Evaluation

The Film- When we started trying to come up with ideas for what our films was going to be about, we were thinking what do people our age struggle with at this time. We came up with the same issues that are generic to our age (drugs, crime, sex etc.), and then we thought about the biggest fear we have, the recession and the effects it will have on us students in terms of getting a job. The story came to us fast after we knew what the concept was, but as we developed the story in terms of the plot, it became clearer to us that we wanted to make a statement against the people that caused the recession and not to focus on our original student theme. We felt this was better for us to use as the message of the film. We also didn’t want to confuse the audience with too many issues and ideas. When we were thinking about the characters we wanted the main character to be a clean cut family man that gets fired due to the recession, but we felt that this character was too boring. We wanted the character to represent the greed of the bankers, and to portray the mutual idea that the public have of them. This change in character meant that a lot of the story had to change because we thought the audience would lose its feelings towards him, so we made him have a change of heart, and to realize his greed by seeing the tramp again. This is something that we would have changed if we could do it again, because we felt that the initial character was better to the story. The idea of his family featuring in the film would have made the character more relatable to the audience, but we didn’t have the tools to carry that story off (actors, sets etc.). The end is something that changed the most from the original script. We wanted the character to have a tragic decline and go buy alcohol, and realize that he has too much to lose by doing this. Unfortunately we couldn’t do this, so that’s another thing that we would have changed. We feel that the story would have been more emotional, and the audience could relate better to it, thus making it more entertaining for the audience. As a film we as a group felt that it tells a story that we wanted to, and it proved to be a powerful statement against the bankers, and the way they are perceived by the public. On the other hand we did sacrificed a lot to tell the story. Most of the things we wanted to do was replaced by the political statement that we wanted to tell are audience.

The Blog- The Blog was something that was new to us as a group because we haven’t used something like this before. It took some time to get used to constantly updating the blog, as in previous years we could wait to the end to do all the paper work, but the blog had to be updated all the time. What we found as a group with this course was the freedom that we had when coming up with the idea for the short film, because the specification said we had to represent the UK today, and it had to be approximately five minutes. This was great because we had creative freedom, and we also felt at points we took that freedom too far and let are imagination get the better of us. We didn’t think about how we would make this film, but we soon came to a decision that we wanted to focus on the recession. The greatest help to us during the course was the media textbook, as it explained a lot of what was being asked of us. This information was priceless, particularly the story of the girl making the artwork for her CD case. In our course what was of great help was the short film analysis, because until that point no one in the group had seen a short film let alone understand the conventions of one, but when analyzing a few it became apparent that it was the themes that were important to the success of a short film. This is due to the lack of time you have to develop the characters, so we realized that in a five minute film the theme has to be clear and fast-paced. The character has to be developed very quickly in the opening scene, and then we can develop him as the story progresses because the audience is unable to form an attachment to the character. We wanted to character to be someone that the audience don’t like because that is an emotion that is easier to create, especially because we didn’t use any professional actors so this causes it own problems. The Blog we feel is a good way of doing the coursework because it is like a diary into how the project is going, and as we look back we can see the changes that we went through in this project.