Film Brand Research

In the real world, it is very clear that the film is the main product. For the film companies it is the main bread winner that brings the massive revenue (if it is successful) to the company. Posters and other merchandise are simply an advertising means to sell the film. They make sure that the film is seen by people who maybe would not see trailers on the internet for example. All of this makes sure that the media owners will receive more money in a very high finance related industry.

Ancillary Tasks

The film is complete and we are happy, but it isn't over yet! We have been set two ancillary tasks on top of making our short. To begin with, we will be making a poster which will advertise our film, typical to the type you would see hanging up inside a cinema. We will also be making a film review after this in the style of a magazine article like that found in Empire and other big film magazines.

Finished Film (Final Cut)

After all that work, here is the final feature, perfected after taking on board all the advice and feedback given to us by our peers and other who had seen it.

Re-Editing The Rough Cut

Although many things needed to be changed they were not really that taxing and were all handled swiftly with no further hiccups. The very bright kitchen was dimmed using a light exposure filter within Final Cut which, although parts were still overexposed it did not fault the film nearly as much as before. The fact Brian answers the phone twice was also a small change, where i simply sourced the clip again, made it longer and snipped the bit out where he picks up the phone a second time. All of the telephone voices were also edited in order to make them more realistic and remove the bassy effect off Karen's voice at the start of the first phone conversation. This was done by using the clip distortion plug in again and move the drive up and gain down slightly. One or two distracting sound effects were also changed, for example the changing in volume on Brian's car was made one volume throughout as although reality would suggest ti was right, it was distracting in the film. Several transitions were tweaked, for example when the music fades out to see Karen in bed the silence is longer to make the transition smoother, as well as a cross fade being implemented in the last scene rather than a fade to black, then fade back in. The crash sound effect was very over the top and i made this sound much more realistic as instead of glass smashing, i had a small skid, one car bumping. I did however add a suggestive body drop, making things slightly more clearer perhaps?

Evaluating Our Peer Feedback

Peer Feedback

Shown above is the questionnaire handed out to everyone of my peers who watched the film. It instructed that they commented on the film through different categories.

First of all, they must comment if they enjoyed the film and if they would watch it again;

Out of 8 people we asked, all of them (8/8) enjoyed the film and would happily watch it again if it was shown to them.

Next they are asked to answer at which age group (or target audience) they believed that our film was mainly aimed at;

19-25 was the desired figure we had in mind and nearly everybody (7/8) selected this result as the target audience. The only person who did not agree was not too far off though and thought it was for people ages 15-18 due to the love sick girl. Although strictly not incorrect, I only used this as a negative answer due to it not including any people in their early twenties. Both would be spot on in conjunction with each other, however the popular answer stood correct on its own.

They were then required to name their favourite and most disliked parts of the film and why;

As a whole, the favourite part of the film was when Brian pulls up at Karen's and when he leaves after cutting all ties with her. The reason this was such a favourite seemed to be as it was deemed 'professional' in terms of the editing and camera work, many even went as far as to say it looked like a shot from a real film or television program. This made us very happy with our film

Criticisms lay in the least favourite part of the film, which turned out to be the kitchen scene down to the sheer brightness of the scene, although everyone liked it other than that, they claimed it tarnished the rest of the film with this overexposed scene.

Overall, we received a mark of 8.5 out 10 from our peers, not bad for a rough cut! The only thing they would have liked to have seen which was not in the film was to show the scene of her almost getting ran over at the start which we actually have taken into some consideration. Other than this feedback, our teacher who, after collaborating with some other pupils, presented us with this feedback shown below;

Complete Film (Rough Cut)

Personally I am very pleased with the final product. No doubt problems or dislikes may arise with it but it will only ensure we will create a better film overall. The only thing I am unhappy with currently is the over exposure in the kitchen, this may be rectified at a later date though

Editing Our Footage

In order to edit our film, we used the following pieces of software;

- Final Cut Studio: Main editing software, enables us to piece clips together, add transitions and generally make a film

- Soundtrack Pro: Provides music, sound effects and if necessary overdubbing for voices. Provides all the sound for our film.

