WELCOME MODERATOR

ELLEN SCOTT 

CANDIDATE NUMBER 1259

CLAREMONT FAN COURT SCHOOL 64680

I worked with Eliza Tracey 1296.

I hope you enjoy my blog, which contains my work on my G324 Advanced Portfolio. 

I chose to make a short film, entitled "Dreaming Daisy".

My evaluation questions are above. 

The research, planning and construction process for my SHORT FILM is below, along with my final finished and two ancillary products. 

The research, planning and construction process  for my two ancillaries is a above in MY FILM POSTER AND MY RADIO TRAILER. 

FINAL PRODUCT: 'DREAMING DAISY'

FEEDBACK: VOICE OVER

Voice Over:


Today my partner and I wrote the voice over for our short film. After carefully watching our footage making sure that the scrip matched the footage we recorded it and added it to the film. 

When creating the scrip for the voice over we took our protagonist Daisy's age into consideration and used appropriate language that our character would use for example 'well jell'. 

After we had added the voice over to our film we gained feedback from our teacher:

• The voice-over is positioned in exactly the right place in the film opening because by the time the voice-over starts we already have a very clearly established idea of the central character.

• We can see her habits we know her gender her age group and we like to already for what we've seen of her and what she doesn't feel sympathetic towards her. It is also very clear from the voice-over at the start the name of the character what she's doing and the whole concept of scrap book of dreams is very clearly signaled so that the center of the short film as a rights of passage film, as a coming-of-age film, as a sort of vlog.

• She knows her audience and she's delivering directly to her audience so we have a great and intimacy in the kind of shots we see in the voice-over confirms that.

• There is a rather clever bit in the voice-over where the words ‘it was crazy’ are heard at the same time as the girl taking tablets. This could suggest it could deliberately mislead the audience. It could suggest that she's taking tablets at the festival because she's taking some kind of substance to keep her going. This is clever because it's not until the end that we find that the tablets are actually to control her life threatening illness.

• One of the very ingenious structural devices of the voice-over is that it highlights key visual codes. All of these are linked to the orange arrows with the Diamante trim which point to key moments in the teenagers life.

•  In the voice over the words 'it all happened so fast' are then matched by real live-action so it goes from the looking at the scrapbook to live action of the young couple and their memories which is clever the choice of languages very careful for example rhetorical questions like you will never guess the use of colour, the use of colloquialisms and the whole teenage world is evoked think there's a word referring to jealousy for example contraction so the whole teenage world is evoked by the way that the voice-over is written ,the script is realistic.

• There needs to be some care taken about volume levels, which perhaps need to be tweaked.

•  In addition I think the moment before the skinny-dipping I need to be perhaps a little break in the voice over there because it removes rather fast from one bit of voice-over to the next bit.

• Another good aspect is the fact that the voice-over knows when to let the visuals and music speak for itself and that does create a sense of poignancy and fun because we're sharing those moments are in a unhurried way.

CONSTRUCTION: FILMING THE FINAL SCENE

Final Scene:

Shooting the final scene involved us dressing our protagonist Daisy in her hospital gown. We also used the other hospital props such as the medical tubes and wheel chair. 

This scene plays a very important role in our film, it is when her serious medial condition is revealed and it becomes clear to the audience why she has been documenting her life. 
To create empathy we chose to reverse Daisy throwing the pages of her scrapbook in the air. With the footage in reverse it shows the pages flying back to her and landing on her lap. 

FEEDBACK: SCRAPBOOK SCENE

FEEDBACK: PROPS

Feedback- Props/Mise en scene 

This scrapbook prop acts as the central narrative device: the order of the pages in the book is the order of the activities that occur in the short film thus it acts as a structuring device, tracing the narrative arc. 

In addison, it gives rise to some playful and inventive editing: sometimes the still photographs turn into live action. For example the bottom left picture features the protagonist and her boyfriend Gabriel in a romantic scene in a park. The photograph is the sort of record that couples take to hang onto their memories but it also afforded us the chance to freeze the action in which becomes symbolic in our narrative, as Daisy's life is put on hold and cut short by her illness. 

The scrapbook pages turn at the end of the film displaying some of the credits and the shutting of the book suggests the finality of Daisy's life and the end of her story. 

