Ancillary Task - Possible Layout Ideas



To create a film review it is crucial to have a suitable article layout. To achieve this we decided to look through a variety of Total Film magazines, above are the three layouts that we felt most suitable to fit with our short film, and greatly liked as a group. All were typically seen many times throught the variety of Total Films chosen.

Ancillary Task - Magazine Review Writig

Quotes

“Truly Captivating”

“Another cinematic master piece from Wolf Pack”

“Typical of the short film genre”

Synopsis

The story of a “player” being played at his own game... with dramatic consequences.

Staring

Joseph Mulhare, Kelsey Freeman, Alice Quinlan

Release date

January ^14th 2011

Positions

Edited by – Joseph Mulhare Kerry Sheehan Helen Daniel

Directed by – Helen Daniel

Produced by – Kerry Sheehan Helen Daniel

Avaliable one

DVD and Blue Ray

Previews avaliable on TotalFilm.com

Coming Soon to download on iTunes

Certification

15

Run time

3 minutes 34 seconds

The short film genre is something of which is often overlooked in the film industry, but all of the best directors start off by creating short films. Take Spielberg and George Lucas they both started off directing short films before moving onto million dollar blockbuster productions such as Jaws and the Star Wars franchise.

By the looks of things Wolf Pack Productions are not far away from becoming one of the best top listed short film creators. Last year they brought us the award winning film “Pandemic” which stayed in the Top 10 Film’s for over 9 weeks. Now with their latest project they seem to have excelled everyone’s expectations with their short film “Deception”, choosing to be different once again with the oddly chosen sub-genre romantic murder mystery. The story follows the life of a successful business man in his early 20’s as he attempts to juggle relationships between two women, but as the story unfolds we realise all is not as it seems. With the director’s high skills they cleverly incorporate fades and well tuned timing to show progression of time throughout. All of this eventually leads to dramatic life-changing events, which are sure to leave the audience wondering and captivate the audience further into the story. This unusual twist chosen by Wolf Pack Productions is sure to leave an impact on all of those audiences life’s choosing to endure in a monogamous relationship, such as the young protagonist.

Magazine Review - Why We Chose Total Film

As part of our ancillary task we need to write a review of our finished short film and then shape it in the style of a leading film magazines article. When it came to researching film magazines we looked at the leading magazines, Total Film and Sight and Sound. We also looked at some online review sites but found none that interested us as a group; such as Empire.

When looking at the Sight & Sound magazines we realised that each article was very detailed and left no stone unturned when it came to a review, because of this the articles in this magazine were very long and explained basically the whole story line. Another point found in the magazine was that there wasn't much visible media within the whole magazine which we found, as a group, was a weak point because it’s a media magazine and it should have more than just the written word and a few visual aids. However there were good points about the magazine. The fact that it was a specialist magazine interested us greatly as only true media fans would know and read Sight & Sound, linking with our target audience. Also because short films are such a specialist genre our production would suit the magazine well.

The other magazine we looked at was Total Film. We found that articles in this magazine had a good combination of text and visual aids. The way the editors had chosen to layout the article also intrigued us, as they often used a image and quote in the centre with the text surrounding these. Another positive feature of Total Film is the key sections within the magazine; this means the magazine is kept more organised and more readable. The key section that our article will be featured in will be ’Screen’. Screen is where the main cinema reviews sections are, and where every new movie for that month is reviewed and rated. Smaller short films receive a concise review and rating which is crucial to the distribution of any short film as it allows the director and the film to be widely noticed.

In the end we decided to go with Total Film as it has a more modern feel, and we aimed for our short film to be contemporary and modern.

Ancillary Task - Final Poster

By previously undertaking a poster analysis on the film poster ‘Inception’ we discovered several things that are important for us to include. One main aspect is to have a centralized image of all main characters; this allows the audience to become aware of who will be featured within the film alongside clearly stating their names at the top of the page. The faces of all the characters have not been included within the poster however; this is to coincide with the theme of the film. The illusion that people are not who you think they are is built up by keeping the audience view limited. The tag line, ’A woman’s desire for revenge outlasts all her other emotions’, followed by ‘Deception’ again emphasizes the theme of betrayal working well alongside the image. At the end of the page the poster states ‘From the creators of Pandemic’. This was a beneficial item within the film as this was the film created last year by our group. The theme of Pandemic is similar to that of Deception, the views towards Deception will be a reflection of the success of Pandemic as they will fall into the same category and the audience will expect the same standard if not higher of Deception.

