Week 5. 2.2 Extended Project

Produce a short review of what you know about your subject (based on your knowledge, previous work and literature review) – mind map
undertake activietInterpret research data
Organise and express your ideas – refine your project ideas based upon the knowledge acquired
Plan further research

what defines my project?

Basque, J. (2015) ‘How Do You Define ‘Success’ as a Workplace?’

My final major project is going to be a short films based around ideas and how we come up with them. I also want to show the differentiation between the dream world and reality, through the use of editing, semiology and other element such as lighting. I want my target audience to leave after watching my film feeling inspired , and feeling like they can come up with an idea even if they are currently feeling creatively drained.

What makes you do your project?

the grief recovery kit (2012) ‘Ask “Why?”’

there are so many things that make me want to do my project. The primary reason I want to do this project is because I am so interested in ideas and how they are formed. I want to help and audience to understand that ideas are something that come from within, and are triggered by experiences, and the way you are brought. I also an totally and utterly in love with creating. I love creating, filmmaking ,and thinking of creative solutions to possible problems that may occur when on set.

A short review of what I know about my project so far:

MINDMAP

Based on the knowledge I have gained so far, previous work and the literature review, I will now be discussing what I know so far about my project. From watching a variety of

 

What I need to further research, and how I will do this:

to summarise and keep me on track, I will now be listing all of the research activities that I want to complete to strengthen the quality of my research:

• People needed for the production/availability, completed over Skype, Facebook etc.
  I will be research into the different production roles about by using sources such as the internet, books, blogs and vlogs to further my understanding of each job role.
• When thinking about budget, I really want to stick to my own opinion. But I could research more into advice for filmmakers seeking to make films on a low budget.
• I intend to research and plan getting my props by making a list of all the props I will be using throughout the Short film.
• I want to research and learn more about colour correction. Once i have researched by reading and watching others, I will try it for myself by taking a shot of a simple scene, and trying to change the tone of the shot to create a different atmosphere completely.
• I can find out more about my target audience demographic by using ‘YouGov Profiles’. Would also like to set up interviews , or possibly even record a ‘vox pops’ to find out more detailed information about my target audience. I think that an interview would be really beneficial to helping me to understand more about my target audience, as I could write specific questions that would help me to discover more about the media that the individual consumes.
• I would like to complete a survey about the idea of dreams, and to just try to find out a little more about my target audience as a whole.
• I would like to watch a couple more tutorials to solidify my knowledge of Foley sound further. I have experimented with Foley sound a lot through the pat year, but I thin just clarifying my knowledge again would help me to create the best outcome possible.
• I would like to experiment with colour correction, to try to make a more cream like colour palette. To do this I would like to take a shot of a simple indoor environment, and try to change the colour palette into something more mystical and dream like on Avid Media Composer. This will help to give me a taste of what it will be like when editing my Final Major Project.
• Pre Production Pack.

 

RESEARCH:

People needed For Production/ Availability:

Elinoberg.com (2016)

People needed for the production/availability, completed over Skype, Facebook etc.
I will be research into the different production roles about by using sources such as the internet, books, blogs and vlogs to further my understanding of each job role.

Availability:

I posted on my personal Facebook, asking if anyone wanted to participate in my short Film. I gave a brief description of my short film and the date that I would need my actor for. I showed this post to both Zoe King and Rhiana Bonterre personally, and they were both up for being

 

 

Budget:

Matthews, J. (2016) ‘the budget has not been passed’

When thinking about budget, I really want to stick to my own opinion. But I could research more into advice for filmmakers seeking to make films on a low budget.

Whilst doing research, I managed to find a variety of sites dedicate to micro budget and low budget films. I am really interested in this because, as a student Filmmaker, I don’t have a lot of money to spare, and so making short films can sometimes feel difficult. I have saved up and purchased a good quality camera, and so camera quality is not an issue for me, although I will be using audio equipment from the college. I think it will be beneficial to get a few tip and tricks surrounding making such low budget films.

