Split Screen

Being an avid fan of the 24 series i have seen a varity of shots to help further the greatness of a film. Throughout the 24 series they use many split screens, to show the story in many creative ways also fastening up the lengths of the sequence and shots.



After seeing this effect work many times on 24 i wanted to see if it works for our idea. The idea we have is to show our characters getting ready together in seperate bedrooms in seperate houses, we wanted to use this split screen to show their simularies and make the audience wonder and think as to why we putting the empathsis on them. This is a technique we hope and want to use within our film.

Lottery Themes

We had many ideas as a group as to what style of short film we wanted to create. After reasearching into Charlie Chaplin and silents films we settled on a theme of 'The Lottery'. Which then lead us to the short film called 'The Lottery'.

"The Lottery" is a short story by Shirley Jackson, first published on June 26, 1948, issue of The New Yorker. Written the same month it was published, it is ranked today as "one of the most famous short stories in the history of American literature".
The response to this story was mildly negative this suprised Jackson and the New Yorker, many of these responses lead to readers cancelling subscriptions to the newspaper.

The plot of the story contrasts details of contemporary small town American life with an annual ritual known as "the lottery". In a small village of about 300 residents, the locals are in a strange and nervous mood on 27 June. Children gather up stones as the adult townsfolk assemble for their annual event, that in the local tradition has been practiced to ensure a good harvest. In the first round of the lottery, the head of each family draws a small slip of paper; Bill Hutchinson gets the one slip with a black spot, meaning that his family has been chosen. In the next round, each Hutchinson family member draws a slip, and Bill's wife Tessie—who had arrived late—gets the marked slip. In keeping with tradition, which has been abandoned in at least some other neighboring communities, Tessie is then stoned to death by everyone present as a sacrifice, while Tessie bemoans the unfairness of the lottery.

This lead to the 2007 film 'The Lottery' this was a slight adaption to the origanal, keeping the main theme and story around the film however. This created a newer fresher look for the film, helping us see the difference and transformations between both the eras, looking for inpiration to help our film idea come along.

Filmmaking Techniques

Charlie Chaplin never spoke opening about his filmmaking techniques claiming this would be tantamount to a magician spoiling his own illusion. Chaplin never shot from a fully finished script until he began making spoken dialogue films with The Great Dictator in 1940. This made his filming and filmmaking unique, creating his own style and humour on the set, or during the post production phase. Chaplin's unique filmmaking techniques became known only after his death, when his rare surviving outtakes and cut sequences were carefully examined in the 1983 British documentary Unknown Chaplin.



Chaplin was an incredibly exacting director, showing his actors exactly how he wanted them to perform and shooting scores of takes until he had the shot he wanted. This is one reason why Chaplin took so much longer to complete his films than his rivals did, however this setback of taking longer to make the film became the BIGGEST advantage Chaplin had over his rivals. With his over exgaggerated directing helping the actors act more fluently and to the best of their ablities, shown in his amazing short and silent comedy films.

Modern Times

Another one of Charlie Chaplin's all time greats was Modern Times



This silent film uses music and its fast editing pace to create the humour and comedy throughtout the film. If listening to the music without watching the video you will create in your imagination that the film will be a fast edited pace. Then watching this film with the music you will see how it compliements the film perfectly, when the workers are working in the factory and one of the actors jumpers into the machine just as the music gets higher and faster.. This is then followed by a trademark Chaplin style of the title cards saying 'Is he crazy?' Then going through the machine fully to come out the other side, through all the clogs and grinds the music changes to a simlaur theme to fairytale music.



This is one of the films most famous scenes, where everyone recongises the film


The film just like 'City Lights' had a high review on IMDB with 8.5 out of 10 rating!
With the box office fiqures looking like this

Budget:
$1,500,000 (estimated)
Gross:
$163,245 (USA) (24 October 2004)

City Lights

One of Charlie Chaplin's most famous film is 'City Lights'..






In “City Lights,” the Little Tramp falls in love with a blind flower salesgirl who believes him to be a rich man. Desperate to maintain the illusion, he attempts to obtain enough money to pay for an expensive operation that can restore her eyesight. Its ending is often considered to be the greatest in film history. He successfully affords the operation fees for his love, and the end is show as them exchanging words (through the black and white title cards) With the woman falling in love with the main male character.

