Evaluation Task- Andrew Games

Evaluation Task- Andrew Games 13DMH

When making the film, myself and Duncan had to keep many things in mind and analyse every step we would make with this project to make sure that it what we were doing would be necessary, in terms of the story and media conventions. The film we decided to make would be a comedy, as after many previous discussions about what genre of film we would do, none of us agreed on the ideas that we had in mind. Duncan and I sat down with our teacher and agreed on doing a comedy film. When deciding this, our heads immediately clicked into gear and ideas were pouring out of our brains to the point when we both felt really confident about making a comedy film which we knew would now be possible to do.  A television series called ‘The Inbetweeners’ influenced us on the type of humour we wanted to have in our film. The humour was slapstick with a crude setting, mainly taken from situations that teenagers may experience which is similar to the content of the ‘Inbetweeners’ series. It was also decided that Duncan would be the camera man for the film, whilst it would be my duty to edit the film piece by piece, including editing music and introducing media conventions to the film.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our media film would use similar material to the ‘Inbetweeners’, mainly on its humour. Despite this, Duncan and I always tried very hard to differ from the TV series as much as possible so we could make our product fresh and new. We would do this buy thinking of a scenario that could be featured in our film and research the ‘Inbetweeners’ archive to make sure that our idea was too similar or accurate to a scene or story from the ‘Inbetweeners’ series. Thankfully, none of the material we thought of was similar to the ‘Inbetweeners’. Our film however, does challenge media conventions of the ‘Inbetweeners’. In our film, we used the ‘flashback’ sequences. The flashback sequences would be in black and white to represent the past. This sequence would be used to represent a scenario from the past whenever a character explains the story. This was influenced by 2009 film ‘The Hangover’, as whenever the characters tried to remember the night before from their hangover; the flash back sequences would be in black and white to represent the past, or a thought. Throughout research, it is noted that the ‘Inbetweeners’ have never used this convention in any of their episodes. This media convention gives us the advantage of using story depth and to be a little bit more creative with our film. We also used the hangover idea, similar to the ‘Hangover’ film, as the main character in the film would be trying to remember exactly what happened on the night of the party. The twist however, is that there are rumours going around about the main character, and it is up to him to decide which rumour is true.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

 The ancillary tasks also play an important role within the project, as they would attract an audience to see the film in the first place. The two ancillary projects we chosen for the film would be a film poster and a radio trailer. For the film poster, Duncan would be taking the pictures whilst I would be editing them. One of the things myself and Duncan tried to avoid was to fall into the trap of making our film poster

Stupid and slapstick, like most film posters such as 'Nacho Libre' & 'Don't mind the Zohan'. Many of these posters have characters of the film pulling pathetic, unnatural facial expressions to deliberately look stupid. These posters are so bad; it shows how desperately hard their trying to make the film look like a comedy. Because these posters get so cringey and off putting, the public is drawn away from watching the film, which is just the cause of bad advertising. Despite the fact that the film was quite silly itself, we would want that quality to shine more during the film itself rather than the advertisement.  Duncan chose Luke (who played the transvestite in the film), to stand being me whilst I'm reading the Leon Trotsky book. Luke would be pulling a facial expression that would show that he is taking the mick out of me.

Duncan chose an image, the image he chose would reveal my character description within the film. The fact that Luke was mimicking me whilst I was reading a Leon Trotsky book showed that I am the butt of everyone's jokes, as well as the fact that I am trying to be intelligent and to hide my clumsiness and idiotic, bizarre behaviour. What really sparks the joke off is that Leon Trotsky was a Russian general/communist in the Second World War, and a character of my description is trying to study the backgrounds and persona of a Russian communist. Almost as if I’m trying to come across as an intelligent leader of some sort.

When editing, I decided to make the image as colourful as possible. The colours I chose were colours that were already on the picture itself. An example of this is black, white and red, as they were the colours located on the Trotsky book, and I would use these colours to create other things, such as the titles.

Already, the poster has already linked with the main product, as there both trying to show exactly what genre of film it is and that the image on the poster is necessary and accurate to what happens within the film and to show off the main characters description throughout pose and facial expression, as well as the fact that the title of the film and the description within on the poster itself would hint about the films content and what to expect.

The other ancillary project we did was a radio trailer. The radio trailer would attract the audience by using dialogue and music. Duncan chose the music for the radio trailer, the music he chose would be Sublime by Santerina. A slow, yet up beat acoustic instrumental that is used for most radio trailers in comedy films, to give a funny but light hearted feel.  There are also quotes from the film on the radio trailer that would hint the storyline of the film. The trailer has been made pretty simple so it is easy and simple for the listener to listen to, especially if the listener is driving a car. Unlike the poster, the radio trailer doesn’t reveal much, if not enough of the film. Apart from the trailer narrator (myself) saying “Funniest Film of the year” and many other similar quotes, it’s still not as effective, because it is hard to advertise without using too many quotes from the film which would spoil the film itself.