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.
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.
