Portfolio evaluation

Our production is a film noir, and it conforms in a number of ways to keep the identity of the piece firmly lodged in that genre. An audience will expect a film to effectively be a crime drama, that has strong cynical undertones and mainly sexual motivation, often personified by the ‘Femme fatale’ Which is a powerful female character that is suave and sophisticated and plays men with no emotion and uses them for personal gain and ensnares the male character with an irresistible desire. Our film conforms to these conventions of the genre as the plot is based around the crime of Johnny killing the ex lover of the Femme fatale and so in this respect it is conforming to the convention of the genre. The femme fatal in our piece is created through emma, and Johnny's infatuation with her. We portrayed this through the narration of Johnny for example “she was like a cigarette...” in the shots of her we tried to show that she was beautiful and alluring and that she had made Johnny think that they were in love. we did this through soft lighting suggesting romance and making the scene more warm through the flickering fire. We also included close ups of emma to show beauty and in this respect put her in power as johnny is in awe of her. We expect the audience to believe that they were in love, but something is not right as the voiceover suggests that, “she was trouble” Another convention of Film noir is to film in black and white, this is mainly due to the technical restraints at the time as color was not yet invented at the birth and majority of Film noir’s peak in popularity. The Cinematography in Film noir is the cornerstone of the genre. Shot framing is vital to achieve the cynical often melancholy feel to the film and huge amounts of attention is payed to the lighting in the shots and the contrast between the lights and darks in the shots. We conformed to this convention because it is such a huge part of film noir and it gives the piece so much depth and atmosphere which really conveys meaning to the audience.

We also challenged some of the conventions of the Genre. Film noir often has long cuts and we chose to not have too many long cuts apart from where appropriate we moved between emotive close ups and two shots to avoid the audience loosing interest or thinking that the piece is too boring because it feels too slow. We also made this decision so that the film would appeal to the more modern audience which are used to more fast paced films, and this in turn will modernize the feel of the piece and hopefully give it a more neo-noir feel. We also broke the convention of the non digetic sound, which in noir films is often more like the piano playing at the beginning of your piece, but at the ending we chose a ambient sound from electric instruments, which would never be scene in a thoroughbred film noir production. So in these respects we challenged the conventions as well felt that they were too outdated and that the modern audience would not respond to them well in a short film as it is more important to hold interest and keep an atmosphere, which we created through introducing quicker cuts and unconventional sound.

Luckily few of our decisions were limited by technical or practical restraints as we had good equipment available, and the film noir genre requites little special effects and what effects we did put it were easy to use on Final cut, we adjusted the gamma levels and brightness but that was all that was necessary. Practically we

managed to stick to the original plan well, through clever use of filming locations, for example the last scene is shot in the library yet it looks like a normal house.

One limitation that we found was the time frame of the 5 Minute film, it meant that we had to break a contention of a film noir which is a complex plot to fit the whole narrative comfortably into the production we also chose not to go wit the classic formula of a film plot line which is equilibrium, problem, climax/resolution and equilibrium we went with a non linear plot, the opening shot is in the same time frame as the end shots and the middle section is a memory of the events leading up to the hanging.

[Do I need to talk about Ancillary Tasks here?]

Ancillary Tasks

We chose to do a poster and a radio advert for our film as these seemed to tie in well with our production, a review would have been less effective and did not appeal to us creatively as the detail in language as opposed to the creation of a media product is not our speciality

For the poster we looked at similar media products, in this case posters of old film noir which is covered in our planning booklet. We looked at these posters and decided what worked well and what we wanted to include and change to appeal to the target audience. The image on the left was the original idea and design with a sleek elegant simple design to tie in with the black and whites of out piece we chose to have the image in black and white. But we decided that it gave away too little detail and information to work as an advert so we changed our idea. We decided that it should look like a more conventional film poster, thinks like a tag line, credits at the bottom and a “from the directors of compromised” line to make it seem like the film will be good because it has famous, well known directors working on the production.

In the final text we had decided on a name change to “No Love for the Wicked” as it seemed to be a more cynical and interesting title than “For her love” it also strongly connotes film noir because of the dark undertones of the title and so it conforms to the conventions in that respect. we decided that the black and white theeme tied in well with the main production and so decided to add interest by choosing to put the silowet of Johnny on the left hand side with the title contrasting it in white. We broke the black and white colors and used a sepia filter on the necklace because it looked unprofessional and almost wrong in black and white, and the color in it makes the necklace stand out, which reflects the main piece as the necklace is the object that ultimately leads to the demise of Johnny and is integral to the narrative of the film.

The Tag line “some will give more than their hearts” ties in with the film well because the film is about love and it is also a more cynical, almost foreboding line implying to the audience that something will go wrong because of love and so it clearly brings out elements of film noir.

The poster is simple and elegant, with a sophisticated look that will appeal to our target audience of the middle class educated demographic we achieved this through the simple colors and more angular stand out text.

