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Evaluation

We decided to post our evaluation as a film. Here it is:

Audience Feedback

These are some quotes from the audience feedback on our premiere evening:

1. Please give details about what you like about our film opening.

"It was really fun and lighthearted. Very enjoyable."

"Very well acted, made it funnier"


"Really embodied the Chick Flick genre"


"Really cleverly thought out for example the whole idea of Special K"


"Editing was great"


"Very creative shots and camera movements"


"Made me want to watch the whole film"


"Loved the quirky bumble bee at the start, it immediately caught my attention which was maintained throughout"


"Was very funny, totally got the humour"


"The credit fonts suited the genre, loved how they faded in and out"


"Really good use of ellipsis, the lighting and costume all worked very well and the timing of the soundtrack was really effective"


"Loved the camera movement when staggering out of bed"


"It was really amusing, a good choice of music, funky and upbeat, suited the genre well"

2. What is your favourite part of our film opening and why?

"Loved the bus scene, made me laugh"


"When she poured orange juice into her cereal, this was funny"


"I really liked the Benny Hill like running after the bus"


"When Kate looks out of the window and sees her sister is lying there, also at this point when the music stopped the surprise was really funny"


"I liked how Kate looks rough and then after spiting out her tooth paste comes up looking all pretty"


"The bumble bee at the start was really good"


"Loved the reaction to the orange juice"


"Liked the use of fast forward to show time passing by"


"Liked the part when Kate left her sister on the floor, was funny"


"Kate throwing the clock out of the window and knocking out her sister, very entertaining"


"Liked the zooming in and out of the blind for the costume change, very clever"


"Loved the switch from wide shots to close up shots in the bus stop scene"


"The bus stop scene was TOO FUNNY, loved it"


"I liked the alarm clock getting thrown out of the window and how it sets the scene for the humour to come"


"The mad hair!"


"Loved the build up of unpredictability"


"The shots in the fridge, very creative"


"The orange juice bit added humour which is hard to do"


"Loved the music choice and how the clips all fitted to it, was great"

We are really happy with our audience feedback, it's always a nice feeling to know that something you've put lots of work and love into is liked by other people. It's also interesting to see how well people respond to a simple bit of slapstick humour, for example Sam being knocked out by the alarm clock. I'm really pleased about how everything has turned out, and it's a bit strange to remember when we first planned the idea.

Music choice

I've been looking back over my blog posts and I realised that i haven't yet justified our use on music in our film opening. Basically, we were stumped over what to use after the company had told us we couldn't use the 'cool shades' track without paying a lot of money. Then, while flicking through the tracks on my Ipod I remembered a track called 'Fell In Love With A Girl' by The White Stripes, which has a very upbeat sound and has lots of points where the music stops. I knew we couldn't use the actual song, and actually we wouldn't have wanted the original version because the lyrics might have distracted from the actual movie, so we found an instrumental cover done by an unsigned artist on YouTube. We put this onto Garageband and cut it in places so that it would fit with the film, and voila! We were really happy with the way the soundtrack turned out, and how well it fits with the upbeat nature of the film.

The Disney Channel

It's been over a week into the easter holidays now, and although I've been doing plenty of revision (honestly!), I've also been fairly susceptible to what I call 'holiday boredom'. This has meant succumbing to the evils of the Disney Channel, a habit i've been trying to kick for the past few years, to no avail. I don't know what it is that makes it so addictive, but for some reason i'll happily sit there and watch an episode of something that i've seen at least five times, when I couldn't bear to watch an episode of any of my favourite 'proper' programs for any more than three times.

Anyway, while watching an episode of Wizards of Waverley Place the other day, something occurred to me. In this episode there was a character in a wheelchair, a topic that in any British drama would have used as most of the storyline for the episode. However, in this instance the fact that the character was in a wheelchair was completely inconsequential to the storyline. In fact, it wasn't even mentioned. This man was treated as a normal person, and even managed to help the protagonists escape a 'dangerous fate'. I've looked up the actor playing the character, Daryl Mitchell, and he is actually a wheelchair user, and not just stuck in one to make the cast seem more diverse.

This made me think of more ways in which programs on the Disney Channel actually shows real life better than British dramas, for example the casts in most of the shows are usually ethnically diverse, including Caucasian, Black and Asian actors. The casts are often also mixed in gender, for example there are many shows with male (The Suite Life of Zach and Cody, Zeke and Luther, Pair of Kings) and female (Hannah Montana, Sonny With a Chance, Shake It Up) protagonists. The portrayal of older characters is sometimes mocking, but there was an entire storyline in an episode of Sonny With A Chance in which the main characters are shown by an older character that they are just as capable as them, and should not be discriminated against because of their age.

However, the channel isn't completely diverse. For example, all the characters are shown to be heterosexual, and while there is the occasional 'effeminate' character, the audience will never be shown that they are anything other than straight. As the channel is shown in America, this is hardly surprising, as in many states it is usually a taboo subject, and people are often discriminated against because of their sexuality, and if the channel decided to introduce any story lines on the subject they would probably lose a good 30% of their audience due to parents of the children watching the channel. As for regional identity, there is a good deal of stereotyping, mostly to do with British people. The character Mason in Wizards of Waverley Place is one of the few Brits in any of the programs, and is heavily stereotyped as tea loving and eccentric, and used words like 'jiffy' in normal conversation and has a very posh accent. There was also a Scottish character in a Canadian show, 'Overruled' on the channel called Rusty, who was also stereotyped, wearing kilts and playing bagpipes at least one an episode, with a fairly light, understandable accent for the Americans.

In conclusion, although the Disney Channel still has a long way to go before it reflects reality in a non stereotypical way, it is better than many British dramas, as it is better at being racially diverse and showing disabled people to be normal. So there's my attempt at justifying a colossal amount of time wasting.

Premiere evening speech

Here is the speech we gave at the premiere evening. We've yet to read/see all the feedback, but most of it was good and hopefully the rest will be too.

Killing Bono

Yesterday I went to see the film Killing Bono, which is a sort-of biopic/comedy movie adapted from the memoir Killing Bono: I was Bono's Doppelgänger by Neil McCormick. The basic synopsis is the tale of Neil, played by Ben Barnes and his brother Ivan, Played by Robert Sheehan, who fail at becoming famous musicians while their classmates in U2 go on to become a huge success. I thought the storyline was quite funny, and I thought all the actors were very good, but the main reason I decided to review it here was because the beginning of the film was very well done.

The film starts with the end, which is quite a popular method of storytelling in many movies, but it was only from one character's perspective, while at the end the clips are shown from a normal viewpoint, so you know who Neil is talking to. It's difficult to describe fully without screenshots, but I thought it was an unusual way of starting the film, and certainly draws the viewer in, adding mystery and intrigue. Overall, I found it was a very good film, and you don't really have to be much of a U2 fan to enjoy it. Here are some of the posters and promotional images from the film.

Something else notable about the film, was that it features the late Pete Postlethwaite, in his final role, playing the boys' homosexual landlord.