Evaluation
14 years ago
Sound Track
The short film we produced had no dialogue or proper diagetic sound to it, because of this we decided to add a soundtrack instead. We chose to add the song 'play by flunk'. We chose this song as we thought it fit the film very well.
We thought that this non diagetic sound would bring out different aspects of the film, which it does. For example the build up at the start fits the build up in the music etc.
We were slightly concered to begin with as we didnt want the music to make our film look like a music video, but we believe it still works like a short film and are pleased with the outcome.
We thought that this non diagetic sound would bring out different aspects of the film, which it does. For example the build up at the start fits the build up in the music etc.
We were slightly concered to begin with as we didnt want the music to make our film look like a music video, but we believe it still works like a short film and are pleased with the outcome.
Ending
Originaly in our story board our film was going to end when the robot was on top of the car park, looking over the horizon. However when we got to this point we realised we had about 30 seconds of film left, because of this we decided to extend the film and in turn, came up with a better ending. After this the robot falls from the car park, lands only to come accross a lighter, and sets hisself on fire accidentally. Our group believes this is a much better ending as it sums up the film better and emphasises the saying we based our story behind 'curiosity killed the cat'
Ancillary tasks
These are the 2 ancillary tasks we chose to do, as you can see there are the Poster (below) and the double page review (bottom).
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| From Matt's blog |
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| From Matt's blog |
Aditions to story board
After alot of filming and putting our film together, we reviewed what we had done so far with our teacher. What we realised by doing this was there was a section where the continuity of the film was effected. This was the section from where the robot is made, to when it gets to the car, initialy it jumped from one to the other with very little between.
Because of this big jump we had to re think this, and make a transition in betwee, we came up with a short section to add to the film which shows th robot in the bag and our character walking to the car. It works much better and is much more proffesional.
Because of this big jump we had to re think this, and make a transition in betwee, we came up with a short section to add to the film which shows th robot in the bag and our character walking to the car. It works much better and is much more proffesional.
Changes to Story board
In our initial story board, we had our character walk to the car and put his bag into the boot, the robot then got out of the bag and onto the parcel shelf, he was going to move forward to the front of the car. When it came to filming the very limited amount of space meant it was extremely difficult to make the robot do this without seeing someone move it. Because of this we decided to change the story board.
Now instead of going onto the parcel shelf the robot gets put on the the passenger seat in the bag, and proceeds to move from there instead, it works alot better and was much easyer to film than the previous idea.
Now instead of going onto the parcel shelf the robot gets put on the the passenger seat in the bag, and proceeds to move from there instead, it works alot better and was much easyer to film than the previous idea.
Teacher Targets
- Evidence of analysis of exisiting reviews and film posters.
- Your film poster and review creation stages and analysis of final product
- Audience feedback - of final ancillary tasks.
- Need evidence that you have considered your target audience- perhaps a target audience profile. Who is your product for? Why?
- Need to revisit older teacher feednack and make amendments
- Record of storyboards/shot lists
- Analysis of company logo - how does it represent you as a company?
- Your film poster and review creation stages and analysis of final product
- Audience feedback - of final ancillary tasks.
- Need evidence that you have considered your target audience- perhaps a target audience profile. Who is your product for? Why?
- Need to revisit older teacher feednack and make amendments
- Record of storyboards/shot lists
- Analysis of company logo - how does it represent you as a company?
Filming issues
Today we started to film the second section of our short film. This started with the scene in the car.
We came accross a big problem here as there are massive space restrictions within the car, this made moving the robot while not being able to see any people very difficult.
Seeing as the character in our film is ment to put the bag in his car, unaware the robot is in there, and not see the robot as it begins to move, this also adds restrictions of what we can do within this scene, so again this makes it very hard for us to do.
We will try to resolve this problem and find a way to complete this scene.
We came accross a big problem here as there are massive space restrictions within the car, this made moving the robot while not being able to see any people very difficult.
