Final Evaluation

From the start you can tell that the movie is serious and ready to send out a message because of the traditional black and white titles. The first phone message that plays in the background doesn’t give any of the narrative away. It makes you wonder why there would be a message playing if it doesn’t have any significance. Already the film creates mystery for the audience. The scene then appears showing the back of the head of Alex making the audience want to discover who this person is. This over shoulder shot also shows him reading his phone. This makes you wonder whether or not the phone messages and this person has a link. The camera then shows an extreme close up of Alex just showing the top of his nose and eyes. This gives a little more of his personality of the character to the audience so they can begin to shape an image of what this person is in the movie. The slow introduction allows the audience to get a detailed image of Alex in their own perspective. The scene dissolves into the time lapse where the use of character positioning and props are beautifully used to show that time has passed. The costume seems casual so that Alex’s personality is not given away. The use of food being whole, then half eaten and then completely finished makes the time lapse more believable and more realistic. The daylight also gets dimmer showing how far time has actually gone. The messages that are playing are beginning to get slightly more disturbing and aggressive. Showing that there is some sort of freaky nature to Alex. This is where his personality begins to unfold. The movie seems to have no sort of anchoring this will leave the audience to perceive freely.

The scene then changes with a dissolve into a letter writing scene. The scene beautifully uses diagonal compositions to show that there is something slightly disturbed about Alex. The way he is hunched over the table writing makes him seem even more strange. He shows how easily he can get frustrated by the way he throws away the letter he is writing. The camera shows a pile of letters on the floor showing that this strangeness that he has may not necessarily be straight forward. He ends the scene with a head scratch showing there may be something that is bothering him. The scene dissolves into the letter posting scene, which is where you hear the final message which cuts the tension. This scene from the beginning shows a parody of a silent film. This is done by the camera showing a message which completely dominates the screen. This acts like the messages that appear in the silent movies. The way that Alex’s fingernails have been treated shows he is maybe a nervous person. The camera then makes Alex appear to be completely weird with the use of composition, the expression of his face and his costume. The composition of the film is predominately horizontal however Alex stands directly in the middle of the shot with a deathly look upon his face. His long black cloak gives reference to the old movie Nosferatu. This shows that he is peculiar and has a deathly/ aggressive aura about him. The inside shot of the letters shows yet another time lapse. The build up of letters do not only suggest he has been posting the letters for a while, it also suggests that no one has been to collect them. This makes the audience question the whereabouts of Melissa. The light dimming in this scene also adds to the realism of the time lapse.

The film then cut to the park scene which already makes you feel uneasy due to the creepiness of the wooded area. From the beginning you already get a build up of suspense from the forward track of Alex. The extreme long shot then allows the audience to see just how eerie the area is. Alex settles on a bench which you see graffiti on the back. This shows that the area is not a good place to be in. The camera then shows a slightly submissive shot of Alex whilst he leaves yet another message on Melissa’s answering machine. This makes the audience question whether he is more of a victim in this situation. The phone message he leaves makes you certain that the phone messages that have played were his. the composition in this shot is diagonal making you feel uneasy about Alex. Another time lapse starts and at one point a man and his dog appear in the background. This yet again makes the time lapse more realistic. He then gets up and walks directly to the camera. The edit makes it seem like he has walked straight through it. Alex pulls out his phone leaving yet another message. Alex is slightly offset to the left hand side making the audience feel slightly anxious because they would want him centred. The scene then fades off.

The meeting with Melissa’s two friends begins and the character Leanne uses an abrasive tone with Alex making you feel sorry for him. Then Alex continuously asks questions about Melissa’s whereabouts. You then discover that she broke up with him a while ago making the audience no question their beliefs about him. The use of the long black coat on Alex in this scene makes him seem taller and much creepier than before. The medium shot of Leanne emphasises the stern feelings she has towards Alex. This makes the audience begin to wonder whether he has done something wrong. After the heated conversation Leanne calls Alex a freak and drives away leaving him watching as she goes. The comment she made begins to reinforce the audience’s view, that he has got something wrong with him. The scene then dissolves into the pub scene where Alex is shown initially joining his friend Tom for a drink. The pair begin to talk and after a while Tom begins to discover that Alex has been missing Melissa. Tom uses direct and abrasive language to get his views across. This shows that Tom is the dominant force in the relationship they have. There is a shot of Tom which is extremely dominant as he swears at Alex which accentuates his dominance. The film clips are sound bridged at one point making the conversation seem like it is continuously flowing. All the costumes so far have been casual to not give any personalities away and to keep everything realistic.

The final scene then dissolves in showing Melissa writing a message to Alex apologising for not getting in contact with him. This now puts a twist to the story and now completely makes the audience question whether Melissa has been playing tricks on Alex. The camera then shows that it is in fact Alex writing the message. This leaves the audience in a sense of shock as the camera slowly moves over revealing that Melissa is dead on the floor. The camera trembles as it moves making the audience feel nervous and uneasy. Both Alex and Melissa in this scene are both wearing jeans and a check shirt showing that Alex is really trying to replicate Melissa writing him a letter. The camera the zooms in on Melissa multiple times before it cuts to the credits. During the end credits the answering machine plays repeating “You have no new messages”. This has a big impact on the audience by really building up the emotion that is given by showing Melissa is dead. The end credits descend by importance to the film starting with the director followed by the cast etc. This and the black and white colour scheme ensures that it is all traditional.

