Hassan's Evaluation

Introduction

My project is an opening to a romantic teen comedy movie called “C@ll Me”. In my group I was working with Louise and Caroline. My contributions to the project were filming, editing, acting, script-writing, drawing the storyboard and research.

Q1 An opening sequence of a movie needs to make the audience watching want to stay on and watch the rest of the film. It also needs to introduce the main characters. Opening sequences of movies make people want to keep watching by creating enigmas that would make them want to keep watching to see how things turn out. Our opening sequence fulfilled these features as it introduces the two main characters, creates an enigma which is that the two main protagonists have an internet relationship but do not like each other in person which will make viewers want to keep watching. Conventions in these types of movies include teens, relationships, schools or colleges and so on. This opening sequence fulfils all the conventions I’ve just mentioned. The reason we have not moved away from these typical codes and conventions are because without them it wouldn’t really be a teen comedy romance.

Q2 The type of people represented in the movie is young people. The costumes are typical of what teenagers would wear; jeans, hoodies, trainers. They are both at college which is also typical for people of their age. Also they text and communicate over the internet a lot which is also typical for people of their age nowadays. The main settings are their bedrooms and college which is again fairly typical. The characters are following their stereotypes. This for the boy would be the jock and the girl a geek. Gender is also represented fairly traditionally by them doing things which are a little bit different before they start college like the girl having a healthy breakfast and the boy quickly getting a chocolate bar. Also on the way to college the boy drives with driving and cars being something that stereotypically interests men more than women. The reason we have adhered to stereotypes is that there wasn’t much need to steer away from them as traditionally jocks and geeks conflict and don’t get on. This is paramount to the storyline as they actually have feelings for each other without knowing it’s them which create enigmas. Therefore we felt the stereotypes didn’t need to be challenged.

Q3 I think an institution such as Universal Pictures would be suitable for our movie. The back movies of all genres and have in the past backed romantic comedies from the UK such as Love Actually and About a Boy. I think our project would have a crossover appeal to American audiences as it has a sort of Hollywood formula in it being a teen comedy romance. However it does have a very British “look” which some audiences from America may find interesting or may dislike. I think despite its British style it would still get backing from a big Hollywood institution and would be a success in Britain as well as a possible success in America.

Q4 The audience for the movie may have an educational background of any kind as it’s not that much of an intellectually challenging film that an undereducated person wouldn’t be able to enjoy the movie. The likely age group for the movie is 16-34. Both genders would come to see the movie however there would probably be more girls as it is a romantic comedy. It would also attract couples as it is to do with relationships. The economic status would be anyone from A – E as most people have free money that they can spend to come to the cinema. As the male lead in the movie is Asian it could draw a bigger audience from Asian backgrounds than such films often do. However it does not just appeal only to Asian people but people of every race. The audience for this movie is very large and diverse which would bring large numbers to watch this movie. Films need a target audience so they can pinpoint where to spend money on promoting themselves. I think our target audience is a good target as many of this audience regularly go to the cinemas to watch movies.

Q5 We managed to attract and address our audience in various different ways. We set up an equilibrium by making you think the main characters are a couple before causing a disruption when you find out that they don’t know each other in person and when they do meet there is a conflict when they bump into each other. This creates an enigma for the rest of the film where people would want to know what happens next. It also shows that the main characters which are in an internet relationship are binary opposites in real life which would attract viewers. I think we did well to create the sense of time that we did. We showed that it was a morning before college as they are both shown getting ready and setting off before being in college where there is an establishing shot of them walking past the college sign. We used fast pace continuity editing throughout. A young, multi-ethnic cast would be likely to bring in an audience which is also young and multi-ethnic.

Q6 I have learnt a lot about using editing software throughout the course of this project as I have never used iMovie before. The editing software as a whole as a whole is quite complete and lets you do just about anything. We used continuity editing therefore we did not make the most of the editing software’s different effects except the title screen when “C@ll Me” waves in to the screen. However we thought as a group it would be best if the title “C@ll Me” is shown with the words clashing as the boy and girl have a somewhat of a personality clash within the film. However we couldn’t do this in iMovie as it did not have the right animation. The internet was a very helpful tool as it can let you research up to date items which you couldn’t do in a library as unlike the internet the books aren’t updated every day. Also using the internet we could use websites such as youtube to watch openings of same genre movies to look for inspiration. The use of the blog lets us do things we wouldn’t be able to do using paper recording methods. As it let us update it with information from home and if one group member posted it from their home another could look at the new post straight away and post up their ideas to improve it making it much more of a group effort. The camera was generally straightforward to use however as it was only one megapixel not all the shots are crystal clear. New technology helps making projects like ours much better and easier to make however it doesn’t guarantee a good project.

Q7 There has been vast improvement in my group’s video making when comparing the preliminary task to the main one. Transitions are a lot better as in the preliminary every single shot was faded in whereas now we realised just because we can use transitional effects doesn’t mean we have to. Therefore we used continuity editing which made it much more flowing. The main task was a lot smoother then the prelim as that was kind of static and bumpy. We used more of a variety and improved camera angles. We used a title which we did not use in the preliminary task which makes it better.

Conclusion

I think our product is, on the whole quite good. It sets up a great enigma, whilst introducing the characters. When you realise they go to the same college but do not like each other it is quite fascinating. I think sometimes the camera jerks a bit which is a weakness. I feel the movie is not too bad compared to other British and Hollywood movies, especially when you look at how much money they spend on their movies and compare it to our movie where we spent nothing.