My Film Poster Mock-Up

This is my mock-up for our film poster. It features a long shot of the sister (Priscilla) appearing to be uncomfortable with her surroundings (her own bedroom) clutching on to her beloved teddy bear. The teddy bear signifies that the sister could posses a child like mentality. The shot also has the drawer which contains her items, with her diary on top of the drawer. The other sister, Hope (Tosin) is located on the bottom right corner. The close up shows the emotion of unhappiness, this is because this sister is ironically in search of "hope".

The tagline for the mock-up is "One journal makes all the difference". I decided to use this tagline because Hope reads her sister's journal in order to overcome her depressive state,  so I thought that the tagline would be appropriate for a general summary of the film.

Existing Film Poster Analysis

This is film poster is from the 2010 film, Remember Me, the film relates to our film as it shares a theme of despair, as one of the main characters manages to overcome the death of a loved one.

Evaluation of Group Presentation

What went well...

• Despite the lack of information based on the narrative, I think we went into a fair amount of detail during the presentation. 

• I also felt as though Freytag's pyramid which informs us about drama conventions was well covered

What didn't go so well...

• I felt as though there was an uneven distribution of who was going to cover what topic during the presentation, (e.g. who was going to discuss our desired target audience and who was going to discuss the location. I think that this was down to poor planning prior to our presentation.

• We were constantly being told to project our voices as we were speaking too low, this brings into question whether our voices were picked up by the camera at all

• I also thought that we did not provide enough information about the narrative of the story as this was mainly done through the use of animatics (which I think was not too clear)

Improvements...

• In the future, I think that more time, planning and consideration should go into producing presentations. 

• We should have also done more research into similar products relating to our chosen theme of despair and genre of drama

Contributions I made to the group...

• Despite working on the individual blog and group blog, I have helped the group by designing the questionnaires that were distributed to pupils around our college. I have also helped produce the results in the form of bar charts. I also helped create the brainstorms that helped us to decide our chosen theme of despair. I also helped prepare the presentation for the group pitch.

Location and Questionnaire

Ideally we need to find a bedroom that is not too brightly coloured and will also not emit too much lighting as this will interfere with the theme of despair.
We are going to use Lorna's bedroom as it is very large and so camera work should be easy to complete. The room also has a certain lack of bright colours, and the room could help us the emphasize to the audience about the theme of despair.


We created a questionnaire and distributed it to pupils around our college, it was originally going to be give to just girls, as girls aged between 15 to 25 was our target audience, however, we had decided to also ask men about how they may also feel about losing a loved one and also if they may have any personal objects.
Questions included whether the people we asked had siblings or not, and as a result, we found out that most people have a brother or sister that they deeply care about.

By asking this question, it made us realise that the narrative of the story should change to help us reflect on this response. Therefore, we had decided to make the main character lose their sister rather than their best friend as the viewers would have felt more sorry for the main character who is going through despair. This would hopefully allow the viewer to feel more of a connection to the main character to add onto the idea that all hope has been lost

We also found out that most people prefer to pay attention to the actual storyline within the drama genre, so it will be important to ensure that the storyline will be clear to all viewers, and also makes sense within our allocated time of five minutes.

Summary of Research

The prestentation below highlights the key information about the conventions of dramatic structure, and we hope that our short film will be able to adhere to the typical conventions of drama:

Genre - Drama

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Codes and conventions of drama
Also, dramas tend to show the conflict, struggle and emotion (emotion is a very important part of drama) that working class people go through, they also have many story lines based on a main character who may manage to overcome something towards the end of the production (for example, in our film, the main character manages to overcome her depressed state), or the drama may leave us on a cliffhanger, leaving us as the viewers to wonder what will happen next.

Dramas also tend to use non -diegetic music (music that characters cannot hear), this also adds onto the emotions that are felt by the viewer, dramas also tend to use shot-reverse shots that inform us that a conversation is taking place between two characters and, also, the two shot to show the viewers the certain type of connection between the two characters.

An example of a Short film relating to depression

This short film relates to our chosen genre, drama. "The Swing" takes place over a four day period where the main character is being bullied by another character who claims to own the swings, and therefore the main character is in despair, (which is the theme of our film). However, the short film does not have a positive resolution to it at the end (which conflicts with our film, as at the end the protagonist finds hope through various objects) as the main character suffers an unfortunate death.

What is a Short Film?

Definitions of a short film

A short film is noticeably shorter than the average feature film (http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Short_film)and originally comes from the North American (early days) film industry. In North America, short films usually last between 20 and 40 minutes. Other places such as New Zealand define short films as being in between one minute and no shorter than fifteen minutes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_films)

My definition of a short film

To me, a short film usually has a powerful meaning towards the end of the film (or no meaning at all but is still easy enough for the mind to digest), and short films could also be seen as music videos and trailers. Short films could also tell a story about one's life. or could be completely random for entertainment purposes.
There are certain genres that could link to a short film these can include music videos, live action, animation, plays, etc.




This short film animation is humorous, yet it also has a meaning behind the story: we shouldn't trust (or try to impress) all people that we come across in everyday life. (even if it is a person with a halo and wings). I think that this short film is very easy to understand, as we start of by almost disliking the first character that we are introduce to as they possess devil-like characteristics In the end, we find that the devil-like character and the "angel" switch roles, which tells us (through the use of humour) that we should not be judgemental towards others.
It also makes use of non-diegetic music to also explain what is going on within the short film.