It was like hitting 'The wall' when your a runner

Myself and Blaine have been editing our short film for the past couple of days making everything perfect and to the high standard that we both desire. It was a fun process watching our film come together and how excited we both were, there were disagreements along the way, but either a compromise followed or we had a thumb war to settle it, That's a joke by the way.

It was all going perfect and then.........The most annoying thing ever happens.

If you want to ride the full emotional roller coaster that Blaine my fellow director has only finally just got off. follow the links bellow to view his very informative posts with a little hint of anger.

expanding footage export: The problem

expanding footage export: The resolution/fingers crossed

Poster production Blaine's blog

Here is a post that links to Blaine's blog concerning the construction of our film poster. Our initial idea for the poster did not turn out how we wanted it to look but Blaine has provided a picture of it and explained why we came to a joint decision to put our creative brains together once again and create some new ideas. I did some drawings of some new potential posters which I have shown within another post titled out with the old and in with the new.

Blaine explains the process which he took in the creation of our poster on Adobe Photoshop and the inspiration it originated from.

To view the post follow the link below:
http://blainekenneallya2media.blogspot.com/2011/02/poster-production.html

Quantitative feedback analysis Blaine's blog

Both Blaine and I constructed a questionnaire to acquire information about potential consumers demographics which will help us to understand where we could advertise our short film, but as well as just finding out about their demographics we asked very guided questions about our subsidiary products, which would then help us within the construction process of both our poster and review. After analyzing the questionnaire results, the graphs show specific elements that consumers want to be included within these subsidiary products.

Blaine has provided some evidence of the results and analyzed what we have concluded from them.

To view Blaine's post follow the link below:
http://blainekenneallya2media.blogspot.com/2011/02/quantitative-audience-research-analysis.html

Penumbra our ambiguous short film title

Penumbra? Do you know what this means? If yes.... good, if no... even better. This is the name of our short film and it is a very ambiguous name because not that many people know what it means. This fits well with our target audience as under the Two step flow theory of the effects models, audiences will want to find out more about the name and consequently what the film is about, this will lead to discussions with friends and can lead to research upon the internet.

For more information on our title name Penumbra follow the link below to my co-directors blog where he explains what it means and how this fits within our genre.

http://blainekenneallya2media.blogspot.com/2011/01/short-film-title-penumbra.html

Blaine has also produced a short video that represents a way our title can be shown on screen before our film. In my opinion the simplicity adds to the impact it has upon the audience and as it starts to get bigger and turn you as the audience just become intrigued by the unusual rotation that is taking place. Overall i think it is very simple but very effective but to cast your own opinion watch the video below.

Initial poster and review layout plans

Blaine has produced some drafts of some potential posters that we could use and he has also created a layout of a two page spread within a film magazine which we could place our review on. Because mainstream magazines do not really have reviews of short films unless they are very critically acclaimed. To read Blaine's post with detailed explanation of our choices follow the link below to his blog.

http://blainekenneallya2media.blogspot.com/2011/01/plans-for-poster-magazine-review-page.html

Representation theory, analyzed by Blaine Kenneally

Representation can dramatically affect a person's interpretation of a film, the filmmaker is in control of the representation of the characters by choosing: what they wear, their personality, their hobbies, their lifestyle and the events that they participate in within the film. All these aspects contribute to the audiences interpretation of these characters and how they are judged by the viewer. The producer does not have full control over the viewers judgement because their cultural background will have an effect upon their overall judgement. This however does not effect the implied representation of certain characters that the producers portrays, for example women as inferior to men as this will not be welcomed by the viewers as it is insulting but in some circumstances is necessary within the narrative. ill either fall in love with or feel indebted to the male hero; in fact, she is somewhat repulsed by his actions.

To view my co-directors detailed post on representation with reference to a critical theorist Laura Mulveyn, who we can learn from and then apply our own knowledge and hers to our short film to make sure that characters are represented the way that we want them to be and nothing else.

Follow the link below:

http://blainekenneallya2media.blogspot.com/2010/12/representation-laura-mulvey-vs-us.html

Production Log 2

Our second production log can be seen on my Co-director, Blaine Kenneally's blog as he kindly uploaded the second instalment to our ongoing production log/research/analogy/evaluation videos.
In my opinion this is a very good way for us to track our progression throughout the course and it is working great so far. Our teachers also like the frequent updates to.

Bellow is a link to the critical/analytical/amusing second video:

http://blainekenneallya2media.blogspot.com/2010/11/production-log-2.html

Cinematography within our film presented by Blaine Kenneally

Cinematography is the art of making sure lighting and camera angles, shots and movement all portray the same feeling within the audience that the director wants and when recording photographic images for the cinema perfect continuty is present.
My self and Blaine want to have a minimalistic style of cinematography within our short film this is because we want our audience to feel that they are watching a real story and inorder to create this feeling or to at least help emphasise it we will use simple camera shots, movement to creat the realsim within tghe audience that we want.
For more information on the cinematography within our film and some inspirational film directors with their own distinct cinematic style follow the link below:

http://blainekenneallya2media.blogspot.com/2010/11/cinematography-look-of-our-film.html

"Writing a treatment" - Blaine Kenneally

After the discussion to finalise the narrative of our film which took place at my house for a couple of hours we then rewarded ourselves with pizza and an amazing film 'fight club'. Blaine then finished drawing up the plans at home scene by scene which you can see in his post as well as the treatment that he constructed for our short film.
A treatment is a step between basic ideas for scenes and the first screenplay. We wanted to do a treatment because it is a very professional process and it clearly lays out the scenes and many important features.
To view the treatment that Blaine constructed follow the link to his blog below:
http://blainekenneallya2media.blogspot.com/2010/11/writing-treatment.html

"poster for a short film: Semiotics" - Blaine Kenneally

The preparatory research for both of our ancillary products is under way, I have done some research into three different film magazines that we could aim our film review to be a feature in. All three film magazines have different tones to their reviews so I will be analysing them in a future post to then decide the writing style of our review. follow the link here to view this post: Film review analysis

Blaine Kenneally has done some great intial research into film poster's as this is the other ancillary product that we chose to create. To view his post follow the link below:
http://blainekenneallya2media.blogspot.com/2010/11/poster-for-short-film-semiotics.html
After reading his post, we talked together and came up with a couple of initial ideas for a poster but we need to do more research into the target audience of our short film first because then we can carry out some primary research but at the correct target audience. We could construct a questionnaire or carry out some face to face interviews asking the potential consumers some questions and oppinions on some existing posters to find out what they would expect to see on a poster aswell as what they would find interesting and eye catching.

Production log

Today we filmed our first production log of many to come as this is a great way to monitor progress and tell you what we plan to do in the future, report if this was completed and then set new goals for the following weeks. Bellow is the link to Blaine Kenneally's blog as he kindly uploaded and edited the video:

http://blainekenneallya2media.blogspot.com/2010/11/production-log-1.html