DAISY CONWAY MEDIA EVALUATION G3323(or whatever)

LOCATIONS FOR ACTION

MORE FILMING

-The Internet has been very involved with our product, for example we kept a blog to record a progress, which could also be used as a marketing technique - we could use our blogs to showcase trailers or clips from the upcoming movie

- We could also use the Internet to distribute our film, with sites such as Itunes. However, this opens our film up to piracy.

- Pre-film and plot writing, I checked out typical film noir OTS's.

- I watched the opening scene of a film noir classic, The Maltese falcon, and a post-modern film noir, James Bond film Casino Royale, which is shot in a film noir-esque way.

- Studying other films of a similar genre helped me find typical plotlines, and stylistic nuances to use in my own piece, and make it more authentic.

- Watch the opening scene of The Maltese Falcon, yes I know there are spanish subtitles. You might learn something.

- Throughout the process of making our ots, we regularly asked for feedback, which led to us completely changing out ots

- We did a lot of research beforehand to research who would be interested in our product.

- We had a basic schedule for filming, but we often changed it due to new ideas.

_ We looked around and saw what worked and what didn't and if our original idea didn't work, then we used what did.

AS MEDIA EVALUATION

INSTITUTION AND DISTRIBUTION

ONLINE PRESENTATION

CINEMA SHOWS

CONVENTIONS AND FORMS

- Whilst we have considered the Internet to act as a straight to DVD release of our film, we are also considering opening it in arthouse cinemas.

- We chose arthouse cinemas because it would attract a more intelligent, open-minded, thoughtful kind of viewer (although that may be a sweeping generalisation). Also, because we are an independent cinema, the big distributors may not be willing to take a chance on an independent film.

PROGRESS MADE AND PLANNING

OPENING TITLE SEQUENCE

FILM NOIR

WEAKNESSES IN OUR CONTINUITY TASK

THE PLANNING PROCESS

ORGANISATION TIPS

'FEMME FATALE'

BRAINSTORMING

REVIEWING

JAMES BOND

CHIAROSCURO

SOUND

First of all we got together and brainstormed our ideas - what typical conventions of a film noir we would use, what characters, and what storyline we would use. At first we decided on a girl being followed.

With our footage shot we though we were set. Only having edited our full piece and having shown it to classmates, we realised it was slightly boring. With thanks to Tom Palmer and Miss Moore, we were able to come up with a new ending idea - a more dramatic one.

Italian for light-dark; is the use of extreme contrast of light and dark.

-For our continuity task, we did a story of a girl being followed, she goes upstairs and speaks to her friend and the follower interrupts them.

-The first thing we learnt was to mix up camera angles - our continuity task was the most boring thing ever until we changed up the camera angles.

- Also, the camera did not pick up voices very well (damn technology), so it was quite hard to hear the dialogue.

-Also, the story had a lot more to offer us really.

- HOWEVER, it was after all a continuity task, and on continuity we did a good job.

- The continuity task helped us to discover what special requirements we would need to make, and gave us a feel for continuity

REPRESENTATION OF SOCIAL GROUPS

FILMING

LEARNING TO UPLOAD

In our media product there was one main characrer - the femme fatale. Recognisable as a vital factor in the Film Noir genre, no true film noir would be complete without one. She uses her feminine wiles to get what she wants, and is normally evil - yet her wicked ways often meet their ends.

Here are some things I learnt from our piece:

- Choose a time and stick to it!

- Make sure everyone is onboard

- Good communication skills

- Get in a group with people you know are organised and not flakey.

The job of the opening title sequence is to establish a sense of time, place, the tone of the film and perhaps characters. In our OTS, we introduce our protagonist

PROTAGONIST

FEMME FATALE

After coming up with our idea we went out to film it in a local location close to the school. However, after having filmed it we realised that it just did not work. So we went back to the drawing board.

So now we had a new idea. But this meant finding our new character to be the femme fatale's first prey. So I roped in my boyfriend. The first night we attempted to film, it was raining, and what bad continuity that would have been. The second night we filmed, one of my teammates, Danielle Bissmire, was unable to attend. But, the show must go on, and we got all the shots we needed.

HERO

A good example of a film noir OTS, is the opening sequence to Casino Royale, the first in the 'reimagining' of the James Bond saga. Shot completely in black and white, we are introduced to the character of James Bond, who kills a corrupt agent.

MORE BRAINSTORMING

EDITING AND EVALUATION

WEAKNESSES IN OUR OTS

A typical film noir protagonist is normally a morally-ambiguous low-life male. Perhaps from the underworld of violent crime - the strong silent type. I know he doesn't sound like a good hero but this optimised the time of the Depression/Cold War.

Paying homage to the modern day femme fatales, Dita Von Teese, Megan Fox, etc, we styled our femme fatale in a rather modern way - pale skin, red lips, dark curls and big lashes. However, we dressed her in a more contempary way than Dita Von Teese might dress, all in black in a low maintenance t-shirt and skirt; vamped up with some red heels.

- This project has definitely taught me a lot about technology - uploading can take a day and a half if the file isn't compressed.

-However, working in a school, we have limited technology, and if this was a real film, we would definitely have more ech on side.

Now that we had the shots we needed, and had edited it together, it was time to have our piece evaluated. Although I was sick to death of watching our piece by then, we recieved some good feedback, such as the music we had used really acted unnervingly.

True to the era, a lot of music featured in les film noirs were JAZZ. We used this in our own film noir but underneath ours we put one of the stock sound effects called 'Suspense' - one of those nails on the chalkboard eery sounds. This gave an effect of uneasiness amongst the audience.

After we realised our first idea did not work, we completely went back to the drawing board. With the help of Ms Moore, we decided we would focus on the femme fatale character. Also, this allowed us to have only one character - which comes in handy.

