Notes Final Film

Notes Radio Trailer

Final poster

Here is our final poster containing segments from our personal designs and new segments that we liked more.

Evaluation question 1

Throughout the production the 180 degree line was stuck to closely as a breach in the line would distort the view of the viewer and ruin their immersion in the film. Here's an example of the 180 degree line being observed during a shot reverse shot conversation. 

A demo of the 180 degree line rule.

Shot-reverse-shot.

Due to the short nature of the film several montages like sequences, time lapses and fade to blacks were used to connote a passage of time. This helps keeps the viewers interest in our film as it cuts out boring and mundane sequences that would not be add any value to the film, entertain the viewer or further the plot line. 

Time lapse.

Jump cut sequence of Laura making a cup of tea. 

 Match on actions are a great way to progress through a film's setting. They allow for continous action with 2 shots that wouldn't otherwise be possible in a single shot, such as transferring rooms or a far shot and a close up. 

 Warm lighting was used in our film to connote happiness and love. 

The editing was done in Adobe Premiere Pro which is an industry standard piece of software. Being industry standard there was a wealth of information and tips and tricks on the internet that was utilised in our film. As the film was independently created the internet was a good free platform to learn how to use the software outside class hours. The software allowed for easy joining of clips together, separate editing of sound clips that was useful for both the film  and radio trailer and lots of pre-sets within the software that allowed for easy application of effects such as rolling credits and dip to blacks. 

Adobe has their own forum based on-line help, that's free of any cost, to help anyone struggling with the software or encountering errors within the software. At one point we lost the data to our radio trailer but a quick internet search, and useful feature with Premiere, we were able to track the file down which was saved in a automatic "autosave" folder within Adobe's program files on windows. This also made us enforce more care and caution when saving our project and made us make back ups more frequently. 

Our film fulfils the expectations of a domestic comedy film as it is set in a similar setting, a house, and features a relationship at the forefront of the plot. From the first establishing shot the setting is apparent. 

Opening shot from Edward Scissor Hands which is similar to ours.

The shot from Edward Scissor hands is said to come from the famous film "Citizen Kane".

As mentioned in our Pre-filming questionnaire our film fits loosely within Todorovs theory of narrative which is split into 5 stages. 

1. A state of equilibrium
2. A disruption of that order by an event "disequilibrium"
3. A recognition of that event. 
4. An attempt at restoration of that order. 
5. Return of a new equilibrium. 

As our film fits loosely within this criteria we have certain aspects omitted such as the original state of equilibrium as we begin the film mid argument as well as a return of a new equilibrium, although it is implied. 

The disruption of our equilibrium is Matt and Laura falling out and the recognition of the fallout is both of their retrospective phone calls to their friends in the film. An attempt at restoration of the equilibrium is Matt handing Laura a note telling her to wake him up but this forms our final joke. 


 A happy tone is used throughout the film which is reflective to the genre as it's a "comedy" film. The film doesn't conform to Douglas Pye's theory of genre which states "Films have to conform to audiences expectations of narrative." The film subverts this theory as a plot twist, as shown in our film with no visible resolution, which would be typical of a domestic comedy, is not common within the genre itself.


Our film was in part inspired by multiple short films found on Youtube and an full length film coming in 2016. Sticky notes are a good medium to experiment in for a short film as the they leave out dialogue which helps the audience interpret the meaning of each note. 

The genre of our film was a domestic comedy which is a sub-genre of comedy and is commonly found in sitcom situations such as "Modern family", "Friends" and "The Simpsons". The conventions of the sub-genre usually involve roles for each of the characters and revolve around a close family or friends environment. Our characters can be divided into easily distinguishable roles with Laura being the girlfriend and Matt the boyfriend as well ass Matt being the catalyst for problems and Laura being the restorer of order. Irony is popular in domestic comedy style films and we have it in our production where they say they are never speaking again but Matt is unable to be woken up due to the lack of speaking and the post it note left to wake him.  
The aim was to produce a modern and relate-able film to our target audience. To achieve the small humour part a small physical joke was used at the end of the film; throughout the film the tone is happy which is set by our music. The aim was to provide the audience with a sense of pleasure from giving them an insight into a fictional characters life. This can provide them with things they are missing in their lives as Richard Dyer's theory of entertainment theorised. 

