costume and props, subtial but vital parts of of our film

When people hear the word filmmaking, they immediately picture film sets with large complex cameras and do not always take into consideration the smaller things that make up these huge productions.
The importance of costumes is often overlooked, because it is a small factor that everyone takes for granted but the implications can be phenomenal if the costume is wrong in any shape or form. This is also the case for props within film.

Multinational film producers have teams of people to produce and check over any props and costumes that are made and included within the film making sure that the continuity is perfect when actors have breaks and come back to a scene with an extra button done up on their jacket. However we do not have these teams to look out for us so we will do this ourselves but just to give you an idea of the amount of effort and work that goes behind these unseen necessities of films here are some lists below of the people that would be present on set:

-Props Master

The property master, more commonly known as the props master, is in charge of finding and managing all the props that appear in the film. The props master usually has several assistants.

-Props builder

The props builder, or more frequently prop maker, as the name implies, builds the props that are used for the film. Props builders are often technicians skilled in construction, plastics casting, machining, and electronics.

-Armourer or Weapons master

The armourer is a specialized props technician who deals with firearms. In most jurisdictions this requires special training and licenses.

-Costume designer

The costume designer is responsible for all the clothing and costumes worn by all the actors that appear on screen. They are also responsible for designing, planning, and organizing the construction of the garments down to the fabric, colours, and sizes. The costume designer works closely with the director to understand and interpret "character", and counsels with the production designer to achieve an overall tone of the film. In large productions, the costume designer will usually have one or more assistant costume designers.

-Costume supervisor

The costume supervisor works closely with the designer. In addition to helping with the design of the costumes, they manage the wardrobe workspace. They supervise construction or sourcing of garments, hiring and firing of support staff, budget, paperwork, and department logistics. Also called the wardrobe supervisor. This term is used less and less.

-Key costumer

The key costumer is employed on larger productions to manage the set costumers, and to handle the Star's wardrobe needs.

-Costume standby

The Costume standby is present on set at all times. It is his/her responsibility to monitor the quality and continuity of the actors and actresses costumes before and during takes. (S)he will also assist the actors and actresses with dressing.

-Art finisher or Breakdown artist

An Art finisher may be employed during the pre-production setup to "break down" garments. This specialized job includes making new clothing appear dirty, faded and worn. They are also known as breakdown artists.

-Costume Buyer

On large productions a buyer may be employed to source and purchase fabrics and garments. A buyer might also be referred to as a shopper. This distinction is often made when the lead actor in a production has control over their wardrobe, and they may personally hire this person.

-Cutter/fitter

A costume technician who fits or tailors costumes, usually on-set. They can also be called cutters, seamstresses or tailors. Some celebrity actors have favourite cutters, and larger productions may hire several and have them on set at the same time, particularly in period film projects that might have complicated or extremely expensive extras wardrobe.

I would like to say that both myself and Blaine played the role of all of the above minus the weapons adviser, costume designer, costume buyer, and costume fitter. so overall we researched the clothes that our actors had and asked them to wear a specified costume. The main protagonist was the most important to get the look and representation of him correct. We wanted the audience to be curious why a well dressed man is laying, asleep in a graveyard clueless to how he got there. This uncertainty within the audience is what the main protagonist is experiencing and this empathy is what will engage the audience with the film and make them want to keep watching.

We told him to dress in smart casual so: Jeans, he had some converse shoes, a shirt which can be seen within the scene under a black smart coat. We also wanted him to have a bag which was a contrast to his jacket and jeans. Overall he looks very good and within the scene that we have filmed the costume has worked perfectly, every time we have filmed we have asked him to remember what he is wearing due to the fact that the narrative of our film happens all in one day which means we need him to look the same to have good continuity.

The Main props we are using are; a red rose with thorns which the young girl will touch and bleed which leads us to the other main prop, blood. I researched into how to make blood and there where many different ways to do so, I tested lots of different formulas but thought that treacle and food colouring worked the best.

Apart from these main props which we have already bought or made there are no other purchases that need to be made. In terms of costume we need to make sure that the teacher looks like a teacher and the girl is presentable and creates the correct representation of her character, we also need to keep making sure that Toby, our main protagonist keep wearing the same attire to keep continuity in check. Overall we have learnt through many discussions and research how to represent characters through costumes and Mise-en-scene to the extent that we want them to be interpreted by the audience.

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.

Production log 4

Yesterday we filmed our penultimate production log, bringing you up to date with our progress throughout the course and future tasks and ideas that we wanted to share with you.

We discussed vast amounts of research and ideas that we wanted to share and develop upon together before the production log so check out some previous posts to read what we are briefly discussing here.

Untitled from Tom palmer on Vimeo.

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

Classic movie posters and designers

Because we have to create a movie poster I thought it would be good to look at some classic movie poster and their designers.

Posters have been a strong form of advertising that many companies have adopted through the history of film production and advertising. There are many different aspects of a poster that can catch the eye of the consumer or intrigue them into the search to find out more.

The construction of a poster is not a simple task, there would be many people from a creative background, technical support and creation of the poster, researchers, Drawing artists and manager making sure that everything was above board and no rules and regulations were broken. This restrictions are a lot tighter to date but greater technology has been developed, bigger budgets are available consumer culture has changed and this has overall stemmed to new ways to advertising your film and make consumers aware of your product.

These very classic posters are just a small example of the wide range of posters that people created and how they connect with their target audience.

The E.T. and Blade runner posters were both created by John Alvin a very respected poster artist and has worked on over 200 posters.

The Clockwork orange poster was created by Philip Castle and many interpretations have been formed about the meaning behind he poster and this just shows the impact a poster can have upon your audience.

