Final Film

The you tube video below shows the  final film for our A2 media portfolio.

Final Group Film Poster

Nicole Rawson Evaluation Q4

Make your own mind maps with Mindomo.

Nicole Rawson Evaluation Q3

To help establish who the audience for our media product would be we carried out some extensive research into different types of film audience and genre. The first stage of this research was to look into specific film genres and the audiences that watch each type of film and why they do so. Our film was to be based on a fairy-tale so instantly you can assume this would mean we would have a younger audience however for several reasons such as the stabbing scene this was not the case. The first thing that our group did in establishing an audience for our film was to carry out a video questionnaire asking people the basic questions about their viewing habits and what they thought of the brief outline of our film. In addition to this i also personally carried out a paper questionnaire as i felt the information gained from the video one wasn’t informative enough. Another issue that i considered is that people could have been intimidated by being filmed and not give full truthful answers however an anonymous hand out would avoid these issues  The results of this questionnaire and a brief description of what this information shows is in the following screenshots. Along with this there is also a descriptions of how creative decisions we made to adjust some of the potential audience issues or feedback results. 

The first question i asked was what was the age of the people i handed my questionnaire out to what you  can see from this chart is that the  age ranges where  as equal as possible that you could hope for in a random hand out. This was good as it ensured that our results to the other questions where as representative of the general viewing audience as possible.  the lagest categories on this chart where the 26-50 and under 16 which potentially influence the results from our questionnaire in their favour. 

For this question i asked our audience was what certificate they would give our film based on the information they had been provided with, this pie chart shows the spread of information that i gathered, ideally it was in line with my own ideas with a large proportion of those asked said they would give our film a 15 rating. Because of its high certificate we knew that we would be limiting our audience but felt it was worth it to make sure that we able to tell the full story. Also we believed that a younger audience would probably not appreciate and understand the story line anyway. To ensure that we where able to give our film a 15 certificate we stuck to the bbfc certification guide limiting the amount of blood and strong language used.  

This chart shows that at the begging of films production the volume of people who gave positive feedback and said they would watch our film. One issue we had with this chart was that there was over a quarter of people saying they would not and our group started to look at how this could be improved. The conclusions that we came to was to make our fairy tale slightly more unconventional to a typical genre. This was a very good decision in the end as it was mainly males who said they would not watch the film so by adding in more masculine scenes we managed to increase the proportion of people who would watch or film  

This question shows the audience that i was able to access when handing out our questionnaires and was  therefor going to be the audience who would will be able to access our film and are more likely to watch it. This meant that the opinions of people in this region was highly important to us when we where reviewing our audience feedback to edit or plot.

 This pie chart shows the genre of film our audience like watch. what we where able tosee from these results was  very good for the genre of our film as nearly a quater or all those asked fit in the fantasy, rom-com genre. One key point to mention whilst analysing this section however is that it was only females who chose this category. Like i mentioned under the "watch" pie chart We addressed this results early on in production and fixed the problem. 

Although initially this may not seem like a typical question to ask our audience when looking in more detail it makes more sense. students and those who do not work are more likely to have more free time than those who work for the public or private sector. this means that in general our audience will most likely to be younger as they are the ones who had the greater potential to watch our film. There feedback was there for the most important and we paid close attention to it when developing our film 

 This  shows the gender of the audience i asked , This information was key as by creating a film with a fairy tale genre we where aiming more at females  however we felt that this was not what we wanted to do and we explored ideas that could make the film appeal more to males too. 

The following results where taken from a Google skydive questionnaire once people had seen and reviewed our film as hopefully they reflect and give an accurate Representative of how a mass audience would respond 

Nicole Rawson Evaluation Q2

Prezi Link

Nicole Rawson Evaluation Q1

Based on a modern day fairy-tale the whole aim of our film was to challenge the conventions of this genre whilst remaining true to real media products of a similar nature. Throughout all of our filming and production of our short media product we tried to make sure that we observed the conventions of continuity weather this was through cinematography, Mis-en-scen, Sound or editing.