- Quicktime Player: Plays the film on our Macs.

- Youtube: Enables us to host our films onto the internet and embed them to our blogs.

- Compressor: Used in order to make the massive film files smaller for storage, Youtube and DVD, not to mention the rendering.

Editing our film started by capturing all of the used tapes and placing them in order onto Final Cut (much like in the animatic). All unnecessary bits of film are then removed by cutting then deleting them from the timeline. Fades and transitions are put where required amongst other effects (light filter in our case). When all this is done, credits are then inserted as well as an ident, the general gist of your film is now beginning to become a real piece of media text. This crude film is then imported into Soundtrack Pro. Within this software, sound effects are added such as a phone ringing which was the most common in our film, along with music. How well they fade out is also controlled here. As well as decorating it to sound good, I also used it for one of its more practical uses by removing background noise we did not want and distorting voiced of people you could not see while on the phone. I also kept a copy of this for the animatic due to it changed so so much, it would be simple to use the films soundtrack itself. The finished soundtrack is then exported back to Final Cut where it is all aligned up and finished. After everything is rendered, you may export it as a Quicktime Movie (mov.) file and there it is, the complete film. We also compressed this file to reduce the file size and hosted it on Youtube by uploading it onto Josh's account. This meant that our film was complete and open for the whole world to enjoy if they wish.

Example of Final Cut

Shooting on Location

Diary of filming

Day: 1

26/01/11

Upon arriving on location for the first day, we were grateful the weather was good and enabled shooting to take place. We wanted to start with the first scene simply for an easier time later on in editing. Once settled I was glad we chose the actors we did. They were eager to assist us and made life on set very pleasant. Many laughs were had using the car as reversing up and down the street became a repetitive incident throughout the time spent there, made funny by the ridiculously loud whining noise it emitted. For the last part of the scene, Matt (Brian) kept forgetting lines, which was frustrating but all was forgiven after he got himself sorted.

Day: 2

01/02/11

Spirits were high when we arrived at Jon’s, the weather wasn’t too bad and he conveniently had a free house meaning we would not be disturbed. After removing the dog from the kitchen (not so easy funnily enough) we got underway with scene 2. We had slight interruptions with phone calls but no major hiccups. A different angle was used a one point to capture this scene but was quickly scrapped on set as it looked terrible and did not do the film justice. Bad framing was one of the reasons it was that terrible but I simply did not like it anyway. We got a lot done this day.

Day: 3

05/02/11

The final scene was filmed on this but I was not there! I was skiing at this point but I am informed by Josh that all went swimmingly and it was a simple case of an in and out job.

Day: 4

10/05/11

My first filming day back after skiing and I was very excited to continue. We made a trip to Josh’s house to film part of the conversation in scene 6. I also managed to get the footage of Matt in the car! That was hilarious, climbing through the car trying to get the best angle I could. My safety probably was not a high concern at this point! After an uncomfortable car journey (for myself anyway) we got plenty of shots of Jodie ad decided to compile them all in the scene we had some lighting troubles at one point but a lamp later we were pretty much sorted.

Later that day we made the trip to my house with the crane. After some difficulties fitting it we managed to get a great crane shot… eventually. First we endured 15 minutes of people walking past and badly framed shots due to the fact we could not see a thing, as we didn’t bother with a Tv. The eventual outcome was perfect though and guesswork clearly paid off. We got the small conversation done very quickly then, when Matt returned to his car, I insisted I filmed him with a panning shot, a shot I later saw as brilliance and had to put it in, meaning an additional frame in the storyboard and a changed animatic.

The final location of the day was Jodie’s house to shoot footage of her on the phone for an earlier scene, one of which we had highly neglected until now. After some minor puns of Jodie in bed and some light hearted insults we got cracking and came out with a pretty decent set of shots which, were ok I suppose, but we did have and excellent focus pull on her clock. A busy first day back at the office!

Day: 5

12/05/11

This was only a quick session but we made the journey to Bloxwich to film Matt in bed now as Brian. There was no escaping how awkward it was for three lads filming another in bed but once past it, we felt the footage was good and a new shot of him slamming the phone down was decided. Another change to the animatic and the storyboard was in order.

