Narration- A lot of short films have narration;
this means there is a speaker which is not necessary visible to the audience.
This voice is usually very clear and sophisticated, this is the general
convention of voice overs. We chose to use two narrators; these were not
professional speakers with an excellent voice but instead we used our own
actors. We felt this made the film more personal, we were trying to reach our
audience on a personal level. The reason for using narration is that it allows
us to cut out certain parts of the film to make sure it fits the allocated time
limit and still have a clear story because details can be explained by the
speaker. It also helped the editing process as we just removed all sound from
the clips and re did the voice overs. Using a voice over we are able to
approach the audience in a settle way, they become more familiarized with the
actors which allows them to feel their emotions more, this makes the piece more
powerful in showcasing our message which is diabetes isn’t a joke and it needs
to be treated.
Interviews – A very conventional aspect
from our genre which is educational films is to use interviews. We originally
planned to use multiple interviews of both doctors and patients. This idea we
quickly got rid of, we were very limited in time and the interviews were taking
up a lot of film time. We completely scratched the idea and used text facts
instead to help promote our message throughout the piece.
Characters – this is one of the more
obvious conventions, short films tend to only use one or 2 main characters. This
is down due short films, literally being short therefore there is not a lot of
time to establish a deeper story behind multiple characters. We followed this
convention in our piece, we only used 2 main characters and the whole story was
based around them too. This worked out really well as people were able to
understand their backgrounds through a combination of clips and narration.
Twist- Short films usually have a twist in
the short time period, this is similar to normal films where you get a twist and
a resolution. The reason for using a twist is that it makes the production more
interesting for the audience, films use them because no audience wants to watch
someone in their regular lifestyle, they want to see the lifestyles be
challenged. We establish equilibrium by introducing the two characters, the
twist then comes in when one character’s health is endangered. The resolution
then comes after, for our film we followed this convention and media theory a
lot.
Situation – Similarly to the twist short films
usually take an everyday situation that the audience is able to relate to and
then flip it on its head is some way. We do this by establishing our actors in
their everyday lives, their lives then coincidently conflict each other which
helps the film move to its resolution. It allows the viewer to relate to the
issue which is promoted in films and at the same time intrigue the audience.
Postcard:
Color Scheme: Postcards conventionally
follow a color scheme of 2-3 colors to generate a cohesive and pleasing text
for the audience. Our color scheme is a calm purple essence, we continued this
color scheme throughout our products to create a sense of branding. The colors
on our postcard are not complicated to look at, most of the attention is lead
towards the actor who is the main subject.
Star: By featuring a well-known person on
the postcard, audience members who are familiar with the ‘star’ I’ll be
inclined to see the film, acts as a persuasive device. We are using one of our
main actors as the so called star on our postcard to help the audience be
familiar with it and relate it to the film.
Image: Instead of using a ‘star’ you can
use an image and have the subject displayed as a silhouette or participating in
an indirect mode of address, a mysterious atmosphere is generated which may
intrigue the audience and persuade them to see the film. We did not follow this
convention as we felt we could not use an image to represent or film well
enough. Our production is not focused around something materialistic, it focuses
on the lives of two individuals and therefore we felt it was important that the
emotional connection was made with a person.
Awards: A very simple and common convention
that the short film postcards are to have the short films nominations displayed
on the actual card. This is usually done through a small clipart of two
feathers bending outwards, then the name of the nomination or the film festival
it is being shown at is pasted in the middle. We followed this convention as it
is very generic and basically necessary to fit the nominations onto there. It
helps make the postcard appear more professional.
Social Media: To create a sense of branding
through our products, we are sharing our social media links on all of our
products. This is a convention that we follow from professional products as it
allows for audiences to have a quick link to news about the film. Almost any
level of production company is able to use social media to promote themselves,
pasting the URL to promote the links.
Website:
Theme: We created the website using WIX
which is an online tool that enables you too easily create websites; you start
out with a template which you can chose. Here obviously, I searched for film
themes and found one which was relative to films. This theme then outlined the
website, from there we input all of the information relevant to our production.
Social Media: Likewise, of the postcard,
the social media links were posted onto the website. These links lead to pages
which were created for our film, this includes Twitte, Facebook and YouTube. These links are the same which were pasted
on the postcard, this creates a sense of branding for our products.
Interaction: A successful website usual
allows for the user to interact with the website, using certain features such
as click videos and browsing galleries the user is not just reading information
of the page but instead they are able to interact with it. This convention we
deemed very essential, with the creation of web 2.0 it came really easy to hand
as well.