City Lights recieved a vote of 8.6 out of 10 on IMDB.

Box Office
Budget:
$1,500,000 (estimated)
Gross:
$19,181 (USA) as of 6 July 2007

Charlie Chaplin

For our A2 task we needed to create a silent film after being given our briefing. The idea of a silent film is to have a film without any scripted dialoge. Many people assocaite silent films with the muted handed guestures and the black and white title cards. However this is not only the case.

With us deciding to move down the comedy silent film track we needed to research into specialist comedy silent film directors, such as Charlie Chaplin!



Charlie Chaplin was an English comic actor and film director of the silent film era. He became one of the best-known film stars in the world before the end of the First World War. His most famous role was that of The Tramp, which he first played in the Keystone comedy Kid Auto Races at Venice in 1914. Chaplin was one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era. He was influenced by his predecessor, the French silent movie comedian Max Linder, to who he dedicated one of his films to. His working life in entertainment spanned over 75 making him one of the all time greats in the film industry.

Charlie Chaplin has recieved 3 Academy Awards in his lifetime: one for Best Original Score, and two Honorary Awards.
City Lights and Modern Times, considered by several polls to be two of the greatest of all motion pictures..

Film Poster 2

Film Poster 1

I included a few elements into my film poster which relates to the theme of the film.
I made the background baby pink, this resembles to the colour of a lottery ticket in real life. It shows both of the characters 'bowling' down the road, with the lottery ticket below them, this shows what they are aiming for. For the added comedy element i added the maze behind the characters, just to add for comedic effect.

Film Review

Film Review

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Due Date

Due Date has two separate posters to advertise the film around the world. Both are very similar in the meanings they try to convey, but both are very different visually on the eye of the consumers. Both Posters have the characters in the scene, being the main focus however they are both in separate locations, the first poster being on an airplane with the second setting being down a deserted road in the middle of nowhere. They genre of the film is comedy, the designers of the posters have tried to get the comedy aspect into the posters. For example in the first poster the main character portrayed by ‘Zach Galifianakis’ is lifting half of his shirt up, into the other main characters face played by ‘Robert Downey Jr’. Similarly in the second poster the characters are looking scruffy, and the main character in the white shirt has got his right arm in a sling, along with the dog wearing the neck brace. This shows the characters getting battered and bruised alone what should be a normal routine journey.

Both of the posters are focusing on the two characters and their actions. Together they take up two thirds of the frame

Characters – Both posters have to two main characters on them, both taking up most of the frame, empathises is on them (They are the main focus)
Settings – There are two different settings in the two posters. First one is in the cabin of a plane, and the second one is down a deserted country lane. Both suggesting to the audience that the film has some form of travelling involved heavily in the film.
Colour – There are two sets of colour themes going through the posters. The first one has the colour of the plane, the white at the top of the lockers and the mixture of colours at the bottom, of the seats and characters. The whit e is pure and calm, while the wildness of the contrasting colours at the bottom. The white at the top of the poster goes well with the black writing used. Likewise with the white writing on the colours at the bottom, it makes the two stands out to the audience, the poster is empathising the focus on the writing.
The second poster has the blue and white of the sky, alone with the blackly grey colour at the bottom of the road, separated by the brown and green of the woodlands areas.
Fonts – The fonts are very clear, and easy on the eye of the audience, aesthetically pleasing. The title has the biggest font, it is the main focus of the poster, therefore having it bigger and in bold makes it stand out more to the audience, its one of the first things they see.
Quotes “2236 miles to go” and “781 miles to go” – both of these quotes on the separate posters again like with the settings suggest to the audience travelling towards their destinations.
Other graphics – The hills in the background of the second poster. They have been added to add to the setting and to the scene, adding the element that the characters are in the middle of a deserted place. (In the middle of nowhere)
Layout/Composition – In both of the posters the two characters are the main focus, together they both take up two thirds of the frame. Likewise in the 2nd poster the characters each take up 1 third each. (The dog 1, both the characters in their own separate one)
Tagline – The tagline of the film is “Leave your comfort zone” - …

Film Poster 2 - 1st Draft

Here is my second advertising film poster.
Here I mainly based this around the second key theme within our film 'Friendship'.
I chose the shot near the end of the film where one of our characters is lurking behind the other, after a fight scene.
From this photo they can tell there is tension between the characters, through their facial expressions and body lanauage.
I also added the tagline of the photo saying 'How much would you risk to win the lottery?...' Answering this with 'Friendship' along with the photo from this text the audience can tell that their has been a end in the friendship between the two characters, and left them wondering will they regain this..

