Audience Feedback

Below are two videos which i have uploaded to youtube showing members of my family watching my groups completed film and their reaction to the finished project. I further went on to interview  them with a few evaluation questions which we feel as a group will allow us to gain more of insight into the good and bad bits from our film and what can be improved if we are to make a film similar to this again.

 

After watching my film i put together several questions trying to find out their opinions on our film and what it is they thought could have been improved. Here is what they thought..

 

Marilyn Posters



Film's Poster



Shown is our completed poster for our film 'Marilyn'. One slight change has been made since the taking of this photograph and that is the age certificate in the bottom right hand corner. Instead of it being classified for 18 and above it has now been certified for 15 and above after numerous participants in our feedback groups felt that this age would also be suited to the film's violence and that it would also broaden our audiences in cinema, boosting sales. We decided to use a variety of different fonts that matched our chosen genre such as calligraphy writing in the films title; 'Marilyn' and a typewriter style font for our production companys name and web address, to link with the detective theme.

In order to become eye catching to our audience, we chose a strong white backdrop so not to loose attention of Marilyn being the main focal point in the poster. We also used strong, harsh colours such as reds and blacks to indicate negativity and to simplistically connote blood and death.

Adding the two ratings either side of the photo gives other people's trusting views and opinions on the film, as we realised most people today rely on other forms of media to tell them whats good and whats not. This is because people today are sucked into this whole idea that the media are right when it comes to opinions on other forms of media and so this where the hypodermic needle theory steps in.

Review of Film

Here is our finished review that we wish to publish in the more indie film magazines such as 'Little White Lies', 'Vertigo Films' and 'Indie Wire' whose target audiences are niche audiences who prefer independant films to the more popular, mainstream blockbusters. We created this review for our own film magazine 'Slice of Cinema' using what ideas we had discovered in other film reveiws of this kind. We found that they were more simplistic in there layout and tried to keep images to a minimum, often only using a key still in a film or the films poster image. As you can see we have kept with the colour theme of reds and blacks still to match to our poster making it look more professional and more like a combined product. We kept with adding an overall rating to our film as people can see just from the 5 star rating just how good a film is or not without having to go into depth and read the whole review. We also included the films weblink at the bottom of the page for people who become interested to find out more from, this is typical feature often used to give people the option for more facts.

Finished Film- 'Marilyn'

Below is our completed film 'Marilyn' We tried to keep to the codes and conventions of Film Noir to keep the realism of the film, this was acheived by costume, props, storyline, sound and camera.

Textual Analysis

Looking back at our film we as a group feel more time should have been spent planning and preparing our locations and set so that we were able to get the best out of our filming time and also we gave a more realistic approach to creating a 1940s time period. However the editing has made up for the lack of focus on set design and created a visually entertaining piece of cinema. If we were to do the project again we would assign fixed jobs to each of the members in the group so the work was done thoroughly and to a perfectionists standards. It would also allow more time to do anything that had been forgotten or put aside and avoid any last minute rushing around, that has been apparent this time around.

More filming pictures

Evaulation Question 4

Evaulation Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience Feedback on Prezi

Evaulation Question 2

Logo development and creation

Logo Development on Prezi

Evaulation Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our film product uses many of the forms and conventions that are portrayed in numerous film noir detective films. We have stereotypically used a lone detective to show our audience that we are using the main codes and conventions of film noir but expanding on them with our own interpretations to represent a modern society, for example; The detective represents a lone detective, whom has great experience and knowledge in crime. As well as solving big murders and crimes, they have their own problems to sort, however putting our own twist on the character led us to changing several main roles in the film from male to female to represent the change in gender and roles. Finally the Detective's partner is played by a male actor to suggest woman are gradually becoming the more dominent character and are able to gain the better jobs, this is also backed up with our main major character being female; 'Marilyn'

 All of the following film noir posters present the female character in the centre frame, either showing that she is main protagonist or antagonist. We felt that with this being a re-occuring theme we should stick to it with our films poster so that follows all of the film noirs codes and conventions. Making it more realistic and indicating a mysterious storyline as we have no actual knowledge of who the character shown is or her past.

 Our final poster, as you can see we have modernised and developed our poster further by adding the typical director infromation in a slim and tall font across the photo and including ratings and verdicts from film magazines in the top left and right hand corners. Also the age certificate and the photoshoped production logo inidicates it is a modern day film, as this software wouldn't have been accesible for 1940s film production teams.

Filming issues

We have encountered many problems whilst filming our media project. This has slowed down the process of creating our film, however we have tried to resolve the situations in numerous ways so that our film is as successfull as we have hoped it would be.

