Bethan's Blog

Our film starts off with our production logo, which is not specific to one specific genre, like Working title fading into black, the are production company name fading into the screen in white Edwardian handwriting script font. This font denotes and helps identify that it is in a different time period as the font is an old style that we do not use in present day. We used this handwriting script as it ties in with the letter, to look like someone has written it.The non-diegetic music comes on shortly after our production logo comes on, the music also helps denote the time period of the film as it is very melancholy, slow piano music and fits in well with the pace of the film. It then pans the peaceful, tranquil garden, this signifies that nothing is wrong, the weather also helps signify this, calm and sunny. The opening scene we wanted to be a long shot as it helps establish the surroundings and also the time period so the audience would know straight away. It then goes into a high angle shot we symbolises that she is weak and vulnerable as stereotypically the woman is the weaker one and the man is the strong and protective one. We wanted the audience to think that she is just another stereotypical woman but if we were going to film the rest of it you would find out that it is her story of coping on her own in war, doing things that a man would have to do and she actually isn’t as weak and vulnerable as you first thought.

It then goes into a medium-long shot from a crossover transition, in the medium-long shot the audience get to see the woman’s face clearly for the first time, this is so you can identify her emotions. When she turns her head towards the camera and looks at something in the distance her expression on her face changes, this signifies something is wrong and what she is looking at is important. We have deliberately not shown the audience what she is looking at straight away, a narrative enigma, this helps build up tension.
In the medium-long shot, where the audience can identify a new character, a man in an army uniform holding a letter and a wallet in his hand which denotes that he has something important. He is looking down at the floor, avoiding looking up which signifies he is uncomfortable and with the music in the background, signifying he is bringing bad news.

When it goes into an over the shoulder shot from the mans perspective we see the woman walking in the centre of the frame in front of big glass white doors which are also central in the frame, this could help signify that she is the central protagonist. The medium long shot of her back walking towards him we didn't originally plan but we thought on the day we filmed it would like quite effective. The slow passing of the letter also signifies that it is important, the over the shoulder shot afterwards is used to see the woman’s expression, and she is staring at it which again is another signifier of the letters importance. The gate which separates the two characters could help signify a binary opposition but only a general one between differences in gender.The close up of the photo signifies that it is her and her husband; this is also made clearer when she strokes the photo, tying down anchorage to the audience

We put the monologue in, so when threes the shot of the letter, the audience can understand what she’s reading and if the audience are finding out the news at the same time she is, it helps the audience relate to the character more.

The close up of her face shows her emotions, but she raises her head slowly to look at the camera, this adds to the dramatic effect and could also signify her slowly realisation of whets happened.

I believe if this were a real film it would be generally a moderate budget film, as you would need the money for the correct costumes, mise-en-scenes and locations to create a film in a different time period such as Working titles, Atonement, Elizabeth (Shekhar Kapur 1998) and Pride and Prejudice (Joe Wright 2005). Working title do not specify in one type of genre and also try to attract international appeal by either using an American star such as Renee Zellweger in BJD (Sharon Maguire 2001) or using a stereotypical British setting. Another big film corporation that does not specify in one particular genre is New Line Cinema which created films such as The Notebook (Nick Cassavetes 2004) and the Lord of the rings trilogy (Peter Jackson 2001-03). Also another film production company that could be likely to produce our film is BBC films as it partnerships with major international and UK distributors such as Miramax, Fox and Sony. They aim to make strong British films with 'range and ambition' which would be suitable for ours as it is about the effects of WW2; it is from a British perspective of the war. Examples of BBC films are The Duchess (Saul Dibb 2008), The Other Boleyn Girl (Justin Chadwick 2008) and The Edge of Love (John Maybury 2008).

I believe that the most similar to our film is Working Titles Atonement (Joe Wright 2007) as it is all about British talent, as the two main characters are both British and is based on the effects of war and is also from a female’s perspective. It took an estimated £15 million to make Atonement and in the UK opening weekend took in around £1.6 million.
Also possible distributors for our film could be Studio Canal which distributed Working titles Atonement and Pride and Prejudice or the BBC which is also a distributor as well as a production company which produced and distributed films such as I Capture the Castle.
This film cost around £4 million to make and took in the UK opening weekend around £138,000. Working Titles Atonement made around $800,000 in the US opening weekend compared to BBC's I Capture the Castle which only took in $50,000.
Both working title and BBC both have experience in dramas set in the past so any one of these would be suitable to produce our film but because of larger distribution and American appeal, Working title would be a suitable film production company. As our film is set in WW2, this is a worldwide topic and would be easy for international audiences to understand. I also believe that our film would be in the budget area of around £10 million as it does not have as many war scenes in as Atonement does but mise-en-scene has to be considered in great detail in our film.
Our film is not a social-realist film, so would not be produced by production companies such as Warpx or WT2 which created films such as Donkey punch and Billy Elliot which were low budget films.

