Evaluation: Question seven

This is my prelim task. Bearing in mind we had had close to no practice with the programmes and cameras we used to make this film opening i actually think it went quite well. The acting could be improved a lot but we had never tried to act for a film opening before so that couldn't really be helped. 

I feel i have learnt alot when filming and editing as my prelim task was only average compared to how well our editing and filming was for our final film opening sequence for Parallel. I definitely think doing our prelim task was worthwhile as it helped us practice using the different editing tools and programmes which then resulted in our final film opening being successful. I learnt how to improve the titles which also then improves the quality of the film. 

This is my prelim task title. I hadn't used Premiere before so i didn't really experiment however i didn't think it was too bad for my first film opening.

This was our final title for our film opening sequence. After our first draft we changed the titles quite a lot as our class feedback mentioned a lot about titles and how they didn't work very well. We chose this font and size for our final draft and everyone seems to think they work well with the genre of our film and we are also happy with them as a group.

My learning journey is evident throughout my blog. It is obvious that i didn't know much about how to use each programme to create the film openings/ practice edits hence why they aren't as successful as they could be. However looking at my more recent blog posts it is clear that I have learnt to use and experiment with a few different/ new programmes such as E-Maze. I found this programme quite fun to use as it was different and made my 'audience research have also learnt a lot about different films and how each aspect of the film is important in its own way. For example the titles. I didn't think titles were that important so we spent less time on them and concentrated more on the filming side of things. We soon came to realise (after receiving our class feedback on our first draft) how important titles were when it comes to introducing a film.  

Here is a screenshot showing a part of my blog that shows one programme used to prove  my learning journey is evident and how it has improved. 

When taking camera work into consideration I think I had included quite a few varied shots into my prelim task such as match on action. This was shown when Olivia opened the door to go into the toilets. I tried to make this as smooth as possible so each shot would dissolve and appear into the next, however I do think this could be better with more practice. In our final film opening we aimed to used all of the well known shots which would give us the best possible mark for our film. We used a birdseye shot when we filmed Max walking down the path in the park and I actually thought this worked really well and created quite a creative effect. We also used shot/ reverse shot to show Zac and Zabel talking to one another. This use of camera work created tension and suspense and also allowed the person viewing it to empathise with him as he was being controlled by his second personality.

 This shot shows the first part to the match on action as the door handle is pushed down and the door is opened.


 

This shot shows the after- match on action after we had walked through the door that had been filmed opening from the other side of the door.

I think this image is quite well shot as we managed to film ourselves in the mirror without the camera being seen which made it seem ore realistic and like a real film.

Here is the birdseye view of Max walking down the pathway which I think is one of our most successful shots.

 

Evaluation: Question six

Evaluation: Question five

Below is the link to our Questionnaire for our film Parallel, feel free to give some constructive feedback.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MSLNJZ2

We got a lot of interesting, constructive feedback from our focus group and from people who answered our questionnaire. This helps us determine the good and bad parts about our film, making our evaluation better.

We got a lot of helpful feedback.

A lot of people said that they would pay to watch our film in a cinema which is ultimately the most important feature of a film as at the end of the day it is a business. This also makes us confident that we have created a film that can realistically be made into a real movie.

Most people felt the film kept their interest going. Although some people said no which we think could be down to the walking scene as it did go on for a while.

A lot of people liked the cloning effect in the editing as it was different and more complex than most other media projects. This seems to be a popular advantage to our film.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/XT1yS3dLmVk

Evaluation: Question four

After finishing our film opening I have done some research into what types of people would be interested in our film. When we began planning our opening sequence we decided to have a few different ages as our target audience that would like different aspects of our film. However now the film is completely finished we have decided just to chose one age for our audience research. (18 year old boys) which we have decided that it would be most popular from an indie teenagers point of view. In this E-Maze I have researched where our target audience would shop, what kind of music they would like, what their favourite television programme would be etc.

Evaluation: Question three

This is a video explaining the types of institutions who may or would not produce/distribute our film.

   

Evaluation: Question two

In our media product we focused on various representations such as gender and age when it came to Zac. In this question, I have compared him to other characters similar to him but also explained how Zac does or does not follow or go against the typical representation.