Text: A more obvious convention was to
limit the text; users are generally not interested in reading large amounts of
texts on pages. We limited the usage by incorporating more images and videos
instead as it appeals more to the user.
This is a post about the filming processes we went through in order to produce our film production. I will go through some of the scenes where we have taken a set up shot and explain how we filmed the shot.
This is from the opening scene, there is a part where there is a close up of my face. Abdul had to get up onto the bed and use the tripod to keep the frame still. He was zoomed into my face, this shot had to be done upwards of 5 times as we kept loosing balance, eventually we managed to film it.
This is a scene that we did not end up using, we filmed a whole scene for Abduls part where he is at a local fast food place ordering food. We co-operated with some of the workers and had them deliver the food to the car meanwhile we filmed them. It was a big hassle as they barely spoke english but we managed to film it and do the exchange of food/money from 3 different angles. Again we just used a tripod to have a stable shot and natural lighting.
Again, this scene was not used. It was supposed to be the final for my part as I drive away. Abdul is filming in free hand and followed me as I reversed out and drove off. This shot was also filmed from inside the car where Abdul had to lay down in the front seat to get a natural camera position. This shot had to be filmed quickly as the sun began to set.
This scene we used, it is for the part where I brush my teeth to get ready in the morning. This had to be filmed multiple times, as Abdul was standing on a chair so he could get the necessary high angle shot, the tripod was also deployed and some lighting was added as the light inside my bathroom was too bright.
This is again a scene from my opening part, here we used a dolly. The dolly was moving along the red carpet. To make it stable we had to lay out my carpet to remove the small bumps on the floor.
Again for branding reasons we needed to use a film title, this would be pasted onto both our website, postcard and film piece. I went through creating a lot of designs which we might be able to use, we then discussed these as a group and came up with the chosen one.
In order to brand our products, we had to create a new logo as our current one was only a font and was not universal. We needed to incorporate a few elements in this new logo, it is important that we can use it on all our media platforms and is considerable for all our products. We needed to consider the style of font and color as well, these two elements make up the whole logo. Further, we wanted to add an object which can be associated with our film company TJAM Productions.
Using both titles and credits in our piece is essential to make it a viable media production. It engages the audience to our film, it helps create a certain sense of familiarity with the film as it identifies actors and other people involved with the film.
The title is a big part of the film, because the title is incorporated in our production throughout. The title has to be easily recognizable and is ideal that also in our film we make sure it is well placed. In the shot you see below, you can see that the show is placed into a blank space, above the buildings as it emphasizes it. The shot is part of the establishing shots which is early on in the film, it helps our audience relate to both our location and the name of the film at the same time.
The title also had an effect added to it, a cross dissolved was used to help it come in and make the shot seem more natural. As the text used is not a natural object it was important to work this balance well, otherwise it would just come up out of no where and seem out of place.
Credits are used in all types of film including ours, it is important as it lets the audience know everyone who was involved with the filming process. I had a few facts about diabetes which was also added prior to the credits, we added these as a group because we felt that it create realism about the problem established in our film. it creates an emotional connection with the audience and really back up what we are trying to say in our film. The writing was very basic, as this helped make it more serious and it was one of the standard titles from Final Cut Pro. The credits were also standard ones from the software used to edit the film, it had to be simple as this is what the audience would be expecting and be familiar with.
To further help our piece come together, we added some special effects into our production. We wanted to be as realistic as possible as realism was an important aspect in our film, we did not use any over the moon special effects but fades and cross dissolves were commonly used throughout our piece. Below you can see the categories which we used, it was all within Final Cut Pro, using the effects enabled us to cut certain parts together and make it a continuity edited piece.
This is one of our scenes were we applied a certain effect. Here Abdul is being dizzy, to enhance this for the audience we put a focus blur on the shot, you can see the effect being put into action in the preview.
Sound is a vital part to creating a good production, ever since the start we have done research to help us understand what key elements of sound we should include. Initially we planned for a slow pace pain style background piece, even though it took a long time to find an appropriate piece of sound we managed to find multiple clips which we could incorporate into different parts of our film. We required a slightly more upbeat sound to help create some optimistic and happy emotions around the initial part of the documentary. The second part where our 2nd character is introduced needed a more dull sound as we wanted it to be in a negative aspect, finally we used silence for the middle part as it helped create a sensation of seriousness. Lastly we used a very optimistic sound once our piece comes together and the resolution is found.
To ensure the quality of the sound we decreased the volume of the sound clips throughout to level -6 to - 12, this was recommend by a friend who said that levelling out the sound is important as it should nook peak at any times in the piece.
