Monday 25 April 2011

Critical Evaluation

We made sure we had good continuity throughout our five minute film by obeying the 180 degree rule as we did not want to break the viewer’s perception of the orientation on the characters on screen. We also kept to the 30 degree rule meaning there is never a big jump between shots unless if it was intended on sequences like shot reverse shot, if we didn’t follow this rule the jump between gaps may be too big and this will make the edit very noticeable to the audience which shows bad continuity. We also did a montage sequence where the Chris was picking up items and putting them into a bag, we did this to speed up the continuity and the sequence as it shows the character is getting ready to leave, also the footage would have to have been longer to shot if we showed Chris placing each separate item into the bag which would have made the scene too long and viewers would lose interest.




We mainly followed the main conventions of a drama showing that our five minute film has realistic situations with believable characters. We also used elements from other genres like using parts of romance at the start of the film where the two characters are talking to each other but also using some action elements with Chris being murdered towards the end of our film.




Our 5 minute film is fairly similar to the film Dear John where John leaves his girlfriend to go to another country whereas in our film Chris also leaves his girlfriend to follow his dream and travel to other countries and is always thinking about the person he leaves at home like where Chris is recording his travels on the hand held camera.



We aim to give the audience pleasure in the form of emotion using ‘Intensity’ as the technique which shows extreme highs and lows of emotion. We show this by showing that Chris is happy when he decides to leave to follow his own dreams of travelling around the world and when he meets Melissa, this then turns into confusion as when they pull over to help someone and it turns out Melissa has been plotting against him which then goes onto being sadness as Chris is then murdered and his belongings are then returned to his girlfriend and she finds the handheld camera and watches the footage that Chris had filmed.




We used a shot at the start of our 5 minute film where Chris appears to be drowning under water where he is really washing his face in the sink in his bathroom. This scene is similar to the scene in Bourne Ultimatum where Jason has a flash back of when he was put under water during his training, both are similarly shot from being under character showing what is happening while they are under water.




In our main film production we are trying to achieve an emotional response from the viewers by adding a lot of drama that can be easily related to e.g. losing someone you love, we did this because since our production is a drama we wanted this sort of response from the people who viewed our film. We tried to keep this feel through our ancillary texts as with our poster we have kept a simplistic, emotional look which stays in tune with our 5 minute film because they both use similar features that give the same feeling, e.g. colour and style. Our radio trailer also follows this theme, it has a calm voice over with soft music to accompany it with a few notable sound clips from the actual film.



I feel that our ancillary tests do well to sell our production as they both have an emotional feel to them which is similar to our film so the audience who see our posters and hear our radio trailer aren’t confused in case our 5 minute film has a different feel to the ancillary texts

Our radio trailer is similar to most other radio trailers that are professionally made, it has music that is either similar or the same as the music that is being used in the 5 minute film. It also has a voice over which explains the films name, any reviews and when the film is being released, which is very similar to many other radio trailers. Our poster is also very similar to other posters that have been made for other films in that our poster explains the films title, what actors are in the film and who are the director, producers etc.



We carried our audience research in two ways, we produced a questionnaire and posted that on the internet for people to fill out we got the results about what kind of films people watch, their age, who they watch them with etc which helped us decided at the beginning what sort of film we are going to produce. Secondly before we made the final cut of our film we showed our unfinished film to our audience and then filmed their responses to a few questions, this second part of research helped us decide what needs to be in our final cut of our film, what they liked and disliked etc.

While we was filming and editing we considered the meaning of our film when we was making decisions about what shots to make to attract a more emotional response from the viewer. In editing we also considered this meaning of emotion through the music we added to the film and the pace of the editing was at a normal or slightly slower speed to add to this feeling of emotion that we have tried to keep throughout our film

I feel that our 5 minute film, when we showed it to our audience they all knew what was happening in the film even though they were all individually different. I found that if a viewer had any different views about the film that was different to the others then they would ask questions to clarify their own views plus to see what the others thought.


The new media technologies that we used during research are we submitted a questionnaire to our target audience and we then collected them back after they had been filled in and entered the data onto a spreadsheet within Excel where we could produce tables and graphs showing the results more visually to make them easy to understand and evaluate. We also used the internet for researching other films, poster and radio trailers to help give us ideas and inspiration for our own

For planning we mainly used communication technologies through mobile phones and social networking sites like Facebook to plan dates for filming and the overall schedule for deadlines which include additional research, editing etc.




During construction the new media technologies we have used were mainly digital cameras which produce high quality footage that we can use.



We also used digital sound recording equipment to capture voices that are also high quality.



We have also used the internet to make a blog where we can post what we have produce during all of the stages.




We used editing software called Final Cut Pro to edit our film together and add effects etc. The video could then be exported as different file extensions eg .mov which can be more effective based on where they are used.



In the evaluation stage we showed our uncut 5 minute film to our target audience using QuickTime Player on a computer, we then filmed their responses using a digital camera and edited the responses together to create one video using editing software. We could then look at the responses easily and make decisions as to what needs to be changed for the final cut of our 5 minute video. We can also evaluate the 5 minute film ourselves using YouTube to watch the 5 minute film and using word processing software to write up the evaluation and also use the blog on the internet to post the evaluation.

Digital technology allows us to develop more creatively because it allows us to have a lot more options on how to record and edit our film unlike using more analogue technology which is a lot more limited. Digital technology with recording allows us to film in many different ways eg HD, SD, widescreen etc. Digital technology allows us to edit more creatively as you can easily cut down clips and remove parts that are not needed. We can also add visual effects that can improve the overall feel to our film. The limitations of digital technology are because there are many advanced features, we may not have the knowledge of how to use them which means we miss features out that we can use. Technology can sometime be unreliable like if a computer suffers a hard disk fail then you can lose all your work and may have to start again if the data was not backed up.
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