INDIVIDUAL EVALUATION

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our film opening was meant to be a contemporary Film Noir, meaning that it had to have some link to the codes and conventions of the genre. It order to achieve this I had to research the genre and some of it’s most well known films, such as ‘Double Indemnity’ 1944, dir. Billy Wilder and ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’ 1981, dir. Bob Rafelson. From these I learnt about the distorted cinematography, non-linear editing, low-key lighting, heavy use of downbeat jazz music and the certain stock characters that appear in Noir films. These include the femme fatale and the doomed hero who would usually fall for her. The doomed hero would be down in the dumps, would drink too much and smoke too much. His whole outlook on life would usually be very dark, much like the ideology behind Film Noir. The femme fatale was a sexy, sophisticated by completely untrustworthy character who often had a henchman to help her. These characters are present in my group’s film opening, in the form of Eve and Al, as well as Eve’s lover who represents the henchman. Characters in Noir films were seedy, the whole idea was no one could be trusted, even law enforcers. As well as watching Noir films, I looked specifically at openings and analysed them in order to know what makes a good start to a film. I looked at two contemporary Noirs, ‘Se7en’ 1995, dir. David Fincher and ‘Sin City’ 2005, dir. Frank Miller. ‘Se7en’ was especially interesting to look at, as it was such a good introduction. It gives clues as to what will happen and creates a huge enigma, so really grabs the viewer. This is what a good film opening should do, and what my group aimed to make our opening do.

In terms of how we used the forms and conventions of Noir in our opening, I think we developed them slightly especially in our character choices. As I previously stated, there was a femme fatale and beat-down hero. We also had the edition of a lesbian character, which was not present in any of the early Noirs. There has been a lesbian Neo Noir created in 1996. It was called Bound and followed the story of Corky and her lover Violet who planned to steal millions from Violet’s mobster boyfriend. This highlights the contemporary feel of our opening. The lesbian character is the henchman in the film, which was another stock character often present. Our film opening also had a lot of the Noir stylistics due to the lighting and cold feel, in the abandoned house scenes, which was caused by us not correcting the white balance. We were trying to make the whole image look darker whilst on set, and this ended up giving it a bluish hue, which worked really well. The narrative brought about unsurity according to our audience when the opening was screened and the opening shots of the diamond created an enigma of what it had to do with the narrative. This unsurity is something common in Noir films as they like to make the viewer uncomfortable and keep them on the edge of their seat. I feel our opening had elements of this and we included quite a lot of the conventions found in many Noirs, both old and new.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

There is quite a large representation in our opening, we have both men and women and also represent both sexualities. It was not originally scripted that the femme fatale’s henchman/lover would be a woman, but on the day of filming we were a man short and could only get hold of a woman to step in for us. We dressed her in a very ambiguous way, all in black with huge boots and her hood up whilst smoking. This created a very butch look, which contrasted with the femme fatale’s sexy feminine style. The femme fatale also has bright blue hair, and whilst many people dye their hair not many go for such a striking colour. She represents the alternative section of the public that like to make a statement, and I think this really matched with her character in the film. The only man in the opening is Al, the fall guy, who is represented as quite weak and has clearly been played by the femme fatale. This could mean that the film is less appealing to men, but it would be impossible for the story to work if both the characters were equally as strong. In modern cinema the lead character is often a male and is usually portrayed as more significant that the women in the film. It might make a nice break for cinema goers to see a male character from a completely different prospective, especially female cinema goers as they probably feel a little misrepresented by certain blockbuster films.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Our film would by no means be distributed as a big budget blockbuster, it would be shown as a low budget British indie film. For this reason we could look into getting help from the British Film Institute who have recently taken over the duties previously handled by the UK Film Council. The BFI also have links to many film festivals including the BFI London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, which is somewhere that our film could be screened. The BFI help with distribution costs and would be able to help us find a good distributor who matches our film. One of the Neo Noirs I looked at in my research was ‘Brick’ 2005, dir. Rian Johnson, which was distributed by Optimum Releasing. They have also distributed small budget films such as ‘This Is England’ 2006, dir. Shane Meadows, and more recently ‘Submarine’ 2011, dir. Richard Ayoade. These films are all quite gritty and all three films focus on the lives of young people. Our film would fit right in with these titles, so a company like Optimum Releasing would be good to work with. In terms of television, our film would be likely to be shown on channels such as Film Four as they focus a lot on British films and have a hand in creating a lot of small budget films. The film would likely to be shown in the evening as it contains violence so wouldn’t be suitable for young children. Also, a channel such as BBC3 that caters to young adults might be interested in showing it as our film opening was made for young adults.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

