Louise Hewison's Message & Showreel.

Hi Abigail, Sienna, Josh and Michael

I just wanted to say thank you for asking me to be a part of your film. It was a pleasure to meet you all.

I enjoyed working with the four of you and I was extremely impressed with the way you worked- very professional.

You are all talented and your drive and passion inspired me...keep doing what you're doing, work hard and don't give up on your dreams!

I'm really looking forward to seeing the finished film...

Keep in touch and let me know how it all goes and please send me any pics and the film when it's done.

Good luck with editing and your grades! - It's going to be 'crazy'! :)

Love, Louise x

Showreel

Question Four.

How did you use new media technology in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

While filming our coursework we used the HDx5 Canon, just one of the many new media technologies used while creating our project.

We first began with pitches, treatments, and experimenting with interesting ways to portray a storyboard. We began focusing on a visual aspect from the off. As we decided to create a photo storyboard with a still digital frame camera, allowing us to be creative with shots and allow those who we are pitching to, to get a real understanding of how we wanted to portray our project. This allowed us as a group to get together and on such programmes as Microsoft word and publisher, allowing us to upload photos and brainstorm around them with arrows etc, gave this project a real professional feel and helped with our attitudes towards the project and we remained extremely professional which I believe was the key to success. This allowed us to create a base for our project, to form ideas and alter our ideas to create belief in ourselves and allowing others to have belief in our project, this was all via a photo storyboard, which we used on the day of filming, proving to be extremely important.

As for Blogger, where we would store all of our work, we could use a variety of programmes, such as you could publish work on either Publisher or word in for example when we created our magazine reviews, I used power point as it was easy to use and worked extremely well. Blogger made it extremely easy to upload work, images and videos shot by our group regularly on the ‘Iphone 4’, using a lead connecting to the phone and to the computer created by ‘Apple’ it was quick and the videos of us talking about our work was of a very good quality. You could also upload such links from Youtube, and moodboards, which I used Prezi, a fantastic internet programme where online you could show you work in a very interesting way, rather than just having simple words, which I believe looks daunting to read and it made it more appealing. On Prezi you could involve video links, text and even images from your film and your J-PEG quality posters. Blogger, being a social network, allowing other people to talk about and rate your work, It gave me the idea to publish tweets, and status on Facebook and Twitter, marketing our film, edging people to view it, creating word of mouth, so our project would be viewed as many times as possible.   Blogger was something we always referred back to throughout all stages of production. Blogger allowed you as an individual to be creative and show your own personal beliefs connecting to your project.  Blogger is a fantastic tool, leaving very little to the imagion, as it allowed you to be creative and was a fantastic way to present your work to others. Blogger allowed you to publish posts that others could comment giving you feedback, allow you easy access to the work of others to compare with your own and also allowed you mainly to show your work in the best way possible. Blogger was fantastic, however the main use a technology was obviously the internet, which was used for all our production and throughout our research.  The internet made it possible for us as young amateur film makers to be creative and show everyone what our film would be about, such as it allowed us to post videos from sites such as Youtube, allowed us to watch other films to gather ideas and also express ourselves personally through our film by using such websites as slideshare.com and Prezi.  

Within editing we used a great deal of new media technology. For example we began by using a lacie drive, in order to transfer our film, from the Cannon camera, to the computer, and finally onto Adobe Premier. We would then capture the project and digitise when necessary, adding affects such as ‘ghosting’ and ‘dissolve’. Evidently we would cut material when finalising the piece, ready for rendering, the transfer between Abode Premier and other software, such as Youtube or onto dics. While editing many groups had problems with sounds, however due to our use and familiarities with such equipment as the boom microphone, when editing our sound quality was more than presentable. However as a group we did indulge in some sound mixing, such as when we altered the voice over to allow us to have a good view, and the correct shots, and also have good quality of sound when dialogue was used, allow the audience to fully understand the narrative. While we introduced music, we created our own, named ‘JimBob’ which was a remixed, slowed down version of the tradition ‘Happy Birthday’ song, we did this using a dictor phone. The software within Adobe and Gimp 2.0 was fantastic, it did not only let us add such things as effects, speed up and slow down our rushes, shots on our timeline, but allowed us to change colours by ‘dipping’, showing high key lighting and removing low key lighting to create the whole out look upon the scene. We did this for example in the shot where the mother, ‘Sarah’ looked under the bed to find the diary of her son, which was originally, was very low key. However we changed this to high key lighting as we wanted to show a metaphorical message that when she found the dairy the outlook on life would change. This made these programmes fantastic and after practice become easy to use and these programmes where professional and without them I believe our project would not have been as successful.

