This is my media blog which will follow the progress of our filming and editing. Fuse Films consists of myself, (Lizi Wood), Josh Jotcham, Mike Fews and Dani Phillpott. We have worked together previously and achieved high grades and our creating a short film for A2.
Day 2 of filming started badly, the camera we had chewed up our tape, luckily we were able to get another camera and we had a spare tape, this did mess things up a little though as it took up time, and consequently light. In this time we would have been able to shot a variety of scenes outside as the lighting was the best it could have been. However we did not let this effect our overall filming.
We came to my house today to shot most of the house and morning scenes, this will be placed at the beginning of the film as our running man is rushing to get ready. We also did some more running scenes, to enable us to have a variety of running scenes when it came to editing. We also thought it might look good to have our running man, running through a number of different terrains.
Due to the Christmas holidays coming up, we need to be able to hand in a rough cut of the footage we have filmed so far. I found this useful as it showed us how to manage our time appropriately and see what our finished film will eventually look like. We discovered that the opening sequence needs to be sped up slightly as it doesn't look as urgent as it should. Overall, we feel as if we have kept up to date with our filming and on schedule to finish on time.
We started filming the running scenes for our short film today near and around our school in Kingswood. We used a variety of shot types, including low angles, mid shots and low angled shots. The footage we filmed seemed to be quite good, although we were concerned about the light, as it was misty and looked as if it would rain. Eventually, we had to go inside as it started to rain. The filming of 'The Running Man' is under way!!
Before we start filming we came up with a shooting list so we knew what we were filming at each location to save time. The main locations in the film are a house, the streets, a park and a bus stop.
Shooting List
Academy Street Shots Lizi's House
Bedroom Scene Kitchen Scene Street Shots Bus Stop Scene Bus Scene
We uploaded our storyboards and published them online using a free web based software called Scribd. This is useful as it allows us to show our storyboards in an easy and clear way. This is them below: The Running Man- Storyboards 1-44
Fuse films are now on Twitter, a Social Networking Site which is status based. This will allow us to connect with our audience telling them what we are doing and when, in the form of 'tweets'. A number of celebrities are on Twitter including Jonathon Ross, Stephen Fry and Chris Moyles. Our target audience will be familiar with the process of Twitter and the way in which it works and we felt this would be a effective way of connecting with our intended audience.
Flickr is an image and video hosting website, which allows users to share personal photos. The service is also used by bloggers as a photo repository. The site holds more than 4 billion images.
We created a Flickr account which we found really useful when uploading our personal photos of the general filming preperations and production. We also liked being able to show our audience what we were getting up to.
After completing the storyboards I have made an animatic, a way to view our storyboards in real time. This allows us to see how our film will look when it is completed, it will also allow us to see any problems in the film before we actually film it.After viewing the animatic we felt that this was how we would like the film to turn out, however we are just short of 5 minutes and therefore we felt that we needed to add a few more shots to the film. This could be resolved when editing as we can change the length of shots instead of shooting new ones. (Written by Mike)
As we are getting closer to filming our final piece, we decided to do some test shots that we may incorporate in our film. We filmed a short sequence featuring me running in different parts of our school, the shots we filmed included: extreme long shots, low angled shots, mid-shots and point of view shots. From this we found that we really liked the low angled shot and the effect it gave and we also most definatly include the point of view shot.
With the footage we filmed we thought it would be useful to document it and create a mini-short film using the iMovie programme on the Mac computers. Our Media teacher then helped us to work out how to use it, however we found that the version of iMovie that we have does not have the split screen effect, which we did want to use whilst creating our short film, this may cause a problem so we may move our footage onto a different computer and use Adobe Premier Pro. as we are familar with the editing process. I am currently working to find an appropriate song for the running sequence.
One of the first steps when thinking up ideas and trying to plan out things, was choosing a genre in which to work with and applying to a target audience. We mind-mapped a wide variety of genres and discussed, in depth, the advantages and disadvantages of creating a short film concering the specific genre. For example it would be extremely hard for us to produce an animation film as we do not have the skills needed to make one. Whereas it would be quite possible for us to create a well made documentary or even a mock-documentary as we would have the right equipment and facilities to do so.
