Evaluation

So, after many weeks of filming and hours upon hours of editing, my film was finally finished and it was time to evaluate. I chose to do my evaluation as a video piece as I wanted it to be as creative and interesting as possibly and I'm hoping that my evaluation is just that.

After watching through my evaluation I realised that I have missed out a lot that I wanted to say about the various questions and now being minus a camera, I have written out my extra notes for my answers:

QUESTION 1:

As well as using conventional media products to make my film opening, I think that I have both conformed and challenged the forms and conventions of real media productions.

With my titling, I think that it is unique. I’ve not come across anything like it in my movie watching experience and so I am happy that I have managed to come up with an idea that is quite original and eye-catching. I think that my titling worked well with my film opening and built suspense along with questions in the mind of the viewer. Also, I believe that, with my titling, I have managed to create something that looks quite professional despite the fact that I had an extremely small budget to produce this film opening compared to the professionals.

The low budget meant that I couldn’t afford a lot of the equipment that the professional film makers use to produce their films. Instead of large cranes with lights on and a light and sound team, I had house lamps to create the atmosphere of the opening being at night without having it completely black and, thanks to my brother, I had a studio microphone to record the narration on so the sound was crisp and clear. However, I think that I could have made my film opening look better by shooting in the day and darkening the footage later using After Effects as the end result would have had a lot more detail in the image, but I suppose by not having this level of detail, I have challenged the conventions of real media productions.

The setting, I think conforms to real media products. My film opening is set in the present day and starts by a girl being unhappy with the world in which she lives which is your standard, stereotypical suburbia.  This is similar to a few other sci-fi films such as ‘Super 8’. While the story is set in 1979, the protagonist, Joe, isn’t happy with the course of his life and is bored being stuck in suburbia. The setting of suburbia is common not just in sci-fi films but also in action, rom-coms and pretty much any other genre you can think of. So, in this way, I have conformed to the conventions of the media.

QUESTION 1/2: 
Lia’s costume reflects her personality and, in a way, conforms to the look of being an outcast which is seen in many different genres in many ages of film. Take The Joker from ‘The Dark Knight’ for example. The audience are made aware that he is more of an outcast type of character by the costume and make-up that he wears. He doesn’t have to say anything for the audience to be aware that he is different and Lia is the same. I dressed her so that she was wearing mis-matching colours, her style of clothing was an array of garments from different eras and her make-up showed her creativity and the fact that it wasn’t hidden showed that she didn’t care what people thought of her. The idea of her 'different' costume is similar to those of the characters of the Zeta house girls in 'The House Bunny'. They are all portrayed as geeks and outcasts through their clothing and, like with Lia and The Joker, the audience don't have to see the characters behaving to know that they are different from the norm of their society. So again, I have conformed to the media by conforming to the idea of an outcast’s costume. 

QUESTION 4:
An idea of the kind of person who would watch my movie:

An idea of Dylan

Dylan, 25, is a graduate music student from the University of East Anglia. He now works full time as a shop assistant in a music shop in Anglia Square in Norwich and this job is enough to pay his share of the rent of his flat, food and other necessities and still have a little left over. He lives in a flat in Norwich with his girlfriend Sarah who is training to become a primary school teacher. They met at University and have now been together for four years. Dylan goes to the cinema twice a month, once with his mates and once with Sarah. Him and his mates go to Cinema City more than Odeon as they like to watch more independent films and are not concerned about whether a film is confined to a genre or not. With Sarah, Dylan will usually go to Odeon or Vue as Sarah is a far more mainstream fan though he will sometimes take her to see something less mainstream.

Also, because I thought that my film would be watched predominantly by teenage boys, I asked more teenage boys than anyone else when it came to doing my audience research as I wanted to find out what they like in a film and see if I could cater to their tastes. See my audience research here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHE_3MM1oSs  

QUESTION 5: 

As well as advertising my film opening on the internet after i made it, when I was making the film, I had to think about how it would attract my main audience of teenage boys. From my research (to watch, click above link) I had learnt about how they don't like too much to be given away so I tried my make my film opening intriguing without giving too much away. I think I have succeeded in this by having clues in the opening about what the rest of the film will hold. The flashing lights and the letter about Lia leaving home will hopefully evoke questions in the audience's mind about where she is going. The dramatic and war-like title music will hopefully make the audience think that something poignant will happen later on in the movie. Also, I'm hoping that the titles are a foreshadowing of the action that would occur later on in the film, had I been making the whole film. Another point came up in my audience research that films that make you think are good because they give you a sense of achievement so i incorporated that with the fact that my audience don't like to be told too much about the film opening by trying to evoke lots of questions in the audience about Lia. In the opening, the audience are not fully introduced to her character or the kind of life she leads, all they know is that she somehow doesn't fit in and that she's leaving 'for a better place'. Hopefully I have been successful in my endeavours. 

