Again with the handheld camera, this makes the footage shaky and closer to real life. All of these create suspense. When we are in the room looking for the bracelet we have used a camera movement to be able to follow the actions of Scarlet and makes us seem are are in the room watching as we follow her movements rather than remaining stationary. The pan and tilt allows us to view two different areas of the room without having to cut between the shot. The high angled walking shot of Joe and low angled walking shot of Scarlet give the film a sense of continuity but still shows some contrast between the two lives. They are both similar but still somehow different. The zoom out of the photograph allows the audience to see the relationship between Joe and Scarlet and then continue to search with Scarlet for the bracelet. The over the shoulder shots allow us to see what Joe or Scarlet see. This is when the are talking on the phone but looking at themselves in the mirror. The over the shoulder shot is conventionally used when two people are having a conversation in the same room, so we wanted to keep the sense they are having a conversation even though they are not in the same room by using the over the shoulder.
One of the conventions of the use of camera is the range of shots they use, they use many shots so to keep the audience interested and not bored. We have developed this as we also wish to keep the audience entertained throughout. Our film followed with the five part narrative structure; we chose to have a happy resolution. The exposition is of Scarlet getting ready and Joe writing the gift tag allows us to know the background into how the film is going to be set up. The development is of the phone conversation between the two characters, the audience discover that they are together and we learn more about their relationship. The complication is when Scarlet discovers that she has lost her bracelet and begins to find it. The resolution is the part within the narrative structure that changes. Scarlet finds the bracelet and goes on her date with Joe. In a lot of short films the endings are open but instead on ours we brought it to a full conclusion. We did this as we wanted to follow the conventions of a romance rather than a short film. Romances are the type of films favored by teenage females who also happen to be our target audience. By following the narrative structure as we did we know that our target audience will enjoy and understand the film.
Within our film we used 3 different songs, Friday I'm In Love by The Cure, You Make My Dreams Come True by Hall and Oates and Old Habits Die Hard by Ten Second Epic.
The Cure and Hall and Oates are from the 80s and Ten Second Epic was a modern day song released in 2006. This allows for our contrast between the two times in which we based our film, the 80s mixed with today. We chose these particular songs from the time, as they reflected the mood and action of the film at the time in which they were featured. Ten Second Epic particularly emphasizes the fast pace action that occurs. The ambient sound within our film was kept to a minimum and the part was was taken out was replaced by music. The sound unedited was the phone conversation and the ending in which Scarlet and Joe walking away. Other then the telephone conversation and the ending there is no dialogue within the film. We have challenged the film conventions as most films keep their ambient sounds simply dub the music over the top. But instead we choose to clear the unneeded sounds altogether and replace it with music.
The mise-en-scene plays a big part within our film by setting up the ideologies of the film. Throughout you can see a continuous theme of a black and white colour scheme. Both characters are wearing a black and white outfit to show that they are in sync with each other and shows how deep their love is.
The bedroom is black and white and the outside of both houses are black to link into the colour scheme. We have tried to keep props to black and white too, such as the iPod and the jewellery box. The main feature that differs from the colour scheme is the bracelet, which is silver. We did this so that it stands out from the rest of the film and the audience can tell it is the main subject. This has developed other film conventions as we wanted to bind retro aspects but still with a modern twist. So we have made the film as though it was created in the past by making the colour scheme very black and white, but shot in colour to reflect the modern idea. This can also be reflected with our choice of music, featuring both 80's and current song choices. The lighting of our film was very bright to show that the nature of the film is happy and that this is not a film filled with sadness and disappointment. This was made more difficult when re-shooting outside scenes as we had to make sure we had bright weather, which is difficult in the UK anyway, let alone during the winter.
The editing of the film was always going to be the most difficult as we would have many aspects to have to remember, such as continuity editing, creating an eyeline match, for example when Scarlet jumps up and looks towards the bracelet and then the camera cuts to a shot of the bracelt, and deciding on the different transitions between scenes. There were some re-shoots that we had to do so that our continuity editing was perfect, for example in the first shoot of the telephone conversation the bedroom door was closed in one scene and open for the rest. So that scene had to be re-shot as so that it fits in with continuity. Another way we tried to stick to continuity was by restraining from getting hair cuts and by filming it all within the smallest amount of time possible.We chose to film in the correct sequence in which the film would be shown to stick with continuity. Our film would involve a lot of props such as boxes of stuff and clothing which ideally couldn't stay where they were for more than a day and it would be very noticeable if the props were arranged differently in one scene then if it was in another. The plot of the film is that the room gets more and more messy as she becomes more panicked and this would be made easier to see if it was filmed in sequence. This differs from other films which don't always film in sequence, but rather in the most convenient.