The scrapbook represents many hours of production work as it involved taking still photographs during shoots and outside of shoots, printing them off and collecting a variety of stickers, diamante studs, coloured paper and momentos of the day such as ticket stubs and sweet wrappers. 

This gif shows all the different 'bucket list' ideas that Daisy wants to carry out before its too late:

As a result I have received very positive feedback about the scrapbook prop and its significance in the film:

•  My focus group was intrigued by the creativity and detail of the scrapbook.
• The scrapbook prop is very convincing because it is what people her age do- people in love want to document every moment.
• The material in the scrapbook provides realistic photos to post on the social media sites such as Instagram.
• Adds pathos to the story because it is Daisy the protagonist memorialising her life because she is dying she knows how valuable every moment is.

FEEDBACK:SOCIAL MEDIA

Feedback is an extremely important process when creating a film. It allows us to gain a response to our ideas so we can work out if we are reaching out to our target market or what we should be doing to improve our product so that it does. 

So far I have used social media accounts to gain feedback on the film poster I have created and thoughts about creating other social media accounts for example the idea of creating a snapchat account to keep fans up to date with the films progress. 

I first got feedback on my poster from the Dreaming Daisy Facebook page:

Whilst I know other film posters have a 'cluttered' look as they are shouting for the audiences attention, I tended to stick with my initial vision of a poster that had a strong, clean design. 
My theory behind the design was to fill the right side of the poster with font to represent Daisy's thoughts and hopes for life. Then the left side representing the harsh reality of her illness by being empty. 

FUZEL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Fuzel and Social Media:

After setting up all of the social media accounts for our short film Dreaming Daisy, my partner and I wanted to give our audience something extra to be excited about, so we wanted to feeds our fans important information and create buzz for our film in an interesting and exciting way. for this we used Fuzel. 

Fuzel is a new app that allows you to created collages of photographs as well as editing photos by changing the effects, adding fames, stickers, labels and text. 
Below are a few of the Fuzels I have made that show our two characters completing some of Daisy's dreaming and aspirations on her bucket list. 

After creating these images on Fuzel I can now use them on the Dreaming Daisy social media pages to create buzz and grab our audiences attention!! Also as our target audience is teenage girls I thought it was externally appropriate to use a tool such a Fuzle because it is an app that our main character Daisy would use and that would appeal to our target audience. 

They have also helped me engage our target audience by giving them the change to get involved themselves, by sending in pictures of them and their friends doing activities of their own personal bucket lists. Also by adding the hashtags (#dreamingdaisy and #bestie) to helps spread the word of the film all over social media and therefore increasing the audience. I have used both Facebook and Twitter. 

RESEARCH: NBC TOUR

When in New York last week, I went on a tour of the NBC Studios that located in the heart of Manhattan 30 Rockefeller Plaza. During the tour we visited lots of the main studios where programs such as The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Saturday Night Live, Late Night with Seth Meyers and NBC Nightly News. I found this very exciting but also interesting to see the sets being set up for the evenings filings. 

During the tour we had the exciting opportunity to use their tour studio. This allowed us to create our own late night talk show and gave us a taste of what it is like to be on the show or behind the scenes. 

Below is the late night talk show we created. 

QR CODE

QR Codes:

QR Codes are a digital barcode and they have much functionality. Today they have a number of purposes, including transport ticketing, entertainment, commercial tracking and product marketing. Commonly, you can find QR codes being used to send audiences to a specific website to promote that particular product.  QR Codes can be used to open a location on a map and direct you to it using Waze, to open a Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn profile page automatically, to share a link or text via all social networks mentioned above, and even call a number using Skype. This is an extremely useful tool to use when distributing a film. In particular short film such as the short film ‘Dreaming Daisy’ that my partner and I are creating, as most of the time short film distributors are battling with their small budget. However, using a QR code can solve the problem, as they are free to use and direct your target audience directly to your product in a very easy and accessible way.