Cinematography

My Animation

Disneys Animation

One feature of our film that appeals to me Is the animated title sequence of the logo I created. What I like about this logo is its professionalism and dramatic opening it creates to our film drawing the audience’s attention and making our film very distinctive and unique. To help stick with the conventions of our films genre I tried to include elements of the genre into the animation. To achieve this the animation was synchronised to a fairy-tale-style piece of music. With every beat of the music the logo cube can be seen bouncing along the ground in perfect time in the style of rhythmic editing. When researching the genre of our film one recurring theme kept coming up on all of the sites I visited this theme was magic and was something I believed would be quite easy to incorporate into my animation. To incorporate the magic feel I took inspiration from Disney’s animation that appears before all of there films. In the animation a flash of light can bee seen arching over the main text on the logo, similarly in our films animation I added a flash of light just as the music finishes. 

Many shots are used in our film that are continues with conventional media conventions. One of these such shots is the establishing shot used right at the begging of the film.  In an opening sequence the conventions state that the audience should be, Introduced to the lead character, set the scene for the film and finally hint at the plot. Our film is some what successful at doing this as In this scene the camera is well positioned to feature both the face of the lead character, and her surroundings providing the setting and character introduction, whiles a voice over narrative from the character provides the plot. however there are issues with this shot that I believe should be changed. Ideally if I had been filming this scene I would have like to have used a pull focus from the phone screen to Becky’s face adding more visual interest into the scene and would remove the problem of the fact that the whole shot is focused on entirely the wrong place.

 Another area where the focus was wrong in our film is when the lead character is brushing her teeth. In this shot a close up of tooth past being applied to a toothbrush is shown however the person who was filming at the time failed to notice that the camera was completely out of focus and created a major error that could not be corrected in the post production stage of our film, If we had more time as the producer I would have like to have re-shot this scene and removed the errors before the film was finalized and released. 

One convention of the fairy-tale genre is that usually there are specific characters that fit into specific examples such as the role of the prince, fairy-godmother and princess. Vladimir Propp: Spheres of action is a good theory of narrative to use to analyze this fact. Although our film does not necessarily follow this narrative theory In our film there are definite characters that fit this convention witch can bee seen in the table bellow.

The Hero	ella
The Villan	James, Jessie,
The Doner	Chez
The helper	nicole
The princess	Seth
The Farther	mum
The Dispatcher	mum
The False Hero	nicole

To help emphasize these roles in our film we have used cinematography techniques based on the information we learned from last year. Examples of this are the eye line match shot in which Ella is on the bench an looks up to Seth & in the bullying scene in which Jessie and James are framed as if they are being looked at. The way that the characters are framed either low or high angled shows that one is more important, holds more power over the other and is therefore more likely to be influenced by these characters actions.

High Angle of bullies

 

It is not just people that are shown to be more important in our film objects too are also emphasised to show their significance to our plot. Sticking with typical conventions of how close ups can show important detail we decided to include extreme close ups of a knife and a phone. In the case of the phone the close up highlights importance of photo being viewed and shows the stalker/obsessive characteristics of one of our character. The scene is also framed at a funny angle to highlight the dodgy character and show something’s not right. One prop that has lots of close ups in our production is the knife. This is because it is perhaps the most important prop in our entire production. The first appearance of the knife is on a kitchen top. Here the knife is shown in focus with a blurred chez in the background. The framing of this shot subtly hits to the events to come later in the film and the connection between the knife and chez.  The second appearance of the knife comes just before Ella is stabbed. In this close up the knife can be seen being removed from Chezes pocket before the camera follows its actions as it is brought up to chest level. The motion of this scene helps emphasize the threat of the object shown and signifies that it will be hugely influential in the next couple of seconds. The final appearance of the knife is after it falls to the floor once Ella has been stabbed, Our group chose to include this shot as it shows exactly that the knife is what has caused the injury to Ella with the fake blood tying the wound and knife together. 

