FILM: Shooting Schedule

When we were creating a shooting schedule I found that it was important to bring into consideration times when everyone was busy. For example, I myself am busy Monday to Wednesday evenings so at these times it will only be Rebecca and Rose who will be filming. I also think that a shooting schedule is important to the group as it gives us a rough idea of when our film we be complete. Also, a shooting schedule is important to a filming company as it is guideline to make sure that companies do not go over time or over budget.

FILM: Researching Other Short Films

To prepare for the making of my short film I did some research on YouTube by looking at other exsiting short films, I thought that this would give me a good idea of what a short film should be like and what it should consist of.

The first short film I viewed was Broken.



This short film showed me that diolouge in a short films is not all important, I think that this also help me in writing the script for our short film as our project is at times going to be short of diolouge and I thought it was important to see how this has worked in other short films as in feature films, there is alot more diolouge used throughout.

Another, short film that I researched on YouTube was Strangers.



This short film was also short on diolouge but more importantly I think that the message conveyed in the project was brillantly done and worked effectively. Messages are also shown in feature films but I have found that in shorter projects it is shown in far less time.

POSTER: Analysing Conventions of Film Posters

When loooking at the conventions of film posters we looked at major feaure film posters but also past media A-Level students film posters. When analysing these film posters we looked at the conventions which are portryed in them. For example, we looked at the film poster for 'The Silence Of The Lambs' and at first we looked at the message we thought was conveyed from it but on a closer look we found that there was more to it than we thought. We found that on the face of the butterfly was a skull, but on a closer look we found that the skull was conveyed of the bodies of women. I think that this was a great use of conventions on film posters as in the film there is a running theme of women. Another convention shown on the 'Silence of the Lambs' film poster is the use of a women as the main figure and the red colour of her eyes. The redness shown could suggests some kind of death or danger that this women is going to recieve.

I think that researching the conventions of a film poster was very interesting as it showed me that more thought goes into developing these posters than I thought i.e the Silence of the Lambs poster. Having seen 'The Silence of the Lambs' I now believe that this film poster could show the public what the film would be about if they looked closer at the poster.

POSTER: Pitching Ideas for Posters

When pitching the ideas for our film poster, the things that we decided to bare in mind were the genre, the message being conveyed by the film and also the overall feeling of the film. With this in mind, we each drew up our own film posters and then analysed each others. After this we decided that Rebecca (other group member) had the best film poster as we felt that it conveyed sadness and also related to the film via the sciccors and shards of paper.

We found that Rebecca's idea of a film poster also made the audience think, Why has the girls got her back to us? Why is there paper everywhere?. This is what we wanted the audience to think so that it could convince them to watch our short film, we also thought that our poster would not be to hard for a child to understand or too simple to not appeal to an adult.





Overall, I feel that we made the best decision concerning our film poster.

POSTER: Sketching Possible Images/Fonts

The image shown above is a rough idea of what our own film poster is going to look like. Everyone in our group talked about what we would like to see in the film poster and what we thought would be conventional to the film. Overall, we thought that we should have a little girl in the middle of the film poster as the girl in our film the girl is highly important to the plot. Also, we thought that if we could only see the girls back on the poster it would adds some sense of vunerability and suspense, making the public think why has she got her back to us? Why can we not see her face? Is she crying?. We wanted to make the public think when they would look at our film poster.
Also, we felt that a frame would add to the theme of the importance of the photos in the film and also that the shards of paper and scissors seen, would also make the audience think why.

When thinking about the font and the title, we felt that the title should be in a child friendly kind of font but that the 'o' in the word 'Torn' would be replaced with a broken heart. I feel that this would work well as all characters feel some heartbreak in our film, for example the parents are both arguing and the daughter is sad and fears the worst for her mum and dad.

POSTER: Setting Up Mise-En-Scene

When we were drawing up our film poster, I thought that it was of importance that we conveyed Mise-en-Scene well as this is an important convention of film posters as things such as props, body language, lighting and costume can have a vital importance to telling a story through our poster.
Firstly, when we were thinking up our idea for our film poster we all thought that we should keep the theme of insecurity and shyness running on to the film poster. Therefore we decided that we could have our little girl in our poster with her back towards us which shows that she doesn't want to talk and is scared to talk to us. I thought that this would work well as in the film she is scared that her mum and dad are asking therefore in the poster it could show that she is scared, also it gives the audience something to think about.
Secondly, when thinking about costume we had to think that the girl in our film poster was going to be a young girl therefore we thought that if we put her in pyjamas this would be conveyed as 'cute' along with the red bow that we placed in her hair.
When thinking about props we thought that it was essential that the scissors were used in the shot that was going to be used on the poster. This is because I think that it makes the audience think 'why has a young girl got scissors?', this is what I wanted to aim for in my poster as I would like the audience to be drawn in by the poster. I think that the little girls body langauge in the way she's holding the scissors says that she is unsure at what she is doing with which could make the audience nervous.
When considering lighting we thouhgt that it would be good to have good enough lighting to show the little girl but also so that it was not light enough to light the room putting more emphisis on the girl.

POSTER: Exploring Fonts

When exploring fonts for our poster with my group there were a quite a few things to consider. For example, we had to bare in mind the genre of the film and what the film id trying to convey. Our film is about a rocky relationship and a vunerable girl therefore when looking at fonts we decided that Centery Gothic was a suitable font to use as it looks slightly mysterious and edgy. This also may draw in the audience as they may want to find out what this film is about.

This is why we did not want to use a 'happy' font because this does not work with what the film is trying to tell the audience.