Final Post

Hello and welcome to our A2 coursework blog.
Below you will find our final short film, poster, and magazine review. You will also find all elements of planning and research that we did whilst initializing our final idea. Everything is correctly labeled so it should be easy to find, and we hope you enjoy looking through our blog.

Thanks,
Jamie, Jess, Caitlin & Theo.

Final Coursework; Short Film

Final Coursework; Film Poster

Here are the final posters...

Poster 1:

Poster 2:



Poster 3:




Poster 4:

Final Coursework; Magazine Review

EVALUATION 1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Shot 1:



this first series of shots establishes the location of the business man, it allows the character to inhabit a world, It shows the wealth; the Mercedes on the drive, the big house on a suburban estate.Tthe match-on-action smoothly transitions to the inside of the house and introduces the first character we meet. He gets a paper delivered to his door everyday, which could show a form of wealth; as it it showing that he can afford it. Also he is being lazy - which links to the business man attitude, and the arrogance we are trying to portray through the character.

Shot 2:



These mid-close up shots show the two characters looking into the mirrors. This symbolises the differences between them, by using similar movements/angles. It exaggerates the differences between their lives. These were slightly challenging to film; because of the risk of the camera/Filmer being in the shot (in the reflection) however we managed to overcome this by using the appropriate angles to miss us out.

Shot 3:



These range of low angle/mid shots of the cross cut routine, show the contrast between both characters lives. As well as the angles, the contrast of colours also represents the power and status of the characters. The dark blue and dull colours of the public toilet shows the difficulty and the struggle he is suffering. The clean white shirt and bright colours show the wealth of the business man.

Shot 4:




This worm-eye view shot of the business man coming down the stairs establishes power, thanks to the use of proxemics. The bright light and the colours in the shot help to exaggerate a divine power.

Shot 5:



This is another use of reflections in our film, it shows the business mans vanity and also another view of the car this mid-shot, allows you to see his tie, before he goes to work a key factor in helping to distinguish the day in which he goes to give money to the vagrant.


Shot 6:



After reading our feedback about our first take of the film we understood that the passage of time was not clear enough so therefore we added on screen text saying each day of the week, this highlighted the time passing, but also the repetition of the routine and the constant ignoring from the business man.

Shot 7:

the audience don't know who he going to ring this creates tension, but when you see the phone ring out and go to answer phone it creates sympathy for the tramp who has saved up money to call home, or to a friends and he is ignored. this use use of Barthes enigma code will make the audience carry on watching to see what happens their is also contrast between the square phone box, square buttons contrasted with the circular items in the family phone scene also adds contrast visually this paired with the contrast in colour used throughout, dark dull colours for the tramp, and more golden warm colours for the richer side of the cross cut.

Shot 8:

this birds eye shot adds another angle into our film but allows the viewing audience to see the business man just wasting his coffee when the the vagrant is desperate for every penny out on the street. which is the following shot of Caitlin's' cameo of dropping the coins in the vagrants hat.

Shot 9:

this point of view shot shows how the business man ignores him, and how he watches him walk past just to be disappointed everyday because it only it is a low angled midclose up it and cant see his face shows the business man to be of higher social status.

Here is an annotated picture of the review, click to enlarge.

Here we have analysed the poster, click to enlarge.

EVALUATION 2. How Effective is the Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?

Script

What did you hope to create?
Jess; We always knew that we wanted to convey a moral message and deal with an issue is society.

Caitlin; We began by playing around with a few different ideas, and finally decided to raise the issue of homelessness.

Jess; We wanted to make the audience think, and question their own behaviour after watching our short film.

Caitlin; After coming up with our theme, we also decided that we would like to link our film to a charity, we chose The Salvation Army.


How did your research help you?
Caitlin; We used Virgin Media short films, the BBC, Channel 4's 3 Minute Wonder and websites such as Youtube to look at existing short films.

Jess; After looking through a lot of short films, we realised that we didnt want to use dialogue and could appreciate the use of silence as it made us focus on the action more.

Caitlin; After coursework in AS we noticed that dialogue can also look amateur and cheapen the film, instead of dialogue we used realistic sounds such as zips and coins.

Jess; As well as this we used a poem that we wrote called 'Am I Human To You' which ties the narrative together and makes sence of it.


How effective was your short film as a whole?
Jess; We think that over all it has worked well at the end.

Caitlin; We have executed binary opposites in the right way, by using accurate costumes, locations, cars and props. We also used good actors who looked realistic on camera.

Jess; As a group we tried to think about everything carefully, to make it as realistic as possible.


What did you hope to create with your ancillary task?Caitlin; We wanted it to have clear links with our film.

Jess; Firstly with the poster, the cardboard links back to the issue of homelessness, also taking the eyes our gives it an anonymous, less personal feel.

