Question 3 Evaluation By Alex Barker

With our audience we had to consider if our film would appeal to the audience Luke went round and ask the audience on their opinion of the title, the storyline and the themes if it would work.

The majority of our audience said title was effective because it is short, easy to remember and it gives a mystery on what the film is about.

They agreed with our character Death should wear dark clothing (modern) that will make his identity a mystery to the audience and make him more intriguing.

They like the idea of an hourglass been used as a prop to signify time counting like life. However many of our audiences thought the storyline was too confusing and needed to be simplified. With Sound they believed that it needed to be kept in the background as a quiet tone so that it would not distract the dialogue between our characters. many thought that our organisation of our storyboard and the script was well thought.

Question 4 Evaluation By Alex Barker

https://prezi.com/w2xt-d478x4a/4-how-did-you-use-new-media-technologies-in-the-constructio/

Question 2 Evaluation By Alex Barker

When it comes to the ancillary tasks I believe as a group we all worked well together on our overall project. We gave ideas and advice to each other when it need. Our target audience was 15 to 25 men and women I believe the final poster would have gained that audience as it intrigued fans of drama and has the concepts of social life circumstances The purpose for the poster was to give a mystery of the short film to the audience making them want to see what the film is about.

Our short film can marketed by a variety of ways such as:

Social media – Because of our target audience, young adult males and females aged 15-25 the majority use social media websites like Facebook and Twitter for information and contact. Furthermore this will spread awareness by friends telling friends which attempts to get more people involved in watching our film

Film festivals by using our short film into a film festival it will have a wider recognition due to fans of film will be interested in watching our project

The Poster is able to give attention-getting ways of giving information to a passer-by. by making our poster appear strong its able to give information about the theme and style of our film allowing the passer-by to be interested

The Review gives awareness and also gives readers a chance to understand the style and concept of our film we took the influence from our review design by Little White Lies  as they are very graphic and specific on their review of design and written work. We have screenshot from the film to put at the top of the review and layed out where the text,title and review should be

Question 1 Evaluation By Alex Barker

   The main task

In the beginning of our project we began our research by looking at other short films to understand the style, inspiration and what features are in a short film. We would look at the following: Lighting,Sound,Camera Work and what was used as Mise-en-scene. Once this was done I learnt that in order to achieve a successful short film it would have to consist of the following such as a strong beginning, avoiding repetition and making sure it did not exceed over 5 minutes.

After this, we planned our short films by listing ideas and then would storyboard each short such as camera angles organised by Kayla, Lighting organised by Claire and sound organised by myself and Luke. The purpose of the storyboard was to use as a guide for our film when it came to filming. Once we finish the storyboard I began to reach music. Throughout I knew I wanted to have the music play in background to be simple and give suspense to create the mood of the unknown to the audience. I looked at a variety which can be found on previous post of what I researched. They all consist of violin and classical piano as I believe these are instruments that can have an impact on creating the unknown. Once we decided on music we began to write a script for our film.

http://advancedportfolio201643.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/planning-6th-october.html

Once we finish planning we decided that our Film would be called “The Man in The Suit” it would consist of 2 characters Elsa an elderly woman played by herself and Death played by Alex Kennard. The reason it was called “The Man In The Suit” was because it gave a strong enigma to who this person is. The use of the suit made the audience aware that the character has a high status and has pride in his appearance. Furthermore we chose the colour black for the suit as it gives themes such as death and the unknown. We decided to also keep the narration of Death a limited to further create the suspicion who he is to the audience while with Elsa giving the majority of dialogue with the audience getting to know and understand her. When planning shots we would use medium shots to understand each of characters body language and facial expressions. To create the mystery of Alex’s character we made sure that he spoke in a calm manner while putting little emotion to not only create suspense but the give the mystery of him to the audience. Another criteria I learnt when studying Short films was that mise en scene plays a key and vital role in order for a short film to achieve. For our film we used mise en scene 2 of our charters Elsa and The man in the suit. For Costume of Elsa we chose a simple middle-class outfit for her costume which consisted of a coloured t shirt and a white cardigan. We chose this as it shows her simplicity of been an old woman to society and we thought it would be best to keep our actor in something that she would be comfortable to wear due to her been having to move around a lot.

The storyline of the film is about an old woman recollecting her life with death before he takes her. It begins with death ringing the doorbell with Elsa inviting him in. the audience do not know Alex’s character giving the enigma on who he is and why he is here. The whole film is set moments before she dies. We decided to end the film  with the idea was that the doorbell at the beginning isn’t death it’s her son who has come to check on her because of her illness but death has unfortunately beat him to it.

http://advancedportfolio201643.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/planning-6th-october.html

The genre of the film is difficult to define as the beginning of the film it appears as a personal drama but as the film progresses we learn that as Elsa is talking about her life to the man in the suit and it is later revealed that the man in the suit she is talking to is here to take her life. We based this idea as people have been known before their death to talk and see the whole of their lives and much like other characters that begin to death we use the idea that a shot of Elsa would have a flash to get the idea as their life flashes before their eyes.

