Evaluation - Megan

Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms & conventions of real media products?

1. Narrative Organization - In Back to Solitude, the narrative appears in reverse. The film starts with the two characters facing each other in a field at the end of their relationship, and works back to the moment they first meet. In our film, we use flashbacks to show the passing of the relationship between our characters meaning that we do not follow a conventional linear and chronological narrative. In this sense, I think Trapped conforms to the conventions of real media products, as both of these short films document the passing of time, though in different ways. Our film conforms a simple version of Todorov's theory of narrative, in that we start with an equilibrium, there is a disruption to this, and then this is resolved and a new equilibrium is formed. This theory can also be applied to Back to Solitude, further showing that our film conforms to common conventions.

2. Characterisation - In Tune for Two, the more vulnerable character is portrayed as weak through his facial expressions, and position in relation to the other character - he is on his knees, facing away from him.

In our film, we wanted to show a different side to our more vulnerable character. To do this, we have a scene with him hanging out with his friends, showing that he is on an equal footing to some of the people in his life. However, even this is ruined by Amy's calls, and demonstrates to the audience that he can't escape her. This prompts a reaction from his friends, who find the situation "weird", showing an element of isolation from Sam between the people we have seen him be most comfortable with. We challenge the conventions of showing vulnerability here, as we show a different side to Sam than his constant vulnerability when he is around Amy.

  This episiode of Coronation Street presents Tyrone as we tried to portray Sam, thereby conforming to the conventions used in the soap. Our film very much conforms to what we see in this particular episode between Kirsty and Tyrone, as it shows a build up of anger before a climactic ending, however there is no apology from Amy, or recognition that she has done wrong.  

3. Characterisation - Back to Solitude shows a quite stereotypical characterisation of its two characters. We see the male character drinking beer and sitting in a laid back manner, in contrast to the female character reading a magazine and appearing quite feminine. In Trapped, we also wanted to show a pretty stereotypical representation of our characters, to create more of an impact when we introduced the violence. In this flashback scene, Sam has his arm around Amy in a seemingly protective way, though her dominance comes through here as she does not reciprocate the gesture and instead is almost turned away from him.

This conforms to the characterisation of the characters in Back to Solitude as we have created the couple in much the same way, thinking about how we wanted to characterise them and trying to decide how best to portray this.

4. Camerawork - In Tune for Two, camerawork is essential to portraying the status of the two characters. A low angle is used to show the dominance of the murderer, reminding the audience that he still has power over the other character even though the tone of the film is more humorous at this point. Camerawork is also important when showing the dominance of the character of Amy throughout the film, as well as Sam's more vulnerable side. We wanted to use some more experimental camerawork in our film, as well as conforming to the use of somewhat standard camerawork in other short films. For this reason, we filmed shots such as this one where Sam drives to college.

 Instead of simply using the shot of him driving away, and trying to show shots of Amy ringing him once he arrived at college, we decided to film him actually driving which challenges the conventions of other short films I have looked at. However, this being said, short films are often renowned for their experimental nature so in this sense experimenting with camerawork could be seen as conforming to conventions.

5. Sound - Much of the narrative in Back to Solitude is communicated through voiceover. The voiceover helps to communicate the narrative as otherwise this could potentially be quite confusing for the viewer. In other short films that I looked at such as Tune for Two and The Black Hole, the dialogue was very minimal and they mostly just used ambiend sound. I think Trapped conforms to the sound used most commonly in short film, as we have pretty minimal dialogue and rely on diegetic sound throughout to communicate meaning. One particular bit of sound that we relied on was the sound of the mobile phone ringing, which signaled the violence and reiterated it to the audience throughout. Nothing hugely similar to this appeared in any of the short films I looked at, so this could be seen to challenge the conventions.

6. Mise en scene - As our film is supposed to be realistic, we tried to make the mise en scene reflect this. We used realistic settings that we thought Sam would be in, such as his house and at college. This conforms to the conventions used in other short films, such as The Black Hole where we see the character in a suit and tie in an office setting. This also shows the importance of having suitable costume in relation to setting, as the man in the office needs to be wearing the smart clothing for the audience to believe the setting. We tried to conform to this in Trapped, by keeping Sam and Amy in stereotypical clothing for their age which would be appropriate for whichever setting.

