MEST2 : EVALUATION
The film that I worked on was with
3 other members, Sunny, Ladan and Rashida. We were working on a psycho thriller
movie, with a bunch of other students that were experienced with acting. We
then called our production, ‘Transgression’. Our initial plans for our film was
going to be an ‘Urban life’ movie but we felt that once we started to make our
script and other elements of planning, we also wanted to use the ‘romance’
genre which then gave us more to write about and made it more creative. This is
because of the fact that we made the movie, the opposite of romance as one of
the main protagonists had killed the other.
We also spent a lot of time doing focus group
research. This is basically where we spent the most of our time planning by
looking at our target audience. Another thing is that we looked at different
types of movies that were trying to inspire us, coming up with an idea of a
movie.
The planning section for us was the
most difficult part of the whole MEST2. We had watched a lot of arthouse movies
to get a good idea of what we can do and once watching those movies, we got the
idea from a movie called ‘Drive’. This is an arthouse crime thriller movie that
starred Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan and many more successful actors. The part
that we were inspired from this film was ‘The Elevator Scene’. This is where
Ryan Gosling and the other character were kissing inside the elevator with
another man standing next to them; He then killed him as he was a target to
Ryan Gosling in the movie. Our idea was to use a similar sort of idea for the
scene but twist it a little. Instead of the main character killing another man,
he would kill the women he was in love with.
From looking at the brief, it tells
us that we have to make the production itself a 15 rating movie. In order to do
this, we went onto the BBFC website to look at what makes a movie, a 15
certificate. On the website it gave a list of the criteria and the thing that
we took out of the list were the extreme violence and also the use of swearing
words. For extreme violence, we decided to use a weapon (prop) which was
suitable in public and also used fake blood on the main protagonists.
Furthermore, I believe that our
target audience for this film is between the ages of 16-28 with a mixture of
the audience being male and females. This film is more of a low brow film which
means that the audience are less likely going to be young and not as much
educated as others who would be into movies that were related to educational
movies (highbrow). The psychographic group that I would put this target
audience with, is mainstreamers. The reason I believe that our target audience
are mainstreamers is because they seek security. Our extract is about a girl
who thinks she is safe but really isn’t as she is going to be killed by one of
her best friends. Therefore, the role of a mainstreamer is to be safe and they
most likely go by the saying of ‘Trust no one apart from yourself’ which is
also written in my double page spread; this is a message to everyone as they
shouldn’t do anything that they do not want to. Also, I believe that another
psychographic group are reformers. This is an audience that are slightly older
and more educated. These audiences are people who are seeking a challenge and
get out of their ways to watch an arthouse and more complicated movie rather
than your average ‘everyday’ blockbuster movie.
Personally, I believe that the
target audience for this movie would be the type of audience that would watch
films 'on demand' (catch up TV) and also, they would use devices such as a
tablet, laptop or even their mobile phones. Considering they are a target
audience in the demographic groups between A-C1 means that they are going to be
more educated than the people that are in the groups C2-E. This means that they
are most likely going to have busy days and hardly anytime where they can sit
down and watch TV. Therefore, our target audience would watch our movie ‘on
demand’ considering the lack of free time and would most likely watch it on
brands, e.g. Netflix. In my opinion, I believe that our target audience was
lived up to this because since our movie is an arthouse movie, it means that it
would take a lot of thinking and this is where the educated audience would come
in and like to watch movies that are quite unusual to the normal society.
One of the key moments that I believe that we did well on
was the spinning the bottle scene. In this scene, we did a lot of editing and
camerawork to make it work. First of all, it started with the main protagonists
spinning the bottle at a medium close up shot. Then we made a straight cut edit
which then changed the view of the camera. The camera angle was then transformed
into a point of view shot. The point of view shot was of the bottle spinning
and looking at everyone in the circle until it had landed onto the main
protagonist. As the bottle was spinning, we added non-diegetic music in the
background. This suggests to the audience that something bad is going to happen
because this music is something that would be played in a scary movie.
Another key moment was the killing scene. This is where
we used more background music but in this case, it was parallel. This was
parallel because of the fact that it went with the theme of the scene (sense of
horror). Also, before the part where the killing took place, we used a vertigo
shot which was most commonly used by a director called Alfred Hitchcock; it was
also used in a popular movie called Jaw (non-arthouse). The vertigo shot is a
zooming technique where the foreground remains stable but the background
expands backwards which plays with the audiences mind as they may think that
it’s a point of view shot but really it isn’t. Also, we used a variety of
shot/reverse shot between the two actors when the actor ‘Grace’ thought
something suspicious was going on.
