EVALUATION

Part 1 – Brief

THE BRIEF

To produce a title sequence/opening of a new film.

TRAPPED IN LOVE

Our created film has been called 'Trapped in Love' as the words trapped and love give of two genres, which are thriller and romance. The reason for our film getting this name was to give the literal meaning of it, which Leila is in love with Danny but he traps her. I believe that this name is rather suitable towards our film as it explains the whole film in three words.

In our title sequence we see how Danny and Leila get to know each other. During the scenes we get to see a murdered girl lying on the floor with bruises and cuts, tied to the floor. We then get the idea that Danny is the murderer as he has a picture taken with the dead girl, Laura. We then get lots of shots showing us Danny moving into a new house. A view of Leila is also available, which is seen when Danny walks up to her and chats her up. He then, in the evening knocks on her door, as his electricity is not working.

The sub-genre of the film is mystery thriller. This genre is introduced to the audience straight away as bright images appear on the screen, attracting the audience to viewing a dead girl. The main settings of the scenes of Danny are rather dark and his face is mostly cropped out, showing that he is an unpleasant person. The mentioned scenes and lighting of Danny let the audience know that something bad is going to come Leila's way, as he enters her house.

EVALUATION

Part 2 – Who would be the audience for your product?

The target audience of 'Trapped in Love' should mainly start from the age of 16. This is because it involves disturbing images/scenes, which may affect people under 16 years of age. This film would be a great way to show the young generation how growing up is not easy and that they should look after themselves and stay away from strangers. The age chosen is a good age for attraction to seeing this film; this is because relationships start to build at roughly 16 years of age. Also, it should easily attract both genders as it includes romance as well as unpleasant scenes, thriller.

Pre-production research would not be an issue or needed, this is because I have just turned 17 and I enjoy romance films more than thriller. However, if I was to go on a date, my partner would not want to watch a romance film and he would rather watch a thriller. Therefore, the romance used in our thriller is a fact that both genders would be attracted. My friends are also the same age as me, and during sleepovers the boys would choose a thriller over romance and the girls would choose the opposite. This once again proves the point of both genres being attracted to our film.

EVALUATION

Part 3 – What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

20th Century Fox would be a great institution for our film to be distributed by. This is because people own it from America; this means that it is famous and rich as it is from USA. USA is a big country and rather rich, so this lets me know that it would not let us down and more people would attend the cinemas to watch our film. Also, 20th Century Fox has distributed many famous and great films.

We have looked at two films, which are the same genre as well as the narratives are very similar to our narrative. However, I am not sure weather they have been distributed by the 20th Century Fox. The two films we have looked at were 'Pacific Heights' and 'Fatal Attraction'. Pacific heights involve an aggressive person who causes trouble to the family of Goodman’s and ends up being violent towards them. Fatal Attraction also includes a mental woman who starts of with sleeping with a man of two children. The man thinks that it was a one-night stand, where the lady does not understand the meaning of no. And therefore, she threatens to hurt his family, as he does not want to build a relationship with her. These two films are very similar to 'Trapped in Love' as they both include violent people, which at first seem friendly and nice.

EVALUATION

Part 4 – In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The narrative of our film starts of with a new friendship, building into a relationship. It all begins as a lovely love story, which leads to a violent, disturbing, and unpleasant life style of two young adults.

The genre of the film is introduced to the audience when the first images are seen on the screen of a young woman’s dead body, which has some unpleasant views of her bruises and cuts.

The introduction camera angles and shots show every detail of the girls body. Starting of by a bird’s eye view, to see the state of the dead girl, leading to close ups of the main features, like cuts and bruises. The shots change to cropped mid shots hiding part of Danny's identity and most of the shots being dark. This shows the mysterious and the unpleasant side of Danny. As Leila is seen the shots change to long shots, as she has nothing to hide. As Leila walks towards home, the long shots switch to point of view showing what Leila sees. Danny appears, and this is the first time that Leila as well as the audience get to meet Danny face to face. As Leila and Danny begin to talk point of view switches to a long shot showing both of their identities. A time laps has been added as they leave, showing the time changing from daytime to nighttime. As it is nighttime the mystery takes over as a knock on the door is not only heard but also seen. We do not get to see the identity of the visitor, which may give us an idea of it being Danny. The last shot that has been included is over the shoulder shot, hiding the identity of Danny and completely revealing the identity of Leila.

The editing starts of with a white flash added to the photographs which makes them appear rather effectively as the brightness is an easy way to attract some ones attention. Cross dissolve has been used in every shot, which lets the title sequence flow without pauses. A Split screen has been used to make the car unlocking look realistic. We had to play around with the lighting using final cut pro for the scenes to fit in, as it got darker outside while filming.

The main sound of the title sequence is non-diegetic. We have chosen an instrumental from Eminem ft. Rihanna - I love the way you lie part 2 as the song is about how a boy lies to a girl, which is relevant to ‘trapped in love’ as Danny pretends to like Leila to get closer to her. Also, the music is very powerful, as a violin and a piano have been used. These two instruments create a sad theme to the audience. A sound effect of a camera has been used; this is to create a crime scene effect to the audience. These sounds are the most important as they both create great themes and moods to the audience. Some diegetic sound has been used to make the audience feel like they are part of the film.

Dark lighting has been used to create the mystery as well as tension towards Danny. Bright and wide shots have been used to represent a normal young lady, Leila, with no secrets and no mysteries. I believe that the lighting has done its job and worked rather well, by getting the themes across to the audience.

We have decided to keep the typography rather simple to keep the main focus on the title sequence it's self.

EVALUATION

Part 5 – How does your media product represent particular social groups?

