Evaluation

1. Our film is a teen drama and there are some generic conventions throughout to show that it belongs to this particular genre. Firstly,the characters in our film are all teenagers and our opening scene establishes Mia (one of the main characters) getting ready for a party.

2. In terms of gender, there are as many girls as there are boys in the film, but our main characters consist of one girl and two boys, who are all caucasian. They are teenagers and behave in stereotypical ways.

Mia Cocking- ‘the slag’
Daniel Walker- ‘the emo’
Jack Slater- ‘the Jack the lad’

They all conform to the norms that these stereotypes give and there are no signs of deviance. For example, Daniel, the protagonist of the film, is an emo. The stereotype for emos are that they have long hair, wear dark clothes and slit their wrists. In the film, this is exactly how Daniel behaves and as a result of slitting his wrist, he faints and ends up in hospital.

Mia conforms to her stereotype of being a slag, because she dresses in short skirts, strappy tops, heels and gets invited to all the parties. She gets with all the popular boys at college- even if they are in a relationship! However, Mia does slightly deviate from this stereotype because most people tend to see ‘slags’ as having a face full of make up (spider lashes, foundation that doesn’t match their skin tone, heavy eyeliner, too much bronzer,lipgloss) whereas Mia plays it subtle and doesn’t cake it all on- her natural beauty is more than enough to get her what she wants, especially as her legs are always on show.

In teen dramas, there are usually boy who are represented as ‘Jack-the-lads’. This film is no exception. We have Jack, a ‘player’ who’s thinking about girls 24/7. Girls are well aware of his behavior, but that doesn’t stop him from being able to charm them all the way into his bed. In the film, Mia is under Jack’s spell, but it leads to trouble. This may be a good result because it could show him that his behavior affects others more than he thinks.

Daniel, Mia and Jack link to our audience because they are of a similar age and our target audience can relate to the stereotypes that have been given to the characters.

3. To distribute our movie, I would choose a small distribution company such as Working Title Films. Our film is a low budget film with unknown actors and actresses as the main characters so a big distribution company such as Warner Bros will not want to distribute it as it doesn’t have any major stars. The film highlights issues such as self-harm, love affairs, drug and alcohol fuelled parties which are a regular occurrence in contemporary Britain. The film would be released to help teenagers understand the dangers of drugs and alcohol and the effects of self harm, and rather than force them to sit through a documentary, a film is an ideal way to reach them because it would hold their attention whilst showing these. It would be ideal for the film to be television movie as it would reach our target audience because teenagers tend to spend most of their time in front of the television. There wouldn’t be any merchandise available for the film as it is only a small production.

4. Our target audience would be males and females aged !5-21 because this is the time when people tend to start experimenting with drugs, alcohol and self-harm. Not all teenagers take drugs or alcohol or self-harm, but by watching this film, they could help a friend that was. Similar films to ours are films like Kidulthood and Precious, which are very gritty, true-to-life films about teenagers targeted at the male and female teenage audience. I think the certificate of the film would most likely be a 15. It doesn’t contain any violent or explicit behavior and people under the age of 15 would probably find it a little disturbing because they won’t have learnt enough about these issues to follow the film.

www.bbfc.co.uk

5. The age and gender of our audience is males and females aged 15-21. Points in our film that would appeal to the audience are the party scenes and when the story is told from Daniels perspective. The party scenes will appeal to them because teenagers have parties and social gatherings on a regular basis as a way of getting away from school/college work and just as a way of having fun. These parties may sometimes end badly and our film is an example of this. By filming some scenes from Daniels point of view, the audience will empathise with him and will see what led him to try and end his life.

6. In terms of camera equipment, we used the HDV 1000 cameras. These cameras are more advanced than the video recorders we used in the preliminary task. Having never used one of the HDV cameras before, I found it easy to set up and use and didn’t have any problems with it throughout the course of filming. We filmed using widescreen and edited using Final Cut Express.

7. The shots used in the opening two minutes were mainly medium shots, with a few close ups in other scenes. An example of a medium shot in when Mia is getting ready for the party. An example of s close up is when Daniel has collapsed on the floor. Overall, I think that my use of shots have improved even though in our film there aren’t that many different shots. I think that by using the same type of shot I have improved because I know how to use them more effectively.

Contrast and Development

The Film Noir research below is another type of film genre that I did, You can see a contrast here to the modern age film we have produced in many aspects such as the cencorship and camera work. This proves the development of film and genres over time from the black and white productions of the early 1900's to modern day.

Steroetypical Costume

For male characters in film noir the detective look is the most common. The characters often wear a suit and a long coat, making them look important and intimidating.