Seeing as the character in our film is ment to put the bag in his car, unaware the robot is in there, and not see the robot as it begins to move, this also adds restrictions of what we can do within this scene, so again this makes it very hard for us to do.
We will try to resolve this problem and find a way to complete this scene.
Filming Log
We did some more filming, this time for our final piece.
We had a chat the day before about what we needed to bring, prop wise etc.
Everybody turned up with the correct props, clothes etc and filming took place.
We got alot done today and we will edit before filming more.
There were a few problems with the filming we already did however. One of these was how the robot moves, we found you could see we were moving it so we need to try to hide this in the next bit of filming.
Also we will need to re film some shots as the miss en scene was different throughout some of them etc.
Also there was some glare from the sun and we left a tripod in one of the shots, so although filming went well there are still things we can re film to make the quality better.
We had a chat the day before about what we needed to bring, prop wise etc.
Everybody turned up with the correct props, clothes etc and filming took place.
We got alot done today and we will edit before filming more.
There were a few problems with the filming we already did however. One of these was how the robot moves, we found you could see we were moving it so we need to try to hide this in the next bit of filming.
Also we will need to re film some shots as the miss en scene was different throughout some of them etc.
Also there was some glare from the sun and we left a tripod in one of the shots, so although filming went well there are still things we can re film to make the quality better.
Props etc.
In order to keep the mis en scene the same throughout the whole short film there are certain things we will need to keep the same, these things are:
Actors
Locations
Costumes
Props
The specific things we have used in our film are:
Cheese (actor)
Robot (prop)
Bag (prop)
Car (prop)
All of the locations
As we do all/most of our filming in school time, these things will be easy to keep the same, we have made sure each person is responsable for there own props, me personaly have to make sure i bring the bag in every lesson. Cheese has to make sure he wears the same clothes on filming days and also brings in the robot prop.
Seeming as everyone knows exactly what they need to bring in and on what days the orgonisation of all of these things is very good, there has not been a day yet where we have not been able to film due to missorginisation.
Actors
Locations
Costumes
Props
The specific things we have used in our film are:
Cheese (actor)
Robot (prop)
Bag (prop)
Car (prop)
All of the locations
As we do all/most of our filming in school time, these things will be easy to keep the same, we have made sure each person is responsable for there own props, me personaly have to make sure i bring the bag in every lesson. Cheese has to make sure he wears the same clothes on filming days and also brings in the robot prop.
Seeming as everyone knows exactly what they need to bring in and on what days the orgonisation of all of these things is very good, there has not been a day yet where we have not been able to film due to missorginisation.
Analysis of test shoot
This is an evaluation of our filming that we have done previous to this. After everyone watched back over our short test short film, we decided the positives and negitives from the filming and decided on what we would make better next time we filmed, when we did it properly (as this was only a test shoot)
One of the things we changed was the opening scene, in the test shoot he is pulled out of a drawer, and jumps into a persons bag, when we decided to re film we had someone make the robot, then him come to life, we believe this gives the film a better film and it flows better. Overalo our group was happy with the test filming that we did, but there were some flaws with the filming. One of these was the lack of a tripod, we realised a tripod was a necesity, to allow us to hold the camera steady and make it look much more proffessional. Another thing we decided was to include Point Of View shots, from the robots perspective, this is to allow the viewer to relate more with the robot, who is in turn the main character of the film.
We will include alot more variety of shots filmed more proffessionaly when it comes to filming for our final piece, this will then lead to a better and more proffessional outcome.
One of the things we changed was the opening scene, in the test shoot he is pulled out of a drawer, and jumps into a persons bag, when we decided to re film we had someone make the robot, then him come to life, we believe this gives the film a better film and it flows better. Overalo our group was happy with the test filming that we did, but there were some flaws with the filming. One of these was the lack of a tripod, we realised a tripod was a necesity, to allow us to hold the camera steady and make it look much more proffessional. Another thing we decided was to include Point Of View shots, from the robots perspective, this is to allow the viewer to relate more with the robot, who is in turn the main character of the film.
