Evaluation for Media Practical Production

The main task for our practical production was to film a clip (of approximately 2 minutes) to the opening of a film, in which we could, chose the genre and storyline. For our piecewe thought it would be best to develop our ideas for our piece by observing other films that had a similar story line to ours and whose characters dealt with similar situations. And for this we decided that Kidulthood was most appropriate as it presents teenagers dealing with their different emotional dilemmas, which is the key theme in our film. However Kidulthood also deals with a lot of violence among teenagers and we wanted to distance ourselves away from this as our main theme is to show isolation and struggles a person goes through on their own. As well as the basic plot, we had to think of the film in terms of shots, camera angles and transitions. For this we looked at a selection of drama films including The Bourne Supremacy, which uses fast/slow motion as we used this in the beginning clip of our film. Many of them also used voice over’s and so we thought that adding that in would make it more effective and more suitable to fit into that genre. Our production shows quite a realistic view on teenager’s lives and that it’s not a happy experience for everyone. We wanted to move away from the stereotypical view of teenagers being happy and full of life as this sometimes isn’t the case. It represents the group of teenager’s in society that are at an ultimate low in life and are struggling to cope with their problems. However it could also portray an image of young people over dramatising their situation and making it appear worse than it actually is.
When thinking about what kind of media institution might distribute our product I would put ours in the Niche category. These are also known as independent smaller releases that deal with more unconventional and abstract films. This is appropriate for our film as the opening is quite artistic (fast motion effect) and you don’t tend to find it in a lot of big mainstream films. It would not be placed amongst all the big Hollywood films as most people don’t go to the cinema to be saddened but to feel happy and be able to laugh. In theory it only targets a small number of people in society. For example a person watching the film who has no idea what the character is going through would not be able to relate to it and therefore would not enjoy it. As this film deals with a very sensitive topic many viewers may find it very difficult and distressing to watch.
As a group we decided that our target audience would be from teenager’s (both girls and boys) of about 14 and onwards as there are many young people that have to deal with difficult situations even if it is not the same as the character in our film. I expect the older generation to take an interest in it to as they may have experienced something like this when they were growing up and might find it interesting to watch. We used a variety of different techniques to make our film appeal to our target audience so that it looked unique and not like every other film. The long shot of Lucy shows isolation and how she feels she is completely on her own, this causes the audience to empathize with her. The use of the fast motion shows Lucy standing on her own while everybody rushing past her to give the audience and the character a sense of confusion and bemusement. It then moves onto a mid-shot of the 2 actors Chloe and Jonny. Here, we see that when Lucy is confronted her emotions completely change and she becomes very angry and agitated. This also makes the audience empathize with her as they may start to realise the severity of the situation. By using the mid-shot effect the audience get a clear picture of the facial and body expressions of the characters, which helps to understand them a bit more. Moving on into the bathroom we have a shot of Lucy looking in the mirror and her reflection and this is really effective as it illustrates the fact that the only person she has is her reflection, which again shows isolation and remoteness. When she begins to rummage through the cupboard for the pills we decided to have an over the shoulder shot for this part as if the audience are seeing things from Lucy’s perspective to give a clearer perception of what she has to deal with.
From the process of constructing this product I have learnt a lot about what aspects take up more time and effort than others. I found that the filming itself didn’t take as much time as I thought but the preparation and editing for it did. For example, trying to find a suitable location for the beginning clip was a problem as we needed a place that had a constant flow of people walking past. However this was always going to be a problem as we thought that some members of the public would mess about and not take it seriously. However when we started filming everyone was very considerate and co-operated really well with us. The opening clip was very time consuming because on the final product it was in fast motion, so we had to film for at least 10 minutes for it to last for a significant amount of time. We had to think a lot about what camera angles were best suited for a particular shot and in some cases we had to re-do these several times, which again was time consuming. Once the filming was completed we then had to move onto the editing and this took up the majority of our time as we had to cut out the all the relevant shots and put all the correct ones together as well as trying to add in transitions and appropriate music to go with the flow of the film.
I feel that I have learnt a lot since our preliminary task a couple of months ago. Compared to the product we have produced, our preliminary task was of poor quality and perhaps we didn’t put enough effort into it. Knowing how to use the camera appropriately is essential in order to get the shots that you want and you have to be prepared to re-do these several times. I have now realised that making a film isn’t as easy as it seems and it takes a lot of time and commitment to produce something of a really high quality that will attract your target audience.