Unhinged final film

Radio Trailer

Final film poster

Evaluation Question 1

Question 1 - In what ways does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

At a technical level, how well did you observe the conventions of continuity, and the language of film and editing?

When creating our film we attempted to create a product that kept to the basic rules of filming whilst also challenging them as and when needed to create dramatic effect. Our films continuity was altered during the flashback scenes, we did this so that we could show our viewer some backstory to our narrative and to also display the confusion of our protagonist. Other than this example we kept to the conventions of continuity. When editing we attempted to show how blurred the timeline of our main character had become, we did this by slotting in flashbacks as mentioned above and also overlapping shots with a slight delay to give them a blurred look. We also did a large amount of sound editing to add to the overall experience of these scenes. As well as this we did fast paced editing for fight and chase scenes and slightly sped up some footage to add to the action on screen.

In terms of the content, how does your film reflect or challenge the conventions of the genre you are working in? Does it fulfil the nature of film genre or will it subvert expectations deliberately?

Our genre of psychological thriller was a great genre to work within as we had such a wide range of filmmaking and editing techniques to study and then replicate in our own work. We made a large effort to stay true to the thriller section of our genre by filming action scenes and a small car chase that ended with a fistfight. The psychological side of our film was shown through our protagonist’s confusion and also his distorted view of reality. In terms of subverting the genre we tried to make the audience empathise with our main character John and this is something that films in this genre particularly do. In terms of filming techniques rather than narrative we stayed very close to the traits of the genre and reflected them closely to stay within the genre. We also didn’t have any parody of other films but took small aspects of many to create out final piece.

What kinds of audience pleasure are you trying to provide, and how confident are you that you have achieved this?

When making our film we wanted to make the audience emotionally connected to our protagonist and associate with the problems he is going through. We did this by John having a younger daughter; this was key to the plot as it meant that the target audience could possibly relate to the storyline. Despite our plot having a saddening ending we wanted the audience to have a sense of release as John is finally at rest. This may not have been pleasurable for all of our audience but it will have provoked emotion no the less.

When compared with current media I believe our product was a success and we achieved the overall goal of our film.

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 3

Question 3 – What have you learned from your audience feedback

 

When creating our film we had to consider the audience in both pre production as well as postproduction. To ensure we always took the audiences views into consideration we made questionnaires and collected responses from our target age using Google docs and asking people to fill them in via social media.

We found out from our research that the storyline of our film was easy enough to understand and people could follow it.
The responses concerning our film genre are exactly what we wanted and most people agreed that our film was being marketed as the right genre of film. When we asked

When we asked people what they would change in the film the answers conflicted to a degree so we made a decision as a group not to change any aspects of this other than to add more shots of the chase/car scene in editing. We also hit our goal in relation to people’s views on our main character “John”, other than the one comment saying they viewed him as ‘aggressive’ we managed to portray him as a victim rather than a villain.

We also found that the main target gender would be more male than female. This meant that we could cater our advertising and editing more towards a male audience. We did this by editing from a male gaze and catering our advertising for males the best we could.

People also agreed that the films age range was around 16-24 this is suitable due to the fact that our films age rating is 15 and also our advertising is catered towards this audience.

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation Question 2

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


From the main brief we were aiming to produce a high quality 5 minute short film. We aimed to create a psychological thriller to demonstrate a downfall of the main character. We were trying to achieve an emotional effect on the audience to feel sympathy for this character. This is also achieved within the two advertising products, the radio trailer and poster. It is achieved in the poster as It demonstrates a blurred image of a little girl who is the main characters daughter. This demonstrates what he's lost through gambling and creates sympathy from the audience. The radio trailer gives away a brief example of how he lost everything when you hear the words 'all in' which demonstrates how he put everything on the line. The car engine noise shows how the film makes the audience think about what could be happening in this scene which is also a good technique for advertising the product as it means they will want to know what is happening.

The two products are effective in selling our product as it creates that emotional effect we want to create for our character in the film. The poster demonstrates a little girl with a blurred face which suggest a sinister storyline which is suggested from the title 'Unhinged'. This is similar with the radio trailer as it shows sounds of rustling, car engines and also script. All these features help sell the product as it says 'All In' which makes the audience want to know what the character risked.

c) Make comparisons with real advertising products.

Our radio trailer in comparison to mainstream trailers has a very professional standard. It displays many features which the others have for example brief sounds from the film to give away what is happening for example the car engine. But also we have a voice over explaining what the storyline is and when the film is released. Many trailers are different in some perspectives as there isn't really a narrative voice over in some but trailers such as taken which refers to the popular 'I will find you, I will kill you' line is similar to ours as ours say 'he has nothing else left to loose'. This is a key line to what the characters situation is. So our trailer does fit its purpose of advertising our product as it has the conventions of many other trailers.

