EVALUATION 4 - who would be the audience for our media product?

A typical member of our target audience would be a man of about twenty years-old (the crime genre is usually preferred by the male gender of a teenage age to middle-age).



This looks like one of the guys who would enjoy crime dramas. Pretty decent dude who probably has watched many films and enjoys a serious drama film. Possibly wears quite blokey clothes like jeans and plain wear; shops at music stores, book shops, maybe even a fan of gaming. TV shows he'd watch are the news, documentaries and comedy shows. Music preferences I'd say are indie/rock, drum and bass, reggae and maybe old-school hip-hop. He may identify with some of the situations or may know peers similar to the characters. Our target audience would watch the film for interest on how it would play out, and to see if the main character manages to redeem himself/how the story and characters develop.

Here are two videos of three people who watched it:

KELLY AND ALI REVIEW OUR OPENING


Here are a girl and boy of 17 and 18 years of age, interestingly the girl wouldn't form part of the target audience as it is (as previously) an audience mostly consisted of males teen to middle-aged. But they both seemed to like it..they both mentioned how they liked the flashbacks, that it was a good method of storytelling, and that the music was appropiate and effective. Kelly said she liked the typewriter effect, saying that it went well with the genre as well as the black and white effect (refering to the surveillance camera pov shot). They both seemed to understand the story (that the murder happened cos of an affair), and said they would be interested in watching the whole film if it was a real film based on the opening (saying it was grabbing and that they would want to see what happens to the remaining characters). However, they did not give any criticism. When I asked for what was bad/what they didn't like, they just said "nothing, it was good". Either they are just being polite or they simply could not think of anything at the time.


AT THE MOVIES WITH FRANCIS



This lad says he liked the murder scene because it looked realistic and that it was well filmed, saying he liked the angles used. This supports our claiming that the murder would attract members of the target audience. However, he says he didn't understand the beginning and was thus confused as to "who was killing who and stuff".

EVALUATION 5 - how did we attract/address our audience?

Here are a list of elements of our film and how they may attract the target audience

Genre conventions:

We have the main character who starts off comitting a crime and is probably unliked by the audience. This type of character features as a lead in many films, starting off bad but then regretting the incident. This is like the lead character from the film American History X - a white supremacist who murders two black thugs and is sent to jail, but sees the error of his ways (and tries to stop his younger brother from going down the same path). This form of character storyline falls into the trait of an anti-hero.

The overall atmosphere of the opening is generally dark given the context (murder, unfaithfulness, depression, crime) which is also represented by the cinematography as the scenes have low/dark lighting to them apart from when the interrogator enters towards the end where it is quite bright. Here are some screengrabs so you can see for yourself:




As you can see, the final frame kind of stands out like a sore thumb as it's brighter. One could interpret it as a turning point of some kind, as everything else is Jay reflecting alone. It's conventional for films of this genre to have this sort of style to them as it's realistic (if it was light and/or funny then it would be a crime comedy).

The narrative is linear, with flashbacks. The use of flashbacks is common in crime films, as it allows the audience to learn more about a character or the plot. These three conventions I have discussed will gather interest from our audience.

The use of music is for now one track that plays over the whole thing. It is part of the soundtrack to the film Schindler's List composed by John Williams so there is a potential problem that it may be easily recognised music. We will ask the teacher about that. The music is quite ideal as it goes with the material greatly. Though we currently have it playing throughout the whole opening, I think it would be better to have it fade out once all the flashbacks have finished, as it could represent Jay clearing his head and paying attention to the interrogator. Using this style of music (classical) really gives the film an impression of a film noir, as it gives a mature approach as opposed to giving an urban approach (which is much more common in modern days) by inserting a hip-hop soundtrack. The Usual Suspects also had classical music as its soundtrack, so there is another a comparison to that film.

The mise-en-scene is very conventional of the genre (knife, police custody room, alcohol, a street as a murder location). I think using the surveillance camera point-of-view is an original idea as that kind of shot isn't used much. The editing is fairly standard, we have a a short montage set after Jay sees his mate and gally in bed; however, because we used me as a double for Louis in a couple of scenes some people may get the impression that it is actually two different people which is bad. Our USP is the use of flashbacks as they are the main plot-point,

EVALUATION 6 - what have I learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

The only technology of which my knowledge advanced on iMovie (as well as how to log in to a Mac computer), as I have been previously acquainted with all the others (well, this was my first time using the Blogger website but it was very easy to understand as within two seconds I was an expert on it).

The camcorder is what we used for all of the filming so of course, it was very useful. The battery never ran out on us, that is to say it lasted for a sufficiently long time, so that potential problem did not happen to us. Also, the LCD screen is really useful as you don't have to lean right up into the lens to see what you're filming as the case is with older cameras; it is more comfortable this way and you can hold the camera steadier whilst viewing if you're filming without a tripod.