I think in some ways it does challenge conventions of War Romances as it is all based on a female perspective of war, how women coped and coped well in the war and just because they weren't in the battlefield doesn't mean it wasn't just as hard, similar to Angelina Jolies character in the film Changeling (Clint Eastwood 2008). But in other ways it does follow the codes and conventions, as our female protagonist does get re-united with her husband and a happy ending is common in romance films, Atonement in this way does not follow this convention as both the main characters die before they get re-united.
From all these examples, even though we don’t want to limit out audience I would say that our target market is the ABC1 social class, upper middle class, middle class and lower middle class as these are the target audiences for Atonement, The Notebook and The Duchess. And also these would all have cross-over appeal to an older generation audience due to the time period.

The setting for our film, Lost in Love & war I feel was a very good choice as it fitted into the style and genre and most importantly, the time period of our film. It has a lot of foliage in the background which helped suggest a run-down feel to it and also signify the time of year as well. We had to be very careful, as it is set in 1944, that we didn't get any modern day items in the shots such as the burglar alarm on the front of the house which is why we did not pan the front of the house. I feel we achieved this, as I think our mise-en-scene was very good, for example the writing on the Man's jacket in the Over-the-shoulder shot, as we paid close attention to detail. I also think our costume choices fitted well to the character and the time period, for example the dress showed a hint of higher class but still did not signify one specific class.
I have photos of the Locations, on Locations, mise-en-scene, Costumes and Props, http://bethansmediablog.blogspot.com/2009/03/locations-mise-en-scene-costumes-and.html

The setting I feel was the correct size for the narrative as if it was too big it would suggest a lot of wealth which would be moving away from the preferred reading to the oppositional reading.
I feel we did film it quite well, we used a tripod for the majority of the shots but there is one particular shot that is a little bit shaky, the medium-long shot of the woman sitting down. This is because we did not use a tripod for this shot and if we were re-shooting we would redo this shot. Also if we were re-shooting, we would bring a tripod that would work as the one we took was broken and would not attach the video camera to the tripod properly.

But generally I think that the shots are still and contain good mise-en-scene. I also feel that it is coherent from shot to shot and the transitions are subtle and work well with the pace of the film for example the overlap transition. We managed to place the camera in the correct place and angle to fit in the whole body, for example, near the beginning of the first 2 minutes, there is a medium-long shot where the protagonist gets up and the whole body is still in frame when stood up. We also managed to get a range of angles and shot in our film such as, high angle, low angle, close-up, long shot, medium shot, Over the shoulder shot and medium-long shot.

Unused shaky clip, medium-long shot of protagonist.

If we got the chance to re-film the changes I would make is that we would include a long shot of the man at the gate from near where the protagonist was sitting as I feel it establishes the character better. We were actually thinking of doing this but unfortunately due to costume difficulties we could only shots from waist upwards.

This clip we didn't use, but it shows Tom's jeans which is an example of why we couldn't use several shots or shot the long s

We made the decision to make our film black and white to help tie down anchorage that it was set in the 1940's. I feel it is effective and works well with the black and white titles.
We did not include the OTS shot of her reading the letter as intended as we already had an OTS shot of her looking at the photo, also all the shots we had of the letter were shaky so we felt we couldn't use them so we decided to go for a close-up instead so the audience could see the most important words ' Missing presumed dead.'
We first began our film, basing it on Atonement, as it was around the same time period and set during the same war. It also started with a black screen fading into a shot, this also happens in Pride and Prejudice and I capture the Castle, which all link into, drama, romance and are set in the past. The black screen gradually fading into black seems to be a convention of drama, as all these drama that I have analysed start of gradually, slow paced. You can find these, which I have analysed on Common codes and Conventions of film openings, http://bethansmediablog.blogspot.com/2009/02/common-codes-and-conventions-of-film.html

Our idea, initially was that she got a letter saying her husband was dead but then we had the idea of saying he was missing, presumed dead as this adds much more dramatic effect. This also lead us on to the idea of flashbacks, such as in 'I capture the castle' (Tim Fywell 2003) where the character is introduced first then fades into a shot of when she was younger then her older talking over it and Titanic (James Cameron 1997) where it starts with the older woman. We did want to do something like this, we did have the idea of at the start an older woman in her 60's/70s' reading the letter but we couldn't find anyone to do this so instead we got a woman of around 40 to read the letter and we put it in near the end when she’s reading the letter. This way I feel still works but the flashback I feel would of been more effective.

