Research & Planning

I took it upon myself to do furthermore secondary research in the form of audio specifically the Radio. I tuned in to TED Radio hour on BBC radio 4 extra. i targeted the episode 'Creativity'.It was was a interview which the presenter Guy Raz asked the Singer/Songwriter what creativity was. 

During this Radio there was a specific point that caught me! I think the definition that Sting used was tremendously powerful and i personally felt that this could be said for our idea 'The Job Interview'. He defines creativity as the 'ability to take a risk, put yourself on the line and face ridicule, being criticised, but you have an idea that you want to put out there and you want to take that risk.'

'The Job Interview' was initially made up in a group conversation. However we wanted to implement something that we have faced our life or will be. 'The Job Interview' in a way is something that we may all face in life, coming out of University and finding a job isn't easy as well as the competitiveness for them. I think the film show cases this perfectly. Its something i believe in a is willing to take a risk. 

Short Film Research

In efforts to find out more about Short Films, my group and I had attended the London Film Festival on the 16th October 2014. They showed showed experimenta 3 short film screenings which were 'The Unreliable Narrator', 'Pyramid', and 'This Illuminated word is full of stupid Men'. What i took away from the event as the fact that how the directors has a narrative however there was no narrator, a times no sound. But the way they synced both sound and video footage to be more effective and touching to the viewer. The synopsis of each film is seen on the pictures below. 

Examples of Short Film:



The first short film shown above uses a variety of shots, shots such a extreme close ups, close ups, wide shots, medium shots and many more. Each shot chosen creates emotion to the audience making them feel as if they are immersed in the movie. The movie fits in into the codes and conventions of Short film as firstly is short, the duration of the film is 7.43 minutes. Secondly there is only one main character situated in the film, however most short film tend to have at least 2 character maximum being 3. The budget seem low however no figures were distributed  looking at the short film it seems as the short film did not cost much. Thirdly it is situated in a everyday situation, which is school. 

Codes & Conventions Of Short Film

• Characters - Characters is an Obvious Convention as ‘Short films’ tend to stick to 2 or 3 main characters. Being ‘short’, short films don’t have time to create deep back story or history for the characters, therefore character numbers are kept low in Short Films to allow the viewer to relate to the characters in the small amount of time. 
• Twist - Short Films nearly always contain a ‘Twist’, the reason for twisting the story line is to make the short film more interesting as they are so short. Without a Twist in a Short Film the story line would simply be uninteresting.
• Budget - Short Films typically have a low budget. This is based on the fact that most Short Film Directors are independent without the sufficient backing in terms of funding. They keep their budget down by sticking to one or two locations and only using one or two actors. Having such a short film allows costs to be little to nothing in some departments as some actors will work for free if they really like the story line.
• Length - Short Films are typically ‘Short’ and usually have a max length of 35 Minutes. They are typically around 5 – 10 Minutes in Length. If these ‘Short Films’ were any longer they wouldn't be classed as ‘Short’; and would be named Feature Length.5) Situation - Short Films usually take an everyday situation that we can all relate to and then flip it on its head in some way. This allows the viewer to relate to the Short Film, but at the same time intriguing the viewer.

Theorist

Character Theory

Vladmir Propp proposed a theory of classifying the characters and their actions due to their clearly defined roles and functions. He concluded that all the characters could be resolved into 7 broad character functions in the 100 tales he analyzed:
1.The villain
2.The dispatcher
3.The (magical) helper
4.The princess or prize and her father
5.The donor
6.The hero or victim/seeker hero
7.The false hero


Primary Research VS Secondary Research 



Introduction to Primary and Secondary Research by awanniarachige on GoAnimate







Cinematography
Cinematography is basically like photographing a movie, except you are capturing it with moving images. Lighting, color, tone, clothing, mood, focal point, focus, camera placement, depth of field, and movement are all very important elements in cinematography. 

Two-Shot

A shot of two people, framed similarly to a mid shot. Two shot allows the audience to understand both characters emotions simultaneously, as well as feel that they are immersed in there conversation.

MCU (Medium Close Up)
Half way between a MS (Mid Shot) and a CU (Close up). Contains a figure from the knees/waist up and is normally used for dialogue scenes, or to show some detail of action, in this case she is on her phone.

