Final Short Film - INTERSECTION

Poster

Review

Evaluation Task 4

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.


How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Don't simply think about the technology you have used but also consider how they 'connect' together. Also comment on how much 'easier' technology has made the research, production and evaluation of your work.
Throughout the production of our products new media technologies have been useful to us when researching, planning and throughout the evaluation stages.

Researching - Online search engines like google made it easy to research real media products. We used these search engines usually on the PC but also due to conversion we could use our mobile phones to research films and posters. Especially when you can download certain apps like IMDB to Iphones it made it easy to access real media products. We also used BBC Iplayer to view different short films. The Empire website was also usefull to view and download certain reviews and posters.

Planning - BBC Weather was useful for us to plan ahead for our filming dates. We used several Microsoft programmes to contruct filming plans like Microsoft word. We also created an animatic on adobe premiere pro using images we had taken with a still camera. Throughout all stages we used Blogger to record and keep track of our portfolio. Communication was important throughout all the stages of planning and construction so email was vitail to keep in touch with Sophie and Naomi but also our actors and locations such as Bournemouth Train Station.

Construction - Garage Band we used to contrust the music for our film alongside Adobe Premiere Pro for the main editing of our short film. We also used Adobe Photoshop to create our poster and Microsoft Publisher for our Review. While filming we used Digital Camcorders to film sometimes using DV Tapes but sometimes using Micro SD Cards. This was useful giving us an alternative use of recording devices. All of these technologies we used crossed over and worked together to bring together a successful film, poster and review. The Internet was also a big part of construction as we downloaded and used images and sound from the Internet from websites like http://www.freesound.org/.

Evaluation - Online technologies like Prezi, Animoto, Wix were used to create successful evaluation tasks. By using online technologies it made it available to a wide rang of audiences to view and showed a broad understanding of new media.

Evaluation Task 3

Evaluation 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback? on Prezi

Our audiences feedback we first expected to be negative towards the plot and possibly we thought they might not understand the narrative, however after putting our film on Facebook we realised this was not the case and the narrative was clear to our target audience.

Evaluation Task 2

Evaluation Task 1

http://www.wix.com/honor_mcadam/intersectionevaluationtask

Follow this link to find out my answer to Evalutation Task 1 - In what ways does your Media product, use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media?

In conclusion

In conclusion, despite several set backs with actors not being available and locations not letting us film, I am pleased with the outcome with our final products. They are what we hoped for when we first set out planning even though there has been changes throughout it has the general feel we were looking for. It has been a challenging but fulfilling experience and I have learnt a lot along the way. I am now more experiences and experimental with camera angles and movements, and more experienced in editing and techniques. Although the problems that occurred were challenging at the time its possible to learn from those mistakes and hopefully next time plan thoroughly and organize film dates and stick to them. Luckily for us in the end we ended up with two reliable actors who gave up a lot of time for us to film and Bournemouth Train Station came around to letting us film there. If given the time I would change our film to add in more dialogue between Lucas and Grace and sort out the sound properly at the Train Station. I however would not change the poster as I feel is a suitable to the film, but I would add an image of the poster into our film review as many film reviews do this. Overall I believe we are all pleased with the outcome of our three products.

Poster Feedback

Making the Film Review

The film review creation was based mainly on decisions of placement and colour schemes and the correct text to include. Our film review progressed from group decisions to include a background image from the film. And adding images from the film. The layout is largley based on Empire's structure.

Editing

Non- Diegetic Sound

We composed our music on a Mac on Garage Band. We made several tracks to fit with our film. The first track to go with Lucas's getting ready for his job interview mainly using acousitc guitair samples and major piano sequences. The second track was for Lucas's wealthy life using delicate piano samples to give a slow sad melody. Furthermore we created one last track for the family life with Grace and for that we used a more upbeat major tune to show Lucas's happiness.

For sound effects we used freesound.org to collect small sound samples to use at points of importance like the flash forwards and added sounds like the alarm clock.

VOICE OVERS

Our voiceover for the beginning:
“We make many decisions everyday without a second thought; whether to have tea or coffee, what clothes to wear and what to have for dinner, but I never knew that the small decision I would make later this morning, would have such life changing consequences.”

Voiceover for the successful life:
"I had the perfect job, the perfect house, the perfect lifestyle. It’s everyones dream to live a successful life like this, but as perfect as it was, I wasn’t happy, I was lonely. Getting on the train that day and getting this job has turned my life around. But money certainly isn’t everything, as what’s a great life when you have no one to share it with?"

Voiceover for the family life:
"I may not have had the perfect job or the perfect house, but I had the perfect woman. I was living the family life everyone dreams of and I couldn’t be happier. It was the little things that I loved the most; from walks on the beach to nights at home in front of the telly. Who would have thought that this woman at the train station would end up being my wife? "

SCRIPT FOR ADDED DIALOUGE

OUTSIDE THE TRAIN STATION – LUCAS RUNS INTO HIS OLD FRIEND.

FRIEND: You alright mate, ain’t seen you in a while, how’s things since the redundancy?  

