Rough cut - Audience feedback

This is the first rough cut we have edited, we have uploaded it to Youtube so that we can gain audience feedback on the two separate scenes we have uploaded.

Teacher Feedback

1) Textually analyse at least three examples of either short films or films of a similar genre.
2) Audience research
3) Risk assessment
4)Costume plans
5)Audience feedback
6)Allocation of roles
7)Research into similar videos

Narrative

What is narrative?

The concept of narrative is the coherence/organistation given to a series of facts, in other words, its what strings each event to the next and how we can interpret those facts and events.

How useful is a narrative?

The concept of  narrative is very useful when understanding someone's work as people need a narrative to understand the ideas and messages behind the work. People need a narrative to string toegther the events in order for it to make sense. Every work has a beginning, a middle and an end. The narrative helps the viewer in understanding how these all link.

Differences between film and music videos

The differences between film narratives and music video narratives is that music video narratives are often just a reflection of the lyrics, while film narratives try to follow along a story or plotline. Music videos tend to focus on the artists themselves, while a narrative will create a universe the film's plot can work around.

The structure of our narrative

Our narrative isn't a conventional equilibrium, disequilibrium and another equilibrium or a standard beginning, middle and end in terms of time. Chronologically, our video starts from the end, slowly revealing what happened in the beginning.

Costume and prop planning

Before we begin filming, we have planned out what props we will be using and what the main character will be wearing:

Costume and props presentation

Location shots

Here is a slideshow of shots of the locations we are thinking of using for our short film:

Presentation1

Compiling these shots will help us plan shot types while story boarding and also help us plan what types of creative techniques we can use for specific scenes.

Genre theory

There are several theories on the subject of media genre, which include:

John Fiske -

"Any one programme will bear the main characteristics of its genre, but is likely to include some others: ascribing it to one genre or another involves deciding which set of characteristics are most important" 

- Any texts main characteristics will be classed as that genre e.g. Lord of the Rings is considered fantasy as it mainly contains the icons of fantasy.

Richard Maltby and Ian Craven -

"The success of Hollywood is reliant on the combination of predictable elements with variation." - Hollywood is mainly successful because films that fit in specific genres have predicatble plot devices.

Edward Buscombe -

Edward Buscome felt that Iconography was the best way to achieve generic definitions.

- A films genre is defined by its icons e.g. A gangster film will contain guns, violence.

In stark contrast Rick Altman suggests:

• Genre theory presumes that viewers pre-read texts
• Viewers become passive voyeurs
• Genres are therefore restrictive
• Doesn't allow for hyrbids - the blending of genres

Film Log - Wednesday, 10th November

Today, we successfully managed to film a test sequence for the introduction of our film. Since the recent story change, it has been much easier to film as the locations haven't been nearly as demanding. We have uploaded our footage to the computer and have finished editing. So far, the shot types were mostly successful, however, at certain points we have had to edit it differently or even had to remove the entire clip so a re-shoot may be need to be scheduled in order to perfect the sequence.

We have lowered the saturation and brightness on each clip to give it a dingier, more urban look. Despite social-realist films not usually being edited drastically, we believe that we still fit within the conventions of it as the desaturated, grey look adds to the atmosphere of the film.

We have next planned to film the first flashback of the film, as we have decided to try and film it in a chronological order.

Common representations in Social Realism

Social Realism often focusses around different groups of people, such as teenagers and often middle-aged men and women. Teenagers are usually portrayed in a stereotypical manner in social realism, such as vandals or drug -users wearing scruffy clothing or looking like 'chavs'. Older women are often portrayed as being single parents, either being abusive or not being able to cope.

These are often traditional representation, as kids have alsways been seen as being trouble-makers or anti-social, however, women being portrayed as being single parents is quite modern, most likely because having children out of marriage isn't seen as consequential as it once was.

New idea - Plot overview

Plot OverviewV2
After showing the group the last script and idea, we decided that it would be difficult to find the actors required and even more difficult to film properly. So after discussing it further, we came up with a new idea and allocated me to produce an overview. We have also decided on a title for the film, Attrition.

Attrition -
          Wearing something down by the cause of friction.

We thought this related to the film as it represented how the main character has worn his life away to a life of stealing and dealing drugs.

Social Realist genre conventions

After looking at several social realist films such as Fish Tank, Kes and This is England, there are a running line of common conventions found in all of them.

• A vast majority of these films have been shot using handheld cameras, to give the films an almost documentary like feel to the reinforce the realism. These often include long cuts and a lack of 'flashy' editing, in order to make the audience forget they are watching a film.

• The use of unknown actors was also a common factor found throughout all of the example films, such as London to Brighton, Fish Tank and even This is England. The actors were used to reinforce the realism as they could be seen as just anybody in society, so the personal success wouldn't get in the way of the atmosphere. Upon reading certain texts about the directors, some only wrote a base script so the actors would have to improvise, so it would have a more realistic feel.

- Example of unknown actors -

• The use of sound if mostly diegetic as music is sparsely used and the real world sound is exaggerated. Music is still used, but mostly in very specific scenes, often to carry the emotion of a certain character to the audience.