Editing

for the editing of the film, me and Rabbi used the mac software that we have in college. it was the first time we were using any kind of editing software, and so we weren't really sure what we were doing. It took us a while to get any clips onto the PC, we couldn't connect the camera to the PC, we kept swapping bits of technology around to see if anything made a difference, but it still didn't work. we then tried a different wire that connects the two and we eventually found one that worked. After it had connected we couldn't get all of our clips onto the PC, we got our film pitch on there and that was it. I asked around to see if people could help, but we still didn't get anywhere with it. we tried twice to get the clips on, but it always stopped after the film pitch had gone on.

Thankfully, we tried again and it finally went on the PC and we had to wait quite a while for it all to be imported onto the PC. then we could start editing. we had to ask for help again because we hadn't a clue how to edit and we didn't want to delete or lose anything by accident. we were shown how to edit and then from then on it seemed quite simple once we got the hang of it. we went through it and edited it entirely. adding in some titles along the way.

we made a back up of all the clips on Rabbi's memory stick just in case anything went wrong and we needed to get the clips back. But everything in the end went fine and we just had the music to add on. we had to have help again because we didn't know how to do this. we have a friend called Jon who we know had used the same software before and he was happy to come and help. we had a song called 'everlasting sadness' for our film that we got from freeplaymusic.com. he added the music on and then after that all we had to do was make all of the clips black and white. we thought the film would look much better if it were to be in black and white. i went through them all and changed them and watched it through and the effect really suited the narrative.

originally we were going to have a strike through design for our film title-

I'm not okay

but in the final title on the film the design looks like this-

I'm (not) okay

Original idea compared with final version

At the very start of this media project, me and Rabbi wanted to do three separate stories within our short film, we wanted an issue about arranged or forced marriages, but we had problems with getting actors to be in the film and so we couldn't do this issue. From the very start we had the idea of the pregnancy storyline, and we have kept that throughout and it has made the final film. but for the third and final story we always had problems, we changed it many times and each time was because we had a problem with actors. so we thought about a storyline that we could realistically do without having actor problems. which is when we came up with the idea of a story surrounding the issue of self harm, we would be able to film that with myself acting in it. for a while we had the idea of doing a storyline with a girl who has an imaginary friend, she had him ever since she was little, but she never 'grew out' of being with him. she was going to be 17 and still have only her imaginary friend as company. but we decided that again we didn't have the actors and that this storyline, if we ever did it would have to be a separate short film in itself rather than part of a 3 way story narrative. so we got rid of that one.

our third story was then going to be about child abuse. we had the actors to be in it and we even filmed that story, but looking back on it, the lighting was terrible and so was the acting. this story wasn't included in the final film. the only two stories that made it was the self harm one and the pregnancy one. which i think now looking back at it is better than having three stories. have three would make the short film too long and i prefer the idea of just having two best friends and their lives behind the smiles they put on.

original ideas
- Pregnant girl
-Muslim who is in love with a boy outside of her religion - forbidden love-
-imaginary friend

final ideas
-self harm
-pregnant girl

other
-child abuse

Music

i have a piano at home and so we got together to try and come up with some music that we had composed ourselves. we used our phone recorders to record what we came up with, but then we decided that this wasn't the best way to do the music for our film. we looked on freeplay music.com and i made a list of songs that i thought sounded good. i could only judge by the description though, because i was on the college computers and they do not have itunes so i wasn't able to download and listen to the songs. so i made the list and then when i got home, i went on the website again and downloaded all of the songs that i had written down. i went through them all and listened to them, none of them really stood out to me at first, they weren't really suitable for our film even though the genre and description made out like they would be good. Rabbi came round my house to have a listen and she agreed with me that none really stood out. but in the end we decided on one named 'everlasting sadness' it is an emotional sounding song and so it goes well with out short film.

yesterday we added the sound with the help of our friend Jon and we are happy with the outcome. we have the music playing throughout the first scene and on every title that we added in. the music sounds appropriate for what the film shows.

