Final product - 'every rose has it's thorns' evaluation

When thinking about ideas for what to do for our media product we came up with the idea of movie from the genre of 1940s/1950s murder. Based around the life of one young damaged girl and the last hours of her life leading up to her shocking death. When planning what we were going to do we decided that our audience was anyone who was interested in old films or Alfred Hitchcock as he was one of our influences when making our film.
When representing our lead character of ’Scarlett’ we wanted her to be glamorous and sexy and so that if you would see her it wouldn’t occur to you that she would have these many problems and that she would be such a damaged girl we did this by the way we dressed her and the way Scarlett acted, she was dressed nicely and classy and she walked with confidence. However the first scene in the film is a shot of Scarlett dead it then fades into a picture of a rose this is a juxtaposition of a dead body fading or turning into this beautiful rose. Also when thinking about representation we thought about class, age, gender and ethnicity. Scarlett was upper class which is why it was so shocking when finding out what she’s been through, she’s a young girl early twenties she’s a female and she white Caucasian simple because that was the common ethnicity in that time. When thinking about audience Our film wouldn’t maybe appeal to young children as they may not follow the film or understand the problems and issues that this girl has to deal with. In the planning stages we looked up a lot of Alfred Hitchcock films like ‘psycho’. We also looked up the film ‘gone with the wind’ to get an idea of how a man should act and the characteristics that the character of ‘Rhett Butler’ has in that film is what we wanted the male character in our film to have. We also looked up a lot of film noir to get a feel of the music that we should use and where it’s appropriate to use it. We also looked up film noir to get a feel of how the women act to get an idea for our character of ‘Scarlett’.

When planning our film and filming our film it was important that we included mise-en-scene and semiotics. A big part of our film was the rose that you see on more than one occasion. You first see the rose in the hand of Scarlett when she’s dead. You then see the rose 24 hours earlier in the pocket of the man Scarlett is talking too. A rose signifies beauty, love and romance and that’s what Scarlett is, she’s young, beautiful and has opportunity for love but she has secrets and is hiding things about herself that aren’t good and there like the thorns on the rose. It’s saying even glamorous and beautiful people even people you would maybe call perfect have their problems and have their secrets.
When thinking about the setting we needed to have a dark alley that didn’t get any of the background in as the houses are too modern to be in the 1940s. We decided to film with our backs to the houses, we also did it when it was dark as well. We also needed to film it next to a wall as a big part of our film was filming the shadow of the man on the wall.
When it came to make-up, all we had to concentrate on was Scarlett as the man in our film didn’t where any make-up as you never see his face. When Scarlett was dead you don’t see her face but the bit of her face we tried to make look pale with face powder. When Scarlett was alive we gave her distinctive eyes with eyeliner and red lipstick to make her lips stand out.
With the props there were only a few, but the props we did decide to use all had an important part to play in our film. The bag Scarlett’s carrying is for her too look for a lighter when she comes into contact with the man because she cant find one and the cigarette and match are props in themselves as using them shows the intimacy and passion behind the encounter between Scarlett and the man. The costumes we chose to use were quite important as you can tell what time it is by the clothes that people wear and it was important that our film looked like it was set in the 1940s and not like a modern film trying to look old fashioned. We chose to have Scarlett wear an old fashioned looking dress that we made a bit shorter with tights and heeled shoes we also decided to curl her hair as that’s how people had their hair back then. With the man in our film we decided to have him wear a suit and look quite smart as he is quite a powerful and rich man.
When filming, we had the camera for 4 days and chose to film at night as the beginning of the film is set at night. Most of our shots were pretty straight forward and we didn’t have to do many difficult angles or shots. We used a lot of long shots when filming Scarlett walking and tracking when following her walking. We used panning when filming Scarlett putting on her shoes and looking in her bag as we started at her feet and followed it up. We then used a close up of the man lighting Scarlett’s cigarette. We found filming simple and easy and we filmed it in 2 nights so we could spend more time editing our film.
When we started editing it was quite simple as our filming linked quite nicely together it was working out how to use the Imacs that was the trouble. Once we got the hang of using the Imacs we uploaded our film on to it we started to edit by cutting down our shots and getting rid of the bits we didn’t need we then started to put them into order and adding transitions like fading it and fading out. We chose to have the shot of Scarlett dead first and then the 24 hours earlier because it would have a bigger effect on the audience. As the first scene is her dead the audience would then want to keep watching to see what happened to this girl and why, that’s how we attracted our audience and also from the strong first shot it immediately tell the audience what the films about. After we finished putting the scenes together and was happy with it we then chose and added the music. We chose a piece of music that would fit the mood of the film and would play at the pace of Scarlett’s walking so that one didn’t out-tempo the other. I learnt a lot by using the Imacs it was good to learn how to put together a film, something that you wouldn’t usually be able to do and have the facilities to do so. Also it had a lot of additional things like transitions you could use. When using the Imacs you learn as you go along, as you edit your film, taking things away and adding things and that’s what was good about it when finding different things along the way gave us the opportunity to produce the best film we could.
Looking back at my preliminary task I think I have progressed a lot. I’ve become more confident in my direction of what would look best when filming and what angles and shots to use. I also became more skilled and confident when editing and using the Imacs I new what to do and I new what would look better. I also feel that in the planning progress we thought more about what we were going to do in detail thinking about representation, audience and the values of our film. We were also a lot more planned when filming, we new exactly what we were doing and where and when we wanted to do it, it wasn’t as improvised as my preliminary task. From the class evaluations the class thought that are film was artistic, that we had an interesting use of black and white and that it looked professional. Which was our aim as we wanted it to look authentic. Also the majority of the class also thought we fit nearly all of the criteria including things like selecting mise-en-scene, framing a shot, editing so the meaning was apparent and using varied shot transitions selectively. Because of all the improvement we’ve made and hearing back from our class we now have a film that we are very proud of.
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