Ancillary Task -Poster Analysis

Before creating a poster we decided that undertaking some research into posters within the same genre as it would allow us to produce a poster that will entice and attract the target audience. Inception is both a current film to have been released, alongside falling in to the category of a romantic thriller. The title being in bold and red allows a contrast against the dull navy blue background, instantly drawing the audience’s eyes to it. Due to the story line of the film the image used has been edited and warped to create a continuous theme throughout the film. Yet it allows the audience to view all of the characters that will feature within the film, having Leonardo Dicaprio in the fore ground. He is the leading character in the film as well as the most famous; this is emphasized through the image and the placement of his name at the top of the poster. It shows his importance within the film. All the characters are dressed in smart formal wear, showing that the film will be bias towards the thriller aspect rather than the romance. Below ‘INCEPTION’ it says ‘FROM THE DIRECTOR OF THE DARK KNIGHT’ this shows the audience the standard of the film, this is due to the dark knight being huge hit. The audience instantly feel that the film will be of the same standard and are again drawn to the film.

Exemplar Posters

When designing the initial poster for our short film it was decided to look through posters of films that filtered into genre similar to ours. As there are few films that fall into this category the amount of exemplar posters we had available was limited.

Continuity problems due to “adverse weather conditions”

From Tuesday 30th November until Friday 5th December we had large amounts of snow fall. So many people this caused a number of problems but for us as media students it gave us a longer lasting problem, continuity.

Many of our scenes outside had been filmed weeks before the snow fall, but we still needed to film and re-film some parts of our short film. The snow also presented several problems, the most important being that the setting now had snow cover, which they didn’t before. This meant that any scenes that needed footage added to it wouldn’t work as when you played the final piece back one moment the ground would be clear and the next covered in snow. Other problems were mainly health and safety (risk assessment) due to slipper ground surfaces and transport problems due to the roads being in such a condition it was hazardous to drive in.

There wasn’t much we could do in this week and the week that followed when it comes to filming, so in these weeks we sat down as a ground, planned our reshoots, discussed blog posts and suggested ideas and researched our ancillary tasks.

Editing equipment & software

As a group we have decided to use Pinnacle Studio Plus as our editing software. We have chosen this as it is an industry standard and offers everything we need to successfully produce a professional looking short film. This software offers a variety of editing techniques from cutting footage and editing sound to adding effects like shadowing, also we will be able to tweak the footage (add a tint, change brightness etc.).

Editing is regarded as the unseen art of film, our group agree with this and believe that editing plays a vital part in the film making. This is why it has been decided by the group that we must make sure that our production is not seen as a "sixth form production" but a professionally produced film, we will achieve this within the editing stage of our work.

With pinnacle being the industry standard, it's main rival is windows media player, which is another industry standard. They both have many unique advantages and offer a great user interface which is easy to use and comes with many helpful tips (providing you know where to look). So when it came to deciding which software to edit with it was a hard choice to make, but after weighing up the pros and cons it was decided that we were to use Pinnacle Studio Plus to edit our footage.

The equipment of hardware used to help edit was a real easy choice because of the cameras we were using. When uploading footage it needed to be in the DV format, to achieve this we needed a Tape to DV converter. We found this in the form of a base which connected to the computer we were using. Other bits of hardware or equipment used were simpl

e things like memory sticks to transfer copy right free music onto our project and headphones to listen to the work in progress.

Church Permission

We decided that our filmed needed an increase in variety of locations. It was then decided that including a church scene with the vicar giving a speech about the loss of life would be a shot that would improve our film drastically. Yet to film in a church we needed permission. After a vast amount of research I called several churches in the Brentwood area. Thankfully our first choice, St Thomas's in Brentwood gave us permission to film our scenes on the 5th January.

Focus Group

We used four 6th form students that took media studies for our focus group. We chose them because we felt that our target audience would be people who have a solid understanding of the media industry and techniques used within film making. The Q&A session is shown below:

Costume

Costume is very important in the film industry. This is because what a character wears needs to coincide with the stereotypes and behaviour of that character otherwise the audience will become confused and will not be able to follow the plot line.

Costume is also part of mise en scene, other parts of mise en scene consist of props, set design and make up. All these point help the audience understand and follow plot lines, so with our film having several plot twists we found it very important to get the costumes right.

The man needs to be seen as a successful and rich young professional who spends a lot of time on his appearance and clothing is no exception.

As a group we decided the best way to show that the man was successful and powerful was to put him in a suit or some form smart attire, backing up the stereotype of a rich successful man. This costume would be used in the bar scene to show the man authority.

We tried this costume out but felt it was to formal so by removing the blazer and tie found that this suited the character better.  

The first time you seen the protagonist he is at the pool, then in the next scene he arrives at his house. In this scene we want to make a suggestion to the audience that he has come from the gym/pool and gone home. To show this to the audience we have chosen a costume like this, jogging bottoms and a hoody. The use of a gym bag also reinforces this point.

The other costume we have chosen for the man will be sued in the scene when he is walking with either one of the girls along the high street and for the last shots of him entering the house. We have chosen a casual style like this one as we feel it is fashionable and would suit the man lifestyle well, also its fitting for the weather seen in the shots and the time of year. 

When we were planning our film there were certain stereotype’s we wanted to avoid and some we wanted to attract with our female characters. We wanted to avoid the cliché of 6^th form “romantic” or “seductive” clothing.  The stereotypes we wanted to attract were that of glamour girls, high heels, make up etc. but we wanted our female character to be tasteful not “slutty”. 

