While filming our project we had to do many different techniques to keep the film running smoothly and continuous. Firstly we tried to obey the 180 degree rule so that it didn’t confuse our audience as it will have made the characters on screen look like they have jolted from one position to another. We also put in eye line matches, so that the camera would cut to something significant that our characters were either reaching for or looking at, this helped the film run seamlessly, although in most cases we did have to re film some bits. We also had to comply with the 30 degree rule, this is where if you are doing a close up of something from a long shot/medium shot, you must move the camera 30 degrees left or right, so that when it is edited together it doesn’t look like it jumps together. Finally we used a few Matches on Action to help make it continuous, we used this for going through doors, so we would use shoot the door from one side and as it is slightly opened, use a shot from the other side of the door and edit them together to make it run smoothly.
I don’t think our film breaks the genre in many ways as it is a Family / Fantasy, however it sticks to the genre it is in well I believe. Firstly seen as it is a family film, the ending needs to be a happy one so it doesn’t leave our audience disappointed, also there needs to be a hidden message somewhere within a family film so that the younger audience members can take something away from it, and our hidden message was that you should love your family, and not fight one another. Furthermore being a hybrid genre with the twist of fantasy involved, our film follows in the footsteps of many fantasy films by having some over the top plot twists thrown in. For our film it is the invisibility of one of the brothers. The only thing that I think sets our film apart to the other films in its genre s the slight darkness to its story line, that because of one brother the other has disappeared and can’t be found, it is rare that you see something as traumatic in a family film.
During our film we do use shots from other films, and also use some ideas. The major one that appears in our film is a shot we used that we found in another family film called “Freaky Friday” which was the quick change of costume, we use it after the shower sequence where the character “Lewis” gets out the shower and goes to get changed, but the camera stays outside his door as it shuts, and then immediately opens to show “Lewis” completely dressed differently.
Throughout the film we are trying to show our audience that family is a key part in anyone’s life, and not to take it for granted as you may miss it once it is gone. I believe we met this goal as once we had finished the film; we showed it to a few people and recorded their response. The majority said it was a good story line and was powerful. We also wanted the audience to also just enjoy the films fantasy twist, and I also believe we met that because the response from the people we recorded said it was a clever and entertaining idea.
Overall our film fits in its genre well because every member of our group researched about the genre and what makes it what it is. An example is “The Sixth Sense” this helped us with the idea for the invisibility, as in the sixth sense there are people only the main character sees, but in that case they are ghosts. Also the children’s classic “Casper” gave us some ideas, the idea we got from this film is the jokes the ghost’s pull on humans while they are invisible. We tried to incorporate this in our film when “Ryan” is trying to let his brother and sister know that he is still there in the house.
While analysing the film "The Fall" I noticed some similarities between both our films, firstly the main point that joins our films together is the fact that both of them are based around two brothers. In "The Fall" the two brothers get along fine, while "Jason" looks after his brother who has mental issues "Darren". Whereas in our film the two twins "Lewis" and "Ryan" no longer see eye to eye since their Grandfathers death. The character "Jason" is similar to our character "Lewis", "Jason" being the protector of his younger brother and showing his compassionate side when he still says goodbye to his father despite what he has done. Whereas "Lewis" doesn't show that side of himself until he starts to realise that his brother may never come back because of what he did, it is in the final scene that we see his true feelings towards his brother.
Another way that our films are similar is that they both have a fantasy twist to them, "The Fall" has its strange Graffiti that helps the two brothers reunite, but in our film "Ryan" hasn't ran away he is invisible and the only way for "Lewis" to bring him back is to show his true feelings. The way the Graffiti is shown in "The Fall" was really clever and I have never seen anything as unique done before. That is what gave us as a group the idea to come up with plans for our invisibility shots, like the writing on the mirror while no one is there and appliances turning on.