Day: 6

15/02/11

This could have been filmed a few days beforehand but our lack of time with a camera made it necessary to do it today. We first went to Johns again and filmed Matt in the office on the phone. In order to get a fluid conversation going, we had Jon reply to Matt pretending to be Karen, which distracted us at one point due to how funny the incident was. Once focus in the group was re-established, the scene turned out to be, in my opinion, the best on in regards to the rest of the phone sequences.

After this it was time to gather more footage of Matt on the phone as once looking at the ones I had taken before were very shaky and useless. This incident does not get old and Matt and I had much fun on the way back shooting this again.

Day: 7

17/02/11

With the end of the filming in sight, we made the short journey to Jodie’s to film her one last time in her home for an early phone conversation. This was a quick ordeal and rather boring as we all had other work to continue with, causing everyone to be restless. I was glad to get this scene out of the way.

Day: 8

18/02/11

Sadly our final day of filming had arrived and all that was left was Matt to speak on the phone one last time. Jon did Karen’s part again with some improvisation to keep everyone in good spirits and the whole scene was done in practically two takes! I was almost sad after this as I will probably never have chance to do this again, I have had fun doing it and it’s a shame I don’t have the camera resources else I would definitely make more films

Preparing For Shooting

Here is a post showing what must be considered before filming goes underway.

^ Here we have a crane on a tripod. This will have the camera attached to it as it provides roughly another four metres of length to the arm. It is operated with weights on the back which are pulled down via a handle. The weights stabilise the arm with the camera, resulting in less wobble when moving. It has a pully-mechanism used to rotate the camera if desired and has the option to hook it up to a television to view the shot. We will be using a crane in the scene where Brian arrives at Karen's house, establishing the scene nicely.

^ This is just a tripod used to hold the camera in place. This is the one we will use but an option with wheel may be kept at hand just in case. This one has telescopic legs to provide us with many height perspectives to shoot from and the point at which the camera fixes has an adjustable height mechanism. This will be used in all scenes.

The camera. Vital in our film, this is a Sony HDV camera taking HD film or has the ability to write to a memory card. This is our 'weapon of choice' if you will and has an adjustable focus setting perfect for focus pulls. It also has a huge microphone able to pick up a lot of diegetic sound much better than cameras we used to use.

Now we have discussed what equipment we need, roles on set must be discussed. Originally, I planned on directing as I felt i knew the story better, but instead of creating dictatorship amongst us it became much easier to share the workload. We had a rotation system in order to please everyone, ie. everyone would have a hand in camera work and the little jobs like going over the script with the actors. This had us thinking that filming would be a lot more pleasant and less formal than having strict roles to abide to as it is clear you can't pleas everyone in that way.

Focus Pull

A focus pull (Using our Sony HD Camera's for reference) is where, during filming, a background is blurry with something solid in the foreground, or visa versa. It is then transferred by creating the solid foreground blurry and the background solid. This is often used to draw attention from one thing to another, for example if a person was speaking and someone came towards them from behind, a focus pull would be implemented in order to swap the perspective of attention in the shot. Using our camera, the lens is twisted gradually when not in auto focus. Shown above, I used one of my peers to stand a distance from what was behind her to get a run-of-the-mill focus pull to demonstrate. Bellow is an example found in Avatar, showing a focus pull fixating attention on two light orbs the main character sees.

Shooting Schedule

This is our filming schedule which we managed to stick to. Upon deciding who our actors were going to be, we handed a copy out to them telling them where we were going to be filming, when and what props will be required at that time. We also labeled which scenes would be shot, just to help us that little bit more when working out what was filmed and when. This was more for piece of mind than anything but did help us find footage we thought that we had lost.

The Animatic

Animatics are animated storyboards. They are used for various purposes depending on the medium for which they are being produced. Animatics are used every day in the advertising industry to test commercials. They're used to preview scenes of live-action films before they are shot. You'll also find animatics in the pre-production stages of animation and in the video game industry.

