My Evaluation

When I think about our media production, I feel we have kept the codes and conventions of a ‘Thriller’ to create our short film. The first thing we thought about was our locations. We realised the first half had to be in an enclosed area so we could show the ‘trapped’ feel to the film. Our first location is a kitchen.  We chose this kitchen as it is white and this gives an irrefutable clinical setting.  Everything in the kitchen is white, this gives it a cold clean feel to it and when we jump to Megan scrubbing the floor, this immediately shows the OCD in her, one of many disorders yet to discover. I’m glad we chose this getting instead of the bedroom, as this would have looked too ‘normal’. The house is semi-detached on a council estate in Whitehouse, Ipswich, this looks like the sort of house Megan would have as it looks like a place of melancholy.

Our second location was the town of Felixstowe. This is the perfect location as normally families come to beach to have fun and enjoy themselves, not to think about a crime. This contrast between the situation and the location works perfectly to create the disposition of the film. Felixstowe is only 14 miles away which made the film seem more realistic as the location is quite close. The location is also an open place, which can then seem a nice place to open the mind.

The costumes were very cleverly thought out, we put each characters personality into their clothing, for example, ‘Charlie/Devil’ wears a black cardigan and a red top throughout the film, her costume does not change as this represents the death, malicious and cupidity of the character. Her make-up was set to be the femme fatale look with the black eyeliner and the bright red lips; also the blonde hair is part of the femme fatale look.  ‘Katherine/Angel’ is wearing purple cardigan and white top. Purple represents honour and nobility and white represents purity and gives an ‘angelic’ look. The main character Megan is wearing contrasting colours which show her opposing personalities. The rubber gloves in the kitchen scene show the native responsibilities of a woman in a house.

The choice of music was very cleverly thought out. The song at the beginning gives the audience the false effect of a drama. The song is ‘Fuera Dal Mondo’ by Ludovico Einaudi, this is a soft melody with no lyrics, and this just helps the audience to get their mind to set the controversial theme of the film. When the second half of the film comes in, we merge the track with the thriller theme music. The image of Megan opening the boot of the car was timed well with the music, this makes the audience realise she is evil. Some of our sound had been manipulated to suit of genre better. For example, the sound of the wind on the beach was amplified as the loudness made it seem more intimidating.

The camera shots used in our film highlighted the codes and conventions very well. For example, using dominant and submissive shots to the characters creates misleading personality recognition. Throughout the first half of our film, Megan had been shown through submissive shots, it gave the impression Megan was the victim. By doing this, an enigma was created until the very end of the film. The first time Megan is shown in a dominant shot is at the point you realise she has locked her boyfriend in the boot of her car, this is where the true story comes out for the audience to realise what has happened, also, this is the first time you get a good look at her face as we kept her hidden for the first two minute of the film. We did this by using close ups and extreme close ups with fast past edits. 

A lot of tight framing was used throughout our film to show the stress of Megan’s life. In every shot in the first half, Megan is constantly surrounded by objects and people who make the space seem so constricted. For example, when Megan is pouring fairy liquid into a bowl, Charlie/Devil is placed directly in the centre of the shot and you can just see Megan’s hands. These are perfectly placed so you can see Charlie/Devil’s face and it makes the audience listen to the quote of ‘use bleach; bleach gets out everything’. This also shows this quote as being important throughout the film and the effect it has on Megan really shows as she slowly puts her hands down. Another is the scrubbing scene; she is trapped between the washing machine, the cooker and Catherine/Angel. This helps the audience realise her struggles with ordinary life and her disorders. Another scene is

The lighting from the start to the beginning helped set the mood of the film. We chose to film on cloudy days to make the lighting seem dull and lifeless. The kitchen scene had the blinds closed to shut out any daylight. The orange tint to the blind gave a great lighting effect which seemed bizarre and inaccurate.

The dialogue to our film was carefully thought out. The first word you hear from Megan is ‘shit’ so this immediately makes it a film for adults. Most Thrillers are certificated 12 and above due to language used. The dialogue on the beach slowly faded out to make the audience think about what’s being said, we know what the conversations are about but this gives the audience time to connect with the characters. It also gives the impression of Megan’s head just blanking out the advice as she is so stuck on what to do. The dialogue in the second half gets repeated. We changed some of the voices to coincide with her illness. As the voices get more overlapped, you struggle to hear what they are saying. The final words you hear is the quote of ‘use bleach; bleach gets out everything’. With hearing this for the final time, the image of Charlie/Devil comes into the audiences head to make them think about what decision is going to be made.

