REVIEW: Editing Final Product

This is a printscreen during the first draft process of our film review. We wanted to ensure that simplicity was a key theme throughout to suit the style that we wanted to achieve. We wanted the page to be uncluttered, However it became clear that too much "white space" took away from the professional look we aimed for, and instead looked empty and not reminesant of a film review from a magazine. From looking at the film reviews provided by the magazine "Little White Lies", we were able to base our film review around the layout, to ensure we acheieved a more professional and stylsh finished product. After adjusting the text to remain in line with eachother, adding a 'rating system' and a main focal image, our film review consisted of a simple and uncluttered layout which would appeal to our target audience of film lovers.

REVIEW: Drafting Layout

For our drafting layout of our film review, we researched into several independent magazines, which we thought would best suit the style of our short film. Little white lies (http://www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/) is what we used for our inspiration, and what magzine we wanted our review to potentially be in. Little white lies, are known to be interested in 'up and coming films' , and the audience would be suited as they are more likely to find low budget films appealing rather than big hollywood blockbusters.


We wanted to produce a review which resembled the reviews which are presented in Little White Lies. I thought the simplicity of the pages,show a unique aspect which delievers the funtional information to dedicated film lovers, delievering the technical crticial aspects of the film, yet is a easy read for our audiences through its flowing diolouge. The colour scheme of the simple black and white, draw more attention to the text and the picture, as the readers of 'Little White Lies' aree genuine film lovers, and would appreciate the text rather than having a 'busy and overbearing' page that distracts from the main purpose - to review. The text is the main focus, yet the picture at the top of the page atrratcs the attention of the readers.

REVIEW: Choosing Most Appropriate Images From Film

We made the decison to choose this still image from our film review, which would be situated at the top of the page. This image reflects what the plot its based around their realtionship and this is the ambiguous ending which makes our short film unique in its own rights due to the lack of resoluation as we challenged the typical five part narrative structure convention of a film. We felt it was right that this image was presented in the review.

REVIEW: Drafting Text

We used inspiration for our text in our review by researching into reviews from the magazine 'Little White Lies'. We made a few notes and further devloped them into our final review product. Below are some of the notes which we made after our research and for us to produce our language in a similar way to 'Little White Lies'.

"However, credit must be shared, not just by the director and her technicians but with the performers too. The combination of Jake Taylor’s natural charisma and Emma Walsh’s heartfelt performance with a subtle yet mature narrative, make for a moving tale. Rebecca Winter captures the impressionable disposition of a young girl yet displays an understanding way beyond her years.Though this film may not offer the clichéd fairytale ending that some hope for, it is the dramatic ambiguity that makes Torn emotive and self-reflective. But despite the unconventional denouement, the inevitable love between the parents is clear through stolen moments of tenderness.
· intrusive camerawork· result is of substained skill and subtlety· resembles with ‘fly-on-the-wall’ aspect in which we are presented with the ongoings in the family home and behind closed doors"
- potential awards (cannes film festival)
- Other short films that has influenced us, readers of 'Little White Lies' are avid film lovers, so they appreciate rferences to other short films that are similar for a futher watch.

REVIEW: Analysing Design & Language Conventions of Magazine Reviews

When looking at examples of film reviews we made sure to think about what sort of design and language features occurred in different magazines. For example in FHM, that is a larger ratio of image to text, as this magazine is typically a male gender orientated magazine, this style of review suits the target audience of the magazine. Readers of FHM, are more likely to want a straight to the point, humorous style text, rather than the critical technical language which is aimed towards film lovers who prefer the specialist film intellect side of reviews, such as readers of Sight and Sound. Different design and language conventions were key when deciding which aspects our review would follow, we considered our target audience, as we would aim our design and use of language on which our audience would relate to and attract. Film reviews are a key aspect in ensuring the success of any film, to attract and draw in an audience.

REVIEW: Researching Different Film Magazine Audiences

We used our access to Google and several magazines, to research which magazine would best be suited for our film review taking into consideration of the 'artsy' aspect as we wanted our independent film be reflective of that. We decided on "Little White Lies" as we felt this best suited our film and its simplicity and the artistist side of film and the media.

POSTER: Drafting and Editing

Below are the drafts of our posters, before we made the necessary creative decisions to ensure our poster looked professional and suited the genre of our short film and worked well in combination with our film review. We moved around with several of the itme son our poster including the main image, the title and tagline, until we felt our poster was accurate and the best it could be produced. The framing of the poster was important to perfect, as the poster will be drawing the attentions of our potential audience, and is their key focus. The positioning of the text was important, we wanted to make sure that the functional information was visible yet didnt detract away from the main image, as we wanted that to be the key point of focus. The font of both the title and tagline, had to be changed several times, as we wanted the fonts to be considering to represent the genre of our film.

