Evaluation - question 1

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

I feel my media product, 'Noir' challenges forms of real media products. It is like no other films recently produced. When we were in the researching stage, we found it really hard to find very similar films. It fits into the mystery/horror catergory. Films I researched as I felt were most similar and appropriate included 'Seven' (1995). I feel the way our film would continue (though I havent really thought of what would happen next) would in some ways reflect aspects of Seven or 'Se7en'.When you begin to watch our production, the black and white makes it have an old, vintage feel but it has a modern day twist. Obviously members of my group were acting so the age of them makes it feel young. Also the locations were just streets and the inside of Roxanne's house. This is going to be a familiar, normal setup for the audience to watch. Because of that I think they would not be expecting the film to be a horror, film's of this genre have spooky surroundings such as big, empty, derelict mansions in the middle of a forrest that hasn't been entered in 200 years, or something to that effect! In this way I feel it has challenged and developed the horror genre. However, you dont actually see what has happeed and whether Roxanne is killed by Amber. You just feel that is the obvious answer the film gives you as Amber enters Roxanne's home dodgily and from the scene with the phonecall, we know Roxanne wasn't having her friends round for an hour. The way the production ends gives away what has happened when the title of the film appears you can vividly hear the gunshot. It basically spells it out to you!

Final Film!

We have now completely finished our film! On friday we did the last of the editing and now it is all done. However it is on Roxanne's home computer so until she has uploaded it, nobody else can. Therefore, I will start my evaluation and upload it as soon as she has.

Changes to our final film

After making our first draft and watching numerous examples of other peoples first drafts, we have decided to completely revamp the majority of the film. Not too much new filming will have to take place as by changing a little filming, you can still manage to change how the audience views it and the opinions and emotions they feel can easily be flipped. We have come to this conclusion because we felt it just did not feel like the beginning of a film. The office scene with the detective began to feel unnecessary and so did various other bits. Therefore, we immediately cut the whole office scene so it would have finished with Amber trying to kill Roxanne in the bathroom, then have the film title and a gunshot and bam, the end. The beginning of the film needed a smoother opening to firstly set the scene, and secondly, allow the audience to begin to relax into our film without immediate dialogue which would take concentration and focus away, you rarely are totally engaged in the first 2 minutes of watching a film. With that in mind, we began the film with a long shot of Amber walking up a street and entering the side gate of a house. She looks suspcious and I believe is holding a gun. We have added non-digetic sounds of foot steps which match hers. This panning scene gives nothing away but makes the audience immediately feel uneasy and suspicious of this character. We have then added a small scene of Roxanne alone in her kitchen, recieving a phonecall and discussing her evening plans. From that we know that nobody is expected to enter the house as she is about to have a bath. The way we have changed the film just allows you to know more of what is going on instead of it being a guessing game and then as it ends with a question mark it means the rest of the film would unravel what happened so it seems more and more like a film opening the more we go on.


In addition, we have also edited the credits so the company logo's I previously uploaded which had  obviously been drawn out on paper will no longer be our production and distributor's company logos. This is simply because they did not look professional when we experimented adding them to the film and as our film has a dark, morbid story I think everything about the story should reflect that, by having the logo's on a black background. To change this, we will still have the same names for the companies however it will just be the words written without any picture logo. This way it takes no attention away from the wording and the credits seem more central and distinctive.

Film Draft

Film Draft
http://roxannepinfold20.blogspot.com/2011/03/film-draft.html

Other things...

We have had to make up company names to act as our film distributor and production company. We came up with 'Brigade Entertainment' and 'Engaging Films'. here are the logo's:

final roles

Also, after a lot of hiccups, we have finalised our cast. So in my group there is Me (Hannah), Amber, Roxanne and Faith. The roles go as follows:

• Me - the detective
• Amber - the murderer
• Faith - the secretary
• Roxanne - the murdered girl

Because we all have small acting roles, it means we will all get to film, direct and act. I think it is god if we mix it up an experience every possible role.

location scouting continued..

For some of our scenes, we haven't completely decided the locations. We have numerous options so have filmed in various places and whilst editing we will decide which location works best. For the panning image of the office building, here are the places we have filmed:

All the images were taken in and around St Aldates Street in the centre of Oxford