We completed our final edit on the first Wednesday back after the Easter break (22nd April). The following day, Thursday 23rd April, our finalised edited version of our project, "Shadows Present" was screened to the class in our lecture that day. We received even more feedback than we had before Easter and from the group presentation when I showed the class the animatic. We specifically took notes from the feedback on Forms and Conventions of Noir used (Editing, Cinematography, Mise-En-Scene, Sound; Narratives & Storylines; Characters & Iconography; and does this media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of typical "Film Noirs"), the Representations of people and places, the Institution and Industry involved in the distribution of our film, the Audience (facts about target audience and how they are addressed in our project), and the Technologies used and their proficiency and overall effect on the project. Feedback is a great way of understanding people's reactions and finding out ways of inproving to suit the audience.
Forms and Conventions:
ECMS:
Editing
The sequence worked well in colour, though someone thought the interior shots were in black and white, but they weren't, so this is obviously an issue with the key lighting being too bright. The titles and title transitions had a good effect on our audience, and someone even liked the way the titles turned to red after the gunshots at the end of the sequence.
Cinematography
The overall opinion was that the cinematography worked very well with the storyline. The framing was nice and looked as if it had been well thought out, and the handheld circular shots of me opening the package at the table in the interior shots proved a success with some viewers.
Mise-En-Scene
The locations, in general, were fine and worked well. There was one pointer given to us about the interior shots. It looked like an office, when we were trying to represent the feel of a room that Peter (my character) had gone to, but our representations of a room in a house had not worked with our audience. And because its seemed like an office, it was thought that this would be aimed at a higher and older audience rather than our target audience between 15-24 years old. We should have used a bedroom or a lounge instead, or at least we should have given the studio more of a sense of someone living there to represent more of a house than an office for the interior shots, in an attempt to aim our project at a younger audience.
Sound
Some comments were that the music was "a bit dark". I don't really know what they meant, though I can guess that they were talking about how the music has an effect on the sequence. Maybe the music was, in some respects, too cold and gloomly.
The sound effect on the jacket zip on an interior shot works as diagetic sound, and comments made were that the sound effects on the zip and the light switch worked well. The voiceovers sort of used and developed the challenging forms and conventions of Noir films, but there were some suggestions that the wording was maybe aimed typically at an older audience who would understand the metaphors and clichés included. One student pointed-out that my voiceovers were "over-the-top" and, to them, seemed a little bit "cheesy". A laughable discussion followed, but this is still a good point to consider for next time - not to include difficult and complicated wording in a voiceover. This same student also pointed-out that the sounds played during the fight scene at the end, when the title transitions are viewed on-screen, may have sounded homosexually-erotic, involving two men. We are not entirely sure about what she was thinking about at the time, but still a useful point to consider nonetheless.
Characters & Iconography
Students liked the characters and understood the different roles they played within the sequence. They felt that the characters represented young adults aged slightly older than us (late teens & early 20's) and also how they represented traditional Noir style characters, e.g. I played the man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and who has been in trouble and been nvolved with the wrong person, and Josh played the mysterious villain who is out there with a deadly ambition to hunt my character (Peter) down. However the audience noticed no fem-fatales featured in our film, though this doesn't make it any less of a noir because not all noirs feature fem-fatales in the opening.
Narrative
The class liked the narrative idea and felt many aspects of it were of he noir style, however many people didn't understand entirely what was going on, and felt the narrative was quite difficult to follow throughout the film, maybe because we'd been too ambitious about fitting too much into a short time scale. To make this clearer we would have focused on on or two key points in the storyline and not tried to over-complicate things with too many different enigmas going on at once. The audience felt the enigmas were good and would keep them watching, but perhaps too much was left unanswered and left them questioning too much instead of focusing what was actually going on. The majority of the class didn't like the dialogue and voice-over though. They liked the idea of having a voice-over as it fits within the noir style, but felt they couldn't understand what Chris and Josh were talking about because it was too 'flowery' and metaphorical. We wrote our speech in this particular way to exaggerate on the traditional noir way of speaking, but to overcome the issue we could have written it to be more understandable and appealing to our target audience.
Audience
The class felt they enjoyed watching our film sequence and would want to watch the rest of our film, but the speech would probably make it more appealing to older people (20's-ish) instead of the younger half of our target audience. This is fine for us as we would still appeal to our target audience, but could have made it more appealing to younger people as well by tweaking the speech and making it understandable for all ages in our target range.
Within the Noir Genre?
The class agreed that our film was within the noir genre as many codes and conventions were addressed. They liked the running scenes and felt the studio scenes were particularly noir-style. They felt the characters and locations represented the noir genre well and liked the use of shadows to illustrate the presence of a new character. They also liked the fast action against slow paced music and felt that worked well to create a tense atmosphere.
Overall the class enjoyed our film and said our film was definitely within the noir genre. We have fulfilled the brief and even with a few things we could have made clearer, the end result was still good.
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