Richard Dyer's theory of entertainment theorised that people will get a sense of pleasure seeing things they lack in their life and these are categorised into; energy, intensity, abundance, transparency and community. Our film fits well into the transparency and intensity elements included in the theory.

Here Laura's inner emotions can be seen through her gesture, this fits the "intensity" section of the theory because the emotions are so strong. 

Transparency is the development of a characters' emotions known by another character. Matt being unaware of Laura's feelings as he left the room but Paige (on the phone with Laura)  knowing them and as well as the audience helps develop their roles and emotions within the film. 

Laura on the phone

While Laura is on the phone the dialogue continues into the short montage like sequence of Matt packing the bag, this helped keep our film under the time constraint as well as furthering the plot line. 

Our film fits in with Steve Neale's theory of representation of gender within film. Matt fits on with many common sterotypes that are associated with people his age. He's going out with friends, his outfit and his persona. This makes Matt a relateable character that the audience will either feel like or possibly know someone similar. 

 The sticky notes act as a set up in the film as they are a slow method of talking to someone which enabled the final joke. I'm confident that the audience pleasure was achieved as our surveys conducted pre and post production were positive. After showing the film to peers they commented that the twist was "surprising" and "unexpected". 
  

Evaluation question 2

Here is my evaluation question 2 powerpoint.

E Valuation question 2 from WogeyBear

Evaluation question 3

After deciding our films storyline it was determined what certificate our film would be in regard to the BBFC's guidelines. The BBFC's guidelines for a 12A film follow as such:

 "Films classified 12A and video works classified 12 contain material that is not generally suitable for children aged under 12. No one younger than 12 may see a 12A film in a cinema unless accompanied by an adult. Adults planning to take a child under 12 to view a 12A film should consider whether the film is suitable for that child."

Furthermore, our film contains one instance of strong language (in the form of a gesture) and the official BBFC guidelines state:

 "The BBFC's Guidelines state that strong language (e.g. 'f***') may be passed at 12 or 12A, depending on the manner in which it is used, who is using the language, its frequency and any special contextual justification. Aggressive uses of strong language may result in a film or DVD being placed at the 15 category. There is some allowance for puns on strong language at this category.
There may be moderate language (e.g. uses of terms such as ‘bitch’ and ‘twat’) at 12 or 12A."

From this its possible to conclude that our film would pass at 12A quite easily due to the context of the film and the underlying themes, this means our audience will be 12 and above.

To get the meaning from certain shots we decided to either make the shots longer or use a closer zoom, here Laura can be fully seen by the audience ensuring clear conveyance of her gesture which shows her anger towards Matt.

This gesture's meaning would be apparent to our target audience as they are around 18/19 and this is a normal gesture meaning the gesture, and its intentions, would be clear in meaning.

In sections of our film warm lighting was used to connote the love and happiness brought by a relationship but this contradicted the current events in the film.

Depending on the gender of the viewer they are prone to taking sides with their retrospective sex represented in the film. One specific member of the audience said that they "related to Matt a little bit" but they also related to Laura as they "didn't know the cause of the original argument". This is good as the audience member being compelled to take sides and reason with the logic of the film would make them more engrossed into the plot and the film.

Older people than the people in our film, around 18/19, will possibly feel that the argument is pointless and perhaps look down upon the younger generation. This is also good because strong opinions regarding any characters in the film make for a more compelling watch for the audience.

Prefilming questionnaire.

 We asked members of our class a set of questions before we began filming to see what features they may like or dislike as well as their general interest into the film.

So at around 27 seconds we asked for feedback onto our films name "Notes", Darren said the name was ambiguous which meant it was intriguing to him and made him curious as to what the film contained. Ellis said the name was good as it game some insight into the films storyline which is good and Callum liked the simplicity of the 1 word title. So all positive feedback regarding our films name.

