reflective analysis

My film studies coursework consisted of the creation of a sequence from a film I have titled 'College life' which is of the teen-drama genre. The whole process included production, planning, filming, editing and research. I also had to decide on what I wanted to achieve at the end of the process. I decided to work alone opposed to a group although I did use actors within my sequence. All of my work I posted on my blog which I created on 'Blogger', the URL for it is www.chloecarrolla2film.blogspot.com.

The synopsis for my film was about some of the issues that take place during a student’s time at college. Friends Sid and Steve have been through all their academic years together and now they are finally at college. Sid loves college and settles in really well, all his teachers adore him and all his work is A* standard even though he is more than often on drugs. Steve doesn't mind college, he does enough to scrape by but his main priority is selling drugs to make money as his girlfriend, Sonia, is expecting a baby. When Steve nearly gets caught selling drugs, Sid takes the blame in order for Steve to be with his new-born baby, Sadie. The sequence I chose to do is where we see Sid buying drugs off Steve, Sid goes to the toilets at college to take them and then we see Sids trip through his perspective.

My aim was to make the audience involved with Sid's lifestyle by using sound and editing for them to be able to go through Sid's trip with him. I also wanted to use different techniques to make the audience feel disorientated. I targeted a mainstream audience, of ages 16-24 and mainly male. This is because people under that age may not be able to empathise with the characters and understand what is going on.  Audiences over this age range may want to see something with more puzzles or maybe will not have the time to go see a film. This age range also are more likely to have disposable income in order to be able to socialise and go to the cinema. The characters within the film are of the age of 18 too so they will be able to relate to the narrative more. I have a number of texts that have influenced my film/sequence, such as the 'trip scene' in Donnie Darko, Human Traffic (Ladism), The Prodigy's music video to 'Smack my Bitch up' and the music video to Underworld's 'Bornslippy'. I took elemens from all of these and tried to put them into my sequence. The whole concept of the trip scene in Donnie Darko (2001, Richard Kelly) was where I got the idea from for my sequence so i created a Pastiche as I mimiced the location (educational establishment, college) and anyone familiar with the film will realise the connection. Human Traffic (1999, Justin Kerrigan) influenced the plot and the culture of 'Ladism' behind the dialogue scene as I made it very quick and easy, reflecting the society we live in and how easy it is now to get drugs. The Prodigy's video to 'Smack my bitch up' influenced the cinematography used within it as I decided to use a point of view shots, like they do in the music video, as it helps the audience to see through the characters eyes. To do so I had to use a hand held camera and put myself in the characters shoes, this can make the audience disorientated as the character is on drugs and is constantly moving. The editing used was influenced by Underworld's song 'Born slippy' as it is very faced paced, I also use the song non-diegetically in the trip scene as the lyrics reflect the situation Sid is in and as it is a faced pace club song it reflects the Ladism and the banging in Sids head. 

By looking into the teen-drama genre I was able to pick out the conventions in which I feel where needed in my perticular sequence in order to conform to them. I feel that I explored the issues well as in the drama genre constantly changes as it changes with society and in this day and age it is becoming more common for teenagers to sell and take drugs, which is why I have chosen to use it as a theme in my film, conforming to the conventions of the genre and reinforcing that the drama genre is always changing due to society. I have also done this by using a realistic setting such as a college and using realistic characters. I chose two males to help it sell to my target audience, which is mainly male, as they will be bale to relate more to the characters. I decided to dress them in a particular way, for example, the character of Steve wears a black saggy hat, stereotypical of a student but also a drug pusher as that is where they may keep them. Where I filmed the dialogue scene is also significant as next to Sids head is a sign saying 'Mind your head', which people may see at first as just a sign, but when you know what is going to happen (the drugs swap) it then becomes clear that it is there for a reason. People may also see it as humourus if they understand it sooner. 

