Update of Production Schedule 3

This is a continued update of my production schedule, which shows that we have completed our second day of filming and received feedback from my first draft of our short film. In the next week we will be having our last filming day and hopefully will have a finished rough draft of our short film. This means we will be on track with our production schedule and will have our short film finalised by the end deadline. 

Planning to Film - Email

This is a screenshot of an email made by one of my other group members who organised one of our filming days. The email shows that we managed to work out when everyone was available and therefore chose that day to film. It also shows the certain types of shots and equipment needed during that filming session. This worked really well as everyone knew what they needed to be doing on the day and when they were needed to help throughout the filming process. By using the email to organise this filming session, it presented us in a professional light and shows that we took our initiative to organise the group.

Poster Feedback

This feedback is for my two draft posters, which shows my average level is three. My improvements for the two posters are to add my own image and make it look as realistic as possible. All the people that gave me feedback for my film posters seem to have a general idea to what the narrative is about and the overall plot within the film. Also, they seem to know what genre film it is by looking at the poster, which is a drama.

Titles and Credits in Short Films

Decisions Film Poster - Draft 2

This is my second draft of an idea that I really like for my short film poster. I have continued to use the black, white and grey colour scheme within my poster as it reflects the themes and genre of my film clearly. I also decided to keep the same font on my poster as well as it gives quite a serious atmosphere towards the film, which is what I am aiming for. The key image of the young boy looking out towards the distance could suggest he is contemplating his thoughts and feelings, which is something our character Edward does frequently throughout our short film. As the poster could be seen as quite dramatic, this means it could successfully target our audience for our short film. If I were to improve this poster, I could include our character Edward overlooking a particular location or person as it could foreshadow the events later on in our film.

Decisions Film Poster - Draft 1

This is my first rough draft of my 'Decisions' film poster, which I designed and produced on Adobe Photoshop. I decided to use this style font as it is really simple and reflects the genre of our short film. I also chose to incorporate a black background into this design as it highlights the negative content involved within our film, such as mental and physical illnesses. The image of the boy shows he is thinking deeply about a situation, just as our character does frequently within our narrative. This poster could successfully appeal towards our target audience as it clearly portrays the content that could be seen within our short film. I hope to improve this draft by creating my own image of our main character Edward in our short film and incorporate a clearer design of the genre of our film, which is drama.

Control - Film Poster Analysis

Brenda - Film Poster Analysis

Outtakes of Filming Day 2

Editing of Short Film

This is another sample of the rough draft I have been working on during the production stages. This time I have added all the footage from our second filming day and I have added more sound effects throughout. I still need to record the voiceover that will be used within our short film, which is one of the tasks I am going to complete this week. The final stage of producing my rough draft is to add the footage that we will be recording on our third and last filming day next week, which will allow the narrative of the idea to become much clearer throughout. 

Filming Day 2

On our second filming day we was able to film two scenes, including the car and the doctors scene. We were able to get a whole range of different shots as we started filming quite early on in the day, which meant we had more hours to film in daylight. As we had so much time to film, this meant we do not have to re-take any of the shots that we got within the second day. The screenshot shows some of the footage we was able to get and I uploaded all of this onto WeVideo to continue creating a rough editing version of our short film.

Case Study - London Short Film Festival

London Short Film Festival

The London Short Film Festival has been known as the premiere UK showcase for cutting-edge UK independent films and now they accept international submissions from around the world. London Short Film Festival have showcased the very best of the country’s raw talent for 12 years now. The London Short Film Festival is a key part of the UK’s young creative talent and is a significant date within the UK film calender. Every year the festival’s huge audience come to watch screenings and take part in the events, and this network has grown steadily over the years to create an extensive network of short filmmakers. They offer 38 new programmes dedicated to documentary and international screenings for everyone who loves the short film culture. They have currently just decided to pick all of the best bits of London Short Film Festival 2016 to be screened in 19 cinemas across the UK, which allows new and emerging filmmakers to showcase their work. The audiences of the festival are also given an insight into the people behind the cameras as they share their knowledge and exeprtise with the audience.


