A2 Media Evaluation

1. A2 Media Evaluation By Jamie Bevan Three’s a Crowd

2. Introduction to my film • The narrative of my short film revolves around two brothers who are in love with the same girl. One of the brothers get a date with said girl and naively asks his brother for advice. The other brother realises the date is with the same girl he is in love with and gives the brother bad advice in order to sabotage the date. He the sweeps in after his brother has taken her on a disastrous date and takes her for himself.

3. Forms and Conventions • We stuck to the usual forms and conventions of a Romantic Comedy by having two males fighting over a female. We dedicated around half of the short film to each brother to give the audience an insight into both of the brothers. However unlike most RomCom’s, in our film the bad guy ‘gets the girl’ which we believed would give a unique twist ending and would separate this film from the rest. This is the direct opposite of our researched movies ‘there's something about Mary’ and 50 first dates. We did however use the contrasting pairs side of comedy which has proven to be funny for example somebody doing the exact opposite of what they intend to do to create awkward situations, which is something we tried to recreate with the use of the ‘3 golden rules’. The brother gives his other brother ‘bad’ advice and he's uses it, which evidently doesn’t work and ends up making him lose the girl of his dreams.

4. Genre • Our film is around 5 minutes in length and therefore sticks to the usual forms and conventions of most short films. We decided too try and replicate the genre of a ROM-COM into a short film which I believed worked well. Unlike the majority of ROM-COM’s we did not however have enough time in our short film to establish character profiles which is unusual in stereotypical ROM-COM’s. This is something I believe I would take more care in if I were given the opportunity to do so again as it was clear in our audience feedback that not all of the audience got the fact the two boys were brothers, which could have been avoided by a fitting character profile. • We studied a few movies as realised we believed the funniest ones were the ones in which real life situations accrued so we tried to stick to that and made our short film more realistic than fictional as people were more likely to be able to relate to it.

5. Narrative Theory • Claude Levi‘s theory is used in my film as he believes in binary opposites in every movie for example good/evil. One of the brothers in the movie trusts his brother and takes his ‘bad’ advice as he is to naive to realise his brother is setting him up for a fall thus resulting in a good brother and a bad brother. This is also supported by Propps theory of character limitation in the fact there is a ‘Villain’ someone with a problem ‘distress’ and a main character in which the story follows. • Rolande Barthes theory also fits into my short film. He believes that there is negotiated meaning between the film and the audience which we play off in the film. The viewer will associate certain things with set meanings for instance a sunny meadow would almost always be used in a scene where something happy or exciting is happening. You can use this is comedy to great effect as it can be seen as funny when something you expect to happen doesn’t and in place a totally different occurrence. There are two examples of this used in our short film. The first example is towards the end of the movie when it appears that one of the brothers and the girl are under the covers in bed. The audience would associate that with a sexual reference but in fact they were revealed to be doing something completely innocent. The second example is when the evil brother is giving the good brother advice and then winks at the audience to let them know that the advice he has given is not is not the good advice his brother thinks it is.

6. Poster research This is the poster I initially imitated when producing my film poster. I like the colour schemes used with the red and the black and tried to replicates that in the logo for my poster and article. I also used this convention when listing the actors names on the poster. I again went with the traditional white back ground as this is what I gathered from my research of multiple posters. I chose this particular poster as I liked the layout (spread) and believed it was simple but effective.

7. My poster • I took the idea of the contrasting colours for the logo of ‘Three’s a crowd’ from the idea of the logo from ‘The proposal’. • I also used a white background as this seemed a very common theme in ROM-COM posters. • I felt I had a lot of white place on my poster so decided to fill it with the love hearts above the brothers head. Originally they were a red colour but I believed the colours matched to much to the logo so changed it to a pink. I created the right one first and simply flipped it for the left hand side.

8. Poster evaluation • Photoshop was used to create this poster and the first task was to use the magnetic tool to cut out the image above. This was done in two sections. The first section being the outer layer of the image and the second step, cutting out the inner background of the image and portray it onto a white background. I used a white background as when researching front covers I discovered that the majority of RomCom DVD covers used a white background and this is where I based my theory. I then imported 2 fonts from the website – DaFont, as I felt that the poster needed a unique font to help it stand out. The font is also in a cartoon style to show the viewer that this movie should not be taken to seriously. • After this was complete i still had some empty space I felt needed to be filled, so i found an imagine of a hollow love heart and imported it. I then duplicated the image and flipped it to give a mirror effect which could link in with the photo used bellow as there are two sides to the fight i.e. two love hearts. • I tried to match the colour schemes on the love hearts and the fonts together as I believed this would give it a professional look.