Because the poster is so closely linked to the film and is in the same style as the film is shot in I believe that it works excellently as a combination with the film, Ii gives the audience a good idea

of what they will see when they watch the film and it does not give away too much information, it tantalizes the audience and makes them want to find out more and so go to watch the film. The Poster could also be put into magazines on a single page spread whcih would allow us to taylor to specific audiences especially niche audiences, an example of this would be to advertise in empire or other film magazines that would directly link to specific audiences and so would be very effective at pulling in the target audience.

On the other hand we went for an entirely different approach with the radio advert

We chose to create a radio advert for our secondary ancillary task. There is a saying that goes “radio makes better TV” and idea in which radio implements the audience’s imagination to perceive what is being said on the radio and allows each individual to conjure up their own “perfect advert” as they have to imagine it. It also means that you can make the audience perceive one message, when in fact selling them an entirely different package all together. Meaning that you can deliberately misrepresent a product to increase sales. This technique is by no means conventional and can often fall flat on is face and it was not our original plan. At first we wanted to use the voiceover from the film to create the advert and use a female voice to contrast Johnny's and to interest the audience by only giving them small snap shots of the plot but after about 5 trys of creating the advert its was still damp, boring and lifeless so we decided to attempt to go for a more high octane up tempo advert, because we thought that the main place that people listen to the radio is in

the car, and if a boring, complex advert comes on they will just switch off, yet if an exiting, more simple advert comes on it is more likely to catch the audiences attention, especially as the audience reaserch suggested that people listen to the more up beat radio stations such as Xfm and Radio1.

This technique has been implemented in a number of different films and it is shown in our blog booklet under the research into similar media products section.

The radio advert uses a combination of Voice over and narration from the film to create a sense of breathless excitement, technically what is said in the advert is correct and it does summarize the opening of the story But it does not show the reflective and cynical side of the film It therefore does not work particularly well with the main piece and if we were to do the production again, we would change the advert and spend more time trying to get the voice acting right which is what severely limited us. Yet the use of the narration from the film does anchor it back to the actual production and after watching the film people would be able to see how it fits in.

The advert does appeal to the target audience because it is a very mainstream advert, but not only does it appeal the target audience it also appeals to a wider audience which would increase viewing figures for our production and people that do not fit into the target audience band will watch the film and they may discover that they enjoy it which will really modernize and potentially could bring about another spell of film noir popularity.

In summary of the ancillary tasks I think that they will appeal to the target audience, and because the radio advert will appeal to a wider demographic of people it will be able to pull in a bigger audience and the poster if correctly positioned or put into the correct magazines will attract the target audience well because it is specifically tailored for them.

Audience feedback

For the Audience research we used google docs, as it allowed us to easily create a questionnaire and it also creates graphs and results data for you allowing us to easily see the results and analyze them, and draw conclusions from them. After creating the form we posted it on Facebook and emailed it to the email addresses we had the form is here: http://tinyurl.com/yezmuu8

This seemed like a good idea but We did not manage to pull in a huge response with 27 in total but if you put this into context with adverts on TV claiming that 90% of people agree that you get longer lasting eye lash definition with their product the fine print at the bottom often states that they have only asked 100 - 150 people and for a professional company to only ask this amount of people, is it really Accurate?

is it false advertising? but if the company feels it appropriate to ask just over 100 people then is it necessary for two amateur producers to ask 100? personally i would have liked round about 100 responses but in the time frame and data collation it was simply un-realistic to attempt to achieve this level of reply because we needed to start production.

One of the questions we asked had a poor response:

We asked the question to try and see what radio station the target audience listened to, but 52% of people replied ‘other’ without leaving which radio station they listened to in the qualitative data box. But apart from that we tried to keep the questions as open and to not mislead people, or use suggestive questions to force an answer.

We attempted to print the questionnaire and use them as hand outs to reach an older age demographic, but the people on berkhamsted high street and Little Chalfont tended to be older than our intended target audience and it was too time consuming and complicated to collate the results, and we had to start production.

In a perfect world we would have been able to get about 100 forms filled out but we were limited by the amount of people willing to respond to the form and the age group of our contacts. If we had more time we could have done the forms by hand, going to a student area or a more upper class shopping center to get forms filled out and so we would have a far more accurate representation of the target audience in the audience research.

The audience research showed us that we had some leeway in how close we had to stick to the conventions of the film noir genre and that people would be interested in watching a short film noir production. we therefore could conculde that we have seen a gap in the audience and so will be able to meet the audience’s needs.

We also conducted Post production Audience research, yet it was less formal as we sat down and showed 10 people our film and asked for constructive criticism, which proved to be far more helpful than the formal research, as people could effectively articulate views and ideas to us.

The feedback that we drew was resoundingly positive and we acted on the constructive criticism that was offered up and so we are confident that we are now hitting the target audience’s needs. The people that watched were challenged by the ending and it did evoke the emotional response that we were aiming for and they were openly challenged about how far they would go as an individual for love, and so we saw Stuart Hall’s active audience theory acting here as the viewers of our media text’s views were challenged.