2015 Facts and Figures:

• Over 10,000 tickets sold
• 1500 UK and international submissions
• 94% of events sold to capacity
• Over 450 films screened

I think that distributing my short film by applying for a film festival is a good way to widen my audience and get access to future contacts if I were to make another short film again. By distributing my short film through a festival it would allow me to successfully target my audience as a lot of young people between the age of 18-30 seem to attend these festivals. It also will allow me to network with other filmmakers and could be a way to find future collaborators. Film festivals can open a door to traditional distribution oppurtunities within the film industry and there is even a chance to win awards for elements within the short film. I believe that film festivals are good ways to meet a variety of different people involved in short films and could help create a much larger audience than expected for my film.

Short Film vs Blockbuster Film Reviews

Lights Out Short Film Review

As we can see from this short film review, the title is very simple and clear stating what is going to read. Below the title it consists of the date the review was posted and the website's name, which tells the reader how recent the film was released and where the review came from. It also shows who the film was directed by and who is starring within the film as they could be names that the audience seem to recognise, which could draw their attention towards the film. Throughout the review there is a frequent use of colloquial and short sentences, which is conventional for short film reviews. This is due to the fact the audience appear to be quite a young, lower class audience compared to those targeted for much larger, high-budget films. Within this review of Lights Out, particular names are highlighted in a bold text, which stands up towards the reader and these names could be popular or well-known people within the short film industry. The review includes two images from the film, one being the titles and the other being a shot of one of the characters that is seen throughout the short film. Including images within a film review, gives the reader an idea of what genre the short film is and can even give an insight into the action and plot of the film, without giving away too much information.  In this example of Lights Out, there seems to be no negative aspects of the short film pointed out in the review. The writer of this review has decided to talk mostly about the strong points and successful moments of elements seen within the film, which could be different in contrast to blockbuster film reviews as they include both positive and negative aspects of a film. At the end of the review there is a link, which leads to more short film reviews on the website. This allows the audience to continue reading more short film reviews of a similar genre and this can cause a word-of-mouth situation where the audience communicates and shares the short film review to others, leading to a wider audience altogether.

Fantastic Beasts Film Review

Firstly, the title of the film review includes more than just the name of the film but it also uses a pun, which can appeal towards the audience by adding a comedic element to it. Underneath the title of the review the newspaper article incorporates a star rating, which isn't usually seen within short film reviews. This rating for the larger blockbuster movies can be seen as a percentage or out of five stars, five being a very successful film. Below the title of the review there is also a short sentence describing the overall narrative of the film and the main character that is starring in it. The review begins by including an image of the main character with a small caption showing who they are in the film. The style of language used throughout this review compared to the short film review is quite different as it uses a lot of jargon and much more formal lexis than the Lights Out review. This is due to the fact that newspapers such as The Guardian are targeted towards a much older and upper class audience than compared to the short film reviews. This film review includes various links to different articles and themes that are common within the film, which allows the reader to read further into certain elements that are included in the film itself. Towards the end of the review, the writer has decided to add in the trailer of the film, which allows the audience an insight into what happens and who stars within the film. However, in short film reviews writers cannot include trailers as they do not exist due to the short length of the actual film. This means the audience will have to watch the actual film through before making their own judgement on it. This blockbuster review finishes off by summarising the themes and a positive sentence describing the film overall. This summary can allow the audience to skip reading the whole review and get a brief overview of what to expect when eventually watching the film.

Codes and Conventions of Film Reviews

Outtakes of Filming Day 1

Audience Feedback

Editing of Short Film

This is a small snippet of the successful footage we managed to film on day one, which I put together on an editing software called WeVideo. I decided to experiment with the software and create a small edited version of the shots we were able to get. After putting all the shots together I decided to add some sound effects and atmospheric music in the background to create a sense of drama throughout the film. Although this is not a completed final draft of our short film, it gave me an insight into the kind of ideas I want to incorporate within my film. To improve this draft I need to record the voiceover of my main character, which will then allow the audience to follow the narrative much more clearly throughout the film. I also need to add more footage from when we have our second filming day, which will hopefully show the overall idea of our film more clearly once added.

