Branded texts

In the SlideShare presentation below are some of the most famous directors and a brief description about their career and their success. I have also decided to include the director who made the The Lovely Bones as that is the inspiration for our film story.

Famous directors. from zoerichardson

Textual analysis - Umbilical.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ2zh0kewQc

This short film could beh suggesting how television is affecting children and taking away their general childhood.

Camera Work

The opening to the film is a pan which gives the audience a clear view of the umbilical cord; this also allows people to know what to expect to be at the end of the umbilical cord. This is then followed by a pan onto the childs drawing which shows the angelic behaviour that he portrays.
There are several low angle shots throughout the film. The first one that we see is of the child looking down to the floor with a crayon in his hand about to draw. He has a slight smile on his face that shows he is happy and content with what he is doing.Soon after he stands up and looks towards the window. With the shot still being low angle is makes the little boy seem superior and in control however this is contrasting the point of which the film suggests. After this is cuts into a low angle zoom in to the window. This conveys ideas that the window has a purpose or that something significant is behind it that needs to be seen. Out of the window is a coloured sky and black birds fly past which shows there is life outside the window - soon after there is a coloured ball that gets thrown up into the air and the little boy spots it which allows creates similar ideas that someone is outside playing. .
There is a wide shot after the little boy gets a shock from the 'umbilical cord' which is coming out of his head. He falls to the floor and the wide shot allows us to see the coloured drawings on the floor and the window which is supplying a lot of light into the room. Following on from this is a mid shot of the little boy stroking the painting of the cat that he has drawn which portrays ideas he may be feeling alone and wanting a friend/company.
Later on in the short film there is another low angle shot of the child running up to the window but gets pulled back by the cord which could suggest he is not allowed outside and has to remain in certain space. This then cuts into a high angle of the little boy looking up at it with all of the colourful drawings surrounding him on the floor; this can emphasis his innocence and make him look vulernable to what is outside.
There is a close up of the little boy setting onto his packet of crayons and squashing them. This this convey ideas that he doesn't care about drawings and just wants to be outside playing. The high angle of him sitting on the floor hugging his crayons makes the audience feel a sense of guilt and sadness that he cannot do what he wishes. There is another close up of the ball when it gets thrown into the room which could signify that this ball is something meaningful and important.
Towards the end of the short film is a long shot when the ball in close up in the focus, the child is laying on the floor from being pulled over and then the TV is in the far end which is the thing the child is connected to. This shot is multifunctional as it shows what the child wants but what is stopping him from having it. This makes the story line clearer to the audience and gives them a deeper insight to whats happening.

over the shoulder, the zoom to window. The next few cuts are an over the shoulder shot where the child is watching the ball bounce out of the window. This can demonstrate ideas that he is saying goodbye to what he wants and feels upset that it's going.

When the TV comes on, there is a high angle shot which shows the little boy walking to the TV with all the different lights flashing. This shows that he is now inferior to the television and maybe under control by the TV. Again you see a close up of the boy stepping on the crayon packet signifing he is hypnotised by the television, not caring about anything.

The final camera shot is a zoom out; this is from the televison when the child is sitting in front of it, watching it. The zoom out conotates that hes alone and drawn into it - oblivious from everything else surrounding him.

Sound 

Right at the beginning of the film, there is an ambient sound which has been added which sounds like a light buzzing/flickering. This sets the scene for what to expect in the film.

Throughout the film a keyboard or piano is being played which can heighten ideas of innocence. The instruments being played are quite slow which could suggest that the environment is very calm and settled and could signify that the child is oblivious to other types of music.The notes that are being played would be classed as key minor, making the setting very reserved and relatively serious.

voice over of children's voices, cat s meowing. When this is being played cuts continuously change, showing the use of a sound bridge. This can conotate the continuous use of happiness until the television switches on.

There are other ambient sounds which occur in the film of the window slamming shut when the ball bounces out of it. This could conotate something bad is about to happen due to the loud bang. Similarly it could suggest that whatever is outside isn't to be seen or noticed. If the plot is to do with children being controlled by the television, them this would fit in as the television would want the childs full attention and not to be distracted by anything else. At the start of the short film there are noises of cats meowing and also water trickling which suggests ideas of something happy or delicate creating thoughts of peace andnormality. These can also be classed as diegetic, ambient sounds.

When the little boy walks away from the window, he hears children playing and talking which seems to excite him. The use of this diegetic sound again allows the audience to have a clearer image of what is happening behind the window and feel a sense of relief that there is someone outside who the little boy can play with. When you can hear the ball bouncing it makes the film seem more realistic and helps to add character to the ball. Similary the television noise starts to play in the background of the cuts creating another soundbridge which suggest that the child is continuly attached to the TV and cannot get away from the screen/sounds it makes.

