#14 Studying Mise-en-scene - Six Shot Analysis

After choosing to use the Horror genre for my film idea, and after looking at and analysing in depth the film still from 'About A Girl', I felt it would be beneficial to analyse more shots from a film similar to the film I intend to make, so that I could gain knowledge about the mise-en-scene specific to the Horror genre, rather than just from 'About A Girl' which is a different genre to what I am using. I would like to create a film about two girls that are lost in the woods, and follow them around, which is similar to the film 'The Blair Witch Project', so I chose to analyse six shots from this film. This helped me greatly and I now have a clearer idea on how to make my film, in terms of setting and props. My analysed shots from The Blair Witch Project are below.

Media six shot film analysis

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#13 Studying Mise-en-scene - 'About a Girl' Shot Analysis

After looking at the overall representation in 'About A Girl', I was then asked to look at the mise-en-scene of the film, to see the effects of this on the overall film. I was asked to take any film still from the film and place it in a word document and analyse it in depth. I was looking at how the whole scene has been constructed in order to tell the story. This helped me as when I am filming for my short film which I will understand the importance of what is included and what isn't included in the scene.

Below is my analysed film still from 'About A Girl'.

About a girl shot analysis

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#12 Representation in 'About A Girl'

After completing both essays, we were asked to watch a short film on YouTube called 'About a Girl', the story is about a young teen girl, who has had a baby and not told her mum about it, although we don't learn this until the end, when it is too late as the baby has died. The film tells the story of the girl's struggle, not only with the issue of the baby but with her struggle with identit, represented through class and age in the short film.

This task benefited me because it allowed me to understand how particular groups are represented in short films, and how I could represent my characters correctly. Below are my notes on the representation within the short film and also an extract from the film.

Clip from About A Girl:


Notes on Representation:

Representation in ' About a Girl'

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#11 Treatment Feedback

Completing my treatment for my short horror film was the first chance for me to hear feedback from others. I photocopied my treatment which can be seen in the posts below, and distributed to several members in my media class, and to friends. I avoided handing it to my close friends as I wanted the opinions to be as truthful and as honest as possible, regardless of how harsh it may sound as I want to be able to improve my intial idea to its full potential.

From handing out this treatment, I have found that my idea has a lot of potential, as it is something that hasn't been seen before. The story needs some correcting as it doesn't always follow correctly, for example, when the cloaked figure is in the kitchen, nobody could understand where he came from. One person suggested having the girl in the cloak in the kitchen instead of this unknown person as it would make the story follow more. Another suggestion was that using one girl would make the story seem more scary, but I feel that two characters will strengthen the plot. This feedback helped me alot.

#10 Actor/Actress Photographs

UPDATED.

Originally I intended to use my friend Bonny Mae for my film, and used Bonny as the character in my storyboard. I felt that I would like to try using different actress' to see if it changed the way the film looked, so I used two friends, Alex Barnes and Chloe Van Sanden. The filming with these two went well but I still felt that the characters were different from my friends Chloe and Alex. In the end I used two different friends, Michelle Stanton and Charlotte Bird, who I felt suited the role perfectly. Below are photographs of my chosen actress' taken from FaceBook as I have yet to meet up with them and begin the shooting process.

Michelle Stanton:

Charlotte Bird:

#9 Audience Profile

To help me with planning I have decided to create a profile for my target audience, including specific detail which will help me adapt my product to fit this audience. My audience would me largely of a teenage audience from the ages of around 15-20. Although some may be older than this, very few are likely to be younger, as the film is likely to have an age rating of 15. The audience is more likely to be male than female, with around 2/3 of the audience being male and only 1/3 being female. The audience are also most likely all to be fans of the horror genre, and watch horror films regularly. In terms of social class my audience are most likely to be social classes B,C1,C2 and D. The film is most likely to be watched by couples and groups of friends, as opposed to families. Developing this audience profile has helped me as I now understand who I am making my film for.