Funding Short Films

Update of Production Schedule 2

This is another update of our production schedule, which shows that we have completed one day of filming but we have got to schedule another day of filming due to the fact it started to become dark on our final scene outside. We are also going to be designing our institution logos for our short film next week, which means we will be on track with the production schedule.

Institution Logos

I decided to take on the role of creating our institution logo for the short film and I managed to make one using a free online design website called 'GraphicSprings'. The website allows you to create your own logo by choosing from a range of images and fonts that they provide. Firstly, I decided that picking an image related to film/photography would be quite relevant for the logo as we are making a short film. There was a very wide variety of images to chose from but I found a few of my favourite ones and started to work from there. I also knew I wanted to include a very simplistic font for our institution logo as short films tend to have much smaller and simpler designs. As a group we came up with the name 'EOA Films' which stands for the names of our group members (Ellie, Owen and Anthony) and agreed to include this title in our logo. This is a few of my ideas that I produced throughout the process of using 'GraphicSprings' before choosing a final design.

This is the first concept I came up with, which includes a blue and yellow colour scheme with a hand-drawn style font. I really liked the image of the camera within the design as it is quite quirky and unusual from any logos I have ever seen before in the film industry. However, I was concerned with the colour scheme as it involves bright colours, which do not correlate with the themes in our film. For this reason we decided not to go with this design as it could give off the wrong message.

This is the second design I had created on GraphicSprings, which was different to how I imagined it would turn out. I really like the font within this design as it is quite dramatic, which is significant in our short film as it is categorised in the drama genre. However, I think the image in this design could have been better if it was smaller or a different style altogether. This design wasn't exactly what we was looking for so I decided to continue experimenting with more designs on the website.

I really liked this logo because it was very simple but effective and looked quite professional for a film company. My favourite part of this design was the colour scheme within the font and image, which consisted of light and dark purples. We was considering this to be our final institution logo as it caught our eyes really well, which would be appealing towards our target audience. The colour purple has symbolism of creativity and independence, which would represent our film company perfectly. However, we still felt like there was something missing within the logo so I carried on looking for a potential final design. 

I wasn't too sure about this design but the other members within my group really seemed to like this one so it had potential to be our final design. The only problem I had with this logo was the image on top of text because it looks quite unstructured. Apart from that I really liked the colour scheme and font within the whole design. This was my favourite font on the website as it looks the most professional and appropriate for our short film. As I wasn't keen on this design I thought it would be best to continue looking for a better design that everyone agreed on.

This design was a winner with everyone as the whole group voted for this to be the final design for our institution logo. This design incorporated all of the things we was looking for such as the purple colour scheme, a simple font and the perfect image. My favourite part of this logo is the image of the camera lens actually represents the letter 'O' in the name of our institution, which was an idea that I came up with and it worked successfully. The colours grey and purple contrast really well against one another and makes the logo stand out in a professional way. I still decided to go with one of the original fonts I experimented with as my group seemed to like this one the most. This institution logo is a very simple design with minimal features but we think it would be really successful in the film industry and targeting towards our target audience.