How Effective Is The Combination Of Your Main Product And Your Ancillary Text?
In our review we have solely used photos from within the film so this creates a clear link between the two products for example in the film reel running along the bottom of the page as seen here.
However on our poster we chose to take a completely new photo. In the photo we have only used products featured within the film but just placed them in a different layout. This also creates a connection between the film and the poster. We didn't want to isolate either products so by featuring the same subjects you instantly see the relationship. The layout of the objects on the poster is also very important to show the combination of the two. The bracelet is at the centre of the frame to show the audience that it is the most important element of the film and that all action will evolve around this. The photograph of Joe and Scarlet is just off centre so that you can see that it is their relationship we would be interested in. The photograph of the couple also features on the magazine article, again linking them all together.
There is very little language on the film poster, it is all functional information and therefore the language used makes little impact on the audience. The language used in the magazine article however is very important as this is where the audience will firstly be able to discover the themes and ideas of the film. Featuring in Company magazine instantly tells the audience something about the film, they know that it will be aimed towards a female audience and the language also reflects this. Whilst still allowing for the language to communicate with the film we had to make sure it was also written to a standard that could be featured within Company magazine. We have used terms such as "earns the film stylistic brownie points" to show the magazines chatty and informal tone. If we made the language of the review stiff and formal this would confuse the audience as to what the genre and sort of film it is. The language certifies that this is a light-hearted "chick flick" as opposed to a serious drama with a deep meaning. Whilst still allowing for the language to communicate with the film we had to make sure it was also written to a standard that could be featured within Company magazine.
The most obvious use of font on our film poster would be for the title. We have used Brush Script MT.
We used this as it is exactly the same font as the one used in our short film and we chose this font as it it resembled a persons handwriting and it can also associate with the plot of our film where Joe has handwritten on the gift tag to Scarlet "From Joe, With Love". The font used on the film review should of stuck to the magazine format rather then the short film's to make it look more professional and realistic. We did still however think about creative choices when choosing the font. It had to be easy to read and not too dramatic as there would be a lot of it. The font we chose was simple and similar to the one used in Company Magazine. The colour of our fonts played a big part within the 3 products. If you look at the products you can see 3 house colours throughout, black, red and white. We chose these colours as we thought they best represented romance and the black and white colours continues with our theme of the vintage film. So we thought it would be best to choose one of those 3 colours for our font so that we stuck with the theme. On the poster the title and first name of the actors are red and any other font is white. This was because our background image was prominently black and these colours stood out well. By making the title a different colour to the majority of the other font this allowed the audience to see almost instantly that this is the most important part of the poster, what the film is actually called. The audiences eye is automatically draw to that part as it differs from the rest, we did not want the title to fade into the background and be forgotten about. Again on our film review, although we had to stick to the Company Magazine style we still allowed for the colours to be red, white and black, creating a link between the film, the poster and the review. As the background was prominently white we chose the font to be black and this stands out the most and also makes the feature look more professional then if we used red. The images that run along the bottom of the feature look also black and white with very little other colour involved, these then look as though they fit within the page and don't distract the eye.
What have You Learned From Your Audience Feedback?
To discover what our audience felt about our film in general we distributed a questionnaire amongst some viewers and asked for their opinions.
When asked about what genre they thought the film was we got the following results
We created our film with the intention of it being a romance. These results tell us that our film was giving out the right impression on what genre it is, to a degree. But that there were also elements of comedy in it that we may not of recognized before. However 30% still didn't know what the genre of the film was so maybe we wasn't as clear as we had hoped.
When we asked how easy the plot of the film was to follow we found that 75% followed it easily. The film was intended to have a short clear cut story and even though 75% understood this, a quarter of the people asked struggled with the plot. The plot is a very important part of the film and if you don't understand that then the film will never seem that interesting. Perhaps we could of made the plot a little more clearer for our audience and created it with the idea in our head that we don't know what the plot is and adjust it for further understanding for the audience.
We asked our audience what they thought the ideological message to our film was. This was slightly a trick question. We didn't create the film with an ideology in mind but rather that we wanted it to be a light-hearted, carefree film to watch and enjoy for 5 minutes rather then watching it and feeling like you had to learn something. But we was interested in hearing what the audience had to say on this subject. A lot of the audience recognized that there was ideology missing, but others thought of deep, meaningful ones such as "sometimes you lose the things you love" others however would go with the simple "look after your things". This showed us that even though we didn't create it with a message in mind some people could relate to the film and therefore create their own.
