1. BY LAURA “LARS” CHELLBERG
Reflection Questions
BY LAURA “LARS” CHELLBERG

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

3. My film’s genre is drama
My film’s genre is drama. Aspects of this genre include suspense and not knowing what will happen next, which I incorporated into my film. My film is about a graffiti artist, and for the first minute or so, the film shows him getting ready by putting on a hood and tying a bandana around his face. I like to think that this will interest the audience – make them wonder what’s going on. Questions the audience may ask themselves are “what is he doing?”, “why is he dressing like that?”, or “what will he do next?”, all questions that I ask myself when watching drama films. One of the points of a drama film is to intrigue the audience, make them wonder what’s going to happen next and where the film’s direction will go.

4. The social group represented in my film is graffiti artists, since that’s what it’s about. I try to convey all the emotions the main character is feeling as he prepares for his task of sneaking out late at night. In the entire opening sequence, the character does not smile once, and mostly looks tired or annoyed. Of course he would be tired, since he is waking up very late, but it’s not directly explained why he looks so annoyed. The reason I made him look this way is because most graffiti artists do not like the way the world is, and are annoyed with how society is structured. I tried to convey these feelings of annoyance at the world and society by making the main character not smile and always look sullen.

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

6. My product gets the audience’s attention with the suspense
My product gets the audience’s attention with the suspense. Throughout the first minute of the opening sequence, as the main character continues to hide himself – beginning with putting on a hoodie before he ties a bandana around his face and pulls the hood over his head -, I hope the audience will wonder what’s going on and begin asking themselves what exactly this character is doing, and what he plans to do. It’s not every day that someone is seen dressing like that, and, judging by how the character hides his face, it appears as though he is planning to do something illegal. This will hopefully intrigue the audience, since they will sit there wondering what this character is doing and why he’s doing it. At the end of the opening sequence, when the character runs away and all that is heard are police sirens, the audience may be drawn in, wondering if the character will get caught or if he will manage to evade the police.

7. I would distribute my film by first spreading the word of its existence around, and posting it on social media to get people interested and gain a fan following. Then, with the help of this fan following, I’d attempt to get the film playing in an indie theater, where not a ton of people will see it, but a lot may. I would word my way up from the bottom, starting with distributing my movie through the internet and working it into an actual, physical theater. I would market the film by using the internet and spreading word of it by talking about it, telling friends to tell their friends to see the movie. I would gain a fan following before attempting to go far with the film, since I feel as though I would be more effective in a group.

8. How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

9. I have definitely grown as a film maker as I have created this film
I have definitely grown as a film maker as I have created this film. Of course, from past movies I have made, I do have experience in producing a film, but this film required me to pull motivation from seemingly out of nowhere. As the character is a graffiti artist, he must do his work under the cover of darkness, which required me to film at night. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, all the motivation I had to film would disappear throughout the day, and I would not want to film. Even when I knew that I should, I didn’t want to film when I had no motivation, since I felt as though the footage would not turn out well if I was not motivated to actually film. On the nights I actually had the drive to film, I would film large parts of the movie at once, which turned out to be a good plan in the end. Aside from that, I didn’t evolve much, since I have been creating movies for a while, and using the same editing software. I did not use any different editing equipment that would have required me to learn something new.

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

11. To make my film, I used Windows Movie Maker, which is the software I have been using to make all my videos for the class. I did not use the software at the school, since I figured that, as I had been using editing software at home for years, it would work better to use what I was familiar with, rather than learn completely new software. I did, however, use some filming techniques that I learned in class. There are a few parts in my film where I make sure to follow the 180 degree rule, and I feel as though all the angles make sense and make my film great.

12. THE END