Our film starts with our production logo. This was created using Photoshop 3 on the school Macs. This logo doesn't fit with the genre of our film which is war romance because its a modern logo. But if our production company did produce our film it would produce other films and we didn't want to limit our market or target audience so like Working Title we would like to produce a number of different genres (working title for example have produce costume drama Pride & Prejudice and other genres of films e.g Hot Fuzz which is a comedy slasher) wheres as production company Merchant Ivory only produce costume dramas which we didn't want to limit ourselves to.
The logo then fades into "Spotlighted Productions Present" and then the Title in the centre "Lost In Love & War" The font used signifies the genre of romance and wartime drama and so does the music. We used this handwritten style font because it ties in with the letter which a key theme throughout our film. An example of this is used in the film The Notebook. This film is based on a story of a young couple which is kept in a notebook, so the font is in a handwritten style font. This is also when the music begins, this is slow piano music called "melancholy" which sums the music up well. Its slow paced which fits in with the slow paced editing of the film.
The logo then fades into "Spotlighted Productions Present" and then the Title in the centre "Lost In Love & War" The font used signifies the genre of romance and wartime drama and so does the music. We used this handwritten style font because it ties in with the letter which a key theme throughout our film. An example of this is used in the film The Notebook. This film is based on a story of a young couple which is kept in a notebook, so the font is in a handwritten style font. This is also when the music begins, this is slow piano music called "melancholy" which sums the music up well. Its slow paced which fits in with the slow paced editing of the film.
The transition between the clips signifies romance and builds up tension.
The film then begins with an establishing panning shot of the garden. This establishes the location and anchorage shows how its peaceful but the writing which appears at the bottom of the shot says "June 1944, London" which to viewers with prier knowledge will signify this is the time of World war 2 so is a contrast to the peaceful setting and London which is know to be a busy, loud city.
The next shot is of the main character sat on a blanket in the garden. This is a high angle so this signifies vulnerability and with her reading can give anchorage to the time period in which this film is in. The weather is warm and sunny and the garden seems to be peaceful, this sets the mood well which takes a drastic change towards the end of the 2 minutes. The main character is shown to be a normal, stereotypical women but this will change through the film because with her husband believed to be dead she will have to take on the man's role in the household making her out to be less weak and vulnerable but more powerful and domineering. This is similar to the story in The Edge Of Love where the main women has to carry on when her husband goes to war leaving her to look after her family by herself.
The wives in The Edge Of Love looking after their children
It then goes into a medium shot from a cross over transition showing the women the women face clearly, this is so the audience can see she's happy and carm. She then looks up not the distance as if she can see something, this is to show the audience her change in facial expression and the look of concern on her face. This is important because we want it to create tension to make the audience question what she is looking at and why it concerns her so much, a sort of narrative enigma. But in the next shot we show what she has seen, a man in uniform at the gate holding a letter, his expression is torn between guilt and sadness because he is looking down at the floor and fidgeting rather than standing still this signifies that he is uncomfortable in this situation. this is key because it will have this affect on the audience making them question why he is feeling that way. this is were the music is key to getting the mood of this scene right because with it being slow paced and dramatic it sets the mood right for this scene.
We the go into an over the shoulder shot showing it from the man's perspective. This shows good mise-en-scene because it shows the shoulder of the man's jacket which the text signifies he's in the army. Then our main character walks into the shot from the side were she starts to walk down the garden path towards the man. This shot wasn't planned but we though it looked effective.
The next shot is a match on action close up shot showing the main character moving the tree branches out of the way while walking down the path. Then a medium shot showing her continuing walking down the path, this is from behind. The next shot was very important because its a close up of the letter being passed to the main character. This signifies that the letter is a very important object in this scene and is the reason for this man being their and the reason for his mood and expression. The over the shoulder shot afterwards is to show the expression of the main character from the man's point of view.
The gate signifies the binary opposition between the two, with them being male and female. It could also signify the differences with the quiet peaceful life behind the gate (the house, her life) and the stressful, dangerous life in the war outside of the gate (the army, outside of her 'bubble').
The gate signifies the binary opposition between the two, with them being male and female. It could also signify the differences with the quiet peaceful life behind the gate (the house, her life) and the stressful, dangerous life in the war outside of the gate (the army, outside of her 'bubble').