The poster i created was an advertisement for the Cinema release of our film. I used a similar layout to a professional poster. I used relevant pictures to our film which were Alex and a wooded area. These represented the main character in the park however this was created by adding Alex to a dark wooded background. I ensured that the title was the largest piece of script on the poster and that the diamond at the bottom followed a format of most important people at the top and then the rest in a descending order from there. The font used was a bold text and left a mystery as to what the film was about. This left an element of suspense with the audience. The images used on the poster are a picture of the starring actor and also a picture of a wooded area at night. To apply the picture of the actor onto the background i traced the image of him out of one picture and applied it onto the background image. I then used photo filters to match colours between the images. This made it all look realistic. The poster shows that there is a dark twist the film by the facial expression of Alex and the dominant picture of him makes you feel that he is going to be a powerful force in the film. The tag line anchors the film to make you believe it is going to include some sort of violence. The dark colours, which are predominantly blue, make you feel the narrative is evil and slightly twisted. The poster attracts mainly a teenaged audience however it is a poster that is intentionally attractive to a wide audience. This is anyone from a teen age upwards.

The film review I created was made intentionally for a newspaper such as The Times. I targeted the review to a slightly literate person who is keen on movies due to some of the wording and references I used. I made myself appear to be a friendly person who is acting as if he is just having a general conversation with you. This is to make the review more humorous and to make it seem more appealing to the reader. Within the review I used technical language that only people aware of medial phrases and expressions would understand. I referred my film to the film American Psycho as it was quite similar to it. Especially when Alex is writing the message from Melissa to himself.  I used quite a sarcastic tone during the review to create more humour in the text. I used a few jokes to keep the reader entertained and to make it seem as professional as I could. After completing some research on reviews about movies like the kite runner, I believe that my review would be more critical as it would be from a mutual perspective. This would allow the critic to be as honest and impartial as possible.

By creating the film and the poster it gave the audience a slight insight as to what my movie is about. The poster gave the audience a slight insight to the movie and gave the impression that the movie is slightly violent and somewhat dark. This will attract and audience that favours movie genres such as horror. The tag line’s anchoring characteristic will also bridge a link to the movie, making the audience have their own ideas about what the movie is about. The poster is closely related to the film and tries to capture a small section of what the film is about through the creator’s eyes. The film review then gives a slightly different insight and talks about how much the film refers to American Psycho and how humorous it can be perceived. Although it is about the film they generally do not have a close relationship to the film. The film review is more of an independent source which looks at the movie in the perspective of 1 person and does not necessarily tell you anything about what the iconography, colour, costumes etc. really mean.

From the audience feedback i have learned that our media piece has quite a bit of potential in terms of becoming a well known piece. I learned that at times our film was at a slow pace and this bored the audience slightly. To overcome this I believe we needed to include more action into the scenes or maybe to cut the scene lengths. I have learnt that my editing and camera techniques are very impressive and I can edit to a high level of quality. The narrative structure was good, however I was told that it may need more detail into the psyche of Alex. We needed to emphasise how mentally deranged he really is. The final point I received from the audience feedback was that the final scene needed to have blood somewhere and needed to have some amount of mess/ wreckage around Melissa to allow the audience to grasp what happened to her. A few people really had to think about what happened to her. It seemed after these comments we just needed to pay more attention to detail.

Within our media piece i used a variety of technologies to produce our final film. I used magixx movie edit pro to piece the entire film together. With this application i was able to cut, fade, and add titles to our sequence. I also used a soundtrack from a different clip to create a very long sound bridge over the film. I used word to plan a majority of our script, filming times and also to write evaluations. Finally i used the internet to browse through different short films and Wikipedia to research for our film. I researched on three short films called Spin, Chicken a la carte and love field to give me an insight into what elements are key to a short film. From this I learnt that short films all need an element of surprise, suspense and shock. These combined really contribute a lot to the films and make them as entertaining as possible. I used a blogging system to post my coursework online. Whilst using  www.blogger.com I had to, not only input text into the blogs, but I also had to add imagery. I personalised my blog to have a unique style. This includes colour schemes, fonts, letter sizes etc. I used a digital camera to take photos of my work in progress and also images for my poster. I used my phone to keep in contact with the other members of the group and also the actors/ actresses.

New technology has been a big factor to making the film look as professional as it does. Present editing equipment and techniques enable the user to put virtually any idea into their film. After completing some research on how editing was completed a few years back I learned that to put titles on the screen the person had to actually film handwritten titles and also if they wanted their film to be seen by others they had to set up a screening of it. Websites such as www.youtube.com make it easy for any film to have a potential worldwide audience. There is no need for a screening it just gets posted on the internet and counts the views that it has had. To gain a larger audience the creator’s may set up a blog. This is used to promote the movie and to advertise it in a free way. Free applications can also be used to create posters and advertisements to a near professional quality. This would be impossible to do a few decades ago.