Film Poster 1 - 1st Draft

Here is my first draft of the film poster.
On this poster I added the main theme of 'the lottery' shown by the lottery ticket. I used many shots from the film, this was so it gave the audience and inside viewing into the films shots and characters. I also added the shot of where our two main characters are dreaming with the thought bubble, and the flash car. This was to show their links between the title and the main theme. How the characters would use the money from the winnings. I also added our films tagline 'You have to be in it.. To win it..' basically saying how you have to have a ticket, in order for you to win the lottery...

Cinematographers

Cinematographers:

Charles Rosher:

- Two-time Academy Award-winning cinematographer
- He was the first cinematographer to receive an Academy Award
- Born in London
- He was one of the founders of the American Society of Cinematographers and served as the group’s first Vice-President
- In the 1920s he was one of the most sought-after cinematographers in Hollywood
- In addition, Rosher also received two Eastman Medals (named for George Eastman), Photoplay magazine’s Gold Medal, and the only fellowship ever awarded by the Society of Motion Picture Engineers

Notable films: Sunrise (1927), The Affairs of Cellini (1934), Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936), The Yearling (1946), Annie Get Your Gun (1950), Show Boat (1951)

James Wong Howe:

- Had over 130 films to his credit, spanning from the silent era to colour
- During the 1930s and 1940s he was considered one of the most sought after cinematographers in Hollywood
- He was nominated for ten Academy Awards for cinematography, winning twice
- As well as being one of the first cinematographers to use deep focus photography, Howe pioneered techniques to augment eyes on B&W film, early dolly techniques, handheld camera techniques and shooting by unusual light sources, such as by candlelight on The Molly Maguires

Notable films: The Thin Man (1934), Algiers (1938), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), The Rose Tattoo (1955), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), The Old Man and the Sea (1958), Hud (1963), Funny Lady (1975)

Short Film Research

Short Film Research:

Sub-categories:
Animated short (hand-drawn or CGI)
Documentary short subject
Experimental or abstract short films
Live action short
Musical short
Soundies
Sponsored
Travelogue

- North America refer to them being 20-40 minutes long
- Europe, Latin America and Australasia to be much shorter
- In New Zealand the duration is referred to as longer than one minute and shorter than 15 minutes
- Often focus on difficult topics
- Distributed on internet

Before going out and making our short film i needed to start my own research into the film concept having never made one before. I found out that many short films are independent, and normally distibuted online through media channels such as 'Youtube'.

Gurinder Chadha

This director is most famous for ‘Bride and Prejudice’ (2004), ‘Bend it Like Beckham’ (2002) and the latest ‘Wonderful Afterlife’ (2010). She has always used her own personal experiences of being British and Asian to theme her films. This is her recognised style, and has always stayed the same throughout her career. She was a journalist when she made ‘I’m British But…’ (1989). This was a documentary about several Asian and British people around the British Isles. During this documentary, numerous shots faded from a black and white version onto a colour version, showing the transition between the current eras to ‘back in the day’.

Chadha's documentary uses the rise of Bhangra music - a vibrant fusion of traditional Punjabi dance music with contemporary Western dance styles from Hip Hop. She uses this to investigate the extent to which Asian forms have both absorbed and influenced Western culture and the way this reflects a newer generation of Asian-British young people who now recently reject stereotypes.

This recent documentary uses interviewees, a group of people from Glasgow, Belfast, London and South Wales respectively, 4 out of 5 of these people were all born in the UK, they are relaxed about their identities. They feel as the UK as their home, but equally certain of their wish to retain a link to their Asian origins, even if their parents' homelands feel remote and unfamiliar.

This is a very personal style of media, with Gurinder being from the British/Asian community, she herself had a strong meaning and reason behind this film, which did come across very positive, of how there are new identities to suit new circumstances.

Amelie: Best 3 Shots

1) I personally feel this is the best shot throughout the whole film. Because of its amazing colour contrast, and the fantastic low angle. The whole of the shot is in black and white except for the shop below the apartments. This automatically draws the audiences eye to the main focus of the picture. This shot was used in an establishing shot, showing the audience where Amelie lives. Likewise the angle of the shot intriqued me, this was taken at a low angle, vertially on the floor. Showing the cafe and flats seem to be taller than useual. This helps them stand out more and brings them to the attention of the audience.



