Critical Self Reflection

 This is a post that shows my critical self-reflection our project, made and written by me (Timothy)

Critical Self Reflection by Timo

The brief set by Cambridge: The titles and opening of a new fiction film (to last a maximum of two minutes). Titles should follow the institutional conventions of commercial cinema. The task may be undertaken individually or as a group.

With this, a few friends and I formed a group to create a teen romance/musical movie opening about a boy who grew out of love for his craft because of his strict upbringing, until he met a girl who could finally reignite the spark that was once there.

Critical Self-Reflection - Canva Presentation

How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues? 

The film's opening was carefully crafted after researching and analyzing similar films, such as 500 Days of Summer and Whiplash, to create a compelling and emotionally resonant experience for the audience. Moonlight Sonata is a film that primarily revolves around music and romance, with a subtle underlying theme of childhood traumas caused by strict parents. The title was chosen because it perfectly captures the essence of love and music, as "moonlight" is a term commonly associated with love and romance. The film features Asian actors to represent the stereotypes of strict Asian parents and the pressure to excel in piano playing. The main character, who initially loved playing the piano, gradually develops a strong dislike towards it after being forced to practice relentlessly. This is a common experience for many Asians. 

We also portrayed the main character's mother as a strict matron, using her clothing and facial expressions to reflect her increasing severity and lack of emotion as the story progressed. We generally conformed to most of the common conventions of the Romance genre in our film, such as using the classic "boy-meets-girl" trope and having the main characters share a common interest. In accordance with Steven Neale's genre theory, we aimed to make our film stand out by using music and the piano as a central aspect of the romance between our main characters, which is not typically seen in the genre. The setting of a private school was chosen to reflect a more affluent environment that is typically associated with owning and playing the piano, which is often portrayed as a middle-class pastime. To enhance this theme, we filmed in a more elegant and grand location, complete with large rooms, luxurious furnishings, and an expensive piano. To appeal to a wider audience, we decided to use English as the primary language spoken in the film.

How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text? 

Moonlight Sonata is a movie ideally targeted towards teenagers and young adults, aging from 13-30. The movie contains representations of both teenagers and young adults which can aid in building audience engagement. This movie is also targeted towards people who enjoy romance and more generally, music. Therefore, the film can successfully target both men and women target markets as it is a romance that features a boy and a girl. The movie uses Barthes' hermeneutic code by not showing the love interest's face, we did this by only using clips where her lips are shown, this creates a feeling of curiousity by adding suspense and a sense of mystery in the audience and keeps them engaged. 

Furthermore, this real media text would be distributed through trailers via social media such as YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter, ideally the trailers would be released a month before the release. Trailers can also be aired in cinemas, it should be released in June, as most schools end in this month. The final piece should be released during school holidays in June to July, as students might miss the feeling of going to school and can cope with so with the presence of this film.

How did your production skills develop throughout this project? 

When we first formed our team, I was supposed to take care of a large majority of the on-set production, this being camera work and equipment setup. I was also in charge of the post-production segment of this project being in full control of what happens in the editing process. With time, I learned the necessary skills required for camera work, with this I researched about the rule of thirds and the triangle of exposure. This was crucial for the on-set execution, this is because learning about the rule of thirds made the framing and composition that much better. The triangle of exposure, however was harder to implement as it took a lot of experimenting with the camera, due to a large variety of different lighting because of factors such as time and location, I had to constantly learn how to adapt the exposure to the natural light. I also tried to be more adventurous with experimenting with camera angles and camera movements, I tried using shots I have never tried before such as dolly shots followed by a dutch angle, a cowboy shot, and even a vertigo shot. Furthermore, I learnt about the set and costume design. I now understand that what a character wears and how they look can convey the meaning and message that the producers are trying to convey in the final product. I learnt how to do makeup on actors, these subtle touches can make the actors more appealing in the movie. 

How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project? 

In the process of creating the film opening, we utilized a variety of tools including hardware, software, and online resources. Prior to the production of this project, I already owned SONY A7 camera with a Zeiss 24-70/F4.5 lens and a MOZA AirCross camera stabilizer, which we used for filming. However, we decided to rent additional equipment such as CN1200DH 5400K 72W lighting panel and YongNuo 360 III RGB LED 3200-5500K light bar, this allowed for more flexible lighting as this product was very portable and easy to hold, this allowed for to very easily adjust the lighting angles. Furthermore, we rented a GODOX Gm55 4K HDMI camera monitor because from prior experience I had trouble setting the focus of the shot, with this monitor, it made this process far more efficient. Overall this hardware allowed us to use cinematography techniques that convey more meaning. For instance, the camera and lens allowed us to use depth of focus to highlight specific characters and events. We used the lighting allowed for more flexible exposure as we could adjust the aperture to create more bokeh, which is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in out-of-focus parts of an image. This is because without the lighting, we would not be able to create this effect because if we set the aperture too low, the overall image would look too dark or underexposed. Additionally, we used a shotgun microphone, which was the RØDE VideoMic, the microphone had a unidirectional pickup pattern, this is when it only captures audio from the direction it is pointed at, this allows us to eliminate the presence of jarring white noise, and allows us to get rid of background noise, this microphone was lent to us by one of our classmates. For software, we used Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2022 for editing and color grading, and Google Docs to collaborate on the script and provide feedback. We also utilized Google Drive to share videos and pictures, and WhatsApp to coordinate our schedules and meeting locations. To make the script and screenplay more professional and more catered towards the industry standard, Maxi used a website called WriterDuet to format it.