Romance Film Audience Research

Create your own user feedback survey
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/JCC9DM6

I shared my survey through Social media sites to get a wider range of responses:



Results:

the majority of my surveyd group were in my primary audience, the were typically students aged 17-18 and female, although i also had some responses from my secondary audience. 

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my results show that the majority of people would most like to watch a film about the unrecognised virtue narrative idea. I have decided from my results that i will be doing this narrative.

the majority of my surveyed audience chose romantic comedy as being their preferred sub genre of a romance film, meaning i would have a more successful movie if i created a romantic comedy. 

the most chosen name idea of the ones i suggested was "Endless" but coming close to it was "School Bully?" so this tells me i should take inspiration from these two titles for my film name.

the average time that people suggested my trailer should be was  around 1 minuet 50 seconds, which I think is a a good time for a trailer as well as it is seems like a good length to fit the data i need into it as well as not long enough to bore a audience.

this questions was arguably unneeded as the results are contradicting and non informative, i think i could have made this question better by including an example of a trailer. this does however mean i can assume that my trailer should convey the right amount of information about the film if i follow existing trailers rules of trailers.

from this i found this most important feature to include for an audience was a basic outline of the plot, and the release date of the film. this gives me hindsight into what is most or least important to put into my trailer when i am making it. 

most of the people who took my survey said that good editing was crucial to a film trailer, this shows me that i should spend the most time on my editing of my trailer.

The overall for the opinion on clothes of a romance film was that the actors should wear casual clothes for the most part. this means that I have less to worry about for my mise-en-scene as i can ask my actors to wear what they usually would as apposed to having to get different clothes.

Genre Reasearch

I did my genre reasearch on romantic dramas as my group mate was doing this work on romantic comedy

Narrative ideas

The Unrecognised Virtue

A girl starts off in school and a guy always bullied her so she set her dreams to fight through all the odds and devote her life to becoming successful and overpowering the bully. However, she didn’t realise that what she saw as bullying was the boy trying to protect her. He devoted his life to protecting her, anything that happened to her she always caught him trying to protect something from happening to her but at an incriminating time.
Act 1- Set upAct 2- ConfrontationTemporary solution- She avoids talking to him and passes his jobs onto him through other people.Act 3- ResolutionA flashback scene of a school setting in which some boys, main guy in the foreground, and the girl runs away in tears whilst clutching her books to her chest. However, the boy was in the front as he was trying to hold the guys back which gave the girl time to run away. The girls eyes were so filled with tears she couldn't tell the difference so being shot from her point of view shows the audience what she sees and initially makes them feel sorry for her.
The girl overcomes her fears and there are shots of her at present in her new and successful career in which she has created out of determination of this guy dragging her down over so many years. However, when she thinks that she has finally gotten past this guy that she believes has traumatised her for so many years he turns up out of the blue with a job in her business.

He approaches her and tries to tell her of how she had got him wrong the whole time and confesses his love for her. He explains the bullying situation and the audience sees the flashback scenes again as a whole, not just from her perspective.
Plot twist
She is already in a happy and flourishing relationship with a girl, that helped her when she believed she was being bullied, so leaves him heart broken.
- Georgina Dunshee, group mate.

First Thoughts 

The Wanderer but gay

a new student and a class clown.

Mei enters school for the first time, shes excited for school to start but nervous. Mei looks over the reception and sees a girl with brightly coloured hair sitting in the waiting seats. Alex is a class clown, she works hard but can't help but disrupt classes and teachers with pranks. when Mei, the reserved exchange student who is focused on work with a kind face and shy attitude towards sociability. Alex finds herself with a school girl crush on Mei but finds all her confidence and cockiness melts into a puddle around her, when she tries to joke its rude and hurtful. at the start of Mei's first term Alex made it a mission to bring her into a world where there's more than just work. in the end its Meis' world Alex is brought into, when Alex's grades start dropping she is pulled into the head office over and over. Mei comes forward and offers her helping hand. when things start to get more romantic Mei seizes up and avoids alex, shes scared of how her family might react. when she starts to search for a different school alex confronts mei, worrying about her health and education. 

Horror genre

( set up ) the trailer starts with a slow zoom in on a book with a bow wrapped around it. then cuts to a teenage girl looking out of a classroom window, she is bored of the lesson she is in.
( development ) the girl walks into the room with the book, the book is in the middle of the floor. she kneels down in front of the book. images of the girl running from something quickly pass by as the girl puts her hand of the book. she slowly starts to undo the bow on the book as the clips continue. she opens the book and the camera shuts down after having "errors". the next scene is the girl running again, looking back at something.
( the resolution ) the book lying on the floor open. the clip of the girl undoing the bow is played in reverse.

The Quest

when a school girl looses a family air loom she challenges herself to track it down. when her friends tell her to drop the search she is heart broken and gets angry at them all for not supporting her. when a boy her age promises to help it turns out badly.

Narative Theory

a narative is the way the story is told. considering the order the audience is told the information in the story, any narative devices that are used, the structure of the plot and the character types used. a narrative isn't the story it, narratives recount the events of a story.

