Evaluation

When deciding on the story for our short film we had come to the conclusion that it would have been best to follow a standard narrative because of the complexity behind the actual story, and it would simply be clearer if we had the simple structure that a normally narrative provides.
On the terms of Genre we went for a thriller/horror approach, it is difficult to define the genre entirely but here is a few links (http://www.filmsite.org/genres.html, http://www.filmsite.org/subgenres.html.) that you may follow to explain the genre's in greater depth and to see whether you agree or not. It is more than likely that our short film is a hybrid of many genres much like the modern short films produced today. We tried to follow the basic conventions of thriller/horror by including the idea of the dark figure with no face, the thought behind this was to explore the viewers fear of the unknown. It is a similar point with clowns, a possible theory behind the phobia of clowns is the fact you can not actually see their proper face, and ties in with the unknown factor that I wanted to get across in the shadow character of our short film.

I also tried to get across the feel of horror and thriller in the music I had produced, I used a range of sounds and effects to create suspense and a sense of uneasiness form the very beginning. The bells and some slight timing variations with the synth sounds I managed to create an abstract sound that creates a feeling of suspense with the tambourine and heart beat drums to add to that effect more .To build the suspense I added choirs wind like noises and hellish screams to send chills down the spine when it came to the climax of the piece, I also added a distinctive Piano tune to portray the sadness and grief normally experienced from horror/ thriller films.

In relation to the 'What makes a good short film ' by the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/filmmaking/guide/introduction/what-makes-a-good-short) Our film has a medium strength script, there isn't much actual taking in our film, it was mainly stage directions and so on, but they are all part of the script. Sections of the film could have been made clearer wit ha slight alteration to the actions and voice over’s used, for example the scene where the Author delete his story, it is not perfectly clear what he is doing. With slight alteration and only adding 20-30 seconds max to the total length would make the story and that scene a lot clearer than it currently is.
I think our story had achieved a good level of originality through the fact that it combines reality and fantasy in a very different light, through an author’s novel we see his creation happening in real life, and even after it has been deleted it still continues using reflections as the /portal/ between the worlds almost. (That last idea is admittedly clichéd).
In terms of acting, our main character is performed by a student who takes performing arts and has appeared in many local productions done by the local drama club, and was very good at acting out the scenes no matter how absurd! Since I was part of the acting as well (playing the role of the Author) I felt I did well for someone who has little experience in acting, I think the fact that me and the actress (Emily) are old friends from primary school all the way through to college put me at ease when acting in front of the camera and provided the natural friendship feeling that was put across at the very start of the film.
When looking back over the film it shows a good flow between each clip, thanks to the use of HD cameras, careful preparation between shots and good continuous lighting. The acting from Emily is of a high quality
The film is short at under 5 minutes keeping it short and sweet is the best approach and I think 5 minutes is a good time to approach that 'philosophy' with.
A strong beginning, is one thing that I find our short film to be lacking, as it is a steady introduction to the characters and not a introduction that would grab your attention instantly, and I think this may damage the films effectiveness in the long run.
We avoided repetition as much as possible, and I think there are not very many repetitions apart form the fast flash back of the recent events, but adds a certain desired effect to the story and does not distract the audience from it, we also avoided the punch line twists by keeping the end simple and effective and offering little hints throughout the film to build up to that final scene.
In relation to new techniques we discovered an interesting technique to create a scratchy like image with a loud distorted noise all by using the trolley without it's tracks, and running it across the tarmac.

When looking at our poster, we copied the style of the 'I’m not there' Poster, as the general composition of the poster fitted our initial sketches as seen on the storyboard sheets posted earlier. We decided that a pure black and white approach would best fit the short film it was advertising, as it is black and white that makes up a novel on the computer screen, or even in the book, no colours other than black and white and creates a good correlation between the two. It also provides the striking contrast to make the image more striking.
The font is a particular favourite of mine and well chosen by Jamie, slightly eroded and damaged just like the story is when it's deleted, and confuses reality with fantasy.
The Tag line again is well chosen as it suggests the main feature of the story without giving it away, it puts the whole idea that the erase key does more than just erase something like a story; it is much more than that. The image of the head with no face, lost in the blackness relates to the actual shadow figure in the short film, it creates a sense of interest into what is behind the blackness covering his face, why is it not there etc. And those questions will make the audience want to watch the film and find out! They will not get exact answers but they will get a story equally compelling. It is a debatable point that the poster does not raise the right questions is unsuccessful, but I feel that having the poster raise a number of questions that makes them watch the short film and even though their questions are not answered completely the poster still does its primary job of pulling in the audience.

