"I found the final product very mesmerising and visually appealing. The use of sound was also effective and fitted the imagery well. I really enjoyed watching your product and think that you've created a production to be proud of." - Hannah Louise Emery, 17.
"I thought that the product itself was of a very high qualty and was visually appealing. Not only were the visuals of a great quality, the audio was of the same calibre!"- Charlie James Razzell Gower, 17.
"I thought the product was very well made, the cinematography was very effective and I found the use of lights and sillouttes really interesting. I also feel that the music went well alongside the visual" - Leanne Clarke 18.
This is the promotional poster for the new release of Martha Marcy May Marlene.
I really like the use of layers in this image. The image behind suggests that the character will be the person that the audience connects to due to her looking straight into the camera. I like how the eye-contact suggests the importance of the character. Because we do not have a main character in our film, we need to suggest the fact that all the audience will see are shapes and words made from lights. In our poster we could place an image of the bokeh effect, or a screenshot from our film of, for example, the light that blurred into a person. It is important that the image is strong from the film so that audiences are impressed by what they see on the poster so that they want to see more. Our film relies on the bokeh effect. Not many people know about this effect, so choosing the image is key to the success of our poster because we want to intrigue our audiences into finding out more about the techniques used.
I find the layer on top of the image very intriguing. Normally, the main character is within full focus. However, the letter 'M' covers our character, suggesting that she has something to hide, or is afraid. For example, the 'Pride and Prejudice poster shows Keira Knightly fully, and she is not covered our hidden by anything.
Because she is closer to the image we know that she is a confident, out-going character. Although she is close to the camera, the character is hidden by another layer, which suggests she is vulnerable and isolated. It also suggests she has a secret worth telling, which intrigues the audience, making them want to watch the film.
A simplistic colour scheme suggest purity and innocence. The text used is also simple and clear. This is important because the audience need to be able to read the text so they can find out information about the viewings of the film, etc.
When making our poster we need to recreate the theme and style of our film. Our film is very slick and smooth, so the poster will need to be too. From this poster I have learnt what layers can suggest and the importance of choosing a strong image from the film. I have also learnt that sometimes using simplistic colours can be more eye-catching than using many bright colours, and using simple and clear text is better than using overly creative, funky text.
During the post-production of our second draft, I decided to look at different poster images for our film. I went through our first draft and picked out my favourite shots and the ones that would be suitable for promoting our film. The image we choose will also be the image we use for our review page.
Image one
This is the title image of our first draft. It is very eye catching, and visually captivating. I think this would be a good image to grab the attention of passers by. It introduces the techniques of bokeh, and the genre of experimental film. However, I don't think that the image allows much space for text. I will try experimenting with text on this image. This maybe a good image to use in the review page.
Image 2
Although this image shows how we are experimenting with manipulating the lights into different shapes and it will intrigue our audiences to find out about the techniques used in the film, it doesn't quite show the theme that we are trying to present. We are focusing on the theme of travel and journey's whether that be alone or together, whereas this image implies togetherness.
Image 3
I find this image really captivating because of the mix of colours and how they merge together. It also shows the experimentation of bokeh, and the techniques we will use in the film.
We want to involve our target audience as much as possible in the development of our film. I posted these images on facebook, and asked people to chose which ones they preferred and why.
This is what they said about each image:
Image 1
"I love this one! I'm not sure what I love more about it, the texture and contrast of all the different colours inside the one shape or just the pure simplistic nature of it! I love how all the colours look so complete next to each other! Great job!!" - Ben Cockram, aged 18
Image 2
"This one is more interesting and the audience can connect to it more!" - Nicola Tee, aged 18
"This one due to its reference to the audience" - Sophia, aged 17
Image 1 was more popular than the other images with our target audience, meaning that this image is more captivating than the others. However, others said that image 2 would be more connecting to the audience. We decided to go with the most popular image and use image 1 for our poster, and image 1&2 in the review.
After finishing our first draft we posted our film on social networking sites to gain feedback from our target audience. We posted it on facebook, tumblr and twitter, all sites that target the same audience, meaning its the best way to gain feedback.
Facebook
Twitter
Tumblr
This is the feedback we gained.
Improvements from comments
All words should have an effect on them. Otherwise they are isolated, and do not fit in with the piece.
Sound is sometimes repetitive, yet some find it relaxing and that it makes the film flow and gives it rhythm
Pace could be faster. We could add more stop motion sequences into the film.
From watching our first draft, I feel that we need to use more colours, and use non-munipulated lights.
I decided to watch some films where the director has not shaped the lights, and has just used an ordinary blur.
I really love the vibrant and saturated colours that the director has captured in this piece. Although the lights are not changed into shapes, the colours make it captivating and engaging for the audience. I really want to develop the colours used in our film. Compared to these colours, they could be brighter and clearer.
The music used is very calming, and makes the piece flow. The music that we have used in our first draft is very competitive. From our feedback the audience didn't like the repetitive music. This is another one of the elements we need to work on.
Before creating our music, we decided to play current music over the top of the footage, to see which style of music would fit best.
Firstly, we tried Lana Del Ray's "Video Games". Her music is slow and calming. When watching the footage, it created quite and emotional piece. We felt that the film needed to be cheeky and lively. Also, some of our shots are quite quick paced, and the music did not enhance the rhythm of the footage.
We then tried Bon Iver's "Holocene". His music is faster, and more upbeat. When watching the footage with the music it fitted the rhythm of the shots perfectly. The guitar and slurred, smooth vocals really made the piece feel like it was travelling and flowing smoothly. The major key of the music made the film full of life, rather than de-saturated. The saturated sounds also suited the bright colours of the lights.
We then tried to re-create this acoustic sound in Garageband. I was struggling to make a 3 minute song using the Garageband loops. A friend suggested we use his updated version on his ipad.
I used "Smartguitar" to create our guitar sound. Whereas in garageband on our school macs limits you to the loops, this version enabled me to choose my own chords, beats and pace of the music.
For example, I used the chord sequence, CGCFCG. This is more free than the loops, which are in locked keys that cannot be changed easily.
After creating the guitar part, I then added some beats.
After creating my drum and guitar sections, I exported the song to itunes and then imported it into premiere to go with our footage.
Final song is below....
We also decided that it would be nice to maintain some natural sounds within the film to introduce different locations and forms of travel. We added sea and seagull sound effects to the beach scene and traffic sounds to the road scenes. This made the film flow more from scene to scene and also gave it a sense of travel and taking a journey.
We began filming, but struggled to find ideas because we had no target audience. We felt that the experimental film genre targets a teenage - young adult audience, because of its challenging techniques and free and quirky style. This helped us decide on what images to use along with the theme of travel, and which locations to film in. We wanted to keep the filming local to myself and Jess, so that the film was more personal to us. We filmed in my hometown, Deal and around where Jess lives in Thanet. Because we were filming in locations that were personal to us, we were motivated and inspired by the locations and lights surrounding us.
We felt that we needed a broader variety of locations and scenes in our film. I decided to search on google maps for possible locations for our shoot. The screenshots below give an idea of the location and setting.
Long shot of train coming into Deal Station - lights from train will blur into a shape
Close up shot of Traffic lights - lights will blur into a word
Lights from Dover Docks. As you can see below, there are many bright lights at Dover Docks. I will be sure to gain more shapes and words from the docks.
Establishing shot of Dover Sea Front. I want to try and blur the reflections in the water. I want to create a glittery effect, and try and make it looke like a sparlky curtain using Bokeh.
Like before, I want to get the reflections from the water, only this time I want to blur the reflections into the shape of a bird. I also want to see what