Short Film Institutions

Planning Sheet

Tasks	Responsibility	Completed
Overall narrative planning	I created a PowerPoint of the final ideas pitch and made a mind map of all our initial ideas.	Completed
Storyboard	I volunteered to draw up the storyboard and create the animatic.	Completed
Production schedule- continuously updated	I have been nominated to be in charge of the continually updated production schedule very week.	Updated
List of Characters with character analysis	I took pictures of the audtionees and helped write the analysis of each one to show how we chose our final characters.	Completed
List of props and costumes	I was responsible for creating the list of props an costumes. Once we had chosen all props and costumes that will be used in our film I wrote a brief description of the reasons why we have chosen them.	Completed
Location recce	I took responsibility of taking recces of the potential locations we could use within our short film. Then after making our final decisions on the film I narrowed down the recces to the places we are actually going to be using.	Completed
Screenplay/script	I took responsibility of helping to write the script with one other of my team members. I also took on the role of producing the screenplay for the group in the end.	Completed
Out-takes	As I took on the role of director and camera-woman I will eventually posting some out-takes of our first day of filming.	To be uploaded soon.
Account of re-filming if needed	We have still got to film a few more scenes for our film and when we have our second filming day I will make sure we re-film any shots that we need.	Scheduled for next week.
Sound- what are you going to need and where	We are currently researching any extra sounds we need for our film, but as we are including a voiceover this is the only main sound that will be in our film. I will recording the voiceover with our main character next week.	Currently researching into.

Filming Day 1

On our first day of filming we managed to film the first few scenes of our short film, which included the montage of Edward waking me up until the scene of the rough sleeper receiving food from Edward. We successfully achieved to film some really good shots and angles throughout the day and it allowed me to create a rough of the footage we have filmed so far. Due to lighting conditions and the time of day we need to re-film the scene where Edward smiles at the woman who appears to be upset. Apart from that, as a director I was very pleased with how our first day of filming went altogether. The image above shows the process of making a rough cut of the footage we have so far and I decided to use WeVideo to create the rough cut.

Camera Shots and Angles in Drama

Risk Assessment Sheet

Locations

Costumes Mood Board

Edward

 

 

Rough Sleeper

 

 

The Doctor

Other Character Auditions

Lily King

17 Years old

Shy

Independent

Lily had volunteered to be one of the actors within our short film as she has had a lot of experience within the acting industry. This was very beneficial towards us because it meant that we did not have to search for another actor, which could have taken us a long period of time. Lily had auditioned for the role of the rough sleeper and she fit this character perfectly, as there was minimal speaking and she was a very realtisic throughout her audition. We had decided that Lily should play the part of the rough sleeper due to her reserved and apprehensive personality.

Grace Staines

18 Years old

Sympathetic

Honest

Our net audtionee was Grace, who was auditioning for the role of the doctor in our short film. Grace has a very keen interest in biology and medicene, which is why we thought she would be perfect for this role in our film. Grace comes across as quite a serious individual, which is also another reason why she had auditioned for the role as doctors must be really sincere when it comes to medical conditions. We decided that Grace should definately take on the character of the doctor due to the similar traits that she holds.  

Sub-genres of Drama

Target Audience

Auditions for Edward's Character

Connor Dye

17 Years old

5'10

Confident
Witty

 We interviewed Conor for the position of our protagonist, Edward. He fitted the bill perfectly with regards to our idea of Edward, a dark haired, sarcastic teenager with confidence, and a flair for acting. We scouted him from our school production, in which we thought he had all of the necessary qualities. We did actually offer him the role, but he decided he was too busy with his own media coursework, and wouldn't have time for filming and school work at the same time.

Jenson Grech

17 Years old

5'8

Charismatic

Enthusiastic

We then moved on to Jenson, who is a very charismatic young man and would definitely be a fine actor for our position of Edward, as it is essential that his character is played well, in order to effectively portray our story. It is clear Jenson is a very talented actor. So talented in fact, that he wouldn't be available for the job of Edward, as he is too busy also, being in a drama production outside of school, which requires frequent and last minute rehearsals, meaning he would not be reliable for filming. As a result, we must continued searching for our character of Edward.

George Deverill

5'6

Intelligent

Humorous

Our final auditionee for the part of Edward was George, who is quite a confident individual and comes across as a well-educated young man. We decided that George would play a perfect position for Edward's character as he is quite geeky and different compared other people. George had never taken part in any form of acting or drama production so we thought it could be really risky taken him on as our main character. However, George has a lot of available times to film throughout the week but his personality really shined in the audition so we chose to cast him as Edward in the end.