Photoshop was a fantastic tool in order to create our posters and review for our project. My review was majority created through the use of Power Point as it was far simpler and was looked very similar to the magazine I used in order to portray my magazine, GORILLA Magazine.  Although during pre-production, filming and editing we used a great deal of new media technology, however in post-production was the time where you as an individual you could really experiment with different programmes, pieces of equipment and fantastic technology. Going onto marketing and distribution, I began creating posters to allow the target audience to get a real feel of the piece before that actually witnessed it first-hand. When creating the posters I decided to use Photoshop and Gimp 2.0 to make my photos look as professional as possible. I created three posters in all, two billboard and a magazine poster which I used a A4 canvas. Within Photoshop you could add images, flipping and rotating them allowing you to get them exactly where you wanted too. When in place you could pull whatever you wanted out of the image to make its own individual image, you could do this by simply going around the object or individual using the ‘magnetic lasso’ or the ‘magic wond’. You could then crop your image to a smaller size for example, change colours either using the ‘bucket tool’ or right click and click fill background. You could even duplicate images and layers so it would give extra graphics and effects to work with to see if they worked. Photoshop made it so simple for you to alter saturation of an image and to insert text to get the best out of your poster to attract your target audience to watch the project I had just created. Finally using either GIMP 2.0 or Photoshop you could filter your image, and flatten it into a J-PEG image, creating an extremely professional look, so it could not be altered as if you had laminated you work. For the images we used for the posters we either took screen grabs from our film, or we would use a digital still camera in order to take shots easily and would convert them to our computer by using a USB. 

Question Three.

What have you learnt from audience feedback?

Immediately after being put into groups we sat down and discussed ideas for the short film project so as a group we had a common ground on which sort of narrative we wanted to portray. We come up with two reasonable strong ideas. Abigal & Sienna’s idea of two Asian girls, living in London, as orphan as their mother had been killed in the terrorist attacks that took place on the London underground. We then had my own idea of a women losing her mother through cancer, and not being able to look after her child properly. We sat down to brainstorm ideas getting different feedback of each other. Both feedbacks where good however it was made clear within the group the story that focused on terrorism was a narrative best for a feature length film however the narrative that revolved around lost lacked narrative in a sense. However instead of immediately scrapping ideas we went away to focus on was we could alter the narrative in which they would suit a short film.

After a few days of discussing in which direction we wanted to take our piece, we as a group decided we would like to get feedback for both narratives as we believed we was in a sense being biased towards our own. We sat down and come up with a pitch for both ideas and we decided to link this to a PowerPoint, including images and videos to show our audience what our film would look like and what emotions we wanted to portray, and to simply just give them a better understanding of the piece and its characters. Both pitches went well and we believed that it was up to those who had seen the presentation to judge the pieces and decide which one would be successful. However the majority of feedback was linked to the story that focused around terrorism, one student began saying, “I like the idea but will it be portrayed well within a five minute film?” And the instant reply was, “No”. It was then made clear to us we could not successfully portray such emotions within such short time to work with. However, our teacher, described the idea as “Well worked” and she would watch a project because it related to so many people as terrorism had effected so many families.

Due to the feedback we got, we realised that although one narrative may be stronger in a sense however it would be incredibly hard to show, and with a more simple narrative t would clearly be easier to focus on such things as camera work, language, sound and would be easier to portray. So we began writing a treatment to present to the class focusing on the narrative that revolved around the subject of loss. The treatment was successful as we received good feedback, “It seems you have worked hard on this and I could see it working”. However feedback occurred such as “I am let down that you did not go for the other narrative as I believed it would have worked well, but this sounds great too”, which was understandable.

