Finally we have the finished product which I believe everyone of our group is really pleased with; I am now going to evaluate the finished product.
Everyone see’s addictions in different ways so we chose to put across other forms that are generally not associated with addictions these being love, OCD, anorexia and drug abuse. Drug abuse is the first substance we used within our film; we did this as it is uniformly accepted as a serious addiction. We chose anorexia as it is usually considered to be a disease rather than an addiction. Our film helps to portray that it is the addicted behaviour of the person that fuels the disease. Obsessive compulsive disorders are also a form of disease where the person becomes addicted to being in control. Love is our final and most controversial element to the film. When a person is in ‘love’ their hormone levels increase to when they are not, when this increase of endorphins leave the person then suffers from withdrawal symptoms. Indicating this is also an addiction. Throughout the film a number of different shots have been used, this has been done so that the audience are able to see either what is going on or in some cases to keep them in suspense or relate to the character.
Our film raises the awareness of all these addictions in a hope to help people come to terms with the fact that they are all equally tolling, it was because of this that we decided to make our films purpose to raise an awareness.
Our casting decisions took a while to decide as we needed to find characters that resemble the addictions that were going to be portrayed. By this point each of us had completed our dialogue and shot scripts so we knew exactly what we were looking for. For the drug section of the film we decided to use Charlotte as stereotypically drugs are associated with people of mixed culture. We found that after interviewing Charlotte that she had some experience with acting as she studied drama at school. For the anorexia section of the film we found it especially hard to find an actress as it could have been seen as insensitive, so because of this we had to look at what qualities we had within the group. So eventually I offered to take the part myself. For the love section of the film we had decided we wanted ideally to have a couple as we didn’t want any discomfort to be visible on screen or for either of our actors to feel uncomfortable, again we found this part hard to fill as a lot of people were shy to be on screen with another male/female. We discussed these issues as a group and Jessica took the part with her previous boyfriend Kyle. For the OCD section we wanted a character that looked mature and presented themselves well. We found that Chenice looked the part and also had background experience after previously studying drama.
The drug abuse scene was filmed in a kitchen. It was considered to do this in a bedroom but found that that made the sense of the piece too personal whereas we wanted to dehumanise the character from herself. Being in the kitchen is a neutral room. Charlotte’s character is with Lorna, who is the person that is persuading her to take the drugs. When they leave the kitchen Charlotte begins to hallucinate; this is mediated through the change of lighting. We also vocally enhanced moments within this scene to emphasise how the drugs can alter your interpretations. Further along the scene Lorna is on the top of the staircase with Charlotte at the bottom. We found this worked well in expressing how the use of drugs escalates the further you get with them. When Lorna is shown with a mask on, it exaggerates how much toll the drugs have had on Charlotte’s perceptions once the camera shows Lorna again, but with a normal face.
For the anorexia scene we wanted to make the audience feel unnerved by the character, to do this we didn’t want to have too much activity. Not only would this show how little energy the character had from her lack of food but also make the audience feel a sense of intimidation towards the disease. The scene was filmed in a bedroom to reflect how personal the subject is to the character. There are a selection of pictures behind my character which are all taken from the internet. This creates a busy background but they also take up the rest of the screen shot, it also implies that this could be the inside of the characters mind magnified behind her. There is nothing else in her life that holds a similar importance. We originally considered filming this with a completely blank background with my character dressed completely in black to show the lack of variety in her life and how she has nothing of importance. However we found that the busy background worked better for the desired effect.
With our perception of love, we didn’t want to go with a clichéd romance but instead portrayed the contentment shown with a long term relationship where the ‘little things’ are what become important. To do this we did the filming in neutral areas of the house; the kitchen, the dining room and the living room. These are impersonal to the characters yet they are rooms that represent their love. Jess and Kyle show how the couple’s activities are dull and boring, but it is the unimportant things that make their relationship so significant. The lighting for this section is a natural light as we wanted the audience to focus on the overall happenings within the frame however for the sections of the individuals talking to the camera we dulled the lighting with a dimmed light on the characters faces this was chosen so that the audience would only pay attention to what the character was saying as well as the facial expressions.
The OCD is filmed within the kitchen. There are so many things in a kitchen that can be organised that we found that this room held the most opportunities for us to develop the addiction. The lighting for this section is particularly brighter than the rest of the film, this was done to represent that the character is slightly more comfortable with her addiction that the other addictions that we have raised an awareness to.
