Luck Out

Our Radio Trailers

We decided due to the nature of our film we would create two radio spots, this is as after creating one using a male voice we realised as our film is a family / film for teenage girls a female voice may come across better, here is the first radio trailer we have done and want to work on another one which we feel will appeal to our target audience better. We also feel this spot would appear on a mainstream radio station where as the one we plan to create is one you would expect to hear on a local radio station as due to our film being a small British one the people who are likely to watch it are more likely to listen to local family radio stations. 

Film Poster

Critical Evaluation- Question 1

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

Collectively, the use of the Sony HDV1000 and Final Cut Express allowed us to ensure that we followed the conventions of continuity within our film, during the shooting and editing processes. One of most important rules we followed was the 180 degree rule, to ensure the audience understood the positioning of our characters.

Although it can be effective to break this rule in certain genres, such as horror to create the idea of disorientation, we felt it was more appropriate to abide by it, as our narrative didn't require it.

We also obeyed other conventions of continuity, such as the correct way to display a passage of time.

Examples  from our film:

Fade to Black:                                                                                                               Cross Dissolve:

In one instance in our film we used text to display how many years had passed since the previous shot, to represent the passage of time. This is fairly common when editing narratives that take place over long periods of time, which can be seen in “Love Actually.” We believe that this has smoothed the transition between the time periods and therefore the audience are not left wondering who this girl is.

Our film:

Love Actually: 

Likewise, we were also able to use Final Cut Express to ensure a sound continuity. In most films, the use of non-diegetic and diegetic sound is continued throughout by using sound bridges and audio transitions. This is something we developed upon within our film, for instance, when Lucy shouts up to Leah, the audio of Lucy’s dialogue is carried over onto the shot of Leah. We believe that this was an effective example of using and developing editing techniques within our own film.

We were not able to obtain complete continuity throughout our film. When we shot our final scene we did not take a close up of Sarah revealing the stolen items. Because we felt it was crucial to have a close up of the reveal, we decided to reverse the shot of Leah covering it up. Because of this, the money and jewellery are not in identical places in the Long and Medium close up reveals. This is a minor error that was unavoidable during editing, if we would have had enough time, we would have corrected this decision and ensured continuity of the prop positions. 

One way we challenged continuity conventions, was by using flashbacks. In films similar to ours such as “Just My Luck,” there is usually a linear narrative. However, we wanted to break this convention of continuity in order to convey certain events. We created a non-linear narrative, in order to use flashbacks to explain events instead of chronologically. Although we did not follow typical conventions in relation to continuity, we challenged them in a way that effectively told the narrative as we wished. It allowed us the opportunity to reintroduce past events that affected the plot, by using an unconventional narrative technique. 

Our film:

At first, we decided our film personified the paradigm of Drama. For instance, our film involves real issues such a girl stealing from her friend, everyday misfortune and relationships breaking down. The clearest example is the build-up of tension, as Sarah experiences lots of misfortune until the pinnacle moment where she realises that Leah stole from her and the penny is lucky. 


Similar elements can be found in other films such as “Titanic,” in which Rose experiences events that change her outlook on life, up to and including the ship sinking. 

However, as we began filming we realised our film actually belonged in the Fantasy-Drama genre, as we incorporated themes such as good vs. evil, and unexplainable, magical phenomena. The clearest example is our integration of luck into our plot and theme. 



Just My Luck:

This reflects the genre we were working within as other films also use similar themes and events. For instance, “Just My Luck” also focuses on the impact of luck and misfortune on their characters, which makes up the narrative. We believe our film represents both genres as it possesses believability in an imaginative way.









We believe our film gratifies our audience through entertainment purposes, which according to Richard Dyer's theory of entertainment and utopia, is when a film provides an audience with something they haven't got or want. He suggested that a film can provide an audience with a utopian solution, for example if an audience is tired it can provide them with energy, if they are bored it can provide them with intensity, if they are poor it can provide them with abundance, if they lack understanding it can provide them with transparency and if they are lonely it can provide them with community. His intensity solution is present in our film as experiences various lows: she breaks her phone, loses Kandi and falls out with her mum and highs: she finds Kandi and her phone is miraculously fixed. By following this utopian solution our film would cure the potential boredom of our audience, as they experience Sarah's emotions throughout, and the events keep them intrigued. We also attempted to entertain our audience by using a flashback at the end of our film to piece together all the events that had taken place so that the audience would understand what has occurred. This is another low that Sarah and the audience experience together which further adds to the intensity of our film, as the audience wants to see what happens next, and as a result is no longer bored. 

We also attempted to gratify our audience (females 10+) by offering escapism within our narrative. We hoped that our film would provide the audience with an opportunity to relieve themselves of everyday stresses in which they are taken to a utopian alternative that allows them to get lost in the narrative due to its unrealistic nature (lucky penny), but also keep them entertained due to its believability (Sarah's character). This further highlights that our film fulfils Dyer's theory as the audience are watching the film to cure the boredom of their everyday lives as it allows them to escape to their own utopian world. 

