WELCOME MODERATOR

Welcome moderator! I am Amber Saville 1158 and I worked with Agatha Parry 1150, Constance Dwan 1188 and Georgina Self 1160.

I hope you enjoy my blog, which contains my work on my G324 Advanced Portfolio. We chose brief 10, a short film which we named Checkout, as well as my two ancillary products, a film poster and a radio trailer. 

The research, planning and final ancillary products are in  individual 'pages' above however I have placed the finished products bellow aswell. My four evaluation questions are also above.

OUR SHORT FILM 

OR CLICK HERE TO SEE OUR SHORT FILM ON YOU TUBE

MY POSTER

OUR RADIO TRAILER

CONSTRUCTION: RADIO TRAILLER

CLICK HERE TO HEAR OUR RADIO TRAILER

After getting Feedback on our first radio trailer we have made some changes from this feedback. After we were told that the sound clips from the film were not clear enough from one of our focus groups, we decided to listen to it for ourselves. We felt that the sound was of good quality and therefore decided to show it to another group of people who were our target audience. They then agreed that the sound wasclear enough.

I did all the editing for the radio trailer and put it all together so that timings were right. I did this on iMovie as it was quicker to copy the sound clips from the film across to create our trailer. We wanted to stick to the conventions of a radio trailer and therefore made ours 32 seconds long. A feature length film radio trailer is typically 30 seconds long.

We also had to add in voice overs. Georgina took the main responsibility for being the voice for this and therefore did the narrators voice and also the institutional voice at the end that gives all the information. When deciding about the information we chose to keep it fairly simple since this is a short film and they don't always do the same things that feature length films do. For example we didn't have a certificate rating as normally short films do not have this. Another thing we did not include were things such as famous actors as since ours is a low budget film we would not have famous people. However we did include things such as "the ultimate love story, modern fairy tale." This signals to the audience the genre of the film really clearly.

CONSTRUCTINON: RADIO TRAILER FEEDBACK

We begun our radio trailer after planning the script and structure of it earlier. After putting most of it together we asked for some feedback on the sound quality. We were given feedback that the clips of sound from the film should be re-recorded. This is because the quality was not perfect and in a radio trailer we are trying to get people to watch our film simply through the sound. Therefore we want this to be as clear as possible. 

PLANNING: RADIO TRAILER SCRIPT

We have planned our radio trailer script.

Once upon a time... 

Shh quiet in the library 

There lived a girl who was young and looking for love

"Why can't real guys be like the men in my stories?" 

When one day love found her.... 

"I see you got my sticky notes"


But not all is as it appears to be

"I love romance stories" "Ours is a better love story though, right."

The ultimate feel good film,  a modern fairy tale 

CHECKOUT, coming July 2015

Lines that are in the colour blue are lines that will be read by a narrative voice. We chose to do the theme of our story since the idea of romance books and library is a theme that is run throughout our film. We also thought that this was a new and exciting way to being our radio trailer

The lines that are in pink are lines from the film. We thought that they were lines that hinted to the plot of the story but also didn't give too much away.

The writing in red is the institutional information that we provide for the audience and listeners of our radio trailer. 

PLANNING: RADIO TRAILER

Today in the lesson we began discussing ideas for our radio trailer. I have put some of our ideas into a brainstorm on a presentation tool named Bubbl.us.

RESEARCH: RADIO TRAILER SOUNDTRACK

As we are beginning our radio trailer we have decided to look into the soundtrack that we should use for the radio trailer. We want to use something that people will associate with our protagonist, a leitmotif.

Therefore we will use the music that is heard when the character is first introduced. A leitmotif is used in a variety of different films and to make people think of either a character or a film. For example Star Wars, James Bond, Chariots of Fire and Harry Potter.

RESEARCH: RADIO TRAILERS PREZI

CLICK HERE TO SEE MY PREZI

CONSTRUCTION: THE POSTER

RESEARCH: SHORT FILM POSTERS

PAPERMAN (2012, 7 minutes) 

This short film is a romance short film by Disney. The film poster does a variety of different things.

We instantly can tell from the poster that the film is animated. This may be due to the fact that the target audience of a Disney film would most likely be younger.

The fact that the cartoons aren't showing eye contact suggests that the story is about a blossoming romance. Normally if there is a clear romance they would be closer together and showing some sort of sign of affection. Despite this it is obvious that they are nervous around each other. They both seem confident in the frame. The woman is standing up right and has her arms crossed which is normally an authoritative pose. The man is also standing upright and simply holding his paper with one hand making him seem stronger in comparison to the girl who is using both. Despite them seeming confident we realise that they do not have the confidence to speak to each other. This is a theme that runs through the film.

The use of black and white is also important. The film is black and white however there is also no dialogue. The use of black and white suggests that there is something missing: colour. This is the same with the sound, there is music but dialogue is missing.

