Analysed test filming

Analysed Shots

Test Filming

Storyboard Analysis.

We created a storyboard to allow us to break down the shots we will be using and allows us to advance our knowledge of what we want to happen in each shot. we have tired to link lots of intresting shots together in our storyboard so when our production is filmed we can acomplish it easily and with out limitations of what will look good when edited together.

Storyboards

Storyboards A2

Genre Theory

Is it timeless?
- No its open to historical change and historical constructs.

John Fiske
"Any one programme will bear the main characteristic of its genre: But is likely to include some from others. Ascribing is 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"

Auters and Iconography
Auters- 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
- Genre will therefore be restrictive
- Does not acknowledge or allow for the hybrid (blending of genres)"

By understanding the different genre theory's it will ensure that we think about the correct methods to ensure that our genre is put across as best as it possibly can. However we also don't want to fall into the trap of giving people a presupposed idea of what our short film will be about before they have watched it.

Representation through the genre

Hybrid- Comedy, Realism

What different groups of people do you have in your genre?
In our Genre there is a specific genre of teenage boys, the actors we will ask to participate in our short film will be around the age of 17-18 so will fit into the teenage bracket. our short film will be a hybrid of both Comedy and realism meaning we will have to introduce our characters very quickly as the audience need to be able to relate to them.


What are the common stereotypes?
The common stereotypes within our genre is a typical teenage boy so there are many stereotypes, our actors will have to be dressed in very fashionable clothes that most people are seen in so that there can be a stronger link between characters and audience. The guy must dress to impress the girl who will also be a character in our production. The boy will try to impress the girl but will fail this is also a typical stereotype


Are they traditional or modern representations?
Our representation will be fairly modern as the story line consists of a boy trying to get a girl, a more traditional approach would be a girl trying to obtain the boys attention. The typical representation of a teenage boy would be hanging around on streets drinking with his friends and having a good time. However we want to challenge this representation as we feel the short film will be more interesting and have a higher entertainment value.


What changes have there been in society which have impacted on the representations of your groups?
Many environmental factors have influenced the way teenagers are represented, For example the binge drinking culture our society has makes the typical stereotype change into drunken yobs that walk the street. The whole "hoody" culture also make teenagers look very intimidating as it looks as if they are hiding something, it also make young people look scruffy and as if they don't care about there appearance. There has been a lot of bad press towards teenagers over the past few years which build a negative stereotype however this isn't the case for all young people. So although our character is going against all the typical stereotypes our short film is aimed at people from the age 13-19 and i believe that they will relate to our character despite not following these conventions.

Brief Production plan

From our Questionnaire results we have decided to make a brief plan, this will help us when we make storyboard and scripts. Is shows a brief storyboard and how each minute of time will run and what happens within them.

Key:

Purple = Swap/ screen split

Green = Minute 1

Red = Minute 2

Yellow = Minute 3

Orange = Minute 4

Blue = Minute 5

Mind Maps

we have produce some mind maps so that we can brain storm ideas and get a feel for what we want to produce. we established an idea that we would produce a short film where two people would swap bodies but when we planned more we decided to produce a short film where one person will be filmed in 2 different situation but the same thing is happening to him just different reactions.

Production Mind maps

Mind Maps

Target Audience Questionnaire Results

finding out what most people look for in a short film allows me to see more in depth about what people enjoy when they are watching short films, from the graph we can see that most people really like comedy and harley any people like escapism so make a comedy which people can relate too would be a really good idea.

This graph establishes what people like when watching short films, we have chose 3 short films that we thought people would like the most. They all have a roundabout effect which is where the film starts where it finishes. Most people enjoyed watching "The black hole" this short film is about a man who gets the chance to have anything he wants be he gets to greedy and ends up in awkward situation.

We asked each one of our participants how long they would prefer a short film to be, we asked them of they would prefer 2-3, 3-5, 4-5, 5+ minutes long most people preferred 3-5 minutes but then this is a very wide range and is not very specific so we also added 4-5 minutes so give us a more specialised result and most people apart from one voted for 4-5 minutes.

Asking what genre people like really helps us establish what genre to make our short film. This information can really help us when deciding how to make our film as we want to make it successful and interesting for people to watch.

Target Audience Research

We posted 3 videos on our main production blog we have asked our target audience to watch, we have also posted this on facebook, We then followed this on by posting a questionnaire using Google Docs to get some audience feedback, this again was posted aswell on facebook.
Target audience questionnaire

Genre Research

After looking at some more short films we found that most of them are not only based on an emotion but also a hybrid, meaning that they follow more that one genre. We will be looking at basing our short film around the age group 11-16, which is basically school year 7-11. We will therefore be combining the stress of being at school, along with social realism. As we are not far off this age our self we feel than we could achieve very realistic results along this line.

Concluded Research on short films

After looking at short films presented on the bbc website i have found some very useful points i must take into account. These are:

- The characters must be introduced very quickly if introduced at all

- Short films reach a climax very quickly and then the rest of the film is used for solving this.

- The plot has to be very simple yet effective but being too complicated will cause the short film to come to a sudden end.

