Pitch for 'AWAY'

In today's lesson we delivered a pitch for our short film concept. In this pitch we displayed the various ideas we would include in our film (synopsis), who we would target our film at, where we got this target audience information and the various ways we would distribute the film.

When we had finished our pitch, our audience gave critical feedback and responded to the questionnaire we presented to them, here is an example of that questionnaire:

Displayed here is the quantitative data we took from the questionnaire's:

Here is the powerpoint we used in our pitch:

Here is us delivering the pitch:

Slide one: 
Hello everybody we are clueless productions and we are here today to present our short film – ‘Away’. The meaning behind the team name was based around the idea that we were starting completely from scratch, we had no idea of where we were going with the project and we have progressed from being clueless, to what we hope is a very good film concept.

Slide two:

As our film is largely focused on suspense and anticipation, building up throughout the scenes, it was clear that ‘AWAY’ complied to the majority of the conventions of the thriller genre. However, as our film is largely focused around mental instability of our main character, it fits into the sub-genre ‘Psychological thriller’. Both ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ and ‘Maniac’ investigate the psychological unease of a character, however with ‘Maniac’ we see it directly from their perspective.

Slide three:

As we are amateurs to the film industry, we have decided that we want to distribute our short film by uploading it to an interactive, broadcasting site known as ‘Short of The Week’. Short of The Week allows all kind of film makers to upload their work for the general public to view, and at the end of the week one of these films is selected to be the short of the week.When we come to marketing our film, we are going to select the two ancillary tasks that we believe are most suited to our film. We will be producing the compulsory poster, which will be a great way to get the mystery around our concept across, nothing will be given away and it will all be left up to audience interpretation, just like our film. The radio trailer will also be useful, as we can portray the peaceful, harmonious bulk of the film through various conversations and music, then end with the baby crying and fire alarm going off, with the noise slowly fading, showing the sense of anticipation our entire film is based around.

Slide four:

From studying both demographics and psychographics we came to the conclusion that our main target audience would be Women of age 16-34, and people that like to experience and make new things. Demographics are a form of quantitative data that take into account age, gender, social class etc. From our research we found that women of 16-34 commonly have children, spending a lot of time watching childrens TV, like to wind down on a night and watch something enticing – which is nothing short of what our film ‘AWAY’ offers. Psychographics on the other hand are a form of qualitative data, that categorises people into 3 clear cut categories based on a VAL’S test. The type of audience we will market our film at are those of ‘Self Expression’, the bracket in which both experiences and makers fall under. It is people that like to make new things, experience new things and investigate or get an understanding of things they were not aware of before – I feel the psychological element of our film offers this to an audience.

Slide five:

In sub-urban England office worker Sarah, single mother of one, is living her average home life, when she is faced with a threatening situation. An anonymous colleague develops an uncontrollable obsession, following her every move. Sarah starts receiving cards, texts and various gifts that unbeknown to the viewer, become to first signs of stalking. Following a locket arriving at the house, containing a photograph of Sarah and her child, it becomes evident to her that she is in severe danger. As time progresses and the plot unfolds, we see Sarah and her child’s life put in jeopardy when the stalker makes regular visits to the family home. Appearing to the audience as merely part of the family, the stalker is actually watching his desired family through the house windows. Countless phone calls to the police prove unsuccessful, due to the lack of evidence tracing back to the stalker. Although the various texts and gifts appear to be the signs of a long distance relationship in play, in the closing scene we finally become aware that this is not any normal relationship. The scene reveals Sarah drugged an unconscious in bed, with her child crying hysterically, when the stalker is finally revealed, stood static at the end of the bed, watching the victim in a complete trance. I will now show you the animated story board me and my group created for our short film, which explains the various stages of the plot.

Slide eight:

Research showed that psychological thrillers tend to appeal more to women do to the fact that they tend to have an emotional or mental conflict (as opposed to a physical one) which appeals more to the female audience. Also because the victim tends to be female and women tend to be able to relate to the victim more than men.

