Film noir opening evaluation

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

Our film noir opening starts from the end and then shows how the character had ended up were he is, this is a style used in many film noirs as we discovered when researching and watching film noirs such as detour, we figured this is rather unusual and is not seen in many films and thought it is a interesting way to attract the audience and persuade them to carry on watching. I do think are film compares to a film noir as it has the typical parts you would see in them e.g. it has a femme fetale and it is obvious to see that she has more power than the man, furthermore it is also clear to see that the man has ended up in the dilemma he is in because of the femme fetale. The use of the female being portrayed as more powerful than the man challenges typical thriller forms as its usually the men whom are seen to be superior than women, our film goes against the sexist view by creating a dominant female character.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our film portrays 18-25 year olds in a very negative way, they are shown as violent and aggressive although this is the stereotypical view of what the world thinks of this age range. The female character is represented as a typical femme fetale by using mis en scene we dresses her up in a dress and made her wear stilettos, by using cinematography we made her seem powerful and superior to the male character and he audience e.g. on one of are shots we paned up from just her feet to her face and most of the shots are looking up at her creating a dominating effect this goes against the stereotypical view of women as males are perceived more powerful.

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

I think art house film companies or independent film companies would be likely to distribute are film because the distribute films that were produced outside of Hollywood and major film companies release a substantial number of films so major film companies would not distribute are film. I think our film would get shown at art house cinemas as it is not a major Hollywood film so would not get released on the big cinemas (multiplexes).
I think BBC2 or channel four are likely to screen as film because BBC2 mainly show most of the old black and white films and are the main channel to show film noirs so it seems like the channel to show are film also channel four tend to show a range of different films old or new therefore I think they are also likely to screen are film. I think if they were to screen our film it would be in the evening probably from 9 onwards because of the rating and also this is the time when mainly people of our film age tend to watch TV.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

The typical audience for are film would be from 12-25 it’s directed mainly for this age because it was produced by people of the similar age, it is also mainly aimed at men as they tend to prefer crime/ thriller films. I would class are film genre to be a thriller, so it would attract more men than women. The mystery of our film invites the audience in, they are just as much involved as they question what is going to happen.
I think if the BBFC were to rate this film they would rate it a 12 because it shows scenes of a man tied in to a chair who has been beaten badly so I don’t think it would be suitable for children under 12. If the BBFC did classify our film as a 12 this would mean it would open up to the biggest age range of people who tend to watch a lot of films and go to the cinema often. Mainly people aged 12-30.

5. How did you attract/adress your audience?

At the beginning all you see is a man tied down in a chair I think that this is a good way to start off because immediately it puts many questions in to the audiences head such as why are they tied up, what have they done etc, which means the audience will want to carry on watching until there questions have been answered. People like watching noirs as it challenges their thoughts so they would watch to the end to reveal if what they thought was right or wrong. Mysteries and enigmas are mainly used in thriller films so we also created an enigma in our film at the end the audience did not know whether the male character was dead or not as we found out in our feedback everyone said that they would watch on to find out what happens next. Our film has an intellectual puzzle this is one of the audience’s pleasures.

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

I have learnt a lot of things while creating this project especially when editing, such as how to apply effects and look at different ones how to add music so the footage and music play together these are things I did not know when doing the preliminary exercise or really understand during the exchange project. I have now got a better understanding of how to use adobe premier and how it works. We also use various different equipment while shooting our opening such as a CANON HV30 DV camcorder, YOGA SHOTGUN microphone, boom pole, headphones, VELBON DV-7000 tri-pod and a 300W light on location to create a stark low key lighting effect. As none of my group really liked the music I found we ended up using one of the tracks from a CD we picked out in the media department. I also used blogger for the first time I have never used this before and now that I have I think it is a good website to publish blogs on. I also used Google to do research on and msn messenger to chat to other members in my group about our project.

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

I have come a long way since the preliminary exercise my knowledge and understanding with media concepts has improved extremely. I also have learnt from the mistakes that were made in the preliminary exercise and was cautious not to make the same ones again for example 1 of our major mistakes was that we didn’t take enough shots which was a major problem when editing it, however this time we spent all the time given taking extra shots. Furthermore on all our scenes we made sure that we had long enough handles so we wouldn’t have any problems when editing like previous times. Most of the problems we had occurred when we were editing because when we thought we had finished we noticed that it was over three minutes so we had to get rid of some scenes, this also meant that we had to put some of the titles on screen along with the action, but I wanted to do this from the start as I think it would look more interesting and would not bore the audience. Another problem we had was voiceovers as when we were in the cellar we could not hear the dialogue because of the background noise so we had to put in voiceovers on top of the action.
We carried out the same planning as we did for the exchange project e.g. call sheets, location checklist etc, and further research for example how characters are tied up and how make up is applied to make the character look like they have been badly beaten, doing all this planning had helped a lot and reduced many problems we would of faced if none of this planning and research had been done. When we done are preliminary exercise all we learned from them was some of the basic shots, while now we have learnt lots of different, effective and more complex shots, as you can tell when watching both pieces in our opening we used a whole range of shots from a right to left pan to show the location to a low angle shot to make the character look superior as well as using complex camera shots we also used lighting in our project for the first time we used a key light for the cellar as it was quite dark in there however we did not make it too bright it was a kind of dim lighting which worked well with the footage. We followed the rule of thirds and did not break the 180 degree line rule. I think that while we were filming our time was managed well as we had finished on time which allowed us to take additional shots just in case they were needed however our time wasn’t as well managed in the editing process as we did not finish until the last session, I think this is because we ended up changing parts of the opening and also altering some of it too.
I think are group worked well together and everyone contributed a fair amount, we also performed are rolls well and also helped other members with their specific roles now and then. My role was producer/editor and I was also an actor in are project, I think that I did do my job rather well although when we were editing Laura was more hands on, while I was contributing and helping her with ideas, I also done half of the animatic and Laura done the other half. I think that I could have done a bit more work on the computer while putting our piece together.