During the editing of our film, we experimented with all the different tools we could use. Slow motion was used on the beach scene of the three characters looking out to sea to make the scene more emotional to the audience. This was inspired by ‘This is England’ and we used it to make the audience connect with Megan and her struggles before the sinister side was revealed. Another technique discovered was duplicating the images on top of each other to give a ‘dizzy’ like effect. This implied the control Megan had of herself was slowly leaving her. The image looks very distressing and fits in beautifully with our Thriller theme.

The titles of the film flow between the wave’s scene and the scrubbing on the floor scene. The scrubbing on the floor has been slowed done to make the pulse of the waves; this idea was one of mine as I got it from the book ‘THE Waves’ by Virginia Woolf. The font is white with black outlines; this shows the boldness of the title and the importance it has to the film.

Overall, I feel we tried very hard to keep the codes and conventions of a Thriller to a maximum. As well as in our film, we needed to keep the codes and conventions in our film posters too.

My film poster was created to let the audience know about the film being released as a DVD. My poster has a modest design but holds a creative aspect.

I started with the image of our main character from a side view, the background is completely black and some what looks like a mug shot in a police station. With using a plain black background, I’ve given the audience the idea of it being dark and sinister without giving too much away.

With the text, I tried to follow the codes and conventions by the order of which the names are placed. The most important is always at the top in the largest font, normally starting with the director and film/distribution companies. The actor’s names are following this but in a slightly smaller font. These are sometime listed in popularity or alphabetical order. My information at the bottom is set in a diamond shape, just like other film posters.

The text used is plain white which contrast form the black background. The font is a typical thriller looking font with the scratched effect. The scratched effect helps target our audience and helps make the poster look professional.

Our tagline of ‘Be careful who you listen to…’ leads the poster towards the thriller genre, as the words seem frightening and shows its audience is clearly adults and not for children.

I believe I have kept to the correct codes and conventions to create a film poster quite well. My research into film posters has helped me a lot with this.
 
When writing my own film review, I used my research from other film reviews to help me with this. I wanted to make my unique but to still have the codes and conventions within my review.

My film review starts with a brief summary, like many film reviews, this helps the audience to have a quick understanding of what the film is about and to decide whether it’s for them or not. The information of the running time and the director is also vital in this part of the review. I told the audience about the double cycle of the film and about the fundamental theme of the film.

Comments that are humorous are often found in film reviews, this helps the reader connect with the writer through a little banter. I have tried to include this in my review, and also quotes from other films such as ‘practically perfect in every way’ when I was describing a technique. As well as funny comments, I have included the positive and negative points of the film. For example the question ‘where did the coats suddenly come from?’ I tried to keep the audience connected with my while reading my review.
The positives are the creativeness from the director and the acting of the characters as this is a low budget film. I also related this to films such as ’Fatal Attraction’, ‘Sixth Sense’ and ‘The Others’ due to the incredible twists featured in all theses films.

As a final point I added my verdict, it was indeed a positive one. I feel I have used the codes and conventions very well in all of my media and I believe I have given a realistic film review that could appear in a magazine.

After we had finished our product, we were determined to get some individual audience feedback; we decided to show an audience of 5 pupils. Individually, we chose 3 girls and 2 boys randomly to come and watch our film. I chose to show the film in our sixth form common room, this is because I could use the projector to get the full aspects of the film. The feedback I got varied, from the girls was very positive but form the boys was not quite so positive. The positive comments I got were; ‘the shots were very well filmed as you didn’t see Megan’s face until the second part of the film’ and ‘the music worked really well to confuse the audience and assist the big twist at the end’. Other comments were ‘the actors did very well to play their characters’ and ‘the dizzy effect worked well in the second half’. The negative comments consisted of ‘some of the voices in the second part didn’t seem realistic’ and ‘the coats suddenly appeared from nowhere’.

