Reflective Analysis
My Film Studies coursework was based on creating a short film or sequence of a film. The whole process including production, researching, filming and editing I did on my own, all of the planning can be seen on my blog at http://claireygrice.blogspot.com. The name of my short film is ‘Golden Years’. This being an appropriate name because it represents the plot of the film and is also intertextual to the song featured in the short film by David Bowie, what else is ironic however intentional is the fact the song was released in 1975 which is the era in the short film where Michael is dreaming. The chosen genre has elements of Mystery, Drama and Comedy; this could be seen as a hybrid genre and the narrative type ‘The wanderer’ in which the character arrives in a new place and discovers something.
I will be using many over the shoulder shots to make the audience feel as if they are on the journey with Michael, along with close up/medium close ups to show the characters reactions and emotions, which is important as we want to see Michaels feelings when finding out he’s missed most of his life.
My chosen film will appeal to a wide audience of 20 to 35, because the genres used within my film are stereotypically unappealing for people my age, which is why I wanted to challenge myself and the mainstream audience, although it has that element of being in different time zones which I hope would entertain the audience. This also means that because the film is targeting an older audience, they will spend more money on it by e.g. going to the cinema and buying it on DVD, instead of illegally downloading. The film will be certificate 15, as it doesn’t include bad language, but wouldn’t really be suitable for people under 15.
Here I have showed part of my aims and context to explain what sort of reaction I was trying to get from the audience with the cinematography I have used. In the genre conventions I talked about the common feature of mistaken identity in Comedies, which plays a big part in my short film, as Michaels appearance has changed without him knowing. I also talked about how this could link with the bomb under the table theory, in which the audience know what has happened to Michael, but he doesn’t. I have also explained the audience I am trying to target, by aiming for a wide audience it ensures I will have lots of viewers.
My short film is based around the main character Michael, we are introduced to him in the first scene where he is reading a book in bed, the book has parody and intertextual references to Donnie Darko in which the mother is reading Stephen Kings ‘IT’ however this book is called ‘The Lost Years’ which could also link with the title of the short film, the book has a parody element as I made the author of the book be called ‘Iva Coma’ which is exactly what Michael dreams happens to him when he falls asleep.
I added some film clips on my blog which had influenced my cinematic and plot idea’s, I used similar stylistics to the coma scene in Kill Bill, in which we see Uma Thurman from a side angle, which pans to a high angle shot until the character wakes up, causing a medium close up. I thought the high angle shot used was clever because it informed the audience that the character was about to wake up.
I have chosen to analyse 50 first dates because, the storyline is similar to mine, as Lucy has short term memory loss, her family have to re-enact the day before she lost her memory over and over, every day. But in order to see Henry and get over her amnesia, he shows her a video of all the big events in society over the years to help her understand. This is quite similar to Michael’s situation however he has nobody to help him, and he has to realise by himself.
The cinematography within the coma scene are very interesting as they are similar to the ones used in my short film, I start from a side angle, showing half of Michael's face, and then panning around the body and ending up on a high angle shot, portraying the vulnerability of Michael, and it makes it a good medium close up when he immediately wakes up.
In talk to her, Almodovar uses similar techniques, to portray her vulnerability, when she is around Benigno as the audience later realise that he rapes her. The shots of Benigno massaging Alicia's legs connote affection and the audience feel a sense of awkwardness and fear. The cinematography also portrays Alicia as a good and strong person, which makes the audience feel a sense of relief as they know she is going to eventually wake up.
Because the dream Michael has is supposed to follow on from him living in the 70’s, I felt the name Michael was appropriate as it was a popular name 40 years ago, however is still popular now, I also used the name because it was common and shows that Michael lead a normal life until the events that occur. Although there are more characters in the short film, names are not known, because they are not important, as the film is based on the main character Michael.
Props were simple as I just used items which I thought would fit in with the characters personality and what he was doing at that time. I have already mentioned the prop in the opening scene in which Michael is reading a book which relates to the whole story. The glasses that Michael wears when reading the book are also very important because they connote that he is getting old and so he is losing his sight, this ties in with the fact that in the dream scene Michael doesn’t realise he’s older, because he doesn’t know he’s been in a coma. I wanted to make the mise-en-scene in the hospital look realistic, so I filmed in an actual hospital and used all the equipment needed for someone in a coma. Throughout the football scenes, I had to make it conventional by Michael finding the Hull City scarf in his drawer and having a Hull City programme in his hand, which shows he’s trying to relive the times of going to see them play, but then notices the football ground has been knocked down.
