CR for Short Film

1. How do your products represent social groups or issues?

Our products represent many social issues. The short film shows the issue of how teens put a face on to be socially presentable. In the film, the characters are shown as laughing and happy around friends, in a social setting, but are going through harsh problems at home. This issue of teens faking a smile is very present in today's society. Teens are constantly feeling like they need to be received as perfect to others. This constant pressure to be perfect leads to other problems, which we show in our film. For example, in the film each girl has a struggle, one has an eating disorder. Eating disorders are a heavy issue for teens. The need to be perfect consumes their mentality and causes these body image issues. Another issue shown is an unstable household.  One of the characters had fighting parents. She witnessed the physical and verbal abuse and fell victim to it. The last issue among the characters was teen pregnancy. This problem is shown through the hurt of the character. The teens are all shown in our film as crumbling under their problems while forcing themselves to put a face on and be perfect. My group and I also showed this in our other products. For example on our website, we created a color theme that went from bright whites to dark blacks. We did this to show the contrast in a teens social persona to their reality. This design is shown in our other forms of social media and postcard. All of the products represent the many social issues our film has by having them evident in the film and in our designing technique. 

2. How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of 'branding'?

The elements of the film's production create branding for our film. The film's theme is how anyone can fake a smile in public, but will have a tough reality at home. So when it came to branding for this, we wanted a trademark that would be noticeable, but not obvious until the audience saw the film. Almost like how you don't see that someones being inauthentic until you truly check on them and pay attention. This was another form of our branding, we wanted everything to have a hidden meaning, just like how the characters hide their problems from each other. We felt that the audience would think this was clever and stood out from other films. Another way we did this was using our website. Our website had our film name and general information, like how to contact us or where to watch the film.  When designing our website we made a specific color scheme. When you first reach our website the colors are bright and creamy whites, but as you scroll deeper, the colors turn to shades of black. Doing this shows how someone can seem bright to others but their life is dark. Like stated before it catches the audience's eye and leaves them questioning. This was also done with our postcard. For this we divided the front into two sections, one with the bright color and one dark. We then placed the title of our film in the middle, allowing for some of the letters to be on each side, another display of the switching of personas. The color scheme we used in the website and postcard create a sense of branding for our short film.

3. How do your products engage with the audience?

Our short film engages with the audience by relating to them. Our film is directed towards teens. It deals with the social issues of being a different person in public when you’re really hurting inside. My group and I can  relate to this. It’s been seen in our own lives and in others.  So, we wanted to show the consequences of continuing this and encourage the audience to be real with others. We also relate by being girls. While this problem is in all teenagers, teenage girls are more likely to suffer under the problems that our characters had in the film.  Our age was also a factor in relating to the audience. The issues of our film are struggled with most by high schoolers. My group and I knew that by making our characters our age and having the audience know that we were also high schoolers, we could reach them in a similar place and relate to the pressure of growing up. Another way we engaged with our audience was through our website. Our website had all of our social media so that the audience could check out the film's process and await its final product. Our social media was another way we engaged. We made sure to post and keep our audience guessing about our film. We were able to reach the audience through these apps. We could get our film out to more teens because social media is wildly popular among them. Our short film engages by relating to the audience and providing interaction.

4. How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

      When starting this project, my group and I had to research our film genre,  know it’s conventions. Through research, My group and I were able to understand what most drama films were like, And how we could incorporate some of these conventions. Throughout this film we used and challenged many conventions in the genre of drama. One of the conventions we used was the structure of our film. The shorts plot is very similar to the basic genre plot. Our film has a beginning then contains a rising action, has a lot of drama in the middle and then ends with a big event. This is very conventional for drama films. We stuck with this plot because it went with our idea and best conveyed the main idea of the film, while allowing the genre to be obvious. Another convention we followed was the characters. In drama films it’s very common for the characters to be teenagers. This is because of how complicated it is to grow up and the loads of drama to be shown. So, my group and I made our characters teenagers. My film also challenges the convention of a happy ending. Many drama films end in a resolution, that brings the audience some clarity. However in our short film, we end it on a cliffhanger, that leaves the audience at the edge of their seats. The structure, characters and ending of our film are all conventions our film had or challenged.

Perception the Short Film

  My Short Film Package

Perception: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foJOfSvOAX0

https://perceptiontheshort.wixsite.com/mysite

Postcard:

Keeping Up with the Social Media

    

    As my group and I started working more on wrapping up our film, we started to pay attention to our social medias. At the beginning of this process my group and I were told to make social media accounts for our short. This consisted of a Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube. We made these accounts with the name of our short and cast list. Because there wasn’t much to add we left it alone. Now, we have material for these medias and can post. The first thing we did was add a cover or profile picture for these medias. This allowed our audience to see what our film would look like. We planned on adding individual posts to each account. For example, we added a compilation of bloopers to our youtube channel. 