Although we had negative comments, most of the feedback received was positive, the comments I thought were really helpful as I could use these tips to improve another media production in the future. The audience I chose react exactly how I wanted them to, the girls were feeling and relating to the character Megan, where as the boys were choosing to not relate to her. They were more worried about their girlfriends getting any ideas from the film.

Media is currently a lot more interactive and more digital than it used to be. Due to old media being linear, once a product was finished that was it, not alterations could be made. Nowadays, when a film is made, many alterations can be made. It is never ‘finished’ as you can always go back to make changes. The interactive side in media can be found on television by pressing the red button, this is where you can play games, take part in quizzes and even find out the news and lottery numbers.

Media now has a democracy as even now has the right to make films. The biggest website for hits and views is YouTube. This is a very popular site where people express their talents and hope to get recognised. As this democratisation has been created, the gap between professionals and amateurs has decreased, this is due to the technology being upgraded and more developed so the average person can now make a film nearly as good as a professional. As this is an easy and more common thing to do, so many people are making videos and more people have realised the internet is a good place to get noticed.

Combinations of texts are used to support each other in the final conclusion. When a film is being made, a film poster is created to attract the audience and this helps promote the film and brings in the viewers. The relationship between the film and film poster is very close and positive.

The relationship between a film and its film review can vary, due to the review being positive or negative decides on whether the film will attract or prevent the target audience from watching the film. So both film posters and reviews affect how successful a film can be.

Rupert Murdock has however overcome this problem as he owns 21^st Century Fox Studios and many tabloid newspapers such as The Sun, The Times Newspapers and Sky. So when writing film reviews, the newspapers are less likely to write a bad review as he is their boss so their job could be on the line. This now shows not all film reviews are reliable and accurate. Viral reviews that come from normal people are a lot more honest as what reason do they have to lie?

When carrying out my research for my media project, my primary source of research was the internet. I used many websites such as Google and YouTube to research Short Films, how they are created and all about media. We used mobile phones to get in contact with each other to arrange meeting times and dates. For the construction of our film, we used digital cameras and the editing software on the computer to edit all of our film together. For my evaluation and all information on my product, I used the blog site Blogger to post all my information on my media project.

My Film review Layout

Ffeatures of a Film Review

When preparing to write our own film review, we had to look ay other film reviews to understand the structure and features.

Film reviews are concise, descriptive, and persuasive.  They are usually witty and sometimes very cutting.  Reviewers often use rhetorical devices to convince to reader of the validity of their analyses.  They rarely use effusive or simplistic language to describe, compliment or critique a film. 

The first thing we noticed was every film review had the title of the film. This is a key part to the review as the audience need to know what film you are writing about and to catch their attention.

The next point is the number of stars allocated to the film by the reviewer. This can be from 0 – 5 *. The more stars, the better the film should be.

The information line is the next part, this normally consists of the running time, certification and the key actors in the film. This can help the audience decide whether they want to see it due to the actors/actresses who appear in the film.

The opening paragraph usually consists of what’s called a ‘Hook’. This is normally a clever comment which reflects the reviewers overall opinion or impression of the film.

This is then followed by a brief synopsis of the film, this is cleaverly done without giving too much away to the reader.

The next feature is the development of the film. This is normally done in short paragraphs.

This consists of posiutive and negative points to the film. If the review is positive, they usually start with a brief analysis of the weaker points and then develop into the stregths of the film. However, if the review is negative, they tend to acknowledge the few strong points first and then go in to depth on the failings of the film.

An analysis of the film and critique aspects of the film is the next step. This may include the director’s interpretation or concept of the film, the design, style of shots and edits, music and sound, special effects, screenplay and the plot.

When referring to the director, they often make references to past film productions. This is so the audience can relate back to any of their previous films. They also relate the film to similar film; they relate them by the storyline or plot.

Most reviewers talk about examples of very poor or outstanding moments due to artistic choices. This cannot decide whether the film is good or bad as it is only talking about a specific part of the film.

The next paragraph is the conclusion. This is where there is an overall ‘sum-up’ of the opinion of the critic. Some critics end with advice to the readers, for example ‘make this your film of the year’; this gives them the final chance to interact with the audience before they make their decision.

