Me Myself and I: Evaluation

AB - 05/05/13

Me Myself and I: Evaluation

The link below will take you to our evaluation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1dpRWHVFhs
In the evaluation the following seven questions must be addressed:
 

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our media project develops what appears to be a stereotypical teenager and people perceptive of those who are mentally ill is subverted; through the revelation of her illness as it’s gradually exposed through introducing her personas.

We used the existing structure of coming of age films: Self-discovery, overcoming social isolation, finding were you fit, overcoming insecurities and growing up which is featured in blockbuster films like Juno, Super Bad and The Breakfast Club. Typical obstacles but exaggerated immensely by May’s DID and so we’ve also challenged the structure by taking it to the extremes.

We’ve also challenged real media conventions through our non-traditional production and through using anchored script where actors’ improvisation revolves around it. We differ as unlike in real media products during their productions various gadgets were available to them to help them film, such as dolly’s, tracks and perhaps even cranes. The shots in our production on the other hand were improvised to mimic the same effect as these media conventions.

Another way we’ve challenged the conventions of film structures is by our distribution of information for the audience. Our opening scene in comparison to other films is more sudden, a lot more informative much like recaps from TV episodes; this is due to our limited time. Other films distribution of information is more gradual sometimes no information is actually given in their film opening, for instance: “Catch Me If You Can”.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our product represents teenagers with disabilities. The representation of the disabled in our film portrays them as ordinary, subverting the expectations of our viewers. An example would be Elizabeth, as she is portrayed as relatively normal in her scene; nothing out of the ordinary happens. However, Elizabeth is still a strange character as she is the persona of someone else. We develop this by revealing the depth of our protagonist and therefore portraying this social group in a different form than what the audience had originally expected.

We subvert the audience’s expectations as information is slowly released; challenging the notion in the minds of the audiences that it’s easy to distinguish a person with mental disorder. For example, many media products are dismissive of the mentally disabled for they’re not part of the plots at all. They’re characters are not fully developed and they remain a stereotype. However, when they are the focus of a film; often they are painted in a negative way. Many are presented as a psychopathic murderer, for example: Hannibal, Freddie Krueger, Jigsaw from Saw and many others. Our film challenges this as our main protagonist who has DID unlike those representation is presented in a more light hearted way. This creates a sense of curiosity and discovery for the audience than fear and dislike. May is more relatable to Charlie from “Perks of Being a Wallflower”. Both are social outcasts and are presented as quite odd but it’s something which is in a way celebrated, a quality they possess which is liked by the audience. So our film is conventional in a way that characters with disability are presented as odd but unconventional as the character is developed to reveal the reason behind their actions, unconventional as the film tries to explain, tries to help the audience understand the mentally disabled rather than fear them or be unnerved by them.

Another social group which we have featured in our film opening are normal teenagers, portrayed by Jasmine Gothard and Daisy Brunsdon. They have shown how some normal people may perhaps react to those with mental disability. Possibly mirroring how some of the audience may react if placed in the same position. As a result, we challenge their perception of the mentally disabled. The same is done as well in Violet’s scene in which her peers are actually laughing at her which challenges them even further. Our film had also shown range of age and nationalities to illustrate how no one is excused from this. That regardless of age, gender and nationality there are many people guilty of reacting similarly to the characters in the film towards May and her personas.

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Since our film’s low budget, it’s unlikely to be released in the cinemas like blockbuster films for it lacks marketability. But it may be featured in film festivals such as the Raindance Film Festival for a pre-promotion. It could potentially be used by foundations which support people with DID or other psychological disorders to help raise awareness, organisations such as: Peny Parks Foundation, First Person Plural, Mind and many others. Our film could also be used in media studies classes in schools, as our opening is effective but relatively simple and could help students understand the structure of creating a film.

Although, hypothetically if we were looking to actually produce our film, we may decide to ask “Kickstarter” to help us get funds, seeing as the cost for producing is immense. We may then decide to sell and market our film online. Perhaps use YouTube to our advantage and use it to promote our film. We may contact independent film distributors such as: DogWoof, Independent Film Company or Entertainment Film Distributors who can help us with sales and marketing throughout UK. Online avenues may be used instead of DVD creation to avoid possible loss of revenue, it’s likely we’ll use ITunes to market our film as not only will this save us money but due to the digital era; everything is becoming digitalised.