ANTAGONIST

http://www.youtube.com/v/epxYm3OouQA&hl

-In our feature we do not have a heroic character, although it is implied that if we continue our film we will feature a hero.

-A typical film noir hero is an antihero; normally someone from the underworld and the loner type.

IMPROVEMENTS SHOWN AND MY STRENGTHS

-The camera often jiggles, as in some of the first scenes shot we did not have tripod.

-I personally find the ending too cheesy

-Finding the time to film it was also a problem, because more often than not the actress in our piece would not turn up, or make other plans. I found this to be very irritating, which meant that our production period was dragged out over a longer period of time than it had to be.

- We also had issues with how the femme fatale and the fella in our piece would greet each other - it looked too forced.

FILMING

I often found myself doing a lot of editing - so I believe editing is one skill that I have refined whilst producing our piece.

The role of the femme fatale can also act as antagonist - often they will have an ulterior motive, whilst trying to woo the hero - good news is she often gets her just desserts.

The main objective of the antagonist is to create obstacles and deter the protagonist from their mission. Seeing as many film noir heroes are from the seedy underworld,the antagonist may be police or an FBI agent.

With our new idea, we picked a day we were all able to film on and prepared to film. We chose my house and my bathroom - my bathroom is all black and white, and we found this befitting of a femme fatale. And my road, mainly due to location but also because there wer quite a few lampposts on it. It is also a very quite street.

Whilst filming our piece we realised a lot of the shots were quite jiggly, so we went back and shot them again, this time with a tripod.

In our project, we do not introduce the protagonist, but establish the character of antagonist - ours being a femme fatale.

We chose to shoot inside and outside, in a way, experimenting with chiaroscuro - inside the scenes were shot in quite a bright light so there is a lot of contrast when she goes outside - this could represent a loss of innocence.

We shot outside under the cover of torchlight to make our figures appear very shadowy, and whilst we dressed the boy in dark clothes, we dressed our femme fatale in a white coat which made her stand out.

ATTRACTING OUR AUDIENCE

BLOGGING

DECONSTRUCTING FILM

CRITICAL THEORIES

- Hellish though it has been, I kept a record of the things I had been doing on my blog

-This could act as below the line advertising for people interested in your film, and also helped to keep ideas organised

- The blog also encouraged me to see what the other people in our class had been doing, and checking out other filmmakers blogs, which is inspiring.

FEMME FATALE

SEMIOTICS

DISTRIBUTION AND EXCHANGE

USERS AND GRATIFICATIONS

-If we were to release our whole film would use internet advertising techniques to our advantage, using viral ads to attract our target demographic - young people.

- Because we would have limited budget, we would not be able to use many above the line advertising techniques.

- We put a modern twist on the femme fatale by dressing her in contempary clothes, yet keeping her hair and make up old fashioned.

- We dressed her entirely in black, white and red. We used white a white coat to represent an appearance of innocence, but a darker character lurking underneath.

- We paid homage to famous femmes fatales with this character, making her a modernised, yet typical femme fatale.

-The main example of semiotics used in our OTS was the femme fatale - the red lipstick, high heels, dark curls.

- Another example of semiotics is the use of a gun - to some people gun culture represents power, or to others it represents violence.

- We hoped that our product would make our consumers feel uneasy - a tour de force of the strange use of sound in our piece.

- We also hoped our consumers would be lulled into a false sense of security by the femme fatale, and we hoped she would appear innocent to begin with.

TARGET AUDIENCE

PREFERRED READING

- We decided to class our product as a 12, leaving our audience very vague, and therefore wide.

- This age rating ensured that any violence featured is implied, as we show in our OTS, this keeps our film away from the horror genre, and gives us a wider audience range.

- Because the genre of film noir we are looking to appeal to hedonists, and traditionalists. Traditionalists because our film features many traditional conventions, and hedonists because it will be quite a new thing.

AUDIENCE TYPES

ME AND MY GROUP

ME AND MY PROJECT

TECHNOLOGIES AND CONSTRUCTING MY FILM

-The gender most likely to watch our film would be male, because of the sexy femme fatale character, and because of the nature of the film - Film noir pieces are often about police or the seedy crime underworld.

- If we were to produce the rest of our film, we would have to decide whether to introduce an element to interest women such as a love story - a la Titanic, or to stick to our mainly men audience.

- We gave our OTS a classification of 12 - meaning most violence would be implied, which would keep our film away from the horror genre and give us a wider audience range.

ME

DANIELLE

LYDIA

MARKET TESTING

MEETING OUR AUDIENCE

MAKING A FILM PLAN

I felt quite confident in my project, as I had done a Media BTEC, the two years previously, a practical based course, so I had experience in the practical side, more so than those students who had done GCSE or none at all.

REVIEW AND EVALUATING

EDITING

- I did the majority of the editing

- I also filmed our piece

- Lydia acted as the director of the group

- Lydia also created the story board.

- We decided our film certificate would be a 12 - many film noir have a PG certificate so we decided this would allow us to make our product authentic, whilst keeping a wide audience rage.

-We made our characters in our film young, which helps to appeal to a young audience.

- Danielle researched the title

- However, there were some problems with her not attending filming sessions

- Whilst making our film, we regularly asked people to view it as a means of evaluating it.

- This is how we formulated the idea to add an extra sequence onto out piece.

- After we had finished the whole piece, we had the whole class watch it to evaluate it.

ALL OF US

- An important detail of out OTS is although its a film noir, it is not in black and white. We did this because we felt we wanted the red to be seen.

- However, we did alter the contrast to make the colours more severe.

- We all decided on locations and on the storyline