In the terms of cinematography we did not always obey conventions of conitnuey, editing and filming particularly well and there are several issues that should have been fixed before we edited and distributed our film. The first issue that i have with our film is that when the knife is picked up of the kitchen top the Long shot framing means that this detail could be easily looked over and may not register with the audience. To make this scene better we should have included a match on action to a close up of the knife being removed. A second example of an error in our film is that 180 degree rule is broken at one point leaving the viewer confused and makes our film look unprofessional.

Broken 180 degree rule

A second shot that makes our film look unprofessional and should have been re-shot is when Ella pushes James away. Not only is this shot badly framed but it is also extremely blurred due to the fast panning motion of the camera.

Not only is the camera work blurred at some points but our production is also let down by shaky handheld camera that is in the wrong place. The scenes that feature this are the ones based in Seth’s house where a tripod was not used at any stage of the filming. If i had been present at the time that this filming took place i would've ensured that a tripod was used as i know the poor results hand held camera work can produce. Shaky hand held camera work is not always a bad thing though. Typically it is used to show distress or that something is not right on screen which is exactly what we needed for the stabbing sequence. In this shot the cantered angle of the camera and sharp jerky movements help to highlight the emotions and fear that the characters are feeling and hopefully makes the audience feel as if they have a firsthand perspective.

EDITING

Editing is a very important part in maintaining continuity in our film with a bad cut transforming what would be a good match on action into a terrible looking transition. One role i was responsible for in the editing stage of our film was the titles in which i tried to reflect typical Fairy-tale conventions. To do this i made the transitions look like the turning pages of a book, Originally the colouring of text was white and a different more fairy tale looking font however Becky wanted to reflect the work of Quentin Tarantino who like us bases his films on challenging the typical conventions. This resulted in a more simplified yellow text. 

Tarantino Credits

Our Titles

Other editing affects that we included in our film include elliptical editing that helps remove any unnecessary time that would extend the length of our film and make it boring. A perfect example of this is the Opening sequence that shows our lead character getting ready in a morning. In real time this sequence could take anything from 15 minutes to two hours depending on the person however in our film we have cut it down so it only takes around 20 seconds of film time. Included in this sequence is along with jump cuts is a graphic match witch also shows the passage of time in one shot Ella can be seen brushing her teeth and then in the next her hair. This shot works as we have made sure we shot the positioning of the two mirrors and character as identical as possible. By placing the images next to one another below you can see how similar the shots are. One issue i have with this graphic match i have however is that i feel it would have looked better with a fad rather than just a quick jump cut.

 

The 180 degree rule is one typical convention of continuity that we have tried to remain true to whilst producing our film. What this rule helps do is create a spatial relationship between a character/Characters and there surroundings. When editing we had to make sure that we only included scenes that followed this rule where possible. A good example of this is the bench scene at the beginning of our film.  At no point in this sequence is the 180 degree rule broken despite various editing techniques such as shot reverse show and match on actions being used. The images below show the match on action of my character sitting down. By  including this match on action we have ensured that the sequence runs smoothly and looks professional.

In our film we have made good use of colour effects and fades to show the differences between the mood and time of each of the shots. The scenes for example that involve my character all feature a subtle sepia tone over the top this reflects that my character is a warm friendly one who in contrast the bullies who are shown with a cool blue filter over the top. The blue filter on the bullying scene is not only just to reflect that these are nasty characters but to also show that this is an unhappy memory that ella is looking back on. One issue that i have with this flashback is the type of transition that is used. normally typical conventions for a flashback include a fade or a wipe however this shot features neither and a jump cut is used.One section of our film where a fade is used to show the passage of time is once ella and her mum have huged. To me this fade appears very successful and is something we should’ve made better use of in the rest of our film.Later on in our film apart from the bench scene we use colour effects again. The most noticeable example is the Red, purple & yellow filter. Personally i don’t like this filter as looks unprofessional and doesn’t fit in with the rest of the film. Although the red is supposed to represent danger, this doesn’t come across well & the viewer is left more distracted by the harsh contrast and un-natural colouring. In comparison to this one colour effect that i do like is the De-saturated colouring of the final few shots which gives the scene a solemn, sad feel, making the audience aware that the feeling in the scene has quickly gone from ‘anger’ to ‘sadness’ This scene is finished of by a fade out that perfectly reflects the fading of life from our lead character. 