Syd Field's three act structure

the theory there are three acts to most stories 

act 1

25%

set up

turning point

act 2 

50%

development

turning point 2

act 3 

25%

the resolution

The first act is usually used for exposition, to establish the main characters, their relationships and the world they live in

The second act, also referred to as "rising action", typically depicts the protagonist's attempt to resolve the problem initiated by the first turning point, only to find him- or herself in ever worsening situations

The second act, also referred to as "rising action", typically depicts the protagonist's attempt to resolve the problem initiated by the first turning point, only to find him- or herself in ever worsening situations

for example:

Torodov's theory of disequilibrium

similar to Syd Feild's theory, 

equilibrium - disequilibrium - re-equilibrium

the equilibrium is when everything is normal, or at peace. the disequalibrium is the problem, where everything goes wrong, like a character dying or being seperated. the main issues and problem of the story. the re-equilibrium is the solution, finding the way back, coming to terms with the loss of a loved one

Propps Theory of action

the theory that there are specific charcter types in stories.

The villain (struggles against the hero)

The donor (prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object)

The (magical) helper (helps the hero in the quest)

The princess (person the hero marries, often sought for during the narrative)

The false hero (perceived as good character in beginning but emerges as evil)

The dispatcher (character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off)

The hero [AKA victim/seeker/paladin/winner, reacts to the donor, usually marries the princess

Levi Strauss' binary opposites

Stauss claims that narratives are centred around binary opposites. polar opposite like good/evil, small/big, light/dark

Rolamnd Barthes' codes

Barthes identified a number of codes used in narratives to allow audiences to understand plot development, 

the three main codes being:

action codes : things that happen dictate an action that will occur (placing characters hand on a gun : likely they will shoot)

enigma codes : things that are seen that raise questions for the audience ( a letter falling out of a characters bag : who will pick it up? what does the letter say? what will happen?)

cultural codes : objects or places that are seen that allow the audience to identify quickly with a specific culture (the eifle tower to link with france, a yellow taxi with new york) 

Preliminary Evaluation

1. What new skills, techniques and knowledge have you learnt from producing the preliminary activity?

I have learnt how to use a video camera and set up a tripod for filming from this activity, this helped me by being able to help film parts of the preliminary task so that i could get the footage that i wanted specifically for my trailer. I also gained the knowledge of how to get smooth panning, taking, and tilt shots through use of tripod, this helped considerably to fit the brief of shot types called for. Through the use of the tripod me and my group were able to get a range of shot types including these smooth moving shots which were kinder on the eyes than shaking handheld shots.

through the editing of the trailer i also learnt a lot about how to use iMovie, i became confident with the software and found it easy to use, adding effects to clips of film and audio. it was very interesting to learn first hand about the software and i explored different ways to add to my movie trailer. i feel one of the aspects i found most interesting was messing with the opacity of the video clips, this added an interesting effect to the film when it was layered over another piece of film, i enjoyed the creepy effect that it gave to the images and chose to use it in my trailer when ever the victim was visible, this made her seem ghostly and jarring to the viewer.

2. How did you work with other people in your production team?  What role did you play in the production? Would you have done anything differently?

Although my group was put together through chance, after the initial awkwardness of talking to new people i believe that i grew to work confidently with them, i believe i played more of a role of a form of a director, although i also helped my group out through filming a few scenes, for the majority of the process i brought together our actors and arranged the time and place for filming which fit around the needs of my group and actors, i was flexible and we were able to get all of our filming done in the same day. i also directed the actors and camera operative to where the script, shot list and storyboard called for. if i could have changed anything about the production, i would have tried to take more of a leadership role in the group earlier on as the majority of the planning was in very short notice for some of my actors. i would also have made sure that my actors had more time to practise for their scenes as some of the voices in the scenes felt heavily acted out. if i had planned forward for my group i could have given my actors more time ahead of the filming and been able to fully explore all of the places that we needed to film in.

3. What parts of the process did you find most challenging?  How did you overcome this?

I personally found planning for my group the most challenging. as somebody who normally is lead by other people and is very timid around new people for a long time the immediate time frame between meeting my group and trying to figure out a fully developed plan which could fit to them and the script which i wrote from a group members shot list was overwhelming for me at first. organising myself enough for my group was a difficult task for me but through the other two members not being overly eager to fill the role i was jumped at the role in a last ditch effort to pull my group through this task. i over came this through contacting my group members out of school and asking some friends who i knew had finished college and were likely to be free.

4. How successful was your final product?  Did it meet your expectations?  What are its strengths? What would you do to improve it if you were to do it again? Does it effectively make use of narrative, genre and representation?

I feel like my product could have been better through many different aspect i feel like there were parts which were successful for example I'm proud to say that I chose appropriate scenes out of the mass we filmed, I feel like this gave me the edge on my editing as i had more choice to get the perfect impression out of the film which should be mystery or an intimidating atmosphere to the trailer. another thing i see as a strength is the inclusion of most if not all of the shot types asked for us in the brief, while some were difficult to include into the trailer, like the extreme zoom shot where I recognise there were some issues, although we found sticking to the script was quite difficult when put into real life situations. other shots i found much easier to include for example the low angle shot of the blood on the tree, i felt the shot was very effective for the horror genre as the connotations of low angle shots create an alarming scene, which intimidates the audience. i also feel like while there are areas in the sound i could have improved as the actors voices were filmed in the park, but i feel the ambient music i used from the i movie sound library fitted well with my edited product.

