Diary
15/11/2018
Today I opened up all of the survey results in a spreadsheet and went through and analyzed the results. It took me quite a while as I had over 170 responses and therefore needed to make sure the results that I talked about were representative of all of the results. I used the premade Google Forms graphs for the quantitative answers and listed the main points from the qualitative questions. Now I need to analyze three clips from Edgar Wright movies to talk about in my video essay.
Inform our own idea...
The people who watch all of these shows I have looked at are all different age groups. Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway is one of the shows with the broadest range of people watching, the reason this show is like this because of Ant & Dec and also the show has a big range of content.
The findings suggest that if we go with the Saturday evening, ITV, 7 pm as this is one of the most popular times for viewing TV as a family. At this time people will put the TV on and just watch whatever show is on. For the group, this shows us that we need to make sure that our show doesn't collide with a popular show as everyone would just watch the show. If we did have to show our show at the same time as a popular show we would have to make sure we were appealing to a different target audience.
Based on our idea we now need to research our target audience to find out what they would want from a show, we need to think of ways we can make our show different from others. We need to research what the shows we want to borrow ideas from do and how they are really successful. ​
Interactive Short Film
The first interactive short film I looked at was called "How was your Day?" and shows snippets at different moments during the process of a couple having a premature baby, as the baby is premature it means it struggles to walk and as the clips progress you can see the mother struggling to love and interact with the child until it gets too much and the child nearly dies, this finally leads to the mother starting to bond with the child. This drama follows a general film structure except the problem is revealed slightly earlier and as soon as the problem has been fixed the film finishes. The interactive element of this film is for the viewer to keep a constant eye on what is happening, the film is made up of different short clips of random stages throughout the journey and often leaves big gaps in which the audience just have to assume the obvious. This follows some drama conventions really well, these include being able to make the audience evoke emotions towards the child, a steady increase and build up towards the end and portraying realistic scenarios and situations to create a more realistic story. I think this short film does a good job of grabbing the audience as soon as it starts, within 10 seconds you know she's pregnant and very stressed. It also keeps the audience right until the end because it isn't that obvious that the mother would end up loving the child at the end again. I think this short film could spend longer on the scene where the child nearly dies because there is a very quick change in the following scene. I think what I would take from watching this is that leaving the viewer to answer questions could add a lot of effect to our story.
Existing Short Films
The second interactive short film I looked at was called "Possibilia" and shows the story of a couple arguing, the story then splits into more and more clips as the story progresses which shows different possibilities of how the situation could unfold. At the end, all of the different clips slowly merge into one final clip which is the starting clip, so this is a circular narrative story as the story would repeat infinitely. The user has the opportunity to select between the different clips at any point, all the clips continue to run so if you wanted to watch every possibility it would take a really long time. This follows a couple of drama conventions including being able to evoke the viewer's attention, being in just one room for the majority of the time and also slow scenes. I like how this is a story which could turn out in so many different ways and the director has managed to create a lot of different possibilities. I think to improve this there could be more direction to what happens and whether all the scenes lead to the same place. From this, I will take the idea that all the scenes could merge back to form the same ending.
The third interactive short film I looked at was called "Five Minutes" and shows the story of a father who has lost his wife battling with life and his past thoughts, he struggles to connect with his daughter until the end when she nearly shoots him. The story follows the standard something is happening and needs solving towards the end. This uses a method of interactivity which almost makes this feellike a game, the audience is required to use their mouse or finger to draw gestures on the screen which allow the actors to complete actions. This film follows horror conventions through the use of unusual and very stable shots, following a generic theme of revenge which slowly disappears and the use of a generic narrative structure. I like how this film is different and combines two very popular things, it was enjoyable to watch. I think this film was too quick and each scene could have easily been a little slower which would have added to the effect of it. From this I would take that some really clever things can be done with interactive short films and that we need to think very carefully about our idea and our idea will need to be very outside the box.