All the background music we used came from this website:
http://www.audionetwork.com/browse/m/production-genre/documentary
It enabled us to use free background music and it had a wide variety.
This is part of the editing process, below you can see for our establishing shots which is highlighted by the yellow box. This is the opening scene therefore it is essential that this piece of sound worked well as it leaves a lasting impression for the rest of the film. We reused the same piece, it is simple to do as once you download the file you can import it. Within final cut pro we were able to edit the sound clip to fit well, this meant making it a lot shorter and adding fades to certain parts so it fits in.
Here at the top left of the screen you can see some of the sound clips we were working with, as I mentioned we used multiple sound clips. Top left is the raw files, once they have been pasted into the below bar we can edit them to fit our piece.
The highlighted yellow box is the part of the clip we used, it was about 17 minutes long and we only required certain parts of it which is once highlighted 03:05 minutes. This part was then pasted into our piece and reused multiple times throughout.
A very important part of sound are the sound effects, we did not use any of the original audio from when we filmed. The reason for this was because we lacked a professional mic. We obviously used a voice over, this was recorded with a professional RODE mic which was then imported into Final Cut Pro and edited to fit the piece. The sound effects we used were rather simple, this meant we were able to find them all on Final Cut Pro, over this you can see the sound effects we used which includes bird sounds, water running, slamming doors.
This is the home page for the website, as you can see the title is similar to the one on our film. The website was created using WIX.com which is a free website where you can make your own sites from templates.
This is how I added a gallery to the behind the scenes page, on the left hand side you get a navigation panel which gives you multiple options as to what media you would like to add. Under the gallery option I went with a sort of multiple square picture box, you can see it on the actual page to the right.
WIX gives you the option to add social links, these social links appear as buttons on the page. You can select which social media buttons you want to appear. You are provided with a set of basic ones from WIX but you can upload your own images as well, these buttons then are given a hyperlink to the actual social media site which you can paste.
Simple function such as editing text, once you press on the selected text you are provided with certain options which enable you to edit the text. These options are very basic and simple, such as font size, style and color.
This where we paste a trailer for our short film, you can easily create a box where you can make it or as in the case of the template I was working from there was already a video I just had to go select the URL from youtube and paste it instead which then automatically pastes the video on the page.
Our website has been a working project ever since we started, anything we have felt necessary has been uploaded or saved so it can be put onto the website. As you can see below, the picture we used to enter the THIMUN film festival. Its a promotional picture which we imported and pasted onto the website. To make it fit in well I had to crop out the top title and some writing which was below, this picture will be incorporated into more aspect of our media production.
Below here is the a screenshot showcasing the process taken to upload the images, it is rather simple as we just have the image saved as a JPEG file which can then be selected and uploaded. Once uploaded you are provided with a standard tool kit which enables you to edit the picture like cropping it and tilting it.
As you can see for the background I have gone for a picture which indicates a 'sweet' theme for our project. The donuts are obviously representative of this, upon selecting I was provided with a very basic set of samples. We originally created our own background which was with lollipops as we were going to use this in other parts of our project as well to represent the theme but we decided to cut this out as it did not work very well nor did the created background look nice once pasted on the page.
Here we have above the edited version of the picture, a tool was used to select the outline of me and remove the background completely. The reason for doing this is to follow the conventions of regular film post cards, also the background would remove attention away from the picture which is the main focus point of the whole postcard. Focus is also lead towards the apple to indicate the healthy aspect of life in the role of Jeppe as a diabetic in our film. Below is the original picture you can use for comparison.
As for fonts, we used the website called 101coolfreefonts.com which enables you do search for certain fonts depending on selected styles. We were able to search for fonts relevant to what we were looking for by selecting terms that relate to our audience such as ''BOLD'' and ''CAPITALS''. A few different fonts were found and these were then evaluated by the group, this process was the same for the website and the short film due to branding reasons the title had to be the same throughout our products.
After the font type was selected, I tried to change the styling slightly and according to our initial research where we learnt that red was a suitable color for our diabetes theme I decided to change the two E's to red. I played around with multiple designs and one was then decided by the group for the website, the same one was then used on our postcard.
Due to branding reasons our production logo as well as the title was the same throughout our products. It came from a template on the website, this color scheme was appropriate and was also selected as the background color for our postcard as well as you can see in the final edition below. The title was also changed once the color scheme was added, because of the strong scent of purple we had to remove the red color in the E's and give the title a 3D effect to make it stand out more.
Before reaching the final edition many different drafts were made. Some were a lot better than others, below is one of the original drafts were we were still using a blue color scheme. The fonts were extremely bad as you can see and inappropriate for the serious theme supposedly suggested for our production. The image stayed the same throughout but was re-edited multiple times to get the best version.
