Completed short film

Reflecting back on my short film and I was looking back on the positive and negative things about it. Being disappointed with the first edit of our film whilst editing for the second time we focussed on making it as good as possible and I am going to talk about the things in our short film that made it work well. I particularly think that the way some of the shots have been put together work really well, for example the shot in the bathroom where she is turning the bath taps. There are also a few other shots in our short film which I felt made it more visually interesting and reflected on some of the short films I have watched. However, I think we should have thought about the shots more whilst filming because then we would have more of these really good shots. It was a shame because we also had some other good shots but couldn’t use them and they did not work well with narrative, we should have planned this better. The use of still imagery works well I feel it gives the audience more of an understanding to what the film is about and gives an idea of where this girl gets her obsession from. The still imagery also makes the short have more of a “girly” feel to it. Not only did the still imagery make our piece more attractive but the way we edited them into our piece worked well and the way they are cut fast goes with the whole feel of our film as it is all edited fast. We didn’t spend ages searching for music to go underneath our piece we only looked through a few CD’s. Luckily we found a song quite quickly that I think worked really well under our piece especially with the poem. I think that the poem over the top makes our piece and I think that without this our film would be a lot less interesting and nobody would know what was going on. The female we used in our short film was well suited to the role and the style of the film and we were luckily to find someone so well suited.

Although there were some good things about our short film we was still left feeling disappointed in ourselves but we felt as if we couldn’t do anything else to improve and a number of times felt like giving up. The things that didn’t work well were that it was too short. It was too short in the sense that we didn’t explain enough in that minute and we could have had more shots. I think this is the thing that really let our film down as it could have been a lot better if we had more footage and explained the story in a little more depth. Some of our shots were out of focus and some of them were so badly out of focus that we couldn’t use them (making our film even shorter). If we extended the poem then maybe we could have used more shots and it could have been improved but we felt like we had a lot of improving to do in a small space of time but did our best to improve what we could.

Our film conforms to the codes and conventions of short film. Short film is a genre in its own defined by its running time (has to be under 50 minutes long or micro short under 5 minutes) our film was a micro short and its running time was under 5 minutes long. Our film was low budget as we didn’t spend hardly anything on making it. However, a code and convention of short film is that because it is short it has to draw in the audience quickly but I do not feel as if our short film does this. Our film holds a message which short film usually does but it could be more thought provoking.

I felt that I held a large part in the production of our short film. I felt that I played a large part in the narrative and the planning of our short film as me and my group member are alike so each others ideas would always work together to make something better. The production work of our short film was shared our fairly but we both wrote the script together so we both had involvement into what went into our story (we had to do two lots of production work as we changed our short film). On both times we filmed I was present and we shared our filming and set preparation so someone always had something to do. I did my share of editing which made me feel good as in past projects i haven’t been given the opportunity to use my skills as the editing desk as much as i would have liked to. I felt as if I could have played a larger role in researching about our film such as I could have found still imagery and made collages as well.

Influences

At the beginning of this project I looked at a wide variety of short films and analysed them. The short films that got my attention and made me look into them more personally were the ones that had a small interesting narrative and were British. Although the short film I created was very different to the ones I had researched it was similar in the way it was structured and the way it was filmed. For example, the shots I used in my short film were very similar to the ones I had studied in the way we used close-ups and the mix of close-ups with continuity. Whilst planning the shots for my short films I was constantly thinking of shots that would be interesting to the eye to make it more visually attractive and more interesting to watch. Even though titles were only a short part of my short film I got influences from other short films I had watched that were similar to mine, the titles were very basic and didn’t exactly give much away about the short film. I watched a short film on the channel 4 shorts website which followed a story about a girl; I was attracted to this short film because I liked the way in which the camera went in and out of focus. In our short film we used this effect a number of times and it worked well. At first I was unsure as to wither it would be a good idea to not have any dialogue at all, but after watching a previous students work which I thought worked exceptionally well with only the use of a voice over it gave me the confidence to peruse this in my short film.

Although I got influences from famous shorts film, short films on the internet and other students work I had to find my own influences to come up with a narrative. My short film works around an issue which is largely spoke about in society today. On the news and in magazines especially body image is spoken about a lot and there are often documentaries about girls dealing with body issues and things such as anorexia. It would have been hard to make a documentary (another form of short film) to talk about this issue so it made me get creative and think of a way this issue can be shown in an indirect way. For example, in our short film the girl herself is never shown upset or her “issue” is never shown as out of the ordinary. Inspiration week also helped us come up with the main concept and feel of our short film as we across a poem called “Barbie Jail” which we re-wrote and used as the voice over in our short film. We could have just used the poem to help us with our narrative but we felt the use of the poem actually in the short film was effective. Before we across the poem we used in our final short, we also looked at other poems and even song lyrics that spoke about body image and obsession (these are posted on my blog). By researching poems and song lyrics this helped us build up our idea and narrative.