Our rough animatic (Shown below) felt empty ad did not suit what we wanted to achieve. The whole scene where the go out for the day seemed a bit unrealistic as they had only just met. Also upon reflecting on titles seen in other films, we believed these looked very unprofessional. We made a collective decision to redo this and remove that scene in particular so, under our own scrutiny, remade a new, better animatic.

This is our animatic, in conjunction with the film soundtrack which really got us excited to finish the final film. Everything seemed to flow nicely and we expect the final cut to be excellent from looking at this.

Storyboard

Collectively, here are all the frames used in our film (STILL NUMBERED) arranged into a storyboard. This was the first visual aspect of our task to create a film and really helped enable us to visualise what we were going to be seeing in the final product. All in all this made us believe in our idea and we knew it would look good.

Props List

Below is another Prezi, almost a sequel to the costume presentation, I have created in order to display what props are going to be used throughout our short film. All have been included with examples as seen below;

Got Props? on Prezi

Costume Research

In the romantic thriller genre, often the people within the film are normal average people, which our are as they are two normal people who meet in the street. Styles of clothes are always going to be different to portray someones personality through the clothes they are wearing. nN this case it is a stylish young man with a lot of money for clothes and a young girl who dresses in casual fashion. Referring to Scream 4 again, here is a screenshot from the trailer showing younger people in casual clothes;









Here I have constructed a Prezi presentation showing the final ideas for our costume ideas and why they were chosen.

Costume on Prezi

Upon realising our rough cut, we have taken the opportunity to show examples of the costume within the film below;

Research Into Potential Locations

Here is a key-framed picture, edited in Photoshop. They are all potential ideas for locations in which our film will be shot on.

Underneath is a screen cast I made in which I discuss what each section of this picture means, why we chose each location and which of them are bad examples.

The Script

Here is our finished script to be handed out to all actors and anyone who comes along on set with us. It was constructed in Livetype, a bespoke piece of software solely for script writing. The software is much quicker than Word or any other word processor when writing a script as new divides and lines for new scenes are already there, simply one click will insert one. We have included sufficient detail into what happens in each scene, helping actors know directions and exactly what they are doing in each scene in order to prevent awkward discussions on location. It also meant we could film quicker. We other than the script for actors itself (so they know what to say) we also included sound effects that will be going on at the time. This is very much for our own benefit as it helps us to know what sounds occur well in acting but also helped actors understand what would be going on, settling them more and letting them feel part of a film instead of only performing infront of a camera

Final Copy of Treatment

Here is the final copy of our treatment. After some slight rectifications on the plot and adding more information, this is a very close representation of what we will hope to achieve in the final film.

Hohfl Treatment

Audio of Treatment and Feedback

This is a playback of Jon reading our treatment out to our class mates and them then giving us quality feedback which will help us develop our film to be a better feature.

Treatment Feedback (Video)

We asked our peers what they thought of the treatment after we dictated it to the class. This is their response;

Rough Copy of Treatment

A film treatment is a piece of prose, typically the step between scene cards and the first draft of a screenplay for a motion picture, television program, or radio play. It is generally longer and more detailed than an outline, and it may include details of directorial style that an outline omits. They read like a short story, except told in the present tense and describing events as they happen

Here is a rough copy of our treatment, outlining precisely what happens in every part of our film. This was constructed in Word for Mac and as I came up with the idea, I took it upon myself to realise the whole plot for the group.

Head Over Heels for Love Treatment

Target Audience

In order to determine which audience to target with our film, I turned to Youtube in order to find out what people are currently watching the genre.




Love Actually Audiences.

Here i have found the people who have been watching this. Statistically, it is mainly younger females in late teens and early twenties that have watched this film. I immediately agreed with this and almost decided on a genre, but believed I should check with the romantic thriller i used as an example in an earlier post (Unfaithful). Weirdly enough, it appears only men have seen this film (evidence below. I decided to compile these together and settle on a target audience of any aged teenagers to people in their early twenties at a push. This would classify for both male and female.

Unfaithful Audiences.