2) Again, this shot is one of my favourites too. It is when Amelie is in the cinema. The colours fantastically mix in together. The blue/gray colour reflecting onto everyones face from the film, and the red along the seats. This gives off a sense of realism to the audience because they can easily identify that her location is in the cinema. The colours are also used very well to set the tone and mood of the scene. At first glance it seems quite sinester to people who have not watched the film.



3) This scene in the film is one of my favourites of all the films i have watched in my life. The picture symmetrical, and very green. It is a low angle shot from the stream showing Amelie stone skipping, with the splash from the water also in the shot.
The director has clearly made Amelie stand out from the background in this picture, by making her wear a red dress, this costume makes her stand out from the background, allowing the audience to realise she is the main centre of attention. Nothing else.

From watching at Amelie and looking at several of the shots the director used it has given me fantastic ideas to take onto my A2 Production. From a variety of new shots, to how the simplest thing as the colour of someones costume can create a whole new meaning.

Character Profile

Character Profile

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Here is a copy of our character profile. Here we have given the names of the characters, their ages, jobs and a short bio about them. In this character profile we have represented our characters as young, lazy, chav guys. Shown by their lack of ambition on the careers, likewise their outfits. Their hoodies, and caps are key iconography the audience stereotypically links to the chavy representation.
Vitally the cap 'Frank' is wearing being a 'Burberry' logo being a key icon which the public and audience instantly recongise as a 'Chavy' item of clothing.

Treatment

Here is the newest copy of our treatment, however this was when we had two male characters as the lead. These have changed now to two female characters 'Stacie and Frankie'. We decided on changing these characters because of one main reason being the lack of male students we were allowed to film, because not many male students are in the media studies department. For this reason we had to change this to two female students. After changing these two characters we realised how this would help us 'Challenge' the normal codes and conventions of a typical comedy genre. We thought this would be a disadvantage, but it turned out to be an advantage. Hoping to get a positve feedback from our target audience.

Photo Storyboard

Our photo Storyboard is just a real life photo version of our storyboard.
Again it will be used for our director to interact with our cast.
This made our commuication between all of the members on set very well.
It was also a still version of how we wanted our film to look, this made it easier for our director to show our cast how he wanted them to act.

Storyboard

Above is the storyboard for all of our film.
This was the drawing version, this is what we will always refer back to when we film, showing the angles we want to film at, and the positions we want our cast to stand.. etc..
This was a usful tool for our director to have, so he could refer to and from the storyboard when talking to the actors.

Pitch

The pitch

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Above is our pitch. We presented this to our fellow classmates. This was so they could have an idea as to what our story is about, and what we want to achieve from making this film.
Showing this to our classmates will allow us to gain vital feedback from the classmates on how we could improve our idea or film.
Throughout our pitch we involved the audience by making them play the lottery game, this got them active and made them smile and feel more enthesistic about our film.

Shooting Schedule

Shooting schedule

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Here is the shooting schedule created by Josh our director. Here was his plan that he wanted us to follow. This was so that on the day we had clear structure to follow. This again would improve our time management, and also enabled us to plan on when we needed the cast. This was so that they can plan their lives and other subjects around acting for us.

Props List

Media Props List

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We created our props list to hand to all of a team members. This was so we all knew what to bring on production day, and we arranged what person was bringing what.
This improved our time management skills, because it saved us from rushing around last minute deciding on what we needed to bring!

Location Reece

Media Location Reece

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Having a location reece sheet allows us to plan all of our locations we wanted to film at, likewise we would look at downsides of the locations, and all the risk assessments of these locations. This will help us choosing our final locations on which ones hold the less risks.

Contract

Media Contract Sheet

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With making the contract we wanted to bring to everyones attention all of the rules and regulations of our team. Also wanted for all of the group members to apply and sign the contract, this would signal their commitment to the group. I believe this would help us work better as a team, and make our bonds stronger together. It would also give us a platform in getting rid of a member of the team who does not follow the rules.

