Evaluation-Frances

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real products?

• camerawork
• sound
• mise en scene
• editing/post production
• use of genre conventions
• narrative organisation and the short film format
• characterisation
• themes and issues

Camerawork:

CU shot of the character from 'Guilty'

Over the shoulder LS of male character in 'Guilty'

The camera work normally seen in short films are usually lots of close ups, long shots and two shots. Depending on what the genre of the short film is, hand held camera are also a popular type of camera work to see. In the short film 'Guilty'  it features many POV shots and the technique of an hand held camera is also used regularly. These techniques are used as this is a thriller therefore, these types of camera work fit nicely in with the typical conventions of a thriller film. Lots of  MS and ECU are used in the short film 'Guilty' which really helps the audience in understanding and also feeling the characters emotions as they feel them. It also makes it clear what emotions the viewer is intended to feel. Different camera angles can communicate different meanings to the audience whether it is power, meaning or empathy. In the short film 'Guilty' the meanings behind the may high angle camera shots suggest that the protagonist is being watched by someone or something therefore this creates an enigmatic code as the audience want to know who he's being watched by.

ECU of Claire holding bay scan

Claire and Wesley holding baby scan

Our short film 'Delusion' uses lots of different camera angles and movements to create a variety of meanings and ideas throughout the film. When Claire and Wesley are shown standing outside the hospital through a low angle camera shot, it is unclear to the viewer that they are outside a hospital as the way the camera is positioned, it doesn't give away much background information however the next shot we see is an close up of the couple holding a baby scan photo and it is then made apparent that they have just picked up their baby scan and are now standing outside the hospital. The close up camera shot indicates the importance of the baby scan and how it is a significant prop in our story.

Claire and Wesley standing in their unborn babies nursery

A medium shot of the couple standing in the baby's nursery shows Wesley with his hand on Claire's baby bump and although you can see their lips moving and it is clear to the audience that they are having a conversation, we can not see or hear what they are saying. From the way that they are looking at each other and the fact that they are standing in their unborn baby's nursery suggests that they are talking about the excitement of the arrival of their baby. The importance of the medium shot is that you can see the location that their in. In the short film 'Birthday' there's is a scene of an elderly woman lying on her bed, from a medium shot you can see that she is her bedroom.

LS of female character in 'Birthday'

The final scene in 'Delusion' is a high angle shot of Claire lying on the floor as she has overdosed and died. The position she is laying in shows she has just fallen on the floor as her legs and arms are sprawled out from her. The short film 'Birthday' ends with an elderly woman over dosing and dying which is where we got the inspiration for our camera angles from. The end scene of ' Birthday' the elderly woman is shown                                                                                      lying dead on her bed with a high angle shot.

CU of female character dead in 'Birthday'

Sound:

Sound is a key element in a short film as it creates a mood that it wants the audience to feel and allows them to experience the emotions that characters in the film are feeling too. The use of diegetic and non-diegetic varies between the genre of the short film and dialogue is noticeably tended to be kept to a minimum. For the opening scene of the flashback we wanted the start of 'Anything can happen-Ellie Goulding" however due to Copyright reasons we couldn't find a version of this that we could use so we had to change our opening song. Instead we used parallel sound at the start of  our film which was a happy upbeat song played on the piano which fitted in well with what was happening at this moment in our film, this part was the flashback scenes before the couple had their baby therefore it's intentions were to make audience feel their happiness and excited emotions as they watched. We also used parallel music at the end of our film to fit with the sad, dark atmosphere when Claire over doses. We used the song "Youth- Daugther" which has a sad feel to it therefore it fits nicely with what's happening in the film at this moment in time and it makes the audience feel empathy towards Claire.

LS of Claire watching tv with 'Theo'

The short film 'Birthday' also uses parallel non diegetic music when the elderly woman has overdosed. It has the same effect as 'Delusion' when Claire dies as it allows the audience to feel empathy towards the elderly woman and her husband.

Birthday | Short film from smider on Vimeo.