Where as the female role often wear a fancy dress making them look more innocent and seductive.

This costume choice for the characters makes the male role seem more powerful and in charge and the females look weaker and make it seem like they are just there to look pretty, more as a trophy shown off by the male characters.

This also helps if in the story the twist is that the woman is the bad guy as it is more unexpected and shows that you can't stereotype someone by how they look.

These costumes are very stereotypical and makes the film feel older as the males are always in working clothes and seem to be mainly detectives or spy's and the female roles always seem to be in fancy dresses in show business or in plain old fashioned clothes and are house wives.

The costumes are often colour coded to fit the characters in film noir and are made so the more important roles contrast, are made to stand out more. For example because it is in black and white a female character would wear all black but have fair skin and light coloured hair making her contrast and stand out more like the woman on this picture.

This also makes the female characters that have costume like this look more seductive and have something about them and the female characters that don't contrast seem more boring and less important.

The male characters that do this make them seem like theres something going on with the character, making them stand out like this gives the audience the feeling that they have an important role in the film and may be the downfall in it or as a twist the more shady male character in the beginning turns out to be the big hero in the end.

How To Create That Signature Visual Style

Here are some tips on how to perfect the visual style of Film Noir;

Helps to have a smoke machine

Back Lighting/Front Lighting

Using blinds between front light & actor creates a nice effect

Shooting at night & in black & white is strongly suggested

Interesting camera angles (e.g. Deutsch Angles, X-tremely High/Low Angles)

Point-Of-View Shots can help your viewer into the mindset of the character

There is a video on this I have found, unfortunately it cannot be posted onto this blog, however here is the link. Feel free to watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J97VnLw7PM8&feature=player_embedded

Main Characters

One main characteristic of film noir is that its main character is often not much of a hero, but rather an anti-hero. This detective is often trapped into doing some pretty bad stuff, and he is left to get himself out of trouble and find a life for himself again. He is depressed, spends a lot of time walking through dark cities at night in a fedora, and always seems to lose. The story often was told from the perspective of the hard-boiled detective, and it was not at all uncommon to begin the film with a scene from the end of the plot, and then flash back to the beginning of the whole story for him to tell it as the narrator

The other main character who was present in most every film noir was the femme fatale, a typically blonde woman whose name spelled trouble. These women with guns were empowering, deceptive, and just plain mean. They always seemed to manage to trap the hard-boiled detective into falling in love with them, just to come in at the last second and turn his world upside-down.

Film Noir - Sex and Censorship

Films featuring corruption, death, and sex defined the classic film noir era of the 1940s and 1950s. It seems strange to think that the genre of film known as film noir would thrive during a period in film history that was heavily censored. The classic films in the film noir genre were forced to illustrate the corruption, violence, and sex through different and creative ways. The films had to use certain ways of implying a sexual relationship as opposed to playing it out blatantly on the screen like most films of the present day. Using innovative and creative ways to imply sexual between characters in the films, the film noir filmmakers during the classic film noir era successfully produced dark and racy films despite being censored by the government.

Films in the classic noir era had a lot to do with sex, but hardly ever showed any sexual interactions on the screen. The censors were one of the main reasons why much of the sexual interaction was absent from the finished product. However, the films were able to work around the censors and imply sexual activity in more subtle ways. As Naremore writes: "if we did not already have the evidence of the films themselves, the censorship reports of the period reveal that classic noir was almost obsessed with sexual perversity...Breen Office censors were especially concerned about [homosexual] characters, just as they were about realistic depictions of heterosexual passion

Another aspect of sex that the makers of noir films had to work at portraying was homosexuality. Homosexuality was a taboo topic in American culture during the classic noir era. Unlike present day where homosexuality has slowly filtered itself into the mainstream, portraying a homosexual character during the classic era in a blatant and obvious way was not considered appropriate by the norms of American society. However, film noir was a genre of film that seemed to have hints of homosexuality from its characters, although the filmmakers never came out and directly announced it.

By using editing, camera tricks, symbolism, and subtle hints, makers of noir films during the 1940s and 1950s were able to work around the heavy censorship they had to endure and produce movies that contained sexuality. The censors may have done a favour to the film noir genre by making the filmmakers create unique ways to illustrate what they wanted their movie to show. This unique way of manipulating the audience makes the genre of film noir intriguing. Unlike the films of the present day, sexuality was not something easily portrayed on the big screen. The creativity of the filmmakers during the classic noir era is just an example of why film noir has become such an interesting and groundbreaking genre of film.