Monday 3 May 2010

Five Minute Film Evaluation

My media product titled ‘Tormented Love’ is themed around love and tragedy as it is based on the heartache that a girl experiences when she faces loosing her soul mate. I watched a short film on the Filminute website called the ‘Space Between Us’ by Christopher Wadsworth from the 2009 collection which started my idea off. This film was about a lady whose partner had died and she was trying to imagine he was still around so she would feel like there was no space between them.

The concept of a tragic love story is fairly simple, a man and woman fall in love and at the end something tragic happens to them, for example they both die, but my tragic love story doesn’t exactly follow suit.

The main concept for my story is that a girl is going through life normally, but she is very troubled. We see her with a man who could be her partner. She does strange things and experiences weird things happening. Throughout the film, flashing images appear, one appears to be the man but he seems to be dead. These images give the idea that she is having hallucination of what is going to happen in the future. The images of the clock throughout symbolises that time is running out but for what? It is revealed at the end that what she imagined is wrong and instead she dies and he experiences the loss this concept challenges real media texts of that genre as it does cause tragedy but it has an unexpected twist to the tragedy.

I am aware that the audience could perceive this short film in different ways, instead of my original idea the audience could think that the man had already died and this thought keeps playing over in the girls mind, she may have even killed him. In the end the girl dies but depending on which idea you developed as a viewer throughout the film you may come to a different conclusion, perhaps the man has died but throughout the film she is missing him so much that maybe she wishes that she could have died instead therefore in the end time reversed and she dies instead. The audience could develop other ideas from my film as well because my film is very open and doesn’t answer any questions that the audience may have.

Normally throughout a tragic love story the audience’s idea of the two partners relationship is built up over the course of the film but in my love story this is not the case, as it is based on the tragic element rather than the love story itself only at the end do we really see the love that the boy felt for the girl as he holds her in his arms. I think that if there was too much focus on the love between them then it would get boring, the young girl’s clear distress throughout the film demonstrates that she loved this man very much without too much romance. As my target audience would be the romantic type they would understand the love that the couple must have had without seeing too much of the build up to it.

The ending does not round everything off and give an answer to all the questions that the audience might want to be answered, this is important because when someone you love dies there are many questions that you want answered and they never are, so I think that this ending presents the distress that the boy felt when he lost his love.

My Poster reflects my main product well, I think that the genre of my film is portrayed in my film poster as the boy is stood behind the girl showing the love element and the tragedy is presented through the blood tear on the girls face. The black and white photograph presents the depression and lack of colour in the girl’s life and the red of the blood shows the focus of the tragic twist to the ending of the film and also reflects elements of things that happen in the film.

I think that the layout of my film review looks very professional like the reviews from Empire Magazine. The shot I have used from the film seems to reflect the depression and misery of the girl through the film, the photo is a little dark so I should have used a clearer frame from the film. In my opinion my review describes the film well, clearly laying out the good and bad points. Overall the combination of the ancillary texts with my film, works well, they compliment each other because of the linking aspects within each.

Overall the audience feed back that I received from my classmates and friends was good. I asked them to be completely honest and from their feedback I have learnt that I need to be more careful in the filming process when I am using pans and tilts because it was pointed out by my audience that these were a little unsteady in places. Some said that the use of natural lighting in the film was good but it was a bit dark in parts therefore next time I would use more unnatural lighting to enhance the existing current lighting. I did use a large torch to help light scenes but I tried to create a mood by keeping the lighting low but this was not as successful as I had hoped.

The majority for people who watched my film said that it had a good storyline twist but some said that the ending was a bit hard to understand. I think that I should have considered this a bit more when I was making the film because I didn’t want my audience to be completely confused by my film. I also got feedback on the narration through the film, they said that the speech had a good structure to it but that the characters voice dragged on a little, this I can understand and I think that I should have had the males voice involved in the speech as well. Overall they said that the film was well written and also that the actors were good.

Using a free website creator, I made my own website to store all my work on for this project. The website is fairly basic but it has different pages to allow easy access to various parts. I have also created a blog so that I can log everything on a day to day basis.

For my research into this project I used the internet, taking notes from BBC film network, Time out film news and channel 4 film making movies, which allowed me to think about how I was going to go about making a five minute film. I also looked at websites called Filminute and Atom which allowed to me look at short films made by other people this gave me ideas for my film. As well as Atom I also used Google video, Open film and Metacafe to upload videos, as examples, onto my website.

In the construction stage of my film I used various technologies; my own digital camera to record scenes for my film. I used my own camera because it’s just as good as the cameras from school and it is also easier to use because I could use it at anytime as I didn’t have to book it and I already knew how it worked. I also used a very large torch in the filming process which allowed me to adjust lighting.

To edit my film I uploaded the film directly from the camera onto Adobe Premiere Pro which is a computer programme which allows you to edit film. I used Premiere Pro throughout the whole of the editing process, this was difficult because I hadn’t really used it that often, only when I made my title sequence for a film when I was doing media at As, so I ended up learning as I went along. I discovered things such as being about to control the speed of a clip which turned out to be very useful allowing me to speed up or slow down a clip.
In general I think that my five minute film has been a success. I think that I executed my research and planning well, I feel that I covered everything that I needed to, to produce my film. I also think that I carried out my filming and editing to a good standard, even though there were some problems. I also think that my ancillary texts reflect my film brilliantly and look very professional. Overall I am very happy with the finished products.

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