Here is a recording of the second session of feedback for our Short Film. This time the audience was more varied, with students from subjects such as English, Psychology and Sociology.
In this session, the feedback was overly positive; probably more positive than the first session.
An in-depth explanation of what we learned from all of our feedback can be found here in my Evaluation Prezi.
Friday 25 March 2011
Thursday 24 March 2011
Audience Feedback on Ancillary Tasks
Here are a few recordings of interviews that were held to get some qualitative feedback on our Poster and Magazine Review Page. As with one of the Short Film feedback sessions, we interviewed media students and a media teacher, so that we would get a more detailed analysis of our work.
Tom has only been able to upload three of the six recordings due to technical error.
Unlike our Short Film, which wasn't received brilliantly, both of our ancillary products were very well received. In summary, people thought highly of the verisimilitude of the review and the authenticity of the poster, and agreed that both would fulfill their purposes well.
An in-depth explanation of what we learned from all of our feedback can be found here in my Evaluation Prezi.
Tom has only been able to upload three of the six recordings due to technical error.
Unlike our Short Film, which wasn't received brilliantly, both of our ancillary products were very well received. In summary, people thought highly of the verisimilitude of the review and the authenticity of the poster, and agreed that both would fulfill their purposes well.
An in-depth explanation of what we learned from all of our feedback can be found here in my Evaluation Prezi.
Audience Feedback on Main Task: Session 1
Here is a video recording of the first of two planned qualitative feedback sessions for our short film. The audience was comrpised of media students and a media teacher, so Tom and I tried to ask questions that would take advantage of their heightened ability to pull texts apart and analyse them in-depth.
The audience response wasn't, perhaps, as positive as we would have liked, but it still brought up some significant points. In summary, although the film is visually accomplished, and the sound is well edited, some of the audience found the surreal narrative too confusing, and this detracted from their enjoyment of the film.
An in-depth explanation of what we learned from all of our feedback can be found here in my Evaluation Prezi.
The audience response wasn't, perhaps, as positive as we would have liked, but it still brought up some significant points. In summary, although the film is visually accomplished, and the sound is well edited, some of the audience found the surreal narrative too confusing, and this detracted from their enjoyment of the film.
An in-depth explanation of what we learned from all of our feedback can be found here in my Evaluation Prezi.
Wednesday 23 March 2011
Evaluation
I have produced the Evaluation of my A2 practical production in the form of a Prezi presentation. The Prezi can be viewed embedded below in this post, but I would recommend that you view it on the official site by clicking below:
Click Here To View Prezi
Click Here To View Prezi
Final Products
They've been a long time in the making, but here they finally are; our finished Short Film, together with our completed Magazine Review Page and Poster!
Magazine Review Page
Poster
Short Film
Magazine Review Page
Friday 18 March 2011
Editing: PROBLEM SOLVED!
Yes, that's right, the problem I ranted and raved about all last night has been solved.
After getting a good night's sleep, and thinking over the technician's suggestions, I was able to pop up to the media room this lunchtime with the method of solution at the front of my mind.
Opening the original Final Cut project, I imported one of yesterday's more successful exports, and used this to replace the expanding footage that was causing the problem. Using the exported version of the shot meant that the footage would be able to be cropped, because the footage itself was no longer expanding. After tweaking the measurement of the crop and making some last minute adjustments to the sound levels in places, the film was finally ready for export.
Although the export worked, the visual quality of it is not fantastic, so I may speak with the technician again on Monday to see if there is any way we can improve it.
Thursday 17 March 2011
Editing: THE PROBLEM OF THE EXPANDING FOOTAGE
After months of hard work, Tom and I have finally reached the point where are subsiduary products are complete, and we are ready to export our short film!
Or, at least, that's what we thought this morning.
After waiting the best part of an hour whilst Final Cut exported our film as a .mov file, it was with some annoyance that I discovered that, due to our use of digital zoom in a key part of the film, the aspect ratio of the exported file had encountered some complications.
We had produced the effect of a digital zoom by setting keyframes to gradually scale up the footage at that particular point in the film, but a by product of this was that the footage broke out of the size-boundaries of all the other footage, effectively moving into the area otherwise occupied by the black 'letterboxing' lines.
At the time, we didn't think this technique would bring us many problems; we assumed that, on export, the resolution of the film would revert back to that which we filmed in: 1280x720, or '720p HD', with a 16:9 aspect ratio. Unfortunately, in actuality, Final Cut wanted to export the film with a 4:3 aspect ratio. With this aspect ratio, the 'letterboxing' lines at the top and bottom were present throughout the film, apart from at the moment when digital zoom was used, where the footage could actually be seen to scale up; the edge of the footage expanding out into these spaces, eventually filling the entire frame, and then disappearing again to reveal the original 'letterboxed' footage.