Next we asked if they understood the plot. Ellis commented that the film was "straightforward to follow" and "simple" and to follow on we asked whether they personally liked the plots content. Here Darren commented on the Todorov theory of narrative, where the equilibrium is disrupted and then returns back to normal and he commented that it was good that we "implemented that theory", Darren commented that it seemed "bland" in part which was contradicted by Callum saying it looked "good". Despite this Callum though that we could have done more with the plot, unfortunately this was not possible regarding our time constraints both to film and the length of the film.

Next we asked what genre they thought notes was, Darren commented saying it was a cross between a comedy and thriller, Ellis a comedy and drama cross and Callum said it would fit into the comedy genre but said it wasn't "that funny" until the "end bit".

When asked where they would expect to see our film we got mixed answers. Ellis said he would expect it in a cinema, Callum in his living and Darren in a film festival.

Rough cut feedback:

Our rough cut was screened in class to help our audience feedback and also help us produce the best film.


The majority of the audience said that the film was "simple" in its nature and had a "very clear story line", this is good as a confusing film isn't good for any viewer and a complex plot isn't associated with a domestic comedy film.

People commented on the music choices and said they were good for the genre and also the continuity of the film was very good. This is good to hear as the music was a difficult choice and lots of editing time was spent getting the best continuity. Also commended was the title sequence and title screen and people said the went well within the film and were executed well.

People mostly thought the film was 12A and over with one person saying they thought the film should be a 15. This was also good to hear as it reassured us we were within the guidelines for our certificate.

Good parts of our film according to the feedback: 

People thought that the music we used was particularly good as it fits in with the shots we had taken. 

A variety of shots were used. 

Good sequence of continuity throughout.

Post production questions

We asked a set of questions in post production screenings to a wide audience, the questions were as follows, the questions were asked after seeing the film.

• Did you enjoy the film? 

We got mostly positive feedback for this question with two people being on the side of not enjoying the film. Due to the limitations of the software we were unable to expand further on this questions so we do not know why they didn't enjoy it but based off of other submitted answers it could have been because the "plot was a bit boring" or needed more "jokes".

From these responses its possible to see that our certificate of 12A was appropriate as the majority of people watching the film agreed with this or under and said it could fit into a PG catogory.  It is good that people agree with this as they most likely won't know the exact BBFC guidelines and we determined that this was because of the swearing in the film.

• What element of the film did you enjoy?

An enjoyed element of our film was Laura sticking fingers up at Matt. This is good as this was risky as we could have not got our desired certificate for our film, limiting the target audience. The joke at the end was also a large success, this is also good as this is what made us categorise the film into domestic comedy as its an intended laugh. 

• What element of the film needs improvement?

• What age ranges do you think this film will appeal to the most?

One thing we struggled with throughout filming was getting the right shots on the notes. This shows how we did have a problem with it but only two people picked up on them which is a success. The lengthening of shots would have made us run over our time constraints and also made the film a bit boring with lots of slow reading, the zooms being too far is a fair criticism but we can only accommodate so many people before people with poor eyes are unable to see the writing but we zoomed as much as we could without it looking silly,

From this we can safely say that our film would appeal to our age certificate viewers and our target audience of 16+ year olds as that close to the age of the characters in the film.

What we would do better next time? 

We would improve the quality of the shots on the post it notes and conduct a survey asking whether or not people could see them clearly so we could make any changes faster and easier. We would also expand on the length of the film to clear up the ending a bit more and remove the cliffhanger and maybe add a montage of Matt getting ready and leaving the door. But overall technically I am happy with how the film turned out overall with the shots and the plot.

Evaluation question 4

Blogger

The research stage of our film used many new media technologies consisting mostly of internet sites such as Blogger, Youtube, the BBFC's website and many more independent websites hosting more alternative content.

Although Blogger is a free platform owned by technology giant Google it does have some flaws. It handles images very poorly when inserted into a post and work is only accessible with an internet connection so sometimes it wasn't possible to check the blog and complete any tasks. 