I believe we have successfully pleased our audience, as from our feedback it is clear that our film cures their boredom and provides them escapism into a world where someone's life can be improved by the luck of a penny- something our audience would wish they had. 

Although we have obtained a level of originality within our film, we were clearly influenced by other films within the Fantasy and Drama genres, such as “My Sister’s Keeper,” and “Just My Luck.” After watching “My Sister’s Keeper” we applied their use of flashback to our own.  We wanted to merge our initial flashback and opening credits to conserve time within our film. “My Sister’s Keeper” was a version of how we wanted to achieve ours and therefore were heavily influenced by it. 

Our flashback/Title sequence:

My Sister's Keeper flashback/Title sequence:

“Just My Luck,” had a bigger impact on our narrative. Ashley embodies luck, whereas Jake personifies misfortune. We applied this to our own film, in which we decided to have Sarah embody both, as an inner conflict, in which the penny induces. Sarah encounters our own twist on bad luck that both Jake and Ashley encounter in “Just My Luck,” showing its influence. 

Our film:

Misfortune:

Luck:

Just My Luck:

Ashley (Good Luck) + Jake (Misfortune) 

Although we were influenced in some aspects of our film, not all decisions were inspired by similar films. Rather than realising that she doesn't need the luck, Sarah realises that she doesn't need her best friend. She keeps her luck, unlike Ashley and Jake who pass their luck onto his little sister, Katy.

Our film:

Just My Luck:

Critical Evaluation- Question 1

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

We made sure that our film followed any conventions and continuity during both the editing and shooting of the film as much as possible to create a continuous film for the audience to understand and find it easy to watch.

The 180-degree rule is one the most important rules we followed, because if not it can be confusing for the audience to follow, e.g. where the characters are in the room may appear to have changed if the line is crossed. Even though we followed this rules it can be broken to give a confused effect this could be used in a psychological genre.

We have also tried to use a variety of shot to direct the audience’s attention and to show extra detail that is needed for the story line to make sense. For example a close up on the coin to show it is double headed and an establishing shot of the park to show where Sarah is and that it is snowy and icy.

Because we have used lots of different types of shots, to make these flow continuously together we also needed to use match on action. This is where a shot angle changes but the action still continues.

We also followed conventions such as time passing. We needed to show time has passed a number of times through out the film, subtly but still able to be picked up on. For the first passage of time we used text on screen to show that 5 years had passed since the last scene. If we didn't this would have been confusing as it wasn't the same actor playing the character as before because time had moved on and she is now older. Another technique we used was dissolves, both through black and straight into the next shot.

Even though our film is linear and shows the action in the same order it happens we have used a flashback
to show realization that the penny is lucky. This has allowed us to experiment with different transitions and filters to show it is a flashback of certain previous event but keep it continuous even though there is no match on action or similar shots.

Our film was originally a Drama as it met all the requirements, realistic characters, emotions and real life problems. But after we revisited our plot we realized it was more of a hybrid genre of both Drama and Fantasy because it included supernatural, magic components as the main plot.

Our film reflects a fantasy drama well, as it includes all the main conventions and paradigms needed to be in this genre category.

It reflects a drama as it includes realistic characters, emotions and real life problems such as; Sarah is a typical teenage girls whose mum tries interfering with her life by telling her what to do all the time, she slips on some ice while walking the dog and to make her day worse her mum accuses her of stealing even though she is innocent.

It reflects conventions of been a fantasy. To be a fantasy it needs to include supernatural or magical elements as the main plot or location. In our film our main characters grandma gives her a double-headed coin but this coin is magical and bring luck to its owner, through out the film the coin causes the bad thing that happen through out the day to be corrected such as when the dog lead is dropped the dog doesn't run away and after she breaks her phone it magically fixes its self. These elements could also be seen as paradigms of a fantasy about a lucky penny. For example the luck makes bad things better, our main character is helped and the villain is brought to justice.

However our film does also challenge this genre type, as it doesn't end happily ever after as most dramas do, we have left the ending quite open. The end shot is of the double-headed coin landing on tails and Sarah saying ‘This coin must be bringing me luck because it has stuck by me, unlike you.’ This doesn't end all wrapped up, we have left it so that it is open to interpretation and the audience can take what they want from it.

This film does fulfill the nature of a fantasy drama and would meet expectations, however even though it is a fantasy there is very little fantasy compared to other fantasy drama films such as the Twilight saga and Harry Potter because non of the fantasy in these film are real. However in our film it is a lucky coin and some people do believe lucky objects exist.

Our audience are people who enjoy dramas and but feel it is more targeted towards teenage girls.