Psychological Thrillers tend to appeal to an older audience as they typically contain some sort of mystery which may be confusing to younger audiences.They are also not suitable for very young audiences due to the fact that they may have scenes they will find disturbing.Therefore, we feel we have targeted the correct audience of 16-34 year old women.

Slide nine:

From watching other short films on ‘short of the week’ we have seen that other, successful short films with the genre of psychological thriller or similar genres often contain similar narrative themes to ours such as a lack of or very small amount of dialogue, a strong element of mystery and almost always a twist at the end.

Looking at similar short films also showed that psychological thriller is a fairly successful genre as they were very popular and highly rated, and had very strong and interesting plots.

We have chosen  to display our short film on ‘Short of the Week’, this seems to be a good choice as many short films gain popularity through this website, due to the fact that it highlights the most popular shorts on the sight and also because it is a site designed specifically for short films , so people viewing the site will be interested in watching short films.

Audience Research

Today me and my group created a simple questionnaire of some questions regarding short films, we handed out this questionnaire to our class as a form of audience research. From gathering our results, we have found that there was a general shared consensus on certain questions. We wanted to know that we were targeting our film at the right audience, from researching into demographics, we could infer that 16-34 year old women are our ideal market. As our class is made up of a range of 17-19 year old girls and boys we decided that our class would be an excellent representative to take our data from.

Although we initially hoped to create a radio trailer in oppose to a magazine review for one of our two ancillary tasks, 6 (two thirds) of our group would prefer a magazine review, as they understood that with thrillers they can often be difficult to understand. However, although we are not being ignorant and completely rejecting market research, we want our film to be completely ambiguous, if we created a double page spread magazine review, it would leave nothing up to audience interpretation, which was what we wanted our film to be based around.

One of the members of our target group, Emily, selected thriller as her favourite genre, and interestingly was one of the 3 in the group that wanted to see a radio trailer. We have taken Emily as the most secure guideline for some of the decision making that will take place, using audience research as a basis. Emily stated that she expected 'suspense' from a thriller, which we truly intend our film to offer. When we asked what type of characters would she like to see from a thriller film, she said 'A hidden character', which is nothing short of what our film offers. Everything is told from the stalkers perspective, he is hidden in the film for the most part, which adds to the conventional idea of suspense in a thriller.

Our audience research consolidated for us that we wanted to go ahead with our idea of a thriller as we believe it captures much of what an audience want to see. Here is some photographic evidence of the audience research we conducted:

'AWAY' Storyboard

Displayed below is a storyboard we 'Clueless Productions' created for our short film 'AWAY'. It contains an underlying tune, a audio voice over describing the various parts of the short film, and the pictures of how it would happen. This is all initial planning and various parts could change or develop in the process of producing the actual film.

 

Concept

This is a brief overview of the concept for our film 'AWAY'.

'AWAY' Mood Board

In today's task we were asked to create a mood board for our short film on PhotoShop, which should include the various aspects of film that we will consider when it comes to the actual production.

Here it is:

Short film planning - Time

Today we began looking at planning for our own short films. As our specification requires that we use 'Time' as a concept, we decided to brainstorm some ideas for how this could be included. To begin with we looked at films that include time as a concept, whether it be subtle, direct, shape the film entirely, or merely featured in one section of the film:

After we had brainstormed as many films we could think of that use time as a concept, we then went on to investigate how these films used time, as we listed the films we noticed the variety of different ways in which time can be used, giving us some insight into how we could include time into our short film.

In the initial planning of our own short film concept, we were thinking that possibly a flash forward/back or even a montage showing the difference in how things are at one time in the past to how they are now.

Film specification

The Brief:

Create a short film in it's entirety, lasting approximately five minutes, which may be live action or animated or a combination of both, together with two of the following options: A poster for the film and either a radio trailer or a film magazine review page featuring the film - 60 marks

 

Research & Planning Evidence:                                                                                                                                                 20 marks

Your blog must contain all evidence of research and planning conducted to produce the work.