We had some problems with the continuity of the diegetic sounds in some parts of our film where in some shots we had the tv on and in some we didn't. To solve this problem we used the background sound of a video from 'Peppa Pig' to put in the back ground so there wasn't random silent parts. By playing the 'Peppa pig' video in the background this solved our problem.
Mise en scene:

The eleven elements of mise on scene are:

• Lighting
• Colour
• Body language
• Facial expression
• Costume
• Hair
• Make-up
• Props
• Decor
• Setting  
• Composition

Lighting

Set up of filming and lighting in graveyard

As lighting is such an important element in a film we wanted to make sure we had he right levels of lighting in the right places in our short film. We knew we wanted to edit the scene in the nursery to make have high key levels of lighting and a high brightness as we wanted this part to be apparent that it was a flashback. We used the lights on its strongest setting and shone them on Claire ans Wesley as we filmed so the brightness of the scene was increased. In the scene where Claire and Wesley are standing in the graveyard we used the lights to create a dark, depressing atmosphere but the way we used the lights was to make it clear that Claire and Wesley were the main part in this scene therefore we wanted the lighting to put all attention on them.

Facial Expression

Facial expression is also another key element for a short film. As shown by various extreme close ups and medium shots throughout our film it allows the audience to empathise with the characters so they understand what they're truly feeling. Most of the close ups of facial expressions are of Claire as it shows the stages of her different emotions.

LS of Claire

 In the scene where Claire is watching tv and Wesley says he's going up stairs and to call him when dinners ready you can tell by Claire's face that she is annoyed a bit hurt by Wesley's reaction and this suggests that Claire is confused as to why he reacted in this manner.








Colour
As our short film was about the sensitive subject of losing a baby and the genre was drama we tried to make sure that the colours of the props and clothing wasn't too bright as we didn't want to suggest that the film had a happy theme. The colours the character of Claire wore throughout consisted of dark blues and greys and the colours the character of Wesley wore consisted of whites and blacks. Theo wears colours such as white and in the final scene he is wearing stripes. This is to make a statement and to clarify that he is a key element in our film and to make him stand out. In one of the final scenes where Wesley takes Claire to see their baby boy's grave, Wesley's costume consists of dark colours which helps set the mood for sadness and complements the dark atmosphere.

Body Language

Body language is a huge part of any film as it can help demonstrate how a character is feeling. The scene where Wesley is walking home from work, he stands tall with his shoulders back which suggests that he may have an important job and may feel inferior. In the first present day scene we see Claire watching TV with baby Theo. The way she is sitting suggests that she may be on edge or she may just be a naturally timid person, she sits on the sofa with her legs and arms crossed as if she is protecting herself.

LS of Claire and Theo watching TV

Costume

The costumes in 'Delusion' had to be chosen carefully as we needed to make sure that the types and styles of clothing Wesley and Claire wore fit with their age range and the situation they were in. The scene where Wesley is walking home from work he is wearing black trousers, white shirt and a tie which implies to the viewer that he may work in an office or have an important job he is coming home from. Claire's costume's were more significant as we had to make sure that what she was wearing fit in with what she was doing.









Hair

Considering the characters Wesley and Theo have hardly any hair, their hair styles weren't changed throughout our whole film. However when Claire starts going through her breakdown her hair and the effort put into making it look nice significantly decreases. In the end scene Claire's hair is greasy and isn't brush which compliments the fact that she is having a breakdown as it suggests that she hasn't been taking care of her appearance and isn't bothered by what she looks like.

MS of Claire showing her natural makeup

Makeup

Claire's makeup throughout the film is natural and subtle as we wanted it to be clear from the start that she is a considerably young mother who would rather spend time with her son than doing her makeup. The scene where Claire is about to overdose her makeup is smudged down her face to make it obvious she had been crying. We done this by wetting a tissue and dragging her mascara down from her eyes to go with the effect that she is going through a breakdown.                                      

CU of Claire's hair

                                                  Props

We used numerous props in our short film. The first prop we used was a photograph which we filmed from behind to make it look like Claire and Wesley were holding their baby scan. This was a significant prop as this was the first scene therefore we needed to make it apparent to the audience that the couple were expecting a baby. Another prop we used in 'Delusion' was the milk bottle which caused an uproar from Wesley resulting in him storming out the room.

                                                                             Décor

CU of Claire just before she overdoses and dies

  When setting up our scenes before we filmed we had to make sure we didn't have any irrelevant props in any of our shots. For example many times we had to move cushions or picture frames from the shots as these would have made no sense in our film and caused confusion for our audience. We tried to make our settings look as homely as possible by placing blankets and baby related items in our shots.

                                                                                                                                  Setting

Here is the sign at the entrance to the graveyard

This is the sign outside the hospital

We needed to use a few different settings in our film to help create the effect of our flashback and to show the different days. The settings that we used included, a house, outside a baby shop, the entrance of a hospital, outside the house and a graveyard.