The use of sound was a very important part of our film as we had very little dialogue. This idea came across to majority of our viewers. They told us that they understood that they music was there to "cause tension" and we even had once person reflect upon the genre and the choice of music to tell us they saw it as a "rock n roll romance". This shows us that the intention we had by using our music came across. We used rock music as it has a better quality of increasing tense moments and yet still able to get across a romance. The audience feedback showed us that this was understood.
We also asked the audience about different camera angels we used within the film and what effect they thought they had. A lot of the audience reflected on the idea that tracking shots and the different viewpoints of Joe walking along the street where the most effective in the film. Another person recognized that the pan and tilt shot we used when Scarlet throws items onto the bed was effective in making the scene seem as though we were watching the action as a person rather then using a stationary camera.
When asking our audience what could have been improved we got fairly little feedback, which tells us that we did a good job on our film. However some that we did get included that the plot was unclear. One standout point we received was "it was a bit confusing as i didn't understand that she'd lost the bracelet". This told us that we need to improve on making the plot clearer as this is the main element and if the audience struggle to understand this then they will struggle to enjoy the film. We thought that there needed to be more focus on the fact it was a bracelet she had lost rather then she was looking for something.
Not only did we ask general questions but we then conducted a further feedback session to get more specific feedback on our film. This time we wanted to know about our film and how its ideologies and symbolism came across rather then just what the feeling was towards in in general. Below is a short film including the results of those questions.
How Did You Use Media Technologies In The Construction And Research, Planning And Evaluation Stages?
When we was deciding upon what film we wanted to make, and how we wanted to make it we did lots of research on the internet, majority of this was on youtube. On here we search lots of different short films, this allowed us to be inspired in a way we would of been able to of been without it. As the internet is a product that can be accessed by thousands of people a day and it can also allow people to easily upload their products, ones we wouldn't of been able to see without it. This is something we use everyday as well so it wasn't a new technology that we needed to practice in, we could just go straight into it. The first thing we did after research was to shoot our film. We used a top of the range HD camera and tripod to make it as easy as possible and to get the best quality film we could. The tripod allowed us to create different shots we wouldn't of been able to do without it. For example during one part of the film we have used a combination of a pan and tilt. The tripod allowed us to keep the motion smooth and professional, something that wouldn't of come across had we not used the tripod. The camera being the best quality had a great zoom and an extra light attached so that we could brighten up a dark area and make all of our clips the best they could be and viewable. The zoom was very steady and we used it on a few shots. For example when Scarlet is searching for her bracelet on the table it starts with a zoom out from the picture of Joe and Scarlet as a sort of establishing shot. Once we had filmed we made our film in Adobe Premier 7, which was the most advanced to use out of all of our equipment and software. It was difficult but became much easier with practice. Adobe Premier is a programme none of us had ever used before so it took a lot of practice and trail and error to get the film we wanted. A lot of functions we used we found by just experimenting with the software and some ideas that we had had to be adjusted slightly because we found we couldn't do it., or if we could, we hadn't worked out how to do it. Once we had come to grips with how the software worked we also found we had problems with the computer it was on. The programme would take a very long time to start-up and once it had sometimes it couldn't find some files and we had to manually find them ourselves. This would take away from the little time we had to edit it anyway and would end up being quite frustrating. However the system was very good as there wasn't much we couldn't do that we wanted to and once we had worked out the way it work it became very simple to use. It enabled us to easily create very effective shots, such as the crosscuts between Joe and Scarlet walking along the street. The audience could then reflect upon the contrast between the two characters. The other software we used on the computer was Microsoft Publisher. This is a product we have been using for many years not only in media but in other lessons so we didn't need to take time to practice and when we designed our poster and review we already knew what was plausible so we didn't have to adjust our plan much to fit the programme. The programme allowed us to easily make our products and yet they will still look professional and realistic. The product I found most difficult and frustrating to use of them all was Blogger. It was helpful in the sense that it allowed me to upload my work onto the internet and I could look to other examples if I needed help with any of the work, however with all the problems I found I thought the pros didn't out-way the cons. It was probably the best way to do my evaluation as I can insert videos, images and links to different websites, something I couldn't do on an essay. It wasn't the lack of practice that I found difficult with this, it was the design of the programme. Some of the problems I found on this software was that if you inserted an image it would automatically go to the top of the text box and it wouldn't allow you to drag straight to the area in the text where you want it, but that you would have to drag as far as the box when and then scroll down some more. This became very tedious, especially if I had an area with lots of writing and I wanted my picture at the bottom. Another problem I found was that you couldn't just insert a video onto the post, but that you had to edit the embedding code and then insert it, and sometimes this wouldn't work for no apparent reason. Blogger has a very poor spell and grammar check so to easily proofread our work we would write it in Microsoft Word with the intention to paste it in to the post. However Blogger would automatically start adjusting the layout and font size and colour making it difficult to read on the webpage again taking up valuable time on fixing it.
