A PLACE TO BE ALONE BY STEFFAN CRYSTAL AND TERRY FARMILOE

AN EVALUATION OF AN A2 ADVANCED PORTFOLIO

BRIEF

Our brief was to create a short film

lasting approximately 5 minutes.

BRIEF We created a short film which was within the Art House genre. Our film was conventional in its use of camera work, editing and mise-en-scene, but was unconventional in its use of sound and narrative .

This is screenshot from the film

IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS? •  Filmic conventions:

Titles, variety of camera angles, match on action Short films can be considered a genre on their own. They don’t necessarily follow filmic conventions, for example of feature films. They often have:

•  An element of comedy •  A narrative which usually centers on a moral dilemma

The Art House genre allows film makers to challenge the conventions of established genres.

OUR FILM USED SOME BUT NOT ALL OF THE CONVENTIONS OF SHORT FILMS

Just 1 or 2 characters

Short film Conventions

Twist in the story line

Strong use of steady cam

Real life situation

Low budget

Variety of camera angles

Use of a comedy element

ART HOUSE FILMS We feel that we have made an art house film , we have come to this conclusion by looking at some other art house films

the conventions of art house : •  Film theorist David Bordwell identified some conventions

of art-house cinema

•  The main protagonist does not have clear-cut goals or discernible motives : Our protagonist goal is to have a time for himself and some peace and quite

•  Screen time is often used without driving the narrative forward : In our film we use a lot of long shots where not much happens to create an atmosphere and make it feel like its in real time

CAMERA

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This is a conventional low angle shot that we used in our film

The image cannot be displayed. Your computer may not have enough memory to open the image, or the image may have been corrupted. Restart your computer, and then open the file again. If the red x still appears, you may have to delete the image and then insert it again.

This is a shot from behind the head, It is an unconventional way of doing a point of view

A low angle is used to make the audience feel small and gives dominance to our protagonist We have also used a medium close up (mcu) to show his facial expressions.

This shot allows the audience to feel that they are in his position and also shows us his surroundings.

ART HOUSE CONVENTIONS

Slow pace film – this is an example of a slow paced short film. Uzak by Nuri Bilge Ceylan Lack of dialogue: Our film is a silent movie so we had to tell the story through the actions of the character . Incoherent narrative : the feedback from our film shoed the we did have a coherent narrative. No change in the character . in our film the change in character is very minimal, he goes from being calm and contained and in there pursuit of peace and quite and progress to a person that would kill another person.

THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF A LONG SHOT

This shot lasting 7.50 seconds which is a long shot and these are conventional to the art house genre.

CAMERA

This is a great example of an establish shot because Batman is set in one city and shows the audience loads of detail of where the film is based.

Establishing shots- Establishes where the film is set or what kind of environment the scene is set in

CAMERA We have used these establishing shots to put the audience in the mood of the scene and reinforce the setting of the film.

These are examples of establishing shots from our film these shots are conventional and show the audience where the they are and the change scenery. They are essential for the film’s narrative because they explain the location of his escape.

MISE-EN-SCENE This is a screen shot of our film showing some props we used for the daily routine sequences. This established our character and showed the audience he had a daily routine .

This is an example of different costumes which we have used. To show different days in the film.

This choice of costume shows the passing of time and shows the audience different days. This also establishes the character as a teenager, he wears conventional clothes for a character of this age. Sandwich – Is a prop to signify the different days, we developed this idea from a short Youtube film http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-jVauuqRaE where the background of the central character changes.

EDITING

Continuity editing

Titles

Transitions

Match on Action

Sound

CONTINUITY EDITING It is a convention to edit the film to maximize continuity to make the film appear like it was filmed in one go. This also allows the audience get in the mood of the film without making the film jumpy which can take the viewer out of the film experience

In this clip we can also we an example of match on action when he gets up and walks off and goes into the other shot.

Match On Action We used Continuity and match on action editing because it is conventional

TITLES This is our opening titles to introduced the film , we have also put sound in the back ground to create a busy atmosphere so that the audience can understand that our protangist wants to get away from the busy day to day life .

The titles also gives the audience the name of the actors, the production company name, and the name of the film. To used titles in a short

film is also conventional

SOUND Used, developed or challenged conventions of sound? Our film challenged the conventions of sound by not having any dialogue. Instead we used traffic sound effects to introduce the story. •  Sound effects for the opening sequence

•  The first song has a beat which can be related to the routine of the character’s day. The second song, which doesn’t have a regular beat can be related to the spontaneity of the character’s nature.

Sound Effect

Sound track over our film

•  These are the songs we used to create atmosphere in our film. We used free music archive

HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TEXTS?

•  Creating synergy

film

poster Magazine review

We feel we have created synergy throughout our film, magazine review and poster. We film that our film directly links to the style and content of our poster and magazine. If the audience were to read the magazine review and poster they would expect to see the film we have created

Other magazines to compare to

We have researched other magazines which we thought would relate to our audience and the genre of our chosen film. One of the main magazines we thought would appeal to the same audience was Sight and Sound.

Our magazine has the same style layout of both of these reviews. We can see this by the way they have a picture of the main protagonist which is the convention that stands out most on the page. Our film post also contains a quote and a film rating this would give some information to the audience about what reviews have thought of the film. We have also put film synopsis which would sum up the film briefly.

This is an example showing the synergy and our visual mark for our film

This is an example of good synergy. Straight away the audience can tell that both of these posters relate the the design and by the font used.

COMBINATION OF MAGAZINE AND POSTER How do they relate to each other? - Font, style & design, colour scheme. In the magazine review and the film poster we have chosen to use the two different photos of our protagonist this would help the audience identify with our film. In our film title we have used the same font and creates synergy by the way both of the l’s line up so that when our audiences see this they identify the film with the magazine and the poster.

