PROJECT EVALUATION [08TH MARCH 2009]

Many forms and conventions were developed by following other movies and stereotypes to help us fulfil these. The fact that the main character is a female merges with a horror; usually the main character is a woman and the ‘damsel in distress’. This shows that ordinary women and girls in particular can achieve more then what they think they can. The forbidden love between the pair is very similar to many romances, such as titanic how the class difference between Jack and Rose was completely contrasting and that their love shouldn’t have existed and was frowned upon by their families. Titanic was one of our influences for our piece. Other influences included Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for the teacher scene, and for the opening shots, High School Musical 2. The use of sound and music was all used to try and heighten the suspense and make the audience feel tenser.

The social groups represented in our film would be students’ considering it is primarily based in a school, but also the teaching faculty. Those involved in the media may involve themselves through mini-broadcasts based inside the film itself. It is also possible that the audience may have been represented further on in reaction to the broadcasts. These are all represented simply by being in their own stereotypical environment, such as a school, at home or TV studio.
The type of institution that may distribute the media would either be some film company such as DreamWorks or maybe one that specialises in horror movies or chick flicks. It could also be shown on another platform such as the television with say the BBC or various other institutions which like to show films.

Our target audience for ‘’The Black Rose’ is primarily teenagers, although young adults may have some interest in the product. This is mainly because of the fact that the film is a horror, may interest teenagers due to a stereotype of a horror sleepover party. Because we also focused on the romance between the protagonist and antagonist, it may also entice a chick flick audience to, so stereotypically we could have an audience of male teens for the horror element and a female audience due to the romantic elements.

We attracted our audience to our film by the environment. It shows the school in a different light, being ‘supposedly’ haunted and later a scene of riot, unrest and man-slaughter bringing a new notion to their own stereotypes of a typical film based in school. It is addressed to the audience by the opening shot of an empty school location, enhancing the aura of a haunted school, so this brings out our genre.

I feel that since the preliminary I have come up in leaps and bounds, not just with the technical aspects of the project but also the more academic and mental parts, such as creating a film pitch and presenting our entire project to some of the media faculty brought out my confidence. I’ve learnt how unreliable technology can be and that maybe its not so good to become totally reliant on technology for everything and to back up pretty much everything we create.

The main task for our media coursework was to create a two minute opening of a film that we had to create. Firstly we were given the task to create a film pitch, storyboard, synopsis and anything else required for our project. We then presented these to some members of the media studies department who would either approve or decline our pitches. We were fortunate enough to get the go ahead straight away. Our film is called ‘The Black Rose’ and is of the thriller/chick flick genre. It tells the story of a young girl who soon discovers that her school holds a terrifying secret that could destroy her seemingly perfect life and shatter the lives of the entire student body of the school. We decided to call our piece the black rose, simply because the rose connotes love and beauty, passion and pleasure but the thorns could signify pain, anguish and blood. The colour black is that of darkness, possibly tainting the rose – all of this reflecting the events of the film and the reaction it has to Grace’s life.

A lot of things did go well for our piece. My partner and I got on really well, and we didn’t argue either which was a bonus! Our filming went really smoothly, which was quite a relief as I always presumed it would be the most laborious part of the project, considering my lack of experience. Getting the cast was easy enough because my partners’ friends were more then willing to take the parts of the characters we needed. Planning the project was pretty simple to do albeit stressful. Other successes include the fact we managed several drafts of the piece, managed to finish it for the deadline and have time to spare. I think the fact that we have a final piece as evidence of our work is good enough to say that some good things did come out of our own hard work!

My own personal opinion of what went wrong was more focused on the actual narrative then the technological aspects of the piece. I believe that the physical opening of the film was just to fast, My partner and I may have rushed the storyline and tried to fit to much action in the film early on, not considering that some of the events, such as the actual story of the ghost should have really come in a lot later, maybe after an actual killing in the school. We also had a lot of trouble with the sound and editing of the film, as we had lost our first copy of the film on the Apple Macs. We finally managed to figure out how to add sound and change the volume, which was useful and we also managed to use another program (Garage Band) to cut and edit some sound to use, similar to a voice over effect so we could have a successful shot reverse shot during the classroom scene. When we had our class review our film, they agreed that this one scene was too long and needed a variation of some sort to make it flow some more, hence why we added our shot reverse shot into it. In the film itself, I think it all pretty much runs very smoothly and the only minor error is during one scene in which our characters are talking, but the background noise was really loud due to the change-over period in school, so all the students were changing classes, and we had to rush so we could get to our own, so we just filmed that. It would have been sensible to have shot that scene again another day, but it was difficult due to our timetables and the fact that we needed to try and keep some sort of continuity going through out.

There were many themes and signifiers in our piece. The first and maybe more important theme really is love. Although there is no love displayed in the opening two minutes, the whole story line is based around love as the films antagonist and protagonist fight against their feelings before falling in love and ultimately ending in a tragedy as the ‘black rose’ meets his demise toward the end of the film. Other themes could include death (as many students and staff loose their lives) and from that grieving. Change is another important theme, partially because it’s the students’ final year at school and the movement from school to the real world, but also due to hormones and the fact that their school does become a wreck. Anarchy and the destruction of the school could be a metaphor for the breaking down of the educational system or more importantly the end of school for these students and that even though they may leave educational boundaries, they will always learn from mistakes such as that of the storyline in the film. Signifiers include the rose itself, and as described in the introduction, ghosts connoting the imaginary versus what’s real, the afterlife (again referencing to change and death).

To conclude, I personally feel that the media project was not just enjoyable and a practical experience for the course, but something that has so much that could be learned from. Our mistakes being one of them, but also for later on it life, if wanting to take something like this on for further education, giving us the experience and capability of being able to do so if we need to. I think ‘The Black Rose’ was at least a minute success, even if I personally feel as though it could have been a lot tenser and living more up to the expectations of horror/thriller.

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