good use of colour filter 

poor use of colour filter

The most major errors in our film come from continuity errors in our film that have occurred due to editing ideally these errors should have been removed and re-shot however we ran out of time at the end of the project. Simple errors such as the latch on the door in seths house that is one minuet open and the next closed is not that noticeable however the scene in with Chez is pushed over onto the floor and then is suddenly stood up again is very noticeable.  James entering the room somewhat breaks up the fast-paced edited sequence and shots of chez however it is still very much noticeable. 

 

Chez on floor one minuet

And stood up the next

Mis-en-scene

 In our film we have included an inter-textual reference to the film forest Gump, this is significant as like our character Forrest is a rather lonely character who has suffered similar problems in his life to our character such as bullying  . 

An important part of continuity and conventions in film is the costumes we chose to use in our film.  A characters appearance is the first thing that comes across to the audience even before they speak which is why getting the costumes right is important. The easiest character to relate this point to is chez.  When  he is first introduced to the audience chez bumps is way into my character in an rather unfriendly, hostile and cold manor who doesn’t really care about his surroundings. This unfriendliness is reflected in the characters costume in which chez is always covered up in a green hoodie that hides his face.  Not only does this hood prevent light from hitting the characters face making him look dark and unfriendly but it also frames his face and shows he is going to be a key figure. To make sure these points are shown in all of chez’s scenes we have used continuity and kept his costume constant throughout in comparison to the other characters who change their costumes based on the scene.

Some of the other characters in our film that have distinctive costumes is the bullies. When deciding on what theses characters should wear we established that dark colours and make up would work best as this would reflect the personalities best. Comparing these consumes to my character and Becky’s who tend to wear more neutral bright colours to show the more friendlier figures 

Sound

In addition to everything i have spoken about in this evaluation question there are also the following sound points that i have considered too.

1.      Non-diegetic voiceover is clear and well balanced.

2.      Diegetic sound of door squeaking is too loud in comparison to the voiceover.

3.      Music finishes as the voiceover ends, the door closes, and the screen goes black. Good synchronisation.

4.      The dramatic change in music and bright, clashing hoody show he is a contrasting character to the scenario shown so far.

5.      Music is synchronised with the ending of the flashback to show this significant scene is over.

6.      Accented regional pronunciation of the word “there” is not ideal if the character hopes to appeal to a wider audience.

7.      The tone of the sound changes between shots, subliminally breaking continuity.

8.      Gentle piano music starts as Ella’s Mum starts to build her confidence. Matches the warm sepia tone and emphasises the relevance of the dialogue.

9.      When the hug ensues, diegetic sound of paper should not be present

10.   Music builds as there is a knock on the door and Chez goes to his door. It is not made clear that there are two different doors involved.

11.   Phone conversation cuts between two characters, with overlapping sound to make the cuts less obvious. The sound is also filtered at points to make it sound as though it is from the phone call. This is hearing what the character would hear, making the audience feel more involved rather than simply observing the entire scene.

12.   Just after Seth reveals to Ella that he likes her, music begins to play again. From this, the audience may recall the same style of music being used every time Chez is present. This means they should begin to anticipate his arrival, building tension in the scene.

13.   The dialogue and sound in this scene is a bit too ‘bland’. It is supposed to be a high-drama, highly intense scene leading up to the climax of the film, but lacks the intensity needed to work with the action.