 Props were also important for us to consider as we filmed in Laura's house, so we needed to be wary of using props that would relate to her in any way as we needed to make the setting believable. Because of this, we ended up with very few key props, and only very few props in the background.

Sometimes this became more difficult to achieve, such as above, but we did our best to work around the fact that it appeared quite cluttered and made sure that we did not move anything in the background accidentally to ensure that we did not end up with any continuity errors. The Black Hole also only seems to use necessary props in the background, and the man does not hugely interact with his surroundings. For the most part, we conformed to the conventions of mise en scene in already existing short films. 

7. Themes & Issues - Our film showed a representation of a relationship containing domestic abuse. We wanted to challenge the conventions of stereotypical representations of domestic abuse - not only in short film but also in other aspects of the media, such as Coronation Street's current storyline with Kirsty and Tyrone. We felt that male domestic abuse was a topic that we could successfully portray as realistic, even though there is not a lot similar to this around at the moment. The relationship in Back to Solitude is also the issue, though does not deal with it in quite the same way as we chose to in Trapped. We used the iPhone throughout the film to reiterate the domestic abuse the whole way through, as Amy's 'clinginess' was one of the key factors, and issues, in their relationship.

 The key issue in our film challenged the stereotypical portrayals of domestic abuse in the media, though the relationship between the two characters was shown in a way that conforms to conventions of relationships, in that we see the couple doing stereotypical 'couple' things, such as having dinner together.

8. Post-production - Post-production effects are used widely in all types of media, including short films, and ours was no exception to this. With post-production, we were able to add in transitioning effects to create our flashbacks and alter the colours slightly to make it more obvious to the audience that they had moved to a different point in time. Without this, our film could have become very confusing to keep up with if the viewer had no prior knowledge of the film. Effects were also used in Tune for Two to show the audience that the person whose eyes we are seeing through is not quite conscious.

A blur effect was used to demonstrate this, as well as a blinking eye which added to the illusion. We conformed to the conventions of real media products here, as using effects in post-production is quite common. 

9. Editing - Most of our editing is quite slow paced throughout, particularly in the beginning as there is not a lot going on. It becomes more fast paced at the end, when we reach Sam's 'breakdown'. This adds tension and is quite common in film and television to show a build up of suspense. We also tried to do some more interesting things with editing, which involved filming scenes from inside a cupboard, an oven and a fridge and then editing these together later to show the passing of time without having to use fades or other editing techniques. Editing in The Black Hole is interesting as the special effects are quite clever. Obviously all of these had to be done in editing/post-production and show how much of a film is actually made afterwards. As the suspense builds towards the end of the film when we realise what he is going to do with his new-found power, the pace of the editing quickens much like ours does at the end of our film, meaning we have conformed to the conventions of editing. 

The Poster

Above are a selection of short film posters. The final four (6-9) are posters made through Virgin Media shorts, where they ask people to make posters for the short films on their shortlist. More information about this can be found here. Because of this, these posters are slightly different to other short film posters, (2 & 5) in that they only contain the title of the film and the name of the director, as opposed to having a credit block or references to festivals and awards. Posters 1, 3 and 4 are from full length feature films, that fall under the social realist genre and therefore link to our short film.