I then began writing ideas, brainstorming and scripting the piece, making sure I focussed on a mass audience rather than a niece one. Allowing us to connect with everyone who had lost someone they loved, through this short piece of film. It was then clear to me, a simple idea can be made brilliant through the hard work you put into it and how it is portrayed. The assistant director of the piece, asked me to create the storyboard as the director, and as it was my original idea so I could pitch to my group how I truly wanted it to be portrayed to our target audience. The story board had around sixty shots on its first draft, “The perfect amount” according to our teacher. This gave us a great deal of confidence that we was on the right track in pre-production.

When filming I sat down the cast and crew to discuss how I would like to portray this film. “I don’t want to create a piece like any other, I want to create a piece of film that will shock our audience and not just surprise them, I believe that hear we have great talent and creating just a ‘good piece’ would be not just a waste of our time, but our ability”. I believe by me saying this to the group and cast could clearly understand I wanted this film to ‘powerful’ and different to other pieces.

As a director I believe you should be organised and prepared however you should be spontaneous when necessary. This allowed us to have a great connection with the actors and the crew, allowing us to talk on set and allowing us to be open and discuss certain scenes. Actors such as Michael Sams on one scene spoke openly saying, “Sorry I don’t think this will work as well”, allowing us to look over the scene and try it from different angles and perspectives. Louise Hewison, actress, on set would constantly give feedback saying whether or not she would agree or disagree with certain shots and certain codes and conventions. 

After filming we come to editing, however we did not allow anyone to see our piece until it was finished as we did not want to reveal any twists within the narrative which now I do not regret. However Stuart Cohen, who helped us on editing would give us feedback and certain shots and was also there with us on set. When the post-production editing was finally complete, we sat down at the premier of our film to around ten students and a few teachers. Our teacher claimed that “This is a beautiful film, I am so surprised, and this is within the top three films this school has ever produced”. One student called the piece “Flawless” and another described as “Un-believable”. However certain students did point out if there was anything they could change they would change the actor of the son and have him at a younger age, as at the beginning it almost appears they are a couple.

Overall the feedback was fantastic to say the least. However one student also brought up the fact the mother and son looked like a couple and we was ‘lucky’ we had the voice over to clear that up.

The next lot of feedback was just after the first draft after editing, we screen it to around five people aged ranging from thirteen to sixteen. All of the students agreed the overall production was  well portrayed however it soon become apparent that the choice of actors where a mistake. The character of the boy was seen as ‘too old’ and during the beginning scene it was thought that the characters where ‘a couple’ rather than son and mother. Due to there being nothing we could do we just had to make the voice over as clear as possible so the audience could fully understand the narrative and the relationships between the characters, this was all in order to redeem our casting mistake in the early stages of pre-production.

The ancillary tasks were so important in my eyes. This is because of our professional attitude, in the majority of cases when a film is realised advertisements take place and this is vital to attract an audience to watch our film. This is the first thing my audience is going to see so it must attract them in order for people to want to watch our project. Blogger allowed me after creating both my posters and film review, to post it online in order for such people as my class mates and fans of the project to comment in order to create hype. This created the atmosphere around the project I wanted. Those who commented said such things as, ‘Looks great, can’t wait’ and ‘Wow’. However there were a few negative comments on Facebook of people saying the posters lacked colour, however I wanted to portray the emotions of the character onto the poster, so I could understand where this one individual was coming from. Overall I was very happy with the feedback I received as I found that it was mostly positive towards the magazine review and the posters, which put me in good stead for the up and coming project, giving me confidence that the audience would enjoy my film.

The original idea changed a great amount, changing the narrative to the father that had died instead of the mother of the women, and also the changing of the narrative completely when we believe it should focus more around the son than the mother character. As a film maker this project has made me grow, it has made me believe that within film, something as simple as character choice can change your how outlook and your whole target audience. It has made me realise a target audience is the most important aspect within a piece and organisation, preparation and a good attitude is key when on set.