Article 1:

http://www.raindance.org/10-zero-budget-filmmaking-tips/Grove, E. (2013) ’10 Zero Budget Filmmaking Tips’

The first article that I want to discuss and analyse is be Grove, E. (2013) and it discusses 10 zero budget filmmaking tips. This article was really useful, as it summarised a variety of differnt tips and tricks, explaining how it use what you have to the best of your ability. One of the points that stood out to me the most is the following:

Grove, E. (2013) ’10 Zero Budget Filmmaking Tips’

This tip really helped to open my eyes. It shows that sometimes the overall story and message of the production is more important than the quality. Something can be just as affective when using slightly lower quality equipment if the story is good enough. Overall, this tip shows that the budget is not actually the most important element to consider, and there should be more focus on the overall story and message, rather than the amount of money you are spending on the piece.

To conclude researching this article has helped me to pick up some good tips on how to utilise what I already have available to me, which is definitely going to help me on the road to my extended project.

Article 2:

After previously finding an article surrounding tips and tricks of how to make a micro budget or low budget film, I was looking for other articles that consist of a similar thing, as I have found it incredibly useful. I have come across the following article by Overbay, J. (2014) talking about tips on making your first micro budget film:

http://www.indiewire.com/2014/07/15-tips-on-making-your-first-micro-budget-feature-24337/Overbay, J. (2014) ’15 Tips On Making Your First Micro-Budget Feature’

Similarly to the previous article, I found some of the tips really informative, and I will be taking a lot from this when thinking about the budget of my extended project. Although, some of the tips weren’t relevant to my project, for example ‘teach at a film school’. One of the tips that I have found the most informative is the following:

Overbay, J. (2014) ’15 Tips On Making Your First Micro-Budget Feature’

Overall, looking at these articles has helped me to understand in greater detail how I can utilise what I already have in order to keep an extremely low budget. I am going to try to stick to the lowest budget possible.

This has helped me in the road to my Extended Project as I now understand that it is completely achievable to make a high quality and successful short Film on a low budget.

 

Target audience: 

McGuire, S. (2016) ‘Why It’s Worth Writing for a Niche Target Audience’

I can find out more about my target audience demographic by using ‘YouGov Profiles’. I Would also like to set up interviews, or possibly even record a ‘vox pops’ to find out a higher level of information about my target audience. I think that an interview would be really beneficial to helping me to understand more about my target audience, as I could write specific questions that would help me to discover more about the media that the individual consumes.

Survey:

Lundy, P. (2015) ‘App of the Month: SurveyMonkey for Salesforce’

I would like to complete a survey about the idea of dreams, and to just try to find out a little more about my target audience as a whole.

Questions:

1. How old are you?
2. Are you interested in ideas and how they are formed ?
3. What helps you to come up with ideas?
4. do you ever find yourself lacking ideas?
5. When thinking about dreams, what colour (out of a variety) come to mind?
6. How long do you think a short film should be?

Sharing my survey:

I have decided to share my survey on Facebook,  and on my Instagram dedicated to Film and TV production. This will allow me to reach a wider target audience, of people I may not have been able to reach with a simple paper survey.

Answers:

23 individuals have completed my survey. I am really happy with this level of response, as I feel as if I have now been able to get a wider knowledge of my target audience and their views an opinions.

Question 1: How old are you?

The average age of my target audience is 18 years of age. This was the result I was expecting. I mentioned previously that, from my experience, I think that individuals between the ages of 16-20 have so many different ideas, but struggle to translate them onto paper. Although saying this, anyone who is struggling to find inspiration, or is inspired by the idea of dreams could be interested in this short film. Overall, this has helped me to further my understanding of my target audience, and therefore this means I can try to cater my extended project to a more specific target market, possibly having the main character as a university student.

 

Question 2: are you interested in ideas and how they are formed?