Things were beginning to grate. Alas, I persevered.
It made sense to look deeper into the export settings, to see if the film could be forced to crop down into a 1280x720 frame. There was an option to select 1280x720 as the resolution for the exported file, so this is what I did. I was pleasantly surprised when the progress bar popped up in a small window which read '2 minutes' for the time remaining, but that pleasantness soon turned to agrivation as the estimated completion time rocketed up to 'about an hour.'
Oh, the joys of edititng.
After finding some useful tasks to fill this time, such as helping Tom to take feedback on the subsiduary products and working on my evaluation Prezi, I returned to the computer to discover that the exported file was indeed of the resolution 1280x720. The footage itself, however, was not. The 'letterboxing' lines remained, and the entire video had been compressed vertically - or stretched horizontally, whichever you prefer - in order to fit a 1280x720 frame.
Okay, now things are getting annoying.
Stuck for answers, Tom and I consulted the technician, explaining our problem, and our futile attempts to solve it. We were provided with some brilliant suggestions, but all brought the possiblity of further disadvantages, such as a loss of quality through repeated exports. Adamant that there would be another, simpler solution, I returned to Final Cut to examine the export settings once again.
EUREKA!
In the window where a resolution of 1280x720 could be selected, I had found a tick-box labelled 'Control aspect ratio', which came with a drop-down list with the option to 'Crop' the film. Hopeful that this was our final solution, I set all of the options to 'best' to ensure the highest quality result, and then clicked export.
Another hour or so to fill with other productive things.
Disappointingly, the film had been cropped closer to what we wanted, but not all the way. Although they were much smaller, the 'letterboxing' lines at the top and bottom were still present, and the problem footage could still be seen expanding into these black areas.
By this time, it was close to 3:00pm, and I still needed lunch, so it was time to give things a break.
Unfortunately, it seems that there isn't a lot more we can do to solve the problem; we can only really make the scaling of the problem footage less noticeable by cropping the film to reduce the thickness of the 'letterboxing' lines that the footage expands into. Because we want to export tomorrow, and with export times being what they are, we can't afford to spend time tweaking settings, because we have other lessons to attend, so this is the solution we will have to settle for.
If we do succeed in solving 'THE PROBLEM OF THE EXPANDING FOOTAGE', I will, of course, post the details here, but until then, I have other work to do...
Or, at least, that's what we thought this morning.
After waiting the best part of an hour whilst Final Cut exported our film as a .mov file, it was with some annoyance that I discovered that, due to our use of digital zoom in a key part of the film, the aspect ratio of the exported file had encountered some complications.
 |
| The footage at original size - how we want it all to look. |
 |
| The footage having scaled up, expanding out into the letterboxing lines. |
At the time, we didn't think this technique would bring us many problems; we assumed that, on export, the resolution of the film would revert back to that which we filmed in: 1280x720, or '720p HD', with a 16:9 aspect ratio. Unfortunately, in actuality, Final Cut wanted to export the film with a 4:3 aspect ratio. With this aspect ratio, the 'letterboxing' lines at the top and bottom were present throughout the film, apart from at the moment when digital zoom was used, where the footage could actually be seen to scale up; the edge of the footage expanding out into these spaces, eventually filling the entire frame, and then disappearing again to reveal the original 'letterboxed' footage.
Things were beginning to grate. Alas, I persevered.
It made sense to look deeper into the export settings, to see if the film could be forced to crop down into a 1280x720 frame. There was an option to select 1280x720 as the resolution for the exported file, so this is what I did. I was pleasantly surprised when the progress bar popped up in a small window which read '2 minutes' for the time remaining, but that pleasantness soon turned to agrivation as the estimated completion time rocketed up to 'about an hour.'
Oh, the joys of edititng.
After finding some useful tasks to fill this time, such as helping Tom to take feedback on the subsiduary products and working on my evaluation Prezi, I returned to the computer to discover that the exported file was indeed of the resolution 1280x720. The footage itself, however, was not. The 'letterboxing' lines remained, and the entire video had been compressed vertically - or stretched horizontally, whichever you prefer - in order to fit a 1280x720 frame.
Okay, now things are getting annoying.
Stuck for answers, Tom and I consulted the technician, explaining our problem, and our futile attempts to solve it. We were provided with some brilliant suggestions, but all brought the possiblity of further disadvantages, such as a loss of quality through repeated exports. Adamant that there would be another, simpler solution, I returned to Final Cut to examine the export settings once again.
EUREKA!
In the window where a resolution of 1280x720 could be selected, I had found a tick-box labelled 'Control aspect ratio', which came with a drop-down list with the option to 'Crop' the film. Hopeful that this was our final solution, I set all of the options to 'best' to ensure the highest quality result, and then clicked export.