Another thing that is important within the short film, is the end scene where Michael wakes up from the dream, by The Beatles ‘Good Morning, Good Morning’ with the cockerel which conventionally wakes people up. The audience are also aware that it is the Beatles playing as Michael picks up the ‘St Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band’ album. The music choice was very vital as I needed it to target the right audience, and it needed to fit in with the audience targeted for the film. The song choices are mainly from the late 60’s to mid-70’s. David Bowie’s songs also have this alternative, sci-fi feel to them, which fits perfectly with the genre of my short film. On the opening scene of the short film, where Michael is reading I didn’t have any sound, which I knew I needed to add. I thought it would be a good idea to add sound from the radio in Michaels bedroom, but to show his old boring personality I decided to play BBC radio 4 in the background, as it talks about Marxism and old theories, connoting the old era he’s living in in his dream. At the scene where Michael is walking to Boothferry park, I faded out the music to play a background sound of old football commentary connoting that the football ground has now been demolished, it also helps the audience understand why he visits that location, if they don’t know what it was meant to be.
With costume, I wanted to make Michael look casual, most people said that because Michaels dream goes back to the 70’s shouldn’t he be dressed in a 70’s style outfit, and my argument was that, it’s his dream which means he decides what he wants to wear. Of course the scene in which Michael is in a coma, we briefly see the 2 nurses, I wanted them to look as realistic as possible, and that meant having them wear nurse uniforms.
The settings were hugely important with regard to my short film, as the whole idea is about trying to understand his life and why everything has changed, and so I needed to reflect this within the locations. I tried to find old/worn out buildings to portray the fact that society has changed. I think the scenes of Booth ferry Park and the old record shop, reflect this well as it tells Michael and the audience how much changes are needed. The short film shows updated versions of these old building, which helps the audience and Michael understand that they have changed, such as the KC Stadium updating Booth ferry park, and HMV updating the old record shop.
The dialogue used in my short film was very important and well thought out, because it helps the audience understand what happened to Michael if they didn’t recognise from the shot of him waking up in the hospital. The dialogue also introduces new characters such as the man who lends Michael his phone, and Margaret Michaels mum. These shot reverse shot scenes between Michael and Margaret gives the audience a sense of emotion. The close ups in this sequence help the audience conform an alliance to the main character.
With regards to filming I started pretty early, once I got a rough idea of what my film was going to be about, and after I finished my animatic, which was in November, I started filming. There were no problems with filming because the main character Michael is my dad, and so I knew he would be reliable, and because I love with him it didn’t cause any travel problems etc. However I did have problems with the script, as it was too sarcastic and unrealistic, and so I rewrote parts. With the shot reverse shot of Michael and Margaret, where Margaret says ‘Can you come and see me?!’ I was going to carry this scene on so that Michael finds out more information, although the film was getting too long and so I decided to cut the conversation scene and end with Michael waking up from the dream. As I said I started filming early, I had gotten most of the scenes shot within 2 weeks, however I began slacking because of other coursework etc. and as a result of this, it took me a long time to get it finally finished and this meant that towards the end of finishing the film it took me a while to export my film because of other students using the editing software. I didn’t really use many editing features on Adobe Premiere pro CS4, apart from using the time stretch tool, which allowed the shot of the clock to go faster than it would normally, connoting that a long time has passed until Michael wakes up from the coma. The rest of the editing was pretty basic, with conventional cuts and fades to show Michael is entering another location and fade to blacks at the beginning and end scene.
The voiceover scenes and background noise, such as the BBC radio 4 sound and the commentary on Hull city from 1975 which connoted verisimilitude of the time before Michael went into a coma, I basically got the scenes from YouTube and converted the sound to mp3 and with the voiceovers of Michael, I recorded his voice on my iPod and then synced the sound onto my memory stick and added it over the scenes. I added the title of the film at the beginning, using a traditional font, to represent the character being traditional and ordinary, but I made the colour of the text gold, obviously because the film is called ‘Golden Years’.
I think overall my idea was successful, this is shown through my audience feedback as I made a questionnaire which gave helpful and positive responses, showing that they understood the narrative of the film, before I added the football commentary people wouldn’t have understood the Boothferry park scene unless they were from hull, and so that background sound helps a wide audience recognize the storyline and the fact that so much time has passed that the stadium has been knocked down. The questions on the questionnaire was a guideline for me to know if the audience understood the whole concept of it e.g. the genre, whether they enjoyed it and what they would do if they could change it, to me that question was the most important because it helped me be aware of what they didn’t like, or what I did wrong. See figure 1.