Then there are shots of her walking back up the path and sitting down on the doorstep. Then there is an over the shoulder shot of her opening the wallet and looking at the photo that's inside. theirs a close up shot of her stroking the photo which signifies that this photo means something to her and with it being a wedding photo will signify its her wedding, meaning its her husband. This is further anchorage that this letter, wallet and photo are very important to her.
We then put a voice over in while she's reading the letter, like a monologue so that the audience can understand what the letter says. We were also debating weather this should be seen as the women reading the letter again in her head while looking back at this period of time in her life, but we decide to let the audience interpret hoe they wanted it to be.
We then show a close up of the main character looking up, this shows her facial expression and signifies that this letter is bad news. We found this shot very effective giving this scene a very dramatic feel.
Through out filming we had the one idea in mind, that we had to make this attractive to our audience. We got to this stage of filming by planning everything out before hand and practicing using the equipment etc.
While filming I realised that all the little details really contribute to the end product for example the location, this was very important to get right in our film or it could have changed the target class and period of the film all together. We wanted to make sure that the location was perfect, that it had that 1940s, wartime look about it and that it was a suitable size that showed the main protagonist to be middle/upper class. We first started looking in Addingham because we wanted somewhere out of the centre of a town or city (but we later realised that we should say that the location is in London to appeal to a wider audience because London is more known than Yorkshire) and somewhere with a gate (this was significant in the opening of the film because it signifies the difference between men and women in the war) So i came up with the idea of looking at my great aunts house, which i recall was featured in an episode of Heartbeat. We went to scout location and found it was perfect because it had that war time, 1940s look which would hopefully signify this to the audience. It also features a gate and has a lot of land in which we could fill the garden scene without having any modern objects in which would effect the mise-en-scene. More on the location here: http://megansmediablog.blogspot.com/2009/03/location-location-location.html
While filming I realised that all the little details really contribute to the end product for example the location, this was very important to get right in our film or it could have changed the target class and period of the film all together. We wanted to make sure that the location was perfect, that it had that 1940s, wartime look about it and that it was a suitable size that showed the main protagonist to be middle/upper class. We first started looking in Addingham because we wanted somewhere out of the centre of a town or city (but we later realised that we should say that the location is in London to appeal to a wider audience because London is more known than Yorkshire) and somewhere with a gate (this was significant in the opening of the film because it signifies the difference between men and women in the war) So i came up with the idea of looking at my great aunts house, which i recall was featured in an episode of Heartbeat. We went to scout location and found it was perfect because it had that war time, 1940s look which would hopefully signify this to the audience. It also features a gate and has a lot of land in which we could fill the garden scene without having any modern objects in which would effect the mise-en-scene. More on the location here: http://megansmediablog.blogspot.com/2009/03/location-location-location.html
The costume and hair and makeup where also key aspects which we had to get right. For the costume we researched on the Internet 1940s style clothing and army uniform that would have been worn at the time. To find something for our main protagonist to wear we started by looking in the school costume cupboard but then decided that we could probably find something more suitable elsewhere so we choose these as backup. This is all explained here: http://megansmediablog.blogspot.com/2009/03/costume-ideas.html Once we had found the right dress (which ended up being one of Lorna's) we then went onto what make-up would be best suited to our main character. After doing some genre research we found that pale complexion and red lipstick was very 'in' in the 1940s so decided to use that which we had pale press powder and red lipstick already. For the hair we took inspiration from Keria Knightley in The Edge Of Love and used rollers to create volume in her hair at one side. Our actress had a natural hairstyle that suited our time period for our film. More about the hair and makeup ideas here: http://megansmediablog.blogspot.com/2009/03/hair-ideas.html We also had props to bring together the time period of our film, these included the army uniform, the photo and wallet and the book being read by our main protagonist which we thought where very useful to provide further anchorage to the time period.
While filming we made a few mistakes, some we could correct in time and some we couldn't. Most of these were while filming. While filming some shots the camera work was 'shaky' which we didn't want because our genre wasn't social realism, most of these we could re film in time and some we couldn't. Another problem we had was a costume malfunction, the trousers to go with the army jacket weren't right so couldn't be used in our film opening so our actor had to wear his trousers which where jeans, this meant when filming shots with him in we could only show him from the waist up, so we had to make sure that in our final piece you couldn't see that his trousers where jeans because it would be incorrect for the time period.
