Emma - Act 2 Scene 2 Version 1

Lots of improvements to be made! I may reshoot the whole scene because I am unsatisfied with the location. Also the ADR and flow of the scene needs work, and I recognise this as somethings that need to be made better. The aspect ratio is also off, and I don't yet know how to edit this, but it will be fixed!

Emma - Act 2 Scene 3 Version 1

I don't know what happened with the error message bar. I will fix this, but I like the effects that I put on a couple of the shots to warp them. It provides a nice distorted and disorientated feel that I like.

Ancillary Task WIP

Version 1

Version 2

These posters are still very work in progress! I have lots of changes I would like to make and I'm not even 100% sure I want this photo. The next versions will be put up onto my blog as I make them. 

Evaluation Questions 1, 2, & 3

• In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My media product will use forms and conventions of real media products. Especially codes from short films, and thriller films.

• How effective is the combination of your main and ancillary texts?

The combination of my main and ancillary texts will be very effective as I will research into the codes and conventions of existing ones and I will apply these with a compelling twist to make my own.

• What have you learned from your audience feedback?

My first two questions from my severe i cannot analyse by themselves as they are just who filled out my survey, I can however analyse them in relation to my other question in that I know these are the opinions of 55% females and 43% male people's opinion. I also need to bear in mind that 30% of my survey responses were from people who were 13 or younger, this is not directly my target audience  as I was aiming a little higher for my thriller film (about 14 - 29 years old). The 30 - 60+ bracket also isn't my target audience but these together only add up to about 15% of people who filled in my survey. 

From these questions I can gather that comedy, thriller, and drama are the most popular genres of short film, with the smallest being period/ historical, documentary, romance, and others that were specified. I think that comedy may have been so popular beach of they young age of many of my survey correspondents. My film will not be of the comedy genre but my film will also not be targeting  people of ages 13 and younger. I do not feel as if I could pull of humour in my film as it does not fit, especially slapstick humour of which young people are particularly partial to. I also feel that These young people who filled out my survey were the ones to say that they do not watch short films. It is not so common for younger children to specifically seek out and watch films which are shorter in length as they do not appeal as much to this age range. One may think that younger people would enjoy films that are shorter in length as they have a shorter attention span than most, but this does not seem too be the case. 

The second and third most common answers were 2 - 4 times a week, and 5 - 7 times a week. Interestingly not many people picked the once a week option, despite my personal prediction of ascending numbers for this question. Now that I think about it believe this to be because if someone likes short films then they would watch more than one a fortnight as this isn't a lot, but if people aren't interested then they may watch one or none. A few people even said that they watch short films more than 10 times a fortnight! These are the people that I am trying to appeal to. 
Overwhelmingly the responses came back for this question as on Youtube, with nearly 80% of the replies. I feel that this is because Youtube as a platform is free, easy, and accessible for both content creators and viewers. This is something I need to bare in mind when I am creating my media product,  as the way media pop. in post production I will have to change the formatting to H264, this format is supported by youtube which means it will process faster and provide a smoother viewing experience. Another format is MP4, which is the same as H264, just less compressed. Peoples attention span on Youtube is a lot shorter due to the shear amount of content on the platform. To combat this I will make the into to my film particularly interesting, to retain engagement. I will also keep my film to a shorter length to ensure people watch until the end to get the full picture of my film.  I will also bare in mind that nearly 30% of people said they watched short films on the website Vimeo.  

I have looked at and researched the films written in the free text box for my 5th question. I will take on board what my survey responders liked, including genre, length, target audience, and aesthetic.For the final question of my survey I asked if people could tell me what they specially liked in short films so that I could incorporate these ideas into my own work. Some of the most common responses were quite vague ranging from "anything really" to "entertaining" and "engaging". I understand that this may be partly my fault, leaving the question so open ended and vague. There were however a couple responses with more specific anwsers. Things like "Not so long", "interesting characters", "artsy". The film being shorter in length came up the most often and this is defiantly something I will take on board when making and editing my film, as something my target audience want.

My media product will use forms and conventions of real media products. Especially codes from short films, and thriller films. 

The combination of my main and ancillary texts will be very effective as I will research into the codes and conventions of existing ones and I will apply these with a compelling twist to make my own.

Animatic!

Ive finally finished my animatic! An animatic, is basically the template for an film. It is the storyboard panels, timed out in order to the dialogue track.You use it to check angles, timing, expressions, and set down all cuts and scene changes within the animatic. 