ECU (Extreme Close Up)

The ECU gets right in and shows extreme detail. an extreme version of the close up, generally magnifying beyond what the human eye would experience in reality, the emotions on the characters face, creates a sense of identity and belonging in the movie.

CU (Close Up)
A certain feature or part of the subject takes up the whole frame. This shows very little background, and concentrates on either a face, or a specific detail of mise en scène.

Cut-In
Shows some (other) part of the subject in detail.

Film Transitions 

1.THE DISSOLVE
The dissolve is an editing technique where one clip seems to dissolve, or fade into the next. As the first clip is fading out, getting lighter and lighter, the second clip starts fading in, becoming more and more prominent.

2. THE WIPE
This transition is the opposite of the dissolve in that it draws attention to itself.

3. THE CUTAWAY
As the name implies, in the basic cutaway, the filmmaker is moving from the action to something else, and then coming back to the action.

4. THE FADE
The fade in and fade out usually signal the beginning or end of a scene, especially if the filmmaker is fading to/from black.

Westminister Reference Library

We had visited the Westminister Reference Library that is located in central London. The Library which specialises inperforming arts, had many useful books in the film section that we could read and make notes from. One of the books that stood out the most was "Making short films: The Complete Guide from Script to Screen by Clifford Thurlow". We found out that this book was highly recommended, after reading it,on many different book reviewing sites such as Goodreads that had rated this book 3.94/5 stars. The reason why we had decided to go to a library to do research as well as using the internet is due to the Filter Bubble by the main search engine Google. Going to a library allows us to research things without it being tailor made for us by the Filter bubble and this increases the chances of us being able to find information that is reliable and that is being presented to us for the right intentions. Compared to if we had just done all of our research using Google.

The world wide web commonly referred to an the internet.

When I use a phrase like 'using the internet' what I really mean is using the sets of protocols of the world wide web bit nobody talks about using the www so I'm going to use common practice. As well as using the internet to find examples of short films, there are also websites which support short film production such as virgin short films, channel 4 and the BBC. Another website which hosts short films and includes a film school for novice film makers, like myself, is Vimeo.

I utilized DuckDuckGo as another web index because of Google's channel bubble. This alludes to ventures being sifted because of past search records, which impacts the sites that surface. At the point when utilizing the web search tool i went over the BFI short film site page which issued me an understanding into short film history. It plots how short film shift. Case in point, some may be 15 seconds while others are 45 minutes.

Work Experience:

        

During the October half term from the 27th-31st,  I took it upon ourselves to take part in work experience along the lines of short film production. Luckily enough we had the opportunity to work on the set of a short film called Untamed written and directed by Richard Kattah. During these 5 days we helped out on the various sets whilst learning about, lighting, audio and camera work. During this time we gained a lot of experience and lot numerous skills which we can take and use on our work to improve the quality of the final piece.  

Film Pitches-

    

Back in september we all thought of film pitches on the off chance that you look at mine its at 1:18-1:46. Then our thoughts weren't exceptionally sensible a we were still innocent about film thoughts. My thought was great anyway I don't think it would be great to film and for somebody to act. As it would just be around one character it would conflict with the conventions of short films as the generally there are 2 or 3 fundamental characters. There wasn't much to the storyline and even with inventive shots it would at present be very dull.

