Final Film - Hope

Final Film - Hope

Finished Film Poster

Finished Film Poster

In the end, we decided to take Daisy's poster and edit it in a way that we had all had an input and were all happy that the final design looked as professional as possible and was fir for purpose (advertise our film and present its context well)

The changes we made to the original was the size of the pictures and added the text along the bottom.

All in all this improved the finish of the poster immensely and gave us all credit for creating the film.

Radio Trailer

Radio Trailer

Our Radio Trailer

Evaluation Question 1

How our Film uses, develops and challenges forms and conventions of real media products

By Emily Smith

 

The genre of our film has been one of the main focuses throughout the research, planning, production and editing stages of our project. The way we planned to follow the conventions of this genre was by presenting realistic and believable situations, as well as authentic and natural characters.

 

The locations we presented were also used to create a realistic portrayal. We applied places such as  park, streets, car park and a hospital to show that the placement of the film concerns everyday living situations.

 

 

 

 

 

How we portrayed our main character was influenced by our research into similar films of the same genre. My Sisters Keeper's protagonist generated the biggest impact on our own character. Portraying this character in a negative way, such as committing crimes or not agreeing to save a loved one's life, makes audience feel angry or unsupportive of the character. This will have a greater impact on the audiences emotions when the true reason for their actions are explained. This concept both challenges and develops the conventions of the dramatic genre.

 

 

Ways in which our film subverts conventions of this genre includes the ending. The death of Hope and devastation of our main character challenges our audiences expectations. In most drama's, the plot concludes happily, leaving characters in a good situation. However, after researching elements of alternate genres such as crime and adventure films, we decided to challenge this convention. We planned to create an immense impact on our audience and to achieve this, we let our eponymous character die. This was not all, with the death of Hope, Destiny has failed. She was unable to save her sisters life and thus had committed numerous crimes for no reason.

 

 

In my research, I have found that the use of a voice over is an effective technique employed in other films of the same genre. Again my sisters keeper has been extremely influential in relation to this. Kate's farewell in the voiceover form, whilst going through her memory book creates a heart wrenching, emotional scene that engages and touches the audience. A similar reaction was hoped for as an outcome for our film and adaption of this technique.  

 

The majority of our film is created to send the audience through an emotional experience. Throughout the film, emotions of characters, along with the audiences emotions are expected to change and develop as the plot progresses. This applies to Richard Dyer's Theory of pleasures. In this theory, the use of these emotional differences in our film would be relevant to the intensity pleasure. This is where the audience have an experience of emotions that are directed and authentic, which our film does.

Continuity is a big factor in the creation and production of a film. To maintain continuity certain factors should be monitored and maintained. For example, a character cannot wear a blue hat one second and then a red one the next, it would make the scene look strange and confuse the audience. A rule of continuity that is normally followed in the 180 degree rule. However, we chose to challenge this convention in one of our scenes. We chose to do this only because it created a sense of confusion and chaos to watch, which was a reflection of the characters emotions during the scene where she is told her sister had died.

 

 

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 4

Mind Map created by EKSmith181 with GoConqr

Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation Question 1

In terms of a technical level we observed the conventions of continuity and the 180 degree line. This was to create a storyline which was easy to follow. In the time limit which we had being up to 5 minutes we adapted our narrative in order to convey the story in an easy to follow structure.

Our media project this year I feel fits the conventions of our chosen genre, which was a drama. In terms of editing and film production we made sure we kept within the 30 degree rule, unless intended. For example a shot reverse shot, between two characters that are having a conversation. Our montage sequence which we used for the titles at the begging of our film had to be a face paced edit, with each photo merging into the next in order to get across the relationship between the two sisters, to the audience. We took inspiration for this from other films of different genres. For example Disney’s animation ‘Up’

The editing also had to project a fast pace, this was firstly not to lose the interest of our target audience, but also to evoke a tense tone throughout film. A scene in particular that does this is when Destiny is stealing from a random home.

We paired this with a close up shot of Destiny’s eyes and the sounds in the cupboard of the footsteps coming down the stairs of the home owner, and Destiny’s breathing.

