Black Monday on YouTube

Black Monday can now be viewed on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t61VRngUCxM

Final Evaluation

We challenged the convention of our genre by having humour in what is a distressing situation for the main character. We added this humour to make the film more interesting for the audience as we only had 5 minutes to engage our viewers. We also added this scene to change the fortune of the character as in the first half of the film we see him being confident and successful. However in the second half we see this replaced by anguish and inner turmoil. The box scene represents this transition. We also challenged our genre as our film focuses more on character development than on plot. This was difficult as we only had a limited time period to develop the character.

We made a poster to combine with our film. We wanted the poster to give the audience an idea of what the film was about and the mood that the film would be captured in. In the poster we wanted a clear image of the feeling of the character in the film. We feel that this combination of poster and film gives it a sense of the films theme of greed and money. We believe the feedback we received from the poster suggests that it does what movie posters should do which is to intrigue the audience.

The review on the other hand is meant to be independent from our film and is meant to be an opinion of an unbiased reviewer. From reading the article we feel we have achieved this as we praise our film but also notice its downfalls. We conducted a lot of research into existing articles so that we knew the format and the style that they write in and translate into ours.

From our audience feedback we have been told that our film achieved this goal of representing modern Britain. We notice as the audience responded to the recession theme that we targeted. The audience seem to feel that this issue was something important for them. "I’m concerned with at this moment in time. At the moment I work and am just out of uni so I’m worried that if the company was to start making people redundant then I fear I’ll be first to go." I believe this analysis shows that we were correct in our decision in both theme and audience. In terms of actual production of the film the audiences response was mixed as some believed the film was well presented with quick pace throughout each scene and enjoyed the films basic plot. However the lack of connection with the main character and the underdevelopment of the character meant that the emotion and feelings that the audience was meant to get was lost. Our real aim of the film was for the audience to realize and understand the mistakes of the character and take that with them. From the feedback we believe we have achieved this as most of the audience realized the problems with society and the need to help each other in this time of difficulty.

One new technology we used to conduct our evaluation was posting our film on Youtube to get a few responses needed for our audience feedback. This was one of the best ways of gaining a broad demographic to view our film. However we asked our friends and family to watch the film so that our core audience that we targeted would see the film.

New technologies such as digital television and internet has helped us investigate the global recession and its effects towards businesses and surrounding communities. We used this so we could actually reflect the recession.

Black Monday Magazine Review Evaluation

In my Black Monday magazine review I tried to be impartial and unbiased, but it’s very hard to be that when you had a major part in the film’s production. I tried to make the review short but extremely detailed. In my research I found that countless film reviews followed this same technique. I also tried the review as if I never had a part in it. I tried to envision in the same way one would, if they would watch the film by themselves.

I spoke very briefly about the acting because in my opinion, short films are really about the message. However in the second paragraph I expressed my feelings about the protagonist and the overall theme. I criticised the fact that the film is simply too short to show the recession which is true. I commented on the speed in which the film changes directions. This is something we couldn’t change due to the five-minute constraint, but someone from the audience wouldn’t know this.

I tried not to nitpick when talking about the setting and the sound. I feel that I made short and accurate observations. In my research I found that most of the reviews hardly spoke about music, unless it’s portrayed prominently (e.g. a film about rap music).

I praised the setting and the characters very highly. I praised the use of the tramp character, and how he reflects the perception that society have on the homeless. Even the way how Kobina Addison is credited as only the ‘Tramp’, shows the how no one cares enough to give him a name, but on the other hand he plays a powerful, and pivotal, role in the film.

I gave a film a modest score. I took into account what the film did good, and what the film failed to capture. Compared films which equally had good and bad parts, and I found that they were mainly given two to four stars. I gave it three stars because I felt it deserved it, due to the message that was shown at the end.

Black Monday Magazine Review (Text)

Craig Perryman does it again in another fantastic performance playing John, an out of luck banker who looses his job due to the economical downturn. Joint directors Matthew Moran and Seiya Sakamoto use everything at their disposal to create a gritty real life portrayal of the current economical climate, in the same way Shane Meadows does with the skinhead culture in ‘This is England’.

The film shows John as ‘the everyman’ who goes to work like any other day, to receive the same fate of so many people. The problem here is that the film is simply too short to show such a big issue in depth. They try to by showing the character’s current lifestyle, then immediately showing his downfall allowing the audience to see a clear contrast. The issue I have with his is the speed in which it happens. It goes straight from him going to work, then him being made redundant, and then his downfall, which happens so fast that it’s simply too hard to take it all in.

The film takes place in London, in what seems to be the financial district. This seems to be adequate setting seeing that the financial district was the most affected. The sound on the other hand is a bit of a hit or miss. The film starts of with a sickeningly happy song, which goes on far too long in my opinion, to the point that it gets annoying. It also makes the character seem like the perfect human.

Talking about characters, I feel that the tramp (played by Kobina Addison) is a by far the best character. Many people in society look down on the homeless, and we can see a little of this in John. However at the end the tramp looks more human. From this we can see that it’s easy to go from well-to-do man to poverty-stricken vagrant. The film even flirts with the idea that what happened to John happened to the tramp.

I can appreciate the boss character, and the reason why the directors chose to hide his identity. He accompanies the idea that John is this everyman, so this mysterious character represents the banks and businesses that caused all the problems, as the common enemy.

The film in my opinion is very good. In such a small time frame, the directors try everything. The film doesn’t go into depth with the whole recession idea, but I’m sure they know that. What I really got from the film is how easy it is to go from having everything, to having nothing.

Black Monday Magazine Review

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Magazine movie review analysis (Dirty Pretty Things)

As we know films are reviewed differently in the magazines, blogs or even newspapers. In magazines even the layout of the review reflects the film (if it’s a double page spread for example).

In my analysis of TotalFilm’s Dirty Pretty Things review, I found that the review was quite short. I found this to reflect the budget of the film because other films with a larger budget (e.g Avatar) had more in depth review. This would prove that is a link with better scores with big budget films.

The review is written informally, but in a way in which it still remains professional. There is also a lot of little jokes, (sometimes at the expense of the film and the actors).

This review is mostly talking about the plot of the film, as if this meant to be a summary. It doesn’t talk about ‘mise en scene’ or any feelings that the film is meant to portray. However it does talk about the acting, and if the actors looked right for the part, ‘Dirty Pretty Things benefits greatly from its excellent, international cast’.

The reviewer doesn’t really describe the story. They only quickly go over it, while only mentioning the key parts. This is strange because this is the bulk of the review. It seems that they didn’t actually care about this film, or actually show much interest in it.

The conclusion of the review is short, but it summarises what the review was trying to say. This is useful for someone who doesn’t have time to read a whole review.

In this film analysis I found that there is in fact a link between film’s budget, and the way the film is reviewed. I also found out that some reviewers tend to talk about the plot a lot. In my opinion it seems more effective to talk about the whole of the film (e.g characters, actors, locations).

Source: http://www.totalfilm.com/reviews/cinema/dirty-pretty-things

Introduction - Film Article Reviews

We will be producing an article review for our film. We plan to carry out research on different article reviews and analyse their strengths and weaknesses. Within these articles we will be looking for how they have used article ratings, headlines, how they have reviewed the films, images, quotations and more. To produce a realistic and successful article review we will include the following features:

• Headline
• Narrow text layout/ newspaper layout
• Images
• Ratings
• Template