PLANNING

Production Schedule

Date	Task	Who's the task set for?	Who's checking completion?
15th September  Monday	Discussion and Research as a group into possible ideas for our short film	Discussion -Group	Research - Jose
19th September  Friday	Final decision film type (genre), on storyline and locations	Group	Group
22ndSeptember  Monday	Secondary research - Research into current short films applicable to our genre choice (Drama)	Asanka  Kilipi	Jose Ruben
26thSeptember  Friday	Primary research - Create a sample group and ask them about the potential of our storyline	Jose	Asanka
29th September  Monday	Create a mood board or mind map to prompt ideas	Ruben	Kilipi
1st October  Wednesday	Create a story-board for our film	Jose	Asanka
3rd October  Friday	Visit potential locations	Ruben	Kilipi
8th October  Wednesday	Decision on casting	Kilipi	Group
13th October  Monday	Filming Practice (experimenting with the camera)	Asanka	Jose
20thOctober  Monday	Start of filming	Group	Group
21stOctober  Tuesday	Second day of filming	Group	Group
22ndOctober  Wednesday	Third day of filming	Group	Group
23rdOctober  Thursday	Fourth day of filming	Group	Group
24th October  Friday	Fifth day of filming	Group	Group
27thOctober  Monday	Start of editing	Jose Asanka	Kilipi  Ruben
29th October  Wednesday	Second day of editing	Kilipi  Ruben	Jose Asanka
31st October  Friday	Final day of editing	Group	Group
31st October  Friday	Watch finished film	Group	Group  Audience
3rd November  Monday	Gather feedback - Group and audience  (Film and editing)	Jose	Asanka
10th November  Monday	Re-shooting	Group	Group
17th November  Monday	Re-editing	Group	Group
21st November  Friday	Final film viewing	Group	Group
24th November  Monday	Start evaluation	Group	Group
8th December  Monday	Finish evaluation and blog work	Group	Group

Designing our Logo

We wanted as a group to keep our logo sleek and elegant. After doing some research on film logos we want that in most logo they used simple text and short names. That is why we came up with the name K.A.R.J. Production. The inspiration for the names was all our initials K (Kilipi), A (Asanka), R(Ruben), J(Jose). 

Inspiration for logo

Our Logo

For this logo I took the idea of a film strip and placing the production groups and embedding it in the middle of the logo. By doing this it keeps the professionalism of the logo. i wanted to keep the logo as simple as possible because most global logo are very simple take the Nike logo as an example a simple tick. I then went further on to design this second version of the logo. It has a circular film role with the end of it meting on our production name. In doing so this it makes it very eye catchy and pleasing to the eye. In my opinion the second version of this particular   logo looks better as it keeps the simplistic and professional look.

Audience Research 

Target Audience

Who are the target audience for short films?

The short film industry’s audience is quite specialised and niche compared that of the mainstream audience of larger full length FEATURE FILMS.

Getting closer to understanding AUDIENCES through using DEMOGRAPHIC features such as social class, gender, educational level, ethnicity, location and age.

Social Class/Status - Interest in short films is really limited to those people who are interested in the form of short films and in making short films themselves. In London there are short film festivals, which are screened at places like the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts), Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn and Ritzy Cinema in Brixton. These are places that attract consumers who enjoy theatre and specialist cinema. They are usuallyuniversity educated and middle class people.

Gender - Roughly 50/50 male/female split. Because there is a higher number of women studying creative arts, short films tend to be aimed slightly more towards them.

Age - Short films are often shared on social media, which is dominated by young people. Because of this, the age range is roughly from 15–30 year-olds.

Short films mostly target young, bright film enthusiasts, both male and female. It is important to understand that, unlike feature length films, short films do not target a broad, but a smaller specific audience depending on its genre.

 STORYBOARD

Story-boarding permits us to outline the story line obviously, letting us know what happens in every scene in what request. Story-boarding as a gathering permits us to bring all our thought into one so it is anything but difficult to picture. It makes it correctly clear to every one of us precisely what the film is about and how we will be recording it, so that our dreams of the film aren't diverse. At the point when shooting, story-board to help guide us take the shots. Minor things were changed through gathering discourses, however the printed material had been the building pieces of the entire generation.

Shot List

Shot-listing tells us what we will be filming i.e. the position of the camera, what the camera is focusing on and what technique we would use; such as whether the camera will be panning or not.

Location Scouting 

Group Vlog

Mood board:

Coming up with an idea for the short film isn't the easiest of tasks when you have a short period of time to think of one. One way in which we combated this was putting all our idea into a mood board, it was apparent that we wanted to base our main film in the world of work. On the top I have placed the mood board which was created to give the production team a brief outline of what the story line. This mood board gave us a vision and guided us to create the idea of a two male character unknowingly applying for a job with only one spot left. We had to keep to codes and conventions of a short film so we used school as our main location  as well as taking in to consideration that we have no budget to use. 

Group Wiki

During the preparation of our short film, my group had to create a production schedule which we would use to help guide us week by week with what needs to be done in order for us to successfully complete our short film.

Health & Safety