The characters in the final version of the film

Oringinally we were going to have  3 main characters in our short film:
Jade
Emily
Ashley

But after filming Ashelys story, we decided that the quailty of film that we were able to get wasn't good enough to have for the final film, so we haven't used that. this turned out well anyway because with the third story we would have gone way over the time limits.

so now we just focus on Enily and Jade and thier background stories. as i have mentioned, emily has found out that she is pregnant with her boyfriend stan, who doesn't take the news very well and he wants her to get rid of the baby. wheras Jade goes home to find her parents arguing about the fact that they don't like that she has turned out to be gay, her father says that he wants to kick her out because of her sexuality and this makes Jade very upset and she turns to self harm.

Emily used to live near Jade and they were able to spend a lot of time together, but in the film, emily has moved away and so they don't get to see eachother very often. They spend the day together, but we only see a small part of thier time together, when Jade says how much she misses her friend, this suggests that something might be wrong, but neither of them say what thier lives are really like at the moment.

They depart and that is when we show what thier lives are really like. we show Jade's first, as she is the last person we see leaving, and so we follow on from her.

we have put a few titles in the film which just say simple things to the audience, such as "are you really okay?" and "happiness doesn't last for long" these just give the audience something to think about whilst they are watching the film, they might answer the wusetion in thier head and wonder if they are hiding thier feelings from anyone.

Filming.

Filming the self harm story

On Thursday 3rd of November, me and Rabbi planned to go to my brother, Aaron's house to film the 'self harm' story. We went to his house because we wanted him and his partner Lindsey to act in our short film and I thought that the upstairs of their house would be ideal for what we intended to film. We went round and I explained the basic plot line of the story so that she had some context about the film, we then explained it to my brother and told them that we would like them to improvise an argument that is based on the sexuality of the character 'Jade' that i am playing. They stood either side of the dining table, Lindsey stood up and my brother sat down. We practised the argument twice before actually filming so that they could get into it more easily and we could see how they were going to act and if we thought it was okay. Lindsey started off the argument and then they went from there. The argument was better than me and Rabbi had expected and so we set up the camera to film the scene. We start off this scene with Jade just arriving in the house. We had the camera being handheld by me so that the audience gets to see exactly what i am seeing. I shut the door and this is then Aaron and Lindsey's queue to start arguing, with the camera in hand i walked down the hallway slowly and then film the argument for about 10 seconds. In the argument my brother said that he wanted Jade out of the house because of her sexuality and he wanted nothing to do with her, Jade overhears this and so she gets upset and she runs upstairs. The camera was still handheld so that the audience see's everything that Jade does. She runs upstairs and into her bedroom, she is panting ans crying uncontrollably, she goes straight over to the chest of drawers and she gets out a little box. When the audience see this box they will wonder what it is and why she is getting it. They then find out when Jade gets on the bed and opens the box to reveal three blades that she has taken from pencil sharpeners. The audience can then piece together that she intends to cut herself.

We took other shots for running up the stairs so that the shot will switch from my point of view to then a view from the bottom of the stairs. We filmed the rest of it upstairs which basically showed Jade getting angry and upset even more which then drives her to putting a blade to her wrist. She doesn't want to kill herself though so the cut wasn't deep. She harms herself and then to end this story we have her looking up directly at the camera and she then says "I'm okay."

Rabbi is the director of this short film and so other than the hand held part of the story, she was filming. She filmed the same part from different angles so that we can have an invisible editing effect in our film, when out together it will hopefully look quite effective. She had some shots from quite down low and other up high, and we also had one shot where the camera was resting on my leg so that we could see Jade lowering the blade to her wrist. We tried to use a variety of different shots to get everything we needed and when watching everything we filmed we decided that everything went exactly as we wanted it to and we are really happy and relieved that we have got one story done the way we wanted it too.

