(UPDATE) Final Poster

Based on the comments we recieved on our last presented version of our final poster, we have made the appropriate changes to our design and content in order for it to be a successful poster. I have moved the billing block from the space on the wall to the lower left hand corner. This was because of continuity, as short film posters do not usually make the billing block very big at all. The billing block is more of a contractual element of the poster, and does not fit well with designs. I had placed it on the wall before as I had thought that it would work well with the sense of perspective I achieved in the title itself. The billing block is now in the corner, and has has an added dark edge effect, so that it stands out over the varying tones of the grass it is in front of. It is at least 3 times as small as it was before, and it has given us space on the poster in order to add more relevent content.

Ther are now also relevent social links in the bottom right hand corner. I have added these as these would appear on other short film posters. The website link I have given is a facebook page. I have added this as because we are a short film company, it is unlikely that we would have our own website for our film with a private domain name. A facebook page seems more appropiriate, as it can attract people to view our other films.

UPDATE Finished Review

Discussion about filming - Alex, Imogen and Joe

Poster feedback - Alex

We were told that our poster was plain and boring so as a result we made another one which is the one we have submitted as our final poster. Although not shown in this filing evidence, we were also told that our poster was clever in the way that is was the title 'The Magazine' as it was resembling a magazine cover. They also said it was straight to the point and gave the audience an idea of what is was going to be about. This poster is one of our final drafts.

IMPROVED Review

Faces were pulled when production group JAI announced they were releasing a film with them theme of social realism. Ken Loach successfully produced ‘Catchy Come Home’ with a similar aspect of homelessness but will JAI be able to compare? Their latest, The Magazine, even manages to evoke a sense of extreme desperation through – the grass and debris of Burgess Hill. JAI doesn’t just film actors speaking lines, or chose to develop stories in conventional ways. They are about perspectives, about where to place the camera in order to heighten, explore and complicate the viewing experience.

Louise Martin Gaff takes on the role of Louise, a character which pushes all of her acting qualities and after her role in Cabaret- The Film, big things are expected from her which she succeeds to do so in ‘The Magazine’. She manages to represent all 3 different notions of class in one film. It’s not only her kindness to strangers or how she is oblivious to her surroundings its her ability to transform herself into 3 different people. The 3 different personalities don’t quite match DiCaprio’s feature in Shutter Island but creates the sensitive person every audience member will fall in love with. It sadly foreshadows her downfall, which makes it even more tragic at the ending.

The film doesn’t start off so promisingly. There are long pauses and sloppy acting which does not begin to set the audience up for anything special but as the film moves along, the pace starts to builds up and it gets better.  Combining the genres of thriller and social realism always creates an interesting film as it’s like a mix between Psycho and Fishtank with the use of kidnapping and guns to the theme of homelessness. Combining the two with the aspect of flash backs really make it work. It contrasts Jason Eisener’s work by toning down the violence whilst creating an atmosphere even more chilling due to using a younger actor which sets the message of social realism that it can happen to anybody.

JAI’s use of plot twists confuses, captivates and controls the audience’s minds by making the whole film become either an illusion or a dream due to the way it is interpreted by the audience and the way they craft their shots transforming it into a mystery. The dramatic ending is unexpected due to its mediocre pace and its worry for the ending to be too predictable but they managed to turn around all expectations and save the film.

Overall JAI delivers a good film; their plot fulfils the purpose of shocking and making the audience think about how easy it is to get homelessness so praise must be given for raising awareness of homelessness but there will always be a better film or way to raise awareness about this topic.

Final published copy of our short film

Evaluating a review

  I evaluated 'Take This Waltz' a film directed by Sarah Polley.

Final Poster

This is our final poster. In the end we created a brand new poster due to having new footage which has better lighting and fitted better with the genre of social realism. I think this will captivate audiences attention when the poster is launced and will encourage them to watch our film.

First Draft of Review

Faces were pulled when production group JAI announced they were releasing a film with them theme of social realism. Ken Loach successfully produced ‘Catchy Come Home’ with a similar aspect of homelessness but will JAI be able to compare. Playing on audience’s heart strings, JAI has craftily set their film in Brighton where a strategy is set out to target homelessness making sure no one will be homeless by 2020 but there is currently over 700 people sleeping rough. Will JAI’s audiences be able to handle the truth of homelessness, which is right on their doorstep?