-The location is very important to quickly establish the setting

Although these are very little points it is essential that we take all of this into account to ensure that we follow the proper conventions of a short film

Walking Frame Productions

We have created a Facebook page and and Blogger page, this hopefully will allow us to gather more information to help with are production and to also keep us on target and allow us to update our viewers with our progress

Blogger page
Facebook page

Audience Theory

Audience Theory
There are many different theory's that explain how an audience is influenced by the media. Some of these are more excepted than others due to the amount of personal information they take into account.

Hypodermic Syringe
- Injects ideas, attitudes and beliefs into the audience who is then influenced.
- Although this theory is simple, it is very black and white in terms of the way its stated. For example not everyone that sits down and watches a violence film will go straight out and cause a fight with someone. It also doesn't take into account every ones individual backgrounds so isn't very accurate.

Culmination theory
- Watching years and years of violence accumulates and will make people less sensitive to this. For example if people constantly watch violence films then eventually people wont think of it as anything but everyday life.
- I believe that this theory could be partly correct as if people are constantly seeing something terrible it will come to a point where the shock factor is no longer there, however again this doesn't mean that with everyone watching horror films society will come to a point where everyone goes out murdering everyone else.

Two-Step-Flow
- This theory talks about how what people experience in media individually will then result in them discussing this with people, which can then influence there behaviour.
- This is saying that although it may not effect someones attitude and actions directly it may cause them to think in a different way and look differently at certain aspects of their life.

Uses and Gratifications theory
-We choose what we watch so choose by what we are influenced by.
- I believe that this theory is very accurate as its not saying we will base our actions on aspects of media we have seen but we may be influenced by it even if we are not aware of this. we base what we watch on the 3Is and 2Es
Information - Informed/ Educated
Identification - Identify with characters/ Situations
Interaction - Social interaction
Entertainment - Be entertained
Escapism - Escape from daily troubles

Encoding/ Decoding Theory
- The way in which directors encode footage with signs for the Audience to decode. However due to the fact that people come from all different backgrounds and cultures it will mean that different people encode media differently.

By understanding the way in which viewers are influenced by the media it makes it possible to create the most appealing short film possible. I believe that the last two theorys are the most feasible so I will have to ensure that i take into account target audience feedback so that the audience are drawn into the short film.

Time plan and schedule

short film evaluation

From looking at post work of short films i was able to understand how to create the mood and story in a time of 5 minutes, short films have a vital point in them which is the main story of the film and this happens and is generally resolved or just left a the end of the film. I believe that i could produce a short film of a good quality but as i have not had much experience with short films i will be looking in much more detail at a large number of short films to understand how they are produced and created, the main construction of a film is the script, character, settings, props, camera angles and shot types, most of all these all revolve around the subject of genre! in our group we intend to use a emotion as our genre and portray they emotion threw the 5 minutes we have.
Shot types that where used in the short film looked very clever and creative, the way they have been edited together makes a seamless bond to create the feeling that you are not watching a film but that it could be happening to you in real life, all of the films i have watched are not social realist films but i would like to possibly create a film that viewers fell they can respond to and also have a certain feel about them that means a deeper meaning and understating.

Creative Filming

During our last lesson we focused on using digital techniques to enhance our creativity, using different camera angles we can make the victim look like they have less power and the suspect look like they have power over the shot and this carry's out throughout the whole clip. we used a match on action in 2 of the shots as this creates a feeling of tension as you are fowling the actor and feel what they feel. We where given the theme of suspicion and using a filter in our editing software it gives the clip a really dark impression, editing is one of the main processes of film production and when putting the clip together you can cut the clip so it creates a certain theme. Totaling i feel that we used a wide range of creative techniques but i would also like to use different techniques but i am scared to use them because of the way they may turn out.

Skills Development

Last year in my AS studies i produced a film opening of a horror genre, this tested my skills and made me think about my analytical skills to produce the best results.

Pre-Production
pre-production was a very important part of my practical production. To start my research i looked into a few films of the same genre to get an idea of what opening of films where like, this gave me a idea of what techniques and concepts and how to apply them. My next step to carry out my research was a questionnaire this consisted of in depth questions to figure out who my target audience is and what they really look for when watching a film, our questionnaire was a basic overview and was not as in depth as we would have liked, if i was to carry out the questionnaire again in my second year i will think more about the questions i ask and look at the genre as more of idea and ask how people portray the genre and how they would like to see a film produced.

After the questionnaire we wrote a film proposal so we had a clear understanding of what we where expecting from ourselves and our film opening, the main aim of our proposal to the outline exactly what we had to do i think we successfully did this but we did only "outline" the main points we could have given ourselves an easier job if we where more specific this way we would have the exact shot types, music, settings, character, techniques ect. but our opening was very loosely held together and was made on spur of the moment thoughts and places which where not idea but where 'plan b material'. Our location pictures and story-board where a great help to our production stage, i had never produced a storyboard before but even though my drawings where stickmen we still had an idea of what shots to use and establish how they would work and possibly not work. The location pictures help us establish where our shots would take place and made it easier for us to take into account the 180 and 30 degree rule so the film when edited fits together well and seamlessly.

Production

To establish our shots and camera angles and to test if our film would edit well together we produced a test film of all of our shots exactly how we would produce the main film following the storyboard, once we edited the opening together we noticed that some of the shots did not work so this was an opportunity to analyse each shot type and re think about what shots would collaborate together.