Evaluation - Part 7

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

A big problem we found when editing our preliminary, was that we were entirely new to using Sony Vegas and therefore the skills shown were incredibly basic and didn't look very good when we actually made them into the final prelim product.

We had no use of titles or non-diagetic sound (or any sound for that matter) in the preliminary task as we didn't know how to incorporate that as yet. To help us use Sony Vegas more effectively in the final two minute opening product, we used tutorials and help from our peers to use it more efficiently.


We learnt to use tools such as cropping and adding music and different fading techniques and colour enhancements, as shown in our final film. Also how to develop the cropping and cutting skills to make the product flow more to make it a nicer experience to watch.


If i were to use the program again I feel I would be a lot more confident and capable to do an even better job of what we did on our finished opening two minute product.

Evaluation - Part 6

What I have learnt about technologies from the process of this project's construction?

View more presentations from alicebuckingham.

Evaluation - Part 5

HOW DID WE ATTRACT OUR AUDIENCE AND ADDRESS?

TARGET AUDIENCE: Young people, female (between 13-25)

SETTING - We chose a local setting (Hastings) to attract local audience members who would want to watch a film, as well as in areas surrounding (East Sussex)

PROTAGONIST -

The protagonist is an attractive female which may appeal to the male demographic, even though this is not a big demographic for our film. Also it is appealing to our mainly female demographic as the age of our protagonist is similar to our audience, therefore relateable.

CAST - Our cast consists of a seventeen year old girl and middle age adults, therefore it does have a wider range of age in the cast appealing to more age groups.

SITUATION -

The situation in the film is quite a 'taboo' one and is addressing a problem that not many films do. This may attract an audience that enjoys watching films that arent so conventional and that portray situations that are not the nicest, but do emulate so aspects of real life. 

Evaluation - Part 4

Audience for our media product on Prezi

Evaluation - Part 3

EVALUATION on Prezi

Evaluation - Part 2

Evaluation - Part 1

1) In what ways does my media project use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media productions?

In our opening two minutes, it is not immediately clear of the genre of our film, and throughout the two minutes, it does remain slightly difficult to distinguish the genre that our film belongs to. This can be seen as different to mainstream media productions, as usually the genre is easily worked out early on in those films. 

With our hybridization of genres, (such as attack the block) between realism and drama, it adds to the difficulty for the audience to work out the genre as it is not a common genre in mainstream films. This has been done deliberately to wider the appeal. Although it may be difficult to decipher, the opening is true to the two genres as the protagonist is a very typical seventeen year old girl, and the setting is a very typical place where many of the audience members would perhaps live. This almost develops the conventions of real media, as it means the audience can relate to the film more than, for example blockbuster action films, therefore may gain a larger audience and appreciation for the film. 

We chose to use completely natural lighting which is due to the fact that we wanted to keep the realism of the situation intact and figured that with lots of special lighting effects that the film would loose its realistic feel. In a way this challenges the conventions of real media products as normally a real media product would look glossy and as clear as possible in the lighting front, and we have gone for the opposite effect.

In our use of music, our film has been very true to conventions of real media, as the music emulates the genre well, and mirrors the protagonist's mood, which is similar to what a genuine film would do. 

Music and sound in our film

Once Keeley and I had finally decided on our storyline and had filmed our footage, I immediately had a song in my mind that would fit well for our opening.  

Above is a copy of an email that I sent to the composer of the song I had in mind for our opening two minutes asking for permission to use her music in our film, because due to copyright laws I could not use it freely without permission.

Due to the fact that this artist is not very well known, I thought there was a greater chance of her getting back to us with a reply.

I got the sound effects (such as the sea) off of websites that distribute music and sound clips that are free of copyright called stonewashed.net

Audience Feedback

I showed our film to four people, my Mother, my Father, my Brother and a friend. I thought this would be a good variety because they are of all ages, and are two of each gender.

MOTHER:

- My Mother said how she enjoyed the film and thought that it had a fairly good storyline to it, although wouldn't wish to pay to see the full production or own it on Dvd. This is beacuse she felt "she couldn't relate to the character being a seventeen year old girl" and "wasn't the sort of film that she recognised and generally would watch." 

- It would appear that my Mother's age has a lot to do with the fact that she wouldn't be inclined to purchase it, as she didn't feel that the character or the storyline could relate to her in any way because of the age and life situation difference. Also my Mother is not a keen 'art house' type of film watcher and prefers mainstream blockbuster films to the kind of film our's would be. 

FATHER:

- My Father is only a year older than my Mother  and he said that he "likes the reality of the opening and the storyline" so far, and enjoyed the fact that it was set in his own town. He didn't however feel he could relate to the character at all or to the film overall. 

- It is clear that the gender difference as well as the age difference between my Father and the protagonist of our film  sets them even further apart than my Mother and the protagonist in being un-relatable, which would be the reason why he wouldn't wish to pay to see it.

- Having said this, my  Father is a  fairly keen 'arthouse' film type watcher and often attends screenings at the 'Kino' cinema in Hawhurst and 'Electric Palace' in Hastings old town, therefore did appreciate the 'reality' and 'gritty' feel to the opening.

