Dog walk Vlog

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Beach Vlog

Media theorist and Representations

In our short film we have used two representations of lives. This could link to the theorist Karl Marx, he was the founder of communism and suggested that capitalism societies brain washed everyone into thinking it was good for them. This can link to the media as powerful rich individuals in the media are able to present what they want in the media for the mass to view. This can be clearly seen in one section of our film where we represent a way of life; a rich successful one. Here we are quite obviously representing a capitalist society and the benefits with it, e.g a large house and nice possessions. However in our view we show our main character as being lonely and not fully satisfied with his life and possibly undermining capitalism.
In our other representation of a family life we have given a representation of a woman. Our film is directed is potentially targeted to a female audience so there is no need to angle our film to the male mind as it would not appeal to women; the male gaze theory.
In some ways our short film can be presented in the frame of mind that we have created these steroypical lives and kept to all aspects of the sterotypes. We have used this possibly because like many other film producers sterotypes are a good way of getting a message across quickly and easily.

Looking at our short film through a feminists eyes you would get the view that Grace is a passive character and in many ways she is, the todorov theory would fit her into the princess type character. This then gives her a slightly bad representation of a woman as she is not powerful or dominating.

Film Poster Analysis

For our auxiliary task we need to produce a poster promoting our film. Here are a few examples of recent film posters of where we could learn from when producing our poster. Marketing in the film industry is incredibly important, although these are feature length films and ours is only a short film the principle and technique when creating it should be the same. It all comes down to the proximity's of the text and images shown on the poster, the chosen writing, the chosen pictures, the line to sum up the films narrative and finally the names included on the poster. These are all important when considering our poster because if our film was to really go on sale we would need to produce sufficient marketing tools and one of the most important is the poster.

This poster here uses two extremely iconic faces of Hollywood; Johnny Depp and Angelia Jolie. The creator has pointed this out explicitly and boldly as it is a unique selling point. It shows the genre, of which is incredibly important as the audience need to know if it will appeal to them. It shows this through the line saying ' the perfect trip, the perfect trap' connotating its a action thriller. The picture of the boat also hints to the idea that its a fast pace film with a lot of action.

This film poster, although not the same film genre as ours, straight away gets the genre across, with its choice of dark lighting and colours it shows its possibly a dark thriller or a horror; connoted by the red writing at the bottom which links to meanings such as danger or blood. This poster uses a photoshop edit to potentially communicate that they are running away from a memory as this image is inside his head, although I cannot be completely sure. The name 'Russel Crowe' Is also an extremely recognised name.

The Notebook, which has aspects of our genre, has taken an artistic picture to use as the main picture. The pale colours suggest its a love story as does the picture of the couple and therefore straight away connotes that the audience is of a female demograph. No particular names are in bold, although many famous actors and actresses appear in this film it is not the unique selling point. This would be similar to our poster as we have no famous actors within our film.

Deadlines and Calander

Weather for Friday, Dog Walking Scene.

Meal.

Beach Filming day




Grace and Lucas, with costume and Location

 

Lucas's Costume

Grace Costume

Beach Location

Beach Location

Lighting on our first day could have potentially hindered us, just because the angle of which we wished to film from meant the sun was coming straight towards the camera. However we used this to our benefit to create an atmosphere of romance, and the silhouetted images we are hoping are going to be effective and add to our short films quality. We decided to collect a range of shots from different angles and for different lengths to make sure we have enough footage to edit later on. We experimented with different camera positions to make our film more interesting.

Weather for first filming date.

We are now ready to film, so our first filming date is Wednesday the 10th of November, we are filming a fairly short scene on the beach of Grace and Lucas together.

The weather for Wednesday is perfect for filming conditions, and by checking this we are showing our ability to plan ahead.

Costumes and Characters

Lucas - Lucas life is split into two and this can be seen in his personality.

In the successful life you can see elements of stress, arrogance with his wealth, yet loneliness. He wears suits which often reflect his personality.

In the other life Lucas shows more of a light hearted, fun person. Lucas wears more casual clothes to reflect his casual personality.

Grace is a bubbly, fun character closely relating to Lucas character.

Lucas's first costume

Lucas casual clothing.

Animatic

Poster Mock Up

This is our first draft of our poster, telling the audience a small amount of the film and a source of marketing. In our poster we plan to show a picture of our main character standing facing away from the camera as if he was beginning his journey and setting off. The two tracks connote his two paths he could take in his life. We have decided to show them as train tracks to make the link between his choice and the train he potentially takes/ misses.

