Ancillary Task 1 - a film poster

Before I started to put together a film poster I needed to know the sort of thing I was aiming for. I needed to catorarise my film. This was difficult because I didn't make it with a specific genre in mind but it felt like one of those alternative happy-go-lucky independant films like '500 Days of Summer'. I looked at posters like this and picked out a choice few to analyse in preparation for putting together one of my own.

Audience Research

I asked five people from ages between 17-19 what they thought of my film, 3 were female and 2 were male.

Things people said they liked included:
The opening credits
The jokes between Joe and Michael- which they felt well captured their age group
The kissing scene- which unfortunately two enjoyed as they thought it was funny
The transitions between scenes
The use of Katie’s guitar for music throughout

Things people said they didn’t like as much:
One said they could see the ending coming several minutes before it did
One noticed some odd cuts in the kitchen scene which put them off slightly

All 5 said they enjoyed the film and felt it was appropriate for their age group. One even congratulated me on dealing with such a sensitive issue facing young people which found amusing.

Before and After

Before:

After:



Cutting Down

The first thing to go was the ending. It had already been suggested I lose the final joke but when I noticed that the people I showed it to often mistook the heart with J+M in it as the end I realised it would be simpler if I jsut ended it there I tried it and sure enough it worked much better and left the audience with a warm feeling it wasn't as realistic but it didn't have to be.

After that it was hard. I cut down the montage by about half including losing the girls reactions because they weren't nearly as strong as what Matt was doing and putting the dissappearing toblerones at the end because it made more sense there. After that though I still have a couple of minutes to cut and I was really at a loss as to what to do.

I tried cutting down the kitchen scene first- starting it from later on but there was ust no conviniant place to cut it even though its the weakest scene in the film it also seems to be the most important. I cut a few shots shorter here and there where I could afford to- especially near the beginging but after that I was stuck again.

I didn't want to resort to this because I really liked the little scene between Joe and Michael before Joe has his little exchange with Natalie. I liked how impossibly well it worked in that single shot but as I said in the end I had no other choice. I cut the whole section with Natalie and went straight from the scene with Sarah into the montage- it worked. Although we missed some nice moments I felt the scene with Natalie was pretty weak anyway as I really don't like not having complete control over what's happening behind the camera.

Still Image Analysis

This is a level two-shot which is typically in keeping with the rest of the film. As I've said before I always want to present Joe and Michael as a pair close enough to understand each others personal space and always confortable with one another.

Here I've positioned Michael so that he is kneeling while Joe sits in the chair, this, I hope, establishes that he is there to help and comfort Joe by bringing himself to Joe's level. He is offering him the bowl of nuts in a friendly gesture but at the begining of the scene it's also supposed to suggest his avoidence of the real issue as Joe at this point feels Michael is to blame for his repeated rejection throughout the night for not telling him who it is who likes him. Joe meanwhile has his head in his hand as if he has a headache coming on. It's a reasonably stark contrast to the optimism he showed on the sofa a couple of scenes earlier before he tried his chat-up line on Natalie.

The way they are dressed is also relevant. In the party scenes I wanted them to look uncomfortably smart like they, Joe is particular, were having to work to improve themselves for this unattainable new girlfriend and again create a contrast between the scene before where Joe could walk about in a lilac dressing gown and Michael wouldn't even question it.

Finally the scene takes place in a corner in an effort to signify Joe's retreat from the party which I also aim to compliment with the sound as the background party noise softens during Joe and Michael's chat and fades away as the music leading up to the kiss fades in.

Re-Reccording Music

We tried re-reccording the music to improve the sound quality and also because of a few mistakes here and there particuarly noticable on 'Something'. I was also dissatisfied with the 'Yes It Is' as the music in the climatic scene. It didn't really flow, it all happened a bit to suddenly and seem a bit last minute and messy. The tone would have been perfect if we'd been using the original with the highly applicable words our version just didn't work.

I asked Katie what else she could play and found out she could play 'Chasing Cars' by Snow Patrol. Neither of us liekd the song but when we put the film on mute and played it over the top it did fit perfectly and eased it's way into the scene beautifully with the correct fade in. So we reccorded it and I was right, it was a lot more effective than 'Yes It Is' despite not being nearly as good a song.