Conventions of Film Posters

• Title - larger than the rest of the text, usually stands out in terms of positioning/colour. Though our title is the same green as some of our other text, we still feel that it stands out due to it's positioning and the fact that it is on a plain background so there is nothing else to distract from it. The title also usually suggests something about the film itself, particularly in short film as this is often the only thing an audience will have to go by before seeing the film, as trailers are uncommon. Our title and the image above it work together to suggest that he is 'trapped' in some way.
• Tagline - most often found on feature length film posters, however we decided to include one as a quote on our poster as we felt that the poster needed something to indicate the nature of the storyline further.
• Director's name - this tends to appear separate from the credit block, Fish Tank, Ginger & Rosa and This is England all support this, with "a film by..." appearing above/below the title on all of them. 
• Actor's names - these appear somewhere on the poster, usually quite large, particularly if the actors are particularly well known as this would be used as a selling point of the film. The names above the title of the film have a dual purpose, as they not only show who acted in the film but who it was directed by. The way this is laid out though, fits more with the conventions of actor's names on a poster.
• Credit block - contains the names of people involved in the film making process, and usually appears at the bottom of the poster. This is true of The Lost Purse, Ginger & Rosa and This is England, though Fish Tank uses this slightly differently as it is actually more central. We decided that our credit block would look best on the screen of the phone, as not only did this give us more room on the poster, it also helped to integrate the phone more with the rest of the design and was more of an original design.
• Image of main characters - most film posters contain an image of the main character(s) in a setting from the film. In films with more well-known actors, this has a dual effect as doing this could also persuade fans of a particular actor/actress to go and see the film because of the 'star' in it. We chose to use an image of our main character on our poster, as we felt that it was important to convey some of our storyline and this was best done by showing Sam looking upset/distressed.
• Ratings - ratings are useful as a part of the selling point of a film. Where a rating is from is also important, as if the source is not interesting to the audience the poster is trying to reach, then they will seem less credible. Ratings tend to come from newspapers and film magazines, and we wanted to conform to these conventions and therefore have ratings from Empire magazine, and Little White Lies. 
• References to award wins/film festival entries - again, these are an important selling point for a film. If an audience can see that a film has been successful at festivals or has won many awards, they will probably be more tempted to go and see it. We decided just to put ratings on our poster, as it was easy for us to add them in to the design with the use of the iPhone. 

For the most part, our poster conforms to the conventions of both short film posters and feature film posters. We did not try to challenge the conventions we had looked at in any way, and only really tried to develop what we had seen by adding in the iPhone as another layer to the poster which would allow us to present the same information in a slightly different way.

The Review

This review layout is slightly different to what usually appears in Little White Lies, as the image that is usually along the top has its own page on the right. However, the rest of the review is much the same with three columns, and the ratings at the end. The review can be found online here. We looked at many reviews from the magazine to give us an idea of what ours should look like, as our aim was to conform to the conventions usually found in the reviews. 

We analysed what was found in each paragraph of the reviews, as well as learning that most reviews tended to have around 5-7 paragraphs. We aimed to make ours conform to this, and ended up with 7 of our own paragraphs.

To make sure that we were conforming to the conventions of the magazine, we not only focused on layout, but also analysed the type of language used in the Little White Lies magazine. Through looking at this example from a review of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as well as other Little White Lies reviews, we found some common features of the language and were able to assume that the magazine and therefore the reviews are aimed at quite a sophisticated audience.   

Some of these language features that we found were:

• alliteration
• complex sentences
• restricted code
• adjectives
• adverbs
• rhetorical questions
• puns
• metaphors

We then tried to use these language features in our own review, for example: 

We intentionally analysed the language and the layout to conform to the conventions of a Little White Lies review, as well as analysing the layout in the same way.

Question 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary tasks?



Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

 
Here are screen grabs of our Facebook feedback page (above) and our Twitter account (below). We received our feedback primarily through these two sources (particularly Facebook), though also received feedback verbally and via text in particular from friends and family. 

 
Here are a couple of our Vlogs where we discussed some of our ideas for audience feedback, and things that we changed because of this.
   

Question 4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

Little White Lies Review Design Draft - Megan

After learning how to use InDesign on Wednesday, today we tried to put everything together roughly how it would be for our final review. I used the review draft that Laura and I had been working on in the lesson and input that text for the columns. With some tweaking of line sizes, all of our text now fits onto one page and still leaves room for the numbered review in the final column. This is the main part of the review that still needs working on, as we have not really thought about what we will write there yet.

Other than that we were looking at more details that we could add to make the review more realistic. We added the LWLies 'stamp of approval' as well as a page number and the word 'review' down the left hand side of the page. This design does still need some work, but we will make the finishing touches when we know the exact length of the review, as this is still a draft.