The internet is vast so being specific in my searches was a must or I could easily be given wrong results that would be in no way related or helpful to our film.  The internet was a great tool for comparing shots in films and also looking for good examples of shots within films, a great example of parrallel editing I found in a clip of the Godfather on YouTube. 



A similar approach to The Godfather but ours has dialogue bridged between all the separate shots which aids continuity and the immersion of our film. The non-digetic sound of Laura talking while out of shot and Matt packing the bag allows the audience to see story develop with Matt going away and Laura's troubles.This also made it easier to stay within the films short time constraint as the bag packing and phone calls are crucial to the plot and a montage or time lapse of these shots would lose key information to the storyline. 

Not only did I research specific shots I also researched what makes a successful movie poster and radio trailer through the use of websites such as Web designer depot.


 

This gave me some insight of things to include on my poster and the groups final poster. 

YouTube was a great resource for finding radio trailers for all genres of films, such as vintage horror Squirm, and more modern box office hits such as Star Wars.

To gather feedback from our potential audience we used Google Docs and its features that allow surveys to be carried out and data automatically graphed and displayed so its easier to digest.The surveys were handed out by email and social media sites such as Facebook, this made it easier for people to access them and easy for us to gather feedback as these platforms are free.
 

Our planning stage used many technologies such as Celtx, online storyboards, Microsoft Word and social media sites such as Facebook to communicate, Facebook offers a group chat function that allows us all to talk simultaneously which is far superior to options such as email. 

The storyboard used was based online, it was really simple to sign up for and was a free service. This helped us create our scenes in a less restrictive space compared to a shotlist which is text only.

The shotlist software was Microsoft word and its table feature that allowed for easy organisation of clear information. But a problem with Word is sometimes that it becomes unresponsive and often crashes; meaning regular saves and backups were needed to prevent data loss.



Construction
Our construction stage used many new technologies, mainly software such as Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Pro

, which are industry standard programs and greatly helped us craft a professional product. Photoshop was our main image editor that we made our final and individual film posters in, 
although the learning curve for Photoshop is steep it is a great program and has limitless possibilities to create pixel based graphics. Photoshop operates with layers allowing for the building of shapes and objects, this is a really simple mechanic that made making our splash screen and final poster much simpler as we could edit each layer accordingly. We also made our title splash screen in Photoshop which was also used in the main promotional poster for our film. It's easy to experiment within Photoshop as individual layer's visibility can be toggled on and off with small "eye" next to the layer. This means it's not a complete reimplementation of an effect on a new layer as its possible it can be toggled of to compare two possible effects on separate layers. 

Photoshop's layers allowing for easy organisation.

Although Photoshop has layers it is good practice to name them as the work is developed as if not it can get very confusing. Although I, the designer of the poster, know what each layer corresponds to another member of my group may not and would be very difficult for them to figure out which layer is which and make any adjustments to the poster if needed in short notice and I wasn't around. But this can all be avoided with simply naming layers. It is up to the document creator to keep on top of the layers so its easier for colleagues to take over the project if need be. See the before and after of the naming of layers.

before naming and organising

After naming and organising

Focus pull

Premiere Pro is standard in the film production industry, again it is a software with a steeper learning curve for the more advanced features but this makes more things possible. Using the industry standard software allows development of skills that would carry over to different projects, upon evaluation of the film again it would be in our interest to better utilise some of Premiere's features such as colour correction and slow-motion. One disadvantage to this software is its complexity, the software took a lot of learning and understanding to use, this would have been prevented if it wasnt as complicated.

The camera was a Canon Legria HFG25 which is a professional level camera, this helped us achieve a rich spectrum of colour compared to an amateur camera and also allowed the use of advanced techniques such as a focus pull in our title sequence. Tripods were used throughout the film and aided to keep the camera steady which is a good feature as shaky hand-filmed footage would be distracting to the viewer and ruin their immersion in the film.


A 75GB hard drive was dedicated to our films on each pc we used. This allowed us to easily store multiple versions of our film locally as well as leaving ample room for all the shots as they, in their uncompressed format, were very large files.

