Lydia Earl's Media Evaluation

Me And My

Media Project

I studied BTEC Media last year, but it's quite alot different to AS Media

Technologies and

Constructing my Film

Editing

• Editing our OTS, I felt was the most relaxing part of making an OTS, this is because filming is stressful when things go wrong, shots don't go as expected, the actors aren't doing the right thing, or the camera goes wrong .etc
• When we were editing, we were trying to use the conventions that a typical film noire OTS uses
• A main one of these, is 'black and white' but we decided not to use this because we wanted the 'red' to show
• We did use high contrast and made the colours look more red, by changing the saturation
• When adding titles into our fiolm we experimentied with many different fonts, colours and styles

Review and Evaluating

• During the process of making our film, we were evaluating what things to change and keep
• Our class mates also helped us to evaluate by giving us feedback, as well as our teachers
• Coming to evaluate our OTS now, I wish that we experimented with more interesting camera angles
• This is because youth drama does use different camera angles, because it disorientates the audience

Meeting my audience

• To meet our audience, of 12+ we thought of making a youth drama, with a film noire style
• We researched typical conventions of youth drama and obviously film noire, and used some of these conventions
• Also to meet our audience, we used younger characters to make the audience feel more in touch with them

Making a film plan

• We made a basic film plan, but we kept changing bits of it, whilst filming and editing
• After finishing our first draft, we gained feedback from other class members, which therefore meant we changed any bits that were recommended to by our audience
• Or any new ideas that we came up with

Critical Theories

Femme Fatale

• Our femme fatale had dark hair, red lispstick, curly hair, wore black and red
• She also wore heels, to create the footsteps effect and to make her seem more sophisticated
• We used the typical conventions of a femme fatale, to make ours like it
• We have also used the personality of a femme fatale
• For example, 'sexy', sophisticated, 'male-grabbing', mysterious

Semiotics

• The main semiotic used in our OTS, was the semiotic of the femme fatale
• For example, we used all the signs and conventions to represent her as a femme fatale, so people could immediately see what character she is
• Another semotic was, the sign of violence, as soon as you see the femme fatale holding a gun to the mystery man's face
• You see that the film is going to be violent

Users and Gratifications

• It means how the audience deals with the text, or the object you give them, rather than what the text/object does to the audience
• What our OTS has been aimed to do to our audience, is to leave them on a cliffhanger, and to discuss with eachother what they think is going on
• We did this for the purpose of hooking the audience into our film (a typical convention of an OTS)

Target Audience

Preferred Reading

• The gender most likely to watch my film would probably be male
• This is because of the 'sexy' femme fatale, and the action used, for example, the gun
• However if we were to carry on making the film we woul want to use conventions that would attract a female audience as well
• This is because we want a wide variety of an audience
• Even the classification of our film is a 12A, I feel that people up to age of 30 would watch our film
• this is because it is also about relationships and how women and men treat eachother in them

Audience Types

• After a lot of decision making, we decided to classify our film as a 12A
• This is because we didn't want our film to be a 15 because we would probably have a smaller target audience
• We also wanted our film to be aimed at teenagers, therefore 12,13,14 year olds wouldn't be able to view our film
• The reason it isn't a PG is because it has a bit of violence in it, for example the gun shooting scene
• We have also planned to have more gun shooting scenes in the film if we were to make the rest of it

Market Testing

• Marketing techniques, such as picking the most suitable audience and attracting them to your film, were important when making our OTS
• This is because if we weren't to attract our audience correctly, our audience wouldn't be interested in our film, therefore we wouldn't make much money for it, follow our target audience plans or have a successful film

Attracting my Audience

Disribution and Exchange

• We revealed parts of our OTS on our blogs
• Our OTS would be suitable to use as part of a trailer for our film because it doesn't give away the whole story but it gives the audience a taste of what the film is about
• Our clip could be uploaded to YouTube and also advertised of Facebbok/Twitter or any other social networking sites
• Many of our target audience will use at least one social networking site and allso probablky has access to YouTube and the internet to watch and read about parts of our OTS

Deconstructing Film

• Before making a final film plan, I watched example of classic film noir opening title sequences
• As well as watching film noir OTS's, I also watched other ones to see some more typical conventions
• We then combined film noir and OTS's together, and made our OTS plan using as many typical conventions as possible
• Looking at other OTS's and film noir style films helped us because it gave us a taste of what they are like, and also gave us aspirational ideas to make ours

Blogging

• I used blogspot, to keep record of my progress throughout making my opening title sequence, this was to keep a regular diary of what was going on and to also show research I did towards making my opening title sequence
• I feel that keeping a blog helped alot, because it was a good way to keep all my ideas together
• I also feel this is a good way to attract an audience, because they can read all your posts about planning, and also hear about anything new that you are adding to your film
• It is also entertaining for my audience, because they can be there to read the experiences you have been through whilst making and planning your OTS

Forms and Conventions

Conventions are something that an audience expect to see in a film genre for example

Strong Lighting

Sound

• A typical convention of film noir sound is footsteps, in my opening title sequence I used footsteps of the femme fatale's heels, it gives of the effect of her wearing heels and is also a convention of a femme fatale
• The music used in film noire tends to be slow jazz, in my film I used slow jazz music with a foreboding, tension building over the top. This was to make my audience feel uncomfortable with trusting the femme fatale

Dramatic Lighting

• In our opening title sequence we experimented with different uses of dramatic lighting
• Using, lampposts, torches, lamps, and lights in a house
• For example there is a shot in the house, where the femme fatale is walking down the stairs and the light is shining down through the top of the shot onto her