The only shot that we need now for that story is a shot that shows Jade walking up to the house and then walking in. We were going to do that on Thursday but we got outside and it was very dark and so there wouldn't have been any point because we wanted to to be a bit lighter. We told Lindsey this and she says we can go round anytime we want to film that little bit.

Acting in the story
I was very nervous to be acting in our film because i thought that i would get it wrong and mess the whole film up. The first part that we filmed was the handheld part and for the first take, i walked down the hallway too fast and my filming of Aaron and Lindsey's argument wasn't as good as it could have been, i didn't get them both in all the time and it was a bit shaky. Then was the part where i run up the stairs after seeing the argument and this part went much better, i had to pant and be panicky. I ran up the stairs quite fast which made me pant anyway, and i was nervous about filming it which naturally makes me shake and so the effect that we wanted went perfectly because i was shaking a lot and that is exactly how the character would have been. I had to run up the stairs quite a few times which made me out of breath for most of the time. The second time filming the argument was much better as we got a really good shot of my point of view looking round the door to then witness the argument. The running upstairs was slightly better as well because i added a cry into the sound as well as panting, which really added to the upset effect that we wanted.

I had to be panting for most of the shots and i really had to act as if i was genuinely upset and angry. It took up a lot of energy and by the end of it my mouth was dry and i was so out of breath from it all. I wasn't expecting to be that worn out from it, but i really did put all my effort in so that we got exactly the shots we needed. When we had finally finished Rabbi went to get me a drink of water, and i couldn't physically move my body, i was lying on the bed and found it hard to get back up. I felt like i was going to faint.

But i think it was all worth it because me and rabbi had such a great time filming the story and we were incredibly proud of what we managed to film and it made up optimistic about the rest of our short film.

Poster Designs

I started to try and design what our film poster will look like, i came up with this:

When looking at this (if it were to be part of the poster) the first thing you notice is the "I'm Okay." This is because those words are written the largest and so they are the words that stand out the most. I decided to keep the "I'm Okay" in the blank area on the page and have the not in amongst the darker background so that it is less visible, just like the true feelings of our characters are less visible to their friends. I then included the tag line underneath which leaves the audience with a question to ask themselves. The shape that the title is in is crooked and looks like broken glass which reflects the slightly broken lives of our characters. 

I also did these designs for the poster. Right at the top next to the original logo, i drew a montage of all three of our main characters all sat looking sad and telling themselves that they are okay. Then i drew a girl looking down and crouched on her bed, after being upset, and in the background the 'I'm okay' is there to represent what she is telling herself. I then tried to draw something for the self harm story, in my head i imagined the word 'okay' being reflected in the blade, but then i scrapped that idea as i decided it was harder than i first thought. Rabbi then told me what idea she has for the poster. she said that she imagine all of the characters faces merged together and then underneath would be the title, tag line and the production company logo and information. so i attempted to draw what i imagined she was trying to tell me. She said she liked what i drew so that could be our starting point for the poster. I then had an idea to have the three main characters covering their faces with an 'im okay' sign, to show that they are hiding what they truly feel, and then underneath their faces are revealed and they are in fact very sad and upset. 

Designing the new logo

Now that you have seen what the new logo looks like, i will go through the designing process that the first logo didn't really have. The first logo was just rushed and done quite quickly so that we could have a logo, but this new one has had a lot more thought gone into it. The first design for the logo looked like this:

The top two designs were the new ideas for the logo and the bottom two were designs similar to the logo that we had already. The first top design was what the new logo was going to be, it has the T Z and V visible in it's design and it is quite simple and fits well together. I liked how it was in a 'rectangular' shape and also looked a bit like an arrow going downwards. But then the 2nd top design was thought of and drawn and i instantly preferred it to the other new design. I like that it is in a circle, because to me that makes it more 'logo like' and so i decided that it would be the new logo. 