Question Two.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary task?

Creating a review and poster is too simply show how much we actually know about the representation of our film and how the audience will preserve it. The ancillary tasks of the posters follow the same house style created by myself however the review would follow the language, layout and other aspects of an already existing magazine.  Both tasks would create hype around our project, giving the audience an insight to the genre, narrative and also familiarise the audience with the project. The review does this more in depth as it actually describes the narratives and gives in a rating, preparing the audience, and informing them weather it is worth watching.

When designing such important aspects of marketing such as the posters, it was important not to stray too far from the narrative, genre and morals of the film however not revealing too much to the target audience. I immediately began researching other feature length and short films that related to my own. One of the posters that inspired me, even though it lacked links through narrative and genre was in fact ‘Public Enemies’. I enjoyed the simplistic view and that created a bold message that reflected the narrative. When designing my poster I realised I had quite a unique film in terms of I took the approach that we was in fact creating a short film, and never tried to portray my project as anything else, making my distribution more believable. In order to get my target audience on board I created posters that had depth and was meaningful, almost as if they were the cover of a novel rather than one for a film, this would attract those who watched films religiously and took film making seriously rather than an audience that would rather watch other genres and blockbusters. Within the first of the posters there is a picture of Max walking away as letters fly from his bag. This shows the mystery through the character and narrative as he is walking away and you can not see his facial expression, but there is a clear indication something is wrong as his body language gestures he is worried.  The film revolved a hell of a lot around Max’s diary entry, revealing to his mother his woes and how he truly felt about his father’s death, that’s why I incorporated letters into the main poster. To market, distribute and promote our film, ‘Lost for words’ in the ‘correct’ way it was clear we had to be extremely professional about the way in which we went about it. The film was described as ‘meaningful’ and ‘powerful’ and we wanted to get that across when promoting the project, attracting our target audience and getting as much publicity and feedback as possible for a short film. The first ancillary task I began work upon was a film review, instantly allowing me to create around the project, making audiences aspire to watch the film. I began research into worldwide known film magazines, such as ‘Empire’, ‘Total Film’ and ‘FILM’. I believe this research was extremely helpful to look at how the language allows those distributing a project can influence the audience to watch it. It was clear in the layout of the magazines that everything was carefully thought about and obviously magazines such as ‘Empire’ have a working formula, so why alter that? This made me think about the type of magazines I was researching. These magazines where for big scale films and it didn’t seem plausible to have a short armature film in the same house style as one of the biggest film magazines of all time. So I then began researching magazines, less known for their status in the business but more known for helping market short films, I then come across an up and coming new magazine, named ‘Gorilla’. Its name represented the magazine perfectly as it was big in name, it was big in stature, it was bold, brief and was hard hitting. I believe this represented my film perfectly. My film was meant to, in the words of Tessa Ross, ‘Shock and surprise our audiences’, and I believe a magazine such as this could perfectly represent that. Within ‘Gorilla Magazine’ the language was bold, however simplistic, it was not fancy and it was very straight to the point, it gave the readers what they wanted to hear, and presented that well. So when writing my review I followed the same codes and conventions ad the magazine presented to me. I just gathered my feedback and portrayed my film to the audience how I originally wanted to, bold, to the point, a piece that will shock, surprise and move you in ways an audience would not believe a short amateur film could do so. There is a clear house style that feature throughout the posters, involving the same colours, characters and emotions which allows the audience to familiarise themselves with the piece. Communicating to the audience through the connections between the posters, demonstrating the morals throughout the narrative and how   and why our target audience should watch our project.