Investigation Into Romantic Thrillers

A genuine, standalone thriller is a film that provides thrills and keeps the audience cliff-hanging at the "edge of their seats" as the plot builds towards a climax. The tension usually arises when the character(s) is placed in a menacing situation, a mystery, or a trap from which escaping seems impossible. Life is threatened, usually because the principal character is unsuspectingly or unknowingly involved in a dangerous or potentially deadly situation. Thrillers mostly take place in ordinary suburbs/cities. Though sometimes, they may take place wholly or partly in exotic settings such as foreign cities, deserts, Polar Regions, or the high seas. The heroes in most thrillers are frequently ordinary citizens unaccustomed to danger. However, more common in crime thrillers, they may also be "hard men" accustomed to danger, like police officers and detectives. While such heroes have traditionally been men, women lead characters have become increasingly common. (Further detail can be discovered on my As Media blog; )
An example I have used to exemplify this is the trailer for the new film, Scream 4;



A romance film can be loosely defined as any film in which the central plot (the premise of the story) revolves around the romantic involvement of the story's protagonist. Common themes include the characters making decisions based on a newly-found romantic attraction. The questions, "What am I living for?" or "Why am I with my current partner?" often arise. The appeal of these films is in the dramatic reality of the emotions expressed by the characters. Another prerequisite is that the film has a happy ending (or at least bittersweet) and many would argue that no film with a sad ending may be correctly defined as "romance;" however, this second prerequisite is admittedly disputable and many screenwriters and directors will push the boundaries of the genre in this aspect. The following is a list of recent romantic films. The most successful romantic film is the 1997 blockbuster, Titanic which grossed over $600 million in America and $1.8 billion, worldwide.
To demonstrate a generic romantic film, I have found a trailer for Love Actually, a true classic of a romantic film. It is shown below;



Our film is a romantic thriller, borrowing some elements of mystery, danger and suspense from a thriller, combined with a love story, clearly from the romance genre. A common ideology for this genre is a man will engage in battle with the villain, fight for their own life and are saved in the nick of time, and through it all, fall in love. There is a double amount of suspense because not only is there romantic suspense (Will the guy get the girl?) but there is plot suspense too (Will the hero save the protagonist in time?). I believe ours is a fair balance of both genre's and does not represent one more than the other too much.
Finally, our genre, a romantic thriller, Unfaithful i believe most fits the area of a romantic thriller our best suits, so here is a trailer for the film;

An Introduction to Group Members

Other than myself, there are two other guys in my group that I can happily work with. First of all we are all friends and are comfortable with each others company, ensuring we are happy to work together. We all live locally and meeting up is not an issue for anybody. The whole group also share general interests and find decisions easy to make. I find I have been deemed as a kind of director figure as this was the idea I presented to the class and was thought as the idea to follow. I am also very keen at the editing elements. Josh again loves editing and will do a lot of this as well. He also is going to be in charge of lighting. Jon is kind of perfectionist when filming and interestingly has a good eye for detail. He will be mainly filming and finding the best shots for each scene I imagine. Although we are all very capable and will take part in everything, each role here is set to share the work load and make it all fair.

Eventually when it came down to a decision, it was realised my idea had the most potential and practicality so we decided to go with it (all will be revealed in the treatment). However all other had good ideas.

Josh's idea was a psychological thriller with an unsolved murder reopened when a detective is told some more information the case. Then he quickly finds out that it was defiantly a murder and the person who was murdered was the person he gave him the extra information. The whole idea was pretty good but was so difficult to be used in a short film to get all of the desired content in it. Reluctantly, the idea was scrapped due to this.

Jon's original idea was about a homeless guy that tries to bunk in an empty house. The when he wakes up in the morning he finds a letter in the letter box with his name on, He finds out that his parents actually owned this house and he now owns it. He has had a second chance in life. I personally though that this had a lot of character and would have been very good. However when decision time came, my idea was selected over this simply because there were fears this may not be as good as originally thought of and may contain to little dialogue for our liking.

Short Examples and Reviews

Here are two short films that I viewed on Youtube and thoroughly enjoyed. I found Both very clever in their own little way and seemed like a lot of fun. Besides this fact, there are also some deep morales within each short, meaning you always take something away with you from them.