Poster Design Decisions

For our poster, we had 3 designs to play with, as you can see above. 
Poster 1 includes a white phone which coincides with the phone used in our film, but as a group, we felt this didn't look as good as what the black one did in the other two posters.

Poster 1

The picture in poster 1 and 3 seemed to be the better photo as well as proved by our Audience Feedback. 
The picture in poster 2 was deemed to give too much away to the audience, as he is in a hospital bed and gives away too much, whereas Sam sitting in the corner with photo's around him signalling that he is "trapped" isn't such a giveaway.

Poster 2

Our final decision for our poster is design 3 as we feel this is the best represented photo for the film and the most professional looking design. Although our design is good, there are still some finishing touches to be completed that we are doing now, so we will keep you updated with the final poster shortly!

Poster 3 - Our Choice of Design

Second Draft of Review - Laura and Megan

Megan and I have now created a second draft for the review. After having a lesson on the structures of the review, and annotating some more ourselves, we have added a paragraph and changed the ordering slightly. Here it is...

James Dunham and Laura Geall make their directorial debut in this gripping representation of domestic abuse. Dunham and Geall have breached societal expectations by having the female as the abuser, with the main star, Sam (Mark Summers); playing the victim. With this the audience are cleverly reminded that what appears on the outside is not always the truth.

We see a character that represents that of a stereotypical teenage boy, “going out on the pull” with his friends, criticising his “clingy” girlfriend. However, as the college day ends, we enter a world that is far from stereotypical. Sam takes us through his relationship with Amy (Megan Trigg) through a series of Ascending-style flashbacks. As his memories progress, we are made witness to the subtly-growing violence.

In the first flashback the audience are made to believe that Amy is to Sam, as Lady is to Tramp. This moment of intertextuality is not there simply to signify romance, but to indicate that Sam is being abused. By comparing their relationship to this oh-so-sweet Disney classic, Amy’s possessive nature is heightened; reflecting the way Sam is stifled in his relationship.

Amy’s psychotic and possessive tendencies are triggered by Laura, Sam’s “friend from college”. We see this in a flashback, when a cleverly edited transition reveals Amy and Sam’s confrontation after meeting Laura (Laura Geall, Snapshot). The moments of violence throughout the film are only shown to us subtly, reminding the audience of the ever-present theme that things are not always as they appear. Even in the final confrontation, Dunham and Geall rely only on the diegetic sound of Sam’s reaction. Hearing his pain is more chilling than seeing it; a cold reminder to the audience that abuse is not always visual.

Summers was given the difficult task of playing an abused college student. Even though his portrayal of the character was hardly Oscar-winning, it does nothing to ruin the overall feel of the film. Even when we see him look to the camera on occasion, Trigg’s outstanding performance just about manages to hold everything together. Her excellent portrayal of such a cold-hearted character, eerily similar to bunny-boiler Glenn Close, conveys her dominance and reiterates Sam’s weak character (whilst reminding us of Summers’ weak acting). Using unknown actors helps portray the social realistic aspect; however, the casting director needs to be fired - effective immediately.

The audience roots for Sam when they realise what he is going through. We hope for him to find a way out of this relationship that he is isolated in; being truly representative of its title: Trapped. Even by the end we see there is no escape for him; as Dunham and Geall reveal the most severe consequences of domestic abuse.

The audience are left judging themselves for criticising Sam, and contemplating whether relationships are really as they appear. The truth of this social realist film hits home with the audience, leaving them with a truly chilling feeling.

Learning InDesign - Megan

As our review has to be in the style of a Little White Lies review, today we learnt how to use InDesign to design the layout of our review page. This version uses an image that we took for our poster the other day, though we may change this to another image or maybe a still from our film.

Little White Lies Research - Megan

Little White Lies is published bi-monthly by the Church of London publishing group. Each issue focuses on a feature film, in this case Django Unchained, which is the main feature of the magazine as well as containing reviews of other films. 

The video below shows more about the making of Little White Lies, which really gives an insight into the sort of content they create.