Audience

We set out to target our audience in different ways. We didn't set out to target a particular adueince but the finish piece made it appeal to mainly females. The type of person that would typically view our short film is females that are quite girly and are interested in these types of topics. The way in which our short film targets this particular type of audience is through its mise-en-scene. The props that we use in our film are typically girly and very "barbie" like, a use of lots of pinks and female products. The actress used in the film may also target this audience because she is shown as girly and looks like a model. This may attract the kind of females which read a lot of fashion magazines. Although our film is typically girly, it also has a very strong meaning behind it. The type of person who may view our piece may be someone who works with girls that have body image disorders or people who work for magazines and are very hot on this issue. I think this could attract this type of audience because in our short film we show body image as an extreme. Our piece will also attract the younger females because of the voice over used, the female we used to do our voice over has a very young voice. I don't particularly think that the music attracts any specific type of audience as it is very basic, however it does add a sense of seriousness to our piece making it more "watchable" to an older audience.

We handed out a questionnaire to a group of year 12's. Five males and ten females. We asked them various questions about our short film to do with the way our film came across to them and things that we could have improved on, here is a summary of the feedback they gave and how it helped us to have a better understanding of how other people saw our short film.

In our piece we tried our hardest to show the physical and emotional effects some females go to, to perfect their body image. In our questionnaire we wanted to know if we did this effectively. The feedback we got was positive as everyone apart from one student, said that we showed this effectively. This made me feel like we achieved what we set out to do.

In our short film we wanted our film to convey the message that "No matter how much one alters the way in which they look confidents comes from within". We gave the audience three options to pick about what they thought our film conveys, there was no right or wrong answer as most answers were linked to eachother but it was interesting to see what most people thought. Both males and females picked similar answers and some even picked two. This made me feel as if our film gave off lots of differents vibes and messages and i took this as a positive thing rather than negative.

We wanted to show the audience that the body image we show isn't the "ideal" one but people still let trying to pefect themselves take over their lives. We asked the audience "Do you think this short film portrays what the idea body image is?" I found the answers given very interesting as ALL of the males said "yes" and all of the females apart from one said "no". This to me showed that males still think all females should have that perfect celebrity look in which you only see in magazines.

We used the poem in our short film because we thought that it will give the audience a better understanding of what was actually going on in the film. I personally thought the film was nothing without the poem being read underneathe. We asked the audience if they would have understood the meaning behind the short film if the poem wasn't used. We got varied answers from this but suprisingly most of them said that they would have understood the meaning without the poem being read.

After being unhappy with the first edit of our film we knew we had to add something in to make it more interesting, so we added in still images. We asked the audience if they thought the imagery compliments, confuses or makes them understand what the film is about. We got positive feedback from this as all of them either chose "compliments" or "makes them understand what the film is about". This made me feel as if it was worth the extra time and effort adding in the still imagery.

We didn't use dialouge in our short film and i was always left wondering "what if" what if it would have given the better understanding? or would it have made our piece more interesting? The feedback we got was mixed, roughly half said dialouge would have made our piece more engaging and the other half said it wouldn't half. Atleast not everybody thought dialouge was necessary.

The feedback we got from our short film made me feel slightly better about the film as at first i didn't want anyone else to see it as i did not think it was good enough. The majority of the feedback was positive with made me glad that we got feedback from others and gave others the chance to watch it. The feedback also gave me a sense of achievment because it showed that the messages we wanted to send out worked and people understood what it was about.

As i was not feeling confident enough about our short film i didn't want to upload it on any social networking site.

We asked the audience: If you could change one thing about this short film what would it be?

Male "Tell us more about the character."
Female "The way it's edited and the titles."
Female "Make it longer to go into detail on what the film is about."

Distribution

I have decided to distribute our film on the Virgin Media Shorts website. After looking around at other websites and competitions that allow you to distribute short films i found that this one suited our short film the best. Unfortuantly, alot of the websites and competitions i came across only let over 18 years enter, which of course, was no good for me. I found that this particular short film distributer suited our film the best as they were not asking for a particular type of film unlike other competitons and websites. The rules also state that the film has to be below 2 minutes and 20 seconds long, our film is 1 minute 1 second long so i felt this was perfect. Below is information about the competitoin that i copied from the Virgin Media website.

