Our Final film! - Laura Brownlie

Some work may still need to be done on the sound but apart from that it's finished

Little White Lies Draft - Holly Stone

Little White Lies Review

Draft

Above is the final template review of our Short Film. The font and the positioning of the text boxes and text itself has been finalized, however - I was experiencing problems with regards to the image we used for the headline of the review.

The image kept becoming pixalated and would make the high quality reviews that white lies produce - appear tacky , therefore I will have to adjust this upon the start of term.

However, the image we chose to use is a clear representation of our protagonists costume, personality and hobby. She appears focused and aims to achieve in her love of football, and I feel that the image we have chosen to represent this achieves what messages we aim to put across to our audience. 

Sherlock Holmes - Holly Stone

Sherlock Holmes

One of our main influences in the post-production editing of our film, was that of text messages which were used in 'Sherlock Holmes'. The mysterious on-screen messages were used as a narrative voice.

Above is an image from Sherlock Holmes, demonstrating the on-screen messages.

Film journalist Michele Tepper commented on this new development with the technological age below: 

"Now, we’re used to seeing extradiegetic text appear on screen with the characters: titles like “Three Years Earlier” or “Lisbon” serve to orient us in a scene. Those titles even can help set the tone of the narrative - think of the snarky humor of the character introduction chyrons on Burn Notice. But this is different: this is capturing the viewer’s screen as part of the narrative itself."

Little White Lies Review - Holly Stone

Review Final Draft

"Cyberbullying; the dominant enemy of todays young society, and a dangerous activity to which threatens the securities of those facing it head on. The newly discovered short film 'Who Are Ya?' suggests many ideas to which of these are conveyed through emotion but also incredibly powerful while maintaining realism. The story to which is based on a young girl whose love and passion for sports places her in the spotlight for the bullies at her sixth form, facing homophobic bullying to which is based on stereotypes surrounding what is the social norms for a girls’ hobbies. The newly discovered actress, Laura Brownlie, plays the role of the lead character, Emma, who receives persistent texts which contain many threats and abuse, leading to her being bullied for her supposed sexual orientation.

With the innovative use of post-production editing, the texts to which Emma receives appear subtly, however the impact on Emma’s life remains dramatic. The text messages she receives appears within a similar format to the award winning TV series, Sherlock Holmes. Holmes building suspense with the anonymous texts to which appear throughout scenes. The innovative ideas used within ‘Sherlock’ and ‘Who Are Ya?’ whereby both are demonstrating the powers of the cyber era,  could this art of ‘Narrative Deduction’ effectively become new age of development in TV and film across homes and cinemas?

 Alongside the many insults and abuse Emma receives throughout this short film, the twist within who her true identity is regarding her sexuality, to which the answers are discovered right under our noses as she begins communicating with an individual simply named 'Jesse Taylor'. The name choice, both masculine and feminine, leaves the audience guessing who this other individual is. The film suggests that Emma seems to be very interested in the mysterious ‘Jesse’, and later she arranges to meet this mystifying character.

 The marvelous twists within this short film certainly leave the audience guessing and leaves us with the thoughts of realization that although based in a fictional world, cyberbullying and homosexual bullying do in fact take place on a daily basis; maybe the cleverly used semantic codes "Who Are Ya" builds upon can open the eyes of those around who may a victim or witness of one of the two horrific downfalls in our society."


Below is the headlining image:

** The final draft will include an explanation into why we chose to use the following image. 

Poster Editing - Holly Stone

Final Poster Editing

While editing our final poster, I decided to create many designs and ask not only my group, but also my peers for which one they favoured the most and which was more effective, below is each designed followed by an explanation into what it does/doesn't achieved:

First Design: Above is the first design I created. I removed the initial advertisements which were on the boards behind the goal. The filter added to the image was favoured in the fact that it makes the poster appear more severe, and the angle of the shot makes the poster shout the theme out towards the audience. The theme of course , football, is spoken through the title of our short film and the image seen in the background of a goal. However, I recieved critisism on the boards being left blank, they appear to reveal a perfect opportunity to include awards etc from film companies and festivals, therefore my next design I opportunity to change this.