    To continue, we also added to our instagram. We made a post with a picture from a piece of our film. This also allows for people to get sneak peaks of our film. The audience could guess the genre and become excited to see it. I really enjoy having these social medias. I like how it allows my group and I to be more involved in the film and do more with it. It also makes us feel more professional and confident in the film package. I also enjoy being able to see other groups progress and films. We aren’t in school and cant just walk up to another groups desk and ask for advice or exchange ideas. This is unfortunate, but the medias allow us to keep tabs on other students. This makes my group and I feel more connected to our class.

Applying Music to our Short Film

      One of the last finishing touches to editing the film was adding music. This was important for our film. Our film is mostly silent. There is really only dialogue in the first and last bits of the film. So, the music had to go with the plot and make up for the absence of dialogue. The first step in doing the music was planning what source we would get it from. Because of the rules for the short, we couldn’t apply any music unless we made it ourselves, got the rights from the artist or management or used copyright free music. After debate we decided on trying to get the rights from an artist. My group and I had a specific song in mind that we felt would fit the film very well. I then took to instagram and found the artists page.

      After this, I direct messaged the artist and their team. My group and I waited a couple of days and received no response. We initially thought that because it was a small artist, we had a chance of getting the rights but it didn’t work out. My group and I decided that we would just use copyright free music. We searched youtube for good music that fit and added to our film instead of drawing from it. After our search my group and I found the perfect copyright free track and added it into our film. Our new track had no lyrics. At first my group and I were skeptical about this because we didn’t want the film to feel poorly made. But, it turned out that not having the lyrics allowed for the audience to pay more attention to the characters and their story lines. After editing this, my group and I are very happy with the music choice and favor our copyright free track over the initial one.

Finishing Editing the Short

    

    After doing the major parts of editing it was time for sound. The sound was very important for our film. This is because our film is mainly silent in dialogue. Because of this we had many background noises incorporated into our film. We decided to make these noises ourselves. What we did was we found a way to make the sound into a mic. If we couldn’t exactly remake the sound, we found an object that sounded just like it. This part was a little difficult, but was worth it. Overall the sounds are very easy to make. For example the major sound that we made was arguing. We simply argued in the mic but tried to alter our voices. Once this was done, I overlapped the sound. I cut it to the certain parts that we needed it, and I lowered the volume or adjusted anything else to make the sound fit.

    After the sound was perfected this was the last step in my editing process. After this, my group and I met up again. We talked over the phone and I spoke to them about how everything went and essentially what was done. They understood and knew exactly where to take it from there. After this each group member edited the parts of the film. We had group meetings anytime someone finished and I answered any questions or any concerns. My group and I have finished the major parts of editing. We have some finishing touches to make but we can’t wait to see the final product of our short.   

Continuing the Editing Process

    

    To continue, I had to cut each piece of footage. Once I was content with the footage I was ready to get more in depth. But before I did this, I communicated with my group mates. We all went on a call and I told them what I kept and what’s gone. We all agreed on the choices I made when it came to cutting. I reviewed with them what I was planning to further do with the footage, so that they could have an idea when they took over. After this call I felt more confident in the editing. I was able to get everyone’s approval and we were able to throw around ideas. 

      The next step and editing was to work on the transitions. This is important to have a seamless short. This is also important for any scenes that had any special editing techniques, and makes the film seem more professional. The first thing I did was add the basic transitions. This includes regular cuts in scenes that had dialogue or anything else that wasn’t special. I then focused on anything different. For example I had to change the transition to zoom for some of the scenes. This would play into the plot and requested edit. For example, for an action match scene I had to make sure the clips lined up. Not only that but I had to make sure the physical in the clips matched up. This is so that the graphic match could be easily perceived by the audience. Once the transitions were finished the last thing I did was sound.

One of our action match scenes.

The Editing Process

         The next step was actually editing. Because we planned out the editing we were confident in starting the process. The way we scheduled our editing goes as follows. I would edit the beginning of the film, my group mate Lauren would edit the middle and my other group mate, Savanna would edit the end. Like I stated in the last blog, we made sure to communicate. This was important because of the lack of face to face we suffer from remote learning. I edited the footage on the software iMovie. I was confident in the software because it was the same one that I used last year and I knew it worked well and had everything needed. 

          The first thing I did was watch every single clip. Because this is a five minute in length film, there was a lot of footage. So to properly know what footage we had I had to watch every single one. When watching the footage I looked for significant scenes and made sure they were correct. Another thing I did was check off every scene in the script that was filmed. I did this because last year my group and I missed a few scenes to film, so I knew that this could possibly be a problem. To avoid this I made a checklist and made sure each scene was filmed. Once this was done I selected the footage. I took every piece of footage that we would need in the short and put it into the editing software. Once I had all of the clips, I started to cut them. This process was very long. I also had to make sure that this was done perfectly. I wanted to make sure everything was included and nothing was cut out that could benefit the film.