Within the review you had to portray it correctly, and in a professional manor, so almost unbiased and from an ‘outsiders’ perspective. I used language that showed both sides of the narrative, exposing minor flaws but backing that up with several good points about the film, influencing the audience to want to watch it. While doing this I had to incorporate actor’s names, as long with my own and some of my previous work to show audiences as a director I was used to the field, I had experience and I was able to create a good narrative and show it well when on screen. I almost had to reassure the readers that ‘It is ok, trust me, it’s good’, as we are nothing but students, with a lack of experience in the world of film, you had to show the audience I was passionate and I believed in my project and in myself, hoping they would then believe in my judgement and watch my project. I also used three small images within the film review, one of ‘Max’, played by Michael Sams, and one of ‘Sarah’ played by Louise Hewison. The third image was one of both characters, with space between them, and through their body language and facial expression, showed the relationship between to the two characters. This, along with the language, allowed the audience to get a real understanding of the piece and I believe influenced them well. 

My second ancillary task was posters. After completing the review I believe I had a good formula in which I could sell this project, also by incorporating images into my review it gave me an understanding of how to influence audiences to watch my film through the use of image and very little text. I created one magazine poster, and two billboards of ‘Lost for words’. The first, the magazine poster, I believe was the strongest, I believed with the billboards, it was hard for people to miss so it did not have to be as appealing, as long as the date of release and the title was in bold letters, the rest was up to the audiences. However the magazine poster had to make to audience turn the page and stop and really inspect it and want to watch our film. The posters consisted of ‘Max’s’ character walking away, with his shadow coming towards the audience, this showed us that he did not know his identity and he was almost lost. The text and images used where ‘tasteful’ and ‘pleasant’, leaving some mystery to the project. I researched films that had the same themes to ours, however my film, had alternatives endings, so I had to create posters not indicating to any happy endings such as the film ‘I AM SAM’, which has the same codes and conventions as our film but the poster is bright yellow and features the main character, Sean Penn, smiling and laughing with his daughter. This made me want to go in the other direction, involving a grey background and while, or dark red writing, with an almost elegant look, as my main objective was to make this look professional rather than ‘tacky’. And I believe as a group we achieved that successfully, and the feedback that we received was extremely good.

When I first began my review it was clear the main objective was to make people believe in my project and allow the audience to get a clear insight into what I had created. When looking at other reviews I had to take aspects from my film that where strong and the weaknesses to make it believable and unbiased. For example I praised camera shots and other aspects, to attract the audience to watch it, however informed them on flaws such as the relationship between the mother and son, appearing as though they were a couple. However later I explained how the narrative in retrospect redeemed itself through the use of a voice over, explaining the relationships. I incorporated such aspect of the film into the review that would surprise our audiences, revealing the uncommon genres which are mixed throughout the narrative and how the films codes and conventions are different to those you would expect to see. This allowed me in the review to create suspense around the project. This linked to the language used within the review. Containing formal language that related back to the film, in terms of themes and narrative.

The posters, review, distribution, marketing techniques and the film as a whole complement each other well, and as a combination, I believe attracts the target audience.  Allowing us to create hype around the project, and almost create a ‘fan base’. The project becomes recognisable, if portrayed in the correct way. This is why the two ancillary tasks work so well together.

Question One.

In what ways does your media product, use, develop, challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

I originally wanted to create a drama, however throughout production other themes have interlinked that you would usually find within a thriller and a narrative that would revolve around romance.  Being such a simple narrative in terms of it being based around a relationship between a mother and son, I believe the other themes give it depth.

My original idea for the project related highly too a short film, ‘Lovefield’. This film was a sensational piece of cinema, I originally loved to whole outlook on the film. The setting, acting and just general cinematography was truly sensational. The whole out look of the film inspired me and I believe if it was not for that inspiration my film wouldn’t have been as successful as it was. I enjoyed this film because it lacked narrative, it was short and just beautifully worked, and I really believed that is what I wanted to incorporate into my own project. As far as themes I wanted to create something with meaning. So I began research into something with a lot of emotion connected to it, such as murder, death and suicide. However after researching such a dark subject I realised I wanted to break the stereotypes of my narrative idea and almost have an extremely bright, high key lit project that would allow me to break boundaries and move away from a dark subject. I wanted to focus on death, as everyone can relate to such a project, attracting a mass audience.

