Creative Critical Reflection

1. Creative Critical Reflection “Amy” Bridgit Burns

2. Using/Challenging Conventions & Representation Genre Amy slightly uses the “manic pixie dreamgirl” theme more so than a psychological thriller theme, mostly in part because the film follows Amy (played by Brigitte)- a teenage girl. Specifically, the film itself is meant to become an insight to her perceptions and distorted mindset. For this reason, the product fits more of a coming-of-age indie film. By using multiple fade transitions for the titles and shots, the film opens slowly; intriguing the viewer into Amy. The lack of other characters and focus on setting also ensures that the viewer is engrossed in Amy’s head. However unlike other films in it’s genre, Amy challenges the damsel-in-distress standard.

3. Social Representation Amy is representative of current troubled youth- a young woman is maturing and gaining recognition of the difference between common and uncommon aspects of her mental health. Unfortunately there is a lack of a variety of racial representation due to the film only having one character. The product however, includes a sequence of shots of Amy from several viewpoints and angles, including a shot of her legs crossed, dressed in fishnets- a hint toward her sexuality. Costuming played a large role in representation of character for this film, as there was not much dialogue to generate more attention toward little details- details such as Amy’s wardrobe. Dark colors (representative of her mood, how she projects herself) were worn in both locations. This is especially important because of the contrasting locations; one is natural and open and filled with nature and light, where the other is dim and small. These choices in detail are extremely symbolic of Amy’s internal personality.

4. Audience / Distribution To capture the attention of the audience the film opens with a POV shot of an unfamiliar location; the forest. This scene is accompanied with the diegetic crunching of leaves underfoot, to connect the viewer as though it was through their eyes. The attention is held by using slow, scenic shots- the viewer is unaware of what the film will be about until Amy is shown (standing in the forest). Since the film is categorized as an indie / coming-of-age / psych film, It would be produced with a low budget using funding from campaigning (ex GoFundMe or Indiegogo). By using social media (all forms- Finstagram, Facebook, Tumblr) for promotion rather than advertising with large companies (McDonalds, Target, etc) the audience will be a tightly knit group, and gradually will spread the word. The movie itself would be distributed digitally as well as in physical copies.

5. Personal Skill Development Through this project I have grown an interest in small budget films; they’re extremely difficult to create efficiently if you want a quality product. I’ve definitely learned the importance of enforcing a strict schedule, however this may be difficult at times with creative mind-blocks and ulterior factors that may negatively affect the film. These challenges however, only contribute to the gratitude of completion; having a final product. It is entirely possible that I may drift into the field of media, whether that be specifically directing, writing or editing, I cannot say. By completing this task alone I had the experience of completing each stage, whereas in in reality, top grossing and popular movies are created by thousands of contributors. There are many aspects of film production/marketing to assess, and personally I had only considered a few before working on this project. I enjoyed learning about the effort it takes to create a film by unifying video and sound.

6. Integrated Technology To film: Canon handheld Camdorder with separate tripod. An external mic was not used. Editing was completed using Pinnacle Studio 17. For research and planning, the internet was used excessively. For an audio recording, rather than isolating the audio channel from a video I used a website called Vocaroo, to embed the video I used YouTube to upload my video. Research and Planning stages were the most reliant on internet, using sites such as Art of the Title and IMDB.