While making the film no stereotypes were aimed at anyone. However, looking back at it, Leila looks like a stereotyped young woman. One of the main reasons may be for her being easy going. She would be classed as a typical young woman as she is the type to fall in love quickly, which means that she is not likely to notice the unpleasant behavior of Danny. Also, she invites a stranger to come to her house at night time as his electricity is not working; this may represent young women as not so clever who cannot look after themselves.

The camera shots used are mostly wide shots and very bright lighting has been used. This lets the audience view her whole identity easily which shows that she has nothing to hide. This may be a good thing towards showing the audience that she is the good character, but maybe she has revealed too much towards the pupils living in her area/world. As she is easy to study anything bad could come her way.

The editing towards Leila has not affected the stereotype of her, as most of the editing is the same throughout the whole sequence.

The sound has also not given an affect towards Leila and the stereotypes as the sounds used are suitable for both Danny and Leila. However, the main instrumental track is an R&B song which may relate to young women once more as this is the type of music that most young women are most likely to listen to.

Not only the camera work, the sound and the editing give away the stereotype of Leila. Her appearance through clothes also gives away a lot, as she wants to impress somebody. This is viewed by her wearing a designer bag as well as high boots. The appearance through clothing links to stereotypes as most young women are likely to dress to impress.

I would not say that Danny has been represented as any youth from London, not for what he is. However, as he wears a hood and he is violent this may be what some people see young male adults to be like. Also the dark shots create a dark and an unpleasant side of Danny which may create a bad stereotype towards young men. This was not part of the aim, but looking back at our title sequence the stereotype appears towards Danny. He has been represented in a rather bad way, for the reason of him being violent. Also the way Danny talks is heard a lot in London which some people may refer to the pupils that actually use this type of language and get an idea of young male adults being violent and unpleasant. The identity is not just hidden by Danny’s hood, but it is also hidden by the shots used, which crop parts of him out most of the times. He keeps the conversation short between him and Leila, which may mean that he does not want anyone to know a lot about him.

EVALUATION

Part 6 – How did you attract/address your audience?

Starting the film of with some disturbing images of a dead young woman has attracted our target audience. This is a good attraction towards teenagers as it is not seen a lot in real life and is a shocking view to be looking at. I believe that we have reached our target audience due to the different characters involved and how they have been presented to the audience. This is because our audience gets to see an average girl and a different boy to an average, showing them the range of people that live in this world, and the varieties of different natures of different people. While planning our production the first dialogue is one of the included things that appeals to our chosen audience. It includes the accent of a younger London generation coming from the male and the female being girly. 

Looking at the feedback from the target audience is very easily seen that the target audience is the age that we have chosen to target it to. This is seen by the way they write as well as the younger London generation accent/slang being used. The feedback given appeals a lot to our audience as the fact of them finding it successful proves that the chosen target audience is correct. 

Two people have mentioned how the time lapse has worked successfully, which is rather pleasing, as something natural has attracted the teenagers. Also, as some people have watched this title sequence with me, they have made a few comments on the very start of the title sequence, saying how the photos at the very beginning accompanied with the sound work rather well together. Also others have said that the white flashes are rather eye catchy and make you want to see more. All of these positive comments make me believe that the target audience age range has been correctly chosen.

A girl has said that Leila invites Danny too soon as well as Danny speaks to Leila too soon. She also said that there is no sound at the very end dialogue. However, Danny wants to get to know Leila extremely quick for him to get closer to her and do what he does best, torture people. Leila being a nice neighbor offers some help if any is needed. At the very end of the title sequence there is no speech for the audience to want to find out what the talk was all about and keep watching the film.

Somebody said that the only thing that gets in the way of our title sequence being less successful is the wind noises, however I personally think that this diegetic sound works rather well with the title sequence as you can tell what the weather is outside and make yourself feel like you are part of the movie.

The work could be improved by using a much better quality camera for the shots to be clearer. Also, the dialogue could be improved by recording it indoors and over righting it on top of the video, as it is not that clear. Maybe more places could be used for filming as only one road has been used. For the pan right shot the car could have driven over hills and a long shot could have been included to show that Danny is really moving from far away.

EVALUATION

Part 7 – What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

At the start of the year iMovie has been used to create a continuity sequence. I have found it rather helpful as I have had ideas and knowledge how it has to be used. However, a suggestion has appeared from a few teachers of using Final Cut Pro as it includes many more effects to create a perfect piece. For me being a beginner on Final Cut Pro was very difficult, however, as I asked for help I have gained a few main skills of how to work it. As I got better at it the decision was to use Final Cut Pro throughout the whole process of editing, this was mainly because as we were told before it has so many more effects.

To upload the footage onto a MAC we have chosen to keep using iMovie, this is only because it was the easiest way for uploading. As that has been done, the whole editing took process on Final Cut Pro.

The most successful uses of the new technology were that we could include an affect cross dissolve in between our shots which has made our whole title sequence flow with no pauses. Another helpful effect that we have included was the flashing when the photographs popped up on the screen. This is because it is a great effect to catch people’s attention due to the fact of it being very bright.

The fact of the diegetic and the non-diegetic sounds being heard at the same time was very helpful as when the dialogue begins the quiet music has given the whole scene a romantic and a mysterious mood. Also the fact of being able to change the volume of the music has also been very successful as le louder the music gets from a quiet track, the more tension has been built up.

The only problems we had with our first video were that as we have made some of the shots lighter, the quality of the footage has went down and it was not very clear.

I have learnt everything that has been included in the title sequence as due to this project, Final Cut Pro was introduced to me for the first time.