After deciding on that i thought i would draw it a few more times on another piece of paper to see if i came up with anything else to add to it or any other ways of drawing it. This is what i did:

When I started to redraw the logo, Rabbi said that she thought the T in the design looked like an umbrella and so i experimented to see if we could do anything with that idea.I drew an umbrella design on the T and then drew the Z in a shape to a lightning bolt underneath the 'umbrella T'. I then drew a more simple version of the 'umbrella style' logo but i didn't really like the way it turned out. I preferred the original design. So then i drew the original design for the new logo out just so i could see it on the page and work out if there was anything that i needed to change on it. I decided that it was fine just how it was, but i had the idea to try and draw it in block letters just to see how it looked, and so i did that at the bottom of the page, but i didn't like that either, it was too big and wasn't simple enough like the original design for it. So i stuck with the normal version of the logo and decided to try and so simple drawings of the logo on certain products. I drew what it would look like on a TV screen just before the film is about to play. I tried writing the T Z V Productions in all capital letters to see how it looked compared to doing both upper case and lower case letters. I think 'T Z V Productions' is how it will appear on all products. I did a colour version just so show where the different letters appear in the logo, as a kind of 'colour letter key' for the T Z V. Rabbi then said that she liked the colour version, but I think having colour as part of the actual logo wouldn't look right; i think the plain black is how the logo should be.

New Logo

The original logo for TZV Productions was:

I liked this logo because it included the T the Z and the V in a very simple way, but there was still a part of me that felt it didn't really look like much of a logo. Logo's have to be instantly recognisable and effective in getting your audeinces attention and i don't think that this logo does that. It is very plain and not really noticeable, even though it had three different colours to it. The logo isn't blod enough to stand out and grab peoples attention. It is to basic to be an effective logo for our company. I was thinking about how i wasn't content with the logo we had and so i wanted to design a new one but i wasn't sure how to go about it, but after some help from a friend, we came up with this:

First of all, the logo is round, in a circle, which i instantly think makes a good logo, because it reminds me of a stamp and so that means that we can easily 'stamp' our logo on all of our products. This logo is bloder that the original one aswell so it immediatly stands out a bit more. The T Z and V are all in there as well but in a more subtle way, and the way they are positioned creates a nice look for the logo within the circle. The plain black also adds to the boldness and the standing out of the logo, i think that this logo would be more effective in getting our audiences attention and having them recognise that a product is from our production company.

Title of our short film

I'm not okay

In the design of the title we will have the word ‘not’ with a strike through, which then leaves ‘I’m Okay’. We are doing this because a theme in our film is that all of the main characters have problems in their lives and they hide their true feelings by appearing as if they are okay when really they are not.

For example, a character will be asked "Are you okay?" and they say that they are okay and that they are fine, when deep down they know that they are not okay. This is an issue that a lot of people face in their everyday lives, hiding what they truly feel. It is so easy to just say to someone that you are completely fine so as not to worry or involve them in your problem, but sometimes that would be the better choice to take. Our characters have yet to discover that telling someone about their problems and having someone to talk to about them would benefit them in so many ways.

I was thinking if we had the "I'm okay." in a different colour than the not then it would make the "I'm okay." stand out more as that being what the person is actually saying, and then the point that we want to get across with this title will be easier to visualise. I first thought of having blue as the colour to stand out, purely because I like blue and sometimes the colour blue can connote sadness, when someone is 'feeling blue'.

My friend then looked over at the screen and at my design and said that she thought it was really good and that she liked it, so this proves that it does draw attention, and the colour standing out works. She suggested trying black and red instead of having black and blue, so i did this version and then she said that she preferred my original blue version better. So I will show this to Rabbi and see what she thinks of it and how we could improve it for the film poster.

It would be good if we could take a photograph and edit the title on to look something similar to this image. It is simple but i think it is very effective. The way the writing has been done on this could represent how angry the person is feeling inside. So me and Rabbi might experiment with different photographs that we take and see if we can come up with something similar to this, just so we can get an idea of how we might want to design our film poster.