Mind Map
Flow
Chart
Analysing Romantic Comedy's
Typical conventions of romantic comedies include extravagant situations, meet-cute plot (where to individuals are brought together in an unlikely situation), main obstacle which makes the couple meeting difficult, happy ending
Man Up (2015), shows the story of an awkward girl who ends up on someone else's blind date, in the end, it leads to them getting together. The film is filled with lots of the most unimaginable awkward situations which makes the film engaging. The main character Nancy is a very close representation of what we want from our main character, someone who doesn't go out much and is a hazard in the everyday situations. This scene here is based on a train and she meets the first person who tries to make her read a book, this symbolizes the girl trying to get Nancy to try new things. The scene is very normal and doesn't include any special lighting or effects, this is most likely done because they want to symbolize that she could be part of this world if she was more confident. There isn't too much editing within this either, that's because it is a fairly simple scene which they don't want to flow well. For iconography, there is stuff sprawled across the table and her notebook is covered in notes which are crossed out this suggests how unorganized her life is.
Love Actually (2003), shows nine stories that are cleverly linked together through love. The clip here is from the wedding scene and the reason I have decided to look at this because of the exaggerated situation, I know this would be difficult for us to create a situation this exaggerated but we could try and add something which is really unlikely to happen. The scene is filled with so much going on and each person in the wedding crowd having a part to play. The whole thing is shot very smoothly and is very upbeat conveying happiness to the viewers. This is what we want to convey at the end of our short film when the couple gets together. There is a little bit of conversation in this scene at the start until the music starts when the music tells the story. We could perhaps include a scene within our short film where the music plays and there is no dialogue.
Just Go With It (2011), shows the story of a plastic surgeon who pretends to be married. He then meets the girl of his dreams, however, he doesn't come clean with any of his lies. Here is the clip when he reveals these secrets. I have included this scene because of the date scene and I like how them sitting at the table works with the surroundings. There is no background music in the scene which I think they have done because it gives the scene a serious tone. As it is in the evening the scene is dimly lit which creates a calming feel. The scene is filled with very close shots with completely blurred backgrounds as this focuses the attention even further of the audience to the characters and the very serious scene. I think we would like a scene like this but it would need to be a little less serious and more awkward.
Diary
20/2/18
Yesterday, we got into groups and decided on our story for our interactive short film. We decided our story will be based around an awkward girl who ends up on a blind date. So our genre is a Romantic Comedy. We then started a mind map of all of our ideas which shows most aspects of the idea and how we will use each thing. Today, we finished off the mind map. We then created a flow chart which shows all the options for the interactive film and all areas of the story. After this, I have been looking at scenes from Romantic Comedies and thinking about how we might create each scene and what types of lighting and editing we may use to create our awkward scenes.
History of Romantic Comedy's
A romantic comedy is defined as "a movie or play that deals with love in a light, humorous way."
The start of this era started with "comedies of manners" which were films where a rich person would end up falling in love with a non-wealthy person. It Happened One Night (1934), She fell in love with a news reporter who was out of work and needed a story to write about. This type of film impacted people who didn't have much money as it showed them that money doesn't buy happiness.
After this, screwball comedies, this is a film made up of slap-stick scenes and hidden witty jokes. An example of this would be The Philadelphia Story (1940), this shows a divorced couple who cross paths again and the women has to decide whether she gets back with the original man or goes with a new man she has met.
Between the 1950s and 1970s rom coms started to focuses on the differences between men and women. A lot of research was done and it showed the women do have sex drives. At this point, there was a very strict production code which filmmakers would have to follow, but they decided to introduce a rating scheme which meant more explicit scenes would be allowed to be shown but only to those of a certain age.
In the 1960s brought along what we now call romantic comedies, this romantic comedieis made men and women speak more freely about sex and love without it being awkward. However, these films did make some people wonder if love was real at all. At this point some films didn't follow the happy ending typical scenario, Annie Hall (1977) is an example of this and doesn't focus on the couple more so the individual.
Nowadays, the romantic comedy focuses more on how the couple interacts and deemphasize sex. The films these days require each person in the couple to make comprises to allow the relationship to work. Majority of these films end with a happy ending which could be a marriage. The plot is most definitely built on things going wrong which are comical for the audience and this leads to the characters working with others to find the love of their lives.
Reviews
You either love a romantic comedy or you hate it, and the majority of people don't like these, or the majority of critics don't like them. The reviews online from Man Up (2015) and Love Actually (2003) are fairly negative from critics, I think it is because romantic comedies aren't meant to be perfect films and they are meant to be cliche which is what the people who like them see in them. The other reviews that I read
Ratings
I have looked at the guidlines on the BBFC website (these state what age the audience must be to see each film. For each age range, there are specific guidelines of what criteria the film must meet. I believe our film will be a 12 because of some of the language the film may include. Our film won't include anything else that would make it hurtful to children. The guidelines (left) are from the BBFC guidlines.
