Media Evaluation

We began to film our romantic comedy on the 20th February 2009, we all met at my house ready to film, we each prepared our own makeup and were ready with our modern costumes, Carissa also brought her bag ready to show that she had just come home and Craig brought his boxers to show the humorous side to the film and the relationships that were involved. Before we could start filming the camera said that their was ‘erasure prevention’ set, this meaning we could not film over or delete any previous footage, after fast-forwarding and re-winding the tape we studied the camera and realised that there was a switch that did this. We stopped the ‘erasure prevention’ and began to film.
The film opens with the title (Love Squared), we decided on this name as the film shows four lovers who get confused by one another and search for the real meaning of love. When editing the film we made the title roll up the screen as we believed it made the opening look more fluent, the pink and blue colours of the title merged together, this to symbolise a boy and a girl. Also we used a black background at the start so the title stood out for the audience. Someone who watched the clip explained that ‘you need to make the title slower’, however in our scene we used a voice over at the beginning to explain the story to the audience and allowed them to be introduced to the genre of the film. The voice over meant that we had to fade in the clip at the correct time to make sure it ended at he correct point, however after editing the film we realised how much footage their was and so the voice over became slightly rushed, this meaning that the title did too.
The first shot is a long shot of Carissa, the camera pans across to show she is the character that is talking, there is then a close up shot as the camera still pans, I found this very tricky to edit as it was important to get the correct time to cut the scene. When the voice over finished we showed a mid-shot of me and Craig, this relating our characters to Carissa’s. As we filmed in a park there were many other sounds around us, the worst noise the camera picked up was the wind. It meant that we needed to change the sound to make the voices louder; we did this and added extra volumes so the voices could be heard more. We played a romantic song in the background of our piece; it was based mainly on a piano playing. We then faded this out and a different song back in for the flash back. When we filmed the piece we used a song whilst filming, after editing we realised not only was it copy write but we had cut out different parts of the song where the clip was incorrect. At first we left it the way it was, we made the clip so the song lines finished and so that it sounded like a real song for people who had not heard the original, our teacher then pointed out the it was still copy write and so we decided to cut out all the audio on the inside clips (where we had used music) and lip sink over the voices. We found this hard and we listened to each part whilst re-recording it on a MP3 recorder, however we managed to do this, we imported each clip, cut them down so just the voices were heard and placed them in the correct spot on the timeline. This worked very well except the last few clips where Carissa’s mouth movements were not extremely clear and so we had to time the added audio to the clip and not to her voice. However no one we asked picked up on the fact it was slightly out of sink.
After the park scene and the close up of Carissa’s reaction to the proposal there was a flash back to a year before, we made this very clear as we placed a title over the clip saying ‘One Year Earlier’, at first we believed the font was very traditional and did not show the genre, however we also believed that the bedroom scene had become less comical during the editing stage. I believe the music and pace of the film made it less funny and more romantic, however when we did a survey asking if people thought it was more a romantic comedy or romantic film everyone said a romantic comedy, this means we did what we set out to do. We faded out of the park scene and into the flash back to give it a clearer meaning to what was happening, also the music changed to a jazzier tune, it also showed the scene was changing and that it was going to start off happier than the others. Added to this we used white writing, this is opposite to the black background we used before and shows how things were different. We used a hand-held camera to film the next few clips as the unsteadiness shows the unsteady relationship. We also zoomed in and out of the bed and used a jump-cut to make the audience more aware of the things happening in the scene.