Soul Beneath Final Cut!

I've finally completed my film opening! Since my rough cut I have added cutaway shots and edited the opening so that the transition between shots is smoother and the story is easier to follow. So, here it is. Soul Beneath:

Soul Beneath Attempt 3

After filming all my cutaway shots and my missing shots, I assembled them together, edited them down and colour corrected the footage to make it look like it was in Lia's bedroom. I also put flares in the titles to try and break them up a bit so they are less monotonous and also reflect the flashing lights in the footage.

Here is Soul Beneath, take 3:

In the film opening, I think that the cutaway shots (news article headlines from 1969) give an indication of the journey that Lia will take but I'm not sure that they really match the rest of my footage.

Time for Improvement/Filming Day 2

After receiving feedback from my classmates, I set about adding a few shots into my film opening so that I could fill in the gaps and also, in adding extra shots, I am able to shorten the lengthy shots of Lia writing and add in cutaway shots which should make the viewer's experience of my film opening less monotonous.

I also needed to film a short shot with Lia as in my rough cut, the footage where Lia gets to the window was not usable so I left it out of my rough cut hoping that it would look ok. In a nutshell, it didn't so i had to reshoot. Unfortunately, my actress was not available to film when I wanted to so I improvised and dressed up as Lia myself. I thought that because I had the costume available to me and the same dark hair as my actress, I could probably pull off a shot from behind of Lia walking to the window. Before I could do that however, I had to make a few changes. My hair is naturally curly and, quite frankly, wild whilst my actress' hair was straight so I had to pull out the straighteners and subject my hair to hot iron plates. Then my mum put my hair in bunches and used the original ribbon used in my first shoot to put bows in my hair. Once I put the costume on, I could just about pass as my actress from behind so I set to work shooting.

Overall, it went pretty well and although I couldn't get the lighting quite dark enough, I should be able to alter this in After Effects.

As for cutaway shots, I spend a good half an hour searching the house for something interesting to shoot that was relevant to my film. I then stumbled across my mum's vintage book collection and found a chronicle of the 20th century. In it were all the headlining article in newspapers throughout the 20th century. Immediately I flicked through to 1969 and found the article about Neil Armstrong landing on the moon. I took a few shots and moved on. I then found old, leather bound dictionaries and experimented with a few shots around the definition of 'alien' but I'm not sure whether these will make the final cut. Also when I was searching around, I was very happy to find an original 1976 Star Trek annual... but that's not really relevant so I'll just save that for myself.

Rough Cut: Audience Feedback

On Friday, we were given the opportunity to showcase our rough cut of our film openings to the rest of the class. Everyone was given a feedback sheet to comment on each person's film opening. I was fairly happy with my rough cut when it was screened but I still knew that I had a lot still to do to get it up to the high level four that I am aiming for for this project.

Out of the ten feedback sheets I received, three marked me as a level three, two people thought I was on the boundary of level three and four and the remaining five marked me as a level four. Overall, the average mark given to me was forty-seven out of sixty which just places me in level four. However, I still need to gain more marks as I want to acheive the best marks I possibly can.

On my feedback sheets there were mainly positive comments. The main element which most people wrote about was the dramatic music for the titles (which many people also gave positive feedback about) and said how it worked really well to build suspense and give you an idea of the kind of film 'Soul Beneath' would turn out to be. Also, many people commented on the character of Lia and how they thought I had presented her well through her costume and make-up.

However, one person did comment on how they thought that my actress was too old for the role even though she is sixteen playing an eighteen year old! Also, a few people pointed out that my titles were a little too fast for them to read so I will take this into consideration and slow them down slightly in my final piece.

Whilst taking on board the comments from my classmates I think that I will venture further than my media class to give feedback on my film. I want people to be as critical as they can so that I can take everything on board and change my film opening for the better!

