This blog post features my (Maxi) critical self reflection.
Here you can access my creative self reflection in the form of an interactive Prezi Presentation, or if preferred, here is the link to said presentation. Additionally, included below is the full text in essay form if you favor to read it on blogger instead.
Introduction
The brief for this project is as follows: "Candidates are to produce 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. There should be a maximum of four members in a group." I decided to do this project in a group, and together decided to make a teen romance/drama film about a boy who loved piano, but felt his passion for the instrument fade away due to an abusive mother. We decided to call the film, "Moonlight Sonata".
How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?
Moonlight Sonata focusses and is predominantly about music, as well as romance, and more subtly childhood traumas of having strict parents. The title itself was chosen as we believe it conveys the ideas of love and music perfectly, due to "moonlight" being a term commonly attributed with subjects of love which also connotes feelings of romance. While a sonata often is a long piece of music that tells a story. Additionally, we casted actors of predominantly Asian descent to star as the characters in our film, as in the film, we tackle issues of strict parents and having to play piano as a kid, which are stereotypes often attributed to Asian people. We further conform to this by showing how our main character went from originally loving the piano, to hating it after being forced to play by his mother, which is again a commonly experienced occurrence for many Asians. The intro of the film also includes a classical piano piece, "Liebestraum No. 3 in A-flat Major" by Franz Liszt, as non diegetic sound that follows the intro of the film. It starts off happy and joyful as our main character is shown growing up and then goes to non diegetic sound as it switches over to his school life, and gets more serious and slower as he is seen getting sadder and more frustrated with the piano. The music then cuts for a while which changes the pace of the opening, after which, the non diegetic sound comes back on and starts to play again when he meets the female lead, Harmony. This is meant to represent how his heart "awakens'' and may suggest how his passion for the instrument has returned, as the music is similar to that heard at the beginning of the film, when his love for the piano was still there. This is supported by the transition from a regular close up to an extreme close up of his eyes enlarging and swinging to the side, which shows how his interest is suddenly captured by Harmony, and again represents how his passion is reignited. This allows us to convey the attraction felt by Hazel towards Harmony, and connotes a more intense feeling of love. This allows audiences to relate to the characters, as they are able to feel what it would be like in their position. Further, we showed the progress of our main character's piano skills by originally showing him using a lower level music sheet book to read from and play, and then by using a match cut, showed him in the present playing from a book which has much harder sheet music. Over and above that, The usage of Franz Liszt's "Liebestraume No. 3 in A-flat Major" as the soundtrack to the opening can also be considered, according to Barthes' 5 codes, a usage of cultural code, as it is a song that is very popular and known by tens of millions of people across the world. The song also has connotations of love and romance as its German title "Liebestraume" translates to "Love Dreams" in English, which is another reason that we decided to use it as the opening soundtrack.
We conform to most conventions when it comes to films of the Romance genre, like the "boy-meets-girl" trope that we incorporated, as well as having the two main character share a common interest that drive them together. However what we did differently, is that musical instruments and music in general would be the driving force in pulling them closer together. The idea of having a romance driven by music and instruments is rare enough in the romance genre that it can be considered quite unique, which differentiates our film from competitors and allows our film to remain interesting to fans of the romance genre. By doing this, we follow the key concepts of Steve Neale's genre theory quite well. We go against and subvert audience expectations however as English speaking romance films often don't have a majority Asian cast, which we did have. Recently though, more and more Hollywood films have been using predominantly Asian casts, with a recent example being the 2019 film Crazy Rich Asians. Generally, Asian's in Hollywood rarely have leading roles. They are mostly shown as sidekicks, nerds, or sex objects, and thus we wanted to go against this stereotype and present a more layered and meaningful portrayal of Asian lives and people. On top of that, we used a private school as the setting for our film. We did this because it connotes a rich/fancy environment that the characters are a part of, as most of the time, owning and being forced to play a piano is an issue faced by more middle-class people/households, which thus led us into filming in a more elegant school and household. This was shown through the house's large room and furniture, as well as the classy and expensive piano that our main character can be seen playing. This also allows audiences to gain aspirations and look to the characters as "idols", as a majority of people look up to people with money and talent and see them as role models. According to Katz and Blumler's uses and gratification theory, this would fall under the "Personal Identity" category for why audiences consume this media text. Furthermore, to fully represent the "strict matron" stereotype, we originally decided in our storyboard and screenplay, to show our main character's mother getting stricter and stricter over time by putting her in more formal clothing, for example how in the scene where she's at her "strictest" we put her in a dress and coat. We also did this by having her facial expressions become more stern and emotionless as time went on, which we highlighted by using close ups of her face, and portraying her using low angles to show she's in a position of power. However, in the final piece, we decided to cut this part out in post production since we were extremely strained for time.
How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?
As mentioned previously, the target Audience for Moonlight Sonata would be teenagers, both male and female, who are (mainly) Asian, and are most likely in high school or college. Additional audiences would also include people who are interested in music/play musical instruments. We targeted these groups using the themes the film discusses, like the romance genre, the use of instruments, the Asian representation, as well as the name for the film itself, as it is a reference to one of Beethoven's most popular works, "Piano Sonata No. 14", or more famously known as, Moonlight Sonata. We engaged audiences with psychographics, especially musical instruments. Since our two main characters play the piano, audiences that play the piano and other musical instruments will relate heavily and be influenced to watch the film and enjoy the film more as they feel that they're being represented. Furthermore, audiences are hooked on early into the film with our usage of Barthes' hermeneutic code, as when introducing the female lead/love interest Harmony, her face is obscured/not shown on screen. This creates a sense of mystery and suspense around who she is and what she looks like, which hooks the audience in and forces them to keep watching if they want to find out.