The camera then pans down to some boxers on the floor; these are comical and are iconography for the romantic comedy genre. Someone who watched the clip said that ‘when the boy gets out the bed he has trousers on and yet his boxers on the floor’, this shows that our continuity editing was not perfect and that the bottom part of Craig’s body should not have been filmed. This could also be the reason why it was not funny enough, if you saw Craig struggling to get his boxers on it would have been more comical. Before me and Craig get out of bed there is then a high-angel shot of us, the words ‘Courtney I’m home’ are then heard as Carissa enters the house. The reaction me and Craig have shows that we are in trouble; the camera follows me to show that I would be the one who is in trouble the most for having a relationship with my best friend’s boyfriend. The camera then jumps and watches Carissa walk through the hall and up the stairs, each time Carissa spoke we faded the other audio out and then back in, we did this by toggling the audio. We also added extra volumes to make it louder and sound as if she were shouting; when Carissa walked up the stairs we used reverb to show the echo of the hallway. Added to this when she walked past the camera we made the sound louder on one of the speakers, this using sound perspective and so it sounded as if she were on that side of you. When Carissa walked up the stairs a low-angle was also used and therefore reflects the status of the characters at that point. We used natural light through out the piece, this not only reflected the emotions of the character, for example the stairs being very dark but showed the actual weather and day outside.
Another time we failed to show continuity was when Carissa walked into the bedroom, we had to use the same shot of me in the bed twice as we had not enough footage of her opening the door, however no one noticed this as it was a very quick scene and everyone was too interested in the action. I believe my favourite shot was when Craig fell to the ground; we panned down and showed that he was now a lower status; we also showed this by Carissa walking over him. At the end of the clip we used a split-scene to show the flashback and what was happening in real life, we used repetition through the words to emphasise the characters more and as the screen got wider the music faded out. Overall the people who watched our clip said it was good and if it was a real film they would be interested in buying it.
I believe our piece shows the stock characters well even though there are only three of these in the first few minutes, you can see that there is a hopelessly devoted woman, Carissa, an ex-boyfriend, Craig and there is also a best friend, however we changed the slightly and made her best friend be her enemy. If we made the full film there would also be a perfect man and his side-kick. Our piece is typically set in a park and a house, specifically a bedroom of the characters. A romantic comedy could be based in a city or the country side; both characters could come from different sides of the world as long as they came together for the end of the movie. I also think our piece shows the narrative of a romantic comedy through the actions the characters take and the complications in their relationships, I think that iconography could have been used more in our piece, however if we made the movie then this would have happened. However, I do think that the music at the start and voice over set the scene well.
Comparing our piece to other romantic comedies you can see that many open from one characters perceptive or use a voice over, for example Bruce Almighty and The Holiday. Added to this many open with one of the characters being humiliated, in our case Carissa. This is shown in 13 going on 30 and in What Women Want. Almost all romantic comedies aim at women who are teenagers and young adults; I believe this would be our target market too. People who watched our clip agreed that he best audience would be people from 15-25, as they said ‘the sexual content and use of vocabulary is too much for a younger audience but I believe it is too immature for a person over 25 to be interested in.’
I have used many methods of technology during the editing stage, one of these being Adobe Premier, this allowed me to edit clips, cutting them down and placing them where they needed to be in the timeline. It allowed me to design titles and make these move as to look more professional. Added to this our group we many different ways to produce the sound, for example reverb. We cut the audio and Adobe Premier allowed us to add an MP3 recording over the speech, this meant that we could place the sound where we wanted on the timeline. In addition we added music over the top of our piece. I also compared my preliminary task to my two-minute piece. With this I was able to see that we lacked many of the continuity skills that were later needed to produce the two-minute piece, added to this the knowledge I know have allowed me to make my own decisions about the sound, lighting and editing I needed. During the filming process I kept a blog of all my work, not only did this keep me up to date, but it allowed everyone I was working with to contact each other. People can also leave comments on my blog, this means I get peoples opinion on my work and this allowed us to decided if ideas were good or not. I also believe it was a good method of learning as it was more active. We also used the internet to research romantic comedies and the different ways the genre has been addressed. I think if i was to sell my romantic comedy i would use Paramount as a distributor as they cover many different types of genre and are able to adapt themselves or this, for example in 1984 they released Beverly Hills Cop, this is a comedy that gained $234,760,478. Added to this they have made many romances that have gained some of the highest overall gross, for example in the 90's they made Ghost that gained $217,631,306. Higher than this was Titanic getting $600,788,188 in 97. Overall i would choose Paramount as my distributor as they have the highest range of films that have gained the second highest total gross payment.