For my film poster I decided to use an image of the main character Megan. This is a side view of here, which looks a bit like a mug shot in prison. She has her hair up and has a dark top on to blend in with the theme of the film.

The dark background gives the impression the film is dark and sinister to the audience. The text at the top ‘Sedition’ is the title of our film. Sedition is another word for, incitement to rebellion, which is a great title for our film. The writing is white which contrasts with the background of the poster. The text font is a scratchy font which gives a creepy feel to the poster.

The tagline of ‘be careful who you listen to…’ is a chilling tagline which makes the audience wonder what is going on.

The information box at the bottom consists of, ‘FIREFLY FILMS presents

In association with GLOBAL PICTURES Directed by SOPHIE SOUZA

JAZELLE JOHNSON  JESS WHIGHT  NATASHA ARCULEO  JOSHUA WADE

Producer ALICE WILCOX Editor KRYSTLE SANTOS Visual effects JACK WALDEN Music JAMES PYKE Costume designer ABBIE COPSEY Screenplay STAN MILLER’

This basically tells the audience all the information they need.

When creating my poster I tried to stick to the codes and conventions of a film poster to make mine as realistic as possible. I think I kept to the aspects of a film poster well.

The title of the film is just below the centre on the left hand side of the poster. The font for the title is just a plain text and in white and yellow; the colour change of the words emphasise each other which makes the title of the film very important to the audience. The writing above the title says ‘from Nicholas Sparks, best-selling author of THE NOTEBOOK’ this tells the audience they have been involved with a best-selling author. This also gives advertising towards the author and his book ‘The Notebook’.  The tagline ‘what would you do with a letter that changed everything’, tell us that part of the storyline is to do with letters being sent to one another.  The information box at the bottom of the page shows us the distribution companies, the producers, the actors, the release date and that it’s coming soon. The picture of the couple sitting on the beach is a beautiful sight. It shows passion and love between the two. As she is sitting in his lap, it gives the impression he is ‘keeping her safe’. The scene of the beach is a stereotypical place for enjoyment and a place to relax. Te two actor’s names at the top of the poster are Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried. These are the two main characters in the film and on the poster. This immediately attracts the audience to the film as these are both good actors.

The title of the film is at the bottom in the centre of the poster. The text is written in an old style text which gives the audience the idea of when the film is set. The colour scheme of this poster is a nice golden colour. Gold represents wealth, faith, healing and blessing. This goes alongside in with the plot of the story as he has lost his family and has become a gladiator until the day he dies. The tagline ‘what we do in life. Echoes in eternity’ is a beautiful combination of words to make you realise the choices you make in life, stay with you forever and changes your future.  The actor Russell Crowe is the main character, although he is quite a well know actor, his name is a lot smaller than the title. This shows us this poster is focusing more on the film title than the actor’s name.  The position of the character is the centre of the poster; he is standing in a dominant position which shows us he is ready to fight. The director’s name is placed just above Russell Crowe’s name. Ridley Scott is the director and by having his name there, the audience can relate him to others films they have seen of his. The information box at the bottom consists of the producers name, the distribution company, director, screen play, editor etc.

The title is the centre at the bottom of the page. The title is big and bold in red and yellow writing. This matches the colour scheme of the poster, which associates with the Far East and the rising sun. The text has been made to look like it is sitting on the rock the panda is standing on.

The main character is a panda and he is in the centre of the poster; this automatically makes him the main focus for the audience.

The characters position is in a ‘kung fu’ position which automatically places his foot in the place of the rising sun.

Japan, where the film is set, is known as the land of the rising sun, which coincides with the theme of the film.

Jack Black, the voice of the main character, is the actors name on the poster. This is at the very top of the poster; this shows he has some importance in the film and plays a big part to make the film a success.

The tagline ‘Pandamonium begins June 6^th’ is very well thought out as it gives the audience the date of the film release and they have also changed the word pandemonium, which means chaos, to pandamoium, relate more to the film.

The information box at the bottom consist of the director, producer, editor, distribution company etc. The film studio which this film was created in is DreamWorks. Their logo is featured above the title; this allows them to have some advertisement.

The layout of the poster is very central and to the point which is very much the key aspect of the film of King Fu and Meditation to help find one’s self.