Daisy Windsor –

Abby Stone –

Both –

In this presentation we are going to be talking about forms and conventions, the creative

process, audience feedback and how new media technologies have effected the way we created

our film. We will be answering the following three questions.

Q1) In what ways your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Q2) How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Q3) What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Q4) How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/ says that a femme fatale is a mysterious, seductive woman who is

gorgeous, manipulative and desperate.

Q1

We have gone against what screenonline says because our film has challenged these conventions in that our

femme fatale has never done anything criminal and falls in love with the detective instead of seducing him.

Q1

From the images in ‘Women in Film Noir’, edited by E Ann Kaplan (1978) we could see that classic

femme fatales usually wear expensive, glamorous looking clothes like fur coats, black dresses, heels,

expensive jewellery (pearls etc.)

Q1

We decided to keep our femme fatale character in the typical costume. Throughout the trailer she

wears a fur coat, black dress, heels, a pearl necklace and a long coat. She also carries a doctors bag.

Q1

http://www.film-noir-alley.com/ says that the thing most men in

film noir films seem to have in common is their mixture

of masculinity and vulnerability. It's this that

sometimes gets them into trouble which leads to

their eventual downfall, particularly when it

involves a woman (femme fatale).

Q1

Our male character is a typical film noir character - detective. We have

challenged the conventions as not only is he a detective, but also a murderer.

Q1

In the trailer he is wearing a white shirt, black waist coat, tie, trilby hat, black trousers and formal shoes.

This is typical male film noir costume.

By watching some film noirs we know that typical femme fatale characters usually smoke as a mean

to seduce the male character.

Q1

We introduce our femme fatale character with her

smoking as the first shot of our trailer.

Q1

Characters faces may be partially or wholly obscured by darkness. This adds a sense of mystery and helps to builds tension.

Q1

We have use this technique to introduce our male detective. This gives him a dramatic entrance and shows that he is going to be vital to the narrative.

Q1

The shadows of Venetian blinds or banisters cast upon an actor or a wall, or an entire set are an iconic visual in noir

and had already become a cliché well before the neo-noir era.

We attempted to use this effect for our trailer, but we were unsuccessful as we couldn't get the

lighting and exposure right.

Q1

Film noir is also known for its use of low-angle, wide-angle, skewed or Dutch angle shots. It’s sometimes common in film

noir to include shots of people reflected in one or more mirrors, shots through curved or frosted glass or other

distorting objects.

Q1

This is a shot we have in our trailer. It's a typical film noir low angled shot. It shows that the drawer or what's in it is important to the

narrative.

Q1

For our magazine we decided to use Little White Lies. This goes well with our film as it is an artistic magazine. We have used the conventions by having a head shot of the protagonist. We also used the magazine logo. We didn’t have much text on the front as it ties in with the conventions of the magazine.

Q1

For our poster we have used the conventions for film noir by having the poster in black and white. To catch our potential audience’s eye we put a bit of red blood in. This is also creating a logo with the title, so that if people see it they will no it’s to do with Wounded. To make our poster more modern we have added a slogan to go with it, “Secrets cannot stay hidden forever...” This is unlike other film noirs as they are all set in earlier dates. We have used conventions of film noirs by having a shot from the film as our poster image.

Q1

They have used this tag line as it is suggesting that there is going to be action in the film. We have used ours to tell them that they will be finding out something shocking.

When creating our film promotion pack we looked at what makes a good trailer, poster and magazine front cover. The best way to do it is to be unique yet still using the original conventions used. We were unique with our trailer as the plot is challenging some of the conventions with our femme fatale. We are challenging the conventions because our femme fatal has never committed a crime and falls in love instead of seducing our detective. We looked at different trailers to get ideas on what makes a good trailer. The main one we looked at was Pulp Fiction.

Q2

We looked at Pulp Fiction because it is a neo noir which were originally going to do. We started out with two of us wanting to do romance and the other wanting to do film noir, we decided on film noir as romance would be hard to do to make it believable. Because of this, our film has turned into a hybrid genre of film noir and romance. This is the image that we have decided to use for our film, as it will now appeal to both men and women. The men will be drawn to it as there is a lot of action in the film, and a pretty woman for the lead role. Whereas the woman will want to see it as the lead woman goes through a journey romantically and of personal discovery. She is also a strong independent woman.