Above you can see I added some advertisement. The boards were also adjusted in colour, in an attempt to keep the black and white theme. However, once again I was critisised on the first award. As the "Lottery Film Awards" does not exist, I had to change this fake award.

I adjusted the awards, and to which suprisingly added the last professional touch to our poster. Conveying all football  themes and also suggesting a potential isolation of someone/something in our short film, above is the finishing product of our film poster.

Final Editing - Holly Stone

Final Film Editing

Thursday 18th December 2014:

Today we completed all the filming we needed for our short film. Alongside all the filming, I finished the sound effects and clip editing in Final Cut Pro. Our film runs up to 5 minutes 15 seconds but includes a variety of transitions which allows the film to move with an easy narriative.

The only tasks needed to be completed in regards to film editing is that of final Non-Diegetic and Diegetic sound editing, this will be completed tommorow by Laura. 

Poster Image Complication - Holly Stone

Poster Image

We recieved permission to use Burgess Hill Football Club's football ground in order to photograph the image we needed for our poster. Harry obtained this permission as his family partly run the club.Many complications still occured however, due to the icy weather conditions followed by harsh rain. 

However, below are the many images that were taken for our poster 

Filming Constraints - Holly Stone

Filming Constraints 

We have been experiencing some weather related problems lately which has been effecting our filming, with Gale force winds and risk of extreme icey conditions, there has been a few problems with filming outside as it relates to our Health and Safety.

Health and Safety includes;

1. Slip Hazzards
2. Winds knocking over camera equipment
3. Winds causing audio problems

This week (commencing the 15th December 2014) we have decided to complete filming on Wednesday and Thursday, but we must take in all Health and Safety precautions.

Weather Forecast for Haywards Heath:

Final Poster Draft - Holly Stone

Final Poster Draft

Above is the final poster draft we have chosen to use as a template for our design. With my previous post, I have justified my changes in fonts when compared to our original titling sequence in our film. However, we have to use our own stadium image for the background of our poster. In order to achieve this, we plan to obtain permission from one of our local football stadiums (Burgess Hill/Hassocks) in order to obtain a photo with similar angles and composition to the one shown in the draft,

However, as the stadiums we use will not be large like many of the bigger football tournaments ones, we intend to show how our protagonist is an amateur at football, therefore using a much more common layout for our football pitch would draw a line between her goal and dreams, and where she is now.

The reviews we used on the poster include a slight 'pun' when relating to our short film. As the film is based around football, we found that using the words 'Absolutely Kicking' would add a light and friendly humor to our film, adding to the age group we film around (teenagers at college) and to target our audience more clearly (16-25 year olds).

Little White Lies - Laura

Little White Lies lay out. 

All the of the reviews in little white lies are set out in a very particular way, It applies to all of there reviews and we're going to want to keep to theses conventions in our review.

This is an example of a review in LWL

Key points in the layout of LWL

• Photo - All reviews have a stills from the film as a photo at the top of the page. It's important that this photo is an equal length away from the left right and top.
• Title in size 36 Century Gothic
• Box with information on the film; directed by, staring and release date.
• Text - The main body of text is size 12 written in Aparajit, with the first letter dropping down 3 lines
• Reviews written side ways on the out side of the page.in font Microsoft YaHei
• Review 'Box' in the corner of the page giving the film a rating out of 5 on three different things Anticipation, enjoyment and in retrospect. Each of these aspects also have a shot comment on the film.
• Page Number- The page number at the bottom of the page is always 3 digits e.g 001 or 023

I have created a rough template for our review I still needs a photo from the film (and a page number) then it ready for use to insert our review.

Photoshopping Poster 2 - Holly Stone

Above is a screenshot of the photoshopping I am currently doing with two images we want to use for our poster. We were going to edit the two images back to back and show the comparison of both sides. Our protagonists sporty side frowning upon her girlier side, suggesting her isolation when compared to the other character. 

