Final Film

 

This is our final film, we have made alot of alterations and are finally happy with our final outcome.

Final Poster

After receiving audience feedback for our film posters, we decided that this would be our final poster. We felt that it had more relevance to the narrative of the film because the phone is one of the main reasons which causes the main character to judge Sam's character. We also felt that of the other posters we created, this one looked the most professional because of the effects which were used in its production. 

Teaser Trailer 2

This is another teaser trailer that I made since we collected all our footage and began editing.

Alternatively, please follow this link to watch it on YouTube: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ray9GQ4wr9M

Teaser Trailer and Radio Advert

This is the trailer i made for our film, we found it was best to do individual ones as we both could come up with different idea's on what we want to present our trailer as. I wanted my trailer to be in black and white as this edit is in our actual film. Also due to the sections of our film, it allows more mysteriousness to what our film is about, this also sets up the girl in the hoody to be portayed as a "trouble maker" which is what we would want our audience to think to allow the ending to be a suprise.

This is the Radio Advert i made, i didn't want to give much of the story away and so the advert it short. I played our non-diagetic music as a background track in this as it gives a more upbeat sound than our mysterious trailer as that has no soundtrack to it. This sound gives our audience the impression that although our film is mysterious, it is not a dark film and emphasises the "drama" genre apose to a crime/thriller genre. Also the music is played in the actual project so the audience would recognise this sound, conventional to a radio advert, also included character lines from the film which was limitted as we didn't have many lines for our characters.

Final Evaluation

Media Evaluation Question 1 from NIKKIBURTON123

Media Evaluation Question 2 from NIKKIBURTON123

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We used audience’s feedback in our planning stage in order to reach our final treatment for our project. We made a questionnaire for our audience research; we tried to interview as many different people as possible to find out what appealed to them and what they didn’t like. We did this so we could include/take out some of this feedback and put it into or take out of our film. The feedback was useful due to our questionnaire being mostly qualitative, we set our questionnaire like this as qualitative is the most efficient and helpful way of getting feedback. It allowed us to gain detailed feedback instead of questions that only lead to ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers which doesn’t give us much to evaluate. This method of audience feedback helped with creating an effective film idea.

After the research into what our potential audience may like, we got them to view our two ideas and give us feedback to which we should use as our final project. We found that our audience liked that our ideas were 'interesting', had 'depth' and the plot was something they could 'associate with'. Also they said they liked the 'unexpectedness' of the outcome on idea 1. click here to view our final treatment

This feedback from our audience influenced us to merge both our ideas as it would suit a more mainstream audience. In doing this, we took into account the constructive feedback we were given, and came up with a storyline that appealed to a range of different people. This was useful in our planning as we knew what the audience wanted and what we had to do next was film. click here to view our audience feedback video!

Using these important words from the first feedback given, we made sure they applied to our final project as this showed these appealed and interested our potential audience. As for any film, audience feedback is important as films are made for audience’s pleasure- to watch, without them, there is little point in making one.

We knew the audience liked films that they could relate to/associate themselves with; we applied this to our film through the characters, the narrative and location of our project. Characters are believable and one character includes a common stereotype which people are always guilty of- thinking people in hoody’s are trouble makers-stereotyping people or prejudging them. People can associate with this as they are the ones judging or the ones being judged. Our narrative is also relatable as it is based around people “jumping to conclusions” about others before knowing facts, a common thing that most people are guilty of. Also, the crime in the project is something that could happen which makes it more relatable. The setting is also important as it wouldn’t be something they could relate to if it was in a different setting, such as in a castle or in the desert, we used a local setting and a real home to make it all believable and relatable.

I think that the unexpectedness involves the depth and the interest of the audience into the film, as the audience has to have an interest for the film in order to allow it to have depth. Also, the audience has to be interested in the plot to expect something from the film in order to be surprised at the end. We filmed and edited our project to lead the audience into thinking that the hooded girl

was a trouble maker. We did this until the ending, to then show that in fact she was the “hero” and returning the stolen phone from the unexpected girl who she had just bumped into. We think that this is a surprise to the audience and something that they didn’t expect and also that was interesting for them to watch as they learnt something had more in it that what they thought. click here for our trailer

Not only were these words important in the planning and editing of our film but they also influenced our advertising product, because the main aim for advertising is so to make your potential audience want to watch our film after seeing posters, trailers, adverts ect. We made character posters, teaser posters, official posters, two teaser trailers and a radio advert. We included questions, parts of our film to lead the audience into wanting to find out what it’s about and wanting to know more.

We used Facebook to gain audience feedback from our teaser posters, we asked which they liked the most in order to have their favourite as our main poster idea. This was successful as we were able to be creative in different ways and have the non-biased opinion of an online audience to tell us which they thought would be the best idea for our official poster.

This feedback gave us confidence that we were doing the right type of film and that we were making it exciting for the audience to watch.

