Sunny MEST2

My group consisted of Mandev, Ladan, Rashida and I. Our brief was to create a three minute extract of an overall thirty minute art house film narrative. The film that we would produce would have a complete narrative and storyline but only an extract of three minutes would be submitted for the film festival’s competition. As a group we decided to focus on the main topic of the brief which was urban life but we also decided to incorporate very small elements of the other topics such as, romance, secret, friendships. Our production is a psychological thriller that explores the division between reality and the false distortions through the eyes of dysfunctional teenagers.

We were very heavily invested in the pre-production research stage of our production. We were able to work together and come up with several different inspirations that eventually ended up influencing our work, both story wise and also visually. We looked also found a few art house movies that influenced our end result and helped us to give us an idea of what we wanted and what we wanted our production to look like. Some of the films that influenced our work were “Drive”, “Whiplash”, “Run Lola Run”, “Trance” and “Gone Girl”. We really loved the idea of how both “Drive” and “Gone Girl” were thrillers with mentally disturbed protagonists that really challenged stereotypes and also had male protagonists that were characters with multiple interpretations, and overall were very three dimensional and “round characters”. This was something that we thought was absolutely crucial in portraying our character as we wanted to subvert representations. “Drive”, “Whiplash” and “Gone Girl” also had amazing cinematography that we felt we could mimic in a way and use as inspiration, especially “Whiplash” and “Drive” as they use rich and bright colour palettes to really appeal to the audience.

We were also able to carry out some institutional research by looking into the British Board of Film Classification to understand the process of classification and what were the different criteria for the different levels of classification. This was very useful as our primary audience were mainly teenagers so we were able to see if our narrative was able to get the correct classification of 15 rating. This was a crucial part of our pre-production as this meant that we didn’t have to cut out key parts of our narrative as it was heavily reliant on strong language and strong violence which according to the criteria was fit into the 15 rating. For example, a BBFC 15 rating allows the use of strong language and violence however it should dwell on the infliction of pain by directly showing the gory images. There may also some portrayal of sexual activity but without strong detail, this was something we deliberately chose not to put in as the unnecessary explicit scenes would ruin the narrative and also not make sense.

Our main core target audience was youth orientated and focused on engaging young people specifically between the ages of 14 to 19. We aimed on targeting both males and females, from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and different social classes but most importantly it was aimed at students and young people that loved to watch films especially with narratives that are relatable to them but also have twists or violence. We were able to target our core audience by creating characters from different ethnic minorities and urban social classes with a balance of genders. The psychographic of our target audience would be a mix of explorers and reformers. This is because the category of explorers perfectly fits the idea of a young student which is basically our core audience. The category of reformers is aimed at a bit more of an intellectual and higher educated group of people that are much more willing to have an open mind to different things and essentially favour intrinsic qualities and little details that make the overall product great. This would be our secondary audience that are a slightly older age of educated adults that are the ones who go out of their way to get involved in the art house scene rather than the mainstream cinema and are generally very anti-materialist.

Our target audience is very appropriate in the sense that our brief emphasises that our film would essentially be used as a way to attract a much more younger audience to the art house scene, and as creating non-mainstream cinema is something that the production company of our brief prides in, we were able to combine both the needs of the brief and the values of our production company together to successfully target our demographic.

Our art house film extract and narrative a psychological thriller. This was something that we believed helped to fit the key conventions of an art house narrative which challenge the audience to really think about the narrative because it is the biggest impacting factor of the film. Specifically, our art house film was unique and helped to aim at the expectations of our target audience because our target audience is more youth orientated. This means that many of our audience are the type of people who are in a way rebellious towards society and the social norm. In accordance to the Uses and Gratification audience theory developed by Blumler and Katz in 1974, our film extract was more focused on the personal identity side of the theory. This was effective as our characters were teenagers taking part in activities and portraying the average teenager. This would mean that many of our targeted audience would feel like they could relate to the characters and feel themselves reflected onto the characters which would allow them to easily connect with the characters.

One of the key moments of our extract that I believe we did well in was right at beginning where we shot a minute long continuous shot which was very effective as it helped to set the scene and tone of our narrative. It was also a good way to introduce the characters to the audience. We used this shot especially because it is a unique shot that is well known by many film lovers, this creates an audience pleasure as our audience who are keen in film making would be easily able to notice it and this would make them feel as if they have a better connection with the crew that made the film.

Another key moment in our extract was the use of the vertigo shot when one of our characters is about to attacked. This is an unsettling camera effect that is made by moving the camera forward whilst also zooming out, it is unsettling as it distorts and undermines the visual perception of the audience and makes them feel very disorientated or uneasy, as if something bad is about to happen. This shot is very effective and also creates many audience pleasures as it was used by arguably one of the greatest directors of all time; Alfred Hitchcock in his film Vertigo. This creates the pleasure that audience with an interest in art house films as they would be able to identify and relate to the specific shot.