Also when planning our short film we decided we wanted to use a sand timer as a key prop. We decided this because we saw that ta sand timer would represent Elsa’s life as the time decreases Elsa begins to suffer more until the sand timer is empty her life is gone. We used close up of the sand timer and Elsa back and worth to represent the connection between them.

evaluation Q4

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?




https://prezi.com/your/

evaluation Q3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

 

Audience Names	Male character	Female character	Comments	Overall film idea
Matt H	×		“I think using a male character to play death will work better in a sense of the audience will be more afraid.”	I think using the idea that the old woman is still alive is very clever. However I still think that it needs to be clearer on how you are going to show death.
Gilly H	×		“I would have liked to see women to play the role of death in a women’s point of view. However, I think that using a male will represent death better because he will have a bigger presence.”	I would say that the film is quite sad in a way that someone has died. However, I think that using the women’s memories to show her life is a good way to let the audience know what will happen at the end.
Amy H		×	“I like the idea of a woman playing the character because I think this will surprise the audience of the appearance of death. This could also symbolise that death could be anyone.”	“Overall film idea I would say its interesting contrasting death a human, but also the women is still alive in her head.  If this is shown correctly I think this will be a fantastic film.”
Jack R	×		“The representation of death is to be a male. So I think this would be more suitable to do then having a female playing the character.”	“I think the whole film will be interesting if filmed right. My only concern is how you are going to show death in the film.”
Amy R		×	“I think having the female character playing death will give the audience enigma when watching the film. They will be surprise because they think that death would be more of a manly scale”.	I love how it’s based in the nans how’s. This will give more of a sense of realism to the short film.

 

This, I put on the blog so that as a group we could find out who should be the best person to play death in our film. This example showed that more people would prefer death as the male character. The reason why I chose this for this question was because I think that this was the turning point on how the film was supposed to go. By getting this feedback we used this to then to grow the story of the film knowing that the audience would enjoy it. Also without the feedback we couldn’t of make the fatal chose on the character. This then could of made the film worse and the audience might not of liked it. This was a risk we didn’t want to take!

Other ideas like costume and the name of the film was also asked to the audience so that we could send a message to the audience of what the story is about but not giving as much away.

Lastly we asked the audience about our two story lines, this was one of the most important research and planning we had to do. Without the data showing what would be the best short film to make then we would have never had the knowledge of what would be best for our audience.  

evaluation Q2

 

Through our ancillary tasks of making a poster to promote our short film, I decided to use the colour of darkness to represent death but also not giving anything away. By using a hint of light to make a shadow I was trying to create a bit of light to show heaven. This was to portray that the women in the film was running out of time in her life. The hourglass we used in the film and in the poster was used to create the same effect.

(picture of poster )

 

This I wanted to make sure that the audience was drawn to the poster so that if this was the case the enigma would already be brewing in their minds. This then would make them excited to see our short film. Like in many poster, they will always have the main characters face and the big title to show and stand out when people look at it.

 

The review stars our also eye catching in away so that if it’s a 5 star film you are going to get more audiences to watch the film, this was our aim. However to make our poster to be the best so that more views would see and like it would have had to use the appropriate construction and codes. We was successful in doing this and this made sure that our poster was linking in to film but also creating enigma throughout.

 

evaluation Q1

Before even beginning our project we as individuals had to go away and search up other short film. This then would let us know what genre we were going for but also the plot of the story.  When looking at the short film i was trying to pick out the real key codes and conventions so that we could put this in our film. However with our film “The man in the suite” we haven’t got a class for this type of film. For i short film to work for the first time in the two years we had to start thinking about a exciting beginning, so that it would bring the audience in but also we wanted to leave the audience wanting more at the end of the film.

After finishing the research we now needed to start planning for the film. As the leader of the group i gave out the roles. Everyone was included in the story board ideas, but we also had individuals roles to fulfil. My roles were Storyboard Artist/ Location Setting / Animatic Director / Screenwriter and sound.

Video of story bored ideas

http://www.youtube.com/feature=player_embedded

soon as the story bored was finished then we could start film in the setting based in Elsa (the main character in the film “ The man in the suite”) home.  While Kayla and Claire started to plan on the camera angles.

 

Me and Alex started to work on the sound and this is what we found

We used Soundcloud to find out what was the best music track that would fit in our short film.