However, the cables supplied with the camcorders were limited, which meant there were times we had to wait around as other groups were using the firewires, which we use to transfer the footage onto the computer. I've used a camera before but not a digital one, so actually it took a couple minutes to figure out the buttons i.e. playing back and ejecting tape. One incident which was quite bad from the camcorder's part was when it swallowed the tape which contained our footage, though to this day I am not clear on how that happened exactly. Thankfully, we only had footage from one session of filming, and I am glad that happened anyway as our re-filming turned out better than the original footage.




A tripod to a camera is like milk to a bowl of cereal or a fat bucket of popcorn to a viewing of a film: you can do without if you must, but brace yourself because it will be harder and thus less enjoyable. This is because the tripod is a three-legged contraption on which the camera is held steady in position; this is obviously very useful as it guarantees steady filming in a professional manner, and we could make use of its height to shoot high-angles as well as tilts. The murder scene is filmed hand-held, and if you notice carefully then you will see how the camera is shaking. The only downside to using a tripod was the looming threat of dropping it and breaking it and then paying for a new one.

The Mac computer is what we used for editing. Once figuring how to login, there were no difficulties at all. The actual editing programme we used (for both the preliminary task and main task) was iMovie. We found it complicated at times, especially during the first times we used it as we were only just getting our heads around it. The most complicated parts would be moving/splitting things around once they were in the timeline, but easy once figured out how to do. Cutting a clip was really easy. On the computer, we also used Itunes to upload the music onto and them import from there onto iMovie.




A digital camera was used to take stills of us filming at my house and at the main school. Very easy to use, no problems with it at all, as was the case with the scanner machine, which Sophie used to scan the storyboards on.




We used the internet alot, for research and for writing this whole blog obviously. I pretty much searched everything on google, and used wikipedia for looking up on the genre and example of films. This was the first time I used this Blogger website, but it was really easy to use. It has a good selection of decorations and lay-outs for your page, and you can change your text fonts, add pictures/videos, and made for a less exhausting manner of writing up on our tasks than it would have been if we were writing it the usual way on paper.

EVALUATION 7 - looking back at our preliminary task, what do I feel we have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Well chicas and chicos, we have learnt a considerable amount since our start as freshies back in the days of the continuity exercise to our final days of today; most notably our continuity awareness and filming techniques, as well as the working relationship between our group which was consisted of people not accustomed to each other (apart from two of the gallies who were).

During our continuity exercise, we made mistakes in terms of continuity (misplacing objects and positions all over the place) and over-looking natural disadvantages (seagulls flying around in background). Our match on action shot of me handing the puffy toy to Eve was clumsy, as we had included it halfway through the exercise which constructed another error to continuity. Our match on action shot in the main task, of Louis opening the door, went quite smoothly.

Our match on action shot in the main task, of Louis opening the door, went quite smoothly.

The whole continuity exercise was based around the 180 degree rule, and that went fine (I mean we would have had to purposely disobey it if we got it wrong for that exercise as there was no moving around for the actors) We used it into our main task so the continuity ran smoothly, and there was one instance when we had to replace a shot because we had indeed made a mistake concerning it (as mentioned previously).

Nearly the whole continuity exercise consisted of using the shot/reverse shot as it was all a conversation. In the main task, we had shot the sequence when the interrogation officer comes in all in the style of shot/reverse shot, but those clips ended up being deleted due to inappropiate yet accidental face expressions (ruining the realism obviously). There are now none in the finished piece.

Obviously we couldn't do much editing techniques for the continuity exercise as it was about ten seconds long or so, but we had more to play around with in the main task which resulted in the little montage and all the transitions as well as effects (colour). Though originally, we had hoped to put some effects or sounds into the continuity piece but did not eventually get the time.

A large factor to the whole project was the relationship between the group, as we had to rely on each other and trust each other as well as bond enough to not fight all the time and ruin the whole thing! Though it was sort of awkward during the first couple of sessions, we got pretty cool together and we succeeded in working well together.

Lethal Affair

Yes, here is the final piece, the full opening. Enjoy folks, if you can. I think the music had a massive influence on the final outcome: it has given a real tragic feel to the events, though it outstays its welcome; I think the music should fade out after the final shot of Ben dying and if I could have put the audio back in the remaining scenes I would have had it like that.

The End..SHABBAAAAA!

Well gallies and homeboys, the time has come for the Mighty Pablo to say goodbye. It will be strange to not be posting on this after being so used to continually checking this site..but Shabba will return.

Adios gallys! This is Pablo signing off...



Adios mi gente!!