Using visual examples of where your coursework does from Sophiewagstaff11

Analysing my film in regards to post-moderism

After looking into post moderism, I feel like I have learnt a lot on how this has effected my short film. I have come across that myself and my partner are unaware of some of the conventions that we have followed without realising.
This suggests that we have been brought up in a world that seems to concentrate on media texts and we can antipate what will happen in films before seeing the event. Following on from this, I can suggest what could happen in a media text, once knowing what type of genre it could be. For example, within a thriller there is likely to be fighting, kidnapping, fear or creepy scenes and the same for a romcon there is likely to be a relationship there is most likely bound to be split up for whatever reason and then will eventually get back together.
I haven't watched a huge amount of films, but I have noticed that some conventions have been copied but changed in different ways; this is post modern as the content of the film isn't orignal, its has been copied and this strongly links to polysemy, which relates to the death of the author. 
On top of this we had a discussion with Mr Swain, our media teacher, and as he picked up on some of the conventions through our film, that could of followed typical conventions in horror genre films and thrillers. For example, the victim in our film being a young girl, being killed by an older male, on top of this the colour of the killers Mac, we was unaware that other films could of done this. In our ancillary task for the film poster, we was unaware that the same similar picture was used in the film of nosferatu, as the main character was walking up the stairs, the same shot we did in ur film as well. Our film was also said to follow conventions from 'Along came a spider', 'Kiss the girls', 'The collector' and 'Silence of the Lambs', however we havent watched these films so we see our ideas and thoughts as our own.

FINAL FILM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GXNdAWDxC0

Voice Over Suggestions and Ideas

Before putting the voice over on our short film, we came up with a selection of ideas that could be used to heighten a dramatical affect so the audience can feel connected with the character and begin to feel sympathy for Lilly.
We started to gather ideas (top ones) from looking at the Lovely Bones, which also includes this affect, to allows us to brainstorm similar ideas as we became very connected with this when we both watched the film ourselves, meaning that we were certain we wanted to use this. As I have watched the Lovely Bones on a number of occasions, I feel confident to perform the voice over as I play the part of Lilly Lenson and picture the voice over effect we want to achieve these feelings from the audience.

Problems we faced with the leave scene

From the beginning of planning our short film, we had it fixed in our heads that we wanted a fresh, green leave floating down in the sky to begin the film. At the end of the film, we then wanted to have a dead leave that had lost it's colour and becomes crispy. I really liked this idea as it represented the girl, Lilly, as a young child that had a lifetime of exploring the world, whilst floating through the sky, then suddenly ends by being murder representing the leave being crispy and abandoned.
However we had a lot of trouble with trying to complete this as it will take a lot of time to complete and might not actually turn out the way we picture it, which will obviously end up being a waste of time on just a fraction of our film. We found it really hard to build up a floating leave as the wind would just blow it straight down and editing it through the iMac was just unsuccessful for our expectations of the idea. Me and zoe have both decided to leave it aside for now and if we have some spare time, when our film is complete then we will try complete this as it will give a proper ending to the film, as we are still struggling to conclude the film now we can't do this idea.

Practice Clips

During class, we practiced doing some possible scenes, shot and ideas for our short film.

The Last Scene

We have decided to shoot the last scene in a cupboard at school as it can be changed to be dark and scary. We feel that if we create the right atmosphere that it will be successful in what we want to achieve. Obviously we are going to need to take the things off the shelves and the back of the door however we could just cover them with big sheets of paper in order to save time. Because this is in the school premises, it will not take long to record and we will have everything planned out ready. Sophie recorded this clip sitting down in a chair and as you can see, Mr Swains head gets cut out. To overcome this problem, I will be filming it behind Sophie so we still get a point of view shot howerver it will display everything that we need it to.
Another change that we would have to test is whether to have the classroom light on or off when filimg. When Mr Swain walks through the door you can see a lot of light from the classroom, which contradicts the feel and mood of the film. If we turned the light off, then it might make the scene more spooky and eery.
As well as this, we are thinking to have a shot of Sophie, tied and chained up sitting in the cupboard so the audience know what is happening to her and it just gives the story plot more context. Other thoughts we had was for Sophie to have masking tape across her mouth so when shes screaming and crying, it will be muffled and sound more paniced. We are uncertain as to whether there should be any dialogue in this scene as we want to limit speech as much as possible and focus more on voiceovers.
I will be filming this from the enterance of the door and maybe in a high angle position so Sophie still looks vulerable and inferior to whats happening.

