Evaluation Question 2 - Ancillary Texts

How effective are our short and ancillary texts?

Evaluation Question 1 - Traditional Media Concepts

Rule of Thirds & The Golden Ratio

This shot is my favourite shot in our short, and after analysis it's not hard to realise why. The framing is very close to a ratio found all around nature. The green lines represent The Golden Ratio, a 68/32 ratio. As you can see, our protagonist's body is close to the horizontal divide, whilst the horizon near perfectly lines up to the vertical line.

A composition of both The Rule of Thirds and The Golden Ratio, showing the similarity between them. In this shot, the bench along the bottom of the shot is fairly close to the vertical divide.

Here's a shot from Run Lola Run, which also shows the golden ratio being used. The background scenery possesses a clear line of contrast which conveniently matches up near perfectly with the vertical ratio line.

Evaluation Question 1 - Run Lola Run Comparison

A Comparison with real world media products.

In the research and planning stage of work on our project, we took a look at how the German thriller Run Lola Run attempted to keep viewers visually stimulated using camerawork and editing. We also looked at inspiration from the Danish crime movie Pusher for our non-action sequences, which uses an over the shoulder long-take near the beginning of the movie.

Our Short - After Thought

In this shot, the protagonist fills 1/3 of the screen space, while his reflection takes up the remaining are, utilising the rule of thirds, whilst retaining this character's very high importance in the shot.	The rule of thirds is used heavily in our short to ensure framing is aesthetically pleasing to look at.
	Focus plus are also used to add an additional visual stimulus in close up shots.
I've chosen to create a nine shot comparison between our film and Run Lola Run as both fall under the alternative thriller genre, and therefore share some similarities, such as a fast, tracking camera, and handheld camera work. It also shares some similar themes, such as alternative choices and wasted opportunities, as well as a similar, electronic musical style.

Comparison - Run Lola Run

The rule of thirds is also used heavily in Run Lola Run, giving importance to the background scenery, which is ever changing, showing her movement across the city.
Fast, tracking shots are used to convey speed of Lola's movement.
	For a little variation, a canted angle is used. This has the effect of making the structure of the bridge in the background a little more visually interesting than looking at it flat on, as a complex patten is visible through the gaps in the structure.

Comparison - Electronic Music

Both After Thought and Run Lola Run share a similar music style, fast paced, electronic music style, intended to make the action sequences that little bit more intense. However as well as following this convention I decided to keep the slower element of the piano throughout in my music.

Click one of the videos below to listen to the action music.

Evaluation Question 3 - Wordle Cloud

Evaluation Question 3 - Audience Reactions

As well as conducting an interview, I was also lucky enough to get permission from a friend to record their reactions to our short as it was being played.




Coming into the viewing, Barney did not know what to expect. When I chatted with him afterwards was impressed with the visuals, but confused in a few parts of the narrative and misinterpreted a few things. Whilst our short film is a thriller, intended to keep the audience guessing, what became clear during the interview was that the transition from diegetic world to his thoughts was probably not as pronounced as it could have been. Apart from that, the viewer noticed no particular editing, which is possibly a sign that use of basic media camera and editing concepts such as the 180 degree rule are used adequately and without major flaws.

Of the elements of the short film I had creative control over, I had creative control over, specifically the title sequence and the music, no major individual issues were voiced. However the title sequence was rated in general as being satisfactory, but lacking in terms of visual interest, with the main title "After Thought" appearing like "an intro to a TV show".

The music, however, was deemed suitable and of good quality despite the repetition of motifs which I was worried about. Fortunately this viewer believed it to suit the style of the rest of the project well, and did not leave anything to be desired.

A few hints were needed to understand the importance of the reflective objects throughout the film, such as the lighter, mobile phone and piece of broken glass. Initially, Barney thought that the mobile phone did not possess any relevance and was simply product placement. To continue, he raises an eyebrow in the final show of broken glass, because he assumed that the protagonist was going to use it to stab his assailant.

In the above video, As you can see, he struggled to maintain his composure at some points of dialogue, this he explained to me as a result of the voice over leaving the impression of the main character being whiny and full of angst in a way that appeared almost comical. For that very reason, he did not like the addition of the voiceover, but recognized the narrative and plot of the short film would be harder to understand without.

I also showed Barney our previous project, an opening sequence titled "The Unbeliever" and asked for feedback in comparison, to see where our group has improved over the course. In this case, the less confusing narrative was greatly preferred over the circular, reality jumping structure our A2 project presents. The style of The Unbeliever was also deemed more suitable, the use of strong yellow grading in our A2 short film was brought into question as having a symbolic meaning, which I had to explain as being used to denote events taking place in the main character's mind.

Evaluation Question 3 - Interview Notes

Here's my notes from an interview I conducted right after a first viewings of "After Thought" and "The Unbeliever".