If we had time to re shot or change anything to our film it would be to have a long shot of the man at the gate (providing we found the right trousers to go with the jacket). To show the main protagonist older maybe in her 70s/80s and to show her at the start opening the letter again in the same place (doorstep) to signify that this was a very important moment in her life. This would also signify the women's voice in the monologue because we wanted to it come across as the women's voice re reading the letter because we couldn't get an older women to act the part in the beginning. We were also limited to what we could achieve with the equipment we had, we probably would have like to use some laps for some of the shots at the end of the two minutes because by that time it had gotten darker, but this isn't as noticeable with it now being in black and white. we would have also liked to have used a smother, less jerky tripod because ours sometimes made the camera shaky and jerky.
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I what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media product? + How does your media product represent particular social groups?
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I what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media product? + How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our war romance has used similar forms and conventions to real war romances. In our genre research we looked at a range of period,war romances and tried to use similar codes and conventions to signify our genre to our audience. Some films we looked at again, analysing them and others we remembered from memory.
One film that helped us with the codes and conventions of our film is The edge of Love (John Maybury 2008) like our film this film is from the point of view of the women/wife showing their hardships as well as the husbands in the war. This isn't a common point of view because in the time period women where less likely to express their views. But in our film we also will have the viewpoint of the man (being held captive) as well as the view point of the women, this is very stereotypical for romance films for example The Notebook (Nick Cassavetes, 2004).
One film that helped us with the codes and conventions of our film is The edge of Love (John Maybury 2008) like our film this film is from the point of view of the women/wife showing their hardships as well as the husbands in the war. This isn't a common point of view because in the time period women where less likely to express their views. But in our film we also will have the viewpoint of the man (being held captive) as well as the view point of the women, this is very stereotypical for romance films for example The Notebook (Nick Cassavetes, 2004).
The main character in our film is portrayed as middle class, this is signified by the size of the house, the size of the land and her clothing (her having expensive clothing and professional styled hair) But the class boundaries are blurred in our film because its set in world war 2 meaning all classes are effected and thus effects the up keep of her house and land making this hard to pin point the different classes, for example this is used in Atonement (Joe Wright, 2007
Like most films ours starts with our production company logo which is Spotlighted Productions (The logo is shown here) http://megansmediablog.blogspot.com/2009/03/production-name.html and starts with a black screen with our film title in the centre of the frame in white text. This is similar to most romance genre films, for example Atonement (Joe Wright, 2007) starts with white text over black screen, then ATONEMENT is typed onto the screen in typewriter font. This is what we wanted to do with our titles but to look as if they had been handwritten but we found it hard to do so, so we just added the text as normal another example is the titles at the beginning of Over Her Dead Body (2008, Jeff Lowell) where they look to be hand written.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
If our film was to be produced it would probably be a high budget film due to the special effects needed for the war and fighting scenes. With all the different locations needed to show the progression and scale of the war this would add to the budget making it an expensive film to produce. Also with the costumes, mise-en-scene and the flash backs of her husband at war will affect the budget.
Our film is probably most like the 2007 Joe wright film Atonement because with it being set in a similar time period for most of it (1940s, World War 2) so our film would probably attract similar audiences and similar distributors. Working Title used Universal Pictures are their main distributor which was vital to attract an American audience, but with our production company Spotlighted productions having no specific link to them this may not be plausible. Working Title try to a known American actor/actress to appeal to the US market. They used this in Bridget Jones diary (2001, Sharon Maguire) with Renee Zellweger being American playing a British women. Working Title have also produced Elizebeth (1998, Shekhar Kapur) and Pride & Predjudice (2005, Joe wright) which are both similar genres to our film and use sterotypical british settings. One thing Working Title have also done to appeal to an American Audience is to add another scene on the end of the film only on the US edition of the film. Another film company that could be likley to produce ur film is BBC films which partnership with large international and UK distrubtors, e.g. Mirimax and HBO Films. they have produced a number of very succesful films at the Box office including The Dutchess (Saul Dibb, 2008) and The Edge Of Love (2008,John Maybury)
With our film being most similar to Atonement it would mean like Atonement our film would be all about British talent as the two main acharacters are british and shows the womens perspective of the war. The budget was £20,315,524.04 (converted from dollars) and made $796,836 USA box office and £1,634,065 UK box office on the opening weekend.