There are many images and little phrases such as this on the Internet that relate to the theme and idea of our short film, the fact that this issue is so relatable for many people is really what we would like to capture within our film. I think that when the audience watch the film, even if they haven't been through the issues expressed and focuses on in the film specifically, they will still be able to think of a time when they might have said they were okay if when they weren't. With this phrase that i have found i think it could represent what is going through the persons mind. They are in denial of their pain and convincing themselves that they are going to be okay and put on a happy front just so they can try and get through each day. Underneath the black text, the same phrase is written in white text, and you can hardly tell it is there, that is the same for the emotions of our characters, they have this sadness but because they hide it (like the white text is hidden) people can't tell it is there. We have to look a little closer to see how the person is really feeling, and this is what our short film does, we get to see behind the face that the characters out on, we get to see what is really going on.

These two apples are a simple representation of what our film is about. The sad apple appears happy to the other apple, but we see howe he is really feeling. I just searched on google "hiding emotions" because that is what all of our characters are doing. The audience get to follow the charcaters instead of being convincxed that the people are okay. At first they might think as the friend of the characters would, by passivly hearing the character say "I'm fine" or "I'm okay" and then later on they realise what the character is really going through, and then when they hear another character say they are fine or okay, the audience know that they are lying and they know that something is wrong, whereas the friend in the short film does not know. This might start the audience to place themselves in this position, as either the friend or the troubled character. They might think twice when thier friend tells them that they are okay. This short film will hopefully make the audience think about hidden emotions.

Audience Research Questionnaire

Questionnaire

1)      What is your name?

2)      What gender are you?

Male                 Female

3)      How old are you?

17-20     20-30      30-40      40-50      50-60      60+

4)      List some of your hobbies

      __________________________________________________________________________

      _________________________________________________________________________

Film in general

1)      How often do you watch films?   Daily     Weekly         Monthly         Yearly         Never

2)      Do you watch short films?    Yes        No

3)      How often do you go to the cinema?   Daily     Weekly     Monthly     Yearly     Never

4)      What is your favourite film genre? __________________________________________

5)      What is your favourite film? _______________________________________________

6)      What is the last film you watched? __________________________________________

7)      Did you enjoy it? _______________________________________________________

8)      If yes, why? ___________________________________________________________

9)      If no, why? ___________________________________________________________

10)   Who is your favourite actor? ______________________________________________

11)   Who is your favourite actress? ____________________________________________

12)   Who is your favourite director? ___________________________________________

13)   What is your favourite music genre? _______________________________________

14)   Who is your favourite artist? _____________________________________________

15)   How often do you listen to music? ________________________________________

Social Realism

1)      Would you watch a Social Realism film? ____________________________________

2)      If yes, why? _________________________________________________________

3)      If no, why? __________________________________________________________

4)      Do you think that Social Realism films have an effect on society?  Yes         No

5)      Why? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Issues related to our film

1)      What is your sexuality?  Heterosexual         Homosexual       Bisexual       Other       Prefer not to say     

2)      What is your opinion on self harm? ___________________________________________

3)      What do you think of domestic abuse? ________________________________________

4)      What do you think of child abuse? ____________________________________________

This is the questionnaire that we gave to some people around college, our family and family friends so that we could get an idea of how often they watch film and what type of films they like to watch. We also asked them what they thought of certain issues that we are exploring in our short film. I think the questions relating to the issues could have been phrased better or a little differently, as people commented on these questions not being worded well. "What do you think of child abuse?" nobody is obviously going to say that it is a good thing, so to have worded it differently to get another type of opinion would have been better.

David Gauntlett- Media in everyday life

We watched this video during our media lesson and it told us how media has changed throughout the years. It explained that media used to be something that needed big equipment and broadcasting stations in order to make a video or a movie television programme. Whereas nowadays we have technologies such as YouTube, laptops and phones, which allow us to make videos of our own and then broadcast them to a wide range of people on the Internet. This video by David Gauntlett explains this media concept very well.

