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.