Throughout our short film sequence “The Interview” we tried our best to incorporate a wide variety of shot types and angles similar to that of a larger production. Most mainstream films in the comedy genre rely little on special effects and so they can spend more money on actors, costumes and suchlike to make the film the best it can be. As the group were doing all the acting there was nothing stopping us from producing a top quality comedy production. Of course we didn’t have the same expertise as someone who had been working in the film industry their whole life and we didn’t have the same technology but we felt we could produce a good production.
We decided in our group that our film was similar to the opening sequence of “the 40 year old virgin”. This is an example of how our sequence is similar to that of a mainstream comedy production. Both the sequence from 40 year old virgin and our opening sequence show the typical morning of one mans less than perfect life. Both the sequences portray the character waking up in the morning and carrying out what is clearly their daily, boring routine before leaving their house and both our sequence and that of the 40 year old virgin have a minimal amount of dialogue.
Of course there were the differences between our production and that of the professionals. For example there are a few shot in the 40 year old virgin that we would be unable to replicate without the correct equipment such as the first shot where the camera is staring down upon the main protagonist as he lies in bed. We also realised after showing the film to the class that our credits were in the wrong place as we put them at the end of the sequence forgetting we were making an opening to a film and not a short film in itself. Of course this problem would never occur in a mainstream film.
Also, we had to produce our own music for the film and so it was just instrumental as we would have found it extremely difficult to do anything else without the rights to a song.
The main character in our film was played by Connor, a 17 year old boy however the suit he was wearing was supposed to give the illusion that he was older, maybe in his 30’s. In the opening of our sequence the man is portrayed as a very happy, fortunate man who hasn’t got a care in the world. However at the end of the sequence the viewer is shown that the opening wasn’t reality is was merely how he wishes his life was. He is in fact very unlucky, unfortunate and unorganised. The way we portrayed the characters unlucky life would have been clearer if we, as a group, were able to get together more often to film for long periods of time. The opening sequence could represent a man in his mid 30’s not enjoying life, living in a plain house, stuck in a dead end job etc.
Large film companies are able to spend lots of money getting there films into cinemas and distributing it worldwide. This can pose a problem for independent film makers as they do not have much if any money and so cannot compete easily with large production companies. However that has all changed now and independent film makers are able to show there films to the world without spending a penny. They do this through online streaming websites such as you tube. As we do not much money this would be the only way we could distribute our film to audiences.
Our target market for our film would be teenagers. This is not because it has explicit content such as violence, bad language or sexual scenes. We would target them only because the humour in our film would be suitable more for 15 year olds up to about 20. our audience would be similar to that of superbad, big mommas house, anchorman, 40 year old virgin etc. These films all already have a firmly established fanbase due to their similar style of comedy.
We tried to make our production appeal to our target audience by incorporating the humour our age would find amusing but also trying to make it funny for older people to watch aswell. We tried to relate to our teenage audience through our main protagonist who, although in his thirties, experiences many problems both older people of around 20 - 25 and our main target audience teenagers can relate to while seeing the funny side.
All through this project I have learnt a lot about the technology involved in producing a sequence to a film. I was keen from the first moment to start experimenting with the equipment and try out new more adventurous shots. The cameras we were given were very easy to use and because they were so small they were easy to use for the awkward shots. The programme we used for editing, imovie was also very simple to use but still worked well. The only problem we came up against during editing was when the editing of the film was done on one mac and the music for the film was done on another. This proved very hard to merge the music and the final film together but we managed to achieve it in the end.
As I look back from now to the end of the course I feel I have learnt a lot about the making of films, camera shots, editing etc. This can be seen from my groups preliminary task where we were constantly using over the shoulder shots and failing to experiment, whereas now we are all eager to experiment with the more adventurous shots and try to make the film all that much more pleasurable for the viewer.
Once we had finished our final sequence we showed it to the class and received some criticisms and some compliments. Some of these were as follows:
Good Points: - The alarm sound fading out to music was done very well.- Music fitted well with theme of sequence, and synced nicely with key moments.- Good variety of shots.Constructive Criticisms: - Some of the shots didn't quite make sense, like flushing the toilet, but these had meant to been edited in a montage like way, but we made the mistake of not making the transition between shots quick enough.- Our titles were in the wrong place as they were at the end of the sequence and not at the beginning, making it look like we ware making a short film and not an opening sequence.- We was also told we could have used more facial close ups, which we did realise but as half of our filming was done in school, the actor was wearing different clothes so most of the filming had to be done from behind.
No comments:
Post a Comment