• Actors; Our original actors were unable to film when we needed them to due to outside plans and because of this we had to find new actors to take part in our film. Luckily we managed to resolve this but it has made the process of our film slower than expected.
• Locations; We have encountered a few problems when wanting to film outside after college because of the heavy rush hour traffic and with our film being set in the 1940s it would not be ideal to see a modern car in the background. To work around this we have changed our busier locations for quiter ones that wont be as busy and industrial.
• Times; With our film being set during both night and day we have had to put together a filming schedule so that we are aware of when it is we are filming and where so not to fall behind when it comes to editing our film.

Filming pictures

Above is a selection of stills from our film 'Marilyn'

My groups filming timetable

We have put together a timetable so that we can plan when we are able to film, create our poster and blog. This will help orgainise the making of our film efficiently so that we dont fall behind when it comes down to editing.

Ideology

What is ideology?

'Ideology' refers to a system of belief that is constructed and presented by a media text. The media can construct our views of our society and our attitudes towards society. A newspaper will usually have an explicit political ideology, but have an implicit ideology as well.

Identifying ideologyIdeologies are promoted in many ways e.g women are portrayed in films as sexy and emotional when it comes to men whereas in magazines they are portrayed as the perfect woman with the 'ideal' lifestyle that most readers aspire to. This 'ideal' is directly linked to the dominent ideologies in society. Consider the text in relation to the ideologies underpinning the text;
- Are they explicit or implicit?
- How does the text employ dominent ideologies?
- What ideological assumptions are made in the text?
- Are these ideologies cultured, institutional or both?
- Do the ideologies reflect the type of  text?

Cast and costumes

Camera man and Director; Tom

No costume needed apart from casual clothing that is easy to move around in.

Marilyn; Played by me (Kirsty)

Dressed in a black 1950's style dress, to match with the genre and era of the film. Also dressed in a fur coat, black heels and white pearls to show she is elegant and extremely wealthy. To symbolise she is a woman of passion we have added red lipstick to the costume, it is also symbolises the blood of her husband, whom she murders. Putting her in a black costume shows she is mounring for her husband after his death but also hides the fact she killed him herself, as the style of the dress emphasises elegance.

Policewoman; Played by Sophie

Dressed in the stereotypical police uniform colours of black and white, to show she is a part of the profession. Casually dressed as they would have been in the 1950's, still need to create a badge and hat to make the costume more realistic to the audience. Hair is tyed back as she would have needed to blend in with the male workers.

Detective and Partner; Played by Zoe and Ryan

Detective: In smart 3/4 jeans with tailored cream coat. Suggests power and feminism. Not one to dress like a stereotypical 1940s lady. Tweed bakers hat, typical popular pattern of the era.

Partner: Long sleeved white shirt with black trousers; simple and sophisticated. With black tweed hat to inidcate his occupation as many detectives would wear hats in the 40s.

Police officer; Played by Sam Sorrell

Decided to keep the costume simple using the stereotypical colours associated with police uniforms, this was used to keep costs to a minimum. However in the 1940s they would have not been as strict on uniform as they relied on detectives rather than groups of policemen to solve crimes, therefore they weren't as important.

Film Noir Posters

This poster is for the film 'This Gun For Hire'. The woman is the main focul point of the design to show she is closely related to the detective below, as she is looking down towards him with a smouldering look. She is also shown wearing lipstick to indicate that she is romantically linked to the male character. The fact that the male is holding a gun symbolises the title of the film 'This Gun For Hire' and also shows he is the protagonoist trying to save the community and his blonde beauty.

This is a poster for the hit film 'Laura'. We are instantly introduced to Laura being the strong female character as she is placed centre of attention with her arms dominently folded, wearing a bright scarlett coloured dress. The colour choice could symbolise her being a mysterious character, because red often resembles blood and death and can also indicate love and romance. The smaller picture below gives us a short  snippet of Laura manipulating and playing games with two men, this is obvious by her positioning being a lot higher and with her looking straight into his eyes. The antagonist of the film is clearly shown on the right hand side as he is placed in the darkness with lot of shadowing, holding a gun towards Laura.

New Technologies

Audience

Target Audience

In marketing and advertising, a target audience, is a specific group of people within the target market at which the marketing message is aimed at. A target audience can be formed of people of a certain age group, gender, marital status etc. (e.g. teenagers, females, single people, etc.) A combination of factors, (e.g. men aged 20-30 is a common target audience.) Other groups, although not the main focus, may also be interested. Discovering the appropriate target market and determining the target audience is one of the most important activities in marketing management.The biggest mistake it's possible to make in targeting is trying to reach everybody and ending up appealing to no-one.

Niche Audience

A situation or activity specially suited to a person's interests, abilities, or nature. For example, social realism films, consist of smaller niche audiences as there are not many films with a similiar genre around in cinemas these days.