The background of both is suppose to be blended between a stereotypically girly background, blending into a sporty/tomboyish background. However, this may not become our final poster idea.

Poster Draft Editing - Holly Stone

Poster Editing: 9/12/14

Above is the advancement of our poster editing. I am currently using guidelines to assist me with the justification of the text within the poster. I finalised the editing of the production/billing box and currently am working on the title and the reviews on the poster.

The font of the title is a copyright free font which I downloaded for free from "Dafont.com". The font is called 'DOT FONT' and acts as a good representation of floodlights for the poster. I believe that the lighting behind the title adds a bold feature and highlights alongside centering the title more. The large space between the title and the production box adds to the severity of the main theme within our short film - football. 

Our titling font is different from the font we used in our short film, this is because the font we used for the short-film appears on the ground, so its specific to that particular scene. If we used the same font for our film poster, it wouldn't have worked well with the background. Plus the font we are using for our poster once again represents floodlights, which you actually see within a stadium, therefore we chose to differ the fonts as the 'DOT FONT' works better for our poster. 

The background image for our poster is once again copyright free and is a downloadable image from the following webpage: http://wallpaper-download.net/football-wallpapers/football-stadium-wallpaper , however, we Intend to find and use our own image as the background for our poster.

Poster Idea. - Laura Brownlie

My Initial Poster Idea - Laura

My idea for our poster is for it to be very simple.

I think we need to show both of the main characters to show that the film is not just about football but not give the audience too much information about the main characters.

To show this I made a very simple example what I was thinking on Photoshop.

This example doesn't have any of the ratings or actor on as we'll add them to our final idea which might not be this one.

Dancing in the Ashes - Laura Brownlie

Dancing in the Ashes

The low key lighting and the colouring in this poster gives the audience the impression that it is going to be a thriller/ mystery film. The main image on the poster doesn't reveal much about the characters (as we don't see any of there faces) but it does tells us that this film is or has some aspect of ballet in it.

Unlike most posters is poster does not have any reviews on it. This is unusual as the audience can not know what people think of the film. Again no names of actors appear on the poster the only text we see is the title 'Dancing in the ashes' which is place in the center of the poster on top of the image. The lack of information on this poster does help bring across a feel of mystery.

The Blue Dress - Laura Brownlie

The Blue Dress

This is a very simple poster. It only contains 2 colours, this make the images and the text stand out on the white background.

Unlike most posters the is no photo. Instead there is 4 different silhouette, again these make the poster look bold and stand out. The images do not tell us much about the story and we do not get to see any of the character. 

The title of the film is right in the middle of the poster. It is all in capitals, and the colouring make it look like these words have been pushed or cut out of the dress. The actors names are also in the middle of the poster either side of title, they are in the same fount, slightly smaller 

Overall the poster doesn't give way much of the what the film is about, but the colouring or the style of the poster give it suggest that it is most likely to be a comedy or a romance style film.

Alarm Clock Transition - Holly Stone

Alarm Clock Transition

Editing

While re-watching the clips we needed to edit and link, I decided that we needed to link two different shots together to show an advancement of time. In order to achieve this, I decided that an alarm clock would be suitable in order to shift the day along. In order to edit this in, I had to download a new font for the alarm clock to appear more realistic.

I used the free font site "Da Font".

Link: http://www.dafont.com/alarm-clock.font?text=06%3A00&psize=l

Ideas That We Rejected - Harry Quilley

Ideas

There were many obscure and unrealistic ideas that we brainstormed  at the start of the project, some ideas that we added into our final synopsis and somewe stayed well away from.

Looking For Eric

Film Poster Research

Looking For Eric

As we can see from the tagline, that Looking For Eric is going to be a heroic comedy, which slightly contradicts the look of seriousness on what looks to be the protagonist. From the piercing look of the male character suggests he is an important figure or even the main character within the movie, that its centered around 'Eric'. There is also a look of confusion in his facial expressions which leads us to believe there some use of enigma within the film. The use of black and white in the main characters picture, as well as the 80-90's collar of the smaller character in the bottom left corner implies the movie is set 15-20 years ago. It also steers us to believe it is a sport most likely football related film, joined with the man celebrating in title wording with his hands in the air to create a similar shape to an I.