Watching short films

I have just been watching some short films to give me an idea of what other people have made and how they did it and what ideas they had. These are the ones I watched:

This short film is called Strangers and was the first one that me and Rabbi watched, the film was mostly silent and I think it worked very well and so we think that we will have hardly any speech in our short film because we like the effect that silence has on the film and we think that with ours being social realism, having little speech will be appropriate in getting the right effect.

This short film is brilliant, the director has got random people from the street and simply filmed them, we hear them say their name and the way this short film is made and directed makes the audience feel like they have got to know all the people before the 'question' is asked. The way it has been made is so effective. The people are all asked what they would like to happen by the end of the day. Simple question and so many different answers. This is most definitely one of my favourite short films. Our short film is based on a question, but we didn't get the idea from this short film, we just liked that idea in general and so since watching this short film I think the effect will be good.

This was also a very quiet film and most of the 'dialouge' was done by the characters holding up signs to each other, because they were communicating from two different buildings, by seeing each other through the window. When watching this short film you really start to feel for the main character and you want him to do well in his life and to be happy. To start off, he is very lonely, which is an issue that all f our characters will have in some aspect of their life.

This short film is called 'The black hole' is basically follows a man who is at work and the printer he is near prints out a piece of paper with a black hole on it. he soon discovers that he can put his hand through this black hole and it will let his arm go through anything. He then uses this to his advantage by putting the black hole against a vending machine and reaching in and grabbing the food and taking it out again. He then starts to get greedy and uses it to get inside a safe full of money, he puts his whole body inside the safe but unfortunately the piece of paper becomes unstuck from the door of the safe and the man is then trapped in the safe. This is a very very short film and only lasts 2 minutes 49. But it is a nice little story about getting to greedy. It didn't give me and Rabbi any inspiration for our short film but i enjoyed watching it. 

I think this short film is very clever and energetic. The basic plot is about a man who is asked to take a picture for a family, but right after he has taken the picture he runs off with the camera and we see him being chased by the camera owner. Throughout the chase he continues to take photos of the man chasing him. we then notice that the person chasing him keeps changing, and we then realise that he does this regularly, he steals camera and takes photos during the chase. The short film ends with the man displaying the photos he took in an art gallery as an exhibition. 

Moddboard for our short film

This is the original mood board that we had for our short film, but since then we have changed what some of the issues and stories are and so some of the pictures on this don't relate to our film anymore.

Self control
This relates to all three of our stories because the characters we have could all do with more self control. Stan, in story 1 abuses his girlfriend Emily and therefore if he had more self control then he wouldn't lash out the way he does. This is the same with the story in which Val is abusing her son Ashley, if she has more self control then Ashley wouldn't be getting abused by her. For our other story, the main character Jade has resorted to self harm in order to try and deal with what is going on in her life at that moment. If she had some self control then she would be able to stop herself from self harm.

Alone
All of our main characters (Jade, Ashley and Emily) feel very alone in life. Jade feels rejected by society and her own family because they do not approve of her being gay. Ashley is only 8 years old and he lives with an alcoholic and abusive mother and he feels like he has nowhere to turn to. Emily is in a very vulnerable position having just found out that she is pregnant with her violent boyfriends baby. She feels alone as she doesn't have anybody left but him to turn to, and she knows that he will most likely get angry and hurt her.

Being Trapped
Both Ashley and Emily are trapped by their abusers and they are finding it difficult to escape, Ashley is only 8u years old and so he cannot just walk out because he relies on his mother still because of his young age. He isn't in a position where he can get out easily. Emily only has her boyfriend to turn to, she has nowhere else she can go to get away from him, and now she is tied down by the baby that she has just found out she is carrying. Jade doesn't have her family to talk to about her problems because they do not like who she is because of her sexuality, she is 17 and still lives at home and she can't just walk away because of how they feel.

Depression
None of our characters currently have depression, but we have included this as a main word/theme because either one of them could sink into depression as a result of their problems and issues in their lives.