LUCAS: Yeah not too bad thanks, I’m actually on the way to a job interview now, how’s things been with you?

F: well I’m still looking, haven’t found the right job yet but you know it’s been nice having some time off with the missus and kids.

L: Yeah I’m sure something will come up and I bet your kids have loved having you around, I guess I’m lucky I’ve only got to look after me.

F: Oh I bet it won’t be long till you have your own family, once you’ve met the right girl that is.

L: Yeah I hope so. 

F: Anyway, take care mate, don’t want you to miss your interview.

L: Yeah thanks, mate, cya soon, hope it all works out.

Making of the Poster

Adobe Photoshop was used to create the poster throughout a number of stages.We first cropped the image of Lucas and put it with the other 2nd picture. We then adjusted the brightness with the Dodge tool to give the same lighting.

We then came across a problem with the shadows so we used the eyedropper tool to get the exact colour of the bench to use on the shadow areas.

We then used smudge tools around the edges of the cropped images to make it blend in and look more realistic.

Then using the 'Lasoo Tool' we drew around the images of Lucas on the bench and separated it from the background, erasing any background left over around the edges.

From Feedback we realised Lucas's hairline on the wealthy life image did not look good so we fixed his hair line so it was smooth.

Images from filming

These pictures show the difference in lifestyle.

Poster

For our poster we are hoping to portray our split narrative so we gathered a few ideas and wanted to definitely show the two parts of Lucas's life.
Our first idea was to have one person split into two with the contrasting costumes.

However we did not think this looked as polished as we were hoping so we decided to go with a different idea...

For this picture we used Adobe Photoshop to merge the pictures. From now on we hope to white out the background so its fits into our poster layout better.

Pictures before they were merged.



Costume

Juxta position of two characters in costume.

Film Locations

Wealthy Life Location

Wealthy Life Location

Wealthy Life Location

Bournemouth Beach Location

Bournemouth Train Station Location

Grace and Lucas House Location

Wealthy Life Location

Lucas First House Location

Costume and Props

This costume is worn by Lucas for the proposal scene to bring originality we decided the proposal scene would be filmed by revealing a t-shirt with 'Will you marry me?' printed on it.

These props are used to show the juxta position of the two lives. The cards are almost identitcal to show that Lucas has a choice of being alone and wealthy or having a family but having money problems.

Essay answers

How did your research into institutions responsible for the production and regulation of the media influence your production work?

When researching into institutions responsible for the production similar to aspects of the products we made both within the foundation portfolio and advanced portfolio, we found it incredibly helpful to look at popular and common aspects of other production companies similar to the genre we had chosen. For the foundation portfolio we hoped to make a children's film but we firstly had to research into the conventions often found in children's films. The influence of Jacinto came primarily from Narnia produced by Disney and Walden Media. The whole narrative is based around Narnia and the theme of entering another world often is found in children's films and the element of fantasy is also apparent in Narnia. However films like Narnia are produced on a high budget with facilities to produce CGI images, we had to work around a low budget and create a film opening similar to other children's films as possible. Other institutions we researched with were Universal Pictures who produce a wide range of film genres, however there is evidence of many children's films which we could use to influence our production work. This includes films like Peter Pan which focuses on having children as the main characters so audiences can relate to the characters. So the research into other institutions was a large influential factor to our film opening and determined the main characters and narrative. Another opportunity to research into institutions was for the advanced portfolio project were we planned to make a drama with elements of fantasy. This genre itself is reasonably hard to find a particular institution which represents this so we decided to look more into similar films with a similar narrative. This can be found in the 1998 film Sliding Doors produced by Mirimax films and Paramount Pictures, we noticed that the genre is recognised by smooth editing and nice framing of shots so we planned to get this feel to our short film as well. We also noticed that there is specific focus on one female protagonist so we decided to use this focused but on a male protagonist. The narrative of this film is incredibly similar to ours however this gave us an opportunity to make note of what this institution had done and change parts of our narrative to make originality. Memento a film produced by Newmarket Capital Group and Summit entertainment have produced a film where after colouring effects the narrative in order to show two different things, these things we hoped to do as well which gave us influence to our narrative and editing techniques. Memento also gave us inspiration to our film name as we liked the effect of just having one word. These institutions produced these films with the audience in mind, they have used an effective technique of using American lead characters to appeal to a large American audience, we are doing a similar thing which attracts audiences by using a very British cultural feel to the short film which is attractive to many audience and we are also using an American title for the film in order to appeal to an American audience (Intersection.)

How did your research into audience contribute to your production work?