 

Editing 

In the short film you see a variety of continuous cuts which are realivity long. By making the cuts seem long, it could demonstrate the long process of television shows and that they can be watched all day. It creates ideas that there is no way to get away it and it reinforces the guilt that you feel for the little boy.
At the beginning of the film, there is an effect which makes the title look like it is in the spotlight. This evokes ideas that the film is about one main idea - the little boy. This can be reinforced by the title 'umbilical' as when you are in your mothers womb then you securely attached by the umbilical and there is no escape. This can show close conotations to the relationship that the little boy has with the television - even though he has a chance to draw or play ball, the TV keeps drawing him in and stopping him.
The short film has been edited in a cartoon effect similar to childrens drawings. First instincts of this will suggest that it is to do with a child(ren) and this is reinforced by the title 'umbilical' which signifies babies.
The title and credits are in the same style and format which helps to show continuity. It has been edited in a sketchy style to match the rest of the film and to make it look professional.

 

Mise en Scene

Low key lighting is used in the film to make it look more realistic and natural. The opening of the film is quite dark, illustrating something bad is going to occur however as the pan moves on, the lighting brightens and sets a positive mood. You start to see drawings in colour where everything else is in black and white. This could suggest positive conotations as drawing is a good thing for children to do.

The little boy is dressed in dungarees which is a typical piece of clothing that you would expect a child to wear, so again it makes the film look professional by maintaining the theme.

The drawings that the child has drawn are colourful that evoke ideas that he is happy. The colours of the drawings are bright which also suggests ideas of positive conotations and happiness. Besides everything apart from the drawing, the bouncy ball and the sky, everything is black and white; this portrays ideas that other things are negative and don't make the child happy. The drawings may be in colour as that is what children should be doing instead of watching TV. Even though the colours flashing from the TV are quite bright, they may be symbolising hypontism as the child is sat close to the TV watching it which is bad for the eyes.

Treatment

Before we started creating the short film Sophie and myself decided to create a treatment to allow us to have a clear insight on what to include into the film. By creating this, it also records all ideas we have so none get forgotten and we can always refer back to it.

                                                                                                                  

The characters in our short film are PHILIP SWAIN and SOPHIE WAGSTAFF. We are shooting the short film in a graveyard located in Kettering. The plot is about a pedophile killer who stalks a young girl and kills her. We've chosen this story line because we want to create tension, for it to be gripping and exciting for what is about to happen.

Plot
The young girls dad dies before the film so he is now being looked after by her aunty as her mother abandoned her with her father when she was born. A pedophile killer is on the loose, yet to be caught. Sophie goes to visit her fathers grave everyday at 4:00pm after school as she misses him greatly and feels alone. The pedophile killer spots the girls and realises she visits the grave everyday at the same time. He starts spying on her and eventually captures her, rapes her and kills her.

Locations
We want to create an eery/spooky kind of setting we thought it would be a good idea to base our film in a graveyard as they are naturally quite scary. Besides this, there are other factors in a graveyard which can contribute to the scariness. For example these could be the church, shadows, tall trees swaying in the wind, and crunchy leaves to emphasis sound. Also in the setting of a graveyard the killer could disguise himself easier behind trees when spying on Sophie. Even though you suspect something bad will happen in the setting of a graveyard, we believe that we can pay more focus on making it scarier and more tense and unexpected. Tension will play a large part in our film.
The noises of nature will always help the eariness.



The story begins with a fresh green leaf slowly falling to the ground which will be put on slow motion and played with a voice over.
The story ends with a dead brown leaf slowly falling to the ground with slow motion and a voice over; this life journey of a leaf as well as Sophies.

Target Audience

Below are several factors that we need to take into consideration when it comes to the target audience.

AGE

As mentioned in a previous post, the age range for our film is going to be aimed at the PG12-50 age band as we feel these ages will be most suitable to watch the film based on the content. Also typically you have to be above the age of 15 to watch horror or thrillers depending on the footage. From doing secondary research, we found out that The Lovely Bones is rated at a PG-13 as it doesn't explicitly show anyone being murdered and the content is fairly moderate.
Fischoff created a theory which states "gradual disengagement with the horror genre" which portrays ideas that people like the thought of scaring themselves and to see how much they can push themselves in order to test themselves. It also states that horror and thriller films are mostly aimed for teenagers and young adults as they mainly appeal to these ages.
For this reason we will be putting the age range quite young so we can get as much interest from the younger audience as possible.

GENDER

We are aiming the short at males and females as we think it would be appropriate for both genders. We feel that it would be hard to aim our film at just one gender as it will limit the interest it will gain and possibly reduce sales. As the genre of our film is drama/thriller is a neutral gender genre so it would be hard to focus this on one gender. 

