Evaluation

Evaluation Questions

• Question 1

Before giving an explaination to the particular question, first it is important to explain the ideology of my product and the film industry i chose for it to be catered to, as well as the genre it belongs to. It is an art film, not coliding with any other sub genres . As i mention 'art' film, that automatically indicates that it belongs to 'art house cinema', that shows films of artistic merit, low to medium budget films, mainly produced outside the mainstream. And so i've chosen Bollywood, the Indian film industry, 'industry of Mumbai'. This is because in my film, the location, the structure, the actors and the idiology, all belong to the culture that places like India and Pakistan present. If i'd choose Hollywood for such a film it wouldn't seem appropriate. Coming towards conventions and terms, all different industries cater to genres in different ways. E.g conventions of an English horror would completely differ from that of an Indian horror. Same goes for art. This is mainly because art films are usually close to reality, that inludes the culture, traditions, beliefs and problems of the places the industries are located in, and so different industries have their own elements of reality shown in their art films. So it is very obvious that the conventions of same genre films from different industries will differ. An art film from Hollywood would cannot be compared to an art film from Bollywood. Bollywood art films have their own set of codes and conventions. These include, location and colour, that is, usually Indian art films tend to show areas of their country, presented in vibrant colours, allowing the feel of the location to be vividly expressed. Audio works on its own way. It usually involves slow, emotional, sometimes adventurous and ethnic kind of music. Lighting is very unique. If the movie involves scenes from somewhere outside on the road, or in a market, a lot of natural light is used, along with color filters. I have mainly happened to notice blue and yellow filters used a lot in Indian Art films. The ideology behind these films is usually dramatic, close to reality, in other words, it represents social realism. Mainly you see no glamour and the typical spiced up entertainment. Things are left natural and simple in all ways. In order to make it closer to reality, The story line is extremely intelectual, at times even slightly obsurd, however, proper and simple media language makes it easy to read. The actors in the film are mainly ordinary looking with a simple appearance, appropriatly representing ther character. Also, these films tend to have a precise amount of narration or voice overs, e.g, at the start of the film or in the end, or simply as the movie goes on and events take place. The story line usually has a message to convey or a story to be told, at times, real events in the past are represented. Camera angles and technigues are mainly very 'artsy' giving the typical feel required that would appeal to the audience. Speaking of audience, these films have a very low level of target audience, maily the elite, educated class of people with in the age limit of seventeen to fifty, who easily unerstand the story as well as feel attracted to the plot. Coming towards my film, i dont think i have broken or changed any codes and conventios however, have managed to use as many as possible according to the research i did. Starting with my story line first of all, I am now incharge of producing a short film, about 5 to 6 minutes long, over the unfortunate reality our third world countries suffer from, that is, child labour. I have a servant working for my family since the last 6 years now, a girl, named Saima. We love her a lot, sh is now family, howeve, im sure its still not kind of life she wanted. Now, this type of concept itself belongs to the 'art' film industry since again, it is based merely on reality. Moving forward, I used forms of real media products in many other way i.e, i have narrative based video. That is, the entire video clipping of my film reflect the narratve structure of my storyline an my concept. Oral and visual aspects along with audio combine in way, making my product set as an 'artistic' project which is the over all idea. Yes i 'used' a real form of narrative structure as per research, and no i did not challenge it, however mold it to my original and innovative story. As an example of this, i took certain films as reference, three out of which are very close to my concept, slumdog millionaire, children of paradise and Stanley a dubba. All three of these films cater to the conflict between poverty and education which is exactly what i have shown in my product by dipicting how 'Siama' was deprived of education in order to earn for a living. Coming to relationship between story and the actor, I am very confident to state that in this particular case I have been at great advantage because i have shot exactly what is real and hence my location is where my actor really works, that is my house, and my actor offcourse is 'Saima' herself, so it couldn't have been better. Also due to this reason, my actor is emotionally close to the story and noone understands it better than her so making her do the act was not a problem as she already knew what to do and it was more like she was actually feeling everything as she was upposed to in the movie, hence, it was very original. As far as representation is concerned before going on with my final shoot, when i was under the entire process of research and planning i took a video clip of Saima, made her sit infront of the web cam and told her to say whatever she thinks of herself and her life and i left the room and let her do it by herself and she unconciously represeted herself in that video, it was beautiful and very helpful becuase then in my shoot i made sure i do scenes that refelect who she is, and what she thinks of her life and of the lives of all the children like her who have to work at an age where they are only legible to play or learn and before i knew it, my film was actually representing it because it had filled into my head. Next we have our relationship between audio and visuals. My entire film is under a long voice over telling the story. Here i have sort of changed forms. I haven't put dialogues in my film instead i have the voice over mentioned above. The voice over and the visual text colide in a way, the story is told in accordance to the scene, which makes it easy to read. Editing is according to real forms, nothing heavy nothing special happening. I have left it simple visually as in other art films, however, more work has been done towards audio in handling diegetic and non-diegetic sounds and back ground score.

Lastly, art films that colide with sub genres like drama and adventure usually create a sort of enigma. As we were supposed to make an opening title, i made sure my product was a combination of sub genres of art and drama, and i kept in mind to use all the techniques and plot the scene in way that it creates that enigma and suspense and luckily, i was capable to do so as i ended my film at a point where sort of enigma is created as the scene is left untold making the audience eager to kniw what will happen next.

• Question 2

• Question 3

After I got done with my film i mailed it to my friends and family and told them to send me their feedbacks on 'whatsap' immediately. The reason I chose 'whatsap and gmail' was simply because I'm currently not on 'facebook' or any such social networking sites but i wanted my feedback on one of these smart phone apps in order to make most possible use of IT in my evaluations.

These are snapshots of a few of my results:

 

• Question 4    

How I used media technologies throughout my production process is vast topic. This is mainly because technology is one thing i used at every stage of this process. From the smallest to the biggest. Starting with the most basic usage, everything i wrote for my blog and otherwise was done on my laptop, as a microsoft office document, and as a point to be noted, there is a whole lot of stuff I've written. Secondly, the initial step to this process was to create my very own blog. Now that's technology isn't it? This process was longer than it seems. First i made my blog on Worpress.com. However i wasn't very comfortable with it so  planned to shift to the good old Blogger.com. I was already familiar to it because of previous year's experience. And so my blog has been on Blogger since than and i keep updating it every now and then. As time passed, i was soon confident of what i want my film to be about. And so i started my research and planning. First thing i did was to look for reference films. For this i again. obviously used the the world wide web, over google through my computer and at times safari as my iphone application. I examined different slides on slideshare.comin order to develope a closer understanding of how to go about with the research and planning. I also watched my reference films on the DVD becuase i believe there's a whole lot of difference in watching a media text on the computer and on actual television. My RnP also contains certain video clips i made when i was gathering information as survey and audience ideas. I used my iphone for some videos and my laptop webcam for certain representation videos. After i got done with surveys and all, in order to make my work look presentable i gathered these videos and my questionaires that i sent to my contacts through smart phone applications, viber and whatsapp, i compiled all the results in one large video that i made on windows live movie maker. I used any video converter many times in order tconvert these long videos to mp4 size to upload these videos on youtube, eventually on my blog. I also used photoshop in order to design my blog layout and poster and magazine design. For my final shoot i used a handicam and adobe premier for the final editing. My evaluation is yet to be done hence I am leaving that part incompete but I have many ideas and they all include technology all the way.