Sky and Leaf

As mentioned in the treatment, we are looking to open the film with a fresh, green leaf falling for the sky, but slow motion edit it so it looks like it is floating/drifting down to represent a life; to help represent the happiness of a life we want the sky to be clear, blue and sunny - however as Autumn is coming, this may be hard to achieve so we filmed the sky incase there isn't another nice day. To close the story we want to contradict this idea however has a similar style. We want a dead, brown, crispy leaf to float from the sky as it connotes death and misery and we are planning to get the sky quite dark, gloomy and miserable to reinforce the idea of death. 

As it was too windy to film the leave falling from the sky, we practiced doing it inside and then was planning to edit out the ceiling, hands etc on final cut pro on the Apple Macs. This didn't really go to plan as the leaf fell to the ground too fast and we couldn't capture the direction of it traveling the way we wanted it to. 

We have had a few ideas on how to overcome this (fishing wire) however we are yet to put it into practice. 

Slow Motion Leaf

Just to get an idea of a leaf falling in slow motion, we edited this clip in Imovie, however it is not suitable for short film as it has yet to be edited on final cut pro and the view of the leaf falling is not to the best standard in which it should be in.

Editing Schedule

We have both devised a editing schedule to plan out when and what we are going to editing at a cetain day and time. This is important for us to do, as it will help us break down the load we have to edit and will give us an idea on how long it will take. As we have already started filming a scene which is centred in the middle of our film, we thought this would be a better to get this part done and start editing on it as it was filmed in a different location and becuase we didnt want to leave all of our editing to the end and concentrate on just filming. This benefitted us as we could combine filming and editing together, which would enable us to get it all done quicker.



We made a deadline to finish filming on the 5th novemeber and we stuck to this, however we left extra time just in case if we wanted to add anything extra or change anything that we didn't really like. When it comes to editing our clips, we have decided to break up particular scenes which we thought would be beneficial as we can concentrate of them and then put everything together when we have all the filming finished. This meant that we would have to plan out when the clips were going to be editted and order each scene for that date and time as well; this is shown below.

Obviously, the bigger the scene the more its going to take to edit (most of the time anyway), so we wanted to make sure that we scheduled enough time for big scenes and the small scenes as well, so we wasnt rushing it or focusing too much on one particular scene.

Graveyard- 5 hours worth of editing. (Tuesday, Thursday & Friday week1)
The first scene that we was going to edit was the 'graveyard' scene, as this was the first part of filming we did. This would need a lot of editting as it was that part of the film where we need t build up a lot of moods and a huge amount of anticipation. So we gave 5 hours to this part.

The cupboard- 2/3 hours worth of editing (Tuesday and possibly Thursday week 2)
Th second part of filming was centred in the school, however we need to do a lot of prepartion to the location beforehand as there is lots of items and products in there that we either want to move or cover. This meant that we would need to get this part done and edited in less than two days as time is running out! But we gave it 2/3 hours to get it done by as it is a scene were lots of cuts need to be included.

The school- 2/3 hours worth of editing (Friday week 2)
The last bit of filming was sent in the school, so we hope it would be finished sooner than filming in a different location. However, as editing does take some time we did give 2/3 hours worth of editing to this particular scene.

The falling leave- 1 hour (Friday week 2)
This is a scene we are hoping to include if we have the time to film it, make it work to the way we want it to look and then edited it as well. However, doing practices clips of this was extrely hard to get the effect we wanted so we are basing this scene on how much time we have at the end of filming and editing; this is mainly because its an extra and isnt actually needed in the film.

My Story Board

Scene- Opening the film and introducing the characters at the school.

Scene 2- Entering the graveyard.

Recce Photoshoot

To get an idea of the type of location we wanted to base our film in, we decided it would be beneficial to visit the location before we started filming to ensure that it was what we wanted and if it would create the vital mood that we was certain we had to include.

 

Recce powerpoint