Finally, another key moment that was very effective, this time however it was due to the effectiveness of our editing. We filmed a first perspective shot of the bottle as if the audience is spinning as the bottle and then did a simple crane shot by using a monopod. We were then able to combine the two different shots through a series of quick successive edits to create an image of two separate but similar events occurring at the same time which the audience can then automatically understand what is going on. It is inspired by a film called “A Field in England” which was an art house film by Ben Wheatley that was known for the use of such editing techniques to warp how the audience viewed the film in unconventional ways.

My print work has follows many of the key conventions of arts centre or art house cinema brochure. For my front cover I used a basic simplistic design combined with professional colours of red, white and grey to create an overall design which was both stylish and professional. I also used typical key conventions such as a central image in the middle of the page which anchored the reader straight away with my main character which is very important. Also, another key convention is the title of the publication which I was able to produce a logo for, and also other conventions such as the date and the issue of the publication. I paid close attention to the little details of my front cover as the key conventions of an art house cinema brochure are very different to that of a common magazine. For example, I used “Ealing Studios” as a name check which is a very big name in the art house scene and also I was able to list some art house films and companies like the British Film Institute in the straplines.

My contents page and also my feature page followed my colour scheme consistently especially in the bottom bar of the page which had the page numbering and the dates. However, for my feature page I focused a lot more on key conventions of art house magazines, where the text is minimal in both size and content. Another convention would be the big heading and unique tagline to captivate the reader. Some small conventions are the first paragraph of the text is bold so that it stands out from the rest of the text and also the first letter of the content is a drop cap.

For our narrative, we had a wide variety of representation of people, groups and places present. Our gender representation was but slightly subversive in the sense that we had three females, but only two male characters, which was unusual as this is normally the other way around in many mainstream productions with the majority of a group being dominated by males with one or two exceptions being females. Our main two leads however were balanced in the sense that there was the opposition of the genders, male and female. Although we were able to subvert the stereotypes of gender in our production, we also reinforced them in the sense that our main protagonist was the dominant and violent male, who held power over the helpless and weak female. This was something that supported the representation theory by Richard Dyer about stereotyping and power where those in power are the ones that stereotype those with less power. As a result of this often men are the ones that are shown to be superior and with all the power whereas the women are shown to be weak and inferior. This was deliberate and useful as the contrast was crucial to our narrative as it essentially showed our main protagonist as inferior in the beginning as part of the group but when he was alone with the female character, he actually held all the power all along. This was something that I felt helped to create a sense of disorientation to the audience and gave our main protagonist a great layer of dynamic and personality, which showed him as a much more three dimensional character rather than a flat one. We were also able to represent teenagers and reinforced many of their stereotypes such as how they are lazy, time wasters, delinquents and violent. However we subverted some minor stereotypes as our characters didn't take part in illicit activities such as consuming alcohol, drug use or sexual acts. Our characters also represented diverse urban youth minorities which was a subversion of the stereotype as many ethnic minorities are also seen as minorities on the mainstream cinema; however the minorities in our art house production are from an urban background where they are actually the majority.

If I had done the third brief I would have created an online film blog which would have been used to essentially support the promotion of our art house film. As our core audience was a youth orientated audience which are known for their adept use of technology and social media, I would have used some form of a social platform that could have acted as a “prequel” to our initial narrative. For example, a type of “twitter” account that could have been from the point of view of one of our characters, this would involve content such as thoughts and perspectives of the characters. Also it would include posting pictures or videos which would be from the perspective of a normally friendship group such as the characters going to a party. This would be useful in the sense of marketing as it would make the audience feel involved as if they are personally immersed into the narrative and essentially give them a better understanding of the narrative that would not be necessary but give a bit more insight into the narrative. We could also create a sense of synergy by cross promotion our production by using different viral platforms such as Instagram or Snapchat which are a lot more modern compared to other platforms such as Facebook. Something that I believe could be unique in involving our target audience and could be used as user-generated content would be the use of Snapchat filters and stories as a way to promote our film and get a younger audience engaged and excited for our film.

I feel that we were able to successfully meet the original brief as our narrative is able to effectively focus on the topic of urban life and also effectively meets the criteria of an art house movie as our production explores the division between reality and the false distortions of society but also from the relatable perspectives of dysfunctional teenagers. I believe that the production would be very successful in the media marketplace as it is aims to challenge society but also creates dynamic and round characters that our target audience is easily able to relate with in one way or another, whether that’s through their obvious personalities or through the subtle sadistic pleasures of the main protagonist, it’s something that is would be very effective in getting a youth orientated audience more engaged in a non-mainstream cinema.