Composition

Before filming our film we had to make sure that everything we wanted to be in the camera frame was exactly where we wanted it to be. We had to take our time on arranging cushions and in one of our shorts we felt like the coffee table was looking bare so we placed a candle just at the bottom of one of our shots. We felt like this helped make the setting appear more homely and was more convincing for the audience that a young couple did actually live here.

Editing and post production

 Flashbacks

In our film 'Delusion' we used jump cuts and flashbacks. This challenged the typical conventions for short films as usually you wouldn't find these techniques in a short film. The flashbacks were used to show Claire and Wesley's happiness whilst Claire is pregnant with their baby. We used the song 'Anything could happen' by Ellie Goulding and edited brighter to make it obvious to the audience that this was a flashback. Another short film that uses a flashback is the film 'I miss you' . This uses flashbacks to show the male characters reliving memories with his girlfriend.

Jump Cuts

We used jump cuts to create a dramatic edge in the scene where Claire is breaking down. We did this to make the audience feel sympathy towards her as from the camera shots you can really see the fear from Claire's facial expression.

Use of genre conventions

The genre of our film is social realism as it includes real life situation which was phantom pregnancy as this could happen to anyone. Our film also has an element of drama therefore it is a hybrid, a hybrid is a mix of genres.

 2.How effective is the combination of your main products and your ancillary tasks?

Here is our initial draft of our poster

The picture we used for our poster was of a baby's mobile above its cot. I feel that the shadow in the picture gives it an eery feel and suggests that our short film may have something supernatural or thrilling about it. We purposely didn't include any more of the cot than we needed to because we didn't want to give away if the baby is a boy or a girl as we wanted to create some uncertainty for the audience. We didn't include any characters on our poster as we wanted to create enigma for the audience as it would keep them guessing about what and who the film may be about. As we are a low budget film company we weren't able to create a trailer for 'Delusion' therefore our poster was a huge marketing appeal for us as this would be one of the main advertising roles. It took a lot of thought in what to have as our main picture for our poster. Our first idea was that we wanted half of the image missing to make it look like the image was there as well as not there. We took pictures of Theo and used photo shop to edit it to fade half of him.

Due to lots of research on short film poster I noticed that the title had to be the biggest and most striking font of the whole poster otherwise it wouldn't stand out. For example on the film poster for 'Cargo' the font is the first thing that catches the audience's eye as the title is written in big black font which is laid on a yellow background, making it easier to see. Underneath the title 'Cargo' there is a tag line, " The most precious of all". I felt like this tag line created an idea in the audience's head of what the film may be about however didn't give too much of the story, making us want to go and watch it. Tag lines are a key marketing strategy for any company as it increases the want of the audience to go and watch their film. When making our poster we realised through research that we wanted a tag line as this allowed the audience to guess what the film may be about. We wanted a tag line that wouldn't give away too much however gave the idea that someone in our film would be grieving. The tag line we eventually decided on was 'When grief distorts the truth.'

The review

The review has a completely different target audience to our poster in the sense that is found in the magazine 'Little White Lies'. Depending whether a film gets a good or bad rating all depends on the magazine editors opinion. A good review is an important factor when wanting to get good audience feedback on a film as your film is more likely to sell. The sophisticated lay out for a Little White Lies review is aimed at a middle and upper class demographic and the design is fairly challenging as it doesn't look like an ordinary film magazine.

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Our intended audience for 'Delusion' were both males and females, aged 25-35. We chose this audience as I feel like the audience may be able to relate to the story a bit more as the characters Claire and Wesley fit into this age range. We used the point of views from both male (Wesley) and female (Claire) and we showed how they may both deal with a situation like this differently.

For our audience we asked a variety of different people a mix of questions and asked them to answer them honestly. We done this by emailing them the link to the video then they answered the questions on facebook messenger.
The questions we asked were:



Joe Allen

Charlotte Newnham





Alex Kendall-Tobias




















Due to having different opinions from our audience feedback I feel that if we were to make 'Delusion' again then we would maybe have more scenes with Theo in to make it more clear that Claire could see him and Wesley couldn't. There was only one scene where Claire could see him and Wesley couldn't however due to the camera shot, it wasn't emphasized that Theo was suddenly gone and I think this was a big mistake we made. I like the fact that each person who answered our questions said that they empathized with the young couple as this was one of our main intentions when making 'Delusion.

4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction, and research, planning and evaluation stages?