Carissa's AS Media Coursework

The basic storyline for our Romantic comedy film is a woman walking through a park and seeing her ex-boyfriend proposing to her ex-best friend. There is also a voiceover at this point explaining about how this all happened and how she thought she had found love until this happened. There is also then a flashback which goes on to show how she had found them in bed together and she had split up with her ex-boyfriend becuase of eveything that they had done.
We began filming our Romance film on Friday, 20th February 2009. We began by filming at Jessica’s house as this was where we were filming the flashback scene. Before we had even started filming, we came across a problem with the camera. Every time that we started to try and record something it kept saying on the camera screen that the tape was not able to be recorded on and the work that was already on it could not be deleted (Erasure Prevention). We all had a look at the camera to see if any of us could see what the problem was and to have a go at different things to try and get it to record.
After about 15 minutes of trying different things we decided to have a look at the tape and see if there was anything on that that could be changed, instead of trying things on the camera. There was a little switch on the bottom of the tape which had been moved so that nothing could be recorded over the stuff that was already on the tape. After moving this switch back over, we found that the camera would start to record again, meaning that we could start to film our coursework.
We started by filming the indoor/bedroom scene and as we had decided to film to music, we had to keep starting and stopping the music when we were filming.
We then went on to film the outdoor scene. This is how we were going to be starting our romance so we had to be very careful how we did it and what we did in it. We decided to set the scene of our film to start with and we did this by having a voiceover explaining all about love and how if there wasn't any love 'there would be no boyfriends or girlfriends, husbands or wifes' and it then goes on to say '...and my cheating ex-boyfriend would not be...'
The camera then pans across to show Carl (the ex-boyfriend) proposing to Courtney (ex best-friend) and Caitlin sees this happening, which makes her think back to when she found them in bed together and how there relationship came to an end. To help show that this is a flashback, at the bottom of the screen there is a caption comes up saying 'One year earlier...'
We also decided that for our romantic film, we would have to have clothes that helped to portray typical young adults that like good nights out on the town. However, when we did the outdoor scene, we had to make sure that it looked as though we had different clothes on as we had set it a year in the future. In order to show the difference between the year changes in the two scenes, we changed our top and our shoes so it looked as though we were wearing something different.
We also did our make-up and hair as though we had just been out on a night out for the bedroom scene but changed it so it was more natural for the outdoor scene as we hadn't been on a night-out for this scene.
The mise en scene for our outdoor scene was quite dul, taking place in a park-like area with a long pathway down the middle of it. We felt like the lighting needed to be as dull as possible in order for the connotations of someone having their heart broken after a romance and the sadness to show through. The iconogrraphy of a park scene was strongly visible because it shows swings, roundabouts and general children's play area's.
Our movie would be shown in cinemas in the UK firstly, and if it was a success here, then it would be shown in other countries. However, it would be shown in the UK first as it was made here. The sort of distributor who may distribute this film may be 'Universal Pictures', who distributed 'Love Actually' or 'Sony Pictures' who distributed '13 Going On 30'. Our target audience was mainly aimed at women, particulary women aged between 13 and 30 because romantic comedy are usually aimed at this age range. It may also attract this age range more because they may be able to relate to the storyline and may have been in a similar situation themselves. We attracted this audience by making the opening quite emotional, yet humorous at the same time, drawing in the audience and making them want to continue watching the whole of the film.
We used a variety of shots such as mid-shot's, long shots, close up's and we also used zooming on the camera on different shots. Our setting's were chosen because we needed a bedroom to represent the 'affair scene' and a outdoor park-type area with benching/seating areas, to represent the 'proposal scene'. We decided to have all our film in colour so as it's more up-to-date and in modern colouring's.
When we originally filmed our introduction we had a song in (Paolo Nutini - Last Request) and we did the monologues as we were filming. However, when we were editing the final filming, we realised that it didn't sound right and so we cut all the speaking and the song out and added them back in as voiceovers which we recorded on a MP3 recorder and then transferred them to the computer. We used Adobe Premier to edit our footage, which is a more recent technology. In the past, it would have been extremely hard to edit a movie without the help of a computer.
Through recording our voice over's again after we had filmed originally, I learnt how to record a voice over with the gadgets we had in school. You have to plug a microphone into the MP3 recorder then use a USB cable to get the files from the MP3 recorder onto the computer.
There could also be a number of reasons as to why the outdoor scene is quite dull; some of these reasons could be that it was a dull day with lots of cloud, or that, the actual reason, that the feelings of the girl is shown through the mise en scene, showing that the girl is extremely unhappy and feeling depressed about what has happened to her in her life. The colours help to reflect that the main character could be suffered from a loss, confused about where her life is heading or a depressive time which is reflected in the colours.
Also, the main characters hair could be down and her clothes could be black, because it is showing that she is trying to hide from the world and hide from everyone around her.
The flashback to the year before showing how it all started is in full colour and is very lively with lots of different colours shown. This is showing how they were going through a better time until they all found out that there was an affair happening.