The next question I decided to ask my target audience was ‘are you interested in the concept of ideas and how they are formed?’ The aim of this question was to confirm my understanding of the fact that most of my target audience will in fact be interested in ideas and how we come up with them. As I originally suspected, almost 80 percent of my target audience said that they were interested in ideas and how they come up with them, with 13 percent saying they would like to learn more. Overall this question has confirmed my understanding that my target audience is in fact interested in ideas and how we come up with them. This was successful as ideas are a large part of the concept of my short film.

 

Question 3: What helps you to come up with ideas?

The third question that I decided to ask my target audience was ‘how do you come up with ideas?’ I gave a variety of different options to those answering my survey. Interestingly, around 60 percent of the people answering my survey picked the ‘all of the above’ option. This suggests that my target audience feel as if they come up with ideas in a variety of different ways. This therefore means that it will be relevant to suggest that you come up with ideas through dreams.

 

Question 4: Do you ever find yourself lacking ideas?

Question four was do you ever find yourself lacking ideas. This most popular response on this question was ‘yes, sometimes’ followed closely by ‘yes, all the time.’ This was an interesting response, and one that I think I was expecting. Over the past couple of weeks I have developed the understanding that my project is meant to inspire, and give the audience the understanding and impression that ideas are always there, even if they take a long period of time to find.

Overall, this question has helped me in the road to my extended project, as it has helped me to understand that my target audience often struggles to come up with ideas. My short film should hopefully help to reduce the stress surrounding the pressure of coming up with good ideas in a short period of time. Ideas will come along in time, they are always there but sometimes we just struggle to find them.

Question 5: When thinking about dreams, what colour out of the following comes

This question was definitely one of the questions I was most inquisitive about. I wanted to find out and discover what colour my target audience associated with the dream world. Whilst researching previous media surrounding dreams, I looked at artist Jeremiah Morelli. His work surrounding dreams often has pastel pink of pastel purple tones running through them. I wanted to see if my target audience associated these colours with the dream world.

The response from this question was actually extremely varied. Overall, the most popular outcome was pastel pink, with 26 percent of the responses, followed by dark purple. This has really helped me when trying to think about how to use colour correction to show the clear transition between the dream world and reality. I think that I will be using pastel pink when using colour correction to show the dream world.

 

Question 6: How long do you think a short film should be

This question was the only one where I got answer that I was not expecting. The average number, out of 23 responses, shows that my target audience think that a short film should be around 20 minutes long. Because of the limited time and budget I have as a student filmmaker, my short film will not be this long. I expect my short film to be around 3-5 minutes long. I don’t want my short film to be too slow, so I am going to be focusing on pacing a lot.

This has question has taught me a lot about my target audience, as it has helped me to realise that often my target audience expects short films to be slightly longer. It will be nice to try to change this attitude through my short film. I feel as though I can show and develop a strong story in less than 20 minutes, and I am going to attempt to show this through my short film.

Overall, this task has taught me a lot about my target audience. I feel as though I can make my shot film slightly more catered to my target audience, as well as being able to understand the way that my target audience thinks in greater detail.

Colour correction:

Vashi (2012) ‘7 tips for HD colour correction and DLSR colour correction’

I need to experiment more when considering and thinking about colour correction. I will try it for myself by taking a shot of a simple scene, and trying to change the tone of the shot to create a different atmosphere completely.

After evaluating the survey that I have taken to get to know my target audience on a deep level, I understand that my target audience imagines a pastel pink colour when thinking about the dream world. This has helped to motivate my decision and choice to try to colour correct and change the overall palette of the dream world scene in my short film to a pastel pink colour. To experiment with this concept, I would like to take a shot of a simple indoor environment, and try to change the colour palette into something more mystical and dream like on Avid Media Composer. This will help to give me a taste of what it will be like when editing my Final Major Project.