The Eraserhead poster created by Ben Barenholtz and director david lynch is just an example of how simple but effective a poster can be depending on your target audience and what you as the producer want to convey.

Marketing strategies have changed dramatically through the years but film posters still stand strong. Modern Posters have an exceptionally high standard and reputation for being extremely enticing with amazing concept art and stunning visual pleasures but at the other end of the spectrum they can also be very simple and very ambiguous. Many films do not just produce one poster anymore they create and original poster for the film but as the release date slowly becomes closer they release substitute posters creating world wide interest within audiences and build the excitement up until the release date.

I have found a really good website that hosts many images of posters called http://www.impawards.com/ and for some great examples of films that create more than one poster to create excitement within the potential consumers follow the links below for Inception and Tron Legacy which have over 15 exceptional posters each.

http://www.impawards.com/2010/inception.html

http://www.impawards.com/2010/tron_legacy.html

Animatic for the first two scenes

The purpose of this animatic is to give the viewer an overall sense of atmosphere and order of the first two scenes and this is created not just by the images but with the detailed analysis and explanation throughout by Blaine Kenneally up selling the film giving a general ordering of the shots, sounds and effects we intend to use.

Short Film Animatic from Blaine Kenneally on Vimeo.

This animatic can not only act as a visual aid for ourselves it can act as a supplement for the active consumer of our film. They will watch this animatic but it could act as a short teaser trailer enticing them to want to find out more and watch the finished product.

Scene one, take one, and action!!

Target audience is a vital variance that any product produced, has to analyse and research in order to then take into account when constructing the product. In our case the short film needs to make sure it fulfills the needs and desires of the target audience in order to make it successful. After analyzing the effects models and coming to the conclusion that our film will attract active consumers under the reception theory of the effect model structure. we will play the part of the Two-step flow theory as we will construct a review of the short film that will explain and diffuse the content to others. This is a modern version of the hypodermic needle model but to completely cover this section people will need to analyze and depict the short film and then readers will adopt their interpretations of our short film.

Myself and Blaine met up with Toby Barret (who we chose to take upon the role of the main protagonist) to shoot the first scene of our film as a second installment to our pre-production testing. unlike the images that we took in my post Scene 1 location and potential camera shots
this pre-production test depicts many of the camera angles, shots and sound that we want to include within the first scene of our short film. We have not added the voice over of the protagonist for this test but i came up with the idea that if we add the voice over, then we could select people to watch the first scene and receive consumer feedback to then be analysed which could outline many different types of consumers that we could then categorize under the effects model theory and work out a marketing strategy based upon the results.

This test footage was edited to depict what we want our first scene to look like and the time we will allocate for the first scene within our five minute short film.
To view the edited first scene watch the video below:

Scene one graveyard test from Tom palmer on Vimeo.

Like any filming process we filmed around twenty one minutes of footage for a one minute section of our film to then be cut down, but it is better to have to much footage than not enough as re-capturing footage will waste time, money and may not fit within continuity.
Some of the footage was static camera shots trying to capture the ambient sound of birds tweeting as this is will be a prominent sound effect that we will use within our film.

To view the un-edited footage which we uploaded to give evidence of the time, effort and organisation that went into testing feel free to watch the video below:

Scene one footage to be edited from Tom palmer on Vimeo.

Santa's been!! and he knows me all too well

This year for christmas I received lots of lovely gifts but some in particular were Awesome with a capital A.
My mum and dad, I mean Santa reads my blog and has seen that I have been reviewing Empire magazine and Total film but I concluded that Empire magazine had better in depth reviews with lots of contextual information about the actors and directors in conjunction with their past films.
Having read this, I received a subscription to Empire magazine for the 12 calendar month issues. How cool is that? very is the answer.
Another gift related to my passion for films and empire magazine is an Empire movie miscellany, hundreds of amazing filmic facts that instantly guarantee a film buff status.
This book includes so many funny and interesting movie facts as well as film set lingo and cinematography slang. Many film shot names are explained and terminology is given some context.

-Did you know that the number of speaking roles in the entire lord of the rings trilogy is only 114.

-Did you know that Jim Carrey's first job was a janitor. Sean Connery used to be a coffin polisher and Kate Winslet was a Deli assistant.

Another awesome gift that I received was Christopher Kenworthy's book on master shots, there are 100 advanced camera techniques to get an expensive look to your low budget movie. After reading around half of the book so far, there are many shots that I have recognized or revisited the film it is depicted within to the watch the action of the shot unfold and let the dramatic irony take place because I know how the shot is done and that within 'fight club' many of the punches that are landed, are landed at least inches from their face but the camera techniques used make it look like they will have one big black eye in the morning.

Overall best christmas yet and thank you Santa for all my christmas presents, you may have just added a considerable amount to the look of our film and the perceived budget that was used.

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 3, Presenting our Final cut express effects

We set about making this production log a little different to our usual production log entries because we had just had a tutorial on how to use Final cut express, we ended up using the end of the actual production log because we wanted to manipulate it within Final cut express to practice and show our learning experience. Feel free to watch the video below and laugh at us, not with us, at us, due to our very individual sense of humor.

Production Log 3 (Experience in Editing) from Blaine Kenneally on Vimeo.

We do only have access to Final cut express and we were informed that their will be certain limitations between using the express version and this can be seen within the video. We created a mask over myself to turn me black and white but within the express version we could only create a box/square mask around me and then bevel the edges which looked good but not to the professional standard that we desire our film to be, so in order to achieve this standard we may use a different editing program to achieve this one effect known as the 'Sin city' effect.