Film Evaluation

I worked in a group with Phoebe and Lucy for my media product. We didn’t have any problems deciding this, as we share very similar ideas and interests and work really well together. Over the winter school term we produced our own mini cardboard mise en scene. My group choose to do the genre ‘Christmas Classic’. After doing this task, we were keen to do our media film on this particular genre; including romance too. As it was around Christmas time when we were thinking this, so we were inspired by all the Christmas classics shown on TV around this time. But after discussing this through we thought the genre wouldn’t be challenging and exciting enough for us. And we would be very time restricted to get the filming done around the festive season. So we then thought against this idea and started to look at other genres. To help develop our media product we looked at conventions of real media productions. We analysed three different film genres; romance, thriller and rom-com, particularly focusing on the mise en scene and semiotic codes. The film we were interested in most was the thriller ‘Enough’. We liked the opening scene of this film as it portrays a normal life style, however the camera shot is from somebody’s point of view, watching the characters every move. This would perhaps make the audience feel uncomfortable and give them an idea of the genre. The film title flashes up in red bold writing, with a black background. The colours connote danger and violence, which would signify the genre. We liked the idea of using this convention in our media product, showing normal life with various shots and flashbacks to suggest the genre. This film was where our inspiration came from.
We then discussed where we would like our location to be, and immediately thought of the capital, London. We were interested to shot at a train station as we noticed many films started with a form of transport, and we really liked this convention for our film. We also wanted to shot in a park as we felt the quietness and stillness a park has, would add to the weary thriller genre. After thinking through these ideas, we realised it would be much easier to film in Oxford City centre, as Oxford has a train station and public parks. Filming in oxford would be more time efficient.
After locating the setting and thinking about the plot, we were ready to pitch our film in front of two teachers. We had pre-prepared a pitch and synopsis with a storyboard of our preliminary task. And explained our thought process. They were really impressed with the thought behind our film and our process. So we were then able to start filming and have access to the filming equipment. From there, we worked out a schedule to film what parts and how long it would take. Most of our filming was produced during a double media lesson that we have every Monday. We firstly filmed the flashbacks in the bathroom scene, which was filmed at Phoebe’s house during a Monday double lesson. The following Monday we went to Oxford to film at the train station and in the parks. When we had all the footage needed, we uploaded to the Imovie HD. When producing our film we took so many shots, quite a lot were all very similar to one another. So when it came round to uploading our footage onto the computer, we had so much unnecessary footage. We briefly looked over our shots and selected the shots we liked. Then started to edit from there. For our background music, we wanted something that was cheerful to suggest a normal lifestyle but also have a slight weariness that would suggest the genre. We experimented with a few pieces of music but many of them didn’t fit and the beat didn’t coordinate with the character walking. We eventually found our music on a large audio internet base, where we researched the atmosphere we wanted to create. We also wanted to combine natural sounds like the water running in the shower to anchor the setting.
Looking back at when we did our preliminary task, I think it was very beneficial to us. It was useful as we were able to play around with the camera and learn how to use it before our real project. Problems that arised when doing this task, was it was filmed over the course of a couple of days so we had continuity occur with clothing. This was something we learnt and remembered when it came round to our project. The task gave us a chance to experiment using different camera angles and shots. Particular shots we focused on were using the 180 degree rule, match on action and shot/reverse/shot. By the end of this task we were very familiar with how to use them.
Our film starts with flashes of the character ‘Emily Shrampton’ who has mental health problems. To show that she is in a bad state, we have shots of her in the shower with clothes on, taking pills and drinking alcohol. To give this more of an edgy feel we used a blue tint effect on these shots, which connotes health problems. The flashbacks are very fast pace and the transitions of each shot fades out. We edited this in this particular way to reflect the genre. We positioned the flashbacks at the beginning of our film as we wanted the audience to have questions running through their heads about the storyline and who the character is. This is a way of engaging the audience into the film as they try to figure out what is going on. Our film then continues following the journey of a detective undercover, through the city. We have a shot of Oxford’s spires, which anchors the location of our film. We also show the woman (detective) walking down old cobbled streets and past a red telephone box, which anchors traditional Oxford.
Our media product represents a social group, as the character ‘Emily Shrampton’ is a schizophrenic, dysfunctional young woman, who has suffered seriously from the separation of her parents and the death of her brother. We represent this stereotype by the strange camera shots used. The actions in the bathroom; which include her in the shower with her clothes on. The camera shot of her scrubbing hard at her face, with heavy black eye makeup and red lipstick. A shot of her drinking alcohol in the bathroom, and close up’s of her taking pills. The audience may have sympathy for the character as she stereotypically falls into the category of a vulnerable, young female.
As our media production’ values were low budget our film would be considered by an ‘art house distributor’ with a minority audience. Our film was filmed in a local area with our own actors and actresses, so it would be unlikely that big institutions like ‘Universal’ would assign our product.
Our target audience for our media product would be aimed at people above the age of fifteen years, as our film contains a young girl with mental health problems. It would not be suitable for a younger audience to see, as these problems are shown. We didn’t just want the age group of teenagers we wanted to engage adults too. To attract such a wide range if ages, we felt our film should be detailed and have a mature approach, so it would engage an older age group. To address our audience we used social problems that may arise in life, such as drinking alcohol, taking drugs and losing someone close to you. People can relate to these common problems, which would engage them more into our film.
During the process of constructing our product we learnt about new technologies, such as, the composition of shot. This enabled us to learn about what needed to be in a particular shot to anchor the meaning of something. Lighting was another technology we learnt about. Our flashbacks were shot in a bathroom with a large mirror against one side of the wall. While filming we had to be careful where we positioned ourselves with the camera, as we obviously didn’t want our reflections filming in the shot. When filming the shots in the park, we didn’t realize how quiet the dialogue would sound when on the computer during the editing. We had quite a few problems with the audio; fitting the music where and when we wanted it was very tricky. Parts of the music fitted perfectly with various transitions of shots. So fitting the music and shots where appropriate and at exactly the same time was difficult. The start of the music is quiet and gradually gets slightly louder. At the point where the dialogue comes in, the music is louder than we wanted, so hearing the conversation was impossible. Using the program we were using ‘Imovie HD’ we didn’t know how to turn down the music and turn the audio up. It was a different program to others, as everybody else was using ‘Imovie’ so nobody could help us figure it out. We had to cut pieces of the music from the start to get the part we wanted. But even now we still have a problem with this.
When first starting to use the editing program it was considerably easier than I thought editing a film would be. We made a very big mistake by not buying our own memory stick to hold our film on. So we had to use a friend’s memory stick to transfer our film onto youtube to show the rest of the class our unfinished film. At this point we still had a problem with our audio, but at this stage it wasn’t a disaster. After the February half term we came back to sort out the audio and realised our film had been deleted off of the computer. It had also just recently been deleted from our friend’s memory stick, so the only copy we had was on youtube. We were extremely disappointed and annoyed by this, as we had worked so hard and so much time taken to edit. The copy on youtube had a major dilemma with the music and audio. We knew we had to do something about this as after so much effort we weren’t going to hand in a copy we weren’t pleased with. The solution we came up with was to upload our footage, which luckily was still on the camera tape to Phoebe’s Mac computer. This way we would know exactly where our film is. We had to start from the beginning, and re-edited everything. Unfortunately, we lost a section of our footage. However, it was a scene that could be done again without much hassle.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the entire process of making our film and learnt a great deal from it. I am extremely pleased with the outcome of our film.