Wednesday 13 June 2012

Short Films...

"What Makes a Good Short?There are no hard-and-fast rules as to what makes a good short film but here are a few tips that might help.

  • An Exciting & Original Idea
  • A Strong Script
  • Good Acting
  • High Production Values
  • Make It Short
  • Strong Beginning
  • Avoid Repetition & Punchline Twists
  • Exciting New Techniques & Style"
Most short films are either funny, meaningful or disturbing, one way or another, they are inteded to 'stick with us' so we will remember something.. some are spine-chilling such as LOOP, a one minute long film by the spanish writer Aritz Moreno, it depicts a man who is going through a cycle.







I found an example of comedy from the website Virgin Media Shorts, which promotes undiscovered talent through short films, these are often shown in Cinema City before seeing a entire film.
My example is a documentry-style short film about a dog called Hugo. http://www.virginmediashorts.co.uk/film/2345/hugo

Monday 11 June 2012

A2 G325 Section A: Qu 1a prompt questions

Digital Technology How has digital technology helped you to capture your ideas for media production?
I used many Digital technologies such as..
-Picnik.com, edit my ident photo.
-  Photoshop, which I used to make the mist on my production logo
- After Effects, which I made the rest of my production logo with
- Adobe Premier Pro, which I edited my film on
- Youtube, which I found my royalty free piano music on
- Facebook, which I used to contact my actress and others
- Google, for my royalty free photographs (Sun, cloud and star photographs were Barrie Sherrington’s who is a relative of mine who took them whilst doing his astronomy)
- Blogger, to upload and update my work in progress
- iTunes, to download music for my film
Creativity What features of your work would you say are original to you?
I often used photographs to portray my characters thoughts and feelings such as the photograph of the earth and how she said 'I live here' I also used lots of statistics in my narration, which I personally think is quite unusual.

Research and planningHow did your research into genre contribute to your production work?The conventions of this genre are..
1. This genre illustrates a Western 'everyday life' culture.
2. It is where people come to difficult life dilemmas and situations
3. Because it is tragedy we know that it is designed for a dark ending
4. There could also be a small amount of comedy as this will reflect what we percieve as 'real life'


An example of this genre is Mike Leigh's "Another Year" which reflects the life of a middle-aged couple (Tom and Gerry) and some of their friends. Life has turned out well for Tom and Gerry, but their friend's lives aren't as positive, as Jerry states at one point in the film 'life isn't always kind to people'

The scenes in the film are of everyday life hence "Another Year" and the main characters in the film face daily dilemmas. One character played by Lesley Manville's for example had many problems with her life; she struggles to find love, and her car keeps breaking down, and she gets lost, she's disorganised and constantly late.She is shown to be continuously dealing with these problems, and at times not coping at all well.


Post-productionHow much of your text was ‘created’ only in post-production?
Using After Effects, I created my title sequence and credits, however I did not use any effects on my actual film.

Using conventions from real media texts

In what ways have your productions used or developed conventions adopted from real media products? I have challenged conventions of how teenage girls are usually viewed.