 By looking into the drama genre and the theories behind it I was also able to find out that there are two main parts to the narrative structure of drama, which are: the story where we see what happens and to whom it happens to and then the discourse -how the story unfolds. They go by a cause and effect sequence where we see development of the characters which is ultimately what creates the drama. There is a lot of character depth opposed to other films because conventionally drama’s also present issues in such ways that will emotionally move or touch the audience and will also give them an opportunity to empathise with characters. They will do this by using non-diegetic sound tracks to fit the certain scene.   They will also do this by the use of cinematography and mise-en-scene. For example the use of over the shoulder shots and shot reverse shot to show conversation between characters and character perspective shots to make the audience feel more involved in the scene and in order for it to look more realistic. The uses of close-ups are a must in the drama genre so the audience can see the characters facial expressions and to make them look more exaggerated.  I have conformed to this, however, as it is only a sequence from my film there is not really a chance for the audience to develop an allegiance with the characters, though they can still recognise the characters through the technical aspects and the narrative. If I was to create the full film I would try and develop my film in order for the audience to be able to relate to all three key elements of spectatorship, recognition, alignment and allegiance.  

Learning about spectatorship in my first year has helped me a lot because I was constantly thinking about how the audience will react to a certain scene depending on how I choose to show it. For example  I decided to show the beginning of the 'trip scene' in slow motion and use an effect called on Adobe Premier Pro called 'ghosting', which is like a visual echo. On top of this I also used the Disney song 'Scales and Arpegios' from The Aristercats and also put an echo on to it( as if what you can hear is from the characters head). I did this after learning in first year the effect contrapuntal music can have on a particular scene. I think it did what I wanted it too as it made the scene seem very dark as the music is from a children's film, it also makes you feel quite disorientated as there is not one main focus point in the mise-en-scene as there are many versions of the characters head moving on screen.

The first scene is the only scene where I had dialogue, I did this because I needed the audience to, first be aware of the situation that was about to take place and as it drove the narrative and was ultimatly the distruption that would be in the Todarov structure that I used in my story. To begin with the audience are not aware of what is about to happen, all they can see is a MS of the character Steve, who appears to be waiting for someone. Steve is wearing a scruffy sock-hat and a black jacket, the sock-hat is symbollic of student and the black jacket connotes his power over people in the sense of him selling them drugs and being able to refuse them. The main character of Sid is then seen in the shot via M/LS walking through glass doors, Sid and Steve exchange the money and the drugs with a handshake which is seen CU. This shot is commonly used in similar scenes in films and t.v series. Throughout the sequence I use a number of different shots and one in pericular is the LS 'spinning' scene where the character of Sid is spinning in a public area of the college, this showing that the state of mind he is really in for him to be doing that in front of his peers. I slowed the scene down and then sped it up in order for the audience to feel disorientated and for it to reflects state of mind. Another shot impericular is where we see a med-long shot of Sid walking off in to the toilets to take the drugs. I wanted the audience to feel for Sid at this point and know that there was nothing they can do as they don't want him to take the drugs, I did this by filming it quite a bit away from Sid in order for the audience to remember they are just a voyuer in Sids life and I distanced them from him in that literal sense. As it's only a sequence, again they are not able to feel and empathise for Sid.  Audience feedback showed that I achieved my target audience as when I posted the sequence on to social networking site Facebook the people that commented were males of the ages 17-18. 
Comments put were:
"Its Good"
"Should be proud of this Chloe, well done chuck, Love the soundtrack"
"This is class, Zac spinning around is the best part"
and "its really good Chloe"
Eight people who liked the video were four girls 17-18 years and four males 17-18 years. 
Also after putting my video on YouTube I was able to see the demographics and statistics of people watching my video however it will not let me process them. I do know that all of the video's views are in the UK apart from one where it was viewed it Spain. I think it helps that I have little dialogue within the peice as people from other countries can watch it and because drugs is a universal issue everyone can relate in someway to it. 


Overall I think that everything went well and I have learnt a lot by creating the sequence. I believe that by researching and looking into detail about the teen-drama genre conventions I was able to conform to all of them and that helped me to achieve my target audiences' views. If I was to do it all again I think I would take it a lot more seriously when thinking about what camera to use, auditon actors and think more about juxtapostion in a sense of making it more complex and adding such things as intertexuality and maybe even self-reflexivity and get the characters to talk to the camera about how they feel, possibly in an interview style, in order to make it post-modern and more appealing for the target audience.