Opening title sequence

• It is there to introduce a film - I feel that our OTS does have a good introduction to a film, because it doesn't give away the answers to any important questions
• To set the scene and style - Hopefully our audience will be able to see that the style is film noir, and it will be set based around the femme fatales life
• Introduce plot and characters - Our OTS has introduced our main character and one of her victims
• Hook audience into film - I feel it hooked the audience into the film, because it leaves a cliffhanger of my our femme fatale shot the mystery man
• Gives you first impressions - Our film will be based with the same conventions as the OTS, for example, increased contrast lighting, spooky sound music (slow jazz and foreboding sounds) and voiceovers with not so much diegetic speech. Therefore if our audience does not like our OTS, they probably won't like the rest of the film. This obviously gives the audience impressions of what the film is going to be like
• Helps you to understand what the film is going to be about - Our OTS shows that the rest of the film will be about the femme fatale murdering mystery men, and will also carry on with the violent but it won't be too explicit as it is only a 12A

Film Noire

Antagonist or Protagonist?

• We have the antagonist and protagonist a mystery in out opening title sequence
• Because we want our audience to carry on watching the film to find out
• It's our catch, because at first you get the impression that the femme fatale is the protagonist but towards the end you get the impression that she is the antagonist

Representation of Social Groups

Hero

• In OTS there is no sign of a hero, but who is to say there isn't a hero in the rest of the film
• We didn't create a hero character in our OTS, because we didn't want to reveal the character's identity too much, hence why we didn't show the femme fatale's 'fierceness' right at the beginning of the OTS

Femme Fatale

• We wanted our femme fatale to be a typical 'sexy' lady
• One of the conventions of a femme fatale is daring and we wanted to emphasise this, we did this by showing her just killing a man without needing any help
• The mysterious man or even the audience probably wouldn't expect our femme fatale to just kill 2 minutes into an OTS, therefore this is why we did it, to be different and mysterious

Locations for Actions

• We decided to film some of our OTS inside and some outside
• This is because we didn't want the scene where the femme fatale shoots the mystery man, to be inside her house because it could reveal some of her identity to the audience and we didn't yet want this to happen
• However, we needed to show her getting ready inside, in her house, living on her own and going out at night
• We also filmed in the dark to create mystery and we also didn't want the man to be shot in daylight.

Smoking

We didn't make our femme fatale

smoke atall in our opening title

sequence because we felt it would

give off the wrong effect to our

audience, and we wanted to be more

modern and subtle

Me and My Group

Me (Lydia Earl)

• I was the storyboard maker, we decided the story line together, and I made the storyboard
• This also meant that i decided what camera angles and transitions to use

Daisy Conway

• Daisy took charge in editing, she was very good at this as she was a good user of iMovie
• eventhough she took charge me and Danielle also had gos at editing, of course

Danielle Bissmire

• Danielle searched titles, look at different fonts and colours
• Although we had an overall decision of what font/colour and style to use, Danielle did the majority research

All of us

• We all searched for locations
• We all took in turns to film
• Overall, even though we had individual jobs, we all helped eachother out and had goes at different jobs and took different responsibilities

Institution and Disribution

Online Presentation

• This online presentation allows our audience to read about the reasons why we chose to do certain things in our OTS
• It may also encourage them to watch the rest of our film
• Evaluating our OTS has made me realise any strengths or weaknesses of it, and will help me in the future if I ever make anything like this again
• It also makes me look back on all the planning we have done, and to fit all the pieces together

Cinema Shows

• If we were to show our OTS in a cinema, I feel it would be hard to disribute it
• This is because film noir is an old style, and isn't very popular nowadays
• However the 'action', violence of our film may attract and audience

Learning to Upload

• Uploading clips of our film, made us watch through all the clips we had, and decide what needed to be kept and what wasn't worth keeping
• The good thing about using iMovie was that if you deleted a clip, but you later decided to use it, you are able to view your 'trash' clips

Progress Made and Planning

Improvements Shown and Strengths

• I feel that doing this project has improved my knowledge of how to use video cameras and how to edit using iMovie
• We were given a lot of feedback throughout making our project, which helped a lot to improve any weaknesses or to even give us new ideas

Organisational tips

• Our group were pretty organised, for example, if we met up to film, we would film unless of course anything very important got in the way
• We all lived close to eachother, so it was easy to meet up and do short sessions of filming
• However at the beginning of the task, we couldn't stick to a storyline we kept changing our minds about what to have as our storyline and this obviously effected the quality of our work
• In the end, we decided what to film and kept our minds to it, and soon developed an OTS

Weaknesses in my continuity task

• One of the main weaknesses in our OTS was the unsteadiness of the camera, this was because we didn't use a tripod, however in the end we decided to reshoot it
• The lighting of our OTS developed quite a weakness, because with it being dark and only having a few torches and the use of lampposts didn't develop quite enough light for us
• There was quite a few shots showing the torches, or even team members standing in the shot, hokding a torch
• However we tried preventing this by reshooting scenes

The Production Process

• The first thing we did when we knew about making an OTS, was sit down as a group and brainstorm ideas
• We then all gave eachother individual jobs, for example, mine was to create the storyboard
• Eventhough we did have a storyboard, we still changed parts of our OTS, for example, twisting the end of the story a bit, or changing the knife into a gun
• The reason we changed the knife into a gun was because of modernising our OTS and also, to be safe
• It was also hard to act out the femme fatale stabbing the man, and through research realised that it is very hard to stab someone descreetly