EVAULTION

My Mest 2 brief is spilt into two parts; broadcasting and print work. The 
broadcasting section of the work involves filming and teamwork. Therefore this meant within the coursework, I worked with Pratisha and Nasteha. This also meant that we were extremely dependent on each other and it involved a lot of collective responsibility. However, the print work was completely separate and individual work. The overall theme of our brief has urban, underclass thrill feel to it and this was really showcased within our directorial choices for the brief.

The pre-production was heavily important and valuable as it helped shaped our ideas for the brief and gave us immense confident in our plan. Films that provided us with excellent insight to be able to formulating our ideas at the time were films such as 'Memento' which has completely different story-line but has an extremely creative and exploration narrative structure that we took interest in. Similarly to our film, the movie 'Se7en' followed a similar narrative structure which includes heavy uses of flashback’s and plot twists. Lastly, a film recommended by a classmate of ours was 'Strawberry films' this movie is centred around feminism and female empowerment as our film has all female cast which is quite unconventional. This is noteworthy as the entire cast for this film is female and there tends to a lack of positive representation of women in the film industry and this is due to the fact that the film industry is heavily dominated by men on screen and also off screen. The inspiration comes from a foreign film called Mustang that also centred around femininity and struggles of being a female in the Turkish society which is heavily overlooked in the media.  Also, the cast of my film is made up of ethnically diverse women and even the two non biological sisters in the film are from two separate minority groups. This is something i am highly proud as the  filmmaker. A lot of these idea plus what worked well in our preliminary project helped finalise our plan for our production.

The core and dominant target audience are the underclass teens and young adults from within London aged from 14-24 who would relate and identify closely with the characters and narrative of the film. Also in terms of psychographics, they would be classified as strugglers and mainstreamers. 
In addition, the secondary target audience  would be the abc1 25-45 years old middle class educated people who have a passion for involvement within society and may be intrigued by the concept of the film. The non-primary target audience would be mixture of explorers and reformers in terms of psychographics. However, it is important to take note that these two groups may overlap or intertwine. Also, the last group of audience would be made up of international viewers due to the short film’s urban, social real and arthouse appeal which is a lot more poplar in other countries such as France and Turkey.  The wide variety of viewers is a strength due to different appeals and the fact that the movie brings awareness to lack of diversity and incorrect representation of young people and women. However, the numbers of the non-primary audiences may be small such as international viewers as the movie does not cater to them for example language barrier.

The scenes within the film were heavily crafted and the techniques used in terms of editing and camerawork were deliberate and organised carefully. For example, the constant binary oppositions and contrast shown between the protagonist and antagonist of the film such as the locations used in their primary scenes, the clothing used and angles shots. This is done deliberate to allow the audience to box and stereotype the characters and un-initially justify their reasons for why they think the murder occurred which is revealed at the beginning of the film due to our narrative style. This point is reinforced through the Medhurst's theory which suggests that stereotypes can be seen as shorthand identification that provides an easy point of understanding text when needed to communicate quickly with the audience. Secondly, despite the fact that this is a thriller and crime genre film, there is no use of blood or weapons as prop within the murder scene as our short film emphasises on the build-up and aftermath of the murder rather than the actual act of murder. This idea came from films such as The Lovely Bones. This means it is left for the audience to create gruesome images in their mind. I believe it has a much more effective impact on the audience and doesn’t allow the audience to stop thinking strategically about the plot. Lastly, there a lot of voice over in certain parts of the films to fill the audience in on the character’s state of mind. This allows the audience to relate the protagonists on a deeper level and this is a strength as it allows us to manipulate the audience thoughts to be levelled and in sync with the motion of the film. This also helped eliminated a technical difficult we faced a lot whilst filming outside which was the sounds of the cars and wind. 
However for the scenes that didn’t include voice-overs, this was fixed by 
re-shooting several times with these obstacles in mind.

I believe that my print work meets the key conventions of arts centre brochures as the front cover greets the readers with a big, black and bold title and an extremely eye catching central image. The focal image is appealing as it centres the protagonist of the film morphed with backdrop of London skyscrapers which conveys the setting of the film. Other conventions of Art-house brochures which have been are clear colour scheme and similar use of fonts and text throughout with logos and reoccurring symbols. A strength of my print work was I was effectively able to create grungy effect throughout my front cover, double page spread and feature page without looking unsophisticated or messy. However, a weakness is the usage of landscape for my double page spread which meant I had to be very weary of my placings of texts and images. Lastly, a plus for my print work was the chosen centralised images which were the protagonists of my film which came out extremely aesthetically pleasing.

There was a numerous amount of unconventional and conventional aspect within our films when its comes to representation. Firstly, the two main protagonist come from two different minority groups and are even culturally diverse from each other. Although this is not something that changes the narrative, this helps change the perceptions and stereotypes that are reinforced within the film industry. In addition, this allows our audience which is mainly underclass teens from the multicultural city of London to be able to identify and relate to our character better. This is in relations to the Perkins theory which states that stereotypes have an element of truth to them therefore it is our responsible as filmmakers to represent accurately. Only 5.3% of the film production workforce, 3.4% of the film distribution workforce and 4.5% of the film exhibition workforce were from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds in 2012 which conveys why the diversity is rare on the big screen. Despite this, our group has been able  to tackle a key issues within the film industry.

My online film blog page would be heavily user-generated content similar to the tag London campaign from the film 'Ill Manors' and 'share a coke' campaign by coca-cola which significantly boosted the popularity and success of these products whilst using less resources than the typical overused and tedious marketing techniques. Social Media provides great importance to films during the promotional and marketing stage as it can give a advantage to films that are heavily discussed or anticipated and also made it easier for institutions to tap in and reach their target audience. In order to reach out to the target audience, the information presented on the online blog must be appealing and relevant to our audience's wants. The audiences want to feel a sense of involvement and  self complacency and the inclusion of hashtags and bloopers can do that. Social media hashtags  makes it easier than ever for filmmakers including amateurs specifically target a particular demographic with similar interests. User-generated content would allow me to easily interact with my core target audience which is adolescents and allows them to voice their opinions and concerns which opens up a dialogue therefore also effortlessly increasing the popularity of my film. In addition, user generated content allows the inclusion of international viewers therefore this would strengthen the relationship between the institutions and audience. i would mention films like Se7en and Fight club which are successful films that have a similar narrative pattern and structure to ours. In addition, this would bring appeal to the enthusiasts of those films. 

In conclusion to this evaluation, I believe that I have met the targets needed for a decent brief and produced a short arthouse film worth watching and reviewing. Also an art-house film brochure that is simple, rich in detail and visually pleasing. This extract would provide the audiences with a film about untold societal issues which will resonate with viewer due to its unique narrative style and structure.