I can Explain

This is the final cut of our AS1213 coursework, a film opening with the title, I can Explain.

Editing update

FINALLY we have completed our final piece.  It took us nearly 2 months, but we now have a completed 2 minute film opening! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

Editing update

One more tiny bit.. Just one more, and then we have finished, finally finished!  Today Kim, Jess and I filmed the titles of our media product.  Now, all we need to do is speed it all up and make any finishing touches and we're there! Counting down the days..

EVALUATION - Question 7

EVALUATION - Question 6

EVALUATION - Question 5

Question 5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

Way back in October we decided that we wanted our film to be a romantic comedy.  In order to gain some information on what our target audience wanted from a film of this genre, we conducted some interviews and filmed their responses..

The questions we asked included:

• Their name, age and occupation
• What they look for in a romantic comedy?
• What romantic comedies they like and why?
• What, if anything, distracts you in a movie?
• What sort of actors do they like to see in romantic comedies and why?
• What didn't want to see in romantic comedies, What were they bored of?

From this, we found out that for an audience to watch and enjoy a romantic comedy there has to be a happy ending, an attractive, yet identifiable female protagonist, an attractive male protagonist, a fairly complex plot and a strong theme of romance, but with comedy intertwined through.

With these ideas in mind, we drafted two ideas incorporating these themes, and, with the help of a large sample of people from our target audience, picked one idea.  We were also given feedback, which we took on board when producing our media product.

We therefore plan to attract our audience using:



Comedy:

There is a strong comedic theme running through the whole of our media product.  We created this using actors expressions and humorous continuity between the two aspects of the opening, such as when Jay can't remember Jonathan and Bridget's names, and Jonathan refuses to use Jay's name.  We also incorporated humor into our script, such as the BJ scene between Jonathan and Jay and the interruption of the kiss.  The aspect of comedy, whilst quintessential to the genre as a whole, appears especially important in attracting our secondary audience of males under 35.

Romance:

Various members of our target audience mentioned the importance of a happy ending, and how 'the guy must get the girl' at the end, so we have ensured romance plays a large part of our film opening.  This is, obviously,  a large part of the romantic comedy genre, and one that we, and our target audience deem important.

Attractive protagonists:

The importance of attractive actors within our media product was something we valued highly when choosing our leading roles.  This ties in with the romantic aspect of our film as both males and females (especially at the lower end of our target audience) claimed they would prefer to watch a film where the protagonists were attractive.  Because of this, and our very much mainstream audience, we chose to cast conventionally attractive people in order to appeal to the wider majority. 

 

Enigma and plot complexity:

Throughout our film opening there are many examples of enigma, which increases the perceived complexity of the plot. For example, we wonder straight away how the two couples are related, which creates depth.  Another example would be why does Jonathan dislike Jay - What has he done to cause this? All of this enigma means the audience are forced to pay attention with the hope that one of these questions will be answered.  This is one of the most effective ways to keep an audience interested.

         


In conclusion, we have chosen to attract/address our audience by giving them exactly what they want - A classic romantic comedy starring attractive protagonists, with strong aspects of romance (the basis of our film) and comedic references, whilst adding plot complexity by using enigma and an additional, very traditional, feeling of forbidden love between the leads.

EVALUATION - Question 4

EVALUATION - Question 3

Evaluation - Question 3 from victoriapritchard

Some Working Title films have done really well, Notting Hill for example, who, with budget of $43mil made nearly 10x that at the box office, and Four Weddings and a Funeral, the film that really shot Working Title into the limelight, whose budget was $4.4mil, and made nearly $250mil.  The creators of Working Title claim the reason for this is their foolproof formula of a british film, with an american star, and it certainly works.

EVALUATION - Question 2

Evaluation q2 from victoriapritchard

EVALUATION - Question 1