Figure 1
Another way of getting audience feedback was to get my teacher Tim to hand out my questionnaires to one of his AS classes, which gives students who haven’t had the chance to make a film yet understand what the roles are and to see if they identify with the main character. The ratio of the gender in the class was 11 females and 7 males with most of them saying they understood the narrative, but in some cases it was confusing which is kind of the reaction I wanted as it would become clearer if it was a full film.
When asking ‘What genre do you think my film fits into?’ most of the class said they didn’t know or that it was an adventure/drama genre, which is understandable as the film has a hybrid genre. However their ideas of what the genre could be are correct. The next question asked was ‘Do you think the soundtrack fits the genre of the film?’ there was a mixed response with this answer, as some people thought the song didn’t fit the genre, however one person said ‘Yes because its energetic music signifying adventure and it appears to be an old soundtrack which fits the setting of the film’.
I was pleased that around 80% of the audience said they enjoyed my short film, with some people saying it had comedic parts and others saying it had a good storyline, although I think the 20% that didn’t enjoy the film found it too confusing to understand. The final question I asked on my audience feedback questionnaire was ‘What would you have done to improve it?’ which I got a lot of different responses for, such as, add more continuity, which as I said earlier I would have done but the point is that it’s a short film. Another person said that I should have quietened the music when there is dialogue, which I did until the music couldn’t be lowered anymore, which is unfortunate. Interestingly another response was ‘changed the ending so he met up with his family’ but I think this person didn’t understand that the film was a dream and that he could have woken up at any time.
Reflective Analysis
My Film Studies coursework was based on creating a short film or sequence of a film. The whole process including production, researching, filming and editing I did on my own, all of the planning can be seen on my blog at http://claireygrice.blogspot.com. The name of my short film is ‘Golden Years’. This being an appropriate name because it represents the plot of the film and is also intertextual to the song featured in the short film by David Bowie, what else is ironic however intentional is the fact the song was released in 1975 which is the era in the short film where Michael is dreaming. The chosen genre has elements of Mystery, Drama and Comedy; this could be seen as a hybrid genre and the narrative type ‘The wanderer’ in which the character arrives in a new place and discovers something.
I will be using many over the shoulder shots to make the audience feel as if they are on the journey with Michael, along with close up/medium close ups to show the characters reactions and emotions, which is important as we want to see Michaels feelings when finding out he’s missed most of his life.
My chosen film will appeal to a wide audience of 20 to 35, because the genres used within my film are stereotypically unappealing for people my age, which is why I wanted to challenge myself and the mainstream audience, although it has that element of being in different time zones which I hope would entertain the audience. This also means that because the film is targeting an older audience, they will spend more money on it by e.g. going to the cinema and buying it on DVD, instead of illegally downloading. The film will be certificate 15, as it doesn’t include bad language, but wouldn’t really be suitable for people under 15.
Here I have showed part of my aims and context to explain what sort of reaction I was trying to get from the audience with the cinematography I have used. In the genre conventions I talked about the common feature of mistaken identity in Comedies, which plays a big part in my short film, as Michaels appearance has changed without him knowing. I also talked about how this could link with the bomb under the table theory, in which the audience know what has happened to Michael, but he doesn’t. I have also explained the audience I am trying to target, by aiming for a wide audience it ensures I will have lots of viewers.
My short film is based around the main character Michael, we are introduced to him in the first scene where he is reading a book in bed, the book has parody and intertextual references to Donnie Darko in which the mother is reading Stephen Kings ‘IT’ however this book is called ‘The Lost Years’ which could also link with the title of the short film, the book has a parody element as I made the author of the book be called ‘Iva Coma’ which is exactly what Michael dreams happens to him when he falls asleep.
I added some film clips on my blog which had influenced my cinematic and plot idea’s, I used similar stylistics to the coma scene in Kill Bill, in which we see Uma Thurman from a side angle, which pans to a high angle shot until the character wakes up, causing a medium close up. I thought the high angle shot used was clever because it informed the audience that the character was about to wake up.
