Evaluation

Critical Evaluation

1
There are many ways in which our film uses, develops and challenges the forms and conventions of real media products.
In terms of content, I think that our final product greatly reflects the conventions of a drama film, which is the genre that we decided our film would be. By representing both the idea of running away and romance in our storyline, both typical themes in dramas, our film deliberately fulfils the nature of the genre. By keeping the themes in our film specifically aimed at one genre, I believe that we will please our target audience.
By also keeping generic conventions in our film I believe that we easily provide audience pleasure. The easy to follow plot and clear theme within the film creates suspense, sympathy and shock within the audience, which are key to a successful drama. The idea that the two main characters, Harley and Holly, meet unsuspectingly and fall in love is a feature that is seen in many other drama films, such as ‘Derailed’ and ‘Cherrybomb’.

By using this element in our product and hinting at themes from other drama films, we knew that we would defiantly be able to reach a particular audience with our film.
In terms of editing and film continuity we have used this along with our knowledge of other drama films, to add certain elements in our final product that will make it easy for the audience to understand and pleasurable to watch. For example, we decided that our film was going to have a temporal duration, which contained flashbacks in linear order, showing the start of our two main characters relationship, up to its current point by the end of the film. Another film that uses this method of editing for example, is ‘American History X’ www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_b0-mMtp8Y .Also, we used black and white filters to tell the audience when the storyline is a flashback. By using Final Cut Pro to put together our final product we were able to easily and effectively do this. I believe that by doing this we add an extra depth to the felling of our final film.

2
Throughout the production of our main product, our five minute film, we aimed to entertain our audience mainly through the idea of ‘Transparency’, noted in Richard Dyers Theory of Entertainment. This means that we wanted to openly show the feelings of our main characters, Harley and Holly throughout our film, openly and truthfully.
At the beginning of our film the character Holly is shown breaking into a house a taking a large amount of money. This is an insight into Holly’s lifestyle. During this clip, Holly’s voiceover says, ‘ ‘I grew up with parents that didn’t care and didn’t want to know’’. This is a clear example of the use of transparency in our film, as it tells the audience openly why she may act the way she does. Our films other main character, Harley, is presented to the audience as a positive role model. His kind behaviour to Holly throughout the film, even when he is aware that he she had broken into his home, provides an inspirational role model and shows contrast between our two main characters. This contrast provides moral to our film as it shows two very diverse people from two different backgrounds being truthful and confronting their problems together. This difference in characters also adds interest to our storyline which is a positive outcome as we wanted to create and interesting storyline that would appeal to our audience.
One of the main parts in the storyline of our film is when Harley discovers Holly breaking into his house. This particular scene adds a great amount of intensity to our film which is another aspect in Richard Dyers Theory. When we began creating the radio trailer that would promote our film, we decided that we would use some of the script from this particular scene as a clip in the trailer because we believed that its intense tone would appeal to the target audience for our film. Because of this I think that our radio trailer is successful at pulling our audience in and making them want to see our film.
When listening to the radio trailer that we created as a group, I think that it sounds very well made and professional. This is mainly because we made sure that we included all of the essential features from our film into the information in our radio trailer, such as, release dates, the film certificate, and where the audience will be able to watch the film. By using voice clips from our film in our radio trailer I think that it gives the audience a preview into the intensity of our film. The music that we used in the background keeps the listener interested and adds to the intensity.
The poster that we created to run alongside our radio trailer in the promotion of our film I believe would also be very successful at enticing our target audience to want to see our film. Like our radio trailer, our film poster also includes all the essential features from or film that the audience will need to know, such as, certificate, cast, and film title. I think that the close relations between our film, radio trailer, and poster, is a very important as the audience need to be able to relate one to the other easily, to get a good understanding of our film.
I believe that our film is very similar to films such as, ‘Welcome to the Rileys’ and ‘Cherrybomb’ as they all contain a theme that we have tried to include in our own film, for example, the idea of running away, or a difference in character personality.

3
When we had first decided that we wanted to create a drama film, we began research by looking at films of a similar genre. This helped us to understand what generic features we should include in our film to ensure that it satisfies our audience. One of the main things that we found from this research is that most films within the drama genre tended to be linked with a sub or multiple genres, such as romance or action. It became apparent that we would need to include a subgenre in our film to give it a more interesting storyline and appeal to a wider audience.
One of the key things we found from our research was that a defining feature of drama films is the ending. The majority of films seemed to have a ‘’happy’’ or ‘’moral’’ ending. We made sure that in our own film we achieved an ending that would leave the audience satisfied after watching; this is when Harley forgives Holly, and Holly owns up to her wrongs, at the end of our film.
The final research we carried out before starting to film our final product was to a few people what they would expect to see from a drama film. The main three things we found people associated with the drama genre were romance, death (or a loss of some sort), and a happy ending. We tried to put all three of these aspects into our film to ensure that it would appeal to our target audience in as many ways as possible.
In the filming and editing of our production we needed to make sure that the meaning of our film would be clearly received by the audience. One of the things that I think makes our film easy for the audience to interpret is the use of black and white clips throughout the production, which tells audience when they are seeing a flashback.

This is another aspect that can be seen in other drama films that adds to ensuring the meaning of our film is apparent to our audience.
When we had finished our final product we asked members of the public, via http://www.facebook.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/, to comment on what they thought of the film.

When we looked over the comments that we had received, we found that we had got mainly a female response. This indicates that our film had appealed more to this audience than a male one. As we had included romance as a sub-genre in our film we expected that we would see a more female response. Our decision to add romance into our storyline came from finding that it was a common factor of most drama films in our research.
Overall, the comments that our film received were mainly positive. The one thing that people thought could have been better with the final production was the volume and clarity of the voice overs. We looked into making our voice overs louder and clearer in the final edit of our film, and also making the background noise quieter.


4
Throughout the production of our film we used a range of new media technologies to help us creatively research, plan and produce our final product.
During the initial research for our film we used the internet to firstly create an online blog, to use as a base for documenting the making of our film, and secondly to gain information needed throughout the development towards our final product.
To create our blog we used the website http://www.blogger.com/ which helped us to easily document the research and production of our film. By putting our work onto the blog throughout the making of our film we were able to add each piece of film research, poster research, audience feedback, etc., neatly to our blog page in a way that will show how we methodically planned and worked through the creation of our film.
When gaining the information needed for the research we carried out before making our film we also used the internet. Websites such as http://www.youtube.com/ helped us to view other short films and films with the same genre as ours, and http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ allowed us to look into the certification and release of films like ours. This large use of a new media technology has greatly enabled us to creatively and efficiently find research for, and construct, our final product.
When creating the final outcomes for our project, such as our film and radio trailer, we used two different types of new media technologies. These were the HDV 1000 video cameras we used to capture our film and the H4 zoom recorder we used to record the voice overs on our film and radio trailer. Both these pieces of equipment, having used them in our previous projects, were easy to use and created high quality film and sound recordings. By using these two different types of new media technology, I believe that we achieved a high standard final film and a good quality radio trailer.
Alongside our radio trailer we needed to produce a film poster that would promote our film. For this we decided that we were going to use a photograph that we had taken during filming as the main image on the poster. We used Adobe Photoshop Elements to construct our poster which turned out looking very professional.

Without the use of Photoshop, I believe that we would not have been able to create a poster that was of a high enough standard to promote our film.
Looking through the work we have produced for this project, and considering the amount of new media technologies that we have used, I would confidently say that without these we would not have been able to produce work as creatively and professionally as we have.