Overall we want the audience to come away feeling happy and relaxed as well as thinking what will happen to the two friends relationship now Sarah knows the truth.
Richard Dyer's theory states that different people will respond differently to a film or media text to replace something that is missing in their own lives, this is called `Utopian Solutions.' For example if the viewer if feeling tired they are likely to enjoy something with energy like an action film. This theory is present in our film as it intense and anyone who is bored would enjoy this as it gives them something to intrigue and entertain them. For example Sarah doesn't know it is the coin until the end flashback but the audience do, also Sarah doesn't realise her phone is broken and then it suddenly gets mended. All these would leave the audience on the edge of their seat wondering when the main character will realise. I am confident we have achieved this because in the film we have teenage girls just like our target audience and so can relate to each other. We have event don't get resolved till the very end and we leave the ending open so that the audience will be wanting to know more and so not be bored any more.

Through out the making of our film we have recognized several similarities in existing films that we have used to help us improve our ideas as well as use similar films as inspiration.

For example for our title sequence we had an idea of lots of coins falling in a waterfall of coins effect. We then found an existing title sequence off ‘Dear John’ where coins are been made and they fall onto and off conveyor belts. 


We have used this as inspirations and tried getting the same falling effect but dropping coins onto a pile.

Another film we used as inspirations was ‘Vanilla Sky’ we analysed the flashbacks in this film because they were obviously a flashback with lots of fast clips and photos, this is how we wanted our flashback to look.

‘Just my luck’ had the biggest impact on our film, as it is very similar to our story line and narrative. For example the main theme is luck, both film have both luck and unlucky in them.

Critical Evaluation- Question 1

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

Before creating our film we spent a lot of time researching short films, once we had got the basic idea of what we would like to do, we decided to put ideas together for our own film. We spent time researching genre, narrative style and rules and regulations of the film industry such as the 180 degree line, match on action and film classification to ensure we knew as much as possible about creating a film which people would find enjoyable and interesting.

As we progressed with our film we felt that the target audience we had originally chosen for our film (teenagers, families and couples) along with its certificate (12A) needed to be modified, this was as our story line had changed as our first idea wasn't developed as much as we needed it to be and found some faults when filming, which got around by altering the story line. Our film; Luck Out has a non-linear narrative and sticks to the 180 degree rule, we found this hard at times but through the use of passage of time and change of location we managed to ensure the continuity of our film was at a similar standard to one of a professionally produced short film. 

We used an extensive range of shots through out our film from extreme long shots, to medium long shots to extreme close ups. We re-filmed multiple parts of our film to add more detail such as extra close ups of the double headed coin which we did not originally film, and some of the scenes where Sarah has her misfortune. We feel our film has benefited from these changes as it now makes it easier for the audience to understand.  The different types of shots we have used has allowed us to use edits effectively; we have used edits such as cross dissolves and a black and white effect on the flash back part of our film, we feel these edits help our film have a more professional look. We have also had to white balance some of our clips in final cut as we filmed in many different locations with different lighting, however we feel the change in lighting across our film gives it a more realistic and believable feel moving from natural light to unnatural light which you would expect to see in many films across the industry.  

  

The genre of our film was originally planned to be a reality drama, we did research into these two genres and felt our film fitted in well, however once we had begun filming we came across some issues with not having the correct actors and confusion in our story line between us. It was decided if we could not understand our story line nor would other people; so this urged us to change it. After revising our story line we decided we wanted to base the film on the magic of the penny rather than the relationship between two people, this led us to alter our genre to fantasy drama, at first we didn't even look at fantasy as stereotypically in fantasy films you expect to see imaginary creatures and complex magic which we knew we did not have the time or resources to do, yet the more research we did into the genre the more we felt it fit with our film. We learnt that fantasy films do not have to have imaginary characters and that the magic of our penny alone was enough for our film to fit into that category, along with the drama genre too. 

Left- The film poster for narnia, typical film poster for a fanstasy film. 





     Right - Film poster for our film a fansty genre.

As a group we have done detailed audience research asking and looking for feedback on our film. From the very first draft of our story line we have been interested in peoples opinions. We have filmed ourselves asking people questions and also used Google Questionnaire along with Social and Digital Media websites such as Facebook and Twitter asking for feed back from our friends, family and wider society which we hope has given us a fair and honest response. I feel our film challenges an does not conform with the stereotypical fantasy genre which we can use as a unique selling point of our film, we have also tried to tailor our film from comments from our target audience such as adding in a '5 Years Later' caption which was something said by a number of people as a response from one of our questionnaires. This has helped us to make a film which has already received positive feedback from its few viewers. Due to the realistic nature of our film eg all of the characters are humans, means that Richard Dyers theory of escapism and utopia allow our audience to believe the magic penny is real throughout the time they are watching our film, this will allow them to have a more entertaining experience while watching the film.