The ones we have chosen are:

Dafydd Bullock

https://soundcloud.com/dafydd-bullock/string-quartet-18-1

When listening to Dafydd Bullock's piece of music i feel this doesn’t link to our short film. Originally we thought that it would link with our short film due to the relaxing tone it has. However when we played the music next to the short film we found that they did not flow. This is due to the lack of enigma that led to this track to not work for the short film. This is because the enigma does not come through the track due to the strong relaxation it gives off. Furthermore the purpose of the music was to create the connection of the characters to our target audiences this is vital when creating a short film. The reason for this is that we only have a certain amount of time to bring this connection between the film and the audience, so it is vital that the track and film work well together.

Hummel

https://soundcloud.com/mu-sic-88/lose-oneself

 

When listening to Hummel's soundtrack we felt that it they were both on the same style of music of classical they both different as Hummel's track of tempo is slower compared Dafydd. Because of the track been slow this did not meet to our expectations. Our expectations for picking the music is that it needs to flow well with the film, its needs to be able to create the link of the film to the audience and it needs to create the specific mood of our film which consist of themes such as death and memories. Originally we thought it would link with the film due to its tone. However it was not able to because of its tempo being slow this made the film and the specific track not flow well with each other. In conclusion it was a potential track but due to its slow sound it was not the final outcome of music for our film.



 

 

Alexander Krichel

https://soundcloud.com/alexander-krichel/oberons-zauberhorn

When listening to Alexander Krichel's soundtrack we felt that this calming track did not fit well to the fil. The reason for this is because the music gave different mood to what we expected. However what I liked about the track was that the combination of the orchestra and piano makes the soundtrack flow well together. But the tone when put next to the film made the film not connect well.

The storyline of the film is about an elderly woman called Elsa   re- establishing her life with death. Show death photos from her past

And tells stores about her adventure of her life. However the audience still doesn’t know that the male that Elsa is talking to is really death until the very end when her time is up, this was to establish enigma through throughout the film.  To portray this we used an hourglass with black sand to communicate this to the audience.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Question 2 Evaluation - Claire

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary tasks?

 

Script –

 

Through our ancillary tasks of making a poster to promote our short film, The Man in the Suit, we all took similar approaches to present our film, a figure of our character Death was pushed to the surface, along with the hour glass. For my approach to the poster I took the idea of making the whole background to look like sand falling in different patterns, I thought it would draw in enigma and be very eye catching so our audience would want to look at it and it would draw them in to watch our short film because they would be intrigued by the unusual approach. I also wanted to add our hourglass as a key representation for our short film, so I made the box of the hour glass the centre piece and main picture of my poster. I put the title of our film, the billing block, our star rating and our actor’s names. I thought putting our short film name on the hour glass box would should a direct link to our film as the titling font is the same which would click in the audiences head like a subliminal message.

 

Many posters use a key feature such as a prop or a main character for the centred piece of their poster and the same font for their titling which links their film and poster together, we also used this technique to link our film and poster together. We wanted to be conversional and make our film look sophisticated by putting it together in all aspect with the appropriate construction and codes.

Question 3 Evaluation - Claire

Question 1 Evaluation - Claire

Question 1)

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

I had a lot of inspiration from the short film I studied ‘RED’. In RED the main character is constantly seen with a camera, you know very early on that he is a photographer as his profession, you see the camera consecutively throughout the short film as a key prop. It links in as a significant part of the storytelling of the short film. I liked the idea of having a prop that would connect your audience into the film, something that wouldn’t perhaps make sense at the beginning but it does help connect the story together and give the storyline some clarity through the film, so I suggested to my group we use an hourglass in our short film to show how the main characters time is running out, to represent her memories as each grain of sand falling through the hourglass and her final moments when reminiscing to death being passed from one person to another like an hour glass passes sand from the top half to the bottom. Just like in RED when they flash towards the camera we also did the same in our short film and showed the hourglass with less and less sand in it through each short, we also changed the sizings of the shot frames so it was getting closer to the hourglass with every shot. I also really liked that the ending shot from RED is of the camera, which inspired me to make the last shot in The Man in the Suit of the hourglass, but as the last grains of sand are leaving the hour glass and fading to black as RED does. This was because I found it gave a bigger power and emphasised the hour glass as a key prop, giving it a bigger part of the clarity of the story, along with the representations it held.

RED also used pictures throughout the short film, I like this technique because seeing pictures through a film can help give you more of an insight into their life, as you can see from the first set of pictures we see in RED he was photographing the murder you see at the start, which tells you he’s a photographer as well as the fact he carries around his camera all the time, we stole this technique by having our elderly actor show death pictures of the children, husband and her life as she grew up to give an insight into her life. We felt like it would be good to have a visual to go along with her story. There is also a part in RED near the end where you see a picture of the main character and his Wife/Girlfriend, they’ve used a pan over the picture, we decided to use this technique as well but throughout the piece a bit more, so we have a pan of her husband near the beginning, then as she’s ‘dying’ you can see pans of her and her grandchildren, her and her husband, which shows you the memories of her life.