We see they only use one newspaper review. of 5 stars. This could be because of 2 reasons, either it is a very specific movie sub-genre that is aimed at a smaller target audience therefore it wasn't very widely advertised and shown and this newspaper/magazine was the only one to write a good review on the film to put it on the poster. Although the title is Looking for Eric, by looking at the tagline which tells us its a heroic comedy as well as the suggestion of football implies it is using 'looking' as a metaphor in relation to the main character which links back to the look of unease and confusion on his face.

Re-editing our Title - Holly Stone

Re-editing our Title

After Effects

Above are the images of the editing process of our title sequence in after effects. After re-watching the previous edit I completed, I decided that the font of the text and the general sharpness of the font should be increased. The difficulty in doing a title on the ground is finding the right font to suit the scene, therefore I used the after effects font "Chalkboard". 

The white font makes the text appear more bold and it pops out at the audience much more. The animation remains the same for our character as she runs over the title while dribbling the football. 

Poster Ideas - Holly Stone

Poster Ideas & Inspiration

While coming up with ideas for our poster, I designed another potential idea which we may use as a backup if our editing doesn't go to plan. Instead of dividing the poster into two with two full separate images, we could merge the face of our protagonist and from the shoulders up have both her sporty side and her girly side which we see towards the end glaring into the camera. We could justify the title and production box and on the side of the poster have reviews and star ratings.

We were going to keep the poster landscape as it is easier to work with, below is the drawing I sketched out in order to illustrate my idea. 

An inspiration for this poster idea is that of James Camerons "Avatar" poster. This showed the lead protagonist (Jake Sulley) and his avatar side half and half framed into the center of the poster. 

Brighton Rock - Holly Stone

Brighton Rock

Poster Research

The main focus on the Brighton Rock poster are the three characters in the foreground. The male character in the center is very prominent, and the fact that he has been centered shows that he may play a key role in the film (Hero/Protagonist). His facial expression is very serious, almost scowling at the camera, this is could also be used to show the potential dark nature of the film. As referring to Misc en Scene, his costume consists of him wearing a long black coat, again this the dark colors suggest evil but also formality. The long coat is a stereotypical costume for a inspector/detective.

The woman to the left of him in red has a very worried facial expression, her stance isn't very powerful so this shows vulnerability. She also is dressed differently compared to the woman on the right, this may show how their age is represented through their clothes. The styles and fashion senses are different between their ages. The woman on the right who his glaring at the woman in red, she looks a bit more in control. She is wearing the lightest colored clothing out of the three, maybe suggesting innocence. She also appears younger than the other two characters, possibly suggesting vulnerability. The poster suggests that there may be a potential clash between both women within the film. 

The background and setting to the poster is dark as well, continuing with the ideas that the film genre could be a thriller. The dark colors are built upon from the left hand corner and get lighter towards the right hand corner, suggesting trouble may arise from the pier. From the skies we can see what looks like a storm brewing, this could give us an idea of what the film is about, something has been brewing and there will be a climax at the end, a clever use of pathetic fallacy. 
  
The text and layout is very formal, this allows us to make the judgment that the audience the film is being targeted at is an older audience. The use of justification means the titling and production box are in line with one another, making it easier for the audience to read information regarding release dates and actors etc. The reviews are at the very top of the poster, in a white font which stands out on the dark background. There is a rating certificate of a 15 on the poster. Also the film poster is canted slightly, this could suggest instability between the characters.

Fish Tank - Holly Stone

Fish Tank

Poster Research 

The reviews of magazines are placed cleverly on the wall of the poster and display as if they were graffiti'd there. The larger fonting of words such as "Powerful" and "Outstanding" draw attraction from the audience as these exclamatory words shout out of the poster.

The body language and facial expression of the female character suggests that she may be within deep thought. The lighting is much brighter on her face on the right side, this may purposely be used to leave the audience questioning what is generating such a bright light

A movie slogan is placed underneath the title, it reads "Live, Love and give as good as you get". The slogan may also act as a potential inspirational quote for the audience. 