Louise Martin Gaff takes on a role, which pushes all of her acting qualities and after her role in Cabaret, big things are expected from her which she succeeds to do so in ‘The Magazine’ by managing to represent all 3 different genres of class in one film. It’s not only her kindness to strangers or how she is oblivious to her surroundings it’s her ability to transform herself into 3 different people. The 3 different personalities don’t quite match DiCaprio’s feature in Shutter Island but creates the sensitive person every audience member will fall in love with but it sadly foreshadows her downfall, which makes it even more tragic.

The film doesn’t start off so promising. The long cuts and sloppy acting does not begin to set the audience up for anything special but as the film moves along, the decrescendo builds up it gets better.  Combining the genre of thriller and social realism always creates an interesting film so the use of kidnapping and guns to being homeless really captivates the diverse world we live in and despite it being tricky to combine the two, the aspect of flash backs really make it work. It contrasts Jason Eisener’s work by toning down the violence but creates the atmosphere even more chilling due to using a younger actor which sets the message of social realism that it can happen to anybody.

JAI’s muse of plot twists confuses, captivates and controls the audience’s minds by making the whole film become either an illusion or a dream. Throughout the whole film the dramatic ending is unexpected due to it’s mediocre pace and it’s worry for the ending to be too predictable but they managed to turn around all expectations and save the film.

Overall JAI delivers a good film, their plot fulfils the purpose of shocking and making the audience aware of homelessness but there are other ways of doing that, maybe a poster.

Planning Review

On the 4th of December, Alex and I did a rough plan for our review.

As the writing isn't very clear I shall type it out.

Paragraph 1

• Director, Actors
• The messages of social realisation "playing on heartstrings"
• Element of context- homelessness (find statistics in Brighton

Paragraph 2

• Scene 1
• Link to the genre (hint)
• Introducing the protagonist 
• Representation of class.

 
Paragraph 3

• Genre
• Issues
• Plot 

Paragraph 4

• Plot Twist 

Paragraph 5

• Conclusion

We decided to start the first paragraph with the directors and actors so we could set the picture of who was going to be in and also combining in with the message of social realism and the context it allows the readers of the magazine to understand what is in store for them and hopefully encourage to watch the film as it might have aspects which is ideal for them.


Paragraph 2 is all about introducing the audience into the film with information about the protagonist and a summary of scene 1. This can help make the readers decide whether it sounds good to them. By hinting to the genre it allows us to reveal the rest of it later in the review.


Paragraph 3 hits the key parts of the film. This is the reveal of how we as film makers managed to target these isssues within our plot and how it fits into the genre. By describing the plot we won't reveal the whole storyline as the plot twist is a key moment.


In paragraph 4 the plot twist is talked about but not explained thoroughly. This will encourage the audience to watch the film due to hyping up the plot twist.


Conclusion will reveal the overall thoughts of the film.

Poster option with feedback

Reasons why my poster will not be put forward for the final 2 posters!

Here is my printed poster.

The reason we decided not to put my poster through to the final 2 is due to the fact it is way too dark and you cannot see the protagonist which is the main focus on the poster. This defies the audience of understanding the social representaton and the bad representation of Women.


I also had someone else evaluate my poster so that I could get a second opinion before we went forward and the evaluated agreed with my thoughts.

Audio Editing

Audio Editing

When we filmed we used an iPhone 6 to record two sets of dialogue for the film. Due to not being able to get a voice recorder we chose to use the iPhone 6 to record.

Due to not having much dialogue in our film there are only 2 recordings.

In order to get the recordings from the iPhone and onto the Mac to edit I will have to email myself the voice recordings and save it onto the Mac.


















Here are the files I emailed to the Mac.

The audio is now saved onto the network. Ready for us to edit into the film.

Background Audio

In one of our scenes, Louise is walking along Brighton sea front and there is no audio to accompany it. So I have combined a Seagull sound and Water Ocean Waves so that the audience understands where it is set. I think it also works well with our location settings.











I used garage band and searched for seaside sounds and ocean sounds to create the sound. By putting the two different sounds together it creates a different ambience where the seagulls do not over power the sea. This is important as the seagulls are not actually visible so it might confuse people.