LIFESTYLE

Our film would be more suited for families and for teenagers. We think this is appropriate based on the content of our film as it could be a good way to bond with family members by watching a short film together and teenagers would find the film most enjoyable. As we have previously said, the message of the film is to make sure someone is aware of where you are at all times so the family viewers would be able to reinforce this idea and make them more knowledgeable and aware of what could happen in this situation. 

INTERESTS

Our film doesn't desire any particular interests as to be interested in serial killers and pedophiles would be slightly strange. Our film may be more appealing to people who like to be in tense situations and on the edge of their seat to find out what's about to happen and in a sense like the adrenaline that it brings.

SOCIO-ECONOMIC GROUP

We feel that there isn't a set social group which will favour our film, however believe that lower/middle class people would be more interested in watching it due to the story line and actions.

Key Information

Just like any other film, we had to decide on the audience, genre, narrative and the representations that it will portray. Below is each category with more detail and why we have chosen it.

Audience

The audience for our film is going to be for both sexes - males and females. we thought we'd target it for both genders as everyone has different tastes and have different opinions on each genre. We are putting the age range as 12-50 as it would not be suitable for young children due to the nature and content of the film and it may scare or frighten them. We put the age range up to 50 as we feel that people over this age may not favour or enjoy watching this genre.

Genre

Due to the content of our film, the genre would possibly be a drama/thriller. The Lovely Bones (the film we are basing our short film on) is a drama/fantasy however we are looking to create more of a tense and creepier setting and content to make our film more distinctive and different comparing it to The Lovely Bones. By doing this it will put our own stamp on it. The Lovely Bones also has a lot dream-like thoughts of heaven and the after life whereas we are focusing more on the killing of the girl therefore it will be more thriller rather than fantasy.

Narrative
The young girls mother dies before the film so she is now being looked after by her aunty as her father abandoned her and her mother when Sophie, the young girl, was a baby. A serial killer is on the loose, yet to be caught. Sophie goes to visit her mothers grave everyday at 4:00pm after school as she misses her greatly and feels alone. The serial killer  has been stalking the girl for months plotting and planning his attempt to kill her.

Representations 

The representations that we wish to convey through our film is negative thoughts as bad things occur throughout. The only positive sign that we would heighten are the messages that the audience should take into consideration. These are to be wary of your surroundings and think about your safety first, to think about your actions and where to travel alone to and to contact people so they know where you are at all times.
We want to represent the main character, Sophie, as quite naive and vulnerable to what can happen in real life and not to trust anyone. Besides this we want to represent the serial killer as dangerous. 

Our Idea

Our idea was inspired by the film 'The Lovely Bones'. Sophie and myself previously watched this film and we loved it. We liked how unexpected it all seemed and the way it was produced. This gave us the idea of doing a similar plot however giving it our own twist. The link below provides a lot of detail on this film and a description on the plot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lovely_Bones

Below are some shots we especially liked as they portray the feeling of unease and mystery. I like these images of George Harvey, who kills Susie Salmon in the film because he has a very focused and creepy expression on his face. In each of these pictures he has someone in his sight (possibly Susie) and he remains in the correct character all the way through which I think is crucial for this role.

Possible Sounds for the Film

Before we started recording, we thought it was a good idea to go through on Imovie sounds to see which ones would be suitable and sounds good which our film. This allowed us to have an idea on the moods that the film will create and help pair it with the sounds more. The list below is all of the ones we are thinking about coorperating into our film.

• Alien impact
• Borealis
• Dogma
• Farewell 
• Mystery accents
• Suspense accent

Also during the selection of sounds there were many sounds that could be used as ambient ones which could occur in the background of the setting/actions/location. This will also help to create the eery sounds and could portray certain feelings and ideas to the audience. 

• Cave Water drops
• Dog barking
• Door metal squeak
• Elysium
• Footstep
• Flurry
• Grandfather clock strike
• Police car siren
• Pursuit 
• Radio station 
• Clock wind-up

Research Methods

There are 4 different kinds of research methods which all have different advantages and disadvantages.

PRIMARY

This research method is done by the individual who wants to find out the information. This can be done by interviews, surveys or questionnaires.

Advantages: You will know where the source of information has come from and the topic of information is more focused and specific to what you want to know. 

Disadvantages: It may be time consuming and  quite expensive and the data may be out of date when you come to use it.

SECONDARY

This research method is done by an individual researching from other information resources such as the internet, newspapers and libraries.

Advantages: The process of finding information is done quickly - you only have to search for it and it isn't expensive. 

Disadvantages: You may not have any access to these sources of information. You don't know where the information has come from so may be unreliable. 

QUALITATIVE

This research method focuses on the reasoning of collecting information and finds more information out about people including age, interests, religion etc. 

Advantages: This can be very detailed and precise. 

Disadvantages: It could be time consuming as you would have to analyse peoples responses.

QUANTITIVE

This research method focuses on the numerical side of research collection like statistics and data.