I have chosen to analyse 50 first dates because, the storyline is similar to mine, as Lucy has short term memory loss, her family have to re-enact the day before she lost her memory over and over, every day. But in order to see Henry and get over her amnesia, he shows her a video of all the big events in society over the years to help her understand. This is quite similar to Michael’s situation however he has nobody to help him, and he has to realise by himself.
The cinematography within the coma scene are very interesting as they are similar to the ones used in my short film, I start from a side angle, showing half of Michael's face, and then panning around the body and ending up on a high angle shot, portraying the vulnerability of Michael, and it makes it a good medium close up when he immediately wakes up.
In talk to her, Almodovar uses similar techniques, to portray her vulnerability, when she is around Benigno as the audience later realise that he rapes her. The shots of Benigno massaging Alicia's legs connote affection and the audience feel a sense of awkwardness and fear. The cinematography also portrays Alicia as a good and strong person, which makes the audience feel a sense of relief as they know she is going to eventually wake up.
Because the dream Michael has is supposed to follow on from him living in the 70’s, I felt the name Michael was appropriate as it was a popular name 40 years ago, however is still popular now, I also used the name because it was common and shows that Michael lead a normal life until the events that occur. Although there are more characters in the short film, names are not known, because they are not important, as the film is based on the main character Michael.
Props were simple as I just used items which I thought would fit in with the characters personality and what he was doing at that time. I have already mentioned the prop in the opening scene in which Michael is reading a book which relates to the whole story. The glasses that Michael wears when reading the book are also very important because they connote that he is getting old and so he is losing his sight, this ties in with the fact that in the dream scene Michael doesn’t realise he’s older, because he doesn’t know he’s been in a coma. I wanted to make the mise-en-scene in the hospital look realistic, so I filmed in an actual hospital and used all the equipment needed for someone in a coma. Throughout the football scenes, I had to make it conventional by Michael finding the Hull City scarf in his drawer and having a Hull City programme in his hand, which shows he’s trying to relive the times of going to see them play, but then notices the football ground has been knocked down.
Another thing that is important within the short film, is the end scene where Michael wakes up from the dream, by The Beatles ‘Good Morning, Good Morning’ with the cockerel which conventionally wakes people up. The audience are also aware that it is the Beatles playing as Michael picks up the ‘St Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band’ album. The music choice was very vital as I needed it to target the right audience, and it needed to fit in with the audience targeted for the film. The song choices are mainly from the late 60’s to mid-70’s. David Bowie’s songs also have this alternative, sci-fi feel to them, which fits perfectly with the genre of my short film. On the opening scene of the short film, where Michael is reading I didn’t have any sound, which I knew I needed to add. I thought it would be a good idea to add sound from the radio in Michaels bedroom, but to show his old boring personality I decided to play BBC radio 4 in the background, as it talks about Marxism and old theories, connoting the old era he’s living in in his dream. At the scene where Michael is walking to Boothferry park, I faded out the music to play a background sound of old football commentary connoting that the football ground has now been demolished, it also helps the audience understand why he visits that location, if they don’t know what it was meant to be.
With costume, I wanted to make Michael look casual, most people said that because Michaels dream goes back to the 70’s shouldn’t he be dressed in a 70’s style outfit, and my argument was that, it’s his dream which means he decides what he wants to wear. Of course the scene in which Michael is in a coma, we briefly see the 2 nurses, I wanted them to look as realistic as possible, and that meant having them wear nurse uniforms.
The settings were hugely important with regard to my short film, as the whole idea is about trying to understand his life and why everything has changed, and so I needed to reflect this within the locations. I tried to find old/worn out buildings to portray the fact that society has changed. I think the scenes of Booth ferry Park and the old record shop, reflect this well as it tells Michael and the audience how much changes are needed. The short film shows updated versions of these old building, which helps the audience and Michael understand that they have changed, such as the KC Stadium updating Booth ferry park, and HMV updating the old record shop.
The dialogue used in my short film was very important and well thought out, because it helps the audience understand what happened to Michael if they didn’t recognise from the shot of him waking up in the hospital. The dialogue also introduces new characters such as the man who lends Michael his phone, and Margaret Michaels mum. These shot reverse shot scenes between Michael and Margaret gives the audience a sense of emotion. The close ups in this sequence help the audience conform an alliance to the main character.