#8 Treatment for 'The Red Cloak'

The detailed plan that I created was a big step forward in terms of developing my idea, however, it was nowhere near enough to prepare my idea ready for filming, I still had a long way to go. I created a treatment for my horror film idea which I intent to develop. This will enable me to present 'The Red Cloak' to my potential audience in order to obtain feedback, which will help me in developing my further. It will also allow me to change any ideas that may not work. My treatment for my short film which I have named 'The Red Cloak' is below.

Treatment for

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#7 Media Genre Essay 'The Insane'

From benefiting greatly from looking at use of media language in the Smashed essay. I then was asked to look more at the importance of these signifiers (signs, codes and conventions) on the genre of the film. The genre is largely determined by these signifiers, so I feel it was important for me to investigate these as my film would need to include genre specific signifiers.

I was given the essay title 'Discuss the short film 'The Insane' in relation to the key concepts of Media Language and Genre'. I learned many key signifiers of the shown genre. This essay allowed me to think more about what genre of film I would like to make, which is horror. Below is my essay, which I achieved a high C grade for, I have also embedded the short film 'The Insane' and my notes used to write this essay.

Notes:

Essay:

Media Genre Essay - The Insane

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The Insane Video:

#6 Ideas Development

This was the first stage of planning for my film that I am working on. I decided to come up with a few ideas, to get a feel for planning a story, and then I would pick one to develop into my film. I came up with three films, a comedy, a horror and a romance, although this is one of my least favourite genres, I didn't want to cut any options out this early on. I then gave a brief description of what would happen in each film, which can be seen in the mind map below.

From this planning stage I have decided to use my horror film idea for my actual film as I feel it is a genre that I would most enjoy creating a film in. I then began to develop my idea into a thicker plot, which I will use to help me start planning roles, scripts and setting for my film. Below is a scan of my developed idea plan.

These are images that I feel influenced me in my idea:

I want my film to be set in a woodland area similar to this one, as I feel it helps relate to the red cloak, through the link made by the child's tale Red Riding Hood.

I want to use a red cloak similar to the one above, as the colour really stands out and has many connotations.

My idea mainly came from putting a twist of horror on a innocent child's tale, like Red Riding Hood.

#5 Media Language Essay 'Smashed'

In class we also watched a short film called 'Smashed', and were then given the essay question 'Analyse the short film 'Smashed' applying technical terms'. This involved us analysing all most every detail of the film, which I found out to be very beneficial as although very short this film was full of different signs, codes and conventions used to construct the story.

Below is my essay on the title that we were given, which I achieved a B grade for, which I am very pleased with. I have also attached my notes on the film, which I used to structure my essay, and embedded the short film 'Smashed' into the post.

Essay:

Media Language Essay - Smashed

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Notes:

Smashed short film:

#4 Class Notes on LOVEFIELD

Lovefield is a short film, which we watched in class. It shows the importance of signs, codes and conventions in a short film as the whole story is changed mid-film, leaving the audience shocked as they were convinced that they knew what was happening in the film. The genre is largely affected by these signs, so for me to correctly fit my film into a genre, I will need to conduct further research into the signs, codes and conventions of the specific genre.

Below are my brief notes on signs in the film Lovefield, and also an embedded clip of the short film Lovefield, which was distributed via YouTube.

Notes:

Lovefield by Mathieu Ratthe:

#3 Studying Short Films

The concept of short films was an area that I had little knowledge in, I had seen a few short films before when played on the TV, but I had nowhere near enough knowledge to make a short film of my own. I began my research by looking at websites that are well known for short films. I remember hearing somewhere that BBC have a BBC Film Network, and a part of this is BBC Shorts. This is a website for screening short films that have been created, and by looking at this I could gain an understanding of what the whole concept of short films was about. This website also helped me to find out about the purpose of the short film industry, and how these short films are distributed. There are many reasons why people create short films, for example, they could simply enjoy pieces of film work, or they may want to gain experience as beginners, or to gain recognition in the industry by demonstrating their skills. Short films could also test an idea that someone has for a feature film, or like the film 'Smashed' be created to educate an audience. As 'Smashed' was created for Sommerset Police to inform about alcohol awareness. The audiences differ depending on the context of the film so there is many reasons why people would choose to watch these films. The most common method for distribution is online via YouTube and various other video websites such as Vimeo, however some short films are also distributed on TV or via DVD. Another way that short films can be shown to people is via film festivals. In our media class, we went on a trip to the European Independent Film Festival, in Paris. Below is the flyer for the film festival and also the time schedule for all the different films.