In order to create the best product for our audience we had to first decide who they were. In terms of demographics, our ideal audience member would be aged 15-25, possibly older due to the age of our actors. For this reason we would aim for a 15 classification from the British Board of Film Classification. The BBFC are an independent body that classify video works, this includes films, TV programs and video games. According to their classification, a 15 rated film with drugs present “as a whole must not promote or encourage drug misuse” although drug use can be shown. Our opening includes one character spiking the others drink, but there is no endorsement of drugs, meaning our film would be fine on this count. On violence the BBFC official guidelines say “Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury”. Our film contains violence, but it is not actually hugely shown on screen, more implied when we see one character tied up with blood on his face and hands. For these reasons I think a 15 rating would be right for our film and if submitted to the BBFC they would be likely to classify it so.

There is more to an audience that just their age however, there is also the issue of socio economics meaning what class our audience comes from. Class is not hugely represented in our opening, but none of our actors were upper class so it is likely that our audience would be working class and middle class. In terms of gender, I previously stated that both women and female were represented but in some ways they were both represented badly. One female character is represented as cruel and deceitful whilst the male character seems weak. This means the gender representation is quite equal, however due to the lesbian storyline I think females would be more interested in the film. They might also like to see a woman empowered over men. Also, due to the lesbian story line our typical audience member might be a lesbian, or gay, or just in support of gay rights. This is not a film aimed at closed-minded people, and I think that comes across in our narrative. I think that our typical audience member doesn’t necessarily have to be a huge Film Noir fan, this could be the film that introduces them to genre as it has contemporary elements that might appeal. I would hope our audience would be an active audience that would interact with the product and ask questions about things, instead of just passively accepting anything that came out of the screen at them. I think it would be a shame if our product was just fully accepted and then forgotten about, and in some cases opposition often makes it a more appealing product to those who have yet to form an opinion as it means they want to go and see it.

We screened our film opening to our media class in order to get an idea of what our audience thought of it. They were all the target age and were prepared to be active audience members as we asked them for constructive criticism at the end of the screening. Overall, they thought it had a clear narrative and the opening created an enigma, although there could have been more emphasis on the diamond as it was the main factor in the story. They thought felt like an interpretation of a Noir and the stylistics worked well. We asked them who they thought it was aimed at and they said 15+ which is exactly what we were going for. Our feedback was quite positive, although there were problems pointed out, so on the whole I feel we identified our audience and their needs well.

How did you attract/address your audience?

In order to attract our audience we tried to pick characters and actors that were somewhat like them in order for them to be able to relate. Our actors were 18, 19 and 20 years old so were right in the centre of our age range. We used a wide representation meaning lots of different people could be attracted to the film. We also used stock characters from the Noir genre, so anyone who was already familiar with Film Noir could relate to them. We included a femme fatale, downbeat hero and henchman who were all involved in a criminal offence in some way. Our narrative was well thought out and we tried to make it quite exciting in order to keep the viewer entertained. It revolved around the theft of a diamond. Al, the main character and our out of luck hero stole the diamond. The femme fatale, Eve, convinced him to steal it for her, as she wanted it for her own gain. Little does Al know that whilst she is confessing her love to him and promising they’ll remain together forever, she is actually in a relationship with her long-term female lover and has no real interest in Al beyond his ability to get the diamond. This storyline is quite a typical Noir story, as we planned it to be.