Another possible destributor is Studio canal which distributed Pride & Predjudice and Atonement with Working Title or the BBC which producded The Dutchess.
Pride & Predjudice took $2,865,017 (USA) and £2,529,947 (UK) in the opening weekend. Were as The Dutchess only took $190,426 (USA) and £1,402,200 (UK) in the opening weekend. Both these distrobuters would be great to distrobute our film because both have experience with period dramas and dramas set in the past, but bsased on appealing and distrobuting to an American audience Working Title would be better suited to distrobute our film because most of their romance drama films make as much in the opening weekend in the US as in the opening weekend in the UK. With our genre being wartime romance this will appeal to a worldwide audience because World War 2 is a very historic period and it will show a viewpoint of the war from a womens eyes. But i think the budget for our film will probably be around £15 million because of the mise-en-scene,the costume, the locations and the music will have to be right to signify the time period and present the genre well. We'll also need CGI to show some of the war scenes and flash backs.
Our film is not a social-realsit film so we would not use production companies such as WarpX or WT2 whcih create low budget social realist films such as Billy elliot and Donkey Punch.
Who would be the audience of your media product and how did you attarct/address your audience?
Our target audience would be 15+ because of our BBFC rating being a 15 and our film would be better suited to a more mature audience. This is because with it being a war romance it may have violent scenes. I have said more about why we have choosen this rating here: http://megansmediablog.blogspot.com/2009/04/target-audience-bbfc.html
The gender target audience for our film is female but with the main protagonist being in her 20s and with their being themes of war this will appeal to the male audience aswell. With the main protagonist being in her early 20s this will hopfully attract a younger audience. The classic music, themes of war and historic dates will hopfully appeal to an older audience aswell. So i would say our target audience would be ABC1 socila class, upper middle class, middle class and lower middle class because these are the target audience for Atonement and would have a cross over appeal to an older audience.
To attarct the male audience we would have to proberbly use the 'male gaze' theory, we do this by having our main protagonist to be in her earliy 20s, the main protagonists in Atonement, The War Bride and The Notebook are examples of which the main protagonist is in their 20s. This is also key to attract a younger audience. To attarct our main audience (15 + women) we tryed to cater to what they would want in a film. This is why we wanted our film to show how a women copes in the war through the womens perspective. We wanted it so that the female audience can connect to the main protagonist, to understand her feelings etc.
What have you learnt about technologies from the procss of constructing this product? + looking back at your prelim task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I learnt quite alot from doing the prelim task. I learnt that planning is key to getting everything right. This includes creating a storyboard, screenplay and everything in the mise-en-scene. For the mise-en-scene in the prelim this wasnt as important as in our final piece because in our prelim task we didnt ahve a specific time period to keep to where as in our final film we need to keep everything to the period of the 1940s or world war 2. But in the prelim it gave us practicse to understand what was in the mise - en -scene and what we had to add e.g. music. For the music in the prelim task I used music from IMovie06 that i thought was appropriate, but for our actual final film we used music from a copyright free website which Lorna found. This music had to be perfect because it set the mood for our film with it being in the opening of our film and it had to be in a 1940s style. It's called 'melancholy piano' which we though suited our opening of our film well. We also used a monologue on our film and we learnt how to do this from our prelim task in which we used the cameras and played with the level of the sounds. But a hissing noise can still be heard in the background of our monologue which we were unable to get rid of so unfortunatly it is still their. Our prelim task also helped us to use the software at school. We used IMovie06 to edit all our shots in both tasks and in our final film we we added a black and white filter which really helped to signify that our film was set in the past or the war. It was also helpfull ahving the transition tool which made it look professional and 'flowing' throughout shots, the text used was also ok, but we wanted more of a hand written style text rather than block text.
One problem we had with IMovie06 was that when going back to re edit our film opening it was very hard to edit it in a detailed way because of all the filters and transactions on it. But when adding text/titles it was easy to do which really controbuted to the end product.
So overall we found IMovie06 easy to work with and gave us a good quality piece of work.
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