EVALUATION #1In what ways does the media product use, develop or challenge conventions of continuity, and the language of film and editing?

Nikki Burton

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An example film of a Social Realism

Drama.We used common stereotypes of young people to portray the audience into thinking that

“Sam”, the character in the black hoody, was a troublemaker. We also used mise-en-scene to create the atmosphere of the character through- shots she appeared in,

costume, music. We portrayed “Sam” as a trouble maker to lead to the audience to thinking that she was going to commit a crime, which would make the ending more

surprising. Also the audience can either relate to our characters due to a similar crime happening to them or they could be the one getting stereotyped.

We each researched into what is a ‘short film’, afterwards we planned our storyline and genre. Our media product idea seemed to fit the usual conventions of a drama and after some research, I realised our film fitted in with the ‘social realism’ sub-genre of drama. This meant the narrative in our film and the action in our film are realistic to what can

happen in today’s society. I put the conventions into a mind-map so we could apply them to our film.

“The Lovely Bones”

We used mise-en-scene to follow the conventions of a drama genre by having “realistic and believable” characters and settings. This shows although our film doesn’t match the

plot or time period of “Lovely Bones”, it follows the same conventions. Another convention of a drama is for a character to have a form of journey. Ours is an

emotionally journey as our character ‘Millie’ (and the audience) learn a moral lesson- not to jump to conclusions about people. The character’s experience helped her journey into

changing her prejudice views.

In order to make our characters “believable and realistic” we

dressed them as a typical person would dress. This is similar to

“Lovely Bones” as this character dresses her age which allows the

character to fit in with the realistic setting.

We used realistic settings such as the park, their home

and the street. “Lovely” Bones also used realistic settings

such as the school, the street, their home and fields.

“Jumping to Conclusions”

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After watching the film “Knight and Day” starring Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruz. We realised our film was similar to the end scene as it is revealed to the audience, through CCTV, that

Tom Cruz's character slips something into Cameron Diaz’s suitcase the first time, and taking it back out the second time so that he could get it through security. This is not shown to the

audience at the beginning as the audience see them just bumping into each other.

This is similar to ‘Jumping to Conclusions’ as we also show two characters bumping into each other, saying sorry and exiting the scene with the audience unaware of any other action

taking place. However, we do not use CCTV playing back to the character and the audience to reveal the stolen phone, we play back the scene from the opposite angel to reveal to the audience what really happened. We used filters of black and white while editing it to show

the audience that it is a playback of the scene and used slow motion effect when the action is taking place to emphasise to the audience what actually took place.

We based our film idea around the TV advert for the Guardian. We lead our audience to think that the girl in the black hood is going to injure the girl on the screen, just like the man in the leather

jacket and jeans looks as if he is about to injury the man in the suit in the Guardian advert. We too edited our film like this the advert as we faded the end of the action scene to black, which

allows the audience to make their own ending in their head before it is revealed to them.When our scene is replayed after fading to black, from the opposite angle, this is the same as in the TV advert as it is done to reveal the real reason to why the person is approaching the other.

We also edited our film to be black and white in certain parts as we thought it would draw attention to the audience that they are looking back at action that has already taken place.

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http://youtu.be/M3bfO1rE7Yg

Link to the video

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Intertextuality was used to improve our film and improve the audience’s understanding of our final production. We finished our film and thought there were something missing and it was quite hard for the audience to follow and understand the message we were trying to perceive. After going back to where our original inspiration came from, the Guardian

TV advert, we realised what we were missing was the narrator. We then chose to include a voice over to narrate to our audience what jumping to conclusions is and how easy it is to do which helped the narrative to flow. Intertextuality was used in the voice over as we

used the style of the Guardian’s narrator into our own film using similar phrases.

“An event from one point of view gives only one

impression.”

“It is only when you look at things from another point of

view you see the clear picture.”

“Appearance is not enough to judge anyone by, step back and see the whole

picture before jumping to conclusions.”

“An event seen from one point of view gives one

impression.”

“Seen from another point of view gives quite a different

impression.”

”But it’s only when you see the clear picture, you can fully

understand what’s going on.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SsccRkLLzU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCdyBjsfvOU

Usually, text appears on the screen of films to inform the audience on dates, time or to inform the audience on what happens next. Examples of these are:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_FKP-rjhh4

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Legally Blonde

Text appears at the end of this film to inform the audience on what happens after the film has finished, for example what characters go on to do and what they have achieved. The main idea of this is to show how the characters get what they deserve, eg. The “good” character’s have a happy ending where as the “bad” character’s have nothing. This is also done to apply realism to

character’s.

One Day

The text appearing in ‘One Day’ sets the time period of the scene that is about to come up. This is typical in films, not just the drama genre, other films too.

Our Media ProjectOur use of text appearing on the screen is not to inform the audience, or set the scene using dates or times. We used it to directly question to the audience which is not usually found in a drama film, however we found it fitted with our film and involved the audience to our narrative.

We knew it was important to apply continuity to our film to maintain a continuous and clear narrative for our audience. Applying continuity to our film allowed structure which makes the scenes flow, this allows

the audience to understand and follow the narrative which was important for us as they needed to

understand the moral message we were trying to perceive.

Applying the 180 degree rule was something we made sure we applied successfully in our film as, if we didn’t it would confuse the audience due to the character’s appearing as if they have jumped places. We chose one side to film on and stayed at that side, however we deliberately broke the rule when filming the action in the park. The rule was broken but didn’t confuse the audience. To do this we filmed the scene in the park twice, once form the left, and once from the right, the first was to have continuity from the rest of the film. The film then faded to black and the scene restarted in black and white, to show it is a re-play, and we continued the film at the opposite side to show the theft taking place.