Feature length films that helped me create my project where of completely different themes and genres, as I focused on doing something different to those of the same genres. I mainly looked at fantastic scenes within all-time classic films to see how the camera was used effectively to make a great piece. I looked at such films as ‘The Godfather’, ‘Once upon a time in America’, ‘Deer Hunter’, ‘Pulp Fiction’, ‘Shutter Island’, ‘Inception’, ‘Training Day’ etc. I looked at these films, as within them there are characters that dislike each other however have to be around each other the majority of the time, also they have fantastic cinematography and that is what I wanted to focus on.

The narrative from the project is not inspired from any other project. The narrative was originally from previous experience from the cast. We did this so we could put our emotions into the project to show our passion for the subject and it is a subject people then could relate too.  It was clear to me and the rest of the crew that it was incredible important that we experimented with how the story was shown rather than portrayed that’s why when it came to research we didn’t look into films that relate to ours, as we wanted to break down those stereotypical codes and conventions of that genre. I wanted to create this film in such a way people would stand up and listen and believe in the ideas we had and respect us as film makers, and incorporate a simple narrative, but show our talent through the way we draw an audience in, how we show this narrative through mese on scene, camera, lighting and sound.   

Technique aspects such as the opening credits along with the music link to television series, ‘Heartbeat’ and ‘Casualty’, as they revolve and heart break pain but also interlink love and several other contrasting themes. We do this with the light up beat soft music; however we are located within a cemetery. We used several fades, allow us to speed up shots with movements that where unnecessary for the narrative.

In terms of sound and camera, there were a few additional inspirations. We wanted to use music that could make the audience understand the emotions being presented to them; however not mislead them through the narrative. So we decided to create some of our own. We created a remix of the typical happy birthday song, slowed down, with a more ‘emotional’ feel. We did this to fit with the ending, which it did very well. However the majority of music throughout was inspired from funeral music and soaps. The soaps, such as ‘Heartbeat’ where they use music beautifully to show death, but with music that is more upbeat, and I believe the contrast works extremely well. It was extremely hard to talk about the research process as we was so focussed on breaking stereotypical themes within this genre, by wanting to, in the words of Tessa Ross, “Shock and surprise our audiences”, we didn’t focus mainly on research but on our passion for cinema and talent within film making.

The transitions between the two scenes, cemetery and house scene was inspired in terms of music relate to a comedic film, ‘Bad Teacher’. The is a scene within this comedy feature length film in which actor Justin Timberlake’s character, sings a song on an acoustic guitar to his love interest. The concept I took from this was that the two actors where attempting to have an intimate moment through contrasting music, however other supporting characters surrounding them where shocked and their facial expression represented that they disagreed with their actions. I took a twist on this with Lost For Words. I used acoustic music within a scene located within a contrasting environment, I also adapted certain aspects to Bad Teacher, such as instead of the supporting characters feeling strange about the contrasting music, I had the audience. I used this technique to gain a closer relationship between the characters on screen, and the audience watching it. This proved to me how powerful film can be, and how experience and inspiration can come from any situation of life. I believe that this technique was powerful, especially though the use of a character attempting to have that key, intimate moment, in which the son, Max, tries to grab his mother’s hand, and she, overcome with grief, decides to reject her son and walk away, which is a perfect representation of the relationship between the characters.

As a whole, I believe that through the use of such techniques and aspects such as narrative, sound, mise en scene and characterisation this film allows me to feel extremely happy as I believe we have broken the boundaries of a stereotypical short film of this genre and altered the codes and conventions suitable to create a fantastic piece of film. However I believe we have followed the real media products, allowing us to create a film with a beginning, middle and end.



"Cinema is a form of storytelling and this film is one of the greatest stories ever told. One of the things that make this story so great is that it's loaded with irony and hypocrisy. No one is all good in this film and no one is all bad. It's a great example of how money and power can corrupt us all. All the frailties of human nature have never been so eloquently presented than in this classic motion picture. One of the 10 best screenplays ever written."

Film Posters Three.

Film Posters Two.