Diary
21/2/18
Today, I researched the history of romantic comedies and learned quite a lot about the journey from what romantic comedies used to be to how they are nowadays. After this, I looked at reviews of romantic comedies and found that they aren't that popular amongst a lot of critics. Then I looked at the BBFC guidelines which taught me all about how the age ratings work and what a film must do to meet each guideline, I then decided what I thought ours should be. Finally, I started looking at an article about writing romantic comedy scripts.
Writing a Romantic Comedy Script
Whilst researching for this topic I came across this website which showed an article titled "Romantic Comedy Writing Secrets" so I decided to give it a quick read and I found out quite a lot of information.
The first thing it said was to write to create interesting characters with complex stories. When the couple gets together a problem in each of their lives will need to be solved or on the way to being solved. They said it will have to be cliche, whether that makes it similar to others. The problem in the girl's life will be how awkward she is and the story will be based on her trying to find love. I think if the short film was a lot longer we could have another problem be solved.
They said to make sure it has a reason, doing this will add something extra rather than the standard boy-meets-girl or boy-looses-girl, with ours this will be built around the girl's awkward situations as we will use this to build up the character.
They also said remember that "an action's worth a thousand words," they not everything has to be said and we should write the script in a way which means the audience learn thing, for example, to show the girl is going on a blind date she could receive a call from a friend wishing her good luck.
Survey Analysis
The first question I asked in my survey was for their age, just so I had an idea of who was answering the questions. I had answers in for all age groups, more so with some than others. I would say the target audience for romantic comedies would generally be females fro ages 15-25. I will confirm this later with other sources, the biggest age group was 12-24 which fits this target audience. I think it is harder to pick a target audience for a film because a lot fo different people may like a film.
Following this, I asked them to list some things they expect from a romantic comedy. Majority of people said they would want a happy ending, which we hadn't originally thought about but I think it will add to it if the awkward girl gets with a guy. Other answers included wit and chemistry between the actors which I think will be paramount and will rely on a detailed script being created. Also, a few people said problems along the way, this will be created through the use of the awkward girl falling in to awkward situations.
After this, I asked if they thought slap-stick comedy would be funny and 2 people said no the rest said yes or sometimes so it doesn't get too repetitive. From this, we need to make sure it isn't overused and when it is used it needs to be creatively added to the script otherwise it will just be another standard romantic comedy.
Next, I asked them to name some romantic comedies they like. As answers have been coming in I have used some of the films suggested above for research and throughout research, I will continue to read the suggestions as I can learn from the films what they do to make people like them.
Finally, I wanted to see if people actually understand what interactive short films are. The majority of people didn't. I think this shows that with our interactive short film we don't want to make it to complex because there probably aren't many interactive romantic comedies. I think I will research to see if there is any.
Focus Group
We gathered a few people together to form a focus group and ask them a few questions. Firstly, we showed them a really awkward scene from Man Up (2015) because this shows an awkward girl who ends up on the wrong blind date, and we think this is similar to what we want to create. The group said they liked the clip because the awkwardness was used to envoke humour and someone said it felt slightly relatable, I think because of the number of awkward situations involved in this one scene it is possible some people may have experienced these situations. They said it was more relatable as it was filmed in the Uk which makes it different from the majority of romantic comedies which are usually filmed in America. From this, I take that difference may be a good thing. We then asked them if this clip seemed realistic, to this they mainly said yes, although this
whole situation is highly unlikely to happen the awkward conversations which it leads to could possibly happen in the average person's life. We then asked if the awkward girl in the clip was presented in a good way, one person said it was more of a happy awkward and the others thought the film does a good job of combining the most awkward situation possible. We then explained our idea to the group. They said they liked the idea, so, I asked them if they saw any floors in our idea. from this one person said it may become predictable. This then contradicts what I have found previously which said romantic comedies are generally predictable. I think as long as we have a good balance between predictable and original ideas we should be fine. Finally, I asked if they thought it needed to have a happy ending, the majority answer for this was yes because they said it is typical for a romantic comedy to have a happy ending. I think this was fairly successful because we got some good answers, and confirmed in some cases information we had received from the internet, in other cases, it didn't but we will compromise with these answers. I think the focus group was conducted fairly well and I'm happy with how we presented ourselves, to improve we could have thought of a couple more questions to ask as this would mean the focus group would have been longer, however, I think most of what we wanted to know has been answered.