In conclusion, Fish Tank uses good graphology skills in order to make the title appear imprinted onto the actual scene of where this is shot. The editing of the peeling paint on the wall adds to the realistic feeling that the title etc are actually a part of the wall. 

Drag me to Hell - Holly Stone

Drag me to Hell

Poster Research 

The film poster of "Drag me to Hell" has many conventions in which it displays cleverly through a variety of techniques.

To begin, the de-saturation of the background of the poster makes the centered image of a female character (who we presume is the protagonist) stand out much clearer. The gloomy background (pathetic fallacy) and the images of some large housing suggests that this is most likely an American horror/thriller film.

The body language and facial expression of the woman on the poster suggests that she is at a struggle. Relating to the title "Drag me to Hell" the general stereotypical idea on what "hell" is, relates to an evil place of which demons live and attempt to bring others down with them. If we look closely at the poster, we can see some claws pulling on the womans throat and shoulders. This reinforces the idea of her being "Dragged to hell." 

Below and behind the title, we can see some flames which burn up behind the title and over the woman on the poster. Once again, we stereotypically link fire to burning and pain and therefore once again linking it to the idea of hell. The poster could potentially be trying to display how the woman is in fact being dragged down to hell, and the film is based on how she tries to escape. 

The large fonting of the title and the capital letters add a effective excitement to the film. The fact that the title is white on a darker background makes it pop out and appear more bold. This would potentially be used as an advertising technique. 

Overall the poster uses great advertising techniques and semantic graphological codes to build upon the same ideas as the actual film presents itself. 

On the Doll - Holly Stone

On the Doll

Poster Research

The conventions displayed in the poster "On the Doll" have many varying qualities and effects on the audience.

To begin, at the very top of the poster, we can see a movie slogan. It reads "do you wanna play." The colloquial language and use of a rhetorical question may add to the potential genre that it is displaying. It may also draw in the audience and leave them questioning the significance of the doll which is centering the poster.

The composition of the main photo centering the poster builds a sense of enigma. It displays this with the use of black and white colors. The use of the doll reinforces the title however. But the fact that the doll is taking up the entire poster may once again leave us questioning its significance. It also is a strange form of doll, as we associate dolls with children and maybe little girls Barbie dolls etc. The doll on the poster has no facial features, it also appears to be slightly dirty which may suggest it is worn from years ago. The general appearance of the doll suggests a horror/thriller genre and builds upon a mystery.

The main titling of the poster "on the doll" is in a clear and very bold text. The world doll is made much bolder than the rest of the texts, this may once again suggest the significance of the doll. The title also has a shadowy effect to it, this may also add a slight eeriness to the poster. We may refer to the shadows behind the texts as echoing and potentially suggest the doll is supernatural.

As with almost all posters, this poster includes a production/billing box in order to credit actors and associates with the production of the film. However the titling and production box are in line with one another, a technique called justification. Two of the main actors have their names larger than the production box, this is often used with well-known actors in order to attract an audience who may be a fan of a certain actor/actress. 

In conclusion, the doll appears to be symbolic within the poster and can generate an overall semantic and enigmatic codes on what genre the film would be based upon. That genre is horror/thriller. The use of an echoing font and pale coloring of the poster suggests the cold/bitterness of the doll and how it is most likely going to be an evil character. 

Editing our Title - Holly Stone

Final Title Edit

For our title within our short film - we decided to be creative with the progression of the text. As our title is inspired by the football chant "Who are ya", we decided on the idea that using a football to brush the title across the floor may appear more creative. The clip above shows how we animated the football to fly across the screen with our protagonist kicking the ball, her feet trampling over the title.

We used After Effects to experiment and the product we recieved can be viewed above in this blog post.

