Group Evaluation Presentation

Evaluation- my thoughts on the finished product

• I believe that throughout our opening, we stuck to the codes and conventions we found from analysing teen comedy films and have constantly tried to appeal to our female, teenage audience. To name a few:

-The setting of a school and girls' bedrooms which are familiar and relatable.
-The costume which was conventional to teens, e.g. school bags
-The props, such as make-up and a mobile phone (teens who have the same phone will instantly relate to this character)
-The character types such as 'geeks' etc; also Propp's character types, JJ being the hero/villian and Jess and Emma the heroines
-The issues within our plot such as frienship and relationships, which are stereotypical issues found in teen comedies
-The music which was fast-paced and contemporary, built up in rhythm which was engaging for the audience and connoted a fast-paced lifestyle stereotypical to teens.

References to British pop culture made it relatable to a British audience. We also used slapstick comedy, with Jess pushing Emma behind a wall, but only to a minor extent.

• I have highlighted above some of the ways we represented teenagers, which is the social group we aim to represent in our product. We have conducted stereotypes, such as the 'popular girl' and the 'geek', and have also conveyed stereotypical issues and lifestyles of teens (as above mentioned). Our audience feedback told us we represented teens 'stereotypically' through these elements.
• I also feel we have developed our skills in working with cameras since the preliminary task. We know to obey the 180 degree rule, and we used camera movements to create verisimilitude, such as panning and tracking, in order to be relatable and realistic to our audience and connote everyday life. We managed to hold the camera steady and the editing ran smoothly throughout the opening. The continuity was probably the hardest part to get right with the second half of our opening.
• The audience feedback was very useful. It told us that we achieved our target demographic as found in our audience profile; the majority of the audience agreed that our opening would be relatable to a 16-yr-old female. They also agreed that an institution that distributes a lot of teen comedies would be most likely to distribute our product, especially Paramount Pictures. This is the institution I had done a case study on so I agreed strongly. Paramount Pictures not only distributes a high numbr of comedy films, but also BRITISH teen comedy films, such as Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging.
• Keeping a blog has helped me organize and keep up to date with my work. It has been extremely useful to go back to things, such as the films analysis, to check we are sticking to conventions, and also to make any changes to casting/shooting schedules.

Best Enemies Film Opening - FINAL!

This is the final, finished version of our film opening for Best Enemies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAjqBH4NAuY

Reshooting due to audience feedback

After looking at our audience feedback questionnaire, we found that a lot of our audience commented on the continuity of the last scene. Therefore, we re-filmed this today and it now flows a lot better than before. Mostly, we found that by using a pan in two different shots they flowed much better and did not jump as much. As the actor playing JJ was not available for our reshoot, we had another actor, Dot, take his place.

Next, we plan to get audience feedback for our new and improved piece, and then finish our evaluation presentation and individual evaluations.

Audience Feedback Questionnaire

1. Do you feel our teen comedy is similar to teen comedies you have seen in the past?
Very similar
Quite similar
Similar
Not very similar
Not at all similar

2. How do you feel teenagers are represented in our films?
_________________________________________
_________________________________________
_________________________________________
_________________________________________
_________________________________________

3. Which film company do believe would distribute our film?
20th Century Fox
Disney
Paramount Pictures
Working Title
DreamWorks
Film4
None of the above
Other (please state) ____________________________

4. Who do you feel our film would appeal to?
Male
Female
10-15
16-20
21-25
26+

5. How do you feel we appeal to our audience? Tick the appropriate boxes.
Character Types
Costumes
Setting
Plot
Props
Other (please state) _____________________________________

6. Do you feel this is a stereotypical teen comedy?
Yes
No

7. What do you feel we could improve?
___________________________________________________
___________________________________________________
___________________________________________________

Reshooting and music

Still in the process of editing our opening. We did have to reshoot the last scene again but now we're happy with how it looks. The only problem at the moment is finding music to accompany the first scene in the opening, as the song we use must be from a source with no copyrights. Currently I am trawling through a long list of unsigned bands on myspace.com, however to no avail, as I have found not one suitable song!

Filming and editing our opening (so far!)

We have filmed all the scenes in our opening. We did have to reshoot one scene as we felt it did not flow well with the rest of the action, but apart from that everything went OK. We have uploaded it and so far have put the shots together and added some transitions, however we still have a lot of work to do in order to get it perfect!