 

Evaluation:                                                                                                                           20 marks

 

Using your blog you will produce an evaluation covering the following questions:

 

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

 

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

 

3.       What have you learned from your audience feedback?

 

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

 

 

Your instructions:

In groups of up to 4 people you must make a short film that is appropriate (and appeals successfully) to your chosen target audience. 

You have to decide who the audience will be (demographics) and how your film will be distributed and exhibited to that audience.

 

 

WHAT SHOULD THE FILM BE ABOUT?

§  Your film must have the theme of, or make reference to, TIME and also TECHNOLOGY.  It needs to feature a prop which is a box or a piece of jewellery.

§  You must make use of one or more narrative concepts to help to tell your story.

§  You must select a genre or hybrid for your film.  Follow Lacey’s schema of genre to ensure you follow some of the codes and conventions but you might also challenge some conventions to offer something new / refreshing to the audience.

 

 

GETTING STARTED

Brainstorm some ideas:  Creating a pot of creativity!!

§  List films that already use time as a concept

§  In what ways do they use time as a concept?

§  What technologies could you include?  (Think of some that may be relevant to your audience or to the narrative of your film).

§  How could the prop of a box or jewellery be used in your film?

§  What could happen in the film?  What is the conflict?

§  Who or what could the film be about?

§  When and where is your film set?

§  What genre is it?

§  How will mise-en-scene help to communicate meaning?

Write your answers on post it notes or present in poster form and photograph these.  You can then turn them into an animation and upload this onto your blog.

§  Think of an appropriate title for your film. 

§  Consider the rules of short film making and create your own list of rules for making a successful short film.

TECHNICAL INFORMATION:

§  You must use studio lighting for at least one scene.

§  Within your filming you must ensure you have used the following shots:

An extreme close up                      An extreme long shot                    A point of view shot (subjective  shot)

A mid shot                                          A low angle shot                              A high angle shot

§  You must use the following edits:

A cross cut                                          Shot reverse shot                            Matched cuts                   

A motivated cut

CREATING THE SOUNDTRACK / SCORE / MUSIC:

§  All sounds used must be copyright free. 

§  You can compose your own music / soundtracks / scores using the Garageband software.  This is very easy to do.

§  You can ask local / college bands to provide tracks. (Permission forms must be completed by the song writers / owners) or you can use copyright free music.

§  Remember, it is unlikely for films to have one song throughout the film, think of how to create an incidental score which heightens the mood of the actual film.

§  Also pay attention to other sounds – voice over, dialogue (must be clearly recorded and fully audible in the final mix), sound effects.

 

              Essential Planning and Research:

§  Who is your target audience and why?

§  What is the purpose of your film?

§  How could you get funding for this if it were a real product?

§  Where do you expect your film to be exhibited?

§  How will you distribute / market your film to target your specified audience?

§  Once you have selected a specific audience you must conduct audience research – questionnaires, online surveys, video focus groups to find out what they do / don’t like about short films.  Explore genre preferences, style preferences, where they access short films, what media they use most often, etc.

§  You must continue conducting audience research throughout the planning and production stages to ensure your audience like what you are producing.

 

Film Planning:

 

§  Write a synopsis for your film.

§  Split your film into scenes.

§  Produce a storyboard or step outline for your film.

§  Produce a locations list, props list, cast list.

§  Produce a filming schedule.

§  Conduct a recce check and complete risk assessment forms.

§  Complete permission forms of all actors in your film (to give consent to Internet exhibition.)

 

Before October half term you will be expected to present a pitch for your film idea. 

This will be filmed and can be added to your blog.  This will be treated as a professional pitch so you must dress suitably and prepare a presentation of some kind.  Think of The Apprentice or Dragon’s Den.

 

 

§  Filming will begin straight after October half term.

§  The filming needs to be completed by Christmas. 

§  Time will then be given to producing the ancillary tasks and completing the evaluation.

§  Attendance is monitored.  You will lose planning marks if you miss lessons.

§  All students must participate fully in the practical work.  You are being assessed at all times.