"Virgin Media Shorts is a short film competition that champions undiscovered talent.

Whether you're a film maker or a film lover, there are loads of ways to get involved. Read all about them below.

If you're a film maker...

Virgin Media Shorts gives you the chance to show your work in cinemas, on TV, online and on mobiles (via the mobile internet).

Here's what's up for grabs:

• 12 film makers win a chance to show their work on 214 cinema screens nationwide
• 1 lucky winner lands £30,000 to make their next film.
• 1 People's Choice winner takes home thousands of pounds worth of new film kit.
• Plus, we reward the college or school with the most entrants with loads of shiny new kit, too.

Entering is easy. Just check out the film spec. Then upload your film. The competition closes on 28 June 2010.

If you're a film lover...

You can see new film making talent, before they hit the big time.

Register as a film critic and you can:

• Comment on films
• Vote for People's Choice (launches in September)
• Win some great prizes, like the new iPad

Get involved now!"

To enter the competions i had to fill in a some details. Some were personal and some were related to our shorts film. For example, the genre and length. It also asked me to write a short synopsis. Having done a synopsis on our blog i just copied in the one i had already written. Before i submitted form i double checked to make sure this was the right competition fior our short film. I look around the Virgin Media website at other short films that have been distributed and i was pleased to find a variery of styles.

Not only will i distribute our film using competitions but it will also be distributed via youtube and vimeo. I think the fact the our film will be shown on these types of sites is a positive thing because a broader audience will watch it (hopefully). I think it is also good our film is being distributed on youtube on vimeo and both of these websites have a wide variety of footage so our will not be judge in any way.

Inspiration Week Ideas

Ideas from song lyrics

In my group we already came up with an idea with the use of song lyrics. As we already knew we wanted to base our short film on fashion we looked at lyrics that were about fashion in some way. We looked at lyrics from a song by Lady GaGa called "fashion" these lyrics are about a girl who had to have everything designer and fashion was her passion. From this basic story from the lyrics a story we came up with was about an ordinary working class girl who was saving up her money to buy this expensive designer dress. The story would be told backwards. There will be shown many ways in which she could have got the money to buy the dress but the audience will never find out if she got the money in a good or bad way. As you can see, we didn't copy the story that was being told in the lyrics but we got inspiration from them. http://www.metrolyrics.com/fashion-lyrics-lady-gaga.html

Ideas From Poems

The poem below is a story about fashion but is the opposite of "loving" fashion. When we thought of fashion stories we came up with ideas of people loving fashion, whereas this story opened our eyes and we began to think of stories of people having different opinions of the fashion industry. This poem has a clear narrative which makes it easier to produce a story from it.

"Down Oxford Street I wandered, pensive,
Through shopping malls, quite apprehensive,
While feeling cautious and defensive,
And my face was ashen;

For Womenswear was comprehensive
With ranks of handbags quite extensive -
The frontline of a charm offensive
In service of Fashion.

Their advertising was intensive,
But when plain clothes are so expensive,
It makes me cross and hypertensive -
I hate them with passion"

Inspiration Week: lesson 1

In this lesson we are starting to gather ideas from different sources. By doing this will make it easier for us to come up with an idea and learn different ways in which we can get inspiration. As short films are so broad and there is not a specific length they have to be, it is going to be a lot more difficult coming up with an idea as you can literally do anything.

In this first lesson we came up with ideas as a class as what makes a narrative. Here are the ideas:

• beginning, middle, end.
• fairy-tales from your childhood
  
• books
• fables
• tribal stories
• legends
• myths 
• plots
• characters
• a series of events 
• stories that have been past down through generations
• something we ourselves can make up
• imagination
• deeper meaning
• once upon a time
• cultures

Brief encounters short film festival

Brief encounters celebrates new talent in filmmaking and provides a platform for emerging filmmakers to screen their work. In 2009, over 150 films screened in competition over five days to over 500 delegates and 6,500 members of the audience. The film and animations were a selection of the best new dramas, comedies, music videos, documentaries and animation from over 58 countries. The festival first began in 1995 as Brief-Encounters- originally envisioned as a one off event, to mark the centenary of cinema. It proved so popular that it is now an annual attraction, expanding year to year and is acknowledged internationally is one of the worlds most respected celebrations of short film.
In 2001, the short film festival was joined by Animated Encounters- celebrating and showcasing the productions the productions, talent, creativity, technology and skills that make animation such a popular successful film form worldwide. It, too has had a rapid rise to global prominence, as it is demonstrated by its status as the UK's representative for the prestigious European Cartoon D'Or.