My video
involves a lot of intricacy and complexity once you watch it a few times
through. Upon several viewings most views will begin to understand the message
I wish to put forward in making my short film.
Throughout the video the camera remains relatively fixed in a sense.
This was done for the simple reason that I didn’t want the camera movements to
deter too much from the action which is something that you find happens to
videos with a lot of camera movement. Towards the end of the short film there
is some camera movement and I’ve done it in such a way that the removal of the
fixed camera perfectly coincides with the liberation of my protagonist. As the
protagonist breaks free from his old life, so does the camera. The camera
movement is something I enjoyed playing with, certainly towards the end of my
filming as it was the moments when I found myself at my most experimental and
adventurous. Throughout the video I have sued close up shots in order to force
the audience into the action and possibly in order to present the effect that
the audience are actually witnessing the events of the film first hand. In
doing this I have found that more and more of my audience have been engaging
with the short film and that was always a goal of mine because I found that my
message would be completely ignored if I created a boring video. I used the
aperture lens that is available at my school in order to get a crisp and
perfect image on all of my close ups. The aperture lens also allowed me to toy
around with the focus. In two shots in particular I have fiddled with the focus
in such a way that it diverts the attention of the audience to a specific
section of the scene and that is brilliant because it allows me to force
attention, this can be found in many films because the attention will always
want to be on a certain character or object in order to inform the audience
that it is important. In emulating the existing products I have managed to
establish a product that is seemingly more professional than one without the
aforementioned qualities. Most existing media products use moving cameras and
the only fixed cameras you see is for conversational shots and even then the
editing is done in such a way that the camera almost feels like it is moving
because it is cutting back and forth using shot reverse shot. By challenging
the conventions and having a constant fixed camera I believe that my product is
very different to most other products.
The editing in my video is an aspect I had to take seriously; I wanted
something to be happening in the video that made the audience really think
about what they are watching. This lead me to implementing the colour bars
throughout it. The colour bars are an aspect of television that most viewers
will recognise, certainly the older ones as earlier televisions would have
featured the colour bars as a test once the television is turned on or if there
is a programming fault. I had to decide on the appropriate timing to slot all
of the colour bar sections into because if I didn’t then it may not have looked
correct. My editing is very different to other products as it unusual and I
don’t think there are any existing products that feature the colour bar
flickers that my product features. Some typical conventions of the thriller
genre is quick cuts and fast paced editing, I opted for a slower pace as I
wanted my film to be more psychologically involved than most other thrillers
that are out there today. I wanted to challenge the conventions of the thriller
genre in order to arrive at a brand new idea that would not only thrill the
audience emotionally but psychologically as well.
Nowadays most films that feature interior home scenes tend to
completely miss the point and the homes don’t feel or look like they’ve been
lived in at all. Some films will manage to pull it off successfully but most
tend to have ridiculous things such as coffee pots that are completely full or plates
that just so happen to be set out, everything feel very premade and as though
half of the action happened off screen. It is precisely this reason that made
me want to challenge the current norm by shooting in my own home which is of
course lived in by me and my family. By shooting in my home I found it far
easier to recognise what does and doesn’t work in scenes, whereas professional
directors may not be able to do that with scenes that are entirely constructed
for them.
The narrative structure of my film is very linear as I wanted to
present the message of a media overdose in one of the cleanest and simplest
ways possible. Many films currently in cinemas today will harness a linear
narrative as it is one of the best ways to bring across a story and keep it
untouched and direct to the point.
My short film has a very strong sense of meaning that in the form of a
message, the idea behind my film is to make the audience as questions about
their own personal lives and how much media they consume. The plot for the film
came from me reading an article in the newspaper about how media consumption is
at an all-time high and its obvious to see, all you have to do is step back and
take a look at yourself, no doubt you have your phone by your side or some form
of easy access to your social media accounts and it is that exact point that I
wished to bring across in my short film. My protagonist is nameless and fits
with almost all of Propp’s characters; He is equal parts of most characters as
he is a blank canvas for the audience to project themselves onto. I wanted a
nameless protagonist that audiences will be able to project themselves onto in
order to draw their own conclusions and to have the film fit into their own
amounts of media consumption. I feel that films like this fail to make any
impact currently which is a shame because they really should. Films like The
Avengers don’t have a meaning, yet it reaches number one worldwide. This is why
I opted to have a strong sense of meaning in my film as I think that films
should be an art form that create a message and give the audience something to
take away from it.
My Poster leaves a slight mystery about the film whilst still giving
away the basic information that a viewer would need to be able to come and see
the film. In doing this I feel I have used the space given to me effectively
and presented a professional looking piece of coursework.
The layout of the
poster features all the relevant information with regards to where to view the
film at the bottom because I found that this is the place where most of the
current products put it, I actually worked whilst looking at a professional product
whilst I produced my own piece, this was so I could get to grips with the
layout and how I could figure the different aspects out. It basically set out
the whole poster for me and then allowed me to tinker around with it as I
pleased. I created the title of the poster on Photoshop as I wanted a specific
design and I think it worked well. The text on the poster is very square and
structured; it presents a uniformed layout that gives a nice overall
appearance. This appearance allows viewers to find their information easily.
There is one main image on my poster and that is of my protagonist, it
is a close up shot of him wearing the television head prop, this gives some
insight towards my short film but it also leaves a sense of mystery relating to
my film that could spark an interest and cause audiences to want to watch it. I
have overlaid a colour bar over the picture with reduced opacity, this is
because I wanted to create a theme that fits into all three of the products and
the colour bars were a perfect fit as they worked as either a still image or as
a moving image.
The third and final aspect of my project this year at A2 was the film
article. Film articles are not only different for each film but they differ
vastly between magazines, you can have the same film being reviewed in two
different magazines and the articles could be completely different. This is why
it is hard to get a good grasp on what a professional article could look like.
Upon looking at six or seven articles I managed to gather a basic layout that I
liked and thought would work for my article. With boxes in place of pictures
and filler text in place of text I began to look at the way that the layout
worked and how it could be improved. I looked at a few more articles and saw
that they had an abundance of pictures so I implemented more pictures. I think
that the article is one aspect that requires you following the conventions of
the professional products in order to receive a good overall outcome. In
challenging the current products I would have merely received a final product
that isn’t worth of being put into any article because without enough pictures
the article becomes very boring to look at and then you will find most of the
readers would just skip your article anyway. With too many pictures your
article becomes nothing more than a gallery of images and then there becomes no
reason to put that in a magazine because it’d be nice to look at for a few
minutes but nothing more. I managed to find the perfect balance between text
and pictures and then I started to consider which pictures should be where and
how I should frame them. I chose pictures based on the pictures selected in
professional products in order to reach a professional feel overall. I chose body
shots for the larger pictures and close up for the smaller ones much like some
of the articles I found. I looked at a whole bunch of interview articles in
order to get a grip on how to actually write one, it took me a while to note
out all the questions I wanted to ask and answer and then took me even longer
to get in touch with my actor. I looked at the questions that other people have
asked in order to get a good understanding of how to write questions and what
questions to ask.
In conclusion, I feel that I have broken many conventions relating to
the short film genre in my short film as I have made sure to bring across a
message in my work. Other aspects of the project have benefitted from me
conforming to the typical forms and conventions of the media industry, mainly
the print-based tasks because I found that subverting made a lot of sense as it
allowed me to bring across my points and make the viewing process a lot easier.
