Evaluation: Ancilary Tasks

This is an evaluation of my ancillary tasks
Evaluation Ancilary Tasks

Evaluation: Audience Feedback

This is an evaluation of my audience feedback
Evaluation Audience Feedback

Evaluation: Media Technologies

This is an evaluation of the media technologies I used
Evaluation Media Technologies

Evaluation: Conventions

This is an Evaluation of my chosen genres forms conventions
Evaluation Conventions

Curiosity Final Edit

Sound track

As there is not a dialogue in our short film we thought that we should add music to the film. We think that in doing this it would add another dimension to the film which would make the viewer focus more on what is happening in the film.

The sound track that we chose to use is 'play' by Flunk. we chose this song because we think it fits really well with our film yet you still focus more on what is happening in the film rather than the song. We have chosen to bring the song in when the robot starts moving, to suggest that the song is sort of the robots theme music.

Ending to our film

At the end of our last storyboard the robot is at the top of the car park due to changes we had made previously in our film we only had about 30 seconds left, so we decided to make him fall off of the top of the car park, find a lighter and set him self on fire. As a group we think this is the best way to finish off of the film as the title is Curiosity. We thought that this would emphasise the the meaning behind the film.

Ancillary Tasks

In this post I am showing the two ancillary tasks that our group had to create along side the short film we created. The ancillary tasks that we chose to create were a magazine review and a magazine poster.

From Matt's blog

From Matt's blog

Teacher Targets

- Analysis in to the codes and conventions of film reviews/posters and then the creation stages of yours with analysis of final product.
- Audience feedback of teh final products
- Editing logs - with music choice - updates choices decisions and revisions.
- links to twitter/facebook and then consider how you are using new media to gain audeince feedback - nice synoptic connection to the exam.

Aditions to our storyboards

After filming and editing for a couple of months we showed our teacher and they pointed out one issue that we had failed to realise, this effected the continuity of the film. the issue is between the two scenes of when the robot is created and when the creator walks to his car. Our teacher told us that there is a big chunk of time missing between those two scenes and that the viewer would get lost when watching it. What we had to do to solve this problem was film the creator walking to his car from the end of the first scene to the start of the second scene. this would involve just filming the Creator of the robot walking out of the collage to his car.

Slight changes to our story board

In our second scene on our story board the creator puts his bag on the parcel self of his car and then the robot climbs through the car to try and escape. When filming we encountered a number of problems with this, like limited space in the car try to film point of view shots, the continuity of the film didn't look very good as we found it very difficult to make the robot climb through the car.

To solve this problem when the creator approaches his car he opens his door and just simply chucks his bag onto the passengers seat. when we tried filming it this way we as a group felt that it worked a lot better than the previous way.

Filming issues

Today we tried to film the second scene and we came across a copple of complications and sturggeled to get the desired effect we first thought we would achive.

The first scene invloved the robot being made and his jouerny out of the room and ended up in his creators bag. The second scene we tried to film today was when his creator chucks his bag in his car. 'Unaware that his robot has come to life and is in his bag'. Then drives off to work and the robot climbs out of his bag explores the car then jumps out when his creator leaves the car. This was our plan but we had trobble filming the robot and make it move. We did this in our test video but dye to the restrictions and the small space of a car. You cant make the robot move without seeing the person. But then we can't not move the robot or use loads of point of veiw shots, because then it will look very emotionless.

We will discus the issue as a group and try to find a solution to the problem.

Story board scene 2

Filming Log

Our group has begun to film our short film "Curiosity". We have already found a few problems that we need to resolve. we need to redo the shots with the robot moving because the robot doesn't move correctly and we need to hide how the robot is moving because the angle of the shot gives it away. Also a shot where we had a sign in the background which we feel would divert the audiences attention to what is going on in the scene. Another shot because we forgot to move the tripod out of the shot. we've done several point of view shots to give the image your seeing from the robot eyes. With these problems in mind we checked in more detail at mise en scene, shot angles for the second scene. Our group made sure this time that when the robot moves you cant see how he is moving in the shot. Checked that no equipment was left or there was anything that would detract away from the scene.