We narrowed it down to a choice of a light-hearted comedic/entertainment film, a Mock-documentary or horror film. We felt that, as we made a horror for our AS Media project we should do something else and that a comedy/pure entertainment piece was the way to go.
In a bid to maximize the use of out time, we decided it would be productive to share out the roles in order to get more done. This allows everyone to have an active part in the creating of our film and ancillary tasks, so that we have enough time to complete our work by the deadline. Roles Filming Director - Mike Fews Camera Work - Josh Jotcham & Mike Fews Editing - Josh Jotcham Lighting - Dani Phillpott Costume & Props - Lizi Wood Music Finder - Lizi Wood
Blog Diary (Pictures)- Dani Phillpott
Ancillary Task
Film Poster - Dani Phillpott & Mike Fews Radio Trailer - Josh Jotcham & Lizi Wood
We have come up with our final idea and have been influenced by certain films, television shows and adverts and these have given us ideas towards our final piece. I have looked at various pieces which have running scenes, so that I can see what shots look good and where the camera is best positioned.
After developing our idea we came up with a short film that we felt our intended audience would enjoy watching as it features a taster of what the final piece could look like.
Final Idea The film starts with a digital clock, the time turns to 6:30 and at the sound of an alarm, a student aged around 18 wakes up suddenly and rushes around the house gathering books and keys etc. He runs out the door and carries on running through the streets of a city and carries on running through more extreme situations such as the woods, a river. He carries on running with an air of purpose as if he is running somewhere important, the audience is left hoping he arrives there on time as he is running with urgency. He suddenly turns a corner and the screen splits and on one half the student see's the bus just about to leave, just as he starts to run to catch the bus, someone not looking accidently spills a drink down him, this delay makes him miss the bus he then turns to leave. The other half shows the man turning the corner and dodging the man with the drink, he then manages to catch the bus. The split screen stops and we focus to the man who missed the bus, he has just arrived home, he goes upstairs to change his shirt as he does he turns on the radio. All sound stops except for the radio, it tells us that a bus, the one which he was meant to catch, has been in an accident. While this is playing the scene has changed to the man on the bus, as the news bulletin finishes the man looks up in fear and the screen goes black. There is then white noise playing the credits up. The film then ends. We will now need to storyboard this idea.
After we came up with the Running concept we started to mind-map ideas which would help to develop our ideas further and make a really great short film. Below is the way in which we altered the ideas we had from the original.
Running Man 1 The shot starts with some close ups of an 18 year old boy waking up, he then starts to run. He proceeds to run, and we see him running past landmarks of Bristol, like The Clifton Suspension Bridge, @Bristol and the S.S Great Britain. Also we would see the man run through more different settings like forest and parks.
Thoughts: We felt that this idea wouldn't be suitable for a short film, but more like an advertisement for Bristol and we wanted our film to be light-hearted entertainment. We came up with a few problems that would need to be addressed if we did go through with this idea? Where is he running to? Why is he running? What is the purpose of this short film?
Running Man 2 Our man wakes up suddenly in a rush, grabs his things from around the house and heads for the door, he then runs through different settings like the park, forests, roads and other places. The purpose of the film is to make the audience wonder why he is running and where he is going. It suggests that it is an emergency or he is late for something. At the end of the film he will arrive at a mundane setting such as the dentist or a bus stop which will give the film the comedy twist.
Thoughts: We really liked the idea that the man runs through quite extreme settings to get somewhere that really isn't that important like the bus stop, therefore we will incorporate this into our final idea. As the short film is going to be around the 5 minute mark we felt that if the whole film was the man running it may become quite boring to watch, therefore we need to find a way to keep the audience engaged until the end. After discussing ideas about how to keep the audience engaged we decided not to produce a film of the comedy genre. We felt we could move this idea further if we went down a more serious route, however we still wanted to include some light comedy in the film which will be the running aspect of it.