When it came to filming we all had the task our sections of the film by ourselves with the exceptions of Lorna’s part where all of us where needed as extras. I found this task easier than I thought as a lot of preparation was made before hand I knew exactly what had to be done. When it came to filming we made a few changes with mine in particular as the effect that we were trying to create didn’t come across well from learning the original script so we made a few alterations to make it seem a lot more natural. The shots are all tight framing this choice was made from the beginning so the audience would feel connected to the character. As you see the other three sections of this section the camera gradually zooms in and eventually ends up showing just the characters eyes. When Jessica filmed her section of the film everything was kept as planned as we wanted the couple to look content yet not interested each other. When Amy filmed her part of the film, she was extremely organised which helped her a lot as she was not the character. Chenice played the part well and I find that watching her on screen her condition is very believable; the costume that the character is wearing is dull yet with the purple top adds a slight bit of colour to her. This worked particularly well as the couple are seen doing everyday dull things yet there are then shots of the couple speaking into the camera saying how much they love each other. This piece was filmed really well with steady shots, and well thought out framing. When it finally came to filming Lorna’s section I found that the filming went really well, she knew exactly what she wanted the outcome to be and definitely directed exceptionally well. This section of the film also had a tremendous amount of editing to it with many of the scenes being slowed down or colours distorted. The music that accompanies this section works really well with this piece in particular as the beat is slower in parts than others so it fades beautifully between each section of the film. However the lyrics to this piece are also slowed down and repeated often which as a group we found this fitting in perfectly to the film.
To put the film together we worked as a group to divide each of the four sections into a further four more sections, to do this we used the editing programme Magix Movie Edit Pro11. As we had used this programme recently to edit our individual sections and also last year we all found this quite easy to use. As we were deciding the order as to which the sections of the films would appear we decided that as drug abuse is stereotypically seen to be the most effective and addictive that this will be shown first. This worked particularly well as it meant that the music would grasp the audience’s attention immediately. Love, OCD, anorexia then follow as we decided that the love would be the most controversial, OCD is then most commonly known as an addiction, the choice for anorexia to go last took a lot of thought as it is a very calm piece and a lot of speech is included in these sections so we decided if it was to go before the second drug section that it would liven the film. However this routine does change at the end of the film as the background sounds of the anorexia video increases it equalises with the sound of the final drug abuse section. The titles of the film at the end fade with the ‘born slippy’ track as the credits are appearing on the right hand of the screen in white, to the left are short 10 second clips of each addiction although these are muted. The OCD clips runs 3 seconds after the credits have finished which we felt added slight humour to the end after the seriousness of the film.
After the film was complete we wanted to receive some audience feedback so we organised a viewing for a selection of peers, alongside this we included a questionnaire. To ensure that we got honest opinions we made sure that the questionnaires were anonymous. From the feedback we received we were able to see that the film was very successful, with many of our audience saying they would highly recommend the film to others. The kitchen scene of the drug abuse section got highly rated; one viewer said “I found the film very effective in raising awareness”. We were extremely pleased with our feedback.
Media technology influenced our project tremendously throughout all of our stages of the production this being through the stages of research, planning, construction of the film and evaluating. Media technology has been a big part of our progress this being as we used the internet to research, mobile phones to keep in contact with each other this way we were able to keep up to date with each others progress. We also used the video camera to film our film, and Magix Movie Edit Pro11 to edit our film. The main source of media technology that we used is www.blogger.com to record our progress throughout the whole production. Throughout the whole of our progress we have used new media all the way through, I don’t think that the project would have worked as well as it did.
Alongside a short film we also had to produce a film poster and a film review. As a group we took a number of photographs of the cast and then used the programme photoshop to airbrush the photo and blacken the background, this part I quite enjoyed as I really enjoy photography. We did some research on the internet to see the general layout of a film poster, from this we were then more knowledgeable as to what needed to be included. We came to an understanding that the poster would be seen before the film so we had to make it attention grabbing to the viewers eye, for this we used the main colours; red and black which symbalize danger. For the film review we also researched into many different ones so we therefore had an idea as to the general layout. I chose to create mine on Microsoft word, with three columns which contain the review. The title is Empire Film Review although on the poster I have done the title in capitals, below this is the title Addiction again this part is in capitals. I chose to keep the same colour scheme as the film poster to make it look more professional.
Overall i am extremely pleased with the final product as is the rest of the group, I feel that we all used the best of our abilities to create something that displayed our talents well. Throughout the process we were well organised which definitely was one of my weaknesses last year, however I feel that as we produced an opening two minutes of a film last year we were able to use our knowledge to create this product.