Prop list

This is a props list that we will need every time we go filming

For the Mise en Scene to stay the same we've kept several things the same:
Actors
Locations
Prop
Costumes

speicifc's we used are:
Tom (actor)
Robot (prop)
Bag (prop)
Car (prop)

As we will be filming the majority of our film in school time, these things are easy to keep the same. When filming in other environments most things stay the same. We are all responsible for bringing in certain things. Tom is responsible for wearing the same clothes for filming and bringing. George is responsible for bringing in the bag prop. Matt is responsible for ensuring we have a camera to film with and brining the robot.

Evaluation of filming

In this blog entry i will evaluate our test piece of film from a previous week. We have all watched what we filmed the other week and have analysed it each saying what we liked, what we didn't like, what we think worked well and any shots we think should be added or taken out.

In our test piece of film, we filmed our opening scene of the robot being created, but we did decide to change it slightly, he was just pulled out of a draw, then we filmed one shot of the robot in the bag of his creator who walks up to a view of the city then the robot jumps out.

Overall our group was happy with the edited test piece of filming which was produced. we think the shots we choose worked well with our theme, but we think that one main type of shot was lacking heavily. this type of shot was a point of view shot we think that if these shots were added in the correct place would make not only our test peice but the whole short film look very professional.

Test shoot

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.

Companys name: Dawn productions

As apart of our brief for making this short film we have to make a company name and logo. The company name we have chosen is Dawn Productions.

From

We chose Dawn Productions as it connotes that it is the start of something new, that it is the beginning of something great.

Story board scene 1

Teacher Feedback

You have made yourself some targets at the beginning of your blog and it might be time to revisit those and follow up with some new ones.

You have some really good research evident on your blog but you need to make sure that you are relating to your own project - how does the Uses and Gratifications theory relate to your short film? What creative decisions have you made based on the exisiting media texts that you have looked at?
How does the genre theories help you to plan and relate your work?

Story boarding - Hitchcock

From Matt's blog

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. 

Our 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 help us demonstrate our ideas and shots better than drawing them would.

From Matt's blog

Audience theory

There are lots of theory's about the audiences of the media and how the react to certain things being shown i have researched into a few of them and this is what i discovered. 

The first is the hypodermic syringe theory.

the theory goes that the media is like a syringe, which injects ideas, attitudes and beliefs into the audience, who as a powerless mass, have little choice but to be influenced. 

The culmination theory is when one media text does not effect a person to much but years and years of exposure to violence for example will make you less sensitive to violence. so for example if you watch domestic violence in soaps for years the theory is that people will be less bothered when real experiences happen in real life. 

Reflective paragraph

In preperation for our short film production I anaylised a variety of short films through different genres. By doing this it showed me what I would need to put into our short film including; the plot, ideas around the film,

I also researched audeince theorys to know who our target audience are and how we can encaptulate them in our short film.

Joy Ride Analysis

The short we looked at today in class was called joy ride, this short film explores the concept of causality. this is when one sequence of events cause another sequence of events to happen and so on through out the film. the film is about a electrician who is sent out to fix a fault in a pylon but thinks its not worth bothering with so he decides to go home. then he finds a man in the road, gets kidnapped and and goes through a series of events through out he ordeal.  

I have made a flow chart of the causality concept and how it works in this video. 

The man doesn't fix the pylon >      

which causes him to drive home early >      

that causes him to come across a man in the road >     

that then in turn causes him to get kidnapped >    

when he is in the boot the cuts the brake light wire >       

which made the police to pull the kidnappers over on the side of the road >      

then that causes him to scream for help >      

which causes the kidnappers to kill the police >     

that then causes them to drive off again faster >      

he tries to escape again but gets petrol over him in the boot >      

which makes him disable the electrics for the lights >      

which then makes the kidnappers crash >     

the boot opens >     

kidnapper holds a knife to the mans throat >    

the man head buts the kidnapper >      

the man walks up to the road which happens to be next to the same pylon that he didn't fix >       its still sparking >     

sparks hit him  >     

which ignites the petrol which kills him.

