QUESTION 1 EVALUATION

Our Media product uses a variety of forms and conventions in a variety of ways as I will show in this presentation. Sticking to forms and conventions enabled us to make the short film easy to understand from the audience’s point of view and also within our print products as they were kept very simple but effectively carried out. To carry out the idea of keeping everything simple to understand, we followed Todorov’s narrative theory being beginning, middle and end. This can be shown in our film:

Beginning – the character arrives in London,

 Middle – the character gets in to trouble and has an adventure in London

 End – Monty’s ticket is out of date and he has wasted his whole time

Another aspect of Todorov’s theory we tried to embed within our film which he says a film consists of establishing a problem, developing a problem, complication, action climax and resolution we implicated within our short film. This can be shown when the problem is first established, he falls in love with a stranger on the train. The problem then develops as he goes into a day dream with her and falls for her even more. Complications that his ticket is out of date so the main character has gotten himself in to a problem here.  With regards to the last bit of a resolution, we decided to not act upon this because if there was a resolution it wouldn’t have fitted in with the story of our film as we wanted it to end on a note that the audience could sympathise with the main character for his time being a full waste in London. This was because we tried to relate it back to one of our case studies; Mr Bean. In the majority of Mr Bean short episodes, there is barely a resolution to the madness he is doing and usually ends on a sad, but funny scene. We tried to use this as we ended our short film on a sad note of Monty wasting his time in London and having a mental break down however the audience also found it funny because of the way he just dropped to the ground and screamed. Mise en scene plays a big part within our film for example the main character is wearing smart clothing which connotes that he is an educated man however there is a slight twist as his trousers is tucked in to his shoes which shows that he’s clumsy and forgetful but also the straw hat shows that he has bad dress sense but also adds to the humour because it’s a contrast between smart clothing and farm clothing.

Levi Strauss suggested narratives need a binary opposition where there is a theme of ‘good vs. evil’ and we have challenged this as we don’t have a ‘good’ or ‘bad guy’ within our short film but most people would maybe interpret the ‘bad guy’ to be the girl Monty falls in love with. This is because she didn’t like Monty in the same way he liked her as Monty is rejected.  Feminism was also explored in my short film as women are objectified. This can be shown in my short film as Monty the main character fantasises about a girl he likes. She is also presented with dominance because she has the audacity to slap him as he day dreams about her which shows her power and authority.

We did three case studies in total which helped us to follow the main conventions in films such as Todorov’s narrative theory as all these films had a clear structure which we needed to use in order to succeed in making the film funny; and they were: Mr Bean, Citizen Khan, and Desmonds.  We felt that Mr Bean formed the backbone so we decided to use this in terms of Camera, sound and mise en scene. of all of our ideas and related to our short film in terms of the main characters non diegetic sounds in some scenes for example before he sees the security guards he makes a sound similar to Mr bean. Citizen Khan was also important to us because we wanted to embed this Asian culture within our film and this helped us greatly because it gave us a sense of direction in where we have to go with this comedy to add the Asian culture we wanted to put in. This can be shown in the day dream scene where we have used Indian music followed by the female character that Monty falls in love with costume as it is traditional. We chose to do Desmonds as a case study because in the very beginning of the planning stages, we wanted to add an African culture into our film in order to mix all of these cultures to make it hilarious as we really wanted to put an African character in there with an African accent. However due to audience feedback, it was proven too difficult to carry out followed by other issues concerning this, so we didn’t really need to use this case study however it wasn’t totally useless as we really liked the way the camera angles were used for example the use of camera panning in the barber shop. We mainly used YouTube to view these case studies in relation to our research and planning. Further analysis on camera shots we used from out case studies can include the use of the close ups of Monty’s facial expression in order to add humour to our short film as it is mainly ‘slap-stick’ comedy which very much is the base of Mr Bean. Also as we have used long shots in the train scene when Monty first identifies the girl he likes, this was also done in all of my case study examples in order to establish the scenery. The first version of our short film consisted of audience laughter effects which we really liked from our case studies as they all consisted of this. However, during one of the audience feedback exercises the audience felt it worked in some places but in other places it was much exaggerated. We were told to remove the laughter completely because they felt that it didn’t work appropriately. The use of the establishing shot at the beginning of the short film with the zoom on ‘London City Airport’ was used to emphasise to the audience that the main character has just arrived into the country and was also used in one of our case studies ‘Desmonds’ when zoom is used in the barber shop. The use of two shots was also used in the day dream scene particularly during the picnic part in order to show that it’s a daydream only about the two of them and no one else is involved. This idea was gathered from one of the examples I have put on my blog ‘Big Bang Theory Inspiration’. We really liked this idea and it is very reflective within our short film as we have used a number of ideas from this for example the faint glow around the screen during the video; this emphasises that it’s a day dream.

With regards to my print product case studies, the one that influenced me the most was the Mr Bean one. As we have also used the background of the train, it connotes a journey and a day out as with the Mr Bean case study; the train is also present in the imagery which also connotes a day out. Also, with the ‘East is East’ case study we used some of the edit aspects for example the splash effects as this sells the film for what it actually is. Also in the ‘East is East’ case study, the fact that there’s small images giving glimpses of what’s going to happen in the film, we have used this in our film poster also as we have chosen to use a medium shot on the still of the girl the main character falls in love with as it is iconic as a crazy day out.  Our magazine review was heavily influenced by our case studies for example we saw that it was a common convention to use the star rating system and we used this to show that our film has been rated by the audience so it makes it the audience more keen to view it. Our film poster also followed other forms and conventions such as the use of the tag line, title, release date, and main character as the main image. As with our film review, it also used forms and conventions for example the picture taking up half the page of the review and the rest of the page filled up by the journalism. We mainly looked at the ‘Skyfall’ case study as it uses a similar structure to this. We decided to add a colour scheme of our own which matches the house style of our 3 products as a package in order to create consistency. Also, I was drawn by the ‘Unstopabble’ film review as I really enjoyed the language used as this shows in my own review as the language consists of some short sentences in order to keep the reader entertained as it can get monotonous. The use of font in the print products is bold and attractive as it has a unique feel to it because of the colour scheme and the fact that some of the letters are slanted conveys clumsiness which could represent the genre of the film. The effect of this is that it would be remembered by the audience. The film review also follows the consistent colour scheme throughout the three products. Another common convention used is the text in the symmetrical text boxes which resemble most magazine reviews. The use of the image in the film review is a still from the short film of the main character just before he meets the security guards. This is also an iconic symbol because it shows that his whole day was wasted therefore I decided to utilised this specific image.