I have taken a photo in my location. I took this photo at 10:00am which is within the time I have chosen to film within. This means that I am getting an accurate representation of the type of natural lighting I will be working with:

It took a variety of attempts for my to feel happy with the overall outcome of the colour correction of the image. I have documented the journey that I have taken to get to my final version:

I used the colour correction tool to change the hue of the image:

Image 1:

My first attempt at editing the image I took wasn’t successful, but I did help me a lot to learn and understand what I needed to do to improve my outcome. As you can see by the video above, in my first attempt at the colour correction of this image, the pink colour was extremely prominent. I now realise that this extremely saturated pink colour is not appropriate, as it would take away from the overall message and atmosphere of my short film. I need to make my colour correction much more subtle. I want my audience to be able to tell the difference between the dream world and reality clearly, but I don’t want the colour correction to be so harsh that it effects  my audiences experience in a negative light.

Image 2:

My second attempt at colour correcting this image was, in my opinion, the worst version. I reduces the contrast of the image, as I thought that it would reduce the intensity of the pink hue, and then reduced the pink hue as well, to try and get a more subtle effect. I really dislike how the shot looks with the reduced contrast, as I think that it takes away from the dreamlike atmosphere of the piece. One thing I did like about this attempt was how I brightened the image slightly. I think the light, more angelic lighting gave the impression of a more dreamlike atmosphere.

Image 3:

In this attempt I kept everything the same as the previous, accept I increased the contrast of the image, and slightly upped the pink hue. I think that the contrast is slightly too much in this image. I do like the level of pink hue, although I feel like I could make it slightly more intense. I think this because of the fact that I want to make a clear change between the dream world and reality, and I don’t think this is enough to create a big impact.

Image 4:

I am actually really happy with the success of this image. I brightened the image, by reducing the contrast and changing the black point of the image, and increased the pink shade slightly. I think that the brightness and level of white in the image has helped to make the image look a look more angelic and dreamlike, helping to create a dream like atmosphere. The only thing I feel as if I want to improve is the shade of pink that I have used. I feel like this more ‘Barbie’ pink colour, does not perfectly suit the confusion and shock that I am trying to portray the character as having.

Image 5: Final Result and evaluation

I am really happy with the overall outcome of this final image. I changed the pink colour so it has slightly more of an orange tone within it, giving the image a peach like look. I feel like the brightness of the shot helps to create a dreamlike atmosphere. I also this think that the change is enough to show the audience the differentiation between the dream world and reality, but not at such a level that the image becomes too distorted that it distracts the audience.

Overall, by doing this experimentation has not only helped me to develop my knowledge of how to colour correct in avid, but it has also helped me to establish the most effective way to show the different ion between the dream world in reality in a way that wont distort the image, and detract from the final result. This activity will have definitely sped up the editing process, as well as allowing me to feel more comfortable when colour correcting the scene.

 

 

Foley Sound:

selcukartut (2011) ‘VA546 Sound Projects 2011 Spring Foley Recordings’

I would like to watch a couple more tutorials to solidify my knowledge of Foley sound further. I have experimented with Foley sound a lot through the pat year, but I think just clarifying my knowledge again would help me to create the best outcome possible.

To do this I decided to research and try to find a simple video to clarify my knowledge of both the historical elements of Foley, and the technical ones. When trying to research this, I came across and extremely informative video, made by Filmmaker IQ:

Soundmaker IQ (2014) ‘introduction to Foley and Sound Effects for Film’

This simple video has helped me to solidify my knowledge of not only the technical side of Foley sound, but the historical side as well. This video was a really simple and well laid out video, that has worked as a really helpful way to give me a simple reminder if Foley sound and the importance of it.
After watching this educational video, I still feel as though I need to research some more examples of different existing successful foley sound artists. I feel like this will help me to further understand the importance of Foley Sound and how it can be completed successfully.