In my evaluation stages I used different word processors and slideshow software such as  Powerpoint and Blogger. These were useful as they allow me to incorporate many different types of media into my evaluations. But Blogger has some problems handling such media as it can disrupt text formatting and the pictures can sometimes dissapear from the blog post, the formatting on text is also frustrating to use as the formatting sometimes applies itself to unrelated text or the formatting carries on when new text is started. Powerpoint was good as it was possible to embed them into blog posts using a website called SlideShare which is free to use and make an account and upload a Powerpoint. They also have handy features such as spellcheck to ensure all words are being spelt correctly and titles and subheadings which allows for easy organisation of information making it easier to digest for the reader. 

Radio trailer plan

In order to make my radio trailer go as well as it possible could I wanted to organise the features to be included so that it was easier to get the radio trailer finished. 

The first thing I was looking for was music to play in the background of my radio trailer. In order ot get suitable music I went to free music websites to see what music I could find which would be suitable to play in the radio trailer. I found a website called free music archive which would give me tracks of multiple genres which I could use. There was a genre of instrumental music which would be the best to use as it would take nothing away from the dialogue or sound effects used in the trailer. 

 First radio trailer music -

Above is a piece of music which I thought would be suitable to be played in the background of my title sequence. I think that this would be suitable as it has no voices in which would then not take away the sound effects or dialogue within the trailer. I also thought that the tone of the music reflected the arguing in the movie as it was a dark piece of music. 

Dialogue- When adding dialogue into the radio trailer I wanted to take spoken language from the film which could be used so that the radio trailer could be linked to the film when the audience come to watch it. The following line is something which could be included

"I'm not talking to you until you apologise"

Sound effects- When the radio trailer comes to an end I thought the sound of post it notes flicking could be included to fade out the radio trailer. By having the radio trailer with this effect in it could relate to the film as well as giving it an ending in which would look professional as well as suitable.

Rough cut of film feedback

Once we had finished a rough cut of our film we sat down in our class and showed a screening of our film to get feedback which would help us to make our film better below are the results which we got.

• Did you understand the film? 

Everyone who gave feedback said the film was 'simple' to understand with a very 'clear story line'. 

• What technical qualities were good in the film? 

People thought that the music we used was particularly good as it fits in with the shots we had taken. 

A variety of shots were used. 

Good sequence of continuity. 

• Which parts of the film did you enjoy? 

The title sequence was good and fitted the film (this was given back multiple times).

The title was also commented on as being a good quality as it reflects on the notes with the colours. 

People also liked the comedic ending which was given at the end of the film. 

• How do you think we could improve? 

When the conversation between Matt and Laura is taking place keep the notes on for longer so they can be read more thoroughly (said multiple times). 

• Who do you think the film is aimed at?

For this question there were a range of answers the most common one being 12/12A. 

other people said everyone and 15.

rought cut of film

Radio trailer script

Click here

Location Photos

LAURA'S sofa

Location Photos

These are the locations we used throughout our short film. Here is the living room, used consistently through the film. As MATT and LAURA are not talking to each other they sit on different sofas. This connotes the distance between them in the relationship.

MATT'S sofa

Living room

Bed

Here is the bed where MATT is seen waking up on the morning of the lads holiday. He is seen checking his phone and russhing to get ready as he is late.

Desk

            Desk used in Title sequence.

Landing

Landing used for lightswitch sceen.

Banister

  
     Banister used for the post-it notes in the title sequence.

Stairs

Stairs used as MATT walks up to back his bag and go to bed.

Wardrobe

Wardrobe used when MATT removes his bag and packs it with clothes ready     for his lads weekend away.

Kitchen

This is the kithen used when LAURA makes a cup of tea  after storming away from MATT after there argument. 

Work top

Our posters and final choice

Here are our groups final poster designs. We decided to use the same tagline in the radio trailer to increase continuity across our film.

Title screen

 Title screen

For our title screen we decided use an image digitally created in Photoshop. We kept it simple and used the same colours as our post it notes present within our film and posters to increase continuity across our film. We will use this image in our title sequence and it will be part of a wipe on the fridge.