For the article we had decided that the images should be placed in a scrapbook/diary arrangement to fit the style of a sneak peak interview that makes up the majority of the article.
The photos were placed in a range of angles and overlapping to let them flow from one to the other revealing little bits of how the film was made, and actual shots from the film acting as little tasters to entice the audience to read the article and watch the film on its release. Thus is the desired effect. We also took the title directly from the poster to link them both together, the faded like background relates to the idea of fading away, like when you erase pencil with a rubber however I feel that the background should have been darker to give better contrast like the poster to help link the two together better.
On a whole the 3 products all work well together as they poster offers a compelling image that entices the audiences to want to watch the film, where as the article promotes the film from a different approach giving a human face on the producers and crew of the film giving it a more friendly appearance, yet still relating it to the short film and trying to make the audience want to watch it, in a subtle way.
In my personal view I find that the poster is stronger than the article as it is more striking visually, and I feel that the article misses that aspect to help boost the promotional purposes it was made for. The film and the poster are tied for the best as I feel that both were executed well and the final products are of a high quality and portray exactly what they were supposed to.

If I could have changed anything I would have changed the article to make link more to the poster, and edit the layout slightly to gain a better impact on the audiences. The poster is of a good quality and I wouldn't change much at all, I would have liked to create different posters, experimenting with different tools and effects on Photoshop.

I think our short film meets the short film beginner audience, by this I mean a teenager aged 16-19 or even older who has never watched short films before, or has dabbled in them on the odd occasion.
I would like to think that the film brings the audience more into the world of short films and makes them an avid watcher. It is a high demand for a short film made under difficult circumstances (lack of proper technology that the more experienced short film makers have).
We were getting constant feedback from our target audience by showing them small previews of our film and asking what they thought, and what could be made better, unfortunately we did not make a record of this, mainly because it was all done in the editing period, so any ideas or errors were changed immediately. But this helped us spot out minor errors in the music and the flow of the film making for a better film, as the film was edited to remove the little errors that the target audience noticed.
Digital Technology was the key factor that made all this possible, there is a huge list of different technologies that we used to create our short film and here are just a few:
Sony Vegas movie suite
Acoustica Mixcraft 4,
Adobe Photoshop,
Microsoft word,
HD camera,
Still cameras,0
Windows move maker,
Email,
Mobile phones.

We would film using the HD camera whilst taking still shot with the other camera, after the filming was complete, we would dock the camera on to the PC upload the clips then sort through them all editing them into place on the movie editor programme. I mentioned Mobile Phones and email, they may seem an odd technology but it was vital for us to be able to communicate with each other and arrange times for filming and collect data and information we had gathered on separate tasks, which would seem rather fitting considering the Web 2.0 age is now upon us.
The idea of interaction with technology and media played a major role in the making of our short film, and showed us how big this will be later.
It is also why we have done this Blog, keeping track of our progress through the whole process relating to research we had done to show the development of the actual production and make them interactive with links and music to follow up on.
The amount of technology we used has been a great help, but it has also been a curse, on several occasions batteries ran out or were just dead and we had no access to chargers, delaying filming for days. It was also apparent that we had troubles on the editing software where it would not respond quickly enough or would glitch moving the sound out of sync with the video.
But it also made the whole process easier to do, and less painful, if we did not have this it would have been a lot harder to make final a product of a similar standard of ours.
I have developed many IT skills during this project, mainly musical skills on the Acoustica Mixcraft 4 software, I quickly mastered the basic techniques and began to delve deeper into the more advanced techniques just enough to help me make effective music scores for the film.

Over all I think the Project has been a great success and I am happy with the final products we have created.