Film Poster Research - Megan

When researching film posters, I found it extremely difficult to find short films which focused on issues similar to our film. I then went on to search for social realist film posters, as I feel that our film is covered somewhat by this genre. The two most obvious films for this genre were Fish Tank and This is England, both of which are also British films.


Fish Tank
(2009)
"Everything changes for 15-year-old Mia when her mum brings home a new boyfriend."

There are multiple posters for Fish Tank, all of which seem to portray different things to the viewer. This would suggest that these posters exist to attract a different target audience with each one. These two in particular show the difference in the audience that the film is trying to reach.

Narrative

• The main image is of the girl, who we assume is the main character. The background is quite plain, but looks as though there is wallpaper coming away from the wall, perhaps indicating a working class background for the girl.

Representation

• The certification for the film is 15, suggesting use of strong language, possible violence and perhaps sexual scenes. This suggests to the audience that the film will probably be quite realistic and focus on issues found in modern society. 
• The 3 main actors names are positioned right above the title, and right below the ratings. This positioning allows the audience to remember the names, and these particular three are obviously going to be key in the film, allowing the reader to see any that they may know. The director's name appears opposite the key actors and still above the title, though in a slightly smaller font to the one the main actors were written in, implying that they are more important/more well-known.

Genre

• Social realism - categorized as drama on IMDB
• Social Realism, also known as Socio-Realism is an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, and economic hardship through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working-class activities as heroic. - Wikipedia
• I feel the poster conveys this as the girl looks quite stereotypically working class from her costume, as well as the look of the setting.

Audience

• Audience for the poster - shown through ratings, as it seems to be targeting an educated, middle class audience, though a female audience is also targetted here - particularly with the mention of Elle
• This is reinforced by the colours used on the poster, as pink is stereotypically associated with girls, and the pale blue compliments it here.
• An educated, middle class audience is suggested through the review from the Guardian as this would appeal to that audience.
• The font is quite simple, though the use of different sizes of text makes it seem much more interesting. The larger words are things like "powerful" and "outstanding", which highlight to the audience how good the film is. The fact that the film is British is also relevant here, as it shows that the desired audience for the film will appreciate the fact that it is British.
• The poster also features awards that the film has won, which supports the high ratings given on the left. This is more appealing to the audience as they will be more likely to go and see a film that has recieved a lot of good ratings from accredited sources.

Film Language

• This poster seems to focus mainly on text, with over half the poster being taken up by the title and ratings.
• The title font is very plain and simple, but capitalized like the rest of the text. The letters are very close together, which seems to be a common theme through the other text on the poster as well. 
• Ratings come from newspapers such as the Guardian, Independent, Times and Telegraph, as well as from woman's magazine Elle
• Tagline - "Live, love and give as good as you get." - positioned directly under the title. Appears quite ambiguous, there is no real indication on the poster as to what this means for the film.
• The positioning of the credit block is quite unusual in this poster as it is in the middle rather than being at the bottom which is much more common. BBC films, UK film council and Limelight are all credited, with the UK film council and Limelight appearing to have funded the film, and BBC films having produced it.

This poster features most of the information from the previous poster; the festivals are still listed, as well as the three main actors, though there is less focus on reviews and instead there is only one quote. The colours in this are much more masculine than before, suggesting that this poster is perhaps trying to attract a male audience. The setting is also a much more important part of this poster, as you can see the city in the background.

The idea of using two posters to attract different audiences works well in this case, and may also work with our own film poster. We could also use multiple posters to focus on different aspects of our short film. For example we could have a poster that features Sam looking vulnerable, and a separate poster showing Amy looking dominant. This way we could still keep the audience guessing about the violence, as we do not want to give this away in the beginning of the film.

This is England

(2006)
"A story about a troubled boy growing up in England, set in 1983. He comes across a few skinheads on his way home from school, after a fight. They become his new best friends even like family. Based on experiences of director Shane Meadows."

Narrative

• The main image is of the main characters in a city setting that we presume will be the setting for the film. This allows us to be introduced to the characters and the sort of people they are going to be.
• We understand that there are going to be many characters in the film for us to be introduced to, though it isn't hugely clear from the poster what the plot of the film will be.