Running Man 3 The man, a student, wakes up suddenly and rushes around the house and gathers his stuff. He quickly goes out the door and starts to run. As the film goes on he runs through settings such as streets and onto fields and forests. He is running with a sense of emergency and suddenly he arrives at a bus stop. The bus arrives and he gets on, the shot will then go black and we find out that something has happened to the bus.
Thoughts: We believe that this idea would be much more interesting to watch and will engage the audience until the very end. We liked the idea that the ending was quite sudden and it will shock the audience, however we felt that we could make it more interesting. Our final idea will be in my next post.
Generally, short films consist of very few main characters, for example one to three. This is due to the duration of the film as it makes creating relationships between the audience extremely difficult. Mis-en-scene is important, as shown in the short film Goodbye Mr. Snuggles:
the characters clothes and the overall presentation of the film creates a lot of imagery. From the surrounding we can tell that the characters are wealthy and also the way they are dressed enforces this. The use of music in short films, is often used. Depending on genre, music can be used for atmosphere, tension, sadness and happiness. In the short film Joyride, we can see how the use of music is effective in creating suspense.
Short films also allow the recurring theme of hybrid genres, this creates an interesting and unique film. For example the short film Le Cheval 2.1, features a mix of French art house genre and a comedy. Short films are often made to break through into the industry, by creating a hybrid genre film your film is more likely to standout and be noticed.
In general, from watching a selection of short films, we can see that they sometimes tackle various subjects, including serious or humorous messages. The narrative is fast-paced and usually there is a sense of a morals and consquences for certain actions.
As we have two weeks off of school, we will be editing our blogs frequently during, trying to complete pre-production tasks. We will create a shooting list, which will show the order of shooting the scenes, this will be useful as it will save time and extra work. We will also do our storyboards, including time, shot type and lighting. These storyboards will be accompanied by the shooting list. The storyboards are what show us the order of the scenes on the screen. When we have completed the storyboards we will scan in the sheets and create an animatic.
We have allocated group roles for the holiday:
Dani: Target audience questionnaire Mike: Storyboarding Lizi: Location planning Josh: Set up facebook group for Fuse Films
These should be finished by 3rd November, this will allow us plenty of film efficiently.
During the holidays, I scouted my local area for places where I felt it would be suitable to shot scences for our short film. I really liked the thought of having the 'Running scenes' through rural parts of Bristol, however I would like to incorporate urban area's also, for the contrast.
The area around the Bus stop is fairly grassy, with trees and park situated at the bottom. One of the pictures shows a collection of metal poles, which we felt would effective for jumping over, (having the camera in a extremely low angled shot e.g. looking up) underneath, to capture the quick and urgency to get to the bus stop. We did some practise shots for this, which can be seen in the Running Man test shots.
Advances in technology have contributed widely to the convergence of film and digital technology, this has helped significantly as we are now able to access films easily through websites and blogs. Short films have benifitted greatly as they are featured widely on the web. Web 2.0 provides an interactive way of searching all over the internet, and allows for anyone to produce a film and upload it to the internet.
Web 2.0 is an extremely useful way for upcoming film companies and producers to upload their creations to websites like 'Youtube', this enables them to reach a wide variety of people. Sites like 'Independent Lens' offer independent film companies the chance to showcase their work. By having their work out there, the opportunity for their work to be seen could eventually lead to funding from people. Film companies tend to use a wide variety of media's to gain publicity and show their work, social networking sites are a great way to do this. Our group decided to create pages for our Fuse Films company, for example on Facebook and Youtube.
A very good reflective paragraph. You made some targets at the beginning of your blog and it is probably a good time to revisit those targets with a follow up and reflect on how well you have met those and create some new ones.
There needs to be more evidence of textual analysis of exisiting short films that relate to your work. Remember you can discuss a range of media products that you feel have helped you to make creative decisions - i.e. Sliding doors.