The Cure and Hall and Oates are from the 80s and Ten Second Epic was a modern day song released in 2006. This allows for our contrast between the two times in which we based our film, the 80s mixed with today. We chose these particular songs from the time, as they reflected the mood and action of the film at the time in which they were featured. Ten Second Epic particularly emphasizes the fast pace action that occurs. The ambient sound within our film was kept to a minimum and the part was was taken out was replaced by music. The sound unedited was the phone conversation and the ending in which Scarlet and Joe walking away. Other then the telephone conversation and the ending there is no dialogue within the film. We have challenged the film conventions as most films keep their ambient sounds simply dub the music over the top. But instead we choose to clear the unneeded sounds altogether and replace it with music.
The mise-en-scene plays a big part within our film by setting up the ideologies of the film. Throughout you can see a continuous theme of a black and white colour scheme. Both characters are wearing a black and white outfit to show that they are in sync with each other and shows how deep their love is.
The bedroom is black and white and the outside of both houses are black to link into the colour scheme. We have tried to keep props to black and white too, such as the iPod and the jewellery box. The main feature that differs from the colour scheme is the bracelet, which is silver. We did this so that it stands out from the rest of the film and the audience can tell it is the main subject. This has developed other film conventions as we wanted to bind retro aspects but still with a modern twist. So we have made the film as though it was created in the past by making the colour scheme very black and white, but shot in colour to reflect the modern idea. This can also be reflected with our choice of music, featuring both 80's and current song choices. The lighting of our film was very bright to show that the nature of the film is happy and that this is not a film filled with sadness and disappointment. This was made more difficult when re-shooting outside scenes as we had to make sure we had bright weather, which is difficult in the UK anyway, let alone during the winter.
The editing of the film was always going to be the most difficult as we would have many aspects to have to remember, such as continuity editing, creating an eyeline match, for example when Scarlet jumps up and looks towards the bracelet and then the camera cuts to a shot of the bracelt, and deciding on the different transitions between scenes. There were some re-shoots that we had to do so that our continuity editing was perfect, for example in the first shoot of the telephone conversation the bedroom door was closed in one scene and open for the rest. So that scene had to be re-shot as so that it fits in with continuity. Another way we tried to stick to continuity was by restraining from getting hair cuts and by filming it all within the smallest amount of time possible.We chose to film in the correct sequence in which the film would be shown to stick with continuity. Our film would involve a lot of props such as boxes of stuff and clothing which ideally couldn't stay where they were for more than a day and it would be very noticeable if the props were arranged differently in one scene then if it was in another. The plot of the film is that the room gets more and more messy as she becomes more panicked and this would be made easier to see if it was filmed in sequence. This differs from other films which don't always film in sequence, but rather in the most convenient.
How Effective Is The Combination Of Your Main Product And Your Ancillary Text?
In our review we have solely used photos from within the film so this creates a clear link between the two products for example in the film reel running along the bottom of the page as seen here.
However on our poster we chose to take a completely new photo. In the photo we have only used products featured within the film but just placed them in a different layout. This also creates a connection between the film and the poster. We didn't want to isolate either products so by featuring the same subjects you instantly see the relationship. The layout of the objects on the poster is also very important to show the combination of the two. The bracelet is at the centre of the frame to show the audience that it is the most important element of the film and that all action will evolve around this. The photograph of Joe and Scarlet is just off centre so that you can see that it is their relationship we would be interested in. The photograph of the couple also features on the magazine article, again linking them all together.
There is very little language on the film poster, it is all functional information and therefore the language used makes little impact on the audience. The language used in the magazine article however is very important as this is where the audience will firstly be able to discover the themes and ideas of the film. Featuring in Company magazine instantly tells the audience something about the film, they know that it will be aimed towards a female audience and the language also reflects this. Whilst still allowing for the language to communicate with the film we had to make sure it was also written to a standard that could be featured within Company magazine. We have used terms such as "earns the film stylistic brownie points" to show the magazines chatty and informal tone. If we made the language of the review stiff and formal this would confuse the audience as to what the genre and sort of film it is. The language certifies that this is a light-hearted "chick flick" as opposed to a serious drama with a deep meaning. Whilst still allowing for the language to communicate with the film we had to make sure it was also written to a standard that could be featured within Company magazine.