14.   EPOV The reverberation on the vocals sounds like it is in a dream sequence, or Ella is losing focus

15.   The quote that Ella’s Mum gave to her is repeated at the end, tying the whole film together at the end

Evaluation Q1 Plan Nicole Rawson

Points for evaluation

CINEMATOGRAPHY – Camera work and framing

EDITING – Cuts, filters, post-production effects & transitions

MISE-EN-SCENE – What’s in the shot; props, lighting, costumes, makeup etc.

SOUND – Diegetic VS non-diegetic

http://youtu.be/ldRbr1vpebo

1.      Intro is good – looks professional. Gets the film off to a good start.

2.      Titles are good in that they are like the pages of a book – fairy-tale book. The colouring and font was inspired by the work of Quentin Tarantino as he is known for manipulating classic stories, similarly to our film.

3.      Non-diegetic voiceover is clear and well balanced.

4.      Opening scene good establishing shot introducing main character however it should be a pull focus and action is blurred.

5.      Jump cuts remove unnecessary passage of time.

6.      Focus on toothbrush is still not right. Considering I wasn’t present for the filming of this scene, I would’ve ensured the camera was in focus before recording the shot.

7.      Cut from mirror to mirror is a graphic match, and she is holding a hairbrush, as she was holding a toothbrush in the previous shot. However, I would’ve preferred to use a crossfade or a wipe to make the scenes blend more smoothly.

8.      Diegetic sound of door squeaking is too loud in comparison to the voiceover.

9.      Music finishes as the voiceover ends, the door closes, and the screen goes black. Good synchronisation.

10.   Introduction of Ella’s friend comes with a warmer tone to the scene, to show she is a friendly character.

11.   Match on action when Nicole sits down gives the scene good continuity and makes the action ‘flow’. Scene sticks to 180 degree rule throughout.

12.   Bench scene is an intertextual reference to the famous Forrest Gump scene. Forrest Gump is also a lonely character in his film.

  

13.   Chez bumping into Nicole shows he is a hostile character.

14.   The dramatic change in music and bright, clashing hoody show he is a contrasting character to the scenario shown so far.

15.   The stand-out green hoody, change in music and freeze-frame show he is important in some way.

16.   Hoody hides his face – shady character – mise-en-scene.

17.   Ella looking away from where Chez left the scene, shows she wants nothing to do with him.

18.   HMS Looking up shows he is the dominant character, in the opinion of Ella.

19.   HMS Eye-line match to show all Ella’s attention is focused on Seth – important character too. Still staring at him as he walks off, then goes back to looking down. Seth is her only reason to look away from her paper.

20.   Starts daydreaming and smiling when she says “life is good”, but then mentions “these b*tches” and looks back down as her smile drops.

21.   Flashback to hallway. Should fade in or wipe.

22.   Colour filter is to show a hostile, cold environment along with the fact that this shot is a memory.

23.   Dark clothing, hair, and makeup = nasty people. In contrast to Ella’s bright clothes and hair.

24.   Title of film cuts on here (1:40) as two of the main characters are in shot and the main story develops from this point on. Freeze-frame and change of music again in the same way ‘Chez’ was introduced.

25.   Looking up at characters (low-angle shot) shows dominance of the bullies.

26.   Music is synchronised with the ending of the flashback to show this significant scene is over.

27.   Cut back to warm tone and better contrast shows back to present day with friendly, warm environment.(melodrama Richard dyer)

28.   Looking up at Mum shows higher importance

29.   Accented regional pronunciation of the word “there” is not ideal if the character hopes to appeal to a wider audience.

30.   The tone of the sound changes between shots, subliminally breaking continuity.

31.   Gentle piano music starts as Ella’s Mum starts to build her confidence. Matches the warm sepia tone and emphasises the relevance of the dialogue.

32.   When the hug ensues, diegetic sound of paper should not be present

33.   Fade shows passage of time

34.   Close up of phone highlights importance of photo and characters emotions gives vibes of a stalker/obsessive character, highlights dodgy character something’s not right

35.   Red, purple & yellow filter looks unprofessional and doesn’t fit in with the rest of the film. Although the red is supposed to represent danger, this doesn’t come across well. The viewer is more distracted by the harsh contrast and un-natural colouring.