'This is England' portrays as niche market audience as it conveys the genre of social realism and therefore its targeted audience is limited, as people don't enjoy watching things that relate to personal life and modern-day society.

Mass audience

A much wider group of people who have much broader interests and hobbies that appeal to the majority of audiences. Big Hollywood blockbuster films are a particular example of appealing to mass audiences as they want to rake in the money rather than release a film to engage with the audience.

Demographics

Marketers typically combine several variables to define a demographic profile. A demographic profile provides enough information about the typical member of this group to create a mental picture of the average target audience. Commonly examined demographics include gender, race, age, disabilities, mobility, home ownership, employment status, and even location.

Psychographics

Psychographic variables are any attributes relating to personality, values, attitudes, interests, or lifestyles. They are also called IAO variables (for Interests, Activities, and Opinions). They can be contrasted with demographic variables (such as age and gender), behavioral variables (such as usage rate or loyalty), and firmographic variables (such as industry, seniority and functional area). When a relatively complete profile of a person or group's psychographic make-up is constructed, this is called a "psychographic profile". Psychographic profiles are used in market segmentation as well as in advertising.

'Marilyn' storyboard

Here is a simple storyboard we have created to show the key scenes from our script. Even though these may not be the camera shots and editing techniques we decide to use when it comes to filming, it is how we have invisioned our film will look.

Film Pitch

Film noir pitch

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As part of our recent lesson we were asked to create a short presentation to pitch our film idea to our chosen distributer. We were asked to present to our class our chosen genre, characters within our film, chosen location, plot, USP (unique selling point) chosen distributer, short snippet of our story board and script. We then had to critically analyise each others presentations and ask any questions we felt hadn't been answered in the pitch. 

Film font ideas

Below are a few ideas for our font title we have decided to name our film based on the main character Marilyn who murders her husband for wealth. Reasons behind our chosen texts are that because of it being a film noir based genre we thought caligraphy writing would be appropiate to the time period. We also experimented with a typewriting font, to symbolise the dectective writing the statment in the opening sequence and the first name of the culprit is shown to the audience.  

Media Theorists

Representation
The media have "The power to represent the world in certain ways. And because there are so many different and conflicting ways in which meaning about the world can be constructed, it matters profoundly what and who gets left out, and how things, people, events and relationships and represented".
(Stuart Hall 1986)

Overall representation is the meaning in which the way things are depicted.

Richard Dyer argues that representation is a political tool:

On how social groups are treated in cultural representation is part of a parcel on how they are treated in everyday life. However he also highlights the complications in theories which focus on the negative representations of class, race and sexuality.

Our film

We have decided to create a short film in the genre of film noir detective. We know that the codes and conventions are closely similar to those of crime or detective fiction. We have already decided on our setting, actors and have recently worded our plot that would be shown on our films webpage. We have titled our film 'Marilyn' as it is common in film noir to name the film after who it is written about. It is also short enough to grab peoples attention but not give much away on the storyline.


Plot
An independant female detective takes on one of the most twisted crimes in the history of his job, that soon becomes a challenge that tests life and death to the ultimate level.
Storyline
Start of the scene is Marilyn ringing the police to say her husband has been murdered. She is the murdered.  Cut to the police ar her house, all that is visual is a chalk outline. The detective begins to ask questions, interrogates Marilyn. He doesn't suspect her to be the murder. She then finds out someone knows her secret, and kills them so it doesnt get uncovered anymore. Clues are gradually found by the detective which all piece together to show Marilyn is in fact the murderer. When he arrives at her house to arrest her she attempts to kill him but before the knive is pulled out the detectives partner enters and kills her before she gets away with anymore murders.

Thriller films

The Maltese Falcon

The film is based on Dashiell Hammett’s book (also called The Maltese Falcon) and star Humphrey Bogart in one of his best roles as private eye Sam Spade.

The story starts with the murder of Spade’s partner Miles Archer. Although he never really liked him, Spade is honor bound by his personal code of ethics to track down his killers.  Along the way he will get involved with the sultry Miss Wanderly and a group of criminals who seek a gold-encrusted falcon sculpture known as the Maltese Falcon.  As Spade gets closer and closer to discovering the identity of his partner’s killer, he gets more and more involved with the search for the priceless statue.  Is the death of his partner linked with the statue?  Why are so many people so desperate to find it?  And how is the mysterious Miss Wanderly involved?