However with this poster there are many things to work on, for example the quality of the pictures and images will need improving and we plan to take our own pictures instead of using images from the Internet. Furthermore the background image needs working on and rethinking, whether we choose to take a different picture or come up with a different concept it needs changing because it is not effective enough.
For our font for our title we have chosen a sophisticated font and word which is directed to our audience as we are mainly targeting to a mature audience. Furthermore our tag line 'Sometimes its smallest decisions that can change your life forever' is one of which sums up the whole film and inevitably is the main message from the film.

Locations

Our main location is at a train station where our film is set, this is where our character has the flash forwards. Furthermore we also have a number of smaller locations for example;
The two houses of which he lives, an expensive house, and an average house,
A restaurant
On the beach
In the forest
In Lucas's office in his good job and shots of Lucas in a not so nice job.
We are hoping that the range of locations and fast pace of shots and different places will keep our audience interested all the way through.

Mood Board

                 This side shows a lonely yet successful side of Lucas's life. The rich and formal side.

This half of our mood board shows the one side of Lucas's life we hope to show the family life, we have shown happy families and aspects of a life with companionship.

The trains in the middle signifies the choice and the middle way and how he is torn between.

Script

Short film script1

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Our script is very short just because although we have our basis to our film, we are planning to film and add in dialouge later so it is more natural to our actors and the off bits of dialouge are more effective. The script shows a rough description of our shots however after experience we found we changed the script a lot during our filming dates.

Our Film Name

Our film title took a lot of time to decide on, we came up other ideas like decisions and choices, due to the main plot of our film, however we found this too boring and simple. We looked at the film Inception and noticed the narrative and genre were very similar and noticed the name as we believed it was very effective for a film title. So therefore after a lot of research on names we decided to sum up our film in one word and we came to the conclusion that our film was genuinely about two choices. So we looked up choices in a thesaurus and came with a number of different words we could possibly use as our titles. However the word intersection really stood out to us, and the initial meaning was crossing of two paths of which our character experiences within our short film. So our film name is Intersection. We looked at other film names amd discovered the film name "Inception" was really effective and complex so we then thought ours followed a similar pattern.

Shooting Script

Scene
Shots	Shot description	Audio and dialogue
1	Sweeping panning shot through the crowded train station and establishing shot to show Lucas walking onto the train platform.	Diegetic sound of crowd and non-diegetic music.
2	Point of view shot from Lucas’ perspective as he moves through the crowd.	Diegetic sound of crowd and non-diegetic music.
3	Shot of Lucas’s feet running through the crowd, in fear he will miss the train.	Diegetic sound of crowd and non-diegetic music.
4	Mid shot of Grace walking along on train platform. Grace’s face in focus, whilst everything else is out of focus, signifying her importance.	Diegetic sound of crowd and non-diegetic music.
6	Over the shoulder shot of Lucas looking out into the crowd.	Diegetic sound of crowd and non-diegetic music.
7	Slow motion shot of the clock hand’s moving, emphasising its importance.	Diegetic sound of crowd and non-diegetic music.
8	Long shot of an empty train track, with the train approaching in the distance.	Diegetic sound of crowd and non-diegetic music.
9	Long shot of Lucas rushing through the crowd as the train pulls up.	Diegetic sound of crowd and non-diegetic music.
10	Close up of the train pulling up.	Diegetic sound of crowd and non-diegetic music.
11	Grace rushes forward and slips as her papers and bags go flying – match on action and slow motion.	Diegetic sound of crowd and non-diegetic music.
12	Close up of Lucas’ reaction to Grace falling.	Diegetic sound of crowd and non-diegetic music.
12	Point of view pan between train and Grace on the floor, indicating how Lucas has a decision to make.	Diegetic sound of crowd and non-diegetic music.
10	Shot of Lucas on train platform, cuts to 2 ghost shots, one where he walks towards Grace and the other where he walks towards the train – representing the 2 different paths.	Diegetic sound of crowd and non-diegetic music.
11	Close up of shaky hand, representing a job interview.	Non-diegetic music.
12	Establishing shot of Grace and Lucas at a romantic meal.	Non-diegetic music.
13	Mid-shot of Lucas on the phone in his office.	Non-diegetic music.
14	Establishing shot of Grace and Lucas on the beach together.	Non-diegetic music.
15	Shot of Lucas stressed out at work – unhappy.	Non-diegetic music.
16	Shot of Lucas proposing to Grace – happy.	Non-diegetic music.
17	Shot of Lucas in his mansion all on his own.	Non-diegetic music.
18	Shot of Lucas and Grace buying their first house together.	Non-diegetic music.
19	Split screen to show Lucas opening a letter in both lives.	Non-diegetic music.
20	Long shot of Lucas opening letter in his mansion all alone with no one to celebrate with. Long shot of Lucas opening letter with his wife. – Split Screen – contrasting the two lives.	Non-diegetic music.
21	Rewind time, back to Lucas standing on the train platform.	Non-diegetic music.
22	Close up of Lucas’ foot as he walks off - audience are left to wonder what path he has taken.	Non-diegetic music.