Moonlight Sonata would best be distributed in cinemas all over the world, but more prominently in Asian cinemas due to the cast being predominantly Asian. English was also used as the language spoken throughout the film, as it allows us to reach a wider, global audience. We could also use cross media convergence to distribute the film to new media platforms (e,g streaming services like Netflix) to reach an even larger audience, as it would allow viewers to watch the film from anywhere, at any time, and would lead to larger revenue as viewers won't need to go out to cinemas to watch the movie. This benefits our target audience of young people too, as their technological literacy leads them to prefer to consume media texts on new media platforms like Netflix. To promote the film we could have our actors participate in interviews where they talk about what the shooting was like, and what the film will be about, on shows like MTV and magazines like Teen Vogue, as the main audiences of these sites/shows are also similar to the target audience of our film, which would allow the film to reach as many members of its target audience possible. Trailers could be released on sites like YouTube, which will allow audiences to share and start talking about the film which could build more hype around its release. This is again perfect for our target audience as teenagers and adolescents make up the majority of YouTube's users, and thus we will be able to reach as many audience members as possible. This would also fall under the "Social Relationships" portion of Katz and Blumler's uses and Gratification theory, stating how audiences consume media to build relationships with other people. In this case YouTube allows audiences to share the film, provide comments and talk about it to their friends. A perfect time for the film to be released would probably be in the Fall season in around October-November, as most dramatical romantic films are released in this time period. It is also where films that aim to contend for the Academy Awards, more colloquially known as The Oscars, are typically released. Which would be the most prestigious award for our film to achieve, and may lead to increased promotion and publicity.
How did your production skill develop throughout this project?
As we went through the production phase of this project, I had to adapt and develop new skills that would be needed to creatively write and film this project. Since I was the screenwriter, I originally wrote everything in an unformatted version in docs, which seemed very unprofessional and amateur. As time went on though, I researched what real, professional screenplays looked like, and used a screenplay writing website to transfer the original screenplay into a more formal and industry accepted form. This allowed the team and the cast to better understand what I had in mind for what the scenes in the opening were supposed to look like, and allowed us to direct the film with a clear and more similar vision. Furthermore, since I was the assistant director, I had to learn how to properly operate a camera and a stabilizer. I learnt about camera focus and ISO, and I ended up recording some of the shots used in the movie as well. I also learnt about scene framing and how to pull attention towards certain people/objects in a frame. For example, in one scene I used a dolly shot to showcase our main character playing the piano that, in the beginning, started close up and only showed his body, which then moved backwards to slowly expose and put more parts of the scene in frame. More specifically to show his expanded trophy collection. Furthermore, I learnt more about how to create meaning using different types of mise-en-scene like costumes, set design, and makeup. For example, how having actors use more formal clothing showed that our main character was getting more serious with playing the piano. Other than that my teamwork and leading skills throughout the project and mainly the production period improved a lot, as I ended up organising a lot of the logistics throughout shooting and getting the team together to all do our jobs effectively. In the end, I believe we were able to cohesively work together as a team to create a great product.
How did you integrate technologies - software, hardware, and online - in this project?
We integrated multiple different types of hardware, software, and online websites into the making of this film opening. Since Timothy, as mentioned in the team introduction, is a video producer, he already had most of the equipment that we would need for filming, including a SONY A7 Camera with a Zeiss 24-70/F4.5 Lens, and a MOZA AirCross Camera Stabilizer. The rest of the equipment however we decided to rent, which included a CN1200DH 5400K 72W & YongNuo 360 III RGB LED 3200-5500K Lighting Panels, and a GODOX Gm55 4K HDMI Camera monitor. We acquired our microphone (a RØDE VideoMic) from one of our classmates, who was kind enough to lend us his. We decided that we would rent and use this costly equipment as it would allow us to use cinematography techniques that convey more meaning. For example, having a good camera and lens allow us to use depth of focus to show specific characters in the foreground and other characters in the background, which allows producers to pull audiences attention to specific characters and events. For example, in one shot, the music club teacher is talking while being blurred out in the background, as the focus is being put on the main character who is in the foreground playing the piano. This shows that the main character isn't paying attention to/isn't taking in what the music club teacher is saying. The lighting panels we acquired allowed us to put brighter & better lighting on certain characters, which pulls the attention of the audience towards them, while other characters can be put in the shadows which signify that they aren't important to the plot at the time. Like how in the classroom scene, the lighting was put on the main character, while extras were to be more in the shadow as they aren't who we intend the audience to focus on. The microphone we used has a unidirectional audio pick up pattern. This means that the audio captured is mainly from what is producing audio in front of the microphone, instead of audio that is produced in the surrounding area. This allows us to capture audio like footsteps and the sound of the piano more effectively, which makes it sound clearer and more crisp. This puts the audience's focus on the correct audio, instead of background audio like wind, that would've been captured if we had used a worse microphone instead.
Moving on to software - Timothy used Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2022 to edit scenes together, for color grading, and for sound editing. To work better as a team, we used sites like google docs to share ideas and work together more efficiently by being able to check each other's work and provide comments to make it better, and google drive to share pictures and videos that we took. As well as apps like WhatsApp to organise schedules and make sure when and where to meet. I used a website called WriterDuet to transfer my original screenplay, which was written in google docs, and make it so that it conformed to the industry norm of what most screenplays looked like.
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