Pre-Production Planning - Short Film Ideas [Keelan]

• Short film starts with the end, then flashes back to the beginning

• At the final end of the film, it could show a different perspective to what was shown at the beginning

• Could end with man being forced to shoot himself/commit suicide

• Another ending could be a man being shot by someone else

• Actual story of the film could be focused on how gambling goes wrong

• Main event - Guy gambles with 'the wrong people', bets more than he actually owns to give up. Loses game, a group of notorious thugs come after him to collect what is rightfully theirs.

• Upper class or lower class persons to be the notorious thugs?

An example of Higher Class Thugs



An example of Lower Class/Common Thugs

• A heavy use of editing would be needed for a realistic gun shot and bullet wound, I think that Adobe After Effects would be the most suitable program to use for this.

• Both a fast and slow paced movie. Most probably would be listed in the Thriller, and Horror and genres.

• Possibly could use green screen for a car crash effect. Car crashes, man gets out, crawls away, then gets shot.

 

• Filming locations - Riverbanks, the sea, a bridge, reservoir. Basically somewhere quiet, with a 'cold' atmosphere.

 

Summary of The 5 Main Concepts - Audience (Elliottt)

Key Concepts - Genre [Keelan]

• Genre is a category or type for a piece of entertainment or art. For example, a movie or music. Genre helps a piece of art or entertainment to be identified as they are formed of similar conventions. 

• Giving things a specific genre is a key part of capturing a target audience. This is because some of the audience may only take interest into certain types of films, for example, Horror. If someone is interested in only Horror films, they're not going to watch a comedy when expecting something else.





(I Spit On Your Grave, 2010)

• Sometimes Genre can be generally targeted towards a certain audience as well. The majority of the target audience for a film such as the one to the right (I Spit On Your Grave), would be males. Typical conventions of a film in this Genre would be lots of blood, gore and violence. This really helps to identify a target audience. As you can see, this is even identifiable from the poster.

• There are also several other ways of identifying what genre or genres a, for instance movie belongs to. A key one would usually be the setting, a film of the Romance Genre would not be in a dark gritty alley of which a Horror would usually be associated with. It would be in a nice location, with the sun beaming and a blue sky.

• A piece of media text generally belongs to one specific genre, this is because it adopts certain codes and conventions of similar products in the genre.

• This is different to films as most usually span across several Genres, these are labelled Hybrid. A Hybrid is a Genre in fiction that as conventions and elements from more than just one Genre.

• A theorist named Rick Altman (Formerly Charles Altman), is a film theorist who has a theory that Genre can be analysed in two different ways.

-Through Syntactic Codes and through Semantic Codes

- Syntactic codes are codes of narrative structure. This means its what the audience is going to expect to happen in the film. For example, In a Horror film, the audience would expect someone to get killed.

- Semantic codes is a structure in which the genre communicates the meaning to the audience rather. This can be done through things such as props, sound, setting and camera work (the shots used, restricted and unrestricted narrative).

 

         

Media Language - Ziaul

MEDIA LANGUAGE:

Media language is basically how he talk about certain areas of film or media,  a more technical way of saying things. Media language is used to de-code the meaning of films with technical meanings.

REPRESENTATION (ZiAUL)

 

REPRESENTATION: 

We will analyze many short films and we will pick out the areas in which social groups are being represented. Also we will analyze certain groups, i.e how different ethnic groups act, old people act, etc. For our film we have to make sure that it is appropriate too our target audience. This is the same as every single film ever made. No-one certain has made a proper theory about, as it is a broad idea with many groups that come under
representation.


This is a poster of women who is not a stereotypical women. This was made around 1940 in an attempt to get more women supporters. Women are usually represented as 'pretty trophies for guys'. This has come under scrutiny in many years and can be seen a sexist. 

Old people are usually represented boring, frail or fragile. This is how they're also represented in many films and we don't really see them as super heroes or presented as the ultimate protagonist/



Summary of The 5 Main Concepts - Narrative (Elliottt)

Narrative is a device essential to the development of films, including our genre of Short Films. Noel Carroll's theory states that narrative can be used to provide any effect that the writer needs to elicit from the audience.

Post #1 - Group Photo

This is our group photo.
Ziaul, Kealan, Elliottt.

Here you can see the wild Ziaul in it's natural habitat, attempting to seduce it's natural prey - the elusive female. Keelan has no time for that sort of shenanigans.