Laura

 

'Laura' follows detective Mark McPherson as he investigates the death of famous advertising executive Laura Hunt.  Suspects include the venomous newspaper columnist Waldo Lydecker, the man who promoted Laura at the start of her career, her fiancé Shelby Carpenter, her rich aunt Ann Treadwell, and her housekeeper Bessie Clary.  As he begins to interview them, he begins to realize that every one of them was in love with Laura.  Even stranger, he discovers that he is beginning to fall in love with her as well, at least until Laura shows up alive one night at her front door.  Featuring a notoriously labyrinthine plot, Laura is a devastating murder mystery.  It develops a powerful intensity as the characters delve further and further into their own neuroses and motivations.

The Killers

The Killers is a tragically brutal film that leaves an impression that lasts long after it has ended.  It starts with one of the most famous opening scenes in film noir history where two hit men invade a small town and kill Ole Anderson (aka The Swede) who puts up no resistance.  The original short story was fairly short, so The Killers takes great pleasure in extrapolating the story and exploring the characters and their pasts.  We learn that the Swede (played by Burt Lancaster) used to be a member of a gang of thieves whom he was pushed into betraying by femme fatale Kitty Collins Colfax (played by Ava Gardner).  Like so many film noir characters, the Swede is fully aware of his transgressions and knows that he cannot escape his fate.  And so he greets his punishment like a man instead of trying to escape from it, as so many other film noir characters would.  We then follow an investigator and a police detective as they struggle to track down his killers and bring them to justice.

Film Noir

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist cinematography. Classic film noir started after the second world war. Much of the fear, loss, mistrust bleakness and paranoia were put into film noir as they represented the feeling and emotions felt by many during the time. Storylines are often non-linear and twisting, typically told with flashbacks, foreboarding background music and first person voice over narration. Amnesia felt by the protagonist is often a common device used as was the downfall of an incident.

Film noir codes & conventions

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in 1946

Narrative Structure

Narrative chain of cause and effect- the plotlines in a story that are triggered by action and enigma codes (something that happens that causes something else to happen). Below is the two theories by Propp and Todorov that show the two typical structures to storylines in films and television.

Propp                          Todorov

1) Preparation                            1)Equilibrium

2) Complication                            2)Disruption

3) Transference                  3)Recognition of Disruption

4) Struggle                       4) Attempt to repair disruption

5) Return               5) A return or restoration of NEW equilibrium

6) Recognition

Below is Propp's theory of the typical seven character types seen in most forms of narrative media.

Hero, Villain, Helper, Mentor, Blocker, Prize, Dispatcher.

Narrative Codes

Enigma codes- Limit audienece information, gives them a puzzle to be solved.

Purpose- Engages audience attention, maintains curiosity and interest.

Action Codes- Often more tthe narrative on and signal that change to the audience.

Narrative Themes

Social issues which are explored within the media text e.g. family values, social class, sexuality and racial issues.

Narrative themes tend to be explored by the crime drama be more simplistic and encoded with the entertainment values.

What is narrative?

• Plot- is the narrative as it is read, seen or heard from the first to the last word or image. That is, like a signifier, it is what the reader perceives.
• Story- is the narrative in chronological order, the abstract order of events as they follow each other. That is, like a signified, story is what the reader conceives or understands.

(Tools for cultural studies, Macmillian, 1994)

More specifically, narrative is a way of orgainising spatial and temporal date into a cause and effect chain of events with a beginning, middle and end that embodies a judgement about the nature of the events as well as demonstrates how it is possible to know, and hence to narrate, the events.

(Narrative comprehension and film, Routledge, 1992)

Here me and my group have created a simple storyboard out of the pictures given to us in class.

The idea of the task was to show the rest of the class  our storyboard and let them interperet there version of the story from how we had arranged the images.

Codes & Conventions

Codes and conventions of short films on Prezi

Media questionnaire

Below is our audience questionnaire designed to find out a little bit more on our target audience; male and females 18-24. We have chosen a variety of multiple choice and written questions that will hopefully give us more of an insight on our chosen audience and what it is they like when it comes to cinema and film.

Questions as followed:

What genre film you prefer to go and watch at the cinema?
How often do you go to the cinema in a month?
Who is it you usually go to the cinema with?
Do you prefer to watch films that relate to your personal life?
What first attracts you to wanting to watch a particular film?

Would you rather watch films at home or at the cinema?

For your answer give your reasons why..
Do you prefer to watch new, upcoming films or old classics?
What is the main reason for you watching a film?
Do you prefer big blockbuster films or small british based films?

We also asked further questions in our focus group consisting of;

1. Which film magazine appeals to you the most?

• Total Film
• Empire
• Sight & Sound
• Little White Lies

2. Are you interested in independant films such as Sight & Sound or Little White Lies or the more established magazines such as Total Film and Empire? Give reasoning to back up your answer.

3. How much would you pay for a film magazine?

Our findings for these questions are indicated below