Microdrama and narrative theory

For the micro-drama task we included Todorov's 5-part narrative formula, his theory was that every narrative can be broken down into three basic stages; Equilibrium,dis-equilibrium and new equilibrium.
1) A state of equilibrium - This was included when we first saw George getting ready for his date with his new girlfriend.
2) A disruption of the equilibrium by some action- George goes on the date with his girlfriend even though is already going out with two of her mates without any of them knowing.
3) A recognition that there has been a disruption- The two other girls see George on his date and meet his girlfriend to discuss it.
4) An attempt to repair the disruption- The girls decide George needs teaching a lesson and plan to get revenge on him.
5) A reinstatement of the equilibrium- All the characters agree to make friends at the tasks ends with them all singing.

In our task we also used the Thulow theory of the active question, some examples of the active questions that could apply to ours are; Will the other girls find out George is two timing them? Will George admit it? Will the girls get George back? Will they resolve their differences?

Final Synopsis/ The Pitch

Its Sex and the city meets The ring at Eden Lake!

Target Audience and BBFC

Our target audience is 15-24,therefore it would be a BBFC rating of 15. Through research of the BBFC we have decided this as it contains strong language, Contains strong threat and intense disaster scenes along with gory details. However younger viewer's can relate to the narrative through such things as watching films with friends and going to school, younger audiences maybe then attracted and try to reach the film through sources like downloads. The first opening two minutes don't include music for tension effects however if we were too produce the rest of the film we would include popular music to reach out to our target audience. Although our opening two minutes doesn't include any non-Caucasian characters; we hope that the narrative and youthful cast will attract some multi-ethnic audiences.

Although many horrors are seen as male gendered we also wanted to be able to appeal to a female audience. Therefore we included girls that we felt would attract the male audience by their clothes and personalities they would be signified as being heterosexual this would help with the male gaze theory. The 'male gaze' theory by feminist Laura Mulvey suggests that the film industry concentrates on the body of women rather than the skill of the actress and this is done for male pleasure. In "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", Mulvey calls for a destruction of modern film structure as the only way to free women from their sexual objectification in film. In addition to this at the same time we included a girl, which the female audiences can relate too and see her as a strong and powerful female, known in horror as 'the final girl', this has intertextual reference to Laurie Strode in Halloween.

In terms of class, we have decided that the socio-economic groupings that would best suit our film is C1C2DE; this is due to the idea that it is a conventional slasher and involves lower middle class characters. We feel it would reach the C1's as we are using a countertype of a strong brown haired girl, which they may be able to relate too. We recognise that the cast have regional Northern accents, however we are hoping to tap into a UK wide audience by the narrative but understand that this may affect foreign sales. However, such films as Full Monty which was filmed in South Yorkshire have been successful; with just over £2.5 million pounds film budget it made just under £2 million in its opening weekend, even with regional accents. Similarly budgeted films such as Son Of Rambow which was based in the South of England highlights advantages of regional films as it had an estimated film budget of £4,000,000.Things which could go to our advantage for filming in the North of England are such things as the amount of countryside, even though it is being filmed in the dark the audience will get a image of the surrounding areas and the outside of the house illustrates the area as well.

We would expect our audience to be fans of such films as scream, prom night and the grudge, which has a 3rd sequel coming out this year. Within our film there will be intertextual references to the film scream therefore this is something 'scream' fans can relate too and if we were to package and advertise this film we may look at the packaging of scream to try and reach out to the same audience's.

For our psychographic profile we would hope to achieve interest from both genders. For women; A wine drinking,partying, sex and the city obsessive. For the male audience; A larger drinking sexually active sky movie subscriber. Looking at recent box office films, One Missed Call is a film with similar narrative to ours; it involves a mid 20's cast and people die because of a phonecall, this relates to ours, as people will be in jeopardy because of a dream. In the opening weekend this film made in the UK £432,327, however this was an American produced film.

Prelim task

Prelim Task Evaluation

We had a German exchange student in the task who was one of our stereotypes we had planned to put her in German clothing and music to denote her nationality, but we realised after we didn't have time, which we learned from and as she didn’t have anything with her we also needed to organise when we would buy clothes which signified her nationality and how we were going to arrange the money for them .

We also had another stereotype of a northern cleaner. Planning the scenes before hand helped us although when it came to editing; the match on action didn't make sense. So we had to go back and add a clip in so it flowed, but we had a problem finding the same mise-en-scene that was used in the previous filming as we needed the transactions to be clear to be subtle.

We also learnt that working in a group of four people wasn’t as easy as anticipated because there were so many different ideas and opinion's it took double the time, also everyone wasn't getting a go at filming. To improve on this criticism we could of organised who did the filming when we were deciding the camera shots to make the task fairer and easier on all of us.

We hadn't taken into account the lightening, in some lights shadows appeared on peoples faces and when we wanted to add a few scenes in the next day that we felt we needed the lighting was different from the previous day. In our real task this shows that we will have to do all our filming at the same time and day as we are hoping to film outside and the weather can be un-predictable which could stop our coursework piece from flowing.

The transitions were too fast for the pace of the task, this cut dialogue short and gave it an amateur feel, although putting the transitions in gave us experience using imovie player which we can take advantage of when it comes to our final piece.

Overall the prelim task was a good exercise to give us practice with the camera that will save time when filming our real coursework task, we found many faults with this task that can help us to improve our final piece.

feedback

After showing people our final product we received some very positive criticism however also felt rewarded by people for our work.Some of the following comments were made;
- Our target audience was 15-24, this was recognised by our audience, they felt it was meant for a youthful audience as the actors were young and they felt the editing was fast pace. They also felt that it was intended for a middle class socio-economic grouping due to the mise-en-scene of the house and the actors regional accent. However it was expressed that it could gain audience of an older age as in the early twenties due to the narrative.
- As the cast were women that were shown, it was commented that the beginning could be signified as being a chick flick and if we were to do it again this is something we would need to work on. The fact that it had no men in as well meant that it was questioned that women had no male gaze theory.
- The lighting of the outside shots were effective and worked well with the narrative
- The narrative enigma at the end pf the film was said to be a 'good unexpected twist'
- The jerky camera style while following the 'final girl' made it more believable
- When the camera was following the girl it was effective and built tension how there was no sound yet you could still hear the footsteps.
- However comments were made that the wind was picked up by the microphone which gave unwanted ambient sound.
- Watching the girl walk out of the house signified that someone was watching her and set up the narrative well

Rough cuts

We decided not too use this clip as we started the recording too early on so therefore the audience had to watch more of the film on television than intended.We could of cut it shorter however we noticed the lighting didn't match in the following scene so we decided to re-shoot.



This cut we decided was amaturely filmed, we could hear footsteps on the camera which we could of blanked out but we wanted to put a synchronous sound over. The camera was also jilting too much and the picture quality wasn't that good on he night vision mode however it is meant to be a dream therefore the blurriness did work for us.



This is going to be our first scene for the film, we decided that the zoom into the front room was too sudden for the music that we are going to play non-dijectically over the scene.However we liked the idea of the canted angle and will use that in the real film

the group

We chose a number of three as in our preliminary task there was five of us and we found difficulties in getting the work done as everyone had a different opinion and we had to make time to make sure everyone had a go with the camera.Although there are four of us, one is a German exchange and therefore wont be with us for the full process of the filming.We are all friends therefore we are comfortable to be able to discuss ideas and are all in easy touch of each other if extra filming is needed.