Re-shooting - Alex

When we were in Brighton the camera we were given broke so we had to resort to using an Iphone to film our short film. It looked good at the time but when we put the footage into final cut pro the quality of it was not up to standard so we have decided to re-shoot some of our footage. Due to limited time we will not be able to go to Brighton to film and will have to substitue and film somewhere more local like in Burgess hill. We will have to try and make the footage look as though it is in Brighton so the shots will be restrcited as oppsed to unrestricted like before. Filming in two different locations may make the film confusing especially as Brighton is so much bigger and more interesting than Burgess Hill so we will try to use transitions so that the sudden change won't be as obvious. We will record the progress as we re-film and hopefully the final result will improve the standard of our short film.

Editing Evidence - Alex

Joe editing our footage

We still need to add in our re - shot footage because some of our footage isn't good enough quality and we also need to add in any sounds that we want.

Finding sound effects for our short film

Research on Little White Lies

Little White Lies Research

Little White Lies is a bi-monthly print magazine committed to promote great movies and the talented people who make them and was established in 2005. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, Little White Lies has been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement".The magazine has since become renowned for its independent ethos and iconic covers.

The target audience for Little White Lies is slightly older readers who are really interested in the context and content of the specific film. This relates to my short film target audience as we are targeting older readers too because we think the social realism message will target older readers as it is gripping and meaningful..


Little White Lies is published six times in 14 months, and then distributed around the country by environmentally friendly carrier pigeons. You can now subscribe today for £29 and recieve this magazine. You can also read up on the interent (their website) or download the app. It has a variety of topics, it can range from reviews of films to interviews with Liam Gallagher.

Layout

  

From researching Little White Lies magazine I have identified that they present their images towards the top of the page, therefore leaving the bottom half of the page for the text. Little White Lies also use images that suit the genre and text presented. For example, in their review of the film Lawless, Little white lies used dark images in order for the review to suit the films genre which is crime fiction. In order for the picture to represent the genre they used dark colours such as presenting the picture in black and white which shows the films seriousness and how it is vintage. The images used relate to what the text is explaining in order for the reader to be able to visualize what is being said. 

In order for my film review to match the style of Little White Lies I will use these conventions in my film review. I can use a dark picture presented in black and white to show the seriousness within my film and to portray its sincerity and genre and I will use an image that would allow the reader to visualise the characters within the film.

Language and mode of address style

The typical conventions of the text in a Little White Lies magazine is that the writer tends to use puns and remarks in order to create some humour for the audience. There is also an indepth explanation of the film and also the films strengths and weaknesses.  Also in the information presented the writer describes the previous successes of the actors/director. The writer also uses quotes from the actors/director or from the film itself in a very creative way in order to get their point across. Although the writer is typically very judgmental of the film the writer do not lack in providing the reader with a thorough review that will answer all questions they have about the film.

Our Poster Designs

Our group poster designs

All 3 of us have designed completley different posters. Originally the idea was for all of us to follow The Magazine set up idea but only Alex did.

Here is her poster design.

Joe took a screenshot from the film and turned it into a poster. 

Here is his poster design.

I used a picture from our shoot.

Here is my poster design.

Now we will choose 2 posters from the 3. As they are all very different we will take opinions from other people so that we can get a different outlook on which poster to choose.

Evaluation on my Finished Poster

Finished Poster Evaluation

This is my finished poster. I will be evaluating it and explaining why I chose the features I used.

The Title

Choosing my title I had a variety of options to use. In my previous blog post (click here to read) I spoke about using 3 different fonts. 
-Garamond
-Helvectia
-Bloodlust


In the end I used none of them. I chose a font off photoshop called:
 




And it ended up looking like this:








The font created the look off the writing but in order to make it have extra features such as it having a glowing white edge I used other features off photoshop.

Bevel & Emboss

Gave the bold effect

Inner Shadow

Created the shadow off the title, I chose a white shadow to make it stand out

Inner Glow

Made the title glow 



To create the colour of my title I used the Dark Room red lights and pasted the colour into the title.

Here is the red lights.

Although it has turned into a slight pink colour I think it contrasts with the black background really well which coinsides with the thriller/genre. The colour also makes it stand out well and makes it more noticiable, emphasising the importance of the title.

Reason for Title name

I chose the name "The Magazine" because it works well with features within our film where the Protagonist sees herself on a magazine. It also creates a sense of mystery due to the title not fitting in with the picture of the poster, this shows our thriller genre.

 The Picture

On the left is the original photo, this was taken during a shoot and was spontaneous for a picture on the blog. You can see that the lighting is dim and is mainly made up of the red lighting and the red lighting isn't as bold.