The animatic is one of the most important parts of the production process.

   

Emma: The Script!

Names Brainstorm!

Emma is my favourite name as it is simple and straight to the point and it being short links to the thriller genre, but the girls name tell you who the main character is and a little about her. Im have not fully decided but from now I shall call the project Emma and see if I want to change it later on.

Research Summary - What I have Learnt!

Short Films

I found a lot of things that I didn't know about in my research. Through my research into short films I have learnt how important professionalism is. A lot of time and effort and money is put in to make each frame of a short film to be perfect.  The make or break point in all the short films that I watched was how believable/ and in the diagesis I remained as a viewer. Films that had continuity errors/ bad acting and other things that weren't professional ruined for me what could have been a perfectly good short film. The films I like best can also be categorised as the ones I felt were the most professionally made (not taking into account if they were made by professionals or not).  When analysing student short films I learnt that there are a couple things that I must do if I want to make my film look professional. These include making audio a priority, colour correcting my footage, and getting the best performances from my actors. Professional shorts taught me the structure of films and how to put a whole storyline into a short space of time whilst refining it to make it even better. I also gained background knowledge into shot types, pacing, and genres whilst watching so many short films.

Film Posters

What I have found through my research is that film posters vary greatly in their style and content depending on what genre there film is. Thrillers and horrors use almost entirely dark colours, images, and fonts. Where as romance and comedy films always use bright colours, with pastel colours and often a lot of the colour white. This will help me create the right conventions when I make my own poster, to attract the right audience of my target market to watch the film. I have decided that I am going to create a poster that is the right size for a billboard or a double page in a magazine, instead of the portrait size that may fit a DVD cover. This is because I feel it would be best to promote my film to its target audience. As this is a short film it is unlikely that it would ever make it to DVD, and therefore a advertising appropriate size would be more effective. 

Film Reviews

From my research I have realised that there are many different formats of film review. Paper magazines look very different from online articles, which are also different from specialist websites, which differ from newspapers. This is something I had not considered before I started my research and I will be sure to think about these different types and styles before deciding what type of film review to write and make. Often, I found, paper based film reviews have a 1:1 or 1:2 ratio of pictures to text. For my own film review I will copy this ratio to make sure my review is in line with others like it. They also had 3 columns per page for easy reading and used the film's font very largely to attract prior fans to the article, so more people would be interested and read the review. 

Survey

My survey taught me a lot of deferent things about my target audience. I have elaborated on these points individually on the corresponding posts. The history of short films taught me about the context of the media product that I am making and where it came from and how to honour that thorough my own work. Through researching my chosen genre of thriller I learnt a great deal about the codes and conventions of existing media products that I will utilise within my own. This will make my media product even better and it will help it reach out to its target audience.

Overall I am happy with my research and I am confident that I am now able to create the best media product of a thriller short film that I can. 

To Film and Edit ......

To Remember to film:

• memory card
• camera
• tripod
• props
• lighting
• Recky
• Sound equipment
• Relise form - actors
• letter of intent - location
• any copyright issues

To Remember to edit:

• play around and research software - do blogposts
• storyboard
• continuity editor and watcher

Ancillary Task Progress - Shoot 1

The photos that I like most are biggest, with ones that I think are okay at a medium size and the smallest photos I don't particularly like. 

The flash accidentally went off. 

I was too low in comparison with my actor, this is not what I wanted. 

I directed my actor to turn to the side so I could try out a profile picture, however I don't like it as much as I thought I would. 

The camera work combined with my actors expression makes this photo great. Her expression is perfect for the strong but messed around PSTD riddled character Emma.  I also love the depth of field I created and how the focus is so obviously on Emma. This is my favourite photo of the lot. I do, however, believe I can improve upon it for my poster. 

The lighting in this photo washed my actor out and really gives an unappealing result. 

I also do not like my actors expression here, it doesn't convey what I was hoping about the film in terms of because this photoshoot is for the poster. I want her to be a strong character, even when she is scared and this does not show the right side of the character I had written. 

Mid shot. I like this photo specifically because of my actor's expression and the good lighting. It took many many photographs to get to this one. But its slightly blurry! Noooo! Its a shame because otherwise this photo may be a contender for the poster. 

I don't like these full body shots because we loose eye contact with the actor and therefore the interest with the poster as an audience. 

Next shoot, to improve upon this one I will dress my Actor in more grown up clothing and, take more care with the lighting and focusing of the camera to get the best picture I can for my ancillary task.