§  Aim to produce interesting, creative films.  Enjoy yourself and work professionally at all times.

 

 

Virgin Short Films - Critical Review

In today's lesson we were set a research task in preparation for creating our own short films. We began by watching a selection of five short films from 'Virgin Media Shorts' (VMS). VMS are the biggest short film competition in the UK. Taking place each year, VMS give the opportunity for undiscovered talents to show their abilities in the very competitive movie industry. The competition allows 13 lucky competitors to showcase their talent on VMS website, their YouTube channel but also the VMS app. The fist 12 films to be showcased are decided by the VMS panel, however as of 2011, the 13th 'lucky place' - taking a spin on the original unlucky number - is decided by the viewers through social networking sites like Twitter, Myspace, Facebook etc. The winners of this niche competition are given the opportunity to have their works viewed by top movie industry judges, featuring the likes of Shane Meadows, Mat Whitecross etc.

As VMS are a legitimately established company, we decided to base some of our research on their films, through our own critical review. The five films we viewed were, 'A Favour', 'Just say hi', 'Wrongly accused', 'The Tenant' and finally 'The Stain'. We watched each of these films in turn, whilst taking notes on things we liked and didn't like (including editing techniques, sound, cinematography, mise en scene and just general opinions and preferences). After taking notes and forming our opinions on the various short films, we picked the two we had the most praise or critique for, and discussed the reasons why we liked or disliked these films. We did this as a group activity, and recorded our reviews, shown in the video below. Our group chose to critically review 'A favour' and 'The Tenant'

 As well as recording our responses, I also composed two short reviews of my own on paper:

 1) 'A Favour' (Film maker: a_favour): I believe 'A Favour' worked particularly well as a short film. The original concept was something that could not have been created as a feature length film, which is one of the many reasons short films are created. Starting with the 'shark bite' technique enticed me as a viewer, going from low to high key lighting enhanced this intrigue massively. The strongest feature of 'A Favour' was definitely the ambiguous ending. Leaving the film up to audience interpretation is a great thing to apply to a short as it puts the audience in a position of power, which many viewers like. Also, with feature length films, ambiguity can be frustrating, as after dedicating hours to a film, often we want solid answers. However with a film that only spans over 3 minutes, ambiguity and cliff hangers can be an excellent aspect of the film. The cross cutting between the scenes when the bombing is being announced on the radio coinciding with the frantic reaction shots of the protagonist is a point of true climax in the short which I thought worked excellently. This climactic moment of real tension is suddenly cut when the film ends, giving the ending a unique and memorable spark. My only real criticism, or somewhat confusion with this film were the opening scenes, I and others around felt huge confusion as to what the beginning of this scene was about and what the blonde man (the implied villain)'s intentions were. However, this air of confusion could have merely been adding to the ambiguity of the film, which is what effectively gave this short film the edge over the others I watched.

 2) 'The Tenant' (Film maker: lubbdupp): Although 'The Tenant' clearly complied to many of the aspects of a short film, it had a generally advert-like vibe due to the morale of the film. (Kids are besotted with technology). However, in saying this, the luminous green lighting that was very stereotypical of a horror film, conveyed the idea that it was a parody quite well. The overly corny acting and lighting and amateur sound effects hinted strongly at how the film could conclude. The twist in the conclusion was arguably funny, if the young girl was appealing to an audience, which for me she wasn't. Her general attitude and the acting of the girl that was cast the part was quite weak which majorly hindered what humour could have arose. However, for those that were not studying this short film with the depth that we were, the girl revolting against the monster in the end could have came as quite a shock for some viewers and would have been humorous. The use of the mobile phone ultimately failed this short film for me. It clearly conveyed the idea that children of the digital age are largely concentrated on technology from such a young age and are not concerned with childish fears like a 'monster under the bed' anymore. This mocking theme is what gave the film the advert-like feel and it was lacked my enticement.

The information about the mission statement of VMS and the videos we reviewed were found on: Virgin Short Films