A2 Project - "After Thought"

• Narrative challenging to understand.
• Ending makes little sense.
• Does the final sequence take place before or after fight/standoff on pier, or is it a creation of the protagonist's imagination?
• Does the title sequence take place before or after final chase scene.
• Credits sequence conveys a sense of disorientation, relevant to plot.
• Plot good, with faults
• Didn't understand purpose of scene where protagonist is asked for lighter.
• Broken glass misinterpreted meanings - Assumed protagonist would use it to stab assalint.
• Who is calling the antagonist and why is it so important that he leaves the standoff.
• Who is in the car and what relation do they have with the protagonist. 
• Credit titles suitable.
• After Thought title overly dramatic.
• Looks like a TV show opening sequence.
• Editing not intrusive
• Not noticed - Good
• Mirrors
• Assumed looking at bruised face.
• Flashbacks not so obvious.
• Staring into phone seen as endorsement, rather than a reflection trigger.
• At parts ranged from visually uninteresting to "looks really cool".
• Hair blowing in wind after being knocked over.
• Looking out over the town with birds flying overhead.
• Very yellow grading noticed
• Is this supposed to convey a symbolic meaning?
• "Afterthought" should be a single word.
• Music suitable
• Despite repetition and slow buildup, it wasn't boring.
• Conveyed mood of short.
• Sound effects okay.
• Noticed hyper-realistic effects - Punches sound like gunshots.
• Acting was good.
• Didn't like voice over.
• Came out as weak, whiney, and angsty. 

AS Project - "The Unbeliever"

• Improvements since:
• The longer running time of the A2 film allows for the story to be explained more.
• More interesting plot. 
• More depth in narrative - Characters less "flat".
• AS project better suited to sepia/yellow tinted grading.

Poster - Final

A small spelling mistake pointed out by Chris has been corrected, and a misplaced grading mask on Will's face has been moved back into place.

Poster - Layers

Here's a breakdown of all the parts of our poster by layer. You can download the full PSD.

Evaluation Question 4 - Presenation

Final Short

Poster - Proof Copy

The poster is essentially complete, however changes to spelling and grammar may need to be made. Here is the proof copy for the world to see.

Filming Session - Photos

Poster - Work Update

Music update - Overview

In this video I demonstrate how I've created the sounds and music for our short by layering effects and changing the speed/pitch of samples. In contrast to the research, the music developed into something less ambient than I had planned. In my opinion it shares the most similarities with a few tracks from the industrial/ambient example I have on the sound wall, "Ghosts".

Cotton Stones - Audio Analysis

In order to focus solely on audio elements of Cotton Stones, I've edited parts of the film together as freeze frames, intended to prevent visual distractions.

Ambient Sound

• Wind
• Diegetic
• Sets the scene

Car in distance

• Semiotics -  Low rumbling signifies threat and discordance.
• Hyperbolic - Emphasised by relative silence of surroundings.

Voices

• Are quieter than car engine.
• May imply that the "forces" of characters weaker than of the insentient car.
• Sets up protagonist as underdog to antagonist?
• Clash against sound of wind - Signifies the desolation of these characters after being ejected from the car.

Music

• In car - Deep bass, high tempo.
• May hint towards impulsive or dangerous traits of the characters inside.
• Contrasts greatly to music around the other characters, which are slow, guitar pieces.
• May denote remorse, regret.
• Or, coupling of these two characters as friends.

Hyperbolic Shuffling

• Noisy, awkward movement present throughout.
• Signifies the unease these characters are feeling.
• And the tension interrelationships.

Graphical themes

During the early stages of our projects production, I had set my mind of creating an appropriate aesthetic for our film. I wanted to ensure that the images I would be making during the project's creation would be visually interesting, so I began work on finding a suitable pallet of colours which would be appropriate for a poster of the short.
I approached this by finding a small selection of posters for thrillers which had similar themes to our short film, sampling the colours, and painting dots of each colour in a blank Photoshop document. I wanted to see which colours mixed well together, so I ran a few effects, a mosaic pixilization effect to take the mean colour from a group of dots, and a radial blur to mix things together. This resulted in a rather nice pattern of curved, staggered lines which work well in an overlay form atop the poster I've been working on.



This asset has come in useful in the creation of the poster, where it is being used as an overlay atop the main image, adding the round, fragmented texture to the image. This is especially handy because it allows us to convey the fragmented stylalization of the narrative as well as the importance of the broken mirror/reflective objects in our film in a fairly subtle manner.

Poster Development

In the past few lessons Jon and I have started making progress on a possible poster for our film. I used a few graphical elements which I created a while ago by creating a pallate of colours sampled from generic thriller posters and applied a bunch of photoshop effects to it. I was quite happy with the result, as the fractured overlay effect ties in nicely with the themes of reflection and the broken mirror prop which plays a fairly important role in the narritave of the short film.

I combined this with a still taken from an early cut of a scene provided by Ed. Since this still is fairly low resolution, we are planning to take a proper photograph another time to allow the poster to me larger and escape the need of hiding artifacting with excessive effects.

In our final poster, we've planned to include mid-closeup shots of the key characters in the current negative space along side each section of text, and hopefully this opposite positioning of these images on the poster will allow people to guess their relationship to each other right out of the box.


The early working draft in Photoshop.


A part finished poster concept, missing character shots alongside the text.

We still don't have a good title for our project, so I'm using placeholder text for now. With any luck, the final title will be fairly similar in length to the placeholder and we'll be able to keep the offset style.

I'm fairly happy with how this poster concept is doing so far, I wanted to avoid creating an image compling to the really generic standard of a long/mid shot with a few faces super imposed over it. Whilst not escaping all of the traditional thriller movie conventions, and not being as creative as a few of the posters we've looked at, I think that the use of contrasting symmetry, asymmetry, and negative space has resulted in a fairly good looking image.

A major critism of the poster in it's current state is that it by no means indicates the primary drive in the narrative, the protaganist repeatedly playing out a situation in his mind. It's a very long way from being unique and memorable, but we will try out other ideas later if we have time, perhaps a recursivly repeating image of fractured mirror inside another, which will demonstrate the film's themes of self reflection and repetition.