In preparation for my production piece of creating a short film, I have spent a significant amount of time analysising a variety of short films, including Le Cheval, Bulletproof Vest and Big Career. I have found that doing in depth textual analysis's incorporating shot types, music and mis-en-scene have helped me to understand the importance of planning for my own piece, as I want the film to look as professional as possible. I chose to use a website called DepicT as I liked the variety of films to pick and analysis, this was useful because they were all in the same place but they were all completely different. Throughout the course, I decided that short film analysis was extremely helpful to the development of my production piece and this is way I did more than the three required.
In order to understand the preferences of my target audience (aged between 17- 20), I devised a questionnaire which would help me to understand what my target audience want and expect from a short film. We also filmed a focus group of around ten people discussing their preferences on short films.
We decided that we needed to create a character that our target audience could engage with and relate to. Due to our film only being around 5 minutes we had little time to establish a character. This is why we thought and planned ideas concerning the costume thoroughly.
We have decided to create an online questionnaire concerning target audience, using Google Docs, which we will post on our Facebook page and using the school email system. This will enable us to reach quite a wide audience, so we can obtain a realistic view of what people think. We are also considering doing a focus group, so we can get a better idea of what people enjoy to watch.
Below I have provided a link to the questionnaire:
There are 5 main reasons behind watching a film and they consider the Uses of Gratification theory:
1. Escapism 2. Social 3. Information 4. Personal Identity 5. Entertainment
We considered this when mind-mapping ideas for our short film and decided our idea fits in the entertainment catagory. However, common to a lot of other short films it may contain features which place it in another catagory. We felt that by combining a mix of different techniques from different genres, it would create a unique video which would be exciting to watch. I want to ensure that we are challenging or confirming to the codes and conventions of our genre.
Due to the advances in digital technology there is now a high demand for more choice, therefore the amount of short film festivals and competitions are growing day by day. Short films are uploaded for fun, entertainment and competitions, Web 2.0 provides a interactive way of watching and judging other peoples films, and is extremely useful for analysis as we can view a wide variety of alternative films. Film festivals such as Raindance Film Festival allow amateur film makers to produce short films, ranging in size and genre, along with films there are also short pieces which show behind the scene snippets of the making of the films, these are useful as it we can see how they made the film and what techniques they used.
Richard Maltbys theory that a successful Hollywood film is reliant on the combination of predictable elements and variation is a valuable point, which proves accurate when looking at different films from different genres. This theory suggests that when an audience view a film they are expecting certain elements to happen, for example, when watching a romantic comedy, the incorporation of a happy ending, funny scenes and a romantic embrace is anticipated. This, therefore makes genre seem predictable however it can prove to be a positive as you know what you are going to watch so there won't be any shocking factors, which could effect the viewer anticipating a happy ending.
Rick Altman disagrees with Maltbys theory as he explains that it does not allow the blending of genres, therefore films are viewed by a passive audience. Generally, most blockbusters tend to follow the idea that Maltby discusses, and that is why they prove to be successful from remaining in the correct codes and conventions of that particular genre.
We wanted to aim our film at young people of our age, (around 17 and 18) as we thought it would be easy to produce something that we enjoyed making, as it is more likely that our friends and peers will like watching it. Our target audience, are both male and female, aged around 17 to 18, they like to watch funny and/or entertaining programmes like The Inbetweeners, Hollyoaks and Big Brother. The digital era that we now live in encourages teenagers to share, produce and watch on social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, Bebo. New sites like Twitter provide people with others opinions, and allow you to see what people have been doing and therefore watching. Due to the advances in digital technology there is now a high demand for more choice, therefore the amount of short film festivals and competitions are growing day by day.
A lot of short films have shared conventions and codes but the mix of genres are quite a bit different. Hybride genres are used frequently nowadays as they provide a unique and original short film. The Film Le Cheval taken from the Short Film Festival DepicT, features a mix of two genres one being comedy and the other arthouse, old-fashioned French film. This blend of genre is effective and modern. Hybride genres tend to incorporate more interesting and diverse ideas and this could also effect it's chances of doing well in the industry.
Generally Short Films consist of humorus, light-hearted, inspiring and entertaining pieces that tend to draw in an artistic audience. The combination of narrative and story is balanced successfully, there is usually a moral highground and a consquence.