The most obvious use of font on our film poster would be for the title. We have used Brush Script MT.
We used this as it is exactly the same font as the one used in our short film and we chose this font as it it resembled a persons handwriting and it can also associate with the plot of our film where Joe has handwritten on the gift tag to Scarlet "From Joe, With Love". The font used on the film review should of stuck to the magazine format rather then the short film's to make it look more professional and realistic. We did still however think about creative choices when choosing the font. It had to be easy to read and not too dramatic as there would be a lot of it. The font we chose was simple and similar to the one used in Company Magazine. The colour of our fonts played a big part within the 3 products. If you look at the products you can see 3 house colours throughout, black, red and white. We chose these colours as we thought they best represented romance and the black and white colours continues with our theme of the vintage film. So we thought it would be best to choose one of those 3 colours for our font so that we stuck with the theme. On the poster the title and first name of the actors are red and any other font is white. This was because our background image was prominently black and these colours stood out well. By making the title a different colour to the majority of the other font this allowed the audience to see almost instantly that this is the most important part of the poster, what the film is actually called. The audiences eye is automatically draw to that part as it differs from the rest, we did not want the title to fade into the background and be forgotten about. Again on our film review, although we had to stick to the Company Magazine style we still allowed for the colours to be red, white and black, creating a link between the film, the poster and the review. As the background was prominently white we chose the font to be black and this stands out the most and also makes the feature look more professional then if we used red. The images that run along the bottom of the feature look also black and white with very little other colour involved, these then look as though they fit within the page and don't distract the eye.What have You Learned From Your Audience Feedback?
To discover what our audience felt about our film in general we distributed a questionnaire amongst some viewers and asked for their opinions.
When asked about what genre they thought the film was we got the following results
We created our film with the intention of it being a romance. These results tell us that our film was giving out the right impression on what genre it is, to a degree. But that there were also elements of comedy in it that we may not of recognized before. However 30% still didn't know what the genre of the film was so maybe we wasn't as clear as we had hoped.When we asked how easy the plot of the film was to follow we found that 75% followed it easily. The film was intended to have a short clear cut story and even though 75% understood this, a quarter of the people asked struggled with the plot. The plot is a very important part of the film and if you don't understand that then the film will never seem that interesting. Perhaps we could of made the plot a little more clearer for our audience and created it with the idea in our head that we don't know what the plot is and adjust it for further understanding for the audience.
We asked our audience what they thought the ideological message to our film was. This was slightly a trick question. We didn't create the film with an ideology in mind but rather that we wanted it to be a light-hearted, carefree film to watch and enjoy for 5 minutes rather then watching it and feeling like you had to learn something. But we was interested in hearing what the audience had to say on this subject. A lot of the audience recognized that there was ideology missing, but others thought of deep, meaningful ones such as "sometimes you lose the things you love" others however would go with the simple "look after your things". This showed us that even though we didn't create it with a message in mind some people could relate to the film and therefore create their own.
The use of sound was a very important part of our film as we had very little dialogue. This idea came across to majority of our viewers. They told us that they understood that they music was there to "cause tension" and we even had once person reflect upon the genre and the choice of music to tell us they saw it as a "rock n roll romance". This shows us that the intention we had by using our music came across. We used rock music as it has a better quality of increasing tense moments and yet still able to get across a romance. The audience feedback showed us that this was understood.
We also asked the audience about different camera angels we used within the film and what effect they thought they had. A lot of the audience reflected on the idea that tracking shots and the different viewpoints of Joe walking along the street where the most effective in the film. Another person recognized that the pan and tilt shot we used when Scarlet throws items onto the bed was effective in making the scene seem as though we were watching the action as a person rather then using a stationary camera.
When asking our audience what could have been improved we got fairly little feedback, which tells us that we did a good job on our film. However some that we did get included that the plot was unclear. One standout point we received was "it was a bit confusing as i didn't understand that she'd lost the bracelet". This told us that we need to improve on making the plot clearer as this is the main element and if the audience struggle to understand this then they will struggle to enjoy the film. We thought that there needed to be more focus on the fact it was a bracelet she had lost rather then she was looking for something.
Not only did we ask general questions but we then conducted a further feedback session to get more specific feedback on our film. This time we wanted to know about our film and how its ideologies and symbolism came across rather then just what the feeling was towards in in general. Below is a short film including the results of those questions.
How Did You Use Media Technologies In The Construction And Research, Planning And Evaluation Stages?
