Feedback on Review Ideas

IDEA ONE 

Everyone preferred my first idea as they felt it was a much more typical/conventional layout for a film review. They felt that they could easily tell where the text stats from. One improvement to it is that more smaller images could be put next to the main image.             

IDEA TWO

Idea two was not a favourable choice. People felt that it was not very visually appealing and weren't sure as to where the text started from. Because there was quite a lot of negative feedback about this design, I will not use it but will base my review around the design of idea one. 

Review Layout Ideas

Things have been a little slow for me recently as I've been struggling to get a firm location to film my final film in and i've also been struggling to get actors there.
Finally I have found a location and am filming the final scene on Saturday!
Meanwhile, I've been working on the design and layout of my film review.
I've created two different ideas, based on the film magazine review's from Empire and Sight and Sound.

Idea 1:  

Like the other reviews in the film magazines, I decided to have a box dedicated to quick information about the film, showing the certificate, who is in the film, who made the film and how long it is. This is placed right under the still image from the film and is also next to the title so that the reader can't miss it.










The title is right above the review and the full review is written underneath. It is written with the three columns as you can see from the dashed lines.








The still image from the film is going to dominate the top of the page. It creates enigma codes as the readers will wonder who the people are and why is one of them holding a triangle?

I based this idea from the reviews in Empire magazine. At the bottom right hand corner of the page, straight after the full on review, there is a box summing it up, giving the reader a quick review, with a star rating.








Idea 2: 

An image from the film is in the top right hand corner to attract attention, with the title of the film above it.
This makes it direct and straight to the point to the film.
The actual full review sort of fills the space between the image at the top left of the page and the bit at the bottom right.












The synopsis and the information about the film concerning who is in it, the certificate and the directors is at the bottom right hand side of the page, after the full review. This sums everything up for the reader. I based this from the reviews in Sight and Sound.

Audience Feedback on First Edit

This is my audience feedback. Everything said was very positive. They felt that they understood the story line and that they found it funny. They understood the documentary format and thought it flowed very well. Fran, also mentions the dialogue being very engaging, which was a relief to me as I was worried that the dialogue was too much and not very relatable.
Having spoken to other people within my target audience, not just the people in the film, I found there was interest in what the music will be like in the film and interest in what the interviewer says in the voice over. This is something I'm still thinking about. I have come up with ideas for instance, in the scene where the character is beaten up by violin players, I may have screeching violin noises in the background to add an aggressive effect to this scene.

Peer Feedback

Today we did peer feedback on our first edits of our short film. There were the following aspects to focus on when analyzing the first edit; Cinematography, Mise-en-scene, Editing and Sound.

Cinematography: The two people who did my peer feedback really liked the variety of shots, especially the 360 degree pan around the character when he is attacked.


































Improvements for the cinematography was that maybe I could add some more continuity techniques when filming, such as; match on action. When I film some more footage I hope to vary my shot types even more and add more continuity techniques.
All in all, I got high marks for the cinematography!

Mise-en-scene: The triangle's room had very positive feedback because of the use of props and the setting created with the shrine for the triangle.

They believed that the mise-en-scene kept the narrative very strong and clear. Again, I was given quite high marks for the mise-en-scene.

Editing: Feedback showed that the meaning of the short film was very clear to the audience and that the editing is used effectively to tell the story. Only improvements to be make is maybe a varied use of transitions. This is something I definitely need to consider when I edit more of my film, especially to show a change in time.

Sound: Both of them really liked the dialogue for the story line and felt the voice overs were very clear.  Because it's only my first edit, not everything is finished yet, so I haven't recorded the voice over, which both of my peers noticed.

Other Comments: "Great job Ursula, really funny, loved it!"
                                "I think the actor choice was really good"

Editing So Far...