Forbidden love
This isn't a theme in our short film anymore, but it was going to be when we were going to have a story that was about an Asian girl who wanted to be with someone out of her religion. Her parents wouldn't allow it as they wanted her to have an arranged marriage and live with who they chose for her. so she had to stop seeing this person who she was not allowed to be with.

Lost faith
This also related to our 'arranged marriage' story. The lost faith in her family and in love itself. However, this could also apply to our final 3 stories that we are definitely having. Emily and Ashley have both lost faith in other people, as all they have ever known is abuse from others, so they find it very difficult to have trust in other people. Jade has lost all faith in herself because of how her family and people around her are viewing her as a person all because she is gay. This lost faith has caused her to start harming herself as she doesn't care about herself anymore.

Making a point
This was mainly related to our 'arrabged marriage' story, as the girl who was in love with someone outside of her own religion wanted to fight for the love she wanted so much. She tried to make a point that you cannot choose who you fall in love with and that you can't control your own feelings. She wanted to let her family know that being with someone she truly loved would be the right thing for her life and her happiness, instead of being married to somebody she hardly knew at all.

Imaginary friend
This was another story that we came up with but later decided that it would be too complicated to do. The basic storyline is that there is a girl who has had an imaginary friend ever since she was little (as children sometimes do) but it became such a big part of her life even when she got older, she relied completely on this imaginary friend and she would always think about him. Then one day she is walking through town and she sees a man walk by, he is quite young, only a few years older than herself. she turns round to see him also looking back at her and she realises that this is her imaginary friend stood right in front of her, just as she had always imagined him. He recognised her as well, she was his imaginary friend. The story then goes on to show them falling in love after finally meeting, but then there comes a time when they both disappear from each others lives.
This story would be very difficult to do and we also couldn't find any actors that would be able to play the imaginary friend. We just really liked the storyline but if we were to do this then the short film would be entirely concentrated on this one story rather than having 3 different stories. we decided that it would be easier not to have this story.

T Z V Productions

Me and Rabbi (my other group member) have come up with a logo and a production company name for our film.

The name is: TZV Productions and the logo is seen below. The logo is made up of a T in dark blue, a Z in Turqiouse and a V in purple, and they all fit together to make the logo. This is only the first draft of the logo and so it may develop into something else later but for now this is what we have. We experimented with other thicknesses of lines for the logo but we both said that we thought this was the best looking one.

the other thicknesses looked like this:

We may decide to use one of the others, we will decide on that later when we come to make a poster for our short film, as then we will be able to see what looks best.

Lou Lou Lives Here

This is the Short film Lou-Lou Lives here that we watched in our Media class from the DVD 'Digital Shorts'

Short Films

When me and the other person in my group were first trying to decide what it was we wanted to do for our short film we came to the decision that we would do social realism. We had recently watched a few short films that were also social realism and so that is where our inspiration came from. We liked the idea that we could concentrate on issues surrounding different peoples lives, as that is what we saw when watching the short films in class.

This DVD is called 'Digital Shorts' and it was made by the UK Film Council and the British Film Institute and was funded by the National Lottery. There are 8 shorts on this DVD:
-The First Time It Hits- Written and directed by Jason Budge
-Hard Labour- Directed by Oliver Krimpas and written by Lucy Floyd
-Job Street- Written and directed by Mathew Santiago Whitecross
-Stripes- Written and directed by Sean Spencer
-Lou-Lou Lives Here- Written and directed by Hazel Grian
-Unreal City- Peter Addington-Animator
-Leila- Directed by Ian Dodds and written by Roxanna Pope
-Ice Cream Dream- Directed by Ekta Walia and written by Holly Bates and Etka Walia