Audition Sheet

Media Audition Sheet

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Above is a copy of our Audtion Sheet, each member of our group created a version. Here is mine.
I wanted to make my sheet stand out, and catch everyones eyes as they walk past. This is why i made the writing red and bold, it was very bright when hanging on the walls and doors.
I believe this gave us higher number of people turn up to the auditions, because they noticed our sheet.
Likewise we added a bit of comical aspect into the poster, with the 'We need you' picture. Everyone who came to our audition noticed this and pointed it out to us, they said it was a very good touch.

Evaluation Question 4

Q4:

How did you use new technologies in the research, construction and planning stages?

We had access to new technologies throughout every stage of the production process. With the Cannon cameras, and the Adobe Premier Pro. We were lucky to have these technologies available to us, this allowed to conduct research to help construct our film together. Then ultimately market it in a presentable manner. The internet was the biggest technology we came across, this allows you to instantly search anywhere in the world, for ANYTHING! This was vital in our pre research about the different comedy genres, we used the internet for everything in our pre production, as well as different editing transitions and phases we could use in the post production. We used ‘Youtube’ in our research for short films, and editing, searching at Charlie Chaplin and his style.
Instead of having to read through books or magazines, I used ‘Google’ for researching famous short film makers, or short films, I found the information I was looking for straight away, and even other pieces of information which was also relevant. Search engines like Google have meant we can research saving time and money. We also got some of our soundtracks from the internet from ‘London Grid’, this gave me thousands of free songs to choose from. This saved me a lot of time, and hassle.
Our blogs were another example of technology we used during our production process. We have been using the blogs since the beginning of year 12. We were given different dealines throughout the production process. Our blogs were how we kept up with these, understanding and doing our work on here. Our blogs are there to show our development over time, in each of our different phases. It helped us stay organised with the work, keeping them in all the same place.
Again, like with year 12, we used to same filming equipment. It took a while to get use to all of these different sections again, however once it came to filming day we were very confident in controlling and creating our filming.
Our equipment was light and very easy to set up and move around our sets, having such good equipment to work with made our film even easier to work, it allowed us to move the camera around freely due to its lightweight frame, and also finding new angles were very easy because of this.
The software we used for editing was very professional, we used Adobe Premier Pro this helped our film come along leaps and bounds during the post production. Using this software allowed use to incorporate several transitions and fades into our film. Like in our opening sequence we spited our screen, this was to show she similarities and differences between our two characters. We also speeded up our sequence during the Scooby Doo scene, this was to make the characters look like their were going faster. We used the Lacie Drive while editing. The Lacie Drive is a portable hard drive which allowed you to store our film onto it. With this being potatble we were not restricted to one computer, so if someone was editing on the same computer this would cause problems, however due to this new technology this was never the case. Overall, the new technology we used, was the difference in the quality of our films compared to previous projects.

Evaluation Question 3

Q3:

What have you learnt for your audience feedback?