We will include alot more variety of shots filmed more proffessionaly when it comes to filming for our final piece, this will then lead to a better and more proffessional outcome.
Test film
This is our test video we followed our storyboard as a rough guide and worked around the restrictions we had on the day of filming. for example: room where we could film, equipment like tripods. we also filmed an extra scene to give our self's and everyone else a more focused idea of what will happen in our short film.
i will post a full analysis of this video of what went wrong, what went well, our future ideas and what we are going to do from here.
Test film info
We made a test video where we were experimenting with our robot idea, this was to see if it was going to work well enough, there were certain things we had to work out on the filming day, like: Cameras, places to film, extras (the robot), characters to act and others.
Once we have edited and viewed this video i will analyse it to pick out all of the things which we could improve on, this will then give us a much better understanding of how to make our film much better.
Dawn Productions
After working out a Production name and logo i created this animated GIF using photoshop.
Story boarding - Hitchcock
Story boarding is incredibly useful as it sets out a plan of what you are going to film, this is an application on the iPhone that lets you take pictures, annotate, add panning shots within the pictures and up load the story board to sites the blogger.
Are group are going to purchase this application and use it to story board our ideas as we think it will be more effective and will demonstrate our shots better than drawing them would.
Are group are going to purchase this application and use it to story board our ideas as we think it will be more effective and will demonstrate our shots better than drawing them would.
Reflective paragraph
In preperation for my production i have looked at many different things, the first one being having looked at existing media texts. By doing this is showed me certain things i would need to include/exclude from my own production.
We also did lots of audience theory and genre theory, this helped us understand more about the genre in which we were making our film, and also the sorts of things the audience was looking for.
Looking at lots of different things was very usefull as it gave me a wider understanding of lots of different things, allowing me he knowledge to create a better production.
I found the blog itsself to not really be very usefull, they arent the easyest to use and can be a hinderance sometimes rather than a help. Although being able to access all of my work from home does help sometimes.
Teacher Feedback
Your blog has some good evidence of research but it is lacking in relating that research to your project.
I think your group would benefit from an account of the groups' roles and responsibilites and a plan of action with time limits so that you can all see when certain things should be happening and getting completed.
You need to revisit some of your posts and link them to te creative decisions and technical choices that you have made/will make.
I think your group would benefit from an account of the groups' roles and responsibilites and a plan of action with time limits so that you can all see when certain things should be happening and getting completed.
You need to revisit some of your posts and link them to te creative decisions and technical choices that you have made/will make.
Encoding/Decoding (theory)
This theory extends the idea that we, as an audience, view texts in different ways.
Everybody brings a different experience to the text, this may alter how the text is 'decoded'
Someone who watches the same film as someone else, may believe it has a different meaning and perceive it in a completely different way. This is because the film is 'encoded' in a certain way and every individual person decodes in differently.
Even though this theory takes everything into consideration, it cannot think about the context for the everyday.
So for example, you may like a film for one day. but then not the next (may remind you of a bad memory etc)
Two - step - flow (theory)
People experience the media individually, they then discuss what they have seen/heard with the others and it is the discussion that influences opinions/behavior.
Example. Someone would say they don't like a film, they will talk to someone who does, this person would change there opinion of it through discussion.
Again this isn't always what happens it depends on the individual whether they are influenced by others or not.
The culmination theory
An example of this would be:
Years of watching violence will make you less sensitive to violence.
This theory does not support the fact it will make you less sensitive to violence in real life, as the person has not been in that situation, also it depends on the person if they have been influenced or not, so this theory is not great either.
Hypodermic Syringe (theory)
Media is like a syringe, it injects ideas attitudes and beliefs into a mass audience. This theory states that the audience for the media has 'little choice to be influenced' and is 'power less to being influenced'
(this however is not a fact and cannot be proven or supported)
Audience theory
Does the media separate us or bring us closer together?
Both, for example. In the cinema it brings us closer together because everyone is watching the same thing, and all sitting with each other, but separates us at the same time as no one is allowed to talk.