We didn't watch all of these shorts as that would have taken up most of the lesson. The films we watched out of these were:
-Hard Labour
 This short is about a woman called Yelena who lives with quite a rich family. A wife and Husband called Simon and Emily. They don't treat Yelena very well when she lives there, working for them. The husband is particularly nasty towards her and for this reason Yelena doesn't like him very much. Emily is pregnant with Simon's child. But then we also find out that Yelena is pregnant also pregnant and she tells Simon that it is his child. Simon doesn't want his wife to know that it's his baby and so he pays her to have an abortion, but she doesn't have it. In the end of this short, Emily has her baby and Yelena ends up taking this baby and having it as her own, as we find out that all this time Yelena has been faking her whole pregnancy by stuffing cushions up her jumper to make it seem as though she is pregnant. She then takes this baby and the money she has earned and goes back to the country she originally came from. One of the 3 stories on our short film has a storyline in which a girl is pregnant. So this short definitely got through to us in terms of ideas for our film.

-Job Street
This short is where the inspiration for having 3 stories in one came from that we intend to have in our film. This short introduces us to a street in which job seekers, who are foreign, go to find work. The 3 characters who we follow all wait on the street until a vehicle come to pick them up and take them away to do the jobs required of them. The audience feel sorry for all 3 of the people for having to do these not very nice jobs. Also because we follow each of their stories we feel closer to them which again makes us feel sympathy for them and the lives they all have.

-Stripes
Nothing in this short film gave us any ideas for our own film, but we did enjoy watching it. The plot line surrounds two men, Michael and Eddie. These two men used to know each other when they were in school, and because Eddie has dark skin, Michael used to pick on him and bully him, sometimes physically harming him. Now Eddie has come back for revenge and threatens Michael.

-Lou-Lou Lives Here
I really enjoyed this short film. It was the first one we watched and the style of it was very good and really got the whole class involved in it's odd plot line. After watching it we all said what we thought had actually happened during the film and we all had a different explanation of what we saw. The story starts with a small girl walking around in a forest and then near a road. A van pulls up and the man inside the van starts to chase the girl. We then have a scene where this man is getting attacked by a dog. The film ends with somebody shouting 'Lou-Lou!' then the dog runs into the garden of this house and a sign on the gate reads 'Lou-Lou lives here'. The girl was the dog.

-Unreal City
I was looking forward to watching this short film, as I really enjoy watching animated films/cartoons. I liked the plot of this as well. The little cartoon character had a fairly boring life, he went to work everyday and didn't seem to enjoy it very much. He had a music box with a dancer inside of it. When he got home from work he would get this music box and open it and watch her dancing. He then fell asleep and he had a dream about the dancing girl. He was in love with her and they were so happy in the dream. When he woke up he knocked the music box off the table by accident and it broke. At this point the audience feel really sad for him because of the box and the dancer being the only good things in his life. But then the dancer character magically grows from the box and becomes the same size as him and they end up very happy together.

-Ice Cream Dream
The main character Luna, dreams of making friends with the children who go to her Dad's ice cream van. She has dreams where she owns the ice cream van and all the children love her. She goes to work with her Dad one day and sees a boy who she wants to make friends with. She goes out to play with him and the films ends with her and this boy playing on his scooter whilst Luna's Dad drives past in the ice cream van.

This is what is written on the back of the DVD for these Short Films:

"The UK Film Council's New Cinema Fund partners 11 strategic bodies across the UK to produce over 100 digital short films a year. The brief is simple: each film must be shot digitally, cost less that £10,000 and be less than 10 minutes in length. Digital shorts is designed to support the next generation of emerging filmmakers who are both technological and creative innovators. Digital shorts encourages the risk taking nature of film making by providing a supportive framework." 

Welcome to my A2 Media Blog!

Over the past few weeks, my media class have started the next unit, A2 Media. We have spent time deciding whether to do a Trailer or a short film. I have decided to do a short film, in the genre of Social Realism, so planning has started and this blog will show the planning and filming process. Filming will start in September, so from now until then, my group will be preparing and deciding on everything that will go into the short film, so that we are ready when September comes!

Enjoy!