Film Evaluation

Alex Thorne
 Contents

Conventions Audience

Media Distribution Technology

 Conventions
Example of Femme Fatale
• Our group has used various conventions in our
Media product that resemble those used in
high-budget Film Noir films. First, we have used
the most dominant convention found in Film
Noir. We have mostly conformed to the
conventions used in classic Film Noir while
taking those from Neo-Noir.
• We have used stereotypical aspects in our film,
such as the protagonist/antagonist being sharply
dressed although we have also taken a more
Neo-Noir approach. Also key conventions were
Example of sharply dressed antagonist
used such as the inclusion of a ‘Femme Fatale’, a
convention found in most if not all Film Noir
films. Another convention we have used is one
of the locations was dark and eerie, keeping the
antagonist and the Femme Fatale in darkness.
Regarding the Femme Fatale, her lips are always
directly in the light, another convention used as
in a lot classic and Neo-Noir films, the Femme
Fatale wears a deep red lipstick, which implies a
romantic, sex appeal.
• We also challenged certain conventions
 Audience
• We aimed our production piece to more of
an older generation as from our
questionnaire we learned that many
people under the age of 18 didn’t know
what Film Noir was.
• The type of person we have directed the
piece at are people that enjoy preferably
darker and grittier films that potentially
stray from every day occurrences. Also we
tried to incorporate a unisex audience as it
contains a slightly romantic feel between
characters, especially when the Femme
Fatale is introduced.
 Media Distribution
• The type of Media distributor that
may distribute our Product would
most likely be small, independent
distributors as Film Noir, although
high budget films, has fallen from
mainstream despite successful Neo-
Noir films. An example company
would be Vertigo Films as they have
distributed many independent films
such as ‘Outpost’ and ‘Shrooms’ to
cinema.
• It would be unlikely for a distributor
such as Universal to distribute our
film as companies such as Universal
tend to distribute higher budget,
more mainstream films.
 Comparison
• In comparison with our Preliminary task, we
have learnt several things that made a world of
difference between the quality of our Final
production and our Preliminary task.
• Looking back, we have learnt that planning
filming sessions helps to create a better,
thought out end product instead of unplanned
filming. This was present in our Preliminary as
the continuity of the film didn’t flow correctly as Preliminary
we didn’t story board or script it, while in our
Final Product, we scripted and storyboarded
many time before we were happy with the Final
Product.
• We also learned that post production is
absolutely essential to making the quality so
much better, even using simple colour
corrections can add a new layer and
atmosphere to a film.

Final Production
 Learning about Technologies while constructing our
product
• Throughout the pre/post production of our
media product, we used Blogs throughout to
keep track of what was happening, this was a
great to keep track as they were easy to look up
in short amounts of time and helped the whole
group keep track of the video’s progress in case
of absence. Also I believe using a Blog to mark
progress over having to use folders with hand
written documents as it rules out the possibility
of losing important documents and keeps the
page formatted so it is more visually appealing.
Blogs also helped with the time management of
production as we could quickly update our blogs
instead of having to find office resource such as
paper. So I believe blogs to be the quickest and
most efficient way of logging progress.

Example of a Blogspot.Com Blog entry

Continued on next slide

Technologies continued...
• Regarding blogs, we also the internet in general
had helped the research and development
stages of production as we could access sights
like Youtube and IMDB. We could use Youtube
to watch extracts of Film Noir films we could
analyse and gain inspiration and ideas from and
could IMDB to research the films we were
analysing. So we learned the internet was a vital
asset in helping achieve our goals in production.
• The group used a sight called Scribd to upload
our scripts and storyboards to our blog instead
of having to scan in individual pieces of work,
saving a lot of time.

Continued on next slide

 Technologies continued...
• For post production, we used Apple Macs for
the time, using Imovie 08 and GarageBand.
Thanks to Imovie’s simple design and user
interface, we could edit our production quickly
and precisely with ease. From this we learned
that technology now offers a lot more in terms
of post production and editing that previously
may not have been accessible for the general
public.
• Using Garageband, one of our group members Example of IMovie 08
was able to compose a piece of music to
accompany our video using preset sounds and
instruments. From this experience we gained
that composing music was now a lot accessible
and in some ways easier for low budget film
makers.

Example of Garageband
composition
 Overall
• Overall, I have really enjoyed producing an opening film with my group,
have learn valuable skills that will only my performance regarding
Media Studies.
• I believe also my group made a high quality, tense and suspenseful
opening that makes a convincing Film Noir opening sequence that fits
nigh-on all conventions we have aimed to create.

“Don’t worry, its all

taken care of...”