The first is shown below, Black Button;



I found two reviews for this, one small one from a viewer on IMDB;

There is an unimaginably huge flood of Movies in Hollywood, Reality Shows & Soap Operas on TV around today and much of it is a torrent of garbage, but the people adding the crap to the pile are either unaware of this, or are too busy counting the bags of money to care. At least my friend Lucas Crandles has a certain self-awareness. He knows that his Black Button is a minor release not in cinema but on You Tube and will never be a top seller.

He knows that he's unlikely to be the toast of the party, and that there will be no big fuss made.

But so often, the loudest voices at the party are those of crashing bores – all bluster and no substance. It's in the corners where the most interesting people are found, who though quiet have so much more to offer.

In the era of Desperate Housewives, Sex and the City and American Idol and shitty movies like Hancock and Babylon A.D., Lucas Crandles from Australia comes with a short Jaw Dropping Masterpiece called Black Button.

I won't reveal anything about it, just watch the flick and love it.

The Father Son Grubb duo perform brilliantly, and can give Kirk & Michael Douglas a run for their money.

Lucas, the Director of the Short, is an illustrator and an imaginary genius who translates his dark creativity to live-action (a la Hitchcock), Lucas has all the makings to be modern cinema's pre-eminent visual stylist.


Here is the second, found on Shortoftheweek.com


found this week’s film, Black Button, on YouTube where it has become rather popular. That makes sense since it is a good film, but more so than that it is also emblematic of the uniqueness of YouTube and the possibilities for filmmakers there.

Black Button is minimalistic in design and execution, but is the kind of tautly paced, well-written film that really shines in the short format. The film centers around a classic hypothetical and moral quandary; lost and confused in a stark white room the main character, Mr. Roberts, is offered ten million dollars by a mysterious older gentleman to push a black button. The catch? If he does, someone, somewhere will die. This premise sets the stage for a provocative conversation between the two as they discuss the implications of such a choice.

There is a lot to like about the film, the visual aesthetic is stylish; stark and ultra-exposed in order to create the depth-less white set. As mentioned, the pacing is excellent, sucking in your attention and never letting it flag and the shot selection wrings the most dynamism possible out of the limited set. The two strongest aspects though are the excellent sound work and superb acting. Fantastically creepy, disorienting sounds emanate during the payoff that heighten the affect nicely, and quite simply Robert Grubb steals the show with his turn as the elderly gentlemen.

As accomplished a film as it is, especially for a $200 first time effort, Black Button likely would have found success on the festival circuit, but instead on YouTube it has become a phenomena, garnering a half a million views and over 6000 comments. It’s hard to imagine garnering as much exposure or feedback from any other means than the online video giant. But also because of the community-nature of the site, the feedback is often a lot more substantial than other sites. Thirteen video responses have been posted already by fans of the film, and questions generated by the short prompted the filmmakers to post two new “making of” segments to YouTube as well, extending the level of interactions possible between independent filmmakers and their audiences. Now if only YouTube can perfect some revenue sharing…

What I personally enjoyed about this short was the way the meaning was brought across. I love how he was so bothered about someones life, or so claimed he did, then finds out he is now dead as well. Also the person who died due to his selfishness is next in line for the test, another clever twist in the short.

Here is the second, The Black Hole;




A review from the IMDB

"The Black Hole" is a short and deep tale of greed of human nature. It is impressive how the writers and directors Philip Sansom and Olly Williams were able to make a short of less than 3 minutes running time without any line and succeed in transmitting one of the seven deadly sins ( "Avaritia") so perfectly and with right dose of humor. My vote is nine.[out of 10]

These reviews are taken from www.cleancutmedia.com

As always, Clean Cut Media is always looking to bring the latest news, reviews and insightful articles in media influence on our culture. Clean Cut Media will also periodically post excellent pieces of advertising, well made videos and overall creative pieces of work. Considering so much of advertising these days resort to cheap emotional grabs, vulgar non-relevant references to sex, as well as send subtle messages that is detrimental to the way we view the world, the only true requirement to show on this site is that it is Clean Cut, thus the name! However we may post non-clean pieces of art for review and discussion. If you find any pieces of work worthy to share or review please comment! We’ll contact you directly and if you wish you can contribute your insight for the entry.