An example of a film that used QR codes to promote the film was the film Inception. marketers used the code to expand on the secrecy and sense of mystery that surrounded the film. Usually, movie QR codes lead to trailers and interviews, but QR codes on posters, T-shirts, fliers and other promotional material for Inception led to a fictional website called “What is dream share?” to help build the movie’s hype. 
The website Chris Thilk produced an article on the Movie Marketing Madness: Inception. The article mentioned the QR code:

Similarly our short film ‘Dreaming Daisy’ is based on dreams and aspirations. This example has inspired me with the idea to create a online space that the QR Code leads to where other teenage girls, just like the one seen in our film can list their dreams and hopes in life in a fun and exciting way.  I think that because it is a new digital advancement it will really appeal to our target audience of teenage girls because it would provide them with a sense of secrecy and safety when they are expressing their dreams. It is almost like writing in a diary they will never be found. 

A real life example of this type of idea is The Guardian A Letter To.... The is a space where people can anonymously post about matters that they need to 'get of their chest'. 

RADIO TRAILER: RESEARCH

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RESEARCH: RADIO TRAILER

Radio Trailer: Research 

Today I started my research into radio trailers. I thought the best place to start would be looking into the codes and conventions that make up a good radio trailer. This will provide me with a better idea as to what I need to add to my radio trailer for my short film Dreaming Daisy.

 I also looked into the importance of having a radio trailer and how it helps to distribute the film. From my research I understood that radio adverts have a different effect in comparison to another distribution style because, it has more of a focus on what is being said and creates a picture for the listener, but also allows the listener to use their imagination.

Radio Trailer Codes and Conventions:

•      Voiceover, with hints of sounds/ or speech from the film.
•       Information at the end of the trailer, as to where and when you can view it. Possibly        the viewing certificate.
•       The films slogan.
•        Sound effects if appropriate.

Next I looked into radio trailers for films using the 1970s radio adverts for cult movies. I watched few of them on YouTube and noticed that lots of them have a formulaic structure. Introductory soundtrack (normally a sounds that is recognisable specifically to that film).Sounds that relate to the film that provides suggestions to the plot and gives the audience a taste of what the rest of the film will be like. Concluding information such as the release date and where is can be viewed.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show:

The trailer opened with an enthusiastic voice saying different statements that would catch the audiences attention and make them listen to the rest of the trailer as they are things that would be appealing to a audience, ‘thrills and chills’ and ‘gorgeous girls’.  This opening also helps to signify the genre to the audience as a fun film with a cheeky side; this is also established by the cheers and party noises in the background.

Through out the rest of the trailer there are some of the well-known songs from the Rocky Horror Show being played. The most to be played is ‘Time Warp’ the most famous song from the show. This will lure in any already existing fans. However it also provides a taste to those who are not familiar with the film or the music as to what it will be like. Next the narrator states that there are 18 songs in the show and where they are available, here he also mentions the certificate of the film (AA).

The trailer finishes with the narrator informing the audience of all the vital information about the film, such as where and when it is being shown.

Jaws 2- Radio Trailer: 

The trailer opens with a narrator stating ‘the legend continues’ in a very low dramatic voice. This automatically grabs people’s attention as the word ‘legend’ suggests the genre of the film as action or adventure. Also the word ‘continues’ shows that this film is a sequel and will already have a market audience.

The well known theme tune of Jaws is played in the background, again this will suggest the genre of the film to the audience but also it will attract the already existing audience. Next dialogue is played ‘That’s a shark’ and it has been taken from the actual film, this provides the audience with a taste of the film and a hint of what is to come. The trailer finishes with the narrator telling all the vital information about the film such as where and when it is being shown, 'in the west end and all over London NOW' and the rating it has been appointed, 'certificate A'.

Friday The 13th Trailer:

The trailer opens with screams and shouting that have been taken from the actual film. This implies the genre of horror to the audience; it also provides the audience of a taste of what is to come.  Next a narrator in a low creepy voice ‘ Ask anyone who was brave enough to watch Friday The 13^th on Friday the 13^th … they will tell you they were terrified, over and over and over and over …’ before the narrator has finished speaking he is interrupted by more screams and shouting. This is again implying to the audience that in the film is full of unexpected frights and interruptions.  The narrator states ‘ Friday the 13^th we dare you to see this film’. This statement will lure the audience into cinemas to watch the film because they will feel challenged to go and see the film and it will attract ‘thrill seekers’. At the end of the trailer the narrator states the information as to where and when the film can be viewed and its certificate (x).