We also used Facebook to reveal teaser trailers, this allowed our audience to make their own minds up to what they thought our film is about as we have not made any direct link to what our film is about or what it involves. We’ve added ‘text’ into our trailers to add mystery and hints to what happens but it is open to interpretation, however, once the film is revealed it shows to have a closed ending. Looking at our audience’s feedback they like the open to interpretation of what’s going to happen in the film as they like the ‘mystery’ of wanting to know what is going to happen next.

Once we had completed our final project, we conducted a final questionnaire in order to find out if we had used our previous audience feedback wisely and to see if our film was understandable and easy to follow, due to the last minute alterations of adding a narrator to our film.  We found that 100% of the audience understood the message we were trying to achieve as this was our main worry, this was crucial that we knew this so we knew that we didn't have to re-look at our film at try to change it. We also know due to the feedback given, that the majority liked the film and understood the message, through the question of asking why did they enjoy the film, not just if they did. This made the answer more evaluative as it is not a straight yes or no answer.

To view more of our questionnaire and the feedback given click here

Overall, the audience’s feedback was crucial in the planning, making and even after our project was finalised. We applied what the audience thought was good about a film into ours, in the planning, in hope that our audience would enjoy it. We took simple ideas from the feedback and used our creativity and imagination to both come up with a story inspired from the feedback. We also used their opinions into our adverts; we kept the mystery and unexpectedness to tease the audience so they want to find out more. I have learnt that our feedback is important because if you’re planning a film that your target audience aren’t going to enjoy, there is no point carrying it out. Feedback is important as you know what to and what not to include and also you can get ideas from other people’s opinions which we learnt to do in putting both idea’s together to create one. Even after our film was finished, we still felt it was important to ask the audience's opinion on if we had successfully achieved what we set out to do, after encouraging feedback we believe we had. Here is our final film:

 

YouTube was particularly useful as I found the TV advert for the guardian that gave me the idea of the twist in the narrative about jumping to conclusions, this allowed us to be creative and use what we had learnt and give us an idea on how to carry out our production of our project.

Click here to view our audience feedback video!

 

Once we understood the narrative of our film, I then looked into sound for our film to include in the production of it. This website was really useful as it had a variety of sounds/music/effects which allowed us to be more creative when making editing it together. However, this website had limited sounds and we were limited to what we could chose which restricted us being too creative with our film as we were only able to choose what was available.

This sound is used both in our project and in our trailes, it is used to introduce the title to the film and also to show tenseness in our trailers. Click here to listen to the sound

 This sound was used in our Radio trailer and in our film to show the journey of the girl. This brightened up the project as it clashed with the tense atmosphere brought by the previous sound. Click here to visit the website and listen to the sound!

                         Click here to view our filming diary!

Also, this captured all our mistakes when filming and were able to make a blooper through FinalCut Express, which allowed our mistakes to be something positive contributing to our film project and allowed us to use our imagination and creativity to present it how we would like. Click here to view our blooper video

Click here to view our evaluation video

Evaluation

1) In what way does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

During the production of our film, we were very aware of maintaining continuity throughout. We used the 180 degree rule to make sure that the audience would not become confused if the characters suddenly changed positions, and we also edited using match on action to make the end product appear smooth and natural. The shot/reverse shot technique is also something we used when shooting our film, because this is an efficient way of shooting conversations between characters. 

The 180 degree rule

Here are the different variety of shots that we used during filming. We wanted to follow the conventions of a drama film by using both cinematography and editing to make our film visually interesting to watch. Because if every shot was long and continuous, the film would be boring. By switching and changing the shots we used, the film had more of an appeal.

Eye-line match/pull focus shot/match on action

Below is a finished video we compiled after having practised some of our more difficult shots. We decided it would be beneficial to do this so that we would have some experience of how to frame and shoot these shots when it came to the day of production. I personally found this very helpful because it made me feel more confident about using difficult shots and executing them.

However, we challenged the convention of retaining continuity toward the end of our film when the truth behind the narrative is revealed. In order to convey to the audience that there is always more than one way of looking at a situation, we decided to repeat the sequence of film again, but use different angles to shoot it from. This meant crossing the 180 degree line, but because the idea behind the sequence was to look at the situation from a different perspective, we wanted to reflect this visually as well as morally. This inspiration derived from the Guardian advert that we found during the research stage of our project. During the editing process, we found that this looked very effective, and even decided to take it a little further by applying a ‘black and white’ filter to show that this is a replay of events which have already occurred (again, similar to the Guardian advert).