Because of these specifications we wanted for our female character it was rather hard when it came to picking certain costumes for them. We started with the bar scene as this is the scene which we knew most about when it came to cinematography and mise en scene.

Because we wanted a tasteful glamour girl look we knew it had to be a dress and heels but this still left quite a large style of clothing for us to choose from. It was finally decided that we dress the female character in a cocktail dress.

 We found this style of dress was appropriate as it showed enough skin to show the girls were “interested” in the protagonist without moving towards the promiscuous stereotype.

We chose black as the colour for the dresses as it is associated with elegance and mystery which will tie in well with our plot twist at the end of our film.

Like the male we also need a casual costume for the female characters, we have decided to go for jeans and a winter coat. We have chosen this as, like the male costume, it suits the weather and time of year. Another reason for choosing this style of costume is because many people wear this style so when filming the high street scene with people in the background our character will blend in and make the footage seem more real than set up.

The reason for choosing a dark coloured coat is for the same reasons as the colour of the cocktail dress, the bark colours represent mystery, a great tool to be using for making the twist even more effective.

Focus Group Questions

As we discovered our target group using a questionnaire, we believed a focus group would allow us to set the criteria essential to entice the audience to our film, through the content itself alongside the ancillary task. The way in which we undertake presenting our short film will be determined by certain features that our target group believes will differentiate our film to others. As there is a small target group we are able to hear the views of several members, allowing us to have a good range preventing a limited view.

Shooting Schedule 3

Planning Schedule

Planning Schedule

Scenes to Film –
Restaurant
Garden
Pool
Underwater
Killing
Driving away from house
Pulling up to restaurant
Ending

Filming Sequence –
Smiths
- Alice and Joe sitting at the table
- 36o degree turns into Kelsey
- Kelsey and Joe sitting at the table
- Kelsey and Joe leaving
- Alice and Joe entering
- Alice and Joe pulling up to the restaurant

Garden
- 360 degree shot both girls
- Alice exits after looking at phone
- Joe walks towards pool
- Over the shoulder shot, looking at phone

Killing
- Point of view walk
- Hit/flash to black screen
- Falling in

Pool and Underwater
- Variety of angles showing Joe fall in
- Dead under water, with blood
- Floating shot from high angle, filmed at day time (will be used after the first diving sequence and will be the final shot)

Driving Away From House
- Camera on floor showing empty road, the car will drive over and fade to black

Diary Of Day Shooting - Smith's

Setting and Location Lighting

For our short film we plan to use different levels of lighting, for example the pool scenes we will be using naturalistic lighting, so the lighting will just be from the general surrounds and the time of day. We used this in this scene and the beginning of the house scene as they were set during day light hours.

When it came to lighting for the bar scene we had a range of lighting possibilities as there was four different lights to choose from and each panel of lighting had its own dimmer switch, which we could use to set the mood. When we had the establishing shot and the tracking cam of the bar we focus the lights on the engravement of “Smith’s Est. 1957” on the wall and made sure the bar was lit up, making the fine cognacs and champagnes visible behind the bar. Most of the long shots used in the bar scene were lit to make the bar seem seductive, which produced a romantic feel which we were looking for. We also used several low angle close ups of the couple on the sofa. In these shots we made the lighting more dominant over the male to show that he was in control and was the strongest character. We feel that the lighting in this scene was very effective and helped us achieve the style and feel we wanted.

Permission Blog

Because we have chosen to change the location of the restaurant scene we have had to ask permission once again. This meant I had to phone and speak with the owners of Smiths Brassiere. After saying i was a media student and needed to film in a high quality and prestigious restaurant we agreed to film on 23rd^th October for a period on one and a half hours, while they set the restaurant up for business.

Change in location

As a previous blog post stated, one of our locations needs to be in a restaurant. The original plan was to film at the Masala zone in High Ongar, however we as a group have decided to change this location to a more upmarket location.

In the past few weeks a local restaurant has been undergoing work to build a new cocktail bar. As a group we decided that this cocktail bar will be a better location than the Indian restaurant. We came to this decision as we felt that the ambience of this new bar would suit the mise en scene of our film better. The new location for our restaurant scene is now Smiths Brassiere.

Shooting Schedule 2

London Film Festival

Short film creators are producing for a niche market and one of the best ways to distribute to this niche market is by your short film being shown at Film Festivals.  The London Short Film Festival is held annually, they screen more than 300 features, documentaries and short films from nearly 50 countries, the festival is the largest public event in the UK with a huge attendance record. The festival showcases films that are highly creative, original and show vision and imagination, awards are given to show recognition of those with the most creative talent.

On the London Film Festival website, there is a dedicated section to Short Films. This is useful if you are a short film director and want to enter into the festival line-up so you know what you’re possible competition will be like and you can create and produce a higher standard finished piece.