The title is clear in the centre of the page. The use of black and white tone makes the title more clear. The font used for the title is a handwriting style font. This goes with the idea of paper as we normally use paper to write on. Along with this I noticed that there was no institutional information. This is because it is a disney film. They tend to present their films before feature length films which is why they don't need institutional information.

RESEARCH: SHORT FILM POSTERS, HIGH MAINTENANCE

HIGH MAINTENANCE

I researched High Maintenance (Phillip Van, 2006) as a second film poster. The poster has a screenshot from the film of the main character. The lighting makes her face glow, showing off her beauty.

The extreme close up shows her emotion, she looks as if she is fed up as she looks at the ground. This could suggest what the film is about; a woman who is fed up with something.

The tag line says "a short film about our future." This line only links with the film after you watch it. I know that this is linked as the film is about robots and therefore about how technology is developing. The director, Phillip Van obviously has an idea that technology will develop so much that there will be robots.

The film was a winner at the Sundance film festival showing the success it was.

RESEARCH: SHORT FILM POSTERS, FILL ME IN

6/10/2014 RESEARCH: SHORT FILM POSTER

I have researched professional short film posters to investigate what professional film posters are like to understand what we'll have to do for our film poster and how they show the genre in their posters, as this is an ancillary brief we are going to do.

FILL ME IN

The poster for Fill Me In (Sebastian Thiel, 2013) shows the genre of romance as the couple stand close together and the other girl facing them with jealous like body language as she stands with her arms crossed. The way that the actors are positioned also gives an indication of the kind of plot as he is clearly in the middle of these two girls.

Another feature that indicates to the audience the story is the tag line of "would you give him a second chance?"The font used is bright, bold and large along with the fact that it seems to be filled in with some sort of pencil effect. The emphasis on the me as it is underlined suggests that the girl who is standing alone is the one that he is being unfaithful to.

The outfits of the actors also indicate the target audience and plot. Two of the actors are wearing young adult like, simple clothing; jeans, a simple top and a t-shirt. The girl on the left is wearing a short skirt and high heels which means that she is showing more skin. This shows her as the one who is causing the trouble as she is wearing minimal clothing and touching his hair. This yet again backs up the idea of the story being about an unfaithful relationship.

Since the poster convinces consumers that the story could be about an unfaithful couple it enhances the surprise of the audience when they watch the short film and realise the real story is completely different from what the poster suggests.

CREATING THE TWITTER, WEBSITE, FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM

I have created a Slideshare to explain why we have made social networking sites for our Short Film and how they help the distribution of our short film along with evidence and research that other short films use social media to get their film out to their target audience. 

Creating our Twitter, Instagram and Facebook from Amber Saville

CONSTRUCTION: CREATING THE TITLE SEQUENCE

Today I have worked on creating the title sequence. Aggy had created the post it not love hearts and then I added the titles on the top to complete the sequence.

Here is the post it note title sequence.



After this we have a credit roll which we have noticed is a convention of short films and therefore we wanted to follow this convention like we have all the others. This is a screenshot of our credit roll.

CONSTRUCTION: TITLE PRESENTATION EXPERIMENTING

I have created a YuDU to present our experimentation on how to present our titles and the title of our film. 

Enlarge this document in a new window
Publisher Software from YUDU

HERE IS THE TITLE SEQUENCE THAT I CREATED TO DISPLAY HOW THE TITLE OF OUR FILM WILL APPEAR.

RESEARCH: SHORT FILM TITLES

I have created a Prezi to present the research that I have found on short film titles. 

CONSTRUCTION: ADDING IN MUSIC

Today we have been making sure that all the sounds are correct. After receiving feedback we knew that we had to change the music that we were using. Therefore we researched music that we could either buy or that would be copyright free.

We found a track that we liked by Luca Stricagnoli. This track went really well with our film and we therefore decided to buy it. We bought it on a website and therefore we are allowed to to use it however we have also credited him in our title sequence to make it clear that we have been allowed to use this track and that it is not ours.

Along with this track we have used one of the iLife Sound Effects tracks called Piano Ballad. This comes with iMovie and we are therefore allowed to use it. We added this track on top of the date scene. We thought that it worked to create a romantic mise-en-scene and followed the convention of a romance film. Along with this track we also used one of the iLife Sound Effects tracks called. This is over our title sequence. It is quite upbeat and happy to suggest the happy ever after. Along with this the music helps to enforce Todorov's theory of new equilibrium as along with the visuals and the music a sense of happiness is created. 

CONSTRUCTION: RECORDING THE MONOLOGUE

We have recorded our voice over monologue over the library scene. The monologue is important for the audience to see into the protagonists thoughts and to see what she is feeling as she finds these notes. We filmed the voice over straight onto iMovie.

 The first time we recorded the monologue we thought that her voice sounded odd and as if it had been warped. Therefore we realised that we should do it again but have her closer to the laptop. We also felt that Aggy found it difficult to get the timings right due to having to look back and forth from two computer screens. Therefore Connie did the job of making hand movements as to when Aggy should say each line. This made our second attempt a lot more successful and sounded a lot more clear.