People tend to use the media more when they are by themselves, like when they are, on the phone, ipod, mp3 player, Internet, magazine.
Then again people still use the media when they are with other people like, going to cinema, watching TV.
Understanding of audiences
Do we have cmoplete choice over what media we interact with?
We only have choice of what is available in the media, ie, we cant watch/read.listen to something that hasnt been made.
Sometimes we dont have a choice, we cant avoid seeing things smoetimes like billbored etc, however, it is our personal choice to be affected by this media or not.
Will everybody watching the same program ract in the same way?
Critisism of mass theories is that they assume the audience will all view the text in the same way, whereas this is not the case.
In fact oir individual view is effected by gender, age, etc.
We only have choice of what is available in the media, ie, we cant watch/read.listen to something that hasnt been made.
Sometimes we dont have a choice, we cant avoid seeing things smoetimes like billbored etc, however, it is our personal choice to be affected by this media or not.
Will everybody watching the same program ract in the same way?
Critisism of mass theories is that they assume the audience will all view the text in the same way, whereas this is not the case.
In fact oir individual view is effected by gender, age, etc.
Uses and Gratification theory
We expect to be gratified by what we watch
Types of gratifications:
1. Information
2. Entertainment
3. Personal identity - People may wish to view models for behaviour
4. Social - Empathy/Sympathy and also personal attraction
5. Escapism
Types of gratifications:
1. Information
2. Entertainment
3. Personal identity - People may wish to view models for behaviour
4. Social - Empathy/Sympathy and also personal attraction
5. Escapism
Film in the online age
Things are changing with films now because of the online age.
There are various factors that are changing this, these are things like:
Web 2.0 - This is things like wikis etc which people can edit and add to as they wish. Web 2.0 is the interaction from people rather than just being able to read things on the internet. This makes a massive difference to films as people can leave feedback or ideas meaning they have more input to things.
Interaction - viewing films is now becoming more personal, with the viewer in some ways having more of a say of what goes on with the film, this could include things like choosing alternate ending etc.
It seems like the boundaries between films and games are blurring, so like stated above the viewer has an active input into the film, in some ways making it more like a game, making the person watching it more like a 'user', than a 'viewer'.
New web - The Internet nowadays in much more different to what it used to be, people are now able to interact with it, posting in forums, blogs and other online things. Compared to a few years back when people could only read things on the Internet, it opens up massive opportunities and makes it much more active to the user. Being able to vote in polls and leave comments on videos etc means people can have an active input into the media on the Internet.
Also devices such as mobile phones etc now allow people to take the Internet wherever they go, meaning it is much more easily accessible, making it a much more commercial and popular thing.
DepicT
www.depict.org
Is a website that is part of the watersheds project which in turn is part of the 'encounters short film festival'
It hosts lots of short films and allows you to submit your own film to compete against others, in hope that your film will be voted the best.
You can watch all of the submitted films on the sight, along with films from previous years. This is helpful as it gives us an insight into the sorts of films that people have already made, and gives us ideas for our own short films, along with techniques and other things to help improve our production.
New idea (changing our short film)
After looking into our idea and storyboarding it a few times we realised that it wasn't really going to hold out for a short film, because of this we decided to come up with a new idea.
Our new idea was about a small robot, who comes to life, and goes on an adventure, over the course of his adventure he becomes more and more curious of his surroundings, this, in the end, leads to his untimely demise by unforeseen circumstances.
The film is based around the saying 'curiosity killed the cat' and because of this the title of our new short film will be 'Curiosity'
The idea seems to be much better and shows allot more potential than the old one.
Genre Theory
Genre depends on the acceptance of generic conventions.
We are making a short film therefore it must fit into the specific conventions for a short film, and for the genre that it is.
So for example, if our film was a short action film, it would fit the conventions for a short film, and for an action film.
Short film analysis
We looked at some short films in class, the one that stood out to me and i decided to write about is called 'shelf life'
Shelf life shows a man undergoing a series of safety procedures before beginning to drill into his wall, a certificate that we see shows he is a health and safety officer and has been rewarded for his accomplishments.