Playing with the order of shots

Since the last blog post, I have been playing around with the order of my shots to see if I can create a more dynamic film opening. I tried moving the shot where 'Lia' is at the window looking out, to the start of the film opening so that the audience can gather a clearer picture of her character earlier on in the film but this meant that it didn't fade into the titles like it did before. I exported the video with the changed order of shots and showed both the original cut and the changed cut to a few people and it was unanimous that the original cut was better than the cut with the changed order of shots and so, I am going to add a few more shots into the original cut (such as cutaways and a shot of her actually getting to the window) in an effort to try and improve my film opening.

Below is the cut with the changed shot order.

Deciding to change

Although I have received positive feedback from pretty much all of the people I have shown my rough cut to, I still think that I need to change it. At the moment, I think that the opening of my film is a little bit monotonous. It doesn't make as much of an impact that I hoped for and I'm not sure that I like what has been said in the voice over - i.e. I'm not sure if I have given too much away. I think I am going to re-write the script and re-do the voiceover as well as play around with the order of shots to try and create a more interesting and memorable piece of film.

Progress - Colour correction

Since creating my rough cut, I have shown it to a few people who would fit my target audience to get some feedback. At the moment, all feedback has been positive but as I watched the opening more and more, the more things I saw that needed to be changed. For one, I realised that the lighting isn't very continuous in brightness and contrast so I edited most of the clips to try and make all the shots have the same light intensity. Some shots I have had to make darker and when shown next to the original shot, they look worse purely because the edits are darker than the originals but I need the setting to be dark as it is meant to be night time and by making all the shots slightly darker, I have managed to achieve the same kind of light intensity in all the shots.



Before colour correction



After colour correction



Before colour correction

After colour correction

Before colour correction

After colour correction

Before colour correction

After colour correction

The main thing that I wanted to edit was the shot of the close up writing in the middle of the film opening. Originally, I applied a mask to the text in After Effects and made it so everything was blurry apart from the words that Lia is reading in ther voice over at the time. Unfortunately, when I tried to export this experiment, it didn't work and the mask kept blacking out the text totally and it didn't work so I had to come up with another plan. I ended up applying another mask but feathering the picture so that the outside of the shot was dark and the text was light and therefore highlighted.

Writing before edit



Writing after edit



Rough cut complete!

After many hours of filming, editing and creating, I have a rough cut of my film opening completed. I have put together all the decent and usable footage that I had along with the music and voice overs and I now have a film opening which I can show to people to gain feedback. However, because I have not yet obtained permission from the composer of the song for my titles, I will post the film opening on here without the music from the titles as I do not want to be subject to any copyright offences.

At the moment, my rough cut is only just two minutes long and made up of a few longer shots so I think that I am going to have to shoot a few more shots to act as fillers so that I can shorten the longer shots so that it won't be boring or laborious to anybody. Also, I need to have a play around with colour effects on Premiere Pro to see if I can make it look any more realistic.

Ideas for film poster

Because I had finished my rough cut and I had an hour of lesson to fill, I thought that I could create some film posters on Photoshop. Below are my ideas.

Here is the first idea that I had. I thought it was bold and simplistic like my film and also my production companies. Originally, I had the film title in a bigger font but my neighbouring peer, Bill, suggested using a smaller font. I preferred this look as it creates a lot of empty space around the title and because of the contrasting black and white (and the fact that the title is the only thing on the page) you are instinctively drawn to it. Myself and Bill also thought that only having the film title on the poster created intrigue and questions in the viewer that made them want to find out more about the film.

On the right is my second idea. I thought that because the title was going to be the only thing on the page, that it should be bold and interesting. So, I duplicated the white title and changed the colour to a light and strange shade of green. I then layered it over the top of the white title, slightly off centre, so that it creates an image that looks 3D.

 

Left is my third idea. This time, I simply changed the white text to black so that the green text appears as if it has breaks in it, almost reflecting the personality of my protagonist.

The fourth idea is on the right. This idea was thought of by Bill and I think that the use of a purpley-pink looks very effective.

 

Left is my fifth idea. For this idea, I used white text and added a green glow around it which illuminates the title and, I think, makes it stand out from the page even more. Also, the illumination could be a reference to the searchlights that the viewer sees in the film opening.