Movie trailer

this is my Preliminary trailer which I created with imovie.

summer homework

Film one

Skyfall
British action/thriller
produced by Eon Productions
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Columbia Pictures

Conventions of action/thrillers are

• lowkey lighting
• themes of danger
• heroes/villans
• guns and other weapons
• moderate gore and violence
• mysteries
• phycopaths and murderers
• quick paced edditing
• fast paced or intense music

Skyfall - Official Trailer

Camera : the camera work in the trailer for Skyfall includes multiple shot types, which are used to represent the protagonist and antagonist as well as other characters in specific ways. for example the two shot of 007 and Q showing them as having a friendly rivalry as the older experience hardened spy and the new and young quartermaster that 007 finds hard to take seriously that the younger man is to supervise him. The shots with Bond and Silva show much more of a sinister rivalry where Silva is very condescending towards bond and taunts him, he refers to M as "mommy" mocking Bonds loyalty to M through low camera angles as well as many other shot types.
Sound : the soundtrack of the trailer is very fast paced matching the cuts and energy of the trailer. where the scenes depicted have more of a serious and less action packed fighting scenes the music comes to a lull, for example when Bond is in Ms house there is no or very quiet music which  shows the drama of the scene and brings in a focus on the emotions of the characters, how M speaks so angrily saying "where the hell have you been" although her expression is hurt.
Editing : in the trailer the editing is very fast paced. there are many cuts after each other to emphasise the action taking placed through the film, at the end of the trailer the cuts change to slower fades to black, showing slower development through the movie. however when Bond is shot the editing is slowed down, the camera follows him as he falls. as he enters the water hes is once again in slow motion to show the emptiness of him or serenity of the man as he is considered dead.
Mise-en-Scene : the mise-en-scene of the trailer is generally very formal, James Bond is wearing a suit even as he is fighting on the dusty train which highly contradict each other as one is highly formal while the dust and dirt of the country has the impression of poverty. in the scenes where bond is "enjoying death" he is dressed down to shorts, and over all looks far more casual. the locals also match him in casual dress. the scene shows bond drinking while a scorpion  crawls up his arm and an excited crowed watch eagerly. this gives the impression that bond has been roped into the situation or is showing his daredevil side to impress the locals.
Representation : the representation of  the people in the trailer both break and enforce stereotypes. while Bond, the white male hero of the film is shown as endlessly loyal, strong and masculine super spy who seduces every woman he comes across and has sex alot, he is also shown to have weaknesses after his "death" where he cant hit the target, where he takes time to himself and lets himself go, drinking at bars seemingly doing nothing else, Moneypenney is a woman who breaks and enforces stereotypes just like bond, the part of the trailer where she shaves Bond with a cut throat razor shows her as a sexual interest, someone who is in the male gaze. but she is also shown as someone strong and reliable although the trailer shows her shooting Bond after M tells her to take the shot, showing weakness in both her and M.

Film two

Captain America: civil war
american super hero
produced by Marvel Studios
Distributed by  Walt Disney Studios and Motion Pictures

Captain America : Civil War relatable 

Camera: the establishing shot is of a wintery bleak apparent wasteland with flat topped cloud covered mountains in the background, the camera is moving forward by use of crane shot, the movement is very smooth and makes the mountain and flat land look very ominous. when the avengers are sitting in the meeting the pull focus is changed from scarlet witch who is very close to the camera to show her reaction to the fall of sarkovia and then focuses on captain america who warns that "that is enough" seeing her comfort which shows him as a leader figure at the table.
sound: the non-diagetic sound track starts as slow paced chilling music, there is a voice over of captain Americans voice as the music builds into more intense the classical music shows suspense and foreboding in the action which contrast each other. these contrasting features of the trailer represents the troubled heroes as they fight against each other which in turn contrasts the stereotypes of the superhero genre where the heroes fight for the well being of the public. the voice overs of the characters in the movie give some plot away, to entice the audience and make them intrigued in the movie.
Editing: the trailer has a lot of edditing in it as with super hero movies the effects are almost impossible to pull of with out CGI. editing between scenes uses uses continuity cuts to move from out of focus scarlet witch to another angle of captain america next to black widow. the use of fading in from black is used to emphasise emotion of the scene for example the fade into sarcovia falling brings the impact of the fictional losses  and damage done.
mis-en-scene: the mise-en-scene of the trailer is very varied. while iron man is wearing a high tech suit with his face covered suggesting protection and strength through riches captain america wears thin clothing and has visible lower face and eyes, he fights with a shield against guns, which has connotations of him being peaceful. a force of protection for the american public. black widow through the movie wears normal civilian clothes and even heels in some of her fight scenes. this represents her as a powerful force to be reckoned with but still portrays her in the male gaze in skin tight clothes and heels as they wouldn't be described as easy to fight in.

Created with Padlet