Advantages: It is good for finalising results and making them more conclusive.

Disadvantages: This could take a lot of time and a lot of effort is involved.

I think that the best research methods to use during the process of creating and finalising the short film would be primary, secondary and quantitive data. I think that qualitative data would mainly be used in the evaluation process of this task. This is because they all provide good and fairly reliable results which would allow summarised conclusions about specific topics. Throughout the task I will be commenting on the research carried out is either primary, secondary, qualitative or quantitive.

Recce pictures

To get an idea of the possible locations for our short film, we took some pictures of the areas which we were looking to film in. As you can see in the pictures below, we thought the entrance of the school would be good to use as it would set the scene for the opening - informing the audience of the location and setting.
By filming the 'student' getting out of the car in the car park, it could suggest that they weren't actually a student but could be some sort of teacher.
Also having the office in the opening of the film could also create the impression that this student is new as she asked for her timetable to the receptionist.
Having the 'student' in the corridors with other students convinces the audience even more that she is actually a student, which we thought was useful to use.

Main Task Decision

Our class got told that it was acceptable to work in pairs our in small groups for the main task. In the group I am in is obviously myself, Sophie and Harriet so we will all share the work load and work well together.
We have chosen to create a short film for the main task as we have clear ideas on what we want to create and the mood we want to portray within it. As we gained our thoughts quite early within the process, it allowed us to think more deeply about what we want to include in the film, the mise en scene and camerawork that would work best as well as finding reliable characters who wouldn't mind playing a part in it.

Short film

What I Have Learnt

Scripting/Storyboarding

Before we started the filming we had to create a storyboard or a script which displayed our thoughts on the story plot and then shots that we were planning to take. Besides this we had to jot done all the sounds, camerawork, editing and mise en scene that we wanted to include. We chose to do a storyboard to show our story line and it helped me to learn that it allowed us to have a deeper vision on what to compose as well as helping to plan the time schedule and the period in which to film. It gave us a structure in which we could follow to see if we were doing the work correctly and if 2we had completed all of the filming scenes.

Locations

As this was just a preliminary task we got limited to the schools premises on where we could film. Due to the story plot to our film, we wanted to do some of the filming outside. This caused a lot of problems due to the weather being miserable. A majority of the days in which our lessons occurred it was raining which meant we could not film. We this happened we filmed inside so we wasn't wasting time. As our deadline was getting closer we had to take matters into our own hands and used our free periods to film when the weather was good. I have learnt that we cannot always do as we please and have to wait for the right time or in this case, when the weather was decent.

Talent

First of all, I have learnt that 'talent' means actors/actress! I have noticed many things when it comes to working with the actress in my case. It is clear to see that you cannot always rely on the actresses who play a part in the film you are creating as they may be off due to illnesses, appointments, and they may just not be in the mood to film. But the majority of time she was reliable and I knew she would be as she is a very good friend of mine. Besides this I also had to rely on the actress and myself to bring in the correct clothing for the filming and this proved to be a big problem as it wasn't always the first thing on our mind to bring to school (our location for filming).

Organisations

Thoughout the task, my partner and myself had really good organisation skills as we contributed fairly and made the same amount of decisions. A big part of our film was the class room which took a lot of organising. We had to get the whole of our media class into a room and set it up as if it was a real lesson; this took a lot of organising as people in our class had their own work to do so we had to chose to film at the right time. We also had to organise when to bring in the clothing needed and when we could book the cameras out. I learnt that not all organisations run smoothly as many factors, such as the weather, can mean that things cannot be done.

Teamwork

I worked with another girl in my class who is the actress in the short film and we are very good friends which made the task more enjoyable and easier in some ways. I was the one who done the recording while my friend done the acting. We found that working together was very benefical becuase we contributed both ideas about the story line, camera work techniques, and putting the film together. We had to rely in each other to bring the clothes that we were shooting in. The shooting was very weather dependent for some of it as we was filming outside, so when it was raining we had to work together on editing the footage we aready had.

Editing

We learnt how to upload the footage onto the Mac as we did not know how to do this. Once this was completed we had to delete any film which we didn't want to use; this was relatively easy as you just pressed the 'delete' icon. As we completed the filming early we just explored and tested Imovie to get an idea on how to edit. As me nor Sophie, the actress, had used Imovie before, we was clueless to how the editing works. We rushed the editing as it took us a long while to learn how to do it. We found out how to add sounds and at transitions ourselves because it was quite easy to figure out.

The Final Product

The main thing I loved about this task was recording it as I learnt more techniques than what I knew before and can put them to use in the future. I also enjoyed working with my partner because even though we got all of the work done on time, we still have an enjoyable time creating it.
If I could improve the making of the film I would maybe have thought about the weather conditions first as I would realise that it could prevent filming however I feel that shooting outside added vartiation to the films setting and made it look more realistic.