GENDER: 

I have made a character profile of Zac to explain the typical representation of gender:

                                                                                                                                              This profile compares him to another, similar character - Simon James, and also explains 
why he goes against the typical representation of his gender.


AGE:

Typical representation of a boy of Zac's age: 

Some would be portrayed as going out to parties and being around their friends a lot. They could be seen as immature and to not be serious about much.

Zac goes against this representation of age as he doesn't appear to have many, if any, friends and is shown to live a very isolated lifestyle. 

Another representation of age is the 'geeky' type of boy. Not many boys pictured above would also be pictured studying in most media products. This shows a big contrast in two different representations of the same age group.

Zac supports this representation and goes against it at the same time as he looks like he is interested in academics as he is reading a book about psychology in the beginning of our film. He goes against it however as it is not clear that this is actually what he is doing, he is not shown to be at university.


An example of a representation in a real media product: 

This is a character, Lucas, from the television series Pretty Little Liars. Although this is not a film, it represents age in a similar way to our media product.

Lucas is portrayed as being geeky and shy, into school and extra-curricular activities such as the Yearbook club. He is shy and not good at confessing how he really feels.

This is similar to Zac as he is extremely shy and timid and will not readily talk to anyone else. This could show how he fits the 'geeky' representation of a young adult.  

This is Caleb, another character from Pretty Little Liars. In the series, Lucas sees Caleb as an enemy due to them liking the same girl.

Caleb is manly, handsome and often gets himself into trouble. This is similar to the very first representation of age I described.

This is similar to Zac and Zabel as Zac sees Zabel as a threat to his freedom. This fits the representation of age that the more popular, mischievous boys are superior and more powerful than the geekier, more intelligent and shy characters.

Evaluation: Question one

 This is a Prezi with our nine shots and explanation of how they develop, challenge or conform to our genre.

CONVENTIONS:

 I did some research into the different conventions of indie films but also watched similar films to our own and looked at the types of things they included. I then compared my research with what I found with watching films and picked out the six main conventions that featured in both.

NARRATIVE:

This is an explanation of Torodov's Narrative Theory and in-depth explanation of our 'equilibrium'. There is also a picture from 'The Double' which is a film we used for inspiration. 

This is a comparison of Torodov's Narrative Theory using The Double and our media product, Parallel. As we couldn't fill in all the sections for the Theory, we included some ideas of the direction the film could take if we made the whole thing. 

This is another example of applying Narrative Theories to our media product with Barthes and Levi-Strauss. 

CHARACTERS:

Zac: He is supposed to be a young adult suffering from a mental illness. However, from his suit and calm attitude at the beginning, the audience probably wouldn't expect this, I think this conforms to the genre as in Indie films, the protagonist is not usually predictable. This shows in Shallow Grave as it is hard to work out how the characters are going to act.

Zabel: I would say that Zabel is quite stereotypical character as alter-ego's are rarely portrayed as helpful or even angelic like. This challenges the genre as I said before, the characters are not supposed to be stereotypical.

This is our example of our characters in Propp's Theory. As the story was not developed fully, we were unable to add many of the characters. However. this also conforms to the genre as independent films are supposed to have a small cast.

Final draft

This Is our final draft of our opening sequence Parallel. From our first draft we have made quite a few changes. We read our feedback and mostly made changes which were mentioned in our constructive criticism. For example, our titles in our first draft didn't look very successful so we decided to change the font and the size to improve the film opening. We changed the names as the names used in the first draft looked very unprofessional and cliché. Some of the footage we got didn't really add to our film so we cut it out. E.g the shop scene. Myself and Olivia spent some time fading different shots into the next to make the film flow and cutting out the irrelevant/ boring footage. When our peers were watching it they didn't really understand what was going on when Zac went into the shop. Also first of all we added to may shots of just walking which made it quite boring to watch so we removed those and added backing  music. The music we chose was by the Arctic Monkeys. We thought this song went well with our opening sequence and also makes a few of the shots less boring and the opening scene more interesting and engaging. We had some feedback from our teachers that our first draft was too long and dragged out a little bit too much hence why we cut quite a few of the boring scenes out. The sound on our first draft was almost too quiet to hear but when editing our film opening for the second time we increased the audio gain on the dialogue which has made the sound in our film a much better quality

Film poster

This is our film poster we made to represent our film 'Parallel'.