Caitlin; We chose 3 different messages to be written in the space where the eyes have been removed, as we knew the poster would be displayed in different locations, we felt that the most important slogan was 'IGNORE ME' as this is an insult to the business man as well as our society.

Jess; We followed the generic conventions of film posters by including the actors names at the top of the poster, as well as a magazine review quote and the name of the film, these were all things we noticed in our research into posters.

Caitlin; We chose to create a 4 page film review, after researching empire magazine.

Jess; We hoped to inform the audience more on our work with the salvation army, and the reason for making this film, as well as reviewing it.

Caitlin; It is realistic, as we have used numerous pictures to break up the text, which we took while we were filming.

Jess; The layout is very similar to the reviews we have researched in Empire magazine, however we have broken the conventions slightly by using a grey background. It was white originally however as a group we decided that grey was more effective.

Caitlin; The cardboard patches on the review give information, and make it aesthetically pleasing, as well as linking it to the message of the film, and the poster.

Jess; We chose simple and clear fonts such as tahoma, as these reflect the clear message we hoped to convey.


Is there anything you would change?
Caitlin; We are happy with our general product, however when making this again, our editing and filming process would need to change, due to numerous circumstances, this was the most difficult thing that we found when filming.

Jess; Another issue we found was when choosing actors, we didnt realise how difficult it would be to find realistic looking actors, another problem we had was that a few actors cancelled on us.

Caitlin; However in the end we managed to find two realiable and realistic looking actors.

EVALUATION 3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Here we have shown a screen grab of a comment we recieved during our editing process, after we had produced our first draft. This was recieved from a peer in our class and we found it very helpful. We have also included a screen grab of a comment we recieved from our teacher after our first draft. If you click on the image it will enlarge, you will see the annotation which describes how we have acted on their feedback.

In addition to the feedback we recieved about our actors, we also decided to change our location. This was for many reasons, firstly, being in the centre of Leicester it occassionally made it difficult to commute. Another downside to it being in the city centre was that we could not predict how busy it would be at one given time, and we also did not want to impact on the public access, in such a busy area too much. Finally, even though the graffti and industrial backdrop were very effective mise en scene, it had a sense of cleanliness to it with it being so modern in some areas.

For our new location we had to consider many options, firstly easy access incase of any 'hiccups' it would be readily available for refilming and tweaks. Also a realistic location as essential, as we had to try and reflect a suburban area and urban area to represent the contrasts between the two men. The final location we chose and used for our short film encompassed both these traits. The alleyway was very effective due to the strong mise en scene, with all the different shapes and angles, we felt this was very interesting. The use of the business man home, allowed our audience to feel he has a background and this also reflected the cultural code as you saw his middle class home/ wealthy car. Finally, another location we felt was strong within our film is the use of the public telephone box, firstly this reflects the vagrants lack of wealth and secondly, his contrasting state of living - with little technology that 'we' take for granted.

Here we have shown how our audience feedback has helped us with regards to choosing realistic actors and costume.

On the left hand side of the image is Jack Sutherland, our first choice of actor to play the business man, after our audience feedback we realised that he does not look like a realistic business man, he is only 18, and this shows in his young looking face and appearance. His clothing is also unrealistic, with his skinny fit jeans, he was also not wearing a tie or a blazer, which is typical business man attire. We chose Anthony Riley to play our business man after recieving our audience feedback, he is a real business man, so it could not be said that he does not look realistic, we were also careful to ensure that he wore a suit and tie this time, so that he looked accurate, unlike our first actor. Also because of his age, he fits well into the criteria we were looking for.

We always planned to use Theo Miller as our vagrant character, however when we first filmed we had not planned enough and therefore he was not wearing realistic clothing, and did not have realistic props. As you can see from the left hand image, he is wearing jeans, which would not be something a vagrant would wear, he is also wearing green trainers that are clean. He does not have any possessions with him, and is covering himself with a coat, which is also unrealistic as a homeless man would be better prepared for the conditions such as cold weather. In the second image, Theo is wearing and old coat and tracksuit bottoms over jeans to make him look more bulky, and therefore older. He also carries a sleeping bag, cardboard and guitar with him, which is a lot more realistic as he would need to take these things everywhere he went, as he has no home. For several days before filming we made sure that our vagrant did not wash his hair or cut his fingernails, and we feel that this made him look homeless as well as his clothing, these were both things we didnt think about when filming the first time.

Our audience feedback showed that Theo is now a believable homeless character, we have heard this from our peers, fellow media students, teachers, and parents.

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Here we have included screen grabs of comments we recieved on our youtube video, as well as the facebook group that we made in order to recieve audience feedback. Click images to enlarge.