Evaluation Of My Film

Creating my final product, I have felt I have developed significantly from my AS Foundation Project, and have gained a more applicability with my editing and planning skills. In the creation of Grace, I wished to challenge the stereotype of a mainstream Drama, and move in to the verges of 'Emotive Drama'. With this in mind, I researched broadly around the areas of Drama, taking my main inspiration from 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button', which shows the life of a person with a 'disease' of sorts.

Although my trailer features no actual characters, except for the 'ghost', I chose to represent Grace using the location based symbolism - reflecting her hectic, disorganised personality by prop placement. I feel that this was achieved, with the location giving a 'lived in' vibe which I hoped it would create. The 'Ghost' is the only shown character, which has very little importance with the overall storyline. I chose to have the 'ghost' as a normal, modern female, which require very little managing of the wardrobe. The 'Ghost' I feel, is very effective when utilising the 'black and white' theme, which although somewhat simplistic, has the desired effect of creating a memory like atmosphere. In some cases (from my audience feedback), the lack of characters and the 'ghosts' presence can be misconstrued into being a Supernatural drama, but this usually occurred with younger audience members. 
I aimed to work with the conventions of the 'Drama' genre, whilst attempting to create my own, unique product - I wished to do this to both challenge what 'Drama' is, and also to create a 'wow' factor in the audience. The research I completed around the broad area that is 'Drama' led me to develop several conventions, of which I used and manipulated into the themes of my film. I made the main theme of 'Grace' age and youth, which was not quite a major theme of my trailer, although it does not necessarily have to be (an example being 'Friend Green Tomatoes' - there trailer does not reveal the main themes of the story, only hints at them http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwYDQG0c-cs). Although my trailer does not reveal any major themes of the story, it does generate a deep emotive effect, with the theme of death being hinted at the most, but this does not make death the principle theme, with the Ghost showing memories and reflection.
My trailer does not aim to appeal to younger audiences, as the darker themes would lead to it being classified between a 12 and 15 certificate, and so the complex nature of the trailer does not detract from it's effectiveness. I would expect the major part of my audience would be Middle-Class, around Middle-aged males and females, as both my poster and magazine cover have a sophisticated, middle-class air.
My soundtrack, I feel works well with the trailer, as it is a somewhat reflective classical piece. It is possible that if I had had the financial backing, I may have used a piano/vocal track, which would have moved away from the classical soundtrack 'stereotype', and steer the piece out of art-house and in to mainstream (i.e (500) Days of Summer featuring Regina Spektor).
I chose to remove the spoken non-diegetic sound (shown in my storyboard) as I did not have access to enough layers, and found that the silent effect was more appropriate.
I would choose to have my film distributed by American Empirical Pictures, whom I decided upon following my research. Although they have a very select filmofraphy, they have been shown to release various spans of Dramas, whilst remaining somewhat unknown. Their films have shown to break the stereotype of their respective substraights, and this is what I hoped for in 'Grace'.

Another possible distributor would be Paramount Pictures, who have distributed various high grossing drama pictures, one of the largest being 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'. Although Paramount's films tend to be more mainstream, it would allow for a large scale release of my film, and move it away from a more 'art house' theme. Other dramas such as 'The Soloist' are slightly more in keeping with 'Grace's' less stereotypic theme, as well as using classical music to reflect life.
From showing my trailer to potential audience members, I have found various opinions. Most found the trailer to be representative of a 'Drama' film, with 65% of the audience member I showed remarking that they would want to go on to watch the film, with another 15% saying they would look at other promotional content to possibly go on to see the film. The remaining 20% said they did not generally watch emotive dramas. The criticisms some had were that some of the titles went too quickly, and so if I were to recreate my trailer, I would extend the length of these. The feedback from the Mise en Scene, is that it immediately translates as an elderly persons home, with the flowers at the beginning portraying them to be female. They also liked the ghost-trails used on the 'ghost' scenes to give it a reflective, somewhat spooky appeal.
Overall, my own opinion of my film, leads me to believe that it gives a broad, symbolic overview of my film, with the sound and images working together to generate an emotive response in the audience. If I were to recreate it in an industrial setting, I would use a more effective prop to symbolise a body in Bed, and add another layer of sound to allow for the non-diegetic speech I had intended for.

Media Story Board

This story board does not include titles which were added in the editing stage.

Evaluation Of My Magazine Cover

Like in my film poster, I wished to keep a mystique behind my film, and chose not to feature any of the main characters, so breaking with the norm of an Empire magazine. From my research, I found that the colour of the text varies according to the film genre, and I chose white and gold to represent 'Grace'. I did this to create a sophisticated and contrasted script, which would in turn draw the eye of potential readers, as well as representing the Drama genre.

The prospective audience members I showed the piece to easily recognised the contrast between the tree and the river as dark and light, most realising it being reminiscent of life and death. The audience also liked the colour theme, and found it to be representing a drama film, without have read the tag-lines.

Like my poster, I created my magazine using Adobe Photoshop, which allowed me remove the saturation of the tree easily - and like my poster I used DaFont for the film title, and used Corbel for the other text. I imported the 'Empire' logo from their website, and then recoloured the text to suit my theme. I used layers and masks to bring through the tree trunk, which created a background/foreground shift.

I feel that my magazine cover works well to both retain the anonymity of my film, instead focusing on symbolism to sum up aspects of the film. If I were to create it in an industrial setting, I would make the background (minus the tree and river) in a matte style, and the text in a glossed style to 'lift' them from the background and give them prominence.

In this piece I have attempted to keep with the conventions of the 'Empire' magazine, from which I gained my inpiration for my piece. I have added various ancillary articles to the front page of films which release around the same time as 'Grace' would in theory, and I have chosen one of their typical drama themes, 'Gold' and 'White'.

I am exceptionally happy with my magazine cover, as it is an attractive, yet simply mysterious summing up of 'Grace' and sets it apart from traditional Drama magazine covers.