The last and final key moment was at the very beginning.
This is where we used one shot which was done in a panning technique were the
camera would move from side to side. This is very effective to the audience
because when the camera moves, the audiences eyes are moving with them which
would almost make the audience feel as if they are a part of the movie too.
Also, we had the same background and contrapuntal sound as we did in the bottle
scene. This is where the effect had started and suggested to the audience that
something was going to go wrong.
Personally, I believe that our weakness in this extract
was the camera movement. This is because a lot of the times, the camera was too
shaky when it shouldn't have been; At some places, we did try to change it but
it didn't work due to the weather conditions and the lack of equipment that we
had which I would think was us back.
With my print work, I used many
different cinema brochures to get an idea of what they are meant to look like;
I used the BFI Film brochures. Also, throughout my print work, I used one colour scheme which was black, red and white.
On
my front cover, I believe that there are much strength with two of them being
the way that the photo of the character was taken and the composition. As you can see, if a rule of thirds grid was
placed onto the front cover, the photo of the protagonist is placed in the
middle, which makes it the centre of attention to the audience. Also, I had
made a strip at the bottom with some of the main films written at the bottom
which makes it appealing to the audience; if it was blank, the reader wouldn't
find it appealing as they don't know what will be inside the print. My last and
final point is that I had also used a strapline next to the characters photo
which is describing the actor as 'The Next Big Thing'; this is a strength
because this is a small phrase describing him as a good actor which is also
appealing to the readers.
Along with my contents page, the
strengths that I thought were the descriptions below the movies on the contents
page. This is because I made sure that they were short and snappy which would
make it more exciting for the readers as they would want to go onto that
specific page. On the other hand, I believe that the weakness of this contents
page is that it is too plain and I should've added more pictures near the main
picture on the right.
In addition, my
double page spread has more strengths than weaknesses in my opinion. This is
because I believe that I have done everything that is usually required for a
double page spread; I used an overlapping picture, I also talked about the
movie itself and what happened it in, I used a main heading and subheadings and
I also used smaller behind the scene still images.
From what we had been working on,
the representation that we created in our work was that we tried to use
different people from different ethnicity backgrounds. Most commonly, when
making films, the majority of people in England and all over the world, a group
of people from a white ethnic minority are been used to act in films which is
now known as a stereotype but we tried to change that way of thinking and used
people from other backgrounds and a mixture of male and female.
Therefore, I
believe that by making this film, we had subverted the stereotypical
representations as it was also intentional. To conclude, I am very happy by our
decision because it gets the viewers thinking and getting them to watch
something that is against the stereotypes.
The representation theory that I
think is linked to Dyer's theory as this is also linking to power and shows
that the male, in the extract, was more powerful than the female. This also
leads to the fact that the male are more dangerous than female which is a
negative representation for the male. Us as a society have a way of seeing
things meaning that men have more power and the women look up at men. In our
extract, we showed the male protagonist as a civil character but when he was
all alone with the female character, he showed his real, true self which is
stating the theory of Dyer.
I believe that if I had made a film
blog, I would have made many links to our movie. For example, the film will be
in a brochure which goes by the name of The Little Picturehouse and therefore,
I would've made a link e-media link which would take you to that page about the
film; I would also publish screenshots of whatever else is linked to our movie
'Transgression'. This will allow the audience to go to those links and get a
better feel about our movie. In order to make this more attractive to the audience
and for those who have watched the movie, I would have a different section of
the film blog which will allow the audience to take part in quizzes and also
more updates on when or if the movie 'Transgression' will be screening at
different arthouse cinemas. The ideas that I would be inspired by is Plan B’s
website; His website looks like a social media site but it’s only him giving
updates of where mostly, every single film that was
made has got a social media account whether it being Facebook, Twitter or even
Instagram. On the accounts, they post updates about when DVD's, interviews etc
are coming out. With our movie, I would've made these different accounts and
link it to the blog, so when something interesting has been posted, it will get
updated onto the film blog too.
To conclude, I believe that we
successfully met our original brief and we did more than what we had planned to
do initially. In addition, I think that our product will be a success but not
for everyone. This is because, as mentioned above, this is a movie that is for
the young and less educated and not everyone will like a movie like this,
mainly the elder audience.