 

For their costume, I liked how the main character was wearing a suit in RED, it kept his personality more of a mystery, because you see him going off to photograph a crime scene in the beginning so it makes you questions whether that’s just his work attire or if that’s his preference, which creates enigma for the audience. We decided instead of the traditional hooded robe, we dressed our death in a suit to keep the enigma built and add mystery to our character as we didn’t want his face to be seen which also adds the enigmatic build up throughout the piece to when you find out who he actually is. For our elderly actor we used a modern day inspiration, gave her a colourful top with a cardigan as it’s a stereo type for elderly ladies to wear slightly colourful clothing, cardigans have also become something associated with elderly ladies as it’s not often to see one without a cardigan.

 

 

We also stole the lighting technique from RED, they keep the majority of every shot very dark and dull with little over exposed parts through key features, such as windows, lights, his glasses lenses, the backs of walls, so only parts of every character are lit up but they’re over exposed. We liked this idea but decided to do it the opposite way and not as over the top and make it subtler, we had our elderly actor in a brighter light than death, to show death’s darkness and keep him more of a shadow figure. We also wanted to show the classic ‘white light’ in the tunnel you’re suppose to see as you’re dying as they do something similar in RED but they use it as a flash back and it comes from behind him and the on through the lenses of his glasses. We thought it would represent her death and add clarity to the scene, however we struggled to make it look like the classic ‘white light’ and add the tunnel effect without cutting our actors face out completely. We wanted the ‘white light’ to go over the top and becoming from her eyes/face so the fact it was cutting her face out made the idea pointless so we scraped the idea. However as RED is an animation I think it was easier for them to manipulate their footage. It is something we’d all like to try again in the future and learn from where we went wrong.

 

 

 

 

In addition to, you can clearly grasp the genre as thriller/horror for RED, however our short film didn’t have a genre as it didn’t fit any of the conventional codes for any specific film genre’s, which made our short film different, it also meant we had to work slightly harder to portray our final outcome with building enigma, to create a solid tension rise to complete the final climax effectively. However the majority of short films don’t have a genre as it’s hard to show a full genre in such a short amount of time, the most commonly used genres for short films are Horror/Thriller and Love/Romance as they’re the easiest to portray.

It’s not unusual to find a short film with no dialogue, or a very little amount. You will commonly find they all use a non-diegetic soundtrack played over the top of the film. We decided to have diegetic dialogue and a non-diegetic soundtrack over our short film, the sound track was to set the mood and it helped make our film look like less of a documentary, we have a fair bit of dialogue throughout our film as well, which we needed for when our elderly actor reminisces about her life with death. We chose to have her talk about her life instead of showing it because we felt like it was more personal. However in RED they don’t have any dialogue, they have a few huffs, sighs and groans but no language, which is diegetic sound. It also has a variety of non-diegetic soundtracks which create enigma with the tension in the tracks; it sets the atmosphere in their film, which is what inspired us to have a soundtrack that created the right atmosphere in our film, as we don’t have a genre we needed to make a clear atmosphere.

The main character in RED is very mysterious, you find out more about him as the short film goes on, I like the idea that the character is revealed more and more as the story goes on so I decided to try this in my short film, which is why we only reveal deaths face at the end of the piece when you find out who he is and once the story is starting to make more sense. I liked this technique to grab the audience’s attention and keep them intrigued throughout the piece. The main attraction in the majority of short films is the mystery of characters and genre/storyline, it’s what entices the audience into watching the full short film and gives them the same effect as watching a feature length film.  Additionally, a short film mainly follows one characters life, or journey in the short film, in RED you follow the photographer’s life and his journey to find out that he’s the one killing the ladies in red dresses. We focused on one person in our film also; we focused on our elderly characters (Elsa) life and what she’s done with her with it.

Upon choosing a name for our short film we struggles with finding something that would fit our film, we looked at many short films to see if we could find a link to their film and name of choice. Red links into its film as the only colour you predominately see is red, the ladies killed are wearing red, the blood is shown in red and when you see the picture of the photographer and his wife, she is wearing a red dress, through watching the short film you can see red is a trigger colour to him and brings back memories he doesn’t want to think of. In Insomnia you can quickly tell it’s about a boy at university who can’t sleep and his mind is playing tricks on him. In INSiDE, you see various characters come out but you can clearly see these characters are ‘inside’ his head, which is shown by having both actors mouthing the words at the same time on screen and the doctor only responding to the patient. This inspired us to come up with a name that would directly link into our short film but still create enigma and keep the audience guessing, we came up with a few names, but The Man in the Suit stuck with us most as one of our main characters (Death) wears a suit so the title will create enigma with him throughout the film till it is revealed who he is.