Short films require immense creativity and planning because an entire story must be condensed into 3-5 minutes. This piece is well done. Quick Commentary follows.

The Black Hole
Moving Towards Desire
What I find interesting in this short film is how the main character slowly gets more and more tempted to push the limits. He starts off just fascinated with his new discovery. He tries it out on the vending machine and ends up eating his reward. However once he gets a taste of the “power” of his discovery, he then decides to use it to enter a locked office to see what is inside. Then his eyes light up as he sees a safe and uses it to access some cash. Then rather than being happy with what he found, he decides to take it all. Both in his expression and his actions the small steps he takes towards what is wrong only escalates. I believe this is very true to reality.

Flight or Invisibility
Someone asked me recently, if you could fly or be invisible, which power would you like? I would easily choose invisibility, however I also acknowledged how I could imagine myself slowly getting myself into really bad trouble and morally questionable situations if I had that capability. Could you say with confidence you would never abuse such a power?

Getting from Point A to Point B – Subtle Power of Desire
This character probably never intended to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars and if he was told he would, he probably would laugh at the thought. But all it took is the access and slow seemingly harmless steps and there he was stealing the money he probably never dreamed of stealing. This is a short film so the progress went quickly, but we can see this happening in the real world across longer periods of time. No one starts wanting to steal, wanting to murder, wanting to commit adultery, wanting to get drunk, hurting people and betraying trust relationships. How many times have I found myself in point B and wondered how I got to this point. So how do we get from point A to point B? Gradual steps. It would be foolish for us to think we are not capable of doing really bad things (yes even murder!) just because we can’t imagine ourselves getting there. It is the small subtle steps that goes unnoticed that contribute to our moral degradation. It is so important for all people to be on our guard to protect ourselves from becoming insensitive to pushing boundaries and rationalizing what we do.

Whether it is a them or not, there are many morals about greed and this is simply hysterical Karma. The safe in which he tries to steal from ends up being his tomb.

Introduction of Shorts

For Our A2 Media coursework we have been set the task of creating a 5 minute short, but to begin with what even is a short?

Strictly speaking, a short film is any film that is not long enough to be classified as a feature film. These days however they have developed to be and much more experimental form of filming, bringing clever little twists and creative links within the small story to leave satisfaction after resolving the story yourself. Short comedies have been around for ages and have been particularly popular (ie. Charlie Chaplin) but now there are no end to the ranges of genre and style. Within North America, a Short is often about 20-40 minutes long, but in reality they are often no longer than 5 - 15 minutes, some even standing at just over one minute.

Shorts are occasionally broadcast as filler when a feature film or other work doesn't fit the standard broadcast schedule. ShortsTV is the first television channel dedicated to short films. It broadcasts an SDTV feed in France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Turkey (Ttnet). A HDTV version of the channel, ShortsHD, is available on AT&T U-verse channel 1789. Movieola is a Canadian cable channel devoted exclusively to shorts up to 40 minutes long. Another Canadian TV station, Bite TV, is trying to become the world's first user-generated television station, encouraging viewers to send in their videos. Mainly, however, short films must rely mainly on festival exhibition to reach an audience. Such films can also be distributed via the Internet. Across the Hall, for example, was solely distributed on the net. Certain websites which encourage the submission of user-created short films, such as YouTube, Vimeo, Openfilm, BritFilms and Newgrounds have attracted large communities of artists and viewers. Sites like BBC Film Network focus on showcasing curated shorts.

Short films are a typical first stage for young filmmakers, though films such as S. Luciani's Dolls show how professional actors and crews still choose to create short films as alternative form of expression.

Short filmmaking is growing in popularity as equipment becomes cheaper and more amateurs are making films. "Prosumer" or semi-professional cameras now cost under $3,000, and free or low-cost software is widely available that is capable of video editing, post-production work and DVDauthoring.

WELCOME!

Hello and welcome to my A2 Media Studies Blog. Feel free to follow this and join me through the journey I will be taking in order to make a film for my Media coursework. The main task I have been set is to make a short film, using the 'Thriller' genre or any variations of the genre. Thanks again for having a look and feel free to comment on how I am doing, many thanks