Research into audience has been an incredibly important contribution to our production work in both foundation portfolio and advanced portfolio. During the research for Jacinto, the foundation portfolio, into audience we decided we needed a target audience and this was young children between 5-15. From there we decided we needed to know what was popular with audiences of that ages. So we produced a mood board with a range of images related to what we hoped our film opening would look like and images we all related to children. During our audience research we noticed that characters were incredibly important to our audience and having them at similar ages were used to promote our film. Further more the whole feel of our film would be incredibly important so because of our audience research we noticed children's films often follow conventions of being brightly coloured and vibrant and this would help promote our film to a young audience. Another example where research into the audience was helpful to our production work was for our audience for 'Intersection.' It was difficult for us to know roughly what audience age and groups would be interested in our film idea, so we produced a survey to work out our target audience, we observed that our audience would be majority female between the ages of 17-35 as it follows a light hearted romantic story line popular stereotypically with these people. We also noticed that audiences were often attracted to films by certain actors like 'Johnny Depp' 'Nicholas Cage' 'Helen Bohen-Carter' 'Angelina Jolie' because of their appeal to audiences. Although we do not have a budget to hire any famous actors popular with audiences so it persuaded us to create characters who would be popular making them quirky and give them normal life issues which audiences can relate to.

How did your research into genre contribute to your production work?

Genre was almost one of the most important research tasks which contributed to our production work. Looking at other films with the same genre was incredibly influential to our production work. In our foundation portfolio work genre was important, so we researched into the narrative, characters, mise en scene and editing of other children's films. We researched into films like Narnia, The golden Compass, Peter Pan, Millions and many other films we have watched in the past. It made us make decisions like the characters we were going to use being ages of 10 and 14 and the two different genders to appeal to a wide audience of boys and girls. It also persuaded us to choose a editing technique to follow the conventions of fantasy by changing colour schemes like with the purple sky once the characters have entered the world of Jacinto so it shows the juxta position of reality and fantasy. It was influential when choosing costume with the typical childish outfits and the fantasy costume ideas for the creatures inside Jacinto. It also had an influential aspect of the name of our film, similar to Narnia we chose to create an unknown word which would fit a fantastical land. Research into similar genres was a large contributor to our foundation portfolio. Genre also was one of the things we researched into first to decided on exactly what we were going to create in the advanced portfolio. We made a list of genres to decide which genre to follow and its conventions. We decided the best fitting genre for our plot would be fantasy drama. It also gave us the opportunity to research into similar films in the same genre like Sliding Doors. From there we worked out the conventions from nicely framed shots and a complex plot often leaving the lasting decision up to the audience. So genre was a very important aspect of research into our portfolio's.

 

Filming dates and the start of editing.

Editing
We have begun editing some scenes for our short film. This enables us to view what we have captured and possibly have to re-shoot certain scenes because we either have new ideas or are not satisfied with the footage we have got. However we are pleased with the footage we have gathered and feel it sufficient enough to tell our narrative. But we hope to film the proposal scene again to gain a better quality feel to the shots to go with the overall feel of the short film.

Filming Dates
We have done a large section of filming over the past weeks but we still have one section of Lucas's life to film. This will be done in the next two weeks so we can concentrate on our auxillary tasks and editing our film together. The post production work for us is going to be incredibly experiemental, because we know a structure of what we want to follow with editing, but we hope to add some interesting effects of which we are undecided at the moment.

Complications with filming

Unfortunately after lots of planning with our filming schedules and dates we came across another problem. Our main scenes located at the train station were all going fine until and duty manager of Bournemouth Train Station did not believe our student identity, so while we were half way through filming we were asked to leave because he believed we were press. We then sent a letter asking permission for a second time to film on the train station. Hopefully if this gets approved we will continue our filming on the train station and complete this section.

Research of Reviews

Here are two contrasting reviews of different films one from Empire's Website and One from The Rotten Tomato's Website. We have decided to go with the style more like Empire as it uses traditional star rating and a clean layout with areas like the verdict and important information about the film text boxes. We are deciding this because we feel it would suit a magazine review rather than a website format better.

Filming Pictures (Our new actor)

Lucas On the beach. Casual Clothing.

Lucas at Train Station, Clothing smart.

Lucas and Grace at the beach.

 Due to complications in filming, it meant we need to re-shoot a lot of scenes. This is our new shooting script for a day full of filming.

Time	Scene	Characters Needed
8am – 12pm	Train station scene	Lucas and Grace
12pm- 1pm	Beach Scene	Lucas and Grace
1pm – 2pm	Dog walk scene	Lucas and Grace
2pm – 3pm	Romantic meal scene	Lucas and Grace
3pm – 4pm	Sofa scene	Lucas and Grace
4pm – 5pm	Argument scene	Lucas and Grace
5pm – 6pm	Opening the letter	Lucas and Grace
6pm – 7pm	Pub scene	Lucas and Grace

Complications with filming

We originally arranged to get all our filming done by this time and we were hoping to start our editing today. However our actor has proved unreliable and was unable to do any of the filming dates. So we have decided to change our actor in order to get it finished. We hope to get our filming done in the next 3 weeks. The actor we have chosen now is incredibly suitable for the part and committed to our schedule; Andy Hawkins. We are hoping that he has just as good as on screen chemistry between the actors as we did before. Now we are focusing on re-shooting our previous scenes and doing the main block of filming. It has put us back quite a way, but we hope to finish filming in the next 3 weeks despite the setbacks.