POSTER: Choosing Most Appropriate Images

This was our final choice of image for our film poster. I felt that this image was significant to our narrative and would provoke interest from the audience, due to the young girl who is seen holding scissors. This image produces the feelings of both tension and uneasiness aswell as producing an attention seeking image. Using fireworks application, we used the 'blur tool' to blur the background surrounding the young girl, to draw the attention to her and have her as the main focus of the poster. The 'blurriness' could also be seen as a symbolic reference to her 'blurred' and conflicting thoughts. We used the 'sharpen tool' to enhance the scissors, to draw particular attention to this dangerous prop. Overall This image works for our film poster, as it evokes suspicious ideas regarding the film and will attract an audience to watch our short film and see how the plot develops.

POSTER: Exploring Fonts

Fonts are important when used in a poster, as they not only provide functional information, they may highlight the nature of what is to be expected within the film, and even the genre. We wanted a font for our title 'Torn' to reflect the drama of our film. Our title of 'Torn' was chosen as it reflects the girls inner thoughts and feelings, and reflects the 'torn apart' family. We wanted a font to also help reflect this. When researching we looked at sites such as http://www.dafont.com/, and proceeded to narrow down to 3 possible fonts which we could use.

However we proceeded to have problems occur when using microscoft Publisher, the font ended up looking out of place and

POSTER: Setting up Mise en scene

Mise en scene was key in order for us to give an insight to the audience into what is inclined to happen within the film. The image on the poster consists of a young girl with her back facing towards the viewers, this produces an enigmatic feeling which draws in an audience as the restricted view of her facial expression keep viewers unaware of her emotions. The girl is seen within the setting of a bedroom, which expresses an idea of a domestic, family home. The girl is pictured in her pajamas, this highlights her innocence and young age. She is seen holding a pair of scissors, this prop conflicts with the previous thought of her young age and innocence, which may spark interest for the film. We wanted the scissors to remain a part of focus as they are important within the story, yet the image of a child with scissors can produce an interest for the audience as these are not commonly related together. This symbolic use of props also produce interest from a wide range of people as its danger as this may evoke feelings of uneasiness. However the sight of scattered torn pieces of paper around her, may help us evaluate the situation, and may represent her scattered thoughts and feelings. We wanted to ensure that our poster, drew people in, and gained their attention.

POSTER: Sketching Possible Images/Fonts & Pitching The Poster

The possible image was produced as a group from a influence of mixed ideas of each person. We aim to copy the sketch for our final film poster product. We wanted the image of the girl to be situated in the centre on the poster, as the short film is situated around her as a character and it is symbolic of her being the heart of the family. It further highlights her importance as a character within the film. The scissors and torn/cut pieces of photos surrounding the girl, may present the audience with a insight to the plot, inclining to attract viewers to see what happens within the film. Despite its symbolic representation to the audience, we wanted to ensure that the final product also contained all the relevant functional information provided to show the poster in a professional light.

POSTER: Analysing Conventions of Film Posters

Film posters are key for sparking interest from a large variety of people, people who read reviews may be already interested in that one type of genre whereas film posters can attract any body's attention by their symbolic yet functional advertising. Film posters can provide information regarding the film it is advertising, so audiences know what film it is and what might be expected, this is where audiences may gain an interest into the film. I researched several film posters, one in particular is 'Silence of the Lambs' which is shown below.

This film poster engages the audience due to its enigmatic nature. Upon close inspection of the poster, it indicates the genre of the film, and what is to be expected. The redness of the girls eyes present danger to the audience, and the moth covering her mouth may indicate an inability to scream, this produces a disturbing and morbid image. On a closer glance of the moth, we see that it consists of women bodies in a distorted way in the form of a skull. This may hint towards the plot of the film, and also attract audiences by its disturbing nature which also produces curiosity regarding the film.

Due to this research into film posters, this enabled me to think of possible ideas for my own film poster for our short film. Our group may be inclined to produce a poster to advertise our film, yet give hints to the audience of what our film may contain and what audiences can expect.