Another hour or so to fill with other productive things.
Disappointingly, the film had been cropped closer to what we wanted, but not all the way. Although they were much smaller, the 'letterboxing' lines at the top and bottom were still present, and the problem footage could still be seen expanding into these black areas.
By this time, it was close to 3:00pm, and I still needed lunch, so it was time to give things a break.
Unfortunately, it seems that there isn't a lot more we can do to solve the problem; we can only really make the scaling of the problem footage less noticeable by cropping the film to reduce the thickness of the 'letterboxing' lines that the footage expands into. Because we want to export tomorrow, and with export times being what they are, we can't afford to spend time tweaking settings, because we have other lessons to attend, so this is the solution we will have to settle for.
If we do succeed in solving 'THE PROBLEM OF THE EXPANDING FOOTAGE', I will, of course, post the details here, but until then, I have other work to do...
Wednesday 9 March 2011
Internal Monologue Script
Recently, most of the time I allocate for Media Studies has been spent on filming and editing the actual footage for our short film, so I haven't been able to post regularly.
As we reach the end of the filmmaking process, however, things have slowed down ever so slightly, so I've found the time to make this post about the internal monologue that will feature in our film.
Below is the full internal monologue, and below that is an explanation of how and why it was written. Just like our shot lists, it was not written in the way an actual film script would have been, because this would have required much undue effort; Tom and I aren't selling the scripts, we merely need to record our ideas for our own later use, in a way which we can both understand and interpret quickly and easily. The bold writing is the spoken monologue itself, and the accompanying italics are notes to show where the line should be placed in the film.
From the very beginning of the process, Tom and I wanted the audience to be able to hear the protagonist's thoughts non-diegeticly, via an internal monologue. We wanted the character to seem both enigmatic and realistic, speaking in phrases that revealed the depth of his thought, but without providing specific detailing, or a definite context. The lack of detail would also add to the realism of the words as the character's own thoughts; when we think to ourselves, we rarely think in a way that would make a great amount of detailed sense if another person were to hear it spoken aloud.
As we reach the end of the filmmaking process, however, things have slowed down ever so slightly, so I've found the time to make this post about the internal monologue that will feature in our film.
Below is the full internal monologue, and below that is an explanation of how and why it was written. Just like our shot lists, it was not written in the way an actual film script would have been, because this would have required much undue effort; Tom and I aren't selling the scripts, we merely need to record our ideas for our own later use, in a way which we can both understand and interpret quickly and easily. The bold writing is the spoken monologue itself, and the accompanying italics are notes to show where the line should be placed in the film.
From the very beginning of the process, Tom and I wanted the audience to be able to hear the protagonist's thoughts non-diegeticly, via an internal monologue. We wanted the character to seem both enigmatic and realistic, speaking in phrases that revealed the depth of his thought, but without providing specific detailing, or a definite context. The lack of detail would also add to the realism of the words as the character's own thoughts; when we think to ourselves, we rarely think in a way that would make a great amount of detailed sense if another person were to hear it spoken aloud.
We also wanted the film to have a certain message hidden within the mystery, so when writing the monologue, I tried to make every line a covert, inexplicit reference to some philosophical concept, or some dilemma of thought. For example, the line 'And you can't control circumstance, so you work with what you have,' alludes to the conflicting concepts of determinism and free-will, and the following line: 'Acting, not because you must, but because you can: doing, not because that's who you want to be, but because that's who you are,' touches on Aristotle's teleological interpretation of morality in Nicomachean Ethics (350 BCE), which is more explicitly mentioned in the teacher's dialogue during Scene 3.
Having only five-minutes of space for the entire film, I was also conscious of the need to be concise, and express as much as I could in as few words as possible. In other words, the monologue needed to be epigrammatic throughout. This was no more important than in the final lines of the monologue, where I wanted to leave viewers with something that would stick in their mind; that they would continue to think about after the film has finished. The final lines, shown below, address the viewer directly for maximum impact:
'Don't lie to yourself about these things; justice is only a dream.
Have the conviction to accept this, and you'll take the world one step closer to that sleep.'
With 'selflessness' the defining characteristic of our protagonist, the themes of 'justice': of what is fair and what is right, should be implicit throughout our film, and to explicitly mention 'justice' at the end should punctuate the film nicely.
As Tom and I have waded deeper and deeper into the production of our film, it has become increasingly surreal, and I wanted to acknowledge that at the end of the film with the mention of 'dreams,' just as I mentioned the theme of 'justice.' What this acknowledgement should do is assure the audience that, whilst the film isn't necessarily realistic by any means, that is no reason to not take heed of its moral sentiments.