Representation

• The setting is also important in this poster, as well as the characters for showing representations of social class/status as well as region
• Shane Meadows is the only name that we see on the poster. This could suggest that the actors in the film are not very well known so therefore we do not need to see their names on the poster, or that Shane Meadows is an influental director and that the film is trying to target people who would be aware of previous films he has directed.
• The representation of gender is interesting to look at in this poster. There are 6 male characters on the poster and 5 female characters, but there does not seem to be a status difference between them. In the 1980s, women were still somewhat seen as inferior to men, though this was changing. This poster seems to demonstrate how women had achieved equality as they seem to be "one of the guys".

Genre

• Social Realism - categorized as crime/drama on IMDB
• Definition of social realism can be found above - tagline suggests that some sort of social injustice/prejudices will be relevant in the film

Audience

• Awards that the film has won are shown accross the top, with reviews underneath from Total Film, Empire and The Observer. The first two are film magazines, suggesting that the audience for this film most likely already has an interest in film. Adjectives such as "impressive", "stunning" and "brilliant" make the film much more appealing to the audience.

Film Language

• The title is the largest text, and is in the colours of the Union Jack, either representing the fact that it is a British film, or highlighting the fact that the film is set in Britain. It is textured as if to suggest that it has been written on the wall behind the characters, though the font is too structured for this to actually be the case. Though the title is larger than the rest of the text, the main image is larger in comparison, meaning that it does not actually stand out too much.
• "A film by Shane Meadows" is written in a graffiti style font, which adds to the urban feel of the poster already given by the setting.
• Tagline - "Summer 1983. A time to stand out from the crowd." - positioned directly above the title. Positioned here it allows the viewer to see this alongside the characters, implying that they are the ones standing out from the crowd and therefore giving the audience an idea of what they will find in the film.
• Credit block appears at the bottom - so small you can barely see it.
• http://www.thisisenglandmovie.co.uk/ is linked underneath the credit block. The website itself contains information about the cast, awards the film has won as well as some contextual information about the time in which the film is set.

Poster Idea - Megan

 

This is my poster idea for our film. The image I have used is not the one that I would actually be hoping to use, but is the closest I could find in the film to what I wanted. The idea would be to have a shot of Mark, similarly positioned to this, looking vulnerable and weak. I feel like this doesn't give too much away about the film, but equally allows the audience to get a feel for the character. I would also get actual ratings and quotes to put at the top, as well as quoting where they came from. I also need to add the credit block to the bottom of the poster.

Poster Vlog

Trapped - The Final Film

So after weeks of editing, it is finally complete. Below is the final film, Trapped.

College Scene - Meg and Laura

When we filmed the college scene for the first time, we filmed in the common room in a place that we thought looked good. Although we had some good shots in this sequence, the background noise was really prominent and distracted too much from the scene overall. In some shots you can barely hear the dialogue between the characters, which is obviously the main focus in the scene as they are having a discussion in which we first see Sam's friends talking about the bruise.  The second time we filmed the college scene, we filmed it in the common room again at a different, quieter time. We also moved to the corner of the room, because we thought the background noise may reflect as much, therefore not be as apparent. However, we found when it came to editing that the diegetic background noise made the diegetic dialogue inaudible. There were some shots that we liked, for example the close up of Sam where his friend Ryan is in the side of the frame. We hoped to emulate some of these shots in the final college scene, however when we looked for a new location we could not find one where they could sit down, meaning they had to stand further apart. 
With the final college scene we had some problems when looking for a location. Overall we tried and set up in three locations, but there were some issues with the lighting and noise still, as we have talked about in our vlog. 

Editing Vlog 16.01.13

Sam and Amy Flashback Version 2

After editing the first version of the flashback we edited a second version with more cuts in the beginning of the sequence. In the first version, we thought that the two shot of Sam and Amy went on for too long and wouldn't be as exciting to watch for the audience. In the second version we added more shots into the opening of the sequence, which we think works better. 

Audio Editing - Mark and Megan

Today we split up different scenes to edit the audio. James and Laura were editing the audio for the fourth flashback as you can see here. Whereas we were editing the sound for the final scene at the hospital.