 

Wired Staff (2016) ‘How Lucasfilm’s Master Foley Artist Perfected the Sounds in Your Favourite Movies’ https://www.wired.com/2016/04/skywalker-sound-foley-artist/
After doing some further research into foley sound, i found this article with a really interesting and inspiring video. In the video, we were spoken to be famous Foley artist John Roesch. I have always been inspired by the work of John Roesch. In my personal opinion, his best work is in movies such as E.T and Interstellar. Watching this short documentary style Film has helped me to understand the lengths and depth of research that goes into the completion of Foley. Seeing the variety of different objects and equipment used to create Foley sound, has inspired me to try to find objects that create the most accurate sound possible.

Overall, after completing this research, I feel a lot more confident about the process surrounding making Foley sound, as well as the benefits and importance of trying to create accurate and detailed Foley.

 

 Planning further research summary:

now that I have completed the research above, I feel as though I have clearly developed a deeper level of understanding when thinking about my extended project. I feel more confident in each technical aspect of my film, for example Editing and Foley sound. I also feel more confident when it comes to elements such  as my target audience and my budget.

To further my research and understanding, I will be completing a pre production pack, which will include:

• Call Sheets
• Production Budget
• Health and Safety Risk Assessment
• Shooting Script
• Story Board
• Location Recce
• Production Schedule Chart
• Production Forms

I will also be completing an Extended Project Pitch PowerPoint that will summarise my research and my extended project as a whole.

Overall, I think that this research will help me to develop my understanding of my project

Overall, how has this research helped to solidify information about my final major project?

 

 

Harvard Referencing:

Wired Staff (2016) ‘How Lucasfilm’s Master Foley Artist Perfected the Sounds in Your Favourite Movies’ Available at: https://www.wired.com/2016/04/skywalker-sound-foley-artist/ (Last accessed: 13th May 2017)

Soundmaker IQ (2014) ‘introduction to Foley and Sound Effects for Film’ Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jznye0iqYE (Last Accessed: 13th May 2017)

Elinoberg.com (2016) ‘En jobbannons är förlegad’ Available at: http://elinoberg.com/2016/04/en-jobbannons-ar-forlegad/ (Last Accessed: 22nd May 2017)

Matthews, J. (2016) ‘the budget has not been passed’ Available at: http://www.foxandhoundsdaily.com/2016/06/budget-not-passed/ (Last Accessed: 22nd May 2017)

Vashi (2012) ‘7 tips for HD colour correction and DLSR colour correction’ Available at: http://vashivisuals.com/7-tips-for-hd-color-correction-and-dslr-color-correction/ (Last Accessed: 22nd May 2017)

Lundy, P. (2015) ‘App of the Month: SurveyMonkey for Salesforce’ Available at: http://www.fonteva.com/Product-News/App-of-the-month-surveymonkey-for-salesforce.html (Last Accessed: 22nd May 2017)

McGuire, S. (2016) ‘Why It’s Worth Writing for a Niche Target Audience’ Available at: http://www.curata.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Niche-target-audience.jpg (Last Accessed: 22nd May 2017)

selcukartut (2011) ‘VA546 Sound Projects 2011 Spring Foley Recordings’ Available at: http://www.selcukartut.com/teaching/?p=324 (Last Accessed: 22nd May 2017)

Basque, J. (2015) ‘How Do You Define ‘Success’ as a Workplace?’ Available at: http://www.halogensoftware.com/blog/how-do-you-define-success-as-a-workplace (Last Accessed: 22nd May 2017)

the grief recovery kit (2012) ‘Ask “Why?”’ Available at: http://www.griefrecoverykit.com/2012/03/ask-why/ (Last Accessed: 22nd May 2017)

Overbay, J. (2014) ’15 Tips On Making Your First Micro-Budget Feature’ Available at: http://www.indiewire.com/2014/07/15-tips-on-making-your-first-micro-budget-feature-24337/ (Last Accessed: 22nd May 2017)

Grove, E. (2013) ’10 Zero Budget Filmmaking Tips’ Available at: http://www.raindance.org/10-zero-budget-filmmaking-tips/ (Last Accessed: 22nd May 2017)

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