Lesbian Sterotyping Clothing - Harry Quilley

When we filmed our first couple of scenes from our opening scenes, it came across that Emma didn't really look to much like a lesbian, even though we are not trying to make her look completely lesbian, we are trying suede the audience into thinking she is. Because of this we have decided we will not use these clips as we intend to change the way in which we dress Emma. Starting with the hair, we believe her hair she be more tied back in a bunch. By just combining each little thing gradually builds up the judgement on Emma leading the audience to believing she is in fact a lesbian.

Filming At Lauras House - Harry Quilley

Filming at Lauras House

Above: Getting the camera positioned correctly 

Above: Filming Evidence

 When creating the make-up scene we tried a few different options to get a close up shot, without the camera being noticed or being seen in the way of the shot.

As Laura's room was still quite girly with a lot of pink and girly apparel, we had to make a few adjustments to the room to make the appearance less girly and a little more tom-boy like to give it a stereotypical lesbian first judgement.

Soundtrack - Laura

Soundtrack.

For the soundtrack in the scene where she's getting changed we wanted to have a fast up beat song the help the scene move along faster. As a group we have chosen is Chelsea Dagger by The Fratellis. which can be herd below.

The problem we have with using this song is that it is copy righted music so we can't use it as a non-dejectic sound track.  To solve this problem at the beginning of the scene we will have our main character turn on a docking station and the song is playing, as it's cover will appear on the phone.  This should turns it in to a dejectic sound track so we can use it in our film.

The clip we are going to use to show the music being turned on is below.

Filming Hazards - Laura

Filming Hazards/ Risk 

 When filming our football scenes we need to make sure everything is safe, so that our actor doesn't them selves or damage any of the equipment that we we're using. This was fine for the majority of the shots we filmed apart form one which we had the camera being kicked towards the camera. we had to be very careful not to hit the camera or the person filming. We had the football rolling across the ground, this made sure that we didn't kick the lens of the camera, and if we did manage to hit it it would be on the tri-pod.  This worked well as we had the ball rolling pass the camera; about form once.....

Location Confusion With Downlands

With half term approaching, and still a lot of filming left to be completed we knew we had to get are filming at downlands completed. When speaking to the school for when was the best time to film, they suggested in the half time, on which we agreed to do. however when speaking near the end of term the week before we didn't hear back from them meaning we didn't get the access we needed to film at downlands.


This has left us in a awkward predicament as we haven't had contact for more than a week, because of this we have chosen to disregard the downlands location as it has become a hindrance within our filming schedules and is taking unneeded attention from other parts of our film including the editing.

Bearing this in mind we have decided as a group to change the location in which we film this scene. As it was at such short notice with little chance of securing a new location rather than downlands that we shall film within the collage campus. Although its not ideal, we don't think it will have a negative effect on our film as we plan to have a lot of  close up shot reverse shots between characters, therefore leaving much of location unseen. This allows us to spend more time filming compared to when we planned to go to downlands as we only had an hour and half.

Protagonists Costume - Holly Stone

Protagonists Costume

In order to achieve the transition shot we wanted to show the passing of time with our characters football training, we had to change her costume. To do this, we simply changed her sport/football shirt during each shot. Below are the variations of the costume change our character uses (in order).

Her main costume for the filming on the Recreation Ground was wearing this black shirt.

She then changed to the red shirt seen above.

The third shot was taken with the blue and black shirt above.

And the fourth shot was with a blue and white shirt.

Weather-Related Problems - Laura

Weather Problems 

Due to a  lot of our filming being outside we've been having problems finding a time to film when it's not raining. There has been a number of occasions where we've had to cancel filming due to the weather.

Filming Location - Holly Stone

Filming Location

We began filming some transition shots and our graphic match today (28/10/14) for our short film. In order to do some of the filming, we had to find a field which provided goal posts. As we all live locally around Burgess Hill / Wivelsfield, the obvious choice was the Recreation Ground. We didn't need to obtain permission to use this field as it was open to the public, we just had to avoid disturbing those around us and bumping into the public etc. 

We also had to be sure the field wasn't being used by anyone else, so we got down there earlier in order to assure that we can film. Below are more shots taken of the location;

We made sure that we set the white balance every time we changed the positioning of the camera across the field.