No matter what film you are making, weather it’s an independent film to a blockbuster audience feedback is a massive part of the filmmaking. The feed back we gain is used on the film to improve where it was needed, in order to create the better film, and consequently earn a better grade. We used our audience feedback in the Pre and Post production process of our films, this helped us gain a wider knowledge from the public, and fellow media students.
The first piece of feedback we received was from out pitch. We presented our pitch to our fellow classmates, the aims of our pitch was to get our story idea across, and what we wanted to do throughout the production process. In our pitch we wanted to be creative, to show our intent through our film, we also wanted to engage our audience. Because pitching to people who are disinterested and bored with the pitch and the idea would be a waste of our time, and theirs. Thinking of clever creative ways to include our classmates into our pitch was to have them take part in a ‘fake’ lottery game, we would give them each a lottery ticket with numbers already filled out with them, and playing a video on our pitch, the winner of the lottery won some sweets. This was a quick and fun way to start our pitch, engaging our audience quickly having their attention, and also involving them in the KEY theme of our film. So the lottery game was not irrelevant and off topic of the pitch. Likewise Josh from our group also studies Drama Studies, and was telling us about his lesson the week before, where their teacher got them to do role plays of certain characters from famous films and TV shows. This gave our group the idea of having our characters do role plays of our characters. This again made our audience laugh and relax while watching our pitch.
After our pitch was finished we had a question and answer section, this is where our fellow media students could point out the points they felt we missed, or what they never understood. We most common question we got asked was ‘What was the meaning behind our idea?’ or ‘What the main idea was?’. This showed us that next time we pitched we needed to make sure our idea and narrative was clearly broadcasted through our pitch so our audience understood. The positive feedback was how they all enjoyed getting involved and playing the lottery game, most of all the winner, and how they liked the role plays it made them feel as though they were witnessing the film idea 3D and in real life, this gave them an idea of what we wanted our characters to come across, this was a good thing to add to the pitch instead of reading and boring our audience with the character profiles.
As well as the role plays our audience suggested having a hot seat section with them being able to ask them questions, because their was many of things they wanted to know, but couldn’t ask. This was vital feedback from the audience, because after hearing this view we instantly felt it was a good idea that could work, and only improve our production. We included this into our 2nd pitch to the audience, they asked them questions about their lives, like asking where they worked, weather they went to school, background information which could give them an insight into the film. The hot seating was very comical, linking in with our genre, the characters were being rude, and lippy to the audience, making them laugh and join in joking around with them, this was making everyone in the room laugh, which is always our main aim in creating a comedy. It also allowed the audience to ‘guess’ what our genre was, this is important because it showed we met our aims and objectives of the pitch of them knowing the story, characters and the genre. These are the three main points of pitching to the audience for feedback.
We also used our fellow students for the feedback during the editing process. Throughout the editing process we showed them our film at different parts, this benefited us because they brought to our attention shots that never worked, and also shots that worked well. This was useful because we had not distributed the film and was still in the process of editing. Showing them our cowboy and chase (Scooby Doo) scenes, we wanted this music to be a variety, having 3 or 4 musical soundtracks changing throughout the film, brought our many themes in the film. Adding to the comical aspect of the film, with the changing of the songs, each adding their own background reason and comical to the film.

Evaluation Question 2

Q2:

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

We followed the normal procedure for any film production process going into the blockbuster market. By following this we created several different posters and a film review. The posters would be the first media text the public would see promoting our film; they would be on local billboards, and on the side of buses. This would allow the public to notice a film, the majority of the audience would see a bus every day, and the likelihood of that bus having the film poster on would be very high. Likewise if the public target audience did not see the actual film poster, someone they know would have seen it, and therefore spoken about it to them, this is the second way the public would hear about the film, ‘word of mouth’.

The aims of the posters are to create awareness for our short film. The film review would then follow, giving the audience the inside review on the film, persuading them with ratings and brief explanations on the film. We had to create three posters; we wanted the posters to show out film in a very unique way, we did this by adding the genre into our film posters. So that the target audience can instantly know what our genre is. In order to create our film posters, we had to analyse several real life film posters from the same genre. I came across ‘Due Date’. The film shared our genre, and its am was to make the target audience laugh, which indeed it did for me. They genre of the film is comedy; like ours, the designers of the posters have tried to get the comedy aspect into the posters. The comedy aspects have defiantly came across in their poster when the main character portrayed by ‘Zach Galifianakis’ is lifting half of his shirt up, into the other main characters face played by ‘Robert Downey Jr’. The poster has managed to make the audience laugh before the film is even released, this makes the target audience eagerly await the arrival of the film. When creating my film posters I felt it was important to keep the normal codes and conventions of a comedy genre, because we changed many of the codes and conventions throughout the film, and I felt to many changes would disrupt the film together, like the famous saying ‘if its not broke, don’t fix it’. Likewise I wanted to use images from the film so the shots used on the film posters would look real and not fake like many film posters in the industry at this time. It would also give the audience an insight into some of the scenes that will be in our film. We felt the link between the film and the posters was vital. There has to be the links there so that the audience can relate to the poster, and inevitably relate to the film. We had to create 3 posters, as a team we decided on creating one with both of the characters in, with the main theme being about the lottery ticket, then with the other two basing them on the characters individually, showing how the film is about them, and how we based the film around their personalities. The posters would contain the humours shots we used during the film, making our target audience in the public to see the main scenes and shots in our film. After the film posters we would need to create the film review, for independent films makers like ourselves its hard to get review by a top critique. A film review could be the final persuasion for the target audience to come and watch our film. Because of this we were creating the review ourselves, therefore it would be a positive review, not wanting to lose customers before the film being aired. We creativity made the review, making it aesthetically pleasing for our audience, stringing them to come see the film. We did this film review for empire magazine, meaning we could market our film to a wider audience than was expected, which would cause our film to gain more views than expected.
Both of these two marketing techniques helped promote our media film to a wider audience than expected, because of this it was a success, receiving over 80 views on ‘Youtube’ the highest in the class.