We also tried to use stylistics in a way that reached out to our audience in order for them to enjoy viewing the opening. Before we even got to the editing process we had already decided our opening was going to be fast paced in order to keep the audience entertained but also to try and lose them somehow to create an enigma. However, whilst filming we underestimated our need for shots so in some of the scenes, especially the bar scene, the pace is a little slower than we had originally planned for. However, when we screened our opening our audience did very much enjoy our flashback transition, which I am very proud of. We took a shot of our main male character, Al, slowly opening and closing his eyes and then got him to look directly at the camera. A second or so before this we began to play the downbeat jazz in the background to give the idea that the scene was changing. This with the additional strong eye contact from Al gave a very powerful transition to the flashback. We thought using a fade or flash would slow the pace down, so just cutting from one shot to another seemed like the better option. The eye contact and music was just a way of making sure the audience knew that we were in a flashback and not the present time. They thought this worked really well and it was clear that we had appealed to them with our use of editing. Our titling techniques was also something that I think really reached out to the audience and in the screening it was something that was mentioned a few times. We had no initial plan in our synopsis for our titles and we assumed we would just add some text to the images in the edit. However, after a brainstorm we thought we needed a way to get the diamond more involved in the opening as it was only seen once. We went into the studio and used one light to film a group member moving the diamond around in the light. This worked really well when we put it all together and I’m really glad we went for this instead of just some plain text and a voiceover. Our audience really liked this too and thought it had a very Noir feel to it. I think our opening was very aesthetically pleasing what with the diamond titles and the colour changes due to white balance and this was the reaction we got from our screening audience.

What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Over the course of creating our film opening we have used a lost of technology for different purposes. In the research stages it was used in order to gain information so the internet was vastly important. Specifically I used Google to find related websites, and YouTube in order to find film trailers or clips of scenes. The site blogger.com was also a huge part of this stage and the rest of the stages as this is the site that hosts my blog. Having an online blog at first seemed like a strange way to keep our coursework together, but over time I have realised that it actually allowed me to use a lot more new media resources that just writing an essay on a paper would have. With blogger I can embed videos or music in order to emphasis a point, and ad photographs to better describe what I’m talking about. Having an online blog also makes it much nicer for the reader as looking through pages and pages of text it quite boring. Offline, I also used a large amount of DVDs as I had to analyse a few films in order to really get a feel for what our final product should be like. My access to technology was really helpful in my research as it gave me a wider access, especially with YouTube and the millions of clips uploaded on there. My use of technology continued into the planning stage of our film opening. Our blogs were vitally important here and they were a way of keeping track of what was discussed in lessons. My group and I exchanged phone numbers and communicated through text which meant that even if we were away from class or one of us was ill and missed a lesson we could still have a group discussion over the phone. However, it was in the actually production stages that I think the media we used was most significant. We began by using a Panasonic SD-HD 700 camera with a Velbon Tri-pod in order to film our opening, and a YOGA Super Cardiod Shotgun Microphone to capture the sound. We also used  a 300W Ianiro Light in the bar scene. During the editing process used a lot of computer programs to make sure our opening was just as we wanted it to be. We used Final Cut Pro to edit the shots together but came across a slight issue with the sound. Although we’d used a mic our sound was still a little low when it came to the characters speaking so we decided it would be easier to dub those parts than re-shoot everything. We recorded the speaking parts using Logic Pro and then imported the sound files into Final Cut Pro. This created a much more clear sound, although at times it sounds almost too clear. Our audience at the screening didn’t really pick up on this but one or two of them mentioned that something didn’t feel quite right about it. Once we explained it had been dubbed over they said that made sense. We used Logic Pro to record the voice over too and imported this in the same way. I think the used of voice over worked really well and added an extra Noir touch to the piece. We also used Adobe Soundbooth during the production to convert .mp3 files to .aif files as these were the only audio file type that Final Cut Pro would allow us to attach to the film opening. We used two audio files, both were royalty free and downloaded from websites that offered free music. We downloaded a siren sound effect and a downbeat jazz track that we used as background music for much of the opening. If it wasn’t for Soundbooth we would have not been able to use our first choice for music. For us this technology was vital for out film opening to work as we wanted. We also used the program Motion to create the logos for our production and distribution companies. We edited one of the logos in Photoshop also, in order to get it the colour we wanted so that it matched the text available in Motion. Although we didn’t use these programs as much as they others, they were very important as without the logos our opening would look unfinished and unprofessional.