9. I used two different text boxes in the making of this logo so that the ‘d’ would fit in-between the ‘s’ and the ‘a’ I also resized them individually to make it easier to fit Article I used a larger sized ‘N’ in the start of the article, as when looking at examples of articles, it seemed very common to do so,. I also believed it added a professional feel to the article. Again, I kept the colour scheme the same for the article using red (italics) for the interviewees responses and kept the black (bold) font for the interviewer I cut out these 3 pictures individually but did however make sure they stayed the same size upon importing them into InDesign from Photoshop so that the feeling of depth would remain in the images I used a white background as this is the colour of the poster and it also made it easier to see the pictures as they contrasted against the background I kept the font the same in the page numbers to maintain the theme

10. Article evaluation • I used both InDesign and Photoshop to create this double page spread. I firstly imported the picture on the left into Photoshop and used the lasso tool to cut them out and saved them separately , this was I could rearrange them or resize them to my wishes. The original pictures were all taken in black and white, however on uploading them, were reverted back to colour, so upon importing into Photoshop I also converted to greyscale. • I imported all of the pictures into the InDesign blank document and began to craft my design around the images, using help from other magazines I had been look at for inspiration. I used the same font for the title that I used in the film poster which I think is important as it connects the two pieces. However in the short film I was unable to import the font I originally wanted to use so I compromised by using a slimier style and layout which I hope will be recognised. • When looking at other magazines I noticed that they usually have a colour scheme which is stuck to so that is what I tried to do in my double page spread. I have used black and white pictures with a red theme, as this fitted in with the oriental logo used in the poster.

11. What I learnt from my audience feedback… When showing our short film to our audience we received some constructed criticisms of the following… • The two houses used in the film were very similar and some viewers were confused to which house was which and I believe this is something that could have been avoided easily that would have made a major impact on the film. • It was also advised to us that there was not as much non diegetic sound used in the movie as in backing music which we strongly agreed with and it something that would definitely input if we were to do this project again. • Finally, the types of camera angles that were used could have varied a bit i.e. during conversations then shots could have switched between the two actors for e.g. a over the shoulder or shot reversal shot .

12. Mise-En-Scene We used this shot in our movie to symbolise how bad the date was actually going. You could tell from the expression from Lauren that she was not pleased with the situation. By showing the wing mirror in this shot it shows that they are still in the car and the McDonalds drink makes it obvious that the date is taking place in a McDonald's car park. We believed this to be a unique shot as we were able to show the surroundings outside of the car and still be able to see the two characters facial expressions.

13. Camera Work • We used a variety of camera shots to set the scene during our short film. This shot was purposely used to emphasize the fact that the bad character was watching the good character leave, which insinuates to the viewer that he is up to something This shot was used to show that he was leaving the house to go on his date as in the next scene we see him exit through the door Opening shot to the short film of a door opening, keeping the viewer waiting to see who will enter the room

14. Editing Effects • When editing, I tried to make each clip as short as possible as the film was intended to be around 5 minutes long. When the first draft was completed it ran to around 7 minutes long, therefore a lot of cutting was due. We used the program ‘iMovie’ which I believed to be a very useful program and would use it again. • The main effect we used was a simple fade effect as we needed to make the viewer believe that time had passed in the film and were advised that by using a fade would add a common media used trick to make it seem as if time had passed. • We did not use sound as much as we would have liked as we were beginning to run out of time, but would be something I would definitely add if I were to be giving another chance and producing this product. The sound we did add would be the ‘Bell’ sound in the transition from the good brother getting changed. This was used to symbolize that time had passed as he ‘pinged’ into his new clothes for his date. We also used the song ‘lets get it on’ by Marvin Gaye, as we believed this to be a popular song and would insinuate the vibe of intimacy. I believe this adds humour. Sound

15. How successful was my product and ancillary texts? • I believe all my products were a success as they all seemed to interlink. The same fonts and colours were used throughout all of them. I did have some trouble trying to recreate the font and colour in the opening credits of the film as the font was not in the program ‘iMovie’ therefore I picked a similar style and colour to try and stick to the original. I also believe that the article and poster represented my film well as in both, the images used showed a clear divide between the two boys with the girl being the centre attention. It almost immediately gives the reader or viewer an early indication of what the story or plot line is going to be about which can help attract viewers.

16. Technology • I used a variety of technology in the making of my film.. • iMovie – I used this program to import and edit my clips from the camera to create my short film • Photoshop - I used this to crop and edit my original picture files to import into InDesign. • InDesign – I used this program to create my poster and article for my movie by adding text and logo’s to the pieces • Word press – I used this website to track and blog my progress during the product of the movie and media pieces • Digital camera – I used this to film my short film

17. Skills I have gained I have gained skills in the following criteria… • iMovie – I have completely learnt how to use this program from scratch and I believe now have a good understanding a ability to use it. • Learning to use a camera properly was a skills I acquired and it made me realize how important the use of a tripod was to still shots which was found out the hard way after having to re-film several scenes. • I had already had experience in using Photoshop and InDesign but I believe I further improved my skills throughout this module.