 

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Teenagers and people who have been affected by DID are part of our target audience. As well as these, our film is also designed to attract people who are interested in the genre of our film; which is mainly Drama. This means that although our main target audience is teenagers and people affected by DID, any group who has an interest in dramatic movies would be targeted for our film. It may even attract certain people who prioritises their family first as “Me, Myself and I”celebrates the importance of parenthood and relationship within family and so mothers may take alike to our film. Couples who have teenagers of their own may find themselves attracted to the film.

Essentially our film is about an underdog. In our film we touch on the issue of bullying. Being bullied can affect a person’s social life and during time at school, social life is an important aspect as adolescents start to form relationships outside their family. Often the extent, at which a teenager can enjoy school and their youth, depends on their social life. This is where peer pressure, self-searching and crushes happen which will be explored in our film. For the older audiences, elements of this film could remind them of similar experiences of bullying they had at school or later on in life. Although bullying is more common throughout teenage years, there are many people who have been through similar situations at work.

Seeing as our film is about a girl with psychological disorder, people with curiosity in psychology may naturally be attracted to our film. Also curiosity plays a big role as it intrigues the audience prompting them to see our film and friends or family of the individual who wants to see it will be tagged along to watch it with them.

5. How did you attract/address your audience? 

We sparked curiosity amongst our audience, prompting them to see our film, at the very start of our opening while May is cycling and no one can tell where her destination is. In addition to this, we explicitly say that the movie is aimed at adolescents for the genre: coming of age often appeals to adolescents as they find they can relate to the characters. We use editing to gradually indirectly reveal information for the audience to pick up. For example: the flashbacks and the dialogues. Although by the end we do directly address our audience as May breaks the forth wall dividing the characters from the audience.

We’ve also used enigma codes right from the beginning of our film, it remains unknown to the audience who the girl is and where she’s heading. As the scenes proceed to the clips of the personas questions such as: “What is she doing?” “That’s the same girl, dressed in different costumes… why?” “Why does that girl dressed as a man…?” it becomes a fodder to audiences’ curiosity. All stimulates the audience to become active to try to work out what is going on. Another way which we’ve attract our audience is through making our film relatable to other existing texts such as “Perk of Being a Wallflower”, therefor evoking a discussion a comparison between the two films and so it lures the audience in as they speculate over our film.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

From making our film, we’ve learnt about the process, the technicalities and the dedication it takes to create a film. We learnt how to use the Dedo lights, the filters and the bounce boards to imitate natural light for our film. For instance: Carefully placing them around the set to avoid creating false shadows and to avoid noticeable artificial light. We had to be constantly aware of the sensitivity of the mic, as it was able to pick up the tiniest sounds that can distract our audience. We were also able to experiment with different video recording gadgets and discovered that they can be quite beneficial. For instance: our substitution for the camera with an iPhone when recording Violet’s scene actually adds realism to our film.

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Comparing our film opening now from our preliminary task, we have made great developments. The quality of work for starters, our film opening had been recorded by professional technologies while our preliminary was recorded with a low resolution camera. The editing is much more fluent, we feel that in our preliminary video; the cuts are pointedly constructed. The editing of our opening on the other hand seems to have developed sophistication as shots flowed more fluently from one to another. Unlike in our preliminary task, we made sure that the editing in our final opening was almost invisible and did not distract our catch the audience’s attention. The execution of the shots are also much well-done due to the fact that we lacked technologies to assist us when filming our preliminary video. For instance, we had no tripod to make the shots still nor did we have a dolly to help us with panning shots; all of our shots had been filmed handheld. Furthermore, our sounds had been recorded within a better mic, not just the built in mic in cameras. We’ve also developed creative sight as we knew exactly what we wanted to include in each scene in the opening of our film, what shot to use and what to include in the misc-en-scene. Everything was well thought of, unlike our preliminary task in which we didn’t have enough knowledge regarding what makes a successful shot.

We have also made a video for our evaluation which we recorded on Karl's IPhone. The editing of the video had to be done on Window Live Movie Maker, and as predicted the MP4 audio file was not supported by Windows Live Movie Maker and so we had to convert the audio file into an MPG. We used an online converter to do this. After the evaluation was completed, it was uploaded onto YouTube.