From my research I found that our target audience is generally the ABC1 class, the music and setting fit into this. Our opening shot of a garden and piano music is similar to the opening of Pride and Prejudice which has the same target audience even though its BBFC rating is a U, but this is because it has no strong language as it was set in the 19th century. I know that our actors are quite young, 17 year olds playing characters in their early 20's but I feel we chose the right costumes and tried to disguise it quite well. As both are characters are Caucasian it could signify that are target audience is only Caucasian as in the 1940's there was a low non-Caucasian popularity but I don't feel this would affect our audience appeal to ethnic groups as Atonements main characters were both Caucasian and the film took in around £1.6 million in its UK opening weekend.

Our actors in our film don't actually speak but the woman we got to read the letter has no distinct answer so doesn't discriminate or represent any particular regional identity. The voice over is suitable as our film is set in London and the Woman who read our monologue has a well-spoken voice which is clear and easier to understand, epically for the American audiences which helps create cross-over appeal. There is more a target audience on Target audience and BBFC rating, http://bethansmediablog.blogspot.com/2009/03/target-audience-and-bbfc.html

Keria Knightley and James Mcavy in Atonement

When we filmed our first rough cut, we found that most of the shot types we wanted did work effectively, we added some more shot types in, for example a low angle of our protagonist.
The narrative of our film did generally stay the same through out the whole process, a woman finding out that her husband was missing, presumed dead, the genre again stayed the same but the BBFC rating we did change a lot. At first it was a PG, then we turned it into a 12 but then after the idea of the flashbacks we thought of including flashback through out the whole film, if we ere to film it. We also needed love complications in our storyline to add to the drama so eventually, like Atonement we chose the BBFC rating of 15. Our location always remained the same as we felt it worked very well with the genre and the narrative so we didn't change the location and also because we had a lot of variety in our location also, there were many areas of the garden we could of shot in. Props wise we created the letter ourselves, by staining it with a teabag, we used a very aged book, which we found right at the start of the research process. On the first day of filming we did find the photo and the wallet, so we added it in and also had to add in extra shot and also take some shots out such as the OTS of the letter.

For the female character, there were many options for her costumes; we had many dresses to use, and many blouses but not many skirts to use. We ended up choosing a floral dress as it matches with the make-up, hair and shoes and also the class of the character. The costume for the guy also remained the same, it was an army cadet uniform we borrowed from air cadets. Unfortunately we didn’t have any trousers to fit the time period of the film so we could only shoot him from the waist upwards which is why we couldn't shot the long shot of him.

Floral dress

When we screened it the first time, the audience feedback we got was that the costumes were good just the shots towards the end were too long. This did influence our final cut as we did try and edit it so the shots weren't too long and we even added a low-angle shot to break it up.
We then screened it again and many people of different age ranges said the music was very fitting and that it fitted the editing. Everyone we screened it to understood the narrative of the film. After we filmed our rough cut we started filming straight away and on some shots we didn’t use a tripod. The shots that we didn’t use the tripod were shaky, so the second time we filmed we always, when possible used the tripod.

From doing the prelim task it helped me understand the editing in imovie, I learnt how to add transitions and Titles and adjust volume levels so when editing out film I found it quite easy to edit. The cutting of clips didn’t actually take that long it was the timing that was the issue, we did have quite a lot of material to chose from, we had extra shots which to took, such as a low angle of the man passing the letter. Putting the fading and overlapping transitions was again quite easy; we jus had to make adjustments to how long these transitions took as some of them were too fast.
From my Prelim task I have learnt how to shoot the 180 degree rule and a match-on-action shot but we didn't included these two aspects in our film but we did learnt to use a close-up shot straight after action has happened to help identify the characters reactions.
It would have been helpful to have better panning equipment as it was quite hard to pan a long shot as the tripod was a bit stiff and when we put it on imovie found that the shot was not coherent and jerked a bit.Filming, we did use auto-focus and did not go on manual-focus at all. Aspects of lighting, we didn't use any extra, the sun was our source of light, but if it were a big budget film it would of been useful to have extra lightening, for example spotlighting when she's lying on the rug or lighting on the close-up of the woman's face to create shadows.

A unused clip of a low angle shot.

Another unused clip is on Cinematography and editing

From doing the prelim task I used music that was already available on imovie but for our final piece we found our music, 'melancholy piano' from freeplay.com, a copyright free website. From doing my prelim task I found it easy it adjust the volume levels, so we added our monologue we still wanted the music playing but just quieter and this was very easy to do. To get our monologue onto our film all we did was use the video recorder and filmed someone saying it then imported it onto imovie and extracted the audio. In our film there is a noticeable hiss in the background and it is made clearer because we of the editing of the sound. We have tried to turn the audio down so the background noise isn't as noticeable as before but unfortunately you still can hear it.What I found unhelpful on imovie was when going back to edit our film, is was much harder to edit due to all the transitions in and the music in sync with all the transitions, when we wanted to re-edit, all the transitions got lost. It was however, easy to add titles in different fonts and add the fade to black transition in, which was a key transition for our movie due to it being in many films we looked at, Brief Encounter, Atonement and Pride and Prejudice