Below are mutiple screenshots of the tools that were used to create this piece on Photoshop. The different tools all have a different function to make sure we were able to create the final edition.
This tool was used to remove Jeppe from the background as you can see in the first pictures on this post.
This enables you to highlight what you wish to remove from your production which was the close up of Jeppe. It creates an outline around him which can then be moved around.
These functions all relate to the font, they enabled us to paste the font and manipulate it slightly to become appropriate for the postcard.
This is the 1st draft video, we explored some different shots and experimented with different ideas which we then collected feedback from to see which our audiences would prefer.
THIS POST WAS MADE AS A GROUP
This is the feedback, we used 3 students and asked them questions about the 1st draft after they watched it. These questions related to different aspects of the film to ensure we covered all bases well and we had a happy audience with our final product.
TARGETS:
Abdul's scenes need revamping, comments mentioned both about the actual length and depth of his part but also the camera work.
Audience is interested in knowing more about the background effects of diabetes and how they can prevent it from happening to themselves.
Sound throughout the piece needs to be more consistent, audience prefers to have the same track playing through the whole production.
The whole lenght has to be increased, the audience did not lose interested after the dedicated time and were very interested in continuing to watch the film which allows us to increase the playing time.
Targets
The overall response we received on the first draft of the sweet truth is negative; however we will use this as constructive criticisms and set ourselves targets moving forward with editing and additional filming if necessary.
The feedback on this question was that it is doesn’t come off serious and it was seen as comedy rather than an informative short film, The editing techniques we used in this first draft were not suitable for this genre of short films. We will remove the effects used. One other thing mentioned is that the flow of the documentary doesn’t feel natural, we will overcome this by using a softer transition from one scene to the next.
The response on this is similar to the first question, the issue being the jump cuts and music being inconsistent. We will find a better flowing track to replace the music we currently have. This means we must find something ranging from low and slow paced to high tempo and louder towards the end. As for the jump cuts between narrations, we will work on making the continuity of the short film more realistic as it is supposed to be done in a continuity editing manner to stay true to the genre.
The attitude of the audience on in terms of this question based on the film was negative however they mentioned that there was not much difference between the two characters therefore they could immediately tell how each person treats their diabetes. This means we need to emphasis Jeppe’s positive behavior towards his health and Abdul's lack of effort towards trying to be healthy. As well as give more information about Abdul's routine as we did Jeppe.
The feedback on this question was there was not a lot of information gained, as the short film felt more like a comedy. The audience felt it starts nicely with an introduction of Jeppe and how his life was affected by diabetes however through the editing and later scenes it did not contain any important information on diabetes. This creates a task list for us as we will film more scenes of Abdul explain how he got his diabetes as well as what happens next. We will also try to give the equal amount of scene time between the two characters and this should present the story more clearly.
For our film we are going to be doing a voice-over. Initially we wanted to improvise them but quickly realised that it would be impossible. Therefore, both me and Abdul ended up writing out a script which we then recorded as edited for the film. Below is my script and also Abdul's.
Hi my name is Jeppe Laursen
I have been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes for just over 5 years now
Since I was diagnosed at a young age I have had to change my lifestyle completely
I like to get up early everyday and get the day started
In order to stay healthy I maintain a good hygiene and eat well
I make sure I take my insulin after every meal I have throughout the day and check my blood sugar as well to make sure I'm all good
After my morning routines I like to go out for some exercise or if I have any doctor appointments make sure I attend them
Hi my name is Abdulaziz and I've been diagnosed with type two diabetes for just over a year now
My doctors told me that I got this disease because of my lifestyle
I get out of bed whenever I really feel like it, my room is a mess to be honest, I'm not bothered to stay very organised
When I go out I tend not to bring my medicine because it doesn't look cool
Last month my life changed, I went out to get food at my favourite place, as I got my order I started to get dizzy. Everything started to fade and all the sudden I fell over.
After this I do not remember much, I heard peoples voices calling for help
A guy apparently came to help me, he was also a diabetic. After waking up in the hospital I was told by doctors I needed to change my lifestyle otherwise I wouldn't have long left.
After this I met up with the same guy, he put me in touch with some good people who helped me turn around my life
My father who is a CEO of a global company meets a lot of people in his work hours, he reccently met with the department CEO of Novo Nordisk who are considered the leading global healthcare company within diabetes care. I was then given his contact number, I emailed him about a possible interview and we managed to schedule one. Below is a copy of the email communication, it is in Danish simply because the CEO is also Danish. Below is also a screenshot from Novo Nordisk website.