I'm quite far into my editing at the moment. It started off a little slow as I didn't have much footage to edit due to various time difficulties with the actor. The first edit was very simple as most of it was cuts and it was mostly about going through all of the footage to make sure things such as the continuity was okay and if the footage itself is good, incase I had to go back and re film something. However, everything looks good and I chose which footage I considered to be the best shots to edit. 

Some lengths of certain shots are a little erratic as I need to record a voice over, over the image and I don't know how long I'll need the shot to be when I come round to recording it. Because of this my first edit is 7 minutes long, which is over the time limit, but when I do the voice recording, everything will be cut down to hopefully fit into the 5 minute time period.

When I finally came around to shooting more footage, I had a very good idea of what I wanted the final edited scene to be like as the scene I was shooting was when the character is attacked. It is sort of like a flash back to his past, showing what happened when he was attacked. Over this footage will be a voice over of the character reflecting on what happened that day.
I slowed down the length of the footage in order to make it in slow motion as I felt this would be more effective and make the mockumentary style film look more serious, which would be quite humorous to the audience.

This is my first edit of what I've done so far. Where there are black gaps on the screen, that is where more footage is meant to be, but first I have to actually film it! It's been delayed a bit as I'm waiting to hear about a certain location possibility to film in.
There is no voice over yet, so there is footage with no audio over it.

Potential Problems

Today I am meant to filming more for my short film.
Today's shots are shots 10-17, where the main character, Glennard Maxwell gets attacked by violin players.
I plan to film this down a sort of deserted road, right by the school as there will not be many people around and not as many cars around either. I was going to film somewhere else but for convenience sake I've decided to choose a location which is closer to school, but is equally as good as the location I was going to have before.
However, a problem has arisen as the actor's foot has been injured recently so that it will make filming today problematic as the actor may not be able to run in this scene. When I meet with him I'll assess how badly the foot is injured and we'll decide whether or not we will go on with filming today.

Later...

The actor's foot seemed okay for running therefore I got alot of footage for a particular scene today, where the character is being attacked. I've edited this in slow motion because I think it would look more effective and be seen to be taken 'seriously' for the mockumentary.

Film Poster Feedback

On the whole, the feedback for my film poster was very positive. Everyone liked the fact that it was straight forward and to the point. They liked the serious expression of the character as they know the film is a mockumentary and so it makes it more humorous.
The only thing that they said I need to improve on is that to make it more clear that this poster is a poster for a mockumentary film and not like an image for a new CD out. Therefore to make it more clear I need to add a tag line for the film.
I want a tag line that is serious yet is sarcastic so that it reflects the humorous side of the film.

Filming Progress

So far, I have done most of the filming for my short film. I've had to change some things though, for instance I decided to change the Character's name, for various reasons. So his new name is Glennard Maxwell. It is a perhaps more believable name, and after asking a few people about it, they agreed that it is the sort of name you'd expect a triangle player to have.

From the feedback from my animatic, I know that there are perhaps too many shots of just the main character sat in the chair talking to the interviewer, which is why I think I might add some new shots into his interview; sort of like flashbacks, in order to keep the carrier wave of the audience's interest going.

Finding the right location and actors to film has been very difficult for the past few days, as people who have agreed to act for me have ducked out at the last minute for various reasons. To overcome this, I'm going to have to really focus and organise a tight schedule in order for me to fit in my filming by the deadline. So I shall be contacting various people and being strict about times of filming as of course I need the best possible light, however because it's winter it gets dark earlier in the day, therefore filming must start earlier!

On the first day of filming I had great fun setting up the Triangle's shrine!

Making the props such as the box that the triangle is kept in was great fun and making it's surroundings look mystical and exciting, was great fun too. I did this using the candles, the cloth on the table, the incense stick and the rocks.
You can tell from this that the character takes his triangle extremely seriously... or maybe too seriously!




Having the actor dress up as Glennard Maxwell was great fun too.

He is wearing large glasses, a tweed jacket a shirt and grey trousers (which you can't see in this image)
This is the sort of look my target audience thought was appropriate for my character.