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

Looking back at my preliminary exercise I think there has been a vast improvement since then. There were some issues we had in our preliminary exercise in that we chose a bad location, this meant in some shots there wasn’t enough room to get the actor fully in shot. However, in our final opening the locations we chose were so much better. We used two locations, the abandoned house and the bar. There was a lot of contrast between the two as the house was falling apart and very grimy whilst the bar was clean and organised. We used the juxtaposition of the two locations to show the scenes were happening at different times. We also had issues in the preliminary task of having too many shots which made the sequence quite jumpy, as I have already mentioned the final opening almost had too little shots during the bar scene. We seemed to improve a little too much and make the page almost not jumpy enough. We also had ill-timed titles on our preliminary piece. I think the titling worked so much better on our final piece. We had the diamond in the light opening and then at the end of the opening sequence the voice over talks about life being a game of roulette, which leads the film title ‘Roulette’ to fade in. We spend a long time picking the font for this and tried a few before settling on ’1942 Report’. This looked a little like a dirtied up typewriter font which fitted in with the tone of the film a lot more than the text did in our preliminary exercise.

We planned the final opening a lot more thoroughly than the preliminary exercise or the Exchange exercise. The Exchange was the second exercise we did that was based around two characters exchanging an unknown object. This exercise was to help us get more familiar with the camera equipment and learn more about what shots to use. We also had to make sure we kept to the 180 degree line rule as otherwise our whole exercise would look completely wrong. This was a step up from the preliminary, but didn’t need quite as much work and planning as the final piece. We had a certain amount of time to get all the pre-production work done for the final piece and knew if this wasn’t done in time we would seriously damage our filming time. We split the work between the group in order to be sure everyone did their part and got things done on time. I was the Producer so did a lot of the writing such as the script and part of the synopsis and treatment. I also kept hold of all the lose sheets of paper relating to our opening meaning they were always in one place so nothing got lost. Dianne, our Art Director, was in charge of creating the storyboard, which was another vitally important part of the pre-production work, and without we wouldn’t have had any idea what we aiming for. Courtney, the Director, put together the shot lists in accordance with the storyboard. We got all our pre-production work done meaning we had more than enough time to go and film. We also had to sort out locations before being able to film which meant asking permission to use the college restaurant and finding our what props we could borrow from their and what we had to bring from home. I spoke to one of the teachers who work in the restaurant and she gave us a specific time and instructions on how to get in. This meant our time management had to be spot on in order to film there and then go on to our other location where we had to meet another actor. On the day we managed to get everything filmed in the time slots we had originally planned for and I think we worked really well as a team and individually.

In terms of what I learnt during the progression from the first exercise to the final product I think the majority of it was to do with the technology we were using. In our final product we used a memory card with the camera instead of a tape so had to learn how to use a completely different camera. We put it on manual so had to learn how to focus it on the subject and how to make sure everything was exposed correctly. We then had to find out how to import from the memory card into the iMac using a card reader. I think it was quite useful as I now have the choice to use either tape or card since I know how to work with both. I learnt a lot more about Final Cut Pro during the process and now feel very at home using it. I learnt a lot about sound and how to make it sound better with things like Soundbooth and Logic Pro, but also using things like cross fades in order to make the sound clips smoother. I realised that I enjoyed editing the piece much more that filming it and in future projects will know where my greatest strengths lie. During this piece I also thought a lot more about how each stylistic effects the final product and purposely did things because the group knew it would look good in the end. In the preliminary exercise I was more preoccupied in getting all the shots in to really think about location, costume and props. I feel much more confident in my media knowledge and I think this showed in the final piece. Our screening audience said it had quite professional looking production values and overall was high end pretty successful. I am really proud of what we created and was really pleased with the feedback.