This theory of causality is used in big block buster films, in most films this is what most story lines are made up of, but it is more subtle than the use of causality in this short film as they use it just as a frame for the story line, not the main point like they used it for in this short film as there is an element of irony because if he fixed the problem in the first place he wouldn't have died. 

Change in our idea

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. The definition of a genre or genres is A set of types/groups which any medium may be classified.

•Western  Science-Fiction  Comedy

•Sitcom  Quiz Show  Soap

•Reggae  Drum n Base  Jazz

In each case the acknowledgement of genre depends on the acceptance of generic conventions   

 John Fiske - ‘Any one programme will bear the main characteristics of its genre, but is likely to include some from others: ascribing it to one genre or another involves deciding which set of characteristics are most important

Richard Maltby and Ian Craven- 'The success of Hollywood is reliant on the combination of predictable elements with variation'

Auteurs - A group of film makers that were considered to be particularly influential and artistic.

Edward Buscombe felt that iconography was the best way to achieve generic definitions.

Rick Altman-Genre theory presumes that viewers pre-read texts.

                        -Viewers become passive voyeurs

                        -Genres are therefore restrictive

                  -Does not acknowledge or allow for the hybrid - the blending of genres.

short films

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.

Our short film idea.

When discussing ideas only one main idea presented its self as an achievable and interesting idea. The idea we have for our short film is an in site to a person life, to see what every person goes through in there life and to see what similarities everyone has in there life as there grow older, including the mundane tasks which need to be carried out every day. We will use a series of transitions to change the characters age as he gets older and goes through the key moments of his life. 

This is our idea at the moment and we are debating to film it in first person with hand held cameras or film it conventionally by following the person. We will experiment with both ideas and post our video that we have made and then make a final decision.

Research into similar concepts

In this blog entry i will be looking into different texts which have similar themes to what we are thinking of using in our text. The first film we watched was city of god which is a Brazilian independent film and has a couple of transition that we are interested in as we want to create a number of similar shots and transition in our short film.

The first transition is of a teenager stood in a run down street, the grade of shot is very dull and blue which is showing that times are not very good. The camera then starts spinning anticlockwise around him as a Steadicam, there are sounds of a clock ticking in the background the shot speeds up and slows down then it fades into a shot of the character when he was younger. the grade has changed to warm oranges and yellows to represent that times are happier at that time in the past.

The next transition that's happens is still in the past will the warm yellows and oranges, the two main characters are walking along the street then a car drives along the road going the opposite way on the road in front of the camera then as the car exits the shot it has faded back to the future in the exact place as they were standing but they are in the future. the music this time is 70's music to emphasise the time period they are in. The grade is also back to the dull blues and greys.

The last transition we looked at was a different type of transition to the others we have looked at. Through out the whole scene the camera is still with an establishing shot of a room. For the rest of the scene it tells a story of what happened in the room. So different people come in the room different people fade in and out as the story goes along in different time periods, the scenery in the room changes constantly as well as the grade of the shot to dark colours to light and back to dark, and at the end it goes back to the original shot that happened at the start of the scene and carried on the story as usual.

All of the transitions that we have researched has helped us to gather ideas on what transitions we could use and by analysing them has helped us to work out how we can create them. We will now apply this in our planning and creation of our short film.

Representations of stereotypes and genres

–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.

Targets for A2 practical work

In this blog entry i will look at setting myself some targets so i can improve upon my grade of what i achieved in my As course work. Last year i created a magazine cover, contents page and a double page spread. although i will be creating a different piece media i can still set myself targets that will relate to my skills in creating my course work.

The targets i will set for myself in A2 are :

• Carry out more research and show evidence of it, on my blog or in a power point presentation.
• Take more time over taking photos and shots to get exactly what i want in the picture.