BROTHER:

- My 20 year old brother's view differed massively form my parent's as he dislike the opening completely. He said he found it "boring" and is in need of more "action to speed things up". He also found it "completely un-relateable" to him and any situation he has ever been in. 

- Although my brother is of a fairly similar age to the protagonist, he didn't like the film at all, as his usual choice of film would be one that contained lots of action and usually a mainstream blockbuster that would be screened at cinemas such as 'Odeon' or 'Vue'. He disliked the genre as he found it difficult to decipher it and was "too much like hard work" having to decipher the situation and what was going on with the characters. 

FRIEND:

-  My friend absolutely loved our film and appreciated the discreetness of the storyline. She is the same age as the protagonist and gender, therefore found it relatable which she said what was the thing that "drew her in" as well as the realism of it all. She felt she didn't know what to expect in the film and the genre conventions were unusual, but remained true to the different  genre that we had chosen.

Whole story of our film

The opening of the film, is very slow and in a tranquil setting. The scene where the father's body is revealed on the floor, we see the Mother look at him with a bag full of luggage and a look of dis concern, and almost disgust on her face before exiting the house. 

The audience does not yet know this, but the Father has abused the Mother and Talulla (protagonist) for years, and this day it finally became too much for Talulla's Mother and she killed him. Whether it was accidental or not is unclear. She then texted Talulla saying "come home now please" then exits the house with the bags. 

This is as far as the audience sees in the opening two minutes

OUR FILM CONTINUED...

Talulla's (nameless) Mother will then wait in the car for Talulla to arrive home and explain to her the situation, before leaving to a better life. The rest of the film is a story of survival of a mother and daughter and shows the way they have to live in order to never be caught by the police. They hide for years, change their names, they change everything about themselves and they are happily settling in to normal life again. 

10 years later curiosity gets the better of Talulla, and she decides to visit her old home / the house her Father was killed in. The house is completely abandoned with the same furniture and everything remained as it had been when they had left. As she looked she remembered all of the horrific times her and her mother had to endure here. She gets caught looking in the house by a police officer who had been head of the murder case of her Father, and the police officer recognizes immediately Talulla's vibrant red hair, which had changed scarcely since she was a child, from photos of the family in the house when the murder investigation took place. 

Talulla is immediately taken in for questioning, although she doesn't tell them anything and sticks to a quickly made up sorry throughout the whole questioning period. She has her one phone call and obviously phones her mother, telling her of the situation. What will her mother do to help? she obviously doesn't want her daughter to take the blame so she decides to turn up and give herself in to the police, confessing the murder, and subsequently setting Talulla free, giving her the life she had always wanted for her daughter. 

Names for our film

When Keeley and I discussed film names we had to take into account the plot and storyline of the film and what would suit it best. Obviously it had to give people a slight insight into the film and a taste of what they would see if they were to watch it, although it is important to Keeley and I that it doesn't give the film away too much as we want it to be surprising all the way through, and in particular the ending.

Also we felt it necessary to choose a film title that would appeal to our target audience, ie - non mainstream, perhaps teens who like to watch a film that is gritty and fairly similar to a real life scenario, and something they can relate to as well as enjoy watching. 

We first decided that we would choose a fairly objective name for our film rather than a name of a character

EXAMPLES:

Distributors likely to touch our film

I will be using my own distribution company that Keeley and I created ourselves. This means that if our film were to be published, We would own all rights to our film. 

The distribution company is called 'Keeylal Productions'.

 

Distributors likely to touch our film would most likely be smaller companies looking to distribute a lower budget film than something that would come out of Hollywood, as our film would be incredibly low budget and our experience in the film industry is very limited.

Examples of distributors that would perhaps distribute our film are: Optimum releasing (distributed Submarine 2010) and IFC (who distributed Fish Tank 2009) These are distributors who deal with lower budget films rather than big Hollywood blockbusters.

How I created 'RAPUNZEL' in the titling

After watching the draft of our film, Keeley and I thought it was a bit boring and didn't involve too many technical editing skills, so we thought we would extend our editing when we came to do the titling.

I used paper to write the letters on so it looked more 'real' which is essentially the theme or genre of our film, so it didn't look too technical and more gritty and real. 

This title takes up around 10 seconds of our opening two minutes so we will probably put it at the end of our film so it rounds it up quite nicely.

Preliminary

This is our initial preliminary task and the first time we had used Sony Vegas so the editing is particularly amateurish. Keely and I have vastly inmproved our editing skills since editing this short video.

With the preliminary task Keeley and I decided to show the simple passing of a 'Parkwood' prospectus from myself to Keeley. It also shows Keeley walking into a different room to where i am. It is obvious that in this preliminary video there is not sound, so to improve on our editing skills we will keep the sound in our main task. Another improvement that needs to be worked on is the cropping of the clips, because in some parts each clips runs a bit too long and it looks a bit out of kilter. Also there is no sound to the footage so in the main task we will need to work out how to add sound to it otherwise, althought we didnt actually want any dialogue, it would be completely silent which is not what we want.