evaluation of final film.

Evaluation

Our media film was called ‘Fixed On You’, and was a romantic comedy opening sequence. I worked with Luke, Gemma, and Lauren and to create our piece, and although I was not part in the acting side of our piece, I took part in the filming and directing side of our opening sequence. We also worked together to come up with the idea for our piece and to write down what we wanted to do and achieve through our work.
Our genre is a romantic comedy, based on a blind date scenario. Our product fulfils the requirements of an opening sequence as we introduce the main characters of the film and introduce a setting to the film. We introduce these elements of our film by using cinematography and different shots that show the character and their surroundings. Also, we used many conventions of a typical romantic comedy. We showed that by going on a blind date it is bringing in the element of romance, and by having lukes character the way he was portrayed, it brought humour to the piece which is the comedy side of our piece. We challenged the genre by showing our two characters pass each other in a long shot at the end of our sequence. The audience would not expect this as the general build up to the climax of them meeting each other would suggest that this would not happen, and the typical genre would have the two characters talking and interacting. In contrast to this, we did feature a typical convention of a romantic comedy by making our two main characters opposites, which means that you would presume they would not get along, and especially not fall in love, which is what would happen later on in the film. We used different types of media language to establish the opposite characters, such as mise en scene when showing the setting of the characters bedrooms. This contrast in the characters engages the audience in a more exciting way, raising an enigma where they want to know how things will turn out between them, setting up different audience expectations. Our choice of doing this proved successful towards our audience in our feedback that we received. 100% of our feedback correctly stated that our opening sequence was a romantic comedy, and said that we portrayed it well and made them want to see more of the film, which shows that we were successful in our work.
Our piece represents young people, getting ready to go out on a date. In our case, we had a unique, quirky character for our female role, and we presented our male role as a stereotypical ‘geek’ character. Our male character wore big glasses, a suit, and at the end, a hat and a scarf to go on his blind date with our female character, who is the complete opposite, wearing up-to-date clothes and is portrayed as a stylish character. This represents opposites between the two characters by using mise on scene. Our representations of the two different types of people were dominant representations as they were how the audience would expect those stereotypes to look and act. For example, the way Luke side combs his hair and puts on the glasses, in contrast to Gemma putting on her makeup and back combing her hair. Also how Gemma’s room is un-tidy and she comes across as laid back and relaxed, whereas Luke’s room is well organised and tidy. This is typical behaviour for the opposite characters.
Film companies such as ‘Working Title Films’ would produce a film like our piece, as they have put money into films such as this before. They have made films such as ‘Love Actually’, ‘Notting Hill’ and ‘Four Wedding And A Funeral’, all of which are British romantic comedies. This is why I feel this company would back our product within the industry, as I feel they this company feel as though there is room within the film industry for this style of production. Romantic comedies are proven to be popular with a wide audience; with films such as ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’, which is a romantic comedy, making a lifetime gross of $241,438,208.
Our film could appeal to a wide variety of audiences, however we decided that our main target audience would be teenagers of around 15 and young adults to around mid-thirties, as they tend to be the people mainly interested in this type of production. Also females would be targeted more in this film as it is females who would tend to watch this genre, however, it can also appeal to males too. Our audience could have a lot of public interest, as when we researched into people who regularly attended cinemas, this is the group that came out at the highest percentage, which would prove good financially for our production. Also, our audiences feedback proved that we was right in believing that this group would enjoy this type of product as they all said that they enjoyed it.
In our opening sequence we gave basic information on our characters everyday characteristics and with the use of showing the phones and the text messages, is set the story off to show the idea of a ‘blind date’. Also, when we finish our opening sequence with the two characters walking past each other, it shows that they do not know that they are going on the blind date with each other, which raises the enigma of what will happen between them as the audience can clearly see the binary opposites within the characters. A sense of time is created by the jump shots between the two characters getting ready to meet, and then when they ultimately leave there houses and walk past each other. The ideologies within our piece is that normally, these two type of characters would not be put together to go on a date in a normal situation, and therefore you feel as though it is going to be a disaster when they finally realise that it these two people going on the date with each other. However, this is how we used our characters to attract the audience, as because this ideology is there, they will want to know if it turns out this way or not.
The overall feeling of our piece is very up beat, and the music we used goes with this. Our music is non-diegetic as it is not what the characters can hear, it is just used over the top of what they are doing and you cannot hear the characters. The connotation used with the music however, helps to begin to tell the story in a different way. Some of the chorus to this song says: ‘And she(he) knew from the finish to the start, that it was bound to fall apart’. This is a good connotation to put across to the audience, as this is what we feel we want the audience to expect. We don’t want the audience to feel as though these to people will get together and be happy, and if they do think this then it would spoil the end to the film. The mise-en-scene- used is effective in the way we represent the characters in their clothing and appearance, and in the way that there rooms are represented when they are getting ready. The shots that we used were linked together by using jump shots between the two characters whilst they are getting ready to go out and leave to meet each other. A particularly effective part of the opening sequence in which we did this was when we put the camera in the characters drawers. When Gemma opens her drawer we see a low angle shot of her pulling out some makeup, and then when she shuts it, we see Luke open his drawer and pull out a tie. Also there is a part where we link up the shots when they are putting on their pants, swapping from each character until Luke has zipped up his trousers. Our editing pace is quite fast in these parts, as we had to get the timing right for it to work as them getting ready. If we did this slowly, it would not have worked as effectively as we wanted it to look as though the two characters, although opposite, where doing similar things but in their own way, at the exact same time, without knowing. This is the first initial clue that they could get along later on.
I feel as though throughout our work I have learnt a lot about the technologies used within the making of a film. We have used you tube to research different clips that are relevant to our film. Also we have Imovie to edit our film and transport our filming from the camcorders to the computer. I would not have known how to do this if it was not for our film. The way in which you edit the film was new to me as well so again; our film has helped to teach me new things about making a film. We had to edit and trim our shots to make it look correct and run smoothly.
Since our preliminary task, I feel that we have learnt a lot in our group about how to make a film and about how you edit and make it look more professional. When looking back at our preliminary task, the shots seem very jumpy and therefore do not work as well as the shots in our final piece as our shots are now much more smoother and look better. Also, we use better shots in our film than the ones in the preliminary, such as low angle and jump shots from one character to the other. Also, our characters are introduced without the use of dialogue in our film, which I feel is better than how characters are introduced in our preliminary task as the upbeat music for example makes it less boring and more enjoyable to watch and get into the feel of the film.Overall, I feel as though our film worked really well, and I feel like we put across our characters really well, making the comedy in the piece stand out too, which I think was an important aspect. I am very pleased with our piece and I just feel as though if we was to do anything different, we could have improved on our team work skills to come up with some more challenging camera angles and different lighting for different types of shots to create a different mood, and also to just make the shots that bit more interesting. But, overall I do feel as though we have made a very successful opening sequence and have set up the story well for the rest of the film.

Grace.