From this research a number of changes were implemented. 6 of the people felt the film was too dark, so we further adjusted gamma and brightness levels in post production to correct this and somewhat lighten some of the shots. 5 of the people felt that there was to much narration, which lead to about 70% of the narration

being cut out, allowing the snippets of narration to sink in and the audience didn’t feel suffocated by a monotonous drawl detracting from the distinctive cinematography and powerful contrast of the blacks and whites. These sit downs with the audience also lead to the change in tact for the radio advert, which they found boring and un-inspiring. Unfortunately due to timing we didn’t have enough time to do the same with the second advert.

From the research that we have conducted we would change the planning and implementation of the original audience research as I feel that it is not as effective as it could have been. Also i think it would have been better if we had made the post production research more formal, on reflection a good idea would have been to video the responses and it would have been good to post them on the blog but ,yet, alas we didn’t think of this at the time.

Technologies

Firstly we used Pages instead of word for much of the written side of the project, mainly because personally i use it more and find it easier to use when it comes to inserting pictures and I find that the inspector is more effective than Microsoft Words toolbars. The only problem with pages is that the grammar system is poor and hence many errors go un-noticed. Yet as James has a PC at home we implemented the Google Docs program offered by Gmail to send each other work to look at, and then used Facbook chat or MSN to discuss improvements and ideas about how to improve the document. This was invaluable in the creation of the blog booklet.

We used Google forms to produce the questionnaires because it is an easy way to create and collate data. The program puts the results in the the appropriate graphs or tables making it far easier to evaluate. It also means that it is easier to distribute as you can create a tiny URL link and post it on Facebook or email it to contacts to reply to the form. the only problem is that it only appeals to the more technlogy savvy consumers and the people that do not regularly check facebook or emails will not reply to the questionnaire and so the data will not be wholly accurate.

We used Issue To produce a booklet of the story boards because it is an easy and effective way of posting the pictures online without taking up pages of the blog. Issue is simple to use and it makes viewing the story boards easier as you can choose to view in fullscreen, and then zoom in further if necessary. we will also use issue to post the production booklet because it is too long to fit into posts, and long posts look daunting, un-aesthetically pleasing and harder to include pictures and other media in.

We chose to use a HD camera and to record in 1080i we did not record in 1080p as the camera unfortunately did not support the full HD setting. The difference between i and p is i is upscaled in the TV that is is viewed on whereas p runs in native 1080 and does not rely on the quality of the TV’s internal upscaler. so it is not a massive difference especially as we could not burn the disk on a blu ray, the main difference is seen on youtube. The reason for this decision is that when

filming in HD regardless of the final output the image is clearer, more defined and often has less noise than your traditional mid price DV camera. Less noise and a sharper picture helped our production immensely because it creates a clearer and more defined contrast between the blacks and whites and even though it is a small difference it speaks volumes in the extra atmosphere it gives and I am glad that we made the decision to film in HD

Another benefit of the camera that we used was that it recorded strait onto SD instead of tape which meant that we saved huge amounts of time and effort because the film was already in Digital format

The music that we used in the piece is called Genopodie and it is played by Thomas arch, a close personal friend and musical prodigy and the music played in the last scene is In macdonalds by Burial, who is an up and coming ambient Dubstep artist. Hyperdub records kindly agreed lo let us use the music in our piece. The music in the radio advert was created using garage band which is a good, but rather limited music creator compared to Logic 8 which hampered our creativity because of the more limited choice of loops and lower quality technology. We used Cubase to record the voiceover and radio advert which was interesting because it is a program i have hardly encountered before and it is not the easiest one go grasp quickly but we got hold of it quickly and learnt enough to make a decent recording, but the only problem we had was that the sound wouldn't go high enough no matter how loud the microphone or recording levels were which resulted in the voiceover being rather quiet and we had to use headphones to listen to the production, and unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to re record because people were using the mikes to do directors commentaries and we had to re do the radio advert, which we also used cubase to record, and then garage band to edit.

We edited and post produced the film in Final cut express. we chose to use express and not Pro because it has all the tools we needed and is slightly faster to use. each shot that we took we changed the brightness and gamma levels until we had the levels that we wanted to create maximum contrast or to create atmosphere in the shots. Good examples of this are in the last scene where Johnny hangs himself.

The text and credits in the film were created in Livetype, which is probably the most irritating and poorly designed program I have encountered. This is because we had huge trouble getting the text not to blur and to get clear defined letters, regardless of Font used. you also have to render each individual preview which wastes so much time. we also had a problem in the speed at which the credits scrolled and we spent hours trying to change it, and in the end we had to use three different livetypes and cleverly crossfade them, and slow the speed of the video right down and even now it is not perfect.

For the ancillary task we used photoshop CS4 which both me and James have lots of experience in, and we used our knowledge and a tutorial from http://www.planetphotoshop.com/compositing-inside-silhouettes.html to create the necklace image. photoshop was probably the best program we could have used for

this because of the level of customization available when compared to Microsoft publisher or other Abode products.