On the right is my finished poster. As you can see I have made it considerably darker and emphasised the red lights to make it look more eerie. Despite the idea being to make the audience scared by the dark lighting, I do think I have made it too dark. If my poster gets chosen as the main poster I will lighten it as you cannot see the true scared facial expressions of Louise. 

Representations

In the poster there is a negative representation towards Women due to the protagonist being tied up, this gives the image that Women are the submissive gender in the World. Due to our film being targeted at teenagers aged 15-25 this gives a negative message to our target audience as they might be inspired by the negative approach towards Women. 

Short Film Poster Genre Conventions

Our film is a thriller/ horror genre and I think I have achieved the conventions within my poster.
By making my poster dark and having the main character tied up, it complies with the horror conventions genre as you are unknown of what is in the darkness and why Louise is tied up.
It also matches thriller genre conventions because enigma is created through the darkness of the settings.
 

My finished poster design - Alex

This is my idea for a poster for our film. I have made the title to biggest because it draws attention to the film and because on a actual magazine cover the name of the magazine would be the biggest aspect of it. Our film is called The Magazine because it is all about how a girl reads a magazine and dreams about being on the cover of it and then we find out that she is homeless and fell asleep reading a magazine called 'The Magazine'. However then part of the dream comes to life and we don't know if the dream was real or not. The magazine is the start and end to all of the problems and also the name of the magazine is 'The Magazine' which sounds daunting and almost like a horror. My design is simplistic because it is a simple idea. We can't give too much information away in our poster because there is a plot twist at the end which we want people to be surprised by and this is why I've mentioned the plot twist on the poster, to draw people in and to keep them guessing throughout the film. The red symbolises blood as I researched on other posters such as the silence of the lambs and I used it because the story could be seen as a little bit dark. The girl on our poster is our main character and the most important because she is the one having the dream.

Finished poster plan & evaluation

This is my idea/plan for our final product poster. For the poster, i chose to take a more simplistic approach, much like some of the short film posters that I researched earlier. The image is a screenshot from our footage that I have edited in photoshop to reach the desired effect. I chose this frame from the footage because it shows elements of our narrative without giving away much information. The shot shows the protagonist walking out of the mall, with shopping bags and a fur coat. This helps show the elements of wealth and fame present in our short film. Her facial expression doesn't show much, and looks slightly more serious, again to show some of the more serious tones of our short film. I managed to get a shot where she is composed slightly off centre, but is much more present in frame than any of the pedestrians walking in the background. This emphasises the fact that she is the main character. 

In photoshop, I chose to add a blur around the protagonist, but not actually on her. This helps distinguish her from the crowd, as well as adding a sense of unknowingness. I also darkened the more blurred areas, both highlighting the protagonist, and adding a darker tone to suggest a similar style in our film.

The font I chose is called Didot. I chose this font based on the fact that it is very similar to the font used by Vogue magazine. Vogue is a very well known magazine associated with wealth and fame, both of which are themes within our short film. The font was slightly slanted at first, and very slanted when in Italic, so i chose not to make it Italic. It also looked more like the Vogue font when it was not Bold, so again, I left it at the preset. I added a slight bevel and drop shadow, to make it stand out a it more, as although the background is blurred it was still slightly busy. I made the font big enough so that the underline divides the picture, which was a feature that I liked. It divided the background, creating a natural space for the billing block and reviews, and it also made the picture the centre for the poster.
Overall I am happy with my plan for our poster, as I think I have captured some of the essential themes of our short film, whilst holding back enough information to create interest in the film. I was inspired a lot by the poster for the short film Donkey, which was the most simplistic poster that I studied, making use of single colour font use throughout as well as spacing text away from the focus of the poster.

Imogen's Finished Poster

Here is my finished Poster 

 

 

Researching Short Film Promotion

Find out about short film production companies and how their logo is created.

Short Film Production Company= Providing the physical basis to get short films off the ground either by giving them information which can benefit them or give opportunities which help pursue a career in short films.


I reasearched 3 different Short Film Production Companies to find out what their role is within short films.

1) Camelot Films

Camelot Films is a company with the intention of helping short film makers from the beginning of ideas and concept. They help with a range of activities from script writing and development all the way to editing, production and route to market.