CONSTRUCTION: IDEAS ABOUT A VOICE OVER

After discussing some ideas for a voice over monologue I created a mind map on bubble.us to present these ideas.

Although we are not completed certain whether a monologue will be used, it is important to discuss our ideas and thoughts about this.

CONSTRUCTION: CO-PRODUCTION COMPANY IDENT

Agatha has created a co-production company ident. The ident shows a monkey poking its head round different corners of the screen whilst we see the name of the company 'monkey moves productions.' Along with this the music is jungle like meaning that the whole theme of the ident is continuous.

The co-production ident is there as it is something that we noticed that short films normally have. The co-production company is there to support the production company suggesting that these companies are normally smaller. This is common in short films since they are not feature length films and therefore are usually lower budget thus meaning that they will need more help with funding.

CONSTRUCTION: TRACKING SHOT SEQUENCE

I made a Piktochart to show how we improved our film after receiving feedback.

CONSTRUCTION: VOICE OVER MONOLOGUE PLAN

Today we have been practising a monologue to go over the beginning library scene where the protagonist is searching the library for sticky notes. We had thought about this idea earlier on but never practiced it along with the film. We also thought that we should change some of our previous ideas that we had for what she would say.  Connie wrote a script for this whilst Georgina practiced the timing by reading it out along with the film being played. 

We have decided to film us doing this on photo booth. Along with this I thought that we should film the screen so that you can see us and the film at the same time. I then edited this together on iMovie. 

Although this was just a practice we will most likely use a similar script when we record the real thing. 

Here is the script we wrote: 

I wonder what’s in the romance section...

hang on what’s this , a note.. 

You make time stand still..

Who, What, who left this, is it for me?..

Wait..

There’s more down here..

Awwww how sweet..

My smile? Where did these come from, who left them?...

Here’s another one and its right next to my favorite love story...

And there’s another one down here (laugh)...

These are so adorable.

CONSTRUCTION: CREATING THE IDENT

I have created an Animoto to show the construction of our ident.

Creating our Ident

HERE IS OUR IDENT

CONSTRUCTION: FEEDBACK AND SOLUTIONS ON THE DATE SCENE

I have created an Emaze presentation to show the re-filming of the dates scene which we did in today's lesson.

CONSTRUCTION: EDITING THE PHONE CALL

CONSTRUCTION: BEDROOM PHONE CALL SCENE AND SNAPCHAT

I decided to create a Snapchat story whilst we were doing the phone call scene. Snapchat is an app on phones. It is a simple way to send a message to a whole group of people as anyone can see it. You simply take a video or photo and upload it to your Snapchat page where your friends can view it. You can write on the video or image to explain what you Snapchat story is about which is why it also makes it useful to present our filming. I have chosen to present our filming on a Snapchat story as it is a popular and new trend.

I have put the images from my Snapchat Story into a Padlet. This presentational tool allows you to add photos all together onto a blank canvas making it easier for photos to be presented and viewed at the same time. 

Created with Padlet

Short film maker Casey Neistat uses snapchat to document and show parts of his life to other people. He has a You Tube channel dedicated to uploading his snapchat stories so that people can watch them over and over again.




Another way that Snapchat is useful is for live updates. A recent one was to broadcast, live, the Sundance Film Festival. The 'live' feature gives people who use Snapchat the chance to send in their own photos and then view other peoples. The 'live' feature is useful if you want to see other people's cultures and what is going on around the world as so many different things are broadcasted; Sundance Film Festival, Golden Globes, New Years Eve around the world and many other events and occasions.

Here is a screenshot from the live Sundance Film Festival snapchat story:

CONSTRUCTION: REFILMING THE BEDROOM SCENE, VINE

Today we refilmed the bedroom scene. We decided to do this because when we gave ourself feedback we thought that the quality of the tracking shot could have been better as it was slightly grainy.

This scene consisted of a tracking shot of the protagonist and her makeup, close up shots of the protagonist and a crane shot of her on the phone.

I have chosen to create a Vine to show the construction of the tracking shot over the makeup as Vine is a new trend.

Vine is an app for phones. It allows you to create 6 second videos. I thought that this was appropriate to present my work on as it is quick and allows you to make a short video with lots of different things on it. You can add in videos or film them instantly and add them to your video.

CONSTRUCTION: FEEDBACK

After receiving feedback on our piece of date filming we have decided that we must film it once more.

The main reasons that we thought that we should do this is because of the fact that the sound is unclear. The conservation between the two character is blurry due to the loud background noise

Another reason we have to re film is because it is boring for the audience to watch. Although there are a variety of camera angles, there needs to be some more close ups. For example we have decided to have a close up of their champagne glasses.

Finally we also thought that the actual script was boring and does not give any hints that the boy is a player. Therefore we are going to write a script which gives hints that he is player and is not the actual person that left the post it notes.