Of course, I say all this now, but once we have recorded the monologue being spoken and added it to our footage, it may be too long, too melodramatic, or it simply may not fit the film. We may end up using every single line, or only a few, or somewhere in-between; there is really no way of knowing until Tom and I actually watch it for ourselves to see what works and what doesn't.
Tuesday 8 March 2011
Writing Reviews
A while ago, I created a potential layout for our subsidiary task of a magazine review page, but since then, using the results of our audience research and having analysed some professional film reviews, Tom has developed a much better looking layout.
The full details of the review-page construction are here in Tom's post.
Just as I took the lead in the creation of our poster, with Tom contributing to the design, Tom is constructing our review page, and I am contributing two small reviews of short films to go alongside Tom's larger review of our own film.
Below are my two reviews in their original states. Whilst writing them, I kept the results of our audience questionnaire in mind, which showed that, in the text of the review, readers wanted...
* Comparisons to other films.
* An unbiased perspective.
Although I didn't crop in direct comparisons to other films, I tried to acheive the same effect by making it clear what kind of genre the films fit into to, what kind of style they are, and who is likely to enjoy them.
For the unbiased perspective, I simply made sure I wrote about the films fairly, justifying every qualitative judgment I made.
Connected
For directors of shorts, filmmaking is always a careful of balancing of ambition against capability, and in Connected, Danish directors Jens Raunkjær Christensenand and Jonas Drotner Mouritsen strike the balance perfectly.
Described by Christensenand and Mouritsen as ‘a sci-fi western,’ Connected transports audiences to a desolate, post-apocalyptic wasteland, where it gives a glimpse into the torturous lives of the surviving few. Clearly a sci-fi by setting alone, Connected affirms its ‘western’ status with the conventionally confrontational characters that trudge through it, shot in the trademark style and accompanied by a soundtrack that even Ennio Morricone would be proud of.
What prevents Connected from being just another weird experiment in contemporary filmmaking, however, is also what makes it unique. There isn’t one part of Christensenand and Mouritsen’s film that doesn’t beg for you attention and contemplation; not one part that fails to make you think. In their brutal world, created from a neat combination of live-footage and CGI, the young directors reveal the startling literality of the film’s enigmatic title, as well as posing questions about the ethics of survival. It is testimony to the directors’ vision that Connected combines tense action and philosophic diversion in a way that many features struggle to imitate.
***** Five stars.
Floor Show
Going by name alone, any viewer would be forgiven for letting Floor Show pass them by, but names can be deceiving, and this is certainly the case with Sam Webber’s directorial debut.
Contrary to the simplicity of its title, Floor Show is a fascinating short that is as exuberant in style as it is disturbing in its themes. With murder, lust, and human salacity all featuring within the space of five minutes, the film will leave you feeling a little dirty, but also somewhat enlightened. The plot isn’t exactly original, but the brilliantly acted characters, atmospheric lighting and creative costume designs bring a welcome dose of drama to the quintessentially theatrical setting: an old-fashioned stage framed with blood-red curtains.
Webber is nothing if not a perfectionist; every shot and angle has been chosen with care, and each plays its own important part in the visual feast-for-the-eyes. Some audiences might find the extravagance off-putting, but Floor Show is sure to gain a substantial cult following from the art-house crowd, who aren’t afraid to value style as much as substance.
**** Four stars.
Unfortunately, I had massively overestimated the space available for the smaller two reviews, taking into consideration not only just the size of the page, but the space taken up by the details for the films and images from the films. After discussing the layout possibilities again and again with Tom, we decided that my two reviews really needed to be cut to around 60 words each; they would be more of a summary-review rather than a review itself.
Below are the final 'summary-reviews'. It was certainly difficult to cut them down to only a few sentences each, but I think I have succeeded in keeping them as informative and interesting to read as they could be at this length.
Connected
For directors of shorts, filmmaking is always a careful of balancing of ambition against capability, and in Connected, Danish directors Christensenand and Mouritsen strike the balance perfectly. Described as ‘a sci-fi western’, and set in a brutal post-apocalyptic wasteland, Connected is an artistic, intense and engrossing piece of film that is as sharp in concept as in execution.
***** Five stars.
Floor Show
Contrary to the simplicity of its title, Floor Show is a fascinating short that is as exuberant in style as it is disturbing in its themes. Webber is nothing if not a perfectionist, and every shot plays its part in the visual feast-for-the-eyes. Some audiences might find the extravagance off-putting, but Floor Show is sure to gain a substantial cult following from the art-house crowd, who aren’t afraid to place style ahead of substance.
**** Four stars.
In today's Media lesson, as I continued with some editing of our footage, Tom added these reviews to the page, and we tested a number of fonts to get the best likeness to the actual font used for the main reviews in the real Empire magazine. I also had a chance to look through Tom's review, so that I could point out any errors or typos he hadn't noticed.
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