Our main focus throughout production was to make our film realistic; this is the most important connotation of a drama film. We did this with the use of our locations, mise-en scene and realistic situations faced in life, we knew that our film had to be original but it would be misleading if we didn’t mention that we were influenced by other films of a similar genre. One film in particular was ‘My sister’s Keeper’.

We created our character of Destiny and portrayed her to be the antagonist for the majority of the film; this was shown by the various scenes where she was seen to be stealing. These included a car, a handbag and several possessions from someone’s home. This was to keep the audience guessing, and for them to feel anger and hatred towards this character, so that when we revealed that it was all in order to help in the cost for her sister’s medical treatment, it would have a more dramatic impact.

Our project did however challenge the typical conventions of a drama, and this was due to our chosen ending. In most dramas they mostly have a happy ending, with the audience left feeling a sense of closure, we chose to subvert this with the character of Hope dying. This changed our main character of Destiny therefore from the hard faced antagonist to a venerable protagonist. We challenged this convention in order to achieve intensity.

We studied Richard Dyers theory of pleasures and found that some of his utopian solution to film we reflected in our film. Firstly the Intensity. Intensity was very much at the fore front of our film and with it being a drama I feel fits perfectly. Another one of his solutions was energy – and the fast place of our film reflects this. It is also energy in terms of human power and activity. One of our main focuses was how far you would go for someone you love and the power that exists in everyone in order to change the course of someone else’s life, just like Destiny tried to achieve for Hope.

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Firstly We wanted to discover who would watch our film, and how they felt with the context of the film. We began by going out to asking people ourselves and filming their responses, we asked detailed questions on the context of the storyline and the relationship between two sisters. We discovered that our main audience were girls, so we needed to make this relatable for this specific audience whilst also making it open to other audience as well. Interviewing people face to face gave us an insight into their reactions and we were able to talk openly about the film an gain honest feedback. Because of this personable approach and not just sending out a questionnaire online we felt gave us some really great feedback

I discovered that although we know exactly what is going on we needed to be a lot more thorough with the plot and attention to detail in order to keep the attention of the audience, and for the twist in our narrative to have a high impact. We did this by adding in more close ups, and action shots, different sounds, but mostly by adding in scenes such as the Doctor speaking to Destiny and telling her that Hope had died. This was to enforce to the audience what had happened, we then had a voice over from hope to fully secure the ending and to evoke more feeling and emotion.

We then sent out a rough cut of our film and attached was a questionnaire, we did this over Facebook and received a lot of results from friends and family indicating that our storyline was indeed easier to understand and follow, and that the twist had the high impact that we set out to do. Although we still had work to do one polishing our sound and adjusting lighting levels.

After sending out our final questionnaire we could see the difference in opinion. Our first product feedback was disheartening as we learnt that we needed to do a lot of work on character development and the story itself, but having not done that we couldn't have achieved the 100% positive feedback we gained in the end.

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 2.

Evaluation Question 3

The auxiliary texts we completed were a film poster and radio trailer to accompany the film. These successfully promoted and advertised our film when displayed on different social media platforms such as Facebook and twitter.  

Our radio trailer consisted of audio taken from the film during tense scenes to give a sense of anticipation and excitement. We then used additional soundtracks that were sourced from royalty free music websites such as Jamendo to create a distinctive sound to the radio trailer. This soundtrack was also used in the film to create synergy between all of our media products through the use of sound. We have used contrasting music to reflect the moment of hope and disappointment in the film allowing the listener to understand the emotional nature of the film through using sound only. 

To create our film poster we used Photoshop. This enabled us to layer images that would instantly show the audience the plot line of our film however still keep enough mystery for them to watch it. We arranged a photo shoot with the actors to create additional images that showed the audience the main characters of the film. We added titles to the poster using a distinctive font that would be used in the title sequence for the film, again creating synergy across all of our media products.

Through creating a film poster and radio trailer we have generated knowledge of our film and given audiences to anticipate about the release of Hope. In the future we could release video trailers and radio trailers for the release of the film on DVD or online sources such as Netflix, which would generate a wider audience.