FILM: Researching Other Short Films

When researching, I found that short films and feature films differ in several ways. In short films, aspects are ofetn suggested rather than developing. Short films do not typically have a large amount of narrative or diologue, I felt that this improved the effect the short film had on me in the short amount of time it was shown. I felt i was allowed to make my own interpretation of the films i was shown, and they in fact had a bigger impact on me, especially a short film called "Letters of service". A link is shown below to the trailer of the award winning short film.



The same could be said for the short film "Strangers" (which is shown below) , where the message is conveyed to the audience without diologue being present.



The internet is a good way of distrubuting short films, as they are not released as widely as feature films and this way they more likely to reach audiences with out the fuss of distributors. Websites such as Youtube and other blogs, were a good way to find and view short films for my research into short films.
Both "Letters of service" and "Strangers" inspired me and our group to produce a film that conveys a message and for a moral to be present within our production.

FILM: Shooting Schedule

A shooting schedule is key for organisation by having a day by day plan, by which we can decide which times are available for our group. It enables us to organise our crew and resources. By us having a limited budget comapared to feature films, our resources were limited, this schedule helps us to keep on track of this. Also by having a schedule, this makes sure we are able to make any deadlines we aim to achieve due to time saving. Planning is key in making sure we achieve a final product within the time set and which we are satisfied with. However alterations may be made to our shooting schedule at a later date, due to commitments within the group, or extra time for extra scenes to be re-shot. Below is the shooting schedule we aimed to follow.

FILM: Organising Location, Actors etc

Within our group we organised our location at one of our houses, as it was easy to us all to access and our short film is set within a family home, so it was simple to film at one of our own family homes. When thinking of actors, we discussed possibilities, but as people's commitments got in the way this made it difficult to choose actors. We finally decided on using a actor within our group and the parents involved in our product, were to be one member within our group and a close friend, which would also make time used more sufficiently as all of us were available to film within a deadline.

FILM: Storyboard

Storyboards are time efficient and are money saving, they help make creative directorial decisions easier. The planning which consists of a storyboard make it easier to understand what is going to happen within the production, although decisions are not also exactly the same as what is shown on the storyboard, due to changes in camera shots and editing etc which may make the overall final product more effective to the audience. Below is our storyboard which accompanies our script during the planning stages, we made sure to include a variety of camera shots, to make our final product look more professional.

FILM: Scripting

Scripts save valuable time during filiming, as all descions on what happens throughout the film are already made although alterations may be made at a later stage due to creative decisons from the director who may feel as though the diologue could be made more effective to the audience. Directions are a prominant feature in our script as we plan to tell the story mostly by visual rather than diologue, this follows the trends of most short films that i researched which also consist of a small amount of diolouge. I believe this way will be more effective to the audience and as it gives them freedom to make their own interpretation of the short film rather then 'telling' them. Our group made sure that the stage directions would convey how we wished our charcters would come across to the the audience without the help of a sufficient amount of diologue.


Below is a sample of our script.

FILM: Developing a Pitch

A pitch is for filmmakers to give postive views of the upcoming films. Our orignals Ideas were as follows. Creating a bonfire, adding photo's to the flames and a teenage culture inspired short film. Focusing on the affects of and making the right decision when it comes to drugs. Originally we were going to go with the idea above but we realised the complexity of the idea would be hard to convey within 5 minutes due to it's narrative.

OUR PITCH
A mother and father are arguing and the father storms out (drives off.) A Young girl (daughter), grabs the box of family photo's and begins to tear and cut the pictures. Father comes home, parents walk into their room to see the young girl has made a heart using the pictures she has cut up. Parents look at one another to suggest a "what will happen" ending.Ending on a quite ambiguous note allows the audience to wonder and decide for themselves what they would like the ending to be and is open for interpretations. We hope, when creating this film the audience will enjoy the moral of the short film but the suspense will keep them interested and evoke emotive feelings and in someway relate to the film , whether from being in a similar situation and overcoming it, or are going through struggles like these at home. The realism is the uniqueness of our short film 'Torn' and our main priority is for the audience to relate and understand the feelings and actions of characters in our independent short film.

FILM: Research into Target Audience

I feel that our film will appeal to the target audience of both male and female in their teens to early twenties, and to people who may have been in or in a similar situation as they can relate to the moral of our film. Adults may be able to relate to our film, due to its realism and the actions and developments of the actors. Our film presents a reality of a family home, so adults may feel they can relate to the situation of our characters as they have experienced this stage themselves, or have overcome a difficult in a relationship. By targeting a wider group of audience I feel that our film will be enjoyed and appreciated by a larger group of people, who simply enjoy the craft of independent short films.