They use Vimeo to post new short films when completed and have their own film festival called Camelot Films Internation Film Festival where people all over the world come to have their films judged by Oscar winning sound designer  (Gravity, Slumdog Millionaire, V for Vendetta), acting legend Julian Glover (Game of Thrones, Star Wars, Indiana Jones), VFX superstar Chris Hardman (Avatar, Spectre, Harry Potter) and award winning actor Ian Burfield (V for Vendetta, The Selfish Giant).

 
By using Vimeo it helps show a wider range of audiences their short films as they have over 100 short films on Vimeo.

2) White Lantern Film

White Lantern Film is an independent production company which make films that make a difference. Based in the South coast of England they are part of BFI FILM ACADEMY, inspiring talented young film-makers and supporting the local film industry in Bournemouth through BREEL, a regular film networking and screening event.

 
Like the previous Short Film Production Company, White Lantern Film uses Vimeo too, submitting all their new work onto it so that they can get recognition. They also have a community programme which complements the talent development initiatives by providing opportunities for those who would not normally engage in film to gain new insights and knowledge in film-making by running knowledge talks at the University of the Third Age which reveales insights into the industry and background to their company.

3) Breakneck Films

Breakneck Films is a company created by Jo Lewis which aims to create targeted stories that tell a bigger picture and craft experiences that better engage the increasingly fragmented way people consume the world. They have featured in many film festivals such as The BFI London and worked with names like Redbull.


Unlike the rest of the Short Film Production Companies, Breakneck films do not use Vimeo due to them being a bigger company and being able to show their videos off via other means of websites such as having their own piece on IMBd.

Evaluation of Filming Process

Evaluation of filming process

Filming was a particularly important and difficult process in our work. It was by far, the most difficult to organise and plan for, as we had a lot of things we needed all at once in order to be able to successfully film what we needed. Firstly, there was the location we were filming in. We had chosen Brighton to film in, as our plot needed a location with that was busy and had lots of shops. We chose a Thursday in the half term to film, as it was the most convenient day for everyone, and all the members needed were able to make it there on time. We had to change our original plan to film inside Churchill square, as when we enquired about it with the owners we needed filming insurance to the sum of £5 million. There was no way we could film there, so we decided to change the location to just outside the centre. Here, it was a similar location to the one we needed, and the addition of the sunlight we had outside made for better lighting than inside the center would have. Filming outside also meant that although there were people walking around, it was not as concentrated and tightly packed as inside the shopping centre would have. This meant that we captured the impression that it was a busy street without being an inconvenience to the public ourselves.

The first problem we encountered was the camera equipment. The camera we had had been set up very peculiarly, as it was far too overexposed, and nothing we did to the settings would change this. We decided after numerous failed attempts to use an iphone, as it had a high quality camera similar to the quality of the original camera. We had a lot of tracking shots and pans, so this decision did not compromise the steadiness of our shots, and looking back on the footage now, is barely noticeable. Eventually, the problem of the camera was resolved to an extent, it was not as overexposed, but still did not appear as natural as it should have. So we decided to use the iphone throughout, so that the footage remained consistent, and did not change too dramatically with the swapping of cameras.

We stuck closely to our storyboard, despite having a slightly different location for the first scene. We adapted to this accordingly, and managed to capture shots that upheld the composition we had drafted in our storyboard. 

Evidence

From filming with the phone it developed problems with the sizing. An iPhone 6 camera which we used to film has a smaller screen than the screen on a mac leading perfectly good footage on the phone to become pixalated when enlarged onto a bigger screen.A lso by transferring it onto the groups phone via Facebook it also created problems of the quality not being as good.

Here is a picture of some footage which has not been enlarged to full screen yet. You can see that it is of good quality and does not look pixalated.

 

This is the shot after being enlarged. Unfortunatley you cannot see the true capicity of the pixlation but it is very pixalated which has made it difficult to use in our film.

Solution

In order to resolve the problem with the iPhone clips we are now using Louise's original film footage from her phone. This has made a lot of difference as the footage is now less pixalated.

 

In contrast

Our footage in the Dark Room worked out really well using the camera. Our aim was to create an eerie atmosphere so that it would frighten the audience seeing Louise in a bad situation ie tied up. We used the red lighting to create a psychotic atmosphere so there could be connections of danger and fear within it and also turing out the lights it makes you unure what will happen in the darkness.

 
 Here is a screenshot of some our footage in the Dark Room. The effect of the red lighting works really word to create danger and adds tension to the film.