Evaluation Question 3 part 1

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 1 part 6

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

Length

The length of our short film was approximately 3 minutes 45 seconds long. This fit into the short film forms and conventions when it comes to time. The short film could have been made longer to create a larger and deeper story, but we had to stick to a time frame that was under 5 minutes long. With this short length of time that we had it made us focus more on what shots to use to tell the narrative and only use key information.

Storylines

In the storyline of Twisted we decided to go against the convention of telling the narrative through mostly non verbal communication and camera shots. Because the genre of our film is psychological thriller we decided to have the narrative progressing through the dialogue of the psychopath; this is due to most psychological thrillers usually having a central protagonist or antagonist that narrates the story and allows the audience to understand the plot as it moves along. So in the conventions of short film we decided to make it complex and difficult to follow at points to try and make the audience focus their attention even more on the events that were happening. But in this we still kept to the convention of a condensed narrative. Furthermore with this being a psychological thriller we decided to have the convention of protagonist meeting his antagonist face to face and having a confrontation, but decided to make this the main bulk of the film as it made the film have more grit to it.

Characters

In following with short film conventions we stuck to three main characters. Henry, The Psychopath and Mary. The reason for doing this was so that we could focus on the relationship between Henry and The Psychopath; we wanted to make the audience unsure of who was really the ‘good guy’ of the narrative and also what were both their connections to Mary. Whilst doing this we realised that we could make the distinctions between the two central characters blurred and make them question who was real and who was not. Like with the genre conventions of psychological thrillers the characters were shrouded in mystery, we didn’t know where they originated from or how they came to meet. In addition to this we also decided that the primary antagonist would be the omnipotent all knowing character to show who really had the power.

Twist

In both the genre of psychological thriller and short films a twist is usually involved to create an ambivalent ending where the audience are unsure as to the events that had unravelled. In Twisted we kept to this convention with the whole story revolving around this narrative device to generate questions as to what identity is and who is real and who is not. The twist in our short film was that both Henry and The Psychopath were one and the same which was revealed through flashback scenes where Henry believed The Psychopath to be the killer of his wife Mary, but in actual fact it is slowly revealed through the actions of Mary and the close ups that Henry was no longer married to her and in his rage he murdered her. We are then again taken back to the dark room where the two central characters are in a violent confrontation where Henry murders The Psychopath which then ends with Henry waking up with a knife in a nurse in a mental health hospital. So in this we conformed to the conventions of psychological thrillers and short films.

Budget and creativity

The budget for our short film was roughly £15.00 for the fake knife and shirts. Most short films only have very limited budgets for props, effects and equipment luckily we had the filming equipment for free from the college. Since we are first time film makers as well as being students we kept to a low budget as most short film makers do, this in effect is actually better than having a large budget as we had to focus the money on only the essential products needed for the film. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Trutex-009659-Sleeve-School-Inches/dp/B008O39AQU/ref=sr_1_8?s=clothing&ie=UTF8&qid=1395663002&sr=1-8&keywords=white+school+shirt

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blitz-Sport-Standard-Rubber-Knife/dp/B001S3C7RM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395663038&sr=8-1&keywords=blitz+training+knife

As this film was intended to be released online and in small niche cinemas we were under less pressure to produce a work of art that would draw in large audiences. Having the film as a non profit product also gave us less pressure to produce something that would have to make big returns such as it is in box office films. The only restriction with the creativity of the short film was that it was a psychological thriller and therefore stuck closely to its forms and conventions, making it slightly predictable in its intentions as many psychological thrillers had be released before.

Distribution

With distribution of short films we did not have any companies that would mass produce and release our film. Instead we decided to use what most real products do and publish it to the internet on websites such as YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe_Y9MjNTGc which was our prime place to publish it. We could also publish it on sites such as Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/upgrade1v2?utm_source=search&utm_medium=google-upgrade1-brand_vimeo_alone_vimeo_exact-uk&utm_campaign=1621&utm_term=vimeo&gclid=CPCkxeqVq70CFWjKtAodQl0AiA&dclid=CJbZ-OqVq70CFQqR3godcTIAyw another place to release short films or enter in competitions such as the BFI completion. http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/competitions

Evaluation Question 1 part 5

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

In order to answer this question we must first answer what are the forms and conventions of short films.

Evaluation Question 1 part 4

Poster Continued

How did you go about designing your poster?

So from the codes and conventions of the psychological thriller posters I decided that I would first take close ups of the two main characters of the short film. When doing this I made sure that both were positioned exactly the same so that their faces would be aligned and I could then Photoshop the two faces together to make a double face. Upon doing this I realised that the image didn't look as good as what it could have been and decided to redraft the poster.

I decided to go against the usual conventions of what characters faces are expressing and went for ambivalent and mocking expressions to make it unclear to the audience as to who was the antagonist and who was the protagonist. Following on from this I decided that I would remove the background of the photos and using the threshold tool is Photoshop removed the entire colour from them making their portraits come out in a black posterize format. From this I then place one portrait landscape and the other inverted underneath it to create a sort of shadow effect to symbolise that the shadow of one character is his alter ego.This kept with the codes and conventions as they were dark and depressing with an enigma set.

From this I then took a background from Google images of a crumbling wall that had rot and decay setting in. The reason behind choosing this was that it conformed to psychological thriller conventions of being bleak and desolate; furthermore once this was placed in Photoshop I resized the image slightly de-saturated it using the contrast and brightness tool and then selecting the arrange tool sent it to the back of the poster so that it was set as the background.

In addition to this I decided that with the colour scheme the main feature of the film was blood being spilled and so decided to add blood splatters that were a deep crimson making it look fresh and stand out in the poster. This was the same for the main title which was created in a font creepy font website http://www.fontspace.com/category/blood  and downloaded. Furthermore the log line was in white font abiding by the codes and conventions and it also stood out more than the black text.

Finally I decided to take a page out of ‘The number 23’s’ book by adding a short extract from the logline and placing it in black and copying it all over the page to add the psychological theme to it. The information that I included in this poster was the title (which is essential) a logline and the billing block. I deliberately decided to not add the actor’s names to the poster because with short film the actors names are not used to attract an audience (such as in mainstream Hollywood with names such as Al Pacino) and also because it furthered the mystery as to who these people were.

Evaluation Question 1 part 3

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

Poster: How did you go about designing your poster?

 Before I began to create a poster for my short film I first looked at what the codes and conventions of psychological thriller posters are. Whilst looking I found these main features:

• Most posters go with a bleak and dark background that either has highly de-saturated environments or nothing at all
• Most psychological thriller posters also have the main protagonist on the front usually expressing fear, confusion or anger such as ‘Shutter Island’ ‘The number 23’ and ‘The Silence of the Lambs’
• Normally there is one object (usually a key element of the film) is only thing saturated in vibrant colour such as ‘After Life’
• The text used on the poster is usually red, white or black, or all three
• The title of the film is usually in a white colour that is in bold letters
• Finally the log lines are usually in a bloody crimson red

Evaluation Question 1 part 2

Magazine Article - Continued

Process of laying out the cover