Media Studies AS Level Creative Critical Reflection of the film 'Till My Last Breath'

1. Creative Critical Reflection
of the film ‘’Till my last breath
By Neha Faisal

2. 1) How does your product use or
CHALLENGE CONVENTIONS, AND HOW
DO THEY REPRESENT SOCIALGROUPS
OR ISSUES?
• My media product(movie opening) shows conventions seen in many other
films of this genre. The genre of my film is romantic/drama.
•The soundtrack (The arrival of the birds – The Cinematic Orchestra) gives a
hint to the audience of what the genre might be in the beginning of the
2minutes 16seconds long clip.
•I used slow transactions between the cuts to fit the genre of this film.

3. • The conventional ideas are present in this product. Such
as flowers, romantic gifts for the girl, letter etc.
• My inspiration for this video was the song ‘Forever and
Always’ by Parachute.
•The lyrics of this song are a narrative, and it first describes
a woman waiting for her boyfriend to return home. She
begins to worry because it has become later than when he
normally returns home. Finally the phone rings, but it
someone telling her that something happened to him and
that she should come to the hospital immediately. He’s
been in an accident. She then gets an idea to marry him
and she vows that she will love him forever.
•Similarly in my product, the couple have a fight and he
wants to make up for it. He leaves her gifts and asks her
to meet her. However, He phone rings and a message
from her friend says that he’s at the hospital.
Image from a scene in the
video

4. • My media product represents the youth of todays society. It reflects the rising
‘boyfriend- girlfriend’ culture and increasing importance of relationships in their life.
•Also it represents the basic stereotypes of teens. It is clearly evident in the scene
where the character’s mother is trying to talk to her and she didn’t even bother to
turn around and instead she reacts rudely and walks ahead.
• A similar example from a real time movie could be ‘10 things I hate about you
(1999)’Directed by Gil Junger. Starring Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles. This film has
a similar genre like my product also it uses the basic conventions.
•In conclusion, my media product does in fact uses the basic conventions of romantic
drama genre and it also represents our youth in a nutshell.

5. 2) How does your media product engage
with audiences and how would it be
distributed as a real media text?
•My media product is aimed at a niche market of teens and mostly women
who would be interested in tragic, dramatic, romantic films. It may not
appeal to the major main stream market.
•The unique selling point of this film would be the music, which captures the
attention of the audience with it’s mild melodic sound.
•After a lot of research on different distributors, I landed on ABC Family. I
want this for many reasons such as:

6. 1. It features series and movies aimed at teenage
girls and young women. This is a perfect fit for
my film as it also aims at the niche market of
teenage girls and women who are into
romantic films.
2. They distribute low budget films which is an
advantage for me since my film would be
categorized as a low budget film. However, a
well known name of this distributor to the
aimed audience will catch their attention
anyway. They have distributed similar films
like Legally Blonde, A Cinderella story etc.
Since my product is low budget, hence, the
risk involved is low as well. Therefore, these
factors should be helpful in encouraging them
to work with me.

7. 3) How did your production skills develop
throughout this project?
• This project has allowed me to widen my knowledge about films and how
they are made. I learnt about the different camera angles that are used in
film which I even used for mine such as close ups, wide shot, two shots and
point of view (pov) shot.
• I also learnt the type of cuts used for different genre and how to use them
accordingly. This might be evident in my film also.
• This project also taught me about the two type of sounds; Diegetic and Non-
Diegetic. For my film, I decided to use non-diegetic sounds. For example;
the soundtrack of the movie and the voiceover of the man reading the letter.

8. 4) How did you integrate
technologies(software, hardware and online)
in this project?
• For this project, I used my Cannon DSLR to shoot the clips.
• After which I edited them on my laptop through a software called ‘Windows
live movie maker’
• I used Gmail to transfer data for example stills, audios etc. from my cell
phone to the laptop.
• To download music, I used an online music downloading website.
• The sound of phone vibration was also downloaded from the internet