Question 2 I believe with the combination of our film and our ancillary texts, the poster(s) and our radio trailer would do an effective job on selling our film to the audience. What we were trying to achieve from creating our film was mainly to entertain the audience and get them wrapped within the story, but also the little hidden message that you should treasure your family. I think with our hidden message thrown into the film, I think it will help our audience connect with the film and the characters within it, making them enjoy it more because they may be able to relate with something during the film. I believe that our posters do a good job of advertising the film to our audience as it gives away subtle hints of what will happen in the story from the slogan ‘The Fate of One...... Rests with the other’ this arouses the audience’s attention and makes them want to see what one of the characters ‘Fate’ is. I believe that our radio trailer would help sell our production as it has the deep voice advertising the film in the background giving hints about the storyline, we decided on this because all the big blockbusters do the same. Furthermore we have cut some sound from our actual film, which again we used because when I did my radio trailer analysis I noticed that they all have sound clips cut from their films that are key points in the story. By doing this it makes the audience what to know what is happening in the film and that is why we did that in our radio trailer. Also we decided upon putting some music over the top of our radio trailer, we used the song we use on the big emotional scene at the end of our film. The song really emphasises what is happening in the film, and we thought it would make the radio trailer stick in the minds of our audience thus making them watch our film. Finally one idea I got from the ‘Batman’ radio trailer was to use a sound effect at the end of the radio trailer that is from the film, and make it echo at the end of the trailer as it really builds up the tension and sticks with the audience.
I believe our film poster would do a good job of catching the audiences attention and pulling them into watching our film. It is similar to the Batman poster I analysed, as both are very simple and not too much going on. Both have very subtle hints within them, for example on our poster the first thing you see is a hand slightly blurred out holding the Grandfathers pocket watch. This is to show the audience that the pocket watch is an important part of the story. The fact that the hand is blurred out is to hint towards the invisibility of the holder during the film. The second thing that catches the audiences eye is the photo of the twins "Lewis & Ryan" this is to show that this photo is also relevant to the story and to let the audience know who the main characters are and to keep their eyes on them. Finally behind the actors names, there are some photos of the Grandfather of the twins. This is a very subtle hint as people will know why they are there once they watch the film, the reason they are there is to show that even thought the Grandfather isn't actually on the film who plays a key part in the storyline.
We tried to base our poster on the other film poster we analysed, I choose to do Batman The Dark Knight as I believe simple poster with hidden messages and hints about the film are most effective. Examples on this poster are the destroyed city in the background, the main character stood in the middle, the weapon in his hand etc. I believe our poster would do just a good a job as this poster would as it is also simple but effective.
Question 3
We learnt a lot from doing research into our audience and getting feedback from them, during the planning stage we had wrote up a basic story line and decided to get some feedback from our potential audience. We wrote a series of questions and then got some of our peers to answer the questions as we filmed their responses. This was a big help as we took their opinions and made changes to our film’s script, an example would be to take out the Priest character as people thought it would be a bit far fetched for a priest to be coming to the twins house and attempt to get rid of the ghost which is actually the invisible "Ryan".
Whilst filming and editing our film we tried to ensure our films meaning was apparent by making sure the film was continuous and flowed nicely, we also tried to make sure the audience could see what was actually happening when one of the characters is invisible. We used close ups on the kitchen scene to allow the audience see that there is something important happening. We also used special effects and sound effects on important scenes to make sure the audience didn’t miss them, the main ones were the flash effect on when "Ryan" disappears and reappears along side a loud wind like noise to emphasise the fact that something strange is happening. We used a variety of creative decisions during the creation of our film, in planning we listened to our audience feedback and tweaked our script and plot to make it more appealing to our audience, an example of this was to tone down the special effect of the flash and the sound of "Ryan" disappearing as our audiences thought it was a bit over the top. During rehearsing and the actual filming of our film we decided not to use too much bad language as we wanted a relatively young audience, and we didn’t want the film to be all about bad language to tell the story.