Flyer:

Film Schedule:

Researching:

As you can see from the above print screen of the BBC Shorts website, it hosts a large collection of different short films, which helped me to gain an understanding of conventions, and how the overall plot works. There was over 72 comedy short films for me to look at, and a large amount of horror short films. This benefited me a lot, so I began to look for other places to watch short films.

I then looked at Channel 4's collection of short films, although this collection was not as large as the BBC Short's collection, there was several very good films that I watched to help me. But these websites only show short films that have been recognised, I wanted to watch short films that had not yet been recognised, films that had not been created by well recognised, up and coming directors. I decided to go to YouTube, to see what short films had been uploaded there.

My search for 'short films' on YouTube got me several thousand results, so I began to shorten down the results by searching for 'short films of the horror genre' and 'short films of the comedy genre'. From watching these I had been slightly more persuaded to make a horror film, as the horror films all seemed to look better and seem less 'beginner' than the comedy films.

Below are my notes on the short film industry.

#2 Initial Planning for Task

As I am working individually, time is very important to me to make sure that I complete all necessary tasks. I began my initial planning to prepare any ideas, get the opinion of others on these ideas, to get me closer to picking a genre, and to help me understand where to start with my research.

I found this to benefit me greatly and I now have a choice out of two genres that I would like to pick to use for my short film. The genres were chosen by picking my two favourite genres, comedy and horror, and also mentioning popular films of these genres which I plan to take a look at. For example, popular horror films include; Paranormal Activity 1, 2 and 3, Insidious and The Exorcist, and popular comedy films include; White Chicks, Superbad and The Hangover. I also mentioned my two least favourite genres, romance and science fiction as these are genres that I have little or no interest in. I then asked for my friends opinions on these two genres to help me make the tough decision between the two.

One friend said that 'comedy can be risky, as not all humour is shared', which is a very valid point as success from comedy films mainly comes from the amount the audience laugh as opposed to the actual story. Another friend said that 'horror films shot in 'home video' style are very effective as they seem very realistic', this relates to films such as 'The Blair Witch Project' which largely uses this 'home video style'/amateur footage technique. A third friend said that 'both films can be very successful with a wide demographic if done correctly, and horror-comedy hybrid is a new area'. After typing 'horror-comedy genre' in to Google, I found that this genre does exist, and films such as the Scary Movie film series are of this genre. It may benefit me too take a look at the Scary Movie films, although I feel it would be more 'safe' to stick to just one genre, and avoid hybrid or mixed genres as it is harder to follow conventions.

Below are the scans from my initial planning.

#1 Welcome to my A2 Coursework Blog

Last year, I achieved a C grade for AS Media. Although I am pleased with this grade, I plan on redoing my AS coursework, using better photography, and a different design for my main campaign website. I also plan to retake the exam and work even harder than originally. I hope to get an A grade overall at the end of A2, and feel that with hard work this is possible to achieve.

Today we received our brief for our A2 coursework project. We have been asked to create a short film, lasting around five minutes, in the genre of our choice, working in groups or individually. I have decided to work on my own, as I feel that I could perform better without the distraction of other group members. We have been told that along with the short film, we will need to hand in a trailer, a poster and a sample scene, all of which will be marked and go towards our overall grade. I feel that this coursework project will be interesting to do, and is very creative, and will help us learn different skills, to the skills we learnt when creating campaign websites for AS.

Before I create my film, I will need to do a lot of research and planning, this will then allow me to select a genre, create a story line and follow the general conventions. As I am working alone, and therefore cannot discuss ideas with team members I plan to watch several different short films, and pick the genre that I feel will be the best for the idea I plan to develop.