Question 3

We got important feedback during the pitching stage. This allowed us to able to make sure that our story idea was perfect. The feedback we received allowed us to look at our story from a different perspective. Due to the fact that we were the ones that made the story; it was really difficult for us to see faults with it, so having other people comment on our idea really opened up our eyes to the stories flaws. The original story idea was that we would show Max struggling at school as a reaction to the death of his father; we were also going to show the father. In the original story Sarah lost her Grandmother as well and her and Max argued a lot and she went back to normal in the end when she saw Max crying. During the feedback period, we got told that "this story was too long to be a short story". We also got told that there were too many characters in our story and that "Sarah's reaction to her husband's death was too extreme". They also said that Sarah had to see something more than her son crying in order for her to change that much. We decided to axe the character of the grandma and we didn't show the character of the dad, but we mentioned him. We also got rid of the scene where Max struggles at school and showed him struggling at home, which meant that at the time we didn't have to go to school to shoot, which would have saved more time. We let Sarah discover Max's diary instead which was more emotional and heartfelt; and we didn't let Sarah change too much. All these little changes made the story more realistic. In the end it had the potential to be a really good short film. From this I learnt how small the gap between a short film that is meant to last five minuets, and a longer film or even a feature film could be. Due to a few minor suggestions we were able to change this idea into a short film. E.g. the part of the original story where Max goes to school being cut made the film shorter and saved us time during the production stage, whilst filming and even during editing seeming as there was less to capture. If the treatment wasn't good we wouldn't have been able to move on, as there would have been problems if we carried on planning for our story e.g. we would have had too much footage to make a 5min film and it may have been too late to change that.

We also got feedback for the storyboard we made for our film. In total we made around three or four storyboards before we finally had one that was good enough for us to stick to. While we were pitching our ideas to a voluntary audience we were able to identify problems with our storyboard that would have wasted a lot of time and may have even caused problems while filming e.g. there were occasions in the storyboard in which there weren't enough action reaction shots e.g. during the first scene there was a long-shot of Sarah walking away from Max, but there was no reaction from Max after that action. Our first version of a storyboard only had the names and actions of the characters and how we wanted them to portray their movement e.g. 'Sarah stomped away'. Even at this stage there were difficulties seeming as we realised we missed a lot things out because we jumped to actions that we could have missed out while filming e.g. we jumped from a close up of 'Sarah hovering furiously' to an 'extreme close-up of Sarah's feet walking up the stairs', we forgot to include a shot of her turning off the hoover or a shot or explanation of how she got to the staircase. It was due to our feedback that we were able to spot these mistakes seeming as they were able to identify problems we couldn't see e.g. "Is the hoover on or off while Sarah is walking up the stairs". This first storyboard gave us the opportunity to change things around as we were able to cut it up in little pieces e.g. we could add the shot of Max reacting to Sarah walking away very easily. This allowed us to make sure that there were always reaction shots after an action shot. It also enabled us to make sure that we included every shot in our scene in our storyboard and considered how every action would be carried out e.g we even added things like 'the next day' so we would know that it was a new scene and we could make sure we made that clear to our audience e.g. we could fade to black to show it was a new day/time. This made sure that our film was professional because it reduced the risk of amateur mistakes e.g. forgetting scenes and then spending time putting them in on production day, like my group did during the opening sequence task at AS level. Our final storyboard was a lot better. It included a lot of detail in the images, actions and camera movement, in the sense that all the information we needed was there e.g. we now knew that the noise of a hoover would act as a sound merger and lead us from scene one to two; you would be able to hear the sound of the hoover when scene one faded to black. Our feedback audience gave us suggestions on how to film certain scenes in order to create more empathy, which was what we were trying to achieve e.g. an extreme long shot of Sarah and Max standing apart really showed the distance between the two. They also gave us suggestions on better and more creative camera angles/shots we could use in order for our film to look more professional e.g. a high angle shot of Sarah would show the audience how weak she is after dealing with the loss of her husband. I learnt that there's always an opportunity to be more creative with a camera shot, to make your film look more professional and to make the audience more amazed with the way in which the film is presented. E.g. there was a close-up of Sarah's reflection in the mirror. Creating a film visually is always a challenge.


 
I had to make three posters for my film that looked like a poster that could be used to advertise a poster in real life. The first two posters were said to not suit the codes and conventions of our short film seeming as they looked like thrillers instead of a drama, which is what our short film is e.g. my poster needed to visually show more feelings of grief. They told me that I had to change the picture I used for the poster because it looked too much like a thriller instead of a poster; however the image was very powerful. The image was a close-up of Sarah looking under the bed in low-key lighting with a shocked/scared facial expression. Due to this feedback I changed the images I used for the poster and avoided adding filters to the poster that made it look a bit ghostly or scary e.g. the filter noise that gave the image grains and made it look scary. I felt that after making these changes I was able to make a good poster that followed the codes and conventions of a drama poster. E.g. the picture I chose was a close-up of a sad Sarah that portrayed her grief very well. I found that you have to make sure that you get the codes and conventions of a particular genre right if you don't it changes the whole conception of a film e.g. an image of a couple kissing would suit a romantic film poster than a horror poster.


 
During the editing phase we got a lot of feedback on the look of our film. The part that we wanted feedback on the most was the final scene in which Sarah appears to be attempting to commit suicide, but in the end she was just trying to cut a slice of cake. Most of our feedback audience believed that she was actually going to kill herself, so we were really happy with that outcome. We were also told that Max's diary scene wasn't clear enough e.g. there were points in which his voice sounded like a muffle. We decided to film that part again. During the second attempt of recording Max's voice we used a directional microphone, so that the microphone would concentrate on picking up his voice alone. We also made Michael who played Max project his voice and we used high quality sound equipment such as a boom mic instead of relying on the microphone on the camera. Max's dialogue in this seen was very significant due to the fact that this is the only part in the film where the audience can find out that Max's father died and this is why Max's mum is the way she is. Unfortunately during feedback we also got told that Sarah seemed like Max's girlfriend or sister instead of his mum due to the fact that the actress playing Sarah looked quite young for her age. By the time we found out this information it was too late to change the actress and shoot it again. This is why it was even more imperative that Max's diary was easy to understand because it says "when you left, mum left with you", which implies that Sarah is in fact Max's mum. Due to this issue I learnt that I need to be more careful when choosing actors/actresses, so that the distinctions between characters are made clear. We also got told by our feedback audience that there were too many knife shots in the final scene and some of them were pointless e.g. there was once a mid-shot of Sarah from behind twirling the knife in the final seem that wasn't very good and had no use, as she was repeating the same action from two shots before, so it was too repetitive so we cut it out.