This shooting script shows our main shots of our film in as much detail as we can think of at the moment. However our group have decided that we may work on thinking up some much more complex shots to add to our short film and we plan to work on this and get extra shots to add to the length and pace of the film while filming.

Sliding Doors Analysis

Sliding Doors is possibly the most similar film to our concept and narrative. It explores a double narrative and a choice and also relates closely to the train idea. The conventions used are very similar and inspiring. Furthermore a convention used is the sound effect at the point where the mains characters life changes. Although you do not see two completely separate lives you see how her life changes and differs from when she catches the train and catches her boyfriend having an affair and when she does not and continues to live her life with her dishonest boyfriend.

The parallel narrative also is very similar to our idea however we aim to make ours original by adding a ghost shot where you see the two flash forward moments at the same time. With using conventions like split screen and lighting to demonstrate the two different lives.

The poster of sliding doors could potentially corrospond closely to ours. It gives a small amount of information about the film, and the mirror image of the woman in her two different lives shows the plot has a split narrative of which we hope to show also.

Survey

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From handing this survey out we realised our audience would be mostly female 18-35 year olds. We noticed that well known actors and actresses attracted certain audiences, however we do not have access to famous actors so we decided to use actors and actresses within the age group of our demograph.

Analysis of a short film.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/films/p004tb3f

This genre of short films closely relates to our short film as it is a drama with elements of fantasy and a non-naturalistic style to it. The narrative follows one character Darren in a dream like state of who is trying to remember past events, this is shown by a clone of himself.

The style of this short film is quite dark and can be reflected in the lighting throughout shots of his memory. However when shots of his current dream like or death state are shown you get this effect by the light airy lighting suggesting it is unreal. The setting and location of the short film is interesting as it really highlights the unrealistic atmosphere and can be found when looking at the mise en scene, the scenes change from a deserted beach with a slightly eery feel to it, to a dark night in an urban area of which also has creepy elements within. The costume of the main character Darren with a dark blue suit shows formality maybe to do with his job as a tv host or another connotation that the suit is the clothing of where he life took a turning point and he murdered the boy and he cannot turn away from it, or hide from it. The blood stain is significant because you believe the man to be dying himself when actually it is the blood of the teenager he killed. The verisimilitude is incredibly successful in many ways although it is unlikely and unrealistic you believe that each shot is a snippet of this mans mind and the madness and distress he is feeling. The way they have used shots of a dilating pupil and eye shows the death of the boy but also the awakening of the man to his crime.

The camera shots significantly reflect the nature of the film. Fast moving shots and pans to show the panic while Darren is running from the group of teenagers. Slow moving shots to show his reflection on the past. The shots range from mid shots to show his life before the murder and slightly closer shots to reflect the intensity of moments. There are also extreme close-ups to show the intense relationship between Darren and his girlfriend and the moment she reveals they are having a baby.

The sound in this film is hugely effective it ranges from soft piano non- digectic sound to show the remembrance and reflection time. Fast pace electronic non digetic sound to show the pace of movement in shot when Darren is fleeing from the gang. And an ear-piercing screech to show the pain inside Darrens head and him struggling to see straight and think straight.

The editing in this short film is also very succesful as it follows the technique of cutting back and forth from scenes and jumping time. This is effective for the story is all about his memories and memories flicker just like the way the shots are edited.

The whole narrative of the story is well though out from the doubled characters to the title of the short film "Tomorrows Forecast" which not only corresponds with Darrens career predicting the weather on a game show, but also a forecast and prediction to what will happen in his life tomorrow. For example the sign; "Game Show Host Killer" which shapes Darrens choice on what to do.

The genre and narrative are incredibly similar to our short film idea and can be useful for inspiration for shot ideas, although this is a much darker approach and we look to making a more light-hearted friendly short film.