In addition to this our poster created a very professional look as it displayed many aspects of film posters such as ratings from magazines and also all the production names along the bottom. The font of the title refers to the film unhinged as it isn't normal and suggests to the audience to think what isn't normal. Our logo's give it a professional look too as it shows we are professional.

Evaluation Question 3

Question 3 Evaluation

1. How did you respond to the original brief with the audience in mind? Give details of audience research carried out at the planning stage.

During the planning stages, we firstly decided on a prominent genre in our group which was a Psychological Thriller. With the storyline in mind, we created a brief questionnaire to distribute to our target audience to evaluate our idea. We recorded their answers using the Sony HD 1000 camera and then placed it on YouTube. This allowed us to embed it onto our blog where we could then start the research stage. From our results we saw that our age rating was the right choice and that it was the correct genre choice as the audience mostly agreed with our genre choice. After these results we decided to research into camera shots, props, music all linked with our genre. When filming we ensured that we followed all conventions linked with our genre and to make sure we did this, we produced a rough cut of our film to ask the audience if we conformed to the conventions of this genre.

1. In filming and editing how did you ensure meaning would be apparent to the audience? What creative decisions did you make in planning, rehearsing, filming and editing that were influenced by your sense of the audience and how they might interpret your finished film?

Within the filming and editing we produced many ideas from camerawork to editing to portray things in certain ways. The way in which we wanted to portray the character was to feel like he was intoxicated and to show him as an alcoholic. Close-ups of the characters face were added to show the characters emotional distress and also the use of focus change was used in a point of view to create a blurred vision to portray the alcoholic affect that is on the character. As well as this when filming certain scenes for example the poker scene, it was too light and happy so we had to create a darker atmosphere by covering windows and other possible lighting issues. However this created an incorrect mood for our film as the lighting then changed orange which was resolved in the editing process as we colour corrected the shots using the colour wheel. Also in the poker scene we wanted to create a blurred memory so as the scene ended we used an overlapping effect and a change in opacity to portray a flashback.

c) How did the in audience respond when you trialled aspects of your film?

We created a rough cut to see how the audience would respond to the brief aspects of our film. We placed this on YouTube and produced a questionnaire to be able to evaluate and change some parts of the film which the audience felt weren’t relatable.

The audience feedback from the rough cut helped a lot in terms of testing our genre and if we portrayed the character in the right way. The audience described our character in all the right ways which showed that our rough cut demonstrated the right techniques to portray the character. As well as this we asked what the target audience is and if the plot was understandable. From the feedback it showed that our audience was both male and females. Also, it showed that our plot was understandable to the audience which helped us move forward with the film as we had already made the storyline understandable.

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 4 from Arron Bettley

Evaluation Question 1

Make your own mind maps with Mindomo.

Evaluation question 2

Evaluation question 3

3 What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Response to the original brief with the audience in mind

Originally when we started out from our storyline we decided a prominent genre. From our chosen genre (psychological thriller) we began researching other films with the genre thriller or psychological thriller by looking at conventions such as the types of shots used, the music and the editing. After creating a story line we then interviewed people based on their views in the questions asked. We embedded video clip examples from YouTube into our blogger page and we analysed and picked out key features. We also analysed radio trailers and posters of the genre. When filming we had to keep referring to the conventions of the genre to ensure that we were using a similar style. After creating a rough cut we then went on to get feedback from our audience to see if we had conformed to the genre conventions adequately.

Achieving meaning and creative decisions made in planning

When editing we used an overlapping effect and by changing the opacity of one layer, in effect creating a blurred image; this effect made the characters point of view seem intoxicated. When filming the poker scene we needed to have a dark room to create atmosphere to do this we covered all of the windows and used a white lamp light to maintain the exposure. Unfortunately the methods that we used to block out the natural light made the room appear more orange, this created a warm feeling which we did not want so in editing we used the colour corrector to change this by using the colour wheel.

When planning the costume for the main character we knew that we needed to have something that made the character look more common and urban, this adhered to the financial situation. The costume for the villans was designed to look darker and borderline professional creating a larger contrast for the viewer to see obviously. Some new shots were required, especially close ups because we needed to show character emotion and show clear points of interest.

Trialled aspects reactions for your film. (interpretations)

We put our rough cut of our film on YouTube for the audience to see and comment on. Some people may be able to relate to the main characters financial struggle and may be interested to see how the character handles it. Or perhaps the viewer is financially secure and would like to see life from another perspective. 

The audience responses helped to alter the film to adhere to the conventions. Once we had our feedback we could ensure that we had the correct audience changing things like adding in music, and changing length of the shots to fit the genre and atmosphere. We even added in new new scenes to make the film more understandable creating a better narrative.

Unhinged rough cut

Evaluation question 4

Questions results

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ans-QkWHD4fh7EPtX4aXPefGK2Z211P8uEWt4Rmg5b4/edit#gid=1367375748

Final Film Audience Questions