The transition between where Sam is in his living room and the hospital is done by dropping the phone and hanging up on Laura. We searched around Garageband for some sound effects and found one called 'Telephone 19' which worked really well. So we put that in as you can see below.

We then searched for some hospital sounds to see if they were better than the ones we had recorded at the hospital, and we found some that we really liked. The sound that we used creates the sense of an actual hospital, as when we filmed the scene it was silent apart from our dialogue and the sound of the heart monitor. 

Then we needed the end beep of him dying when the heart monitor fails. There wasn't an actual sound of this so we thought we would improvise. We managed to take a beep from the clip we used earlier and extend that so it was just one long sound which worked really well.

To do list:

We still have quite a lot to do in the editing process, particularly when it comes to sound, so we have decided to write a list of things that we still need to do.

• Record voicemail
• Fix audio in college scene - re-film
• Add in phone ringing in some scenes
• Heart monitor failing beep
• Film foley sound
• Put soundtrack over the top

Continuity Errors - Megan

Whilst editing our film, we have found a major continuity error regarding costume.

When we see Sam come in from college, he removes his hoodie before going upstairs to the bathroom. 

We then see him come downstairs to the fridge, still not wearing a hoodie, whilst he makes his dinner.

However, after preparing a ready meal, we then see Sam put his ready meal in the oven wearing the hoodie. This error has come from filming shots on different days, and has caused us a problem in editing.

To get around this, we either had the option to re-film all the shots in between our flashbacks without the hoodie, or try and get around this issue in editing. We decided that re-filming would take too long to do and would be difficult for us to organise, so instead we have decided to change the order of our shots. Instead of seeing Sam come in from college and head upstairs before coming down to eat, we are going to change the order so that he comes in to the kitchen, and then heads upstairs so that when he is then wearing a hoodie, it is more plausible that me may have simply put it on before finishing his meal.

We realise that this is not ideal, but we are hoping that it will not affect the film overall as it still makes sense in the new order. 

First Editing Session

Today we have put all of our footage on to the network and have started editing some of our ending scenes. We are hoping to have at least three possible endings for our film.

• Amy bringing Sam flowers to apologise - shows he is still trapped
• Laura bringing Sam flowers - shows he may have a way out of the violence
• Amy turning up to blame him for the violence

We wanted to have as many possible endings as we could so that we can ask for feedback on our Facebook page. This will enable us to make our film more appealing to our target audience, as the majority of people giving feedback fit the demographic which we are aiming at.

Hospital Filming

Today we filmed the final sequence of our short film at the Audrey Emerton building in Brighton. We were able to use props such as a hospital bed, a drip and a heart monitor which made the scene much more realistic in terms of mise en scene. We filmed many different endings for our film as we want to receive feedback on different edits before we choose one to be our final decision for the ending.

After various comments about how realistic the bruise on Mark's face Megan talks through how she has taken the comments on board to create a more realistic bruise.




Interview with Kate Rogers, a nurse within the county. We also had the privilege of speaking to Kate Rogers, the nurse who kindly gave us the permission to film in the training centre for medical students. We felt it would be useful for us to gauge a feel of how domestic abuse cases are encountered in real life. We began by asking her just how common domestic violence cases are on hospital wards.

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Above is an image we took of a screen which said which rooms were booked and who by, as you can see we are the "College Students filming"

Editing - The Beginning Sequence

Below is the beginning of our short film, it is only rough at the minute as we still have some clips that need to be put in and some audio is missing, but so far is looking good. 

Friday's Filming Summary

Friday's filming turned out to be quite successful as we finished all the scenes we needed to film in Laura's house. We now only have to film the college scene which we will be doing on Monday, and the hospital scene which we will be doing on Thursday. Then we plan on going over all of our footage and putting together a few more test scenes to see if we need to re-film anything. We have also filmed a few different versions of some scenes that we will edit together and then ask for feedback on which ones work best for our film.

We share our thoughts on finishing the inside sequences.

Megan talks to James about the days' filming.
  Mark talks to Laura about camera shots, angles and lighting decisions.