THE COMBINATION OF POSTER AND FILM

The institutional information connotes professionalism

Picture of the main character. Connotes a pensive theme. The low angle shot emphasizes that this is the main character

Title of film

The font used hear reinforces the serious theme of this movie

The film still with graffiti clearly identifies the film as being aimed at a younger audience

We can already see the mise en scene being used in the poster for example costume and setting.

These are all examples to show how our poster is conventional.

Magazine Review

This picture is of the main character in the film and this shows to the audience that it relates to the poster and to the film.

This is the title of the film and is the same on the poster and on film titles. This shows the combination of are main product and how they are linked with the ancillary text.

This is a shot from the movie, it is a low angle shot and we can see his expression on his face which he is feeling in the film.

This information tells us about about the film for example who directed it and the age rating of the film.

The text here is directed at the same audience as the movie is directed at.

Website of the magazine for more information

Page number and date of the magazine

These are all example to show how our magazine review is conventional.

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK FROM THE FILM

This is an example of one of the questionnaires we handed out to the audience to see what they thought .

Good Points: everyone was able to quickly Identify the film’s genre. The audience recognised that loads of different shot sizes were used. They also thought that sound effects and tracks went well with out film The music added to the relaxed nature of the first part of the film. Weaknesses: some of the audience found it hard to follow the narrative. The pace of the film was too slow

AUDIENCE RECOGNITION OF SYNERGY BETWEEN FILM AND POSTER

90%

10%

Having seen the film, would you say that the poster is a good representation of the

film?

Yes

No

41%

59%

Having seen the poster would you go and see the

film?

Yes

No

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

Having found out that only 45% of people who had seen our poster would see the film we decided to make some changes to the poster. The main issues that were raised were about the colour of the poster, the audience said it should be darker because they felt that it would relate to our film more. Another issue that was raised was about the magazine reviews who gave our film the stars, the audience said the writing was to small and hard to read with the background. After the audience feedback. We decided these were the main issues that we thought we would need to change.

Poster version 1

Poster version 2 Here we decided to change the color from white to black, this gave the poster a darker look

Here we made the font bigger so it stands out more so the audience can read it and make sense of the stars

Here we changed the twitter and Facebook sign so the audience knows were to find out more about the film

HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?

•  Open source software - Celtx

•  Web 2.0 – Free Music Archive •  Media literacy

•  InDesign

•  Final Cut Pro

•  Adobe Photoshop

•  After Effects •  Abelton Live

•  DSLR CAMERAS

USING MODERN TECHNOLOGY

We used a DSLR camera to film our film (Canon 60D)

The reason this camera was good to film on is because it films in full1080p HD, it has interchangeable lenses witch makes it much easier to get a variation of shots , it has a high iso range

Some down falls of the camera •  It has a small field of focus •  It only takes SD cards instead of compact flash drives

RESEARCH To help us with our research into short films we use Youtube, we found this use full because it had loads of short film from in all different genres.

This is an example of a short film that our film could relate to. We find that this is similar by the establishing shots used, also the use of a soundtrack and a voiceover which we thought we would try but in the end we decided to only use a sound track with sound affects to create more atmosphere.

Some of the channels we prefer for short films were future shots and blue tongue films.

USE OF CELTX 1 INT. CLASSROOM.DAY 1

Two 18 year old boys are sat in a class room alone, Eric andBob. Around them are groups of people chatting, high-fiving,and talking about how fun their weekend was.

BOY 1(excited)

Yeah! That party was sick! Did yousee me with Holly?

BOY 2Yeah she’s fit, man! Did you tryany of the bubble?

BOY 1Yeah all day in bed come Sunday. Iwould do it again though! So worthit!

2 CAMERA CUTS TO BOYS SAT ALONE AND QUIET. 2

ERIC(To Bob)

Did you hear that? The party lastweek that we missed again.

BOBYeah, I guess they forgot to tellus.

ERIC...again.

BOBIf we organised something on thatscale we could get everyone hear tocome.

ERICYeah, right. You wish.

3 INT. LANDING.DAY 3

Camera leads up to a door with a 2 Pac poster on it.

CONTINUED: 6.

ERICwe will get you your money by theend of the week i swear

DEALERIf you don’t get me that cash, youdon’t wanna dream of what willhappen to you. Remember. End of theweek.

bob and eric run off panicking

BOB(A little excited)

did you see me stand up to himEric?

ERIC(dismissive)

oh shut up Bob

9 INT. STREET.DAY 9

ERICShit! Bob, how are we going to gethim his money?

BOBdon’t worry Eric we have loads ofoptions.

ERICwell what are they then bob

BOBermmm...

ERICwhat about if we save our pocketmoney.... or we could, we couldsell our phones?

BOBhow about we borrow some money fromyour parents and put it back beforethey get back.

ERICno. we are not taking money from myparents.

SCREENFLOW OF THE EDITING PROCESS

This is a screen recording of some editing in our movie. It is an example of a shot reverse shot. You see the character walking down the path and you see that he is confused we go to a shot over his shoulder to see what he was confused about then back finally to his face for a reaction shot.

ABELTON LIVE

Abelton Live is what we used to make a song for the movie all though we didn’t use it in our film it was very interesting to use

This line represents the volume level

This is the sound bar it displays the wave forms

This is the display for the looping tool

WEB 2.0

This is an example of a website we used called free music archive, we found this very useful because we could find free music of any genre to go with our film and help explain our film by the track we used.

PHOTOSHOP This is an example of a tool called curves which we used, this help us with the contrast of our poster to make it look professional and get the color more shape.

With Photoshop it is also useful for adding titles and positioning them. We also used this tool to add some conventions for example the stars.

We added this to our poster to give our audience some information out the film and show awards it has won.