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This is example of how we used the 180 degree rule, the camera was kept at the same side of the road so that ‘Millie’ was always on the left hand side of the scene,

if the camera moved, our characters would be at the opposite side of the screen which would make them jump places and confuse the audience. Keeping this

camera and the same side allowed the audience to follow them and understand what they are doing.

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YMatch on action was also important when making films as everything needs to flow to look as if there were no breaks in the scene. We applied this a couple of times in our film, an example of this is with opening and closing of the doors at the house scenes, sitting down on the swing at the park and when Millie leaves the room to walk upstairs. Applying match on action was simple to do through editing, although I had to make sure that it looked smoothly. For example, when Millie sat onto the swing, we cut to a close up of her sitting down, then returned to a mid-shot. Once editing it all together we had to make sure that the swing was swinging backwards and forwards as usual and not look to have jumped or stopped in any way in order for the scene to flow continuously.

This match on action is then followed by an eye-line match. This was done to show the audience exactly what “Millie” is seeing, in this case she see’s “Sam” struggling with “Jodie” , the girl she has

just bumped into. This allows the scene to run smoothly, where as if we just cut to the next scene the audience may be confused to what is happening, and unsure whether the character see’s the

struggle. This would confuse the narrative.

Although shot-reverse-shot is used as a quick paced edit, we allowed ours to fit in so it looks continuous. Our shot was applied while our character’s were walking, this shot looked smooth as I panned the character’s crossing the road which allows a smooth shot as if the audience is

following the characters. Then the characters looked at the car, the person in the car looked at them, then the two

characters looked at each other. This built up pace and excitement for audience making it more engaging as they

want to know who the character is in the car and they may also build up their own idea of the type of person. A shot through the reflection of the car mirror is used when watching the characters walk away. This is also a point of view shot as the audience are seeing what the person in the car is seeing, match-on-action was applied too as we had to make sure that the walking was continuous in each

shot to look as if it was one walk. This allowed us to be more creative with the camera and explored different

ways of shooting the scene.

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Another convention we followed was a steady increase build up of tension along with climax and anti-climaxes to keep the audience engaged. We increased tension not only through the direct shots we filmed, but mainly through the editing process. We added high pitched non-diagetic music which built up tension, also it was done through the

“too much too soon” edit which shook the camera and faded to black in the scene where the hooded girl darts direct towards the screen. This builds up tension as the

audience will want to know what is going to happen and the girl is looking directly into the camera, which when watching as an audience member, is looking directly at them.

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This was the music I downloaded from

FreeSound.org. The music built up higher and higher then had

an impact sound. This was good for

building up tension to the audience. I

used rhythmic editing as i played the sound to mirror the scene of “Sam”

directly walking towards the camera.

http://www.freesound.org/people/m_O_m/sounds/107195/

Rhythmic editing was also used in the trailer

as the sound was played to introduce the title on screen, this is also done

in the final project.

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Todorov’s Theory of Narrative

How this theory applies to our

film

All as it should be

DisruptionRecognition and an attempt to repair the disruption.

Return to equilibrium

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USES AND GRATIFICATIONS

• Finding our about relevant events.• Satisfying curiosity and general interest.

• Learning/self-education.• Gaining sense of security through

knowledge.

I believe that the uses and gratifications theory applies to our film as we are educating them and informing them about prejudice behaviour and

how easy it is to judge people. The moral lesson at the end also is educating the audience that is its wrong to do as well as informing them on what the definition is for “jumping to conclusions”. Due to our project

being a short film, it engages the audience long enough without them loosing interest which enables us to get our point across.

1. Entertainment2. Education/information3. Role Models4. Socialisation

•Celebrity Actors.•Character’s they can learn from.•Likeable character’s.•How to positively handle a situation.•Character’s/people they aspire to.

Role models is also an important factor as we have both positive and negative people in our film and include a situation that is handled positively. The character in the “hoody” is shown to be the positive character which is unexpected to the audience but is showing how people they should act, for example returning the phone. People could see her as a role model as she saw something wrong happening and stepped in to help others.

Although I feel our film has stuck to some of the common conventions in technical terms such as continuity, our film has challenged some other conventions of a typical drama such as the direct text

and the twist of the moral in the story. It is something that the audience don’t really expect which subverted their expectations. We researched into our audience to see what they wanted and based our film around involving them into our plot as much as we could, through this I believe our audience would

gain pleasure when watching it. Although we had hints of intertextuality in our project which was the Guardian advert, we never intentionally set our plot to reference to another film although after looking

through our film we have found some similarities to others.

I believe our audience will get pleasure from watching the film because they get to watch something that is realistic due to our believable characters and also through the question left at the end. I think this because

we have engaged with our audience emotionally and directly and so they may take pleasure in that they are involved in the story and have an unexpected, yet satisfying, closed ending.

Another reason I am confident in our audience enjoying our film is through our research task for our potential audience. We went into the public to ask what they thought of our rough draft of our film idea’s, and they told

us to “relate to people more” and so, after changing our idea to what we have now, I believe that we have achieved the conventions of a drama and pleased the audience because we have related more to real

situations which is what drama films is all about.Finally, we leave our audience with a lasting impression (which is typical of a drama) and our lasting

impression I believe is given successfully, as questioning ‘text’ appears on the screen, directly asking the audience to question their own prejudices.

CONCLUSION

OUR AUDIENCE