With regards to filming I started pretty early, once I got a rough idea of what my film was going to be about, and after I finished my animatic, which was in November, I started filming. There were no problems with filming because the main character Michael is my dad, and so I knew he would be reliable, and because I love with him it didn’t cause any travel problems etc. However I did have problems with the script, as it was too sarcastic and unrealistic, and so I rewrote parts. With the shot reverse shot of Michael and Margaret, where Margaret says ‘Can you come and see me?!’ I was going to carry this scene on so that Michael finds out more information, although the film was getting too long and so I decided to cut the conversation scene and end with Michael waking up from the dream. As I said I started filming early, I had gotten most of the scenes shot within 2 weeks, however I began slacking because of other coursework etc. and as a result of this, it took me a long time to get it finally finished and this meant that towards the end of finishing the film it took me a while to export my film because of other students using the editing software. I didn’t really use many editing features on Adobe Premiere pro CS4, apart from using the time stretch tool, which allowed the shot of the clock to go faster than it would normally, connoting that a long time has passed until Michael wakes up from the coma. The rest of the editing was pretty basic, with conventional cuts and fades to show Michael is entering another location and fade to blacks at the beginning and end scene.
The voiceover scenes and background noise, such as the BBC radio 4 sound and the commentary on Hull city from 1975 which connoted verisimilitude of the time before Michael went into a coma, I basically got the scenes from YouTube and converted the sound to mp3 and with the voiceovers of Michael, I recorded his voice on my iPod and then synced the sound onto my memory stick and added it over the scenes. I added the title of the film at the beginning, using a traditional font, to represent the character being traditional and ordinary, but I made the colour of the text gold, obviously because the film is called ‘Golden Years’.
I think overall my idea was successful, this is shown through my audience feedback as I made a questionnaire which gave helpful and positive responses, showing that they understood the narrative of the film, before I added the football commentary people wouldn’t have understood the Boothferry park scene unless they were from hull, and so that background sound helps a wide audience recognize the storyline and the fact that so much time has passed that the stadium has been knocked down. The questions on the questionnaire was a guideline for me to know if the audience understood the whole concept of it e.g. the genre, whether they enjoyed it and what they would do if they could change it, to me that question was the most important because it helped me be aware of what they didn’t like, or what I did wrong. See figure 1.
Figure 1
Another way of getting audience feedback was to get my teacher Tim to hand out my questionnaires to one of his AS classes, which gives students who haven’t had the chance to make a film yet understand what the roles are and to see if they identify with the main character. The ratio of the gender in the class was 11 females and 7 males with most of them saying they understood the narrative, but in some cases it was confusing which is kind of the reaction I wanted as it would become clearer if it was a full film.
When asking ‘What genre do you think my film fits into?’ most of the class said they didn’t know or that it was an adventure/drama genre, which is understandable as the film has a hybrid genre. However their ideas of what the genre could be are correct. The next question asked was ‘Do you think the soundtrack fits the genre of the film?’ there was a mixed response with this answer, as some people thought the song didn’t fit the genre, however one person said ‘Yes because its energetic music signifying adventure and it appears to be an old soundtrack which fits the setting of the film’.
I was pleased that around 80% of the audience said they enjoyed my short film, with some people saying it had comedic parts and others saying it had a good storyline, although I think the 20% that didn’t enjoy the film found it too confusing to understand. The final question I asked on my audience feedback questionnaire was ‘What would you have done to improve it?’ which I got a lot of different responses for, such as, add more continuity, which as I said earlier I would have done but the point is that it’s a short film. Another person said that I should have quietened the music when there is dialogue, which I did until the music couldn’t be lowered anymore, which is unfortunate. Interestingly another response was ‘changed the ending so he met up with his family’ but I think this person didn’t understand that the film was a dream and that he could have woken up at any time.
Generally I am pleased with the overall outcome of my film, however I wished the huge gap between filming and not filming was used on getting the short film finished, because then I could have improved it with plenty of time left. Although the acting isn’t important within the film, I think it would have been realistic if some of the actors didn’t look at the camera as it looks unprofessional. But I am proud of the result as I feel the narrative is hard to understand and from the audience feedback you can see that people understand it.
Word count: 2661Generally I am pleased with the overall outcome of my film, however I wished the huge gap between filming and not filming was used on getting the short film finished, because then I could have improved it with plenty of time left. Although the acting isn’t important within the film, I think it would have been realistic if some of the actors didn’t look at the camera as it looks unprofessional. But I am proud of the result as I feel the narrative is hard to understand and from the audience feedback you can see that people understand it.
Word count: 2661
