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.

Jennifer Penaluna - Critical Evaluation Q2

Rewind on Prezi

Jennifer Penaluna - Critical Evaluation - Q3

Jennifer Penaluna - Critical Evaluation - Q4

We initially set up a blog on Blogger of which all our media portfolio would be put on to enable us to use different types of media in one place throughout the making of the film. I was introduced to this last year and so had a years worth of experience with it at A2.

We were able to upload videos that we created on Final Cut Express onto YouTube and then embed them onto Blogger so they could be viewed directly on our blog. For this to happen, we had to create a YouTube account. We created a group account with the username ‘blankpagepro’ so that we could upload and manage our videos together.

Along with videos, we can upload photos to our blog which allows us to show our further ideas in picture format, making the blog a multi-media platform and interesting to view rather than just writing and essay structures.

Ebay helped us to be creative by allowing us to create a pretend selling page for our remote control prop in our film, making the intertextual link between the viral advert and selling page which were incorporated into the actual film.

We used the Macs for all of our media production process, which featured Celtx and Final Cut Express. We used Celtx to create the script and was very easy to use as it uses the correct format for a script. We used Final Cut Express for all of our editing throughout the filmmaking process including my Video Diary, the Viral Advert and the title sequence along with the finished film.

For the filming, we used a HD camera which I did not use last year so this was a development for my confidence in my camera skills. As I was in most of the film, I did not get chance to film much so my input to this was limited but I got to see and understand how to use the camera through observation. The sharpness of the image that this camera gave us made our film look a lot more professional than last year. For my video diary, I used the smaller handheld cameras as they were more portable but a less sharp image.

A voiceover was included in our film which meant that we had to use a Zoom recorder to record both mine and Joe’s voices. This was a new experience for all of us and we had to quickly learn how to use it. We missed a part of Joe’s speech and me and Jade had to re-record it whilst we were filming. We were also able to turn the sound level up when necessary on Final Cut Express due to one part being held further away from Joe and subsequently sounding naturally too quiet.

Final Cut Express enabled us to be creative with our film and incorporate the ‘rewind’ feature. We wanted to show the shots in reverse to fit with the theme of rewinding to make the effect of the remote more plausible. We were able to edit the shots to play backwards which was exactly what we anticipated. Some of our shots were the wrong colour due to filming on different days in different levels of natural sunlight and they weren’t continuous. We were able to edit the balance of light on Final cut, making our film look a lot better.

We also used Photoshop to create our poster in a professional looking way, which was a step up from last year. After every group member contributed a poster, we chose a favourite and used this to create in Photoshop so we knew exactly what we wanted it to look like so it was quite straightforward.

Along with other group members, I used Facebook to gain audience feedback which proved useful. Before we had fully finished the film and wanted some feedback on what was missing, I posted our film on Facebook to people directly asking for comments which we took on board, allowing our creativity to blossom further.