Here are the results from our online questionnaire, we found these useful as we were able to see who watched certain films. We used Scribd.com to present them:
From the questionnaire we found out some useful information which will help to create a film that an intended audience will enjoy and relate to. From this we will be able to tailor a plot to a genre.
As we are making a short film, we thought it would be appropriate to research the genres included in short films, as they could alter from cinema. I went on sites like Independent Lens, an online film festival, and Youtube. They were both useful as they hosted a number of short films ranging in subject matter and lengths.
The first film we viewed was called Bullet-proof vest and was created by May Lin Au Yong, a graduate of documentary film. The short film provides an incite into the lives of two young children living in Richmond, California, one of the most dangerous cities in the US, with an average of ten homicides every ten days. The long shots, typical of the documentary style, make the children's words even more poignant as we understand what they mean from the images. Having the children discuss such a serious and deadly situation makes the documentary more raw and sinister as we feel empathy towards the vulnerability of the children, and the way in which they explain it is very honest. Like most documentaries, voiceovers are used to make sense of the image portrayed on screen and are extremely effective when explaining what is going on. There is also an interview with the children's mother, which adds another side to the story. The credits are particularly well made as we can hear the diegetic sounds of people shouting and car's beeping in protest.
DepicT! is a unique competition from Watershed and is part of Encounters Short Film Festival, it challenges filmmakers to create new, imaginative ideas portrayed in just 90 seconds. Due to the demand of social networking sites and being able to connect with an audience DepicT has a Twitter account, this appeals to the Web 2.0 era in which we communicate and is convient for an easy way to find out about new films and filmmakers.
We looked at a lot of short films, 'Le Cheval’ was a particular film that stuck out, as we wanted to incorporate the running sequence into our production, but at a smaller scale. We liked the range of different shot types used including, high angled mid shots, long shots and establishing shots. We also liked the slow-motion effect and will consider using it in our film. The subtitles and black and white are effective as they contribute to the overall theme an old fashioned French film, however from the content of the piece we know it is a comedy as it features a man talking about how he longs to become a horse, this challenges the idea of a general black and white, serious film, but is obviously a spoof from the start.
Le Cheval 2.1
Another short film featured on the DepicT website is called 'Big Career' the opening scene is a high angled mid shot of a tea-cup, the way in which the shot is filmed suggests that the tea cup is miniature. In the background we can hear diegetic sounds of a fair ground and people talking, this sets the scene and allows the audience to understand what is happening and where. You can see a slight reflection in the liquid of the tea-cup of the man talking to the woman about the job, you can also see a reflection of the Ferris wheel. The table then shakes, and we finally see the huge hand of the main character as she lifts the tiny tea-cup. The diegetic speech throughout is cleverly scripted as it explains that the woman wants to get a job at the fair ground, however she does not want to be discriminated against for her height, and the employer then explains that he will give her a job in the miniature golf course. The film is ironic and cleverly made.
Big Career
Lift, uses most of the typical codes and conventions for a typical documentary, for example the interviewing format and the same surroundings throughout. The film is used for the social interaction aspect and also information, as the audience are able to relate to the people. The camera cuts frequently, to the mechanical parts of the lift, we can hear a baby crying and the noise of the lift moving.
This year, for our group project we are considering doing a short film, we felt it would be fitting as last year for AS we did a short film also. Last year the project went quite well, the filming and the editing was our full focus and we tried to complete it to the highest standard we could. We found that we worked well as a group, as we all knew our roles and what we worked best doing. I found that in general, the planning aspect is an important part of the project and we need to make sure that we plan thoroughly this time, so we know exactly what were doing. Here are my targets:
1. Plan the time, so we know how far along in the process we are, and it enables us to use are time effectively 2. Use mind-maps, lists and powerpoints to make sure we have plenty of ideas to choose from in the first place in case we change our minds, and have nothing to do 3. Try to challenge the conventions of the genre we are using, as we tend to stick within the conventions 4. Divide the roles up equally, in able to let every one have an equal chance at inputing to the final piece