Evaluation Question 1

Q1
In what ways does your media product USE, DEVELOP or CHALLENGE forms and conventions of real media products?
Our chosen genre was comedy, challenging and developing the codes and conventions for our genre vital for us to succeed in the making of our media product. We knew this would be hard, as the genre of comedy was very tricky to go for, however with the planning and research we did we were confident in succeeding. In choosing comedy as our genre, we had to choose which style of comedy to choose – weather this was aiming at younger children or adults with the two audiences having different perceptions on their range of comedy. For example, children would find funny pranks and silly characters funny; however adults being more mature tend to find actual jokes their humour.
Eventually after some intense research we decided on the age ranges of 12-21 year olds. We chose these as our target audience because we found creating our own unique mature jokes for a short film. With our target audience decided we carried out research into similar genres in order to gain an understanding into the comedy aspects used.
At first our film idea stemmed from a four character storyline, however given our restraints of the film being silent and the maximum characters allowed being two we had to change this] idea. Instead of scrapping the idea altogether we came up with our main characters being a comedy duo, with the whole film being around them and their relationship.
Most of our inspiration came from ourselves and the films we had seen before, we did not want to copy something that had been done before, and we wanted to be original. The main thing we all notice was that most if not all of the comic duos around were all males. For example, ‘Del-boy and Rodney from Only Fools and Horses’, ‘The Chuckle Brothers’ and ‘Cannon and Ball’. This would be the first idea we would explore to Challenge the codes and conventions of the comedy duo. Changing the main characters to women was a challenging experience however a very exciting opportunity. This was a gamble as comedy is normally associated with ‘male’ comics. We felt that because we would be making our short film with female actresses we would attract more people to watch our film, for the uniqueness. We watched ‘The Hangover’ and again us all as a group noticed that the film contained a ‘leader’ and ‘follower’, where one of the characters would be the main character with a second person closely following.

Again with our film being silent, we had to create our own style of comedy without using dialogue. The ideal person to focus this on was ‘Charlie Chaplin’ himself. Charlie Chaplin is known worldwide for his silent comedy, and he did this using soundtracks and editing. The soundtrack would almost always contain the piano playing, using this against the quick fast paced editing complemented the musical soundtrack brilliantly. After looking through many ‘Charlie Chaplin’ films, we decided that our film would work well if the soundtracks we picked complimented it well.
At the start we picked at 4 different soundtracks which we believed could go with our film, after careful consideration we cut this list down to one, being a drumming beat. This worked with our film better, the quickness of the music would help fasten the film up. With us keeping the same range and style of music we used the current codes and conventions of a comedy films around. We never wanted to shake up and change to many aspects of our film, this would take all of the codes and conventions away, and would make our film tacky and it wouldn’t work.




Again we looked at ‘Charlie Chaplin’ for his fast paced editing, aiming to do this to add another form of comedy into our film. Likewise how he makes the audience laugh without the use of diologe, this would be vital and important for us because we knew we had to make a silent short film. However we focused mainly on Scooby Doo. Where they fastened up the movie when the characters where running down corridors and through rooms.
We developed this code and convention in our seen of our characters running through the different doors. We sped this scene up to show the characters running for longer, and also to show how much our characters are willing to go through to be the holder of the ticket, we used the fastening up of our film to add another aspect of comedy to our film, and it worked.

Overall, I feel we used many of the codes and conventions of a current comedy blockbuster, for it to be classed as a comedy. However with the changing of some of the conventions we made our film something new and current. We kept the audience laughing, even by breaking some of the codes and conventions, and of course the MAIN aim of a ‘comedy’ film is to make the audience laugh. We succeeded in this when showing it to our family members and friends. They might not have expected our film at first, however comes the end of the film I’m sure the film was well received and most importantly gave our audience a laugh and a chuckle.

Editing Log

Above is our Editing Log from our post production process of our film. This allowed us to see who came and edited, at what time, and what they did to our film. This helped kept us organised within the editing phase. Allowing us to edit freely in our free periods, without having to waste time finding out what the other team members edited.