We always wanted to have our actress as the main selling point of our film to show that our film noir is different from others. By using shots of her for our poster and film magazine cover we are not only showing this off but we have also used the image of our actress to help attract the male audience. It is also a good way to get the women wanting to see it as they will have sympathy for her because she looked quiet scared and is looking over her shoulder, looking to see if she is being followed.

Q2

An important part of Web 2.0 is the social web which is a fundamental shift in the way we communicate. The social

web consists of a number of online tools and platforms where people can share their opinions, thoughts and

experiences. With web 2.0 and can use podcasting, blogging, tagging, social bookmarking and social networking. We

would promote our film using Web 2.0 by:

•Launching a fan site•Make a Facebook and Twitter page

•Wikipedia, IMBD

Q2

We uploaded our film trailer to YouTube and showed it to our media class. They gave us feedback by writing three

points for how they liked the film, or how it could be improved. As the film is on YouTube, we were able to

access it from home as well and so showed it to various family and friends. This was very useful as we now have

feedback from not just 17 – 18 year old students at Varndean College, but a much more varied group.

Through our feedback we realised that we needed to change parts of our trailer to make it more appealing to a wider audience. We changed the music to make it more dramatic and changed the voice over to a female voice so that she would receive sympathy and bring in a wider audience.

Q3

When showing our magazine cover to our peers they told us that the title of the film could be bigger so that it stands out more and makes it easier to read. They also said that they liked the red background and that it looks as if it symbolises blood and death. Also that the expression on the protagonists face looks scared and worry, so is showing the audience that someone is following her.

Q3

When we showed them the poster the comments that they made were, that the titles were clear and that they liked them. They liked them because of the splatter of blood it makes the poster more interesting and adds colour to it, it is also suggesting about a murder they may happen in the film. The tagline used was said to create a sense of mystery because it got them wondering what the secret was and whose secret it was.

With new media technologies it has made filming and editing our trailer easier. This is because it is all done digitally. While editing because of new technologies instead of recording everything that we wanted separately, we could have it on different films, capture what it was we wanted, the batch capture everything in that film. We did this on Adobe Pro This saved a lot of time. When we had started to put the whole trailer together it was hard to decide what shots to use and which ones to put next to each other.

Q4

This was because we didn’t want give much away of what would happen and we didn’t want it to look like an opening sequence. We did this by not putting two shots from the same location next to each other and mixing them up. Even though the shots are all mixed up they still flow and give a narrative. I think one reason why this worked was the music we used. We couldn’t find one bit of music that was like how we wanted as they were either slow paced or really fast, none of them seemed to build up tension, so we put three different tracks together to create this effect. We also had a voice over to go with it.

For our initial research we used Powerpoint. We found this to be a really good way to do research because:

• it’s easy to refer back to – you can find what you’re looking for quickly•it’s easier and nicer to read than a huge essay – broken up with pictures etc.•you can print it out• we could present it to the rest of the class

The limitations of using Powerpoint were:

• they took quite a long time to produce• our group ended up having a lot of the same research

Q4

For our planning work we used the college blogs.

It’s a clear, quick and easy way of presenting our work. This was a good way of organising our planning because it makes it really easy for everyone in the group to be able to see everyone’s planning and thoughts. It was really helpful to be able to access it from home and look back on it while filming.

Q4

For our evaluation we decided to use PowerPoint to present our answers to the evaluation questions. We thought that as we were doing a pair evaluation it would be the quickest and easiest way to do it. We were thinking about using moving maker, but that would take too long as we didn’t have many times that we could meet up to discuss things. Also by using PowerPoint, it has made it easier for each of us to show what we have done to the presentation. It is also an effective way to show people you r evaluation.

Q4

With PowerPoint we have been able to edit the slides so that information can come up when we want it, and separately not in one chunk. The benefits of using PowerPoint instead of movie maker is that if you are slower than you expected when presenting it, it doesn’t matter as you can control what comes up and when, whereas with movie maker you have to be dead on time otherwise a topic you haven’t got onto yet might appear on the screen before you are ready.