Jennifer Penaluna - Critical Evaluation - Q1

During the filmmaking process, we used the conventions of filming and editing in our film to ensure professionalism. In terms of filming, we made sure to keep to the 180 degree rule so that our film made viewing sense. This was especially important in the beginning scene of Jack and Emma entering the house when they walk through the living room and into the kitchen. We filmed the shots from entering the house to pouring the wine from one side of the couple so it didn’t confuse the audience.

We also used fast-paced editing and jump cuts for when Jack is buying, receiving and opening his remote. The fast-paced editing demonstrates the impossible quickness of receiving a package and makes it humorous. The jump cuts were filmed from different heights and on a 30 degree angle to make the jumps continuous. We decided to use jump cuts to show the speed and subsequent eagerness of Jack and his new life-changing package. 

 

The flower drop and give back sequence was quite difficult to do to ensure continuity and prevent from jarring and consequently looking unprofessional. The editing here was crucial and fiddly to get the consecutive shots to fit together seamlessly. Although I found it difficult to match the giving back of the flowers sequence, I think I managed to make it work and appear to run smoothly.

After coming up with the initial basis of our film, we decided that our film was a Romantic-Comedy which is evidently a sub-genre of both Romance and Comedic films. ‘Rewind’ is based around a “meet-cute” which is a humorous and/or awkward encounter between the main couple and this is what led us to follow other conventions of the Romantic-Comedy genre. We also incorporated a hybrid of Science-Fiction with Romantic-Comedy due to the technology of the remote control and making our film a different genre, which according to Steve Neale, is important for growth of genre as it attracts new audiences. Similar ideas to this include ‘the Time Traveller’s Wife’ which incorporates both Romance with Science-Fiction due to the main character’s love of his family and ability to time travel. Looking for ideas for our niche hybrid genre, I came across ’11 Minutes’ which is a short film that is also a Sci-Fi Rom-Com and this helped me to understand exactly what goes into this genre.

In accordance to Tom Ryall’s genre theory, we tried to stick to the narrative structures, themes, iconography and characters of Romantic-Comedies. Our narrative structure can be said to be typical of a Rom-Com due to the majority of the predictability of our storyline, i.e. the “meet cute” infers straight away that the couple become romantically involved, as well as that Jack will mess up on the date due to his initial awkwardness. The typical theme of love and striving for perfection is the main point of our film that everybody can relate to. Even if not in such a radical way as having a time rewinding remote, people aim for perfection – especially on an initial date. Iconography was very important to us as this is what the audience can easily identify with as being a Rom-Com; flowers, wine and a couple watching television are obvious Rom-Com traits without even knowing the plotline (pictured below). As for the characters in our film, we stuck to the very vague typicality of a main girl and a main boy being romantically involved but we wanted to subvert the gender stereotype and have the male as the awkward and unsure character, subsequently making the female the stronger and superior character throughout the film. This made the twist at the end (Emma having a remote control all along) a shock to the audience because she isn’t the strong one after all; she is just as susceptible to strive to perfection as Jack due to lack of confidence in herself, making the two equals at the end. 

As our film is mainly a Rom-Com with components of Sci-Fi intertwined, we realised that our film would have to primarily follow the conventions of a Rom-Com and the Sci-Fi part would be the innovative and different selling point. This idea follows Steve Neale’s theory of Repetition and Difference, meaning that audience pleasure was created through the predictability of the characters, iconography, themes and narrative structure and the unique selling point of incorporating Sci-Fi and technology into a Rom-Com. With this in mind, we created our poster and radio trailer with the remote control being the main point of the advert. The link between Rom-Com and Sci-fi exists already as a niche film market that manages to make big films due to the mix of traditionalism with a bit of difference. Films likes this include ‘Click’ which has a similar theme to ours in regards to the idea of a remote control for life itself (trailer below).

From the beginning, it was evident that Jack was an awkward kind of boy and so the audience would assume that he would mess up. From guessing this, the audience gains pleasure through feeling as if they have worked something out. So as not to be overly predictable and subsequently bore the audience, we manipulated the audience’s expectations right until the end where Emma has also had a remote and this hopefully left them surprised. After letting people view our film, typical out loud comments were:  ‘Oh, she has a remote too!’ which show the exclaim we were looking for and means that we were successful in terms of creating audience pleasure through both predictability and surprise.