The Evaluation Questions Based on Recreation of My Beast Friend

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in progression from it to the full product
 We were given the task of recreating a short film, the one we chose to do was My Beast Friend, originally directed by Ewan Torrance. We chose it because it is very funny and original. From this I learnt how to plan a full day of filming and experiment with different camera shots and angles. 

What information will be needed to create these?
We needed to study the film many times in order to get every single detail of the film as similar to the original as possible. 

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? 

Setting/location.
I used a very domestic environment which was very similar to that in the original, this was because it was a hallway which we decorated with scattered boxes, binbags filled with stuff and it had a glass door. This meant it looked very much like Ed was clearing stuff out, making it even more similar to the original.

Costumes and Props.
We created a cat costume out of a dressing gown and cat ears for fluff. We also made Fluff's tag and box to be very similar to the original. Other props included the box of magazines Ed's carrying, which we replicated. And the bin bags. 

Font and Style of titling.

We used the same font and titling as in the original, and  the same music and movement as it fades in. This meant that our film looked as similar to the original as possible. 

The Story.
In a nutshell, My Beast Friend is about a young man (Ed) who is trying to get rid of his foul-mouthed cat Fluff, who Ed sees as being a man dressed up in a cat costume. He decides to trick Fluff into thinking he is going to go to a place called Pleasureland and that it's just for cats. However, Amelia turns up early and sees Fluff as a real cat and doesn't realise it was Ed who was trying to get rid of him in the first place.

How the characters are introduced.
There are only three characters in the entire script. Fluff, Amelia and Ed. Fluff is a grumpy cat who is owned by Ed, he is seen by Ed as a man in a cat costume but by Amelia as a cute cat who has been abandoned by a 'monster' he makes harsh remarks at Ed's expense and threatens to 'sick up all of yesterdays tuna' when he wants to know what is happening and what the tag around his neck says. Ed is the second main character (next to Fluff) He is Fluff's owner and tries to get rid of his irritating cat. Ed has evidently developed a relationship with a girl called Amelia, though she is described by Fluff as being way out of his league. He lies to Fluff saying he will go to a 'great fun place just for cats' however, he is planning to dump him in this cardboard box somewhere, which is much to Amelia's horror, although she does not know that it was Ed who planned to dump him. Amelia is Ed's girlfriend who turns up really early, which is how she meets Fluff. She could be described as being a bit dippy and not all there as when she sees Fluff for the first time she is completely unaware that Ed (her boyfriend) was the 'monster' who 'abandoned this sweet little creature.' it is Amelia that forces Ed and Fluff back together as she is Fluff's 'New mummy now'

What have you learned from your audience feedback?
We recieved some audience feedback on Youtube for our film. Including a comment and email from the original writer of My Beast Friend. He said ...

"Hi Evie and Lily,

That sounds great.

I haven't done that many short films, though I have done quite a bit of TV writing over the last few years. I think some of the same rules apply, like...

The key to good films and low budgets is planning. 

Only film what you'll need, and remember that people like stories about people. Spend time making your characters interesting. Make us care about them, even if we don't like them.

Don't set out to write a five minute film. Start writing a half hour and edit edit edit the script until you've got down to five minutes. Like I said, I went from four minutes down to one and ditched a lot of stuff. But what was left worked really well. 

Remember that you have much more than just words to use. We used looks, reactions, movement and even the hand-written note to get the information across. Make every shot work as hard as it can.

If you get the opportunity, there is one pretty good book you could look at. 'Rebel Without A Crew', by Robert Rodriguez (who made 'Sin City' and 'Spy Kids'), where he describes making his first feature. It's pretty good nuts and bolts stuff.

Anyway, that's all I can think of right now. Let me know if I can help with anything else, and keep me posted.

All the best, 

Fergus Mitchell."

As can be seen we were given a lot of advice from Fergus Mitchell, which really helped us. We also recieved positive feedback in our class which highlighted our strong points, and constructive criticism - so that we knew which areas we must focus on in order to create more short films.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

-Picnik.com & Photoshop were used to create and edit my poster for My Beast Friend .
- After Effects, which we used for the animation of text at the very beginning.

- Adobe Premier Pro, which I edited the film on.
- Youtube, to gather music and study original film.

- Facebook, which we used to contact my actors and others.

- Blogger, to upload and update my work in progress.
- iTunes, to download music for the film.