We also decided on trying to make the characters more relatable so that our audience can easily get lost in our story and maybe even see a part of themselves in the characters, "Lewis" for example is the typical big brother he will pick and poke at his younger brother 24/7. But if anyone else threatens him or if something happens to his younger brother the true side of him will come out to show his true feelings. Whilst editing we decided to put in a few special effects into our film as in our audience research, someone said if the special effect look good I will be excited to watch the film. So we made the decision to put in a few special effects on the key plot points to make them more memorable, but not to overdo it as it can be too much to take in for the audience. An example of this is the mirror scene where "Ryan" is writing on the mirror but we cant actually see him as he is invisible.
Once the film was practically done, we showed our peers a rough edit of our film to get some final feedback on any changes they could suggest, or any bit they thought were particularly memorable. We got mainly positive feedback, ranging from it being a very good film with a nice twist thrown in, to compliments on our effects and music choices during the film. People really liked the last scene where the music's lyrics matched up almost perfectly with what was happening on screen, and after all the fine tuning of our disappearance effects people said that it fitted in nicely with the film and was no longer over the top. But we also got some people noticing little mistakes during the film, like the shot not being framed properly, or there was an incident where you could see the character "Ryan" while he is supposed to be invisible, but overall we had a positive response from our audience.
Question 4
In the process of making the film I used many different media technologies in the several stages, firstly in the research stage I used the Internet to aid me finding out about the genre that our group decided on to make our film, this was very useful as it helped us stick to what makes that genre. Also once we had our film ideas ready, we made a questionnaire and then filmed the responses of our peers on what they thought of our pitch by using an HDV1000 camera, and then edited the best answers to the questions using ‘Final Cut express’ and put them onto ‘Blogger’.
In the planning stage of creating our film we used the HDV1000 camera again to plan out some of the trickier camera shots that appear in our film, the quick change where to door shuts, or the invisible person writing on the mirror for example. We also used ‘Blogger’ to make a shot-list so we knew where the camera needs to be in each scene, this was a huge help as last year we did also make a shot list, but didn’t really use it to the degree we have this year, also we did multiple back up shots in case the first wasn’t to the standard we wanted. Also during the planning stage, we did a video tour of my house where the film was going to take place. This was to show the audience what is going to happen where, but also to help us plan out our shots as we could re watch this video over and over again. We also used a normal camera to take still shot photos of the key areas within my house so we could have a more in depth look on where the camera is going to be.
In construction, we used a vast range of media technologies; firstly we used the HDV1000 camera to shoot the entire film, although I didn't use the camera as much as I did in our AS project because I was generally the one being filmed I still helped out when I wasn't on screen. We then used a Capture device to transfer our film from the tape onto the computer. Once the un-edited film was on the computer we used ‘Final Cut express’ to edit our shots together to make the film also to add in titles and effects. Afterwards we used some CD’s to find some copyright free music, but we couldn’t find anything we thought fitted the tone of our film, so we used the Internet to find some music, and luckily we found some for the final scene in the film and also the opening and credits. Once the film was done, I used Adobe Photoshop to create a film poster to advertise our film using screen shots from our film and also some photos we had taken, each member of the group made their own individual poster, and then we put all our ideas together to make a joint, final poster. We also needed to make a radio trailer to advertise our film, so we used a Zoom Recorder to film a speech on the film that we had written and put on ‘Blogger’, we used ‘Garage Band’ to edit the radio trailer together and also used one of the songs we used in our film alongside some sound effects we downloaded off the internet. Also we needed to edit some scenes with a colour corrector, mainly the first scene where "Lewis" is walking towards the house, because there was too much blue of shot, making it look really cold which it actually wasnt.
Finally in the evaluation stages, we used ‘Blogger, Facebook and Youtube’ to get some feedback from the public by posting the final edit of our film on each of them and asking for feedback, by putting a questionnaire alongside the video, using media technologies for this stage really helped as we got a much wider range of feedback. We also used a HDV1000 camera to film some response of our peers after they have watched the film, then it is edited on ‘Final Cut express’ and posted on ‘Blogger’.
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