Evaluation

Final Piece

Preliminary Exercise

Dialogue in our film

The first bit of dialogue is shown when Lucy is dreaming about her sister being in the room with her. We wanted to make the dialogue so that the viewers were intrigued as to who I (Charlie) was. We did this by adding 'I dont have 5 minutes'. We wanted to leave the viewer wondering why.

The next bit of dialogue appears in the flashback. The main Dialogue is when me and Harriot (Lucy) are sitting on the sofa before there is a knock on the door. We wanted to keep the dialogue casual so it seemed more realistic that two sisters can be relaxing on the sofa one evening. We also added a negative comment 'yeah im stuffed thought' to, in a way, reflect that something bad is going to happen.

The last bit of dialogue is the voiceover which is giving the viewer vital information so that they understand the openening sequence and set them up for the rest of the plot. The dialogue is spoken by Lucy, the main character to make the viewer aware that Lucy is the protagonist throughout the film.

Research on film genres

To research film genres, Me and Freya watched a number of dramatic/ 'tear jerker' films such as; P.S I Love You, Dear John, My Sister's Keeper, The Notebook and 50 First dates. From these different films, we noted down a few of the typical conventions from the films. We noted:

-Establishing shot at the beginning of the sequence
-Opening starts off by giving the viewer hints of the rest of the film such as a voiceover for example
-Enigma codes such as voiceovers leave the viewer wondering what is going to happen next
-Music is often slow paced which represents the genre to be dramatic/sad

From these conventions we tried to intergrate them into our openeing. This was when we came up with the idea of having a flashback coz it is not common in the openeing sequence of a film, so we thought if we add a different aspect to the opening, it may stand out to the viewers.

Feedback And Improvement ( Response To Showcase)

As part of our coursework, we had to showcase our media product so far to the rest of our class and our two media teachers Miss Thrasher and Miss Kassam. Here are some of the comments made, bareing in mind that our media product was no where near being finished.

Positive comments

-Like the use of the home video
-Good lighting
-"looks like a film I could cry at, which is a good thing" (This fits in to our target audience and the reaction we hope to get from the audience)
-Good characters
-Certain camera shots were effective
-Production company
-Realistic

Negative comments

-Clip is too long
-Breakfast part doesnt need to be there
-Didnt understand the story line
-Few of the clips jumped
-Sound is a bit quiet
-Electric interference

From the comments above, it is clear there was alot we needed to change. Our origional sequence had a part where the main character, Lucy, goes into the kitchen to make toast, However, in response to the feedback, me and Freya decided to take it out as it just made the film too long and put the viewer off. As our opening was not ready, and there were parts we had not filmed yet, the sequence did not make sense but now that the opening is completely finished, if it was to be showcased again, it would make more sense and would be more exciting as we have added effects such as fade in fade out and wipe. We also added and 'Aged-Film' effect over the home video to make it look like it is filmed in the past and to show the viewersm that Lucy, the main character is reflecting to when her sister, Charlie, was alive.

Production

Our production is called Zebra Productions. We thought of Zebra productions because our group is called group Z and we thought it would be a good idea to have our production complany also start with Z. We origionally wanted to have the zebra run across the screen and stand up but due to lack of facilities, we were unable to do this.

Other names we were considering:
Frash productions
Frankin productions
Smash productions
Zebra productions
Bluenose productions

We decided to stick with Zebra productions as we had a really good image of how we wanted it to look.