Our film subverts expectations of the genre we have chosen due to its morally driven narrative. We maintained all the standard iconography of the drama genre, including realistic settings (e.g. a house, a park, a street…), realistic characters, and every day objects for props (e.g. a pen, a notepad, folders, a phone…) to make it clear for the audience what kind of genre our film would be. Normally, a film in the drama genre will focus on the situation a character finds themselves in, and as a result may subconsciously make the audience reflect on their own principles or behaviour. In contrast, we wanted to deliberately subvert the conventions of the genre by making the audience question themselves directly. The plot is set up so that the audience judges the suspicious character on instinct, and by showing the other side of the situation, and then asking the direct question ‘did you jump to conclusions?’ 

we achieve this.

Question title at the end of our film to engage audience

Real locations and every day objects for props

There are no intertextual moments in our film which might link it to another film, though we did draw ideas from other films when playing around with initial ideas. The whole idea of the ‘theft’ or ‘mugging’ that we originally came up with stemmed from a similar situation in the film Knight and Day. In the opening scene of the film Cameron Diaz’s character bumps into Tom Cruise’s character at the airport, and the audience don’t think anything of it. Later on as the plot develops, the clip is played back to Diaz’s character via a security video taken from a different angle. That is when the audience and the character realise that he put something into her suitcase in order to get it through airport security. In our film, the suspicious character, Sam, is actually taking the phone back from the girl who stole it. Though the central idea for our film actually originated from a Guardian advert that focuses on judging people and situations from the angle you see them. Also, we liked the use of a black and white filter for this advert, which is what inspired us to use it in our own film, even if we did use it slightly differently. This is why we decided that our only intertextuality would be to use the narrative quotes from the Guardian advert, and apply them to our own film to help explain the idea of the film more clearly, as well as to acknowledge the inspiration for our film.

Knight and Day

Guardian advert

The chief purpose of our film is to target the audience by using stereotypical characters and appearances to bring out their natural reactions. In doing this we can highlight just how easily people can be prejudiced against someone or a situation. Even though our film does not contain a lot of action or excitement, we wanted to aim for a clever narrative that had a twist and surprised people. I believe that we have achieved this successfully. 

In relation to the Uses and Gratification Theory, we aimed to give the audience pleasure through both entertainment and providing them with a model situation of someone learning their lesson after acting prejudiced toward someone. In addition, if the audience goes away feeling as if they have learned something from our underlying moral message, then that is a bonus. Overall, I believe that we have achieved this.

Our film also follows 'Todorov's Theory of Narrative'. Todorov believed that most narratives have 5 stages to them which makes for an interesting piece of film. This is how our narrative is structured, as shown below. Syd Field's theory is also shown below, similar to Todorov's idea that every narrative has a similar structure. The only difference is that he believed every film has 3 main plot points.

As in most films, our narrative rises to a climax and then dips again to reach a new equilibrium. The 'equilibrium' at the start is that Millie and her mother's relationship is fine. They are out walking and there is nothing out of place. Then the climax arises when Sam steals Millie's phone, and the event is when Millie realises something is wrong and that there is a disruption in the park between Jodie and Sam. Her attempt to solve the problem at the end of the film is both the moment she thanks Sam for taking her phone back and again when she apologises to her mum. In some cases films finish with a return to the original equilibrium because everything goes back to the way it was before. However,  our film ends with a new equilibrium because Millie admits her mistake, and there is an unspoken implication that she will not jump to conclusions again.

Similarly to Todorov's Theory, our film has a 3 act plot structure like Syd Fields suggested. The beginning (the setup) is when Millie and her mum are coming back from a walk and Millie judges a stranger and comes to a disagreement over it with her mother. The middle (the confrontation) is when Sam 'steals' the phone from Jodie in the park, because this sets up the climactic point of the film. Finally, the end (the resolution) is when Millie thanks Sam for taking her phone back, and when she apologises to her mum over text at the very end of the film.

2) How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?

Evaluation (2) from LauraWol

3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?

4) How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

OTHER

I used iMovie to create a small teaser trailer for our film because I wanted to experiment with a different program as opposed to using FinalCut again. I found this program easy to use, and this is one of the reasons I prefer FinalCut because it allows you to do more with your footage.

I used paint quite a lot to edit my images quickly. I have a lot of experience using this program, so I found it easier and much faster to crop, resize and merge photos on this program. As opposed to Photoshop, this program does not require a lot of experience to be able to use it well.

I used MovieMaker to create another teaser trailer, but found this too simple to use. It did not offer me enough effects to use on our footage, so I was not happy with the end result. I was only able to use titles, credits, videos, images and sound. There were no filters.

I found Photoshop more efficient to use for creating my film posters. There were so many different effects for me to play around with, and in the end I think my finished poster looked more professional. I was able to add filters like 'black and white' and 'motion blur' to my images to give them a more authentic, detailed look. After using the program multiple times, I found that it became easier to use.

I used Powerpoint to present my theory notes in a way that made them more interesting visually to look at on the blog. I also used it to make brainstorms and mindmaps because the program allows you to use different colours and fonts to make the brainstorms more interesting.

Mostly, I used word to create shot lists, to write up the treatment for our film, and to create the analysis of my film posters.