36.   Depth-of-field on the knife shot shows it is an important element in the scenes to come.

37.   Cutting back and forth between the two scenes builds tension and gives indication of forthcoming events where the two scenes will collide.

38.   Music builds as there is a knock on the door and Chez goes to his door. It is not made clear that there are two different doors involved.

39.   Banana throw seems irrelevant, although the intention was to display the angry persona of Chez.

40.   It is not clear that the knife is picked up off the worktop. This is a very important event which is overlooked. A close-up of Chez picking up the knife should’ve been added.

41.   Locking the door gives the impression that Ella is now trapped.

42.   Door latch goes from engaged to disengaged. Flaw in continuity.

43.   Canted angle reflects something isn’t right, as Ella looks puzzled / distressed.

44.   Phone conversation cuts between two characters, with overlapping sound to make the cuts less obvious. The sound is also filtered at points to make it sound as though it is from the phone call. This is hearing what the character would hear, making the audience feel more involved rather than simply observing the entire scene.

45.   Shaky camera angle looks unprofessional, but also seems as though it’s from the point-of-view of someone spying on Ella. She doesn’t know they are there.

46.   Just as Nicole mentions the antagonist, he arrives in the scene.

47.   180 degree rule is broken, however this is not especially noticeable as a cut to the front of Ella breaks up this sequence.

48.   When Ella threatens James, the sudden change in character may shock the audience. This makes them feel less sympathetic towards her and has a detrimental impact on the emotion they are supposed to feel at the end of the film.

49.   He is shot on an equal level before she pushes him, whereas after the confrontation he is looked down upon. Has lost some of his dominance.

50.   Badly framed shot when Ella pushes James away. The action of James falling back is too fast for the camera pan to keep up with. This results in a blurry, unprofessional image where the action isn’t caught on camera.

51.   When Seth sits down to talk to Ella, the camera-work is very shaky. This should’ve been eliminated by using a tri-pod with the camera, instead of taking the shot hand-held.

52.   Just after Seth reveals to Ella that he likes her, music begins to play again. From this, the audience may recall the same style of music being used every time Chez is present. This means they should begin to anticipate his arrival, building tension in the scene.

53.   As the door swings open and Chez walks into the room, this almost acts as a wipe transition into an establishing wide shot where you can see the same thing as Chez is seeing.

54.   A extreme close-up of the knife in Chez’s pocket shows it is of big importance in this scene.

55.   The dialogue and sound in this scene is a bit too ‘bland’. It is supposed to be a high-drama, highly intense scene leading up to the climax of the film, but lacks the intensity needed to work with the action.

56.   As Chez removes the knife from his pocket, there is a bad match-on-action. This is supposed to make the scene flow more smoothly, but instead it almost does the opposite, interrupting and breaking up the action sequence.

57.   James is out of focus as he enters the room.

58.   James entering the room breaks up the fast-paced action sequence, leaving the audience unsure of who has been stabbed. Blood is seen on the knife, but it remains unclear (until the next shot) whether it was Chez or Ella that has been stabbed.

59.   Good match on action as James drops his can.

60.   Eye-line match from James’ perspective to focus attention on Ella’s stab wound.

61.   The use of fake blood highlights the severity of the injury

62.   Continuity error – Chez goes from laying on the floor, to standing by the side of Ella without any noticeable scene of getting up.

63.   Desaturated colouring of the final few shots gives the scene a solemn, sad feel, making the audience aware that the feeling in the scene has quickly gone from ‘anger’ to ‘sadness’.

64.   The fading of colour relates to the fading of life.

65.   EPOV The reverberation on the vocals sounds like it is in a dream sequence, or Ella is losing focus

66.   EPOV The shot is blurred intentionally to show Ella is loosing focus

67.   The quote that Ella’s Mum gave to her is repeated at the end, tying the whole film together at the end

68.   Tarantino-style credits are repeated at the end.

69.   Should fade out.