Once the man begins to drill into the wall, we see another shot of an elderly man, his face drops and he falls as we notice his head has been penetrated by the safety mans drill. The credits roll and we see the man continuing to drill a series of holes. The film then ends.
The reason i chose to analyse this film is because of the unseen twist that happens towards the end, where the elderly man is killed. The twist really draws your attention into the film more, as it is very unexpected. What makes this so intriguing is the way the main character is set out to be very safety conscious, this leads us to believe he has taken every precaution and that the foreseeable events will run very smoothly, this is then completely changed as wee see the character accidentally kill a man, and not even know he has done it.
This adds a very comical yet cynical feel to the film and makes it very enjoyable to watch.
This short film is about mundane everyday things, and a lot of emphasis is shown on these simple everyday tasks, this links the short film to the one we were planning on making, as in the one we are planning on making would also emphasis everyday tasks that everyday people would undertake. Although in our short film it is going to give the viewer a view of the life of a standard person, with no twist, the short film we watched is still relevant for the fact of it being about everyday things.
Research into similar texts
Because our text is going to have transitions through time, with the character jumping forward in age, i decided to look at a film with similar sorts of transition.
The transition i looked at was from a film called 'City of god' which is an independent Brazilian film.
This transition shows a teenage boy which then changes to a young school boy, the camera movement and sound is very significant in this transition. The camera is probably a steady cam, this travels round the character in an anti clockwise direction, probably to signify the backwards movement of time, also while this is happening we can here a clock ticking, again to show movement in time during the transition.
Another transition in this film is where 2 children, our main characters are walking up the road, this is being filmed with a tracking shot, as they are walking a car moves through the shot, as it leaves the children are older. There is a grade for the different periods of time during this film, when this transition takes place the grade changes from very gold and warm, to very dull and inky, also during this transition, once the car has left the shot, music comes in typical of that era, again this makes it more obvious of what has just happened, which is the just forward in time.
The transition i looked at was from a film called 'City of god' which is an independent Brazilian film.
This transition shows a teenage boy which then changes to a young school boy, the camera movement and sound is very significant in this transition. The camera is probably a steady cam, this travels round the character in an anti clockwise direction, probably to signify the backwards movement of time, also while this is happening we can here a clock ticking, again to show movement in time during the transition.
Another transition in this film is where 2 children, our main characters are walking up the road, this is being filmed with a tracking shot, as they are walking a car moves through the shot, as it leaves the children are older. There is a grade for the different periods of time during this film, when this transition takes place the grade changes from very gold and warm, to very dull and inky, also during this transition, once the car has left the shot, music comes in typical of that era, again this makes it more obvious of what has just happened, which is the just forward in time.
Stereotypes
–In our short film we have representations of a typical male character but from different ages of there life. So it will include a typical representation of a: Young boy, Teenage boy, Adult male and an elderly male.
–The common stereotypes of these sorts of people are as follows:
–Young boy – late for school, rushing around, careless
–Teenage boy – Finishing exams, excited, going to socialise
–Adult male – Working, driving, going drinking
–Elderly male – Walking stick, not doing much, content
–These are all traditional representations of each of the age groups showing typical actions and emotions these sorts of groups would show.
–The representation of these groups has stayed the same during the years, i think teenagers now are shown as being more violent nowadays than they used to but apart from that the representations are the same.
–The common stereotypes of these sorts of people are as follows:
–Young boy – late for school, rushing around, careless
–Teenage boy – Finishing exams, excited, going to socialise
–Adult male – Working, driving, going drinking
–Elderly male – Walking stick, not doing much, content
–These are all traditional representations of each of the age groups showing typical actions and emotions these sorts of groups would show.
–The representation of these groups has stayed the same during the years, i think teenagers now are shown as being more violent nowadays than they used to but apart from that the representations are the same.
First Post
This is the first post in my blog, this is where all my media stuff wil go and it should be rather good and stuff so yeah...
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