Diary
26/2/18
The past few days I have continued to complete my research portfolio. I spent a while continuing to read an article about writing romantic comedies and gathered some helpful information which I have put above. I then went through our survey results and drew up some conclusions, a main conclusion would be that people want it to be cliche and we need to use slap-stick comedy, they also said don't overuse any of this as it will become repetitive and get boring. Then today, my group conducted a focus group, we planned some questions and then gathered a group of mixed individuals aged 15-25 and showed them a film clip and then asked some questions about our idea. This was helpful because we got more detailed answers than those which we get in a normal survey.
Props/Costumes
I think with this project I have spent longer thinking about props and that is because I have learnt that they will play a big part. We also want to show elements of iconography as this will create more realistic shots. An example of this would be photo frames which we have bought here and here. I was looking at these (here) but then I found the ones from Wilko which were cheaper. Another one of our scenes is based in an office so I have been looking at some "geeky" mouse mats. I found this one first (here) but then found this one which is a lot clearer (here). There will be lots of shots of the girl on her phone which will show she relies on it quite a lot. Regarding the costumes, the girl will look scruffy which will convey she has been rushing, for work she will look smarter, and the other actors will wear appropriate costumes for their act ie: office scene will be smart dress, dinner scene waiter will be smarter.
Locations
For our locations we plan to use my house for the wake-up scene where the girl will be getting ready and leaving the house very quickly. We will use the college office so create the office scene where the girl will work. I have just emailed a local pub who will hopefully let us film our date scene there. We will also film in the local co-op the scene where the girl trips over and makes a fool of herself.
Interlude
I was looking at tutorials on YouTube and this one seems helpful, its a guide to using interlude which is the site we will use to create our interactive short film. If I have any issues with the sit I will come back to see this video.
Target Audience
I said above in my survey that I thought the target audience for our romantic comedy should be Females aged 15-25, and I had only made this judgement based on the people around me who watch romantic comedies, therefore, I needed to confirm this so I went on YouGov and looked up the target audience information for some romantic comedies. The information is given here (left) agrees with my target audience information.
Diary
27/2/18
Today, I started off by looking online at different props we will need for our project and finding different sites which stock the products we need and finding the cheapest place to get them from, this did take a while but these props will be important because they will make the short film seem a lot more realistic. After this, I wrote down a list of all the locations we will be using and sent an email to the pub we are hoping to record our film in (see below). Then I looked at a tutorial for the site we will be using which will be helpful, for when I need knowledge of the site we will be using. Finally, I looked at the YouGov results for several romantic comedy films as I needed to decide on a target audience for our romantic comedy interactive short film.
Bibliography
Evaluation
I think this has been my most comprehensive research portfolio so far. Previous to doing this I had watched barely any romantic comedies and had never seen an interactive short film. From the start everything I instantly started learning. Watching and analysing the interactive short films was an eye opener because I had never watched one of these before, the concept of an interactive short film seemed complicated but I think now I know a little more about them the challenge has become less daunting.
I think the reason this has been more successful has been because our idea has been very clear to me and this has allowed me to research directly for our project and has meant our idea has been developed a lot further. There has been a good range of research which included information about the audience, the existing content and also how they are made.
I think one of the most helpful pieces of research was looking at existing romantic comedies because I rarely watch these, so, watching quite a few of them gave me some knowledge into what makes a "romantic comedy." The other really helpful information was formed from the article about romantic comedy scripts. It is difficult to rate the research for this project individually because I think each piece of research played a big part in and gave a lot of information. I believe the focus group was a lot more important for this task because the answers we gathered were very helpful.
To improve this research portfolio I believe I could have changed a few things...firstly, with the focus group, I think we could have written a few more questions and tried to create more of a discussion between the people answering. I think we should have had more of a push with the survey because it only got 14 responses which isn't really enough. I could have also researched more production techniques but I think we will find out a list of techniques next week when we start planning the project in a lot greater detail.