Our final product at the end of A2 Media will be a 5 minute short film. My blog will document the work and evidence that is needed for our film to be as successful as possible.
This is a review from total film magazine. We really liked the set out of the picture and text and the style they have wrote in. To make film review to look similar to this we've analysed 2 articles and the typical conventions.
I have looked through this article and circled all the conventions of this particular magazine article to make a kind of template for our review I then sketched a plan for us to make our review.
This is my 2 sketches of the kind of layout of the review, I found it a lot easier to sketch the reviews then I could use this as a reference when making the review on Quark.
Above is our first draft of the film poster using the photo that the group decided we all liked. We have stuck to the style of our hand drawn plan with the positioning of the tagline, title and actors names and the theme of stalking in shown in the poster which is what we wanted to achieve. However we did notice the writing was a little hard to read so to combat this we added a grey box around the writing with a low opacity and added a stroke to the tagline and 'coming soon'. We then got our media class to look at the poster and tell us their opinions of the poster, any suggested changes and whether they get the themes we wanted to portray. We then recorded their views and suggested changes. note: poster feedback starts at 5 minutes Above is the new and improved movie poster after considering some of the suggestions from the class feedback: Only keep the grey box around the neck of the woods and cast info: don't want to over do it Outline of the tagline and coming soon: added a white outline Needed to sort out the small writing underneath Neck Of The Woods The class really liked the photo but is it a bit too clear and more glossy magazine?
After creating a draft and researching movie posters we decided to take some photos in the woods with Charl and Gregg. We got a variety of different shots so that when we got back to school and uploaded the photos onto the mac we had a lot of choice rather than a limited range of photos.
When we got the photos back to school we decided that we liked the first photo of Gregg looking at the camera because his facial expression is quite evil looking and with Charl walking in the distance it highlights our stalking theme.
This is a drawn draft of the kind of style we want our poster: - We want to incorprate the woods - Both Charl and Gregg in the poster - The tagline at the top of the poster - Neck Of The Woods 3/4 of the way down with actors names above - Stalking theme incorprated
When making our poster it's going to be important that we make it conventional and realistic of a movie poster. So like I did with the review I'm going to look at all the conventions of a poster and incorprate these into our poster. When we looked in a magazine from the local cinema we saw this poster for the new film Beastly. The genre of the poster which alludes to a thriller with mystical elements is very similar to our film and therefore this style of poster is a suitable example of the conventions we should look too.
After looking through the style of posters and conventions we decided that we didn't want our poster giving too much away about the plot and leave the audience intrested in what the film could be about. We then decided to draw out a draft of a potential poster so when we went out to take photographs we knew what kind of thing we needed to take photos of.
We have to complete 2 ancillary tasks for our blog. The first task is a movie poster and the second is a film review. I will document my progress whilst making the poster and review to show how we will make our end product.
The writing in italics is the changes we are going to make to overcome the problems :) General feedback: Jerky pans in the living room from the T.V to Gregg and Charlotte walking to the house Cut each shot shorter, the jerks start at the beginning of each shot. The framing in the woods where Charlotte is taking the photos is good framing and the class seemed to really like it. The class also really liked the flicker shots of the woods just before Charlottes killed. The green screen isn't the greatest quality but still a good job. They didn't like the way that it starts; J cut with a news graphic, jingle then newsreport
29 seconds: Fade through black newsreport to the titles. The sound is good and conventional of a newsreport. However the titles are too long- cut the length of the titles down. 53 seconds: The pan isn't smooth and the shot is a bit long. Cut the first part of the shot add some reaction shots. Atmosphere sound isn't needed in the soundtrack- bit overdone. 1.16: The two reaction shots of Charlotte looking at the phone shows a continuity error, she's got the phone on the table, then the next shot is of the phone behind her ear. The solution is to add a shot before of a clock then in between the 2 shots of charl add another clock showing a couple of hours have passed. 1.50:When Charl goes home the shot is too long and the camera jerks. The jerks are only at the start so we will cut the shot so it's not so long. 2.09: The fridge shot for a 1/4 of a second theres a pause as she opens the fridge. Cut this by a couple of frames. When Gregg appears in the window, needs to be a spin chilling moment, with a sound effect or a change in music as the music before gives away that its a thriller. Change the soundtrack so that it appears almost like a romantic, then when gregg is in the window, sudden change in music. Another stinger when Gregg disappears from the fence. Sound effect. Shorten the scene when Gregg appears behind the tree. The scene where Charlotte and the dog walk into the woods is too long. Cut the shot at the end. The shot of charl holding the camera before getting killed add a camera noise sound effect News titles on each news report Add an ident at the start.
In our film we wanted to get footage of a full moon to try and show a change of day but to also follow the convention of a werewolf and full moons. Our media teacher told us that to film a moon would be very difficult and to capture a moon involves a lot of specialist equipment. He then suggested buying a photo of a full moon to use in our film to solve the problem, in the end we ended up buying the photo of the full moon to use in our second draft.
ions. 
ions. 
This is my 2 sketches of the kind of layout of the review, I found it a lot easier to sketch the reviews then I could use this as a reference when making the review on Quark.