However everythign else we reccorded didn't go as well as we had hoped. It all came out muffled and pretty awful actually, I tried diffling about with the voume but that made it worse so in the end I only used 'Chasing Cars' and the sound effects we reccorded for the starfish, rainbow fish and squid joke and I had to put them through several sound filters before they were too standard.

Feedback on First Screening

After the first screening my feedback tending to be quite positive where I was ticking a lot of boxes. In fact on one the only box I didn’t tick was ‘images are lit and exposed correctly’ and I was encouraged to play about with colouring in post-production.

Some of the other points people made included:

• Length needs to be reduced to five minutes
• Sound levels could be tweaked
• The shot at the end of the montage is blurred
• Consider loosing the ending or joke as it could be taken as an anti-climax
• Titles at the end could be faded out
• Food sequence looks out of place
• Background noise too loud

My plan of action therefore is as follows:

• I always intended to cut down the length and with that I can cut out some of the bits that people felt didn’t work.
• I shall adjust the volume levels relative to each other then lower the level as a whole to ensure there is no crackling.
• I intend to cut the montage down considerably to save time and the girls shots are amongst those that may be cut
• I will try ending the film in several different places and ask opinions from the cast before making a decision
• I will save the titles separately then cut them up and fade them neatly into one another and re-apply the music
• I will cutting the food sequence differently to make it less clunky
• I will turn down the background noise in any scenes it seems to be intruding in particular the climax

Visual Explantation of Montage

Putting Together a First Cut

I already knew the film was going to be too long but for the first cut I figured I’d just put everything together as if I wasn’t making it to be under five minutes and take things out later.

The opening scenes were simple enough. Without worrying if they flowed into each other too well I put together the door exchange, the gaming scene and the one in the kitchen. With the constant movement in the kitchen and the positioning of the door it could only be done in shot reverse shot so with this in mind I kept the video games scene in a two shot to uphold the idea that Michael and Joe had a close, comfortable relationship.

 

I used ‘Norwegian Wood’ as planned to cover the transition between the kitchen scene and the party whilst playing about with the speed Michael writes at. This worked very well to convey the idea of jumping forward in time.

With Sarah’s scene already put together I merely slotted it in between the kitchen scene and the bedroom scene that followed which was very simple and just linked into the exchange with Natalie. The editing on Natalie’s scene I was particularly pleased with. I decided to use a simple two-shot for the first part of the scene rather than cutting between Joe and Michael as it kept with the idea of the two of them as a pair and the strength of their acting in that scene carried it as it was. The exchange with Natalie herself was harder because playing Natalie had prevented me from having complete control over the camera although every shot had been run by me before we pressed record. I went for a snappy shot-reverse-shot structure and then faded into the rejection montage- the expression on Joe’s face was perfect.

The montage was very tricky. I first picked out the best selection of Joe’s reactions and the girls then experimented mixing them together but it didn’t seem like another. I referred back to my original influence (the credits sequence in ‘A Hard Day’s Night’) and then picked out the best expressions to use as stills which I then mixed in alternating between black-and-white and colour. This effectively conveyed the passing of time but sound was still a problem. When I put Katie’s ukulele rendition of ‘Something’ to the images it quickly came apparent that it looked odd if it didn’t cut to the beat. This was very difficult. I had to listen to the track few a couple of times before putting markers on the timeline at appropriate steady intervals then I cut the shots in time with the marks. It worked as well as it could have. I was also adamant to use the shot of people taking Toblerone in time with the refrain in ‘Something’ this was trickier yet. I experimented with using clips of people taking them sped up and just stills of them gradually disappearing before settling on something.

The final scenes by contrast were quite simple. With the stairs scene it was simply a case of putting together the best actors performances and cutting out the parts where Matt forgot his lines (of which there were many) with the climax I wanted to really accentuate the feeling of unity and I think the steady sound of chatter in the background fading away worked really well with that. The shots of the different girls being compared to fish was a nice moment of comic relief from the tension building between the two characters. I cut between two shots and close-ups to also accentuate the feeling of division growing between them just before Michael initiates the twist ending.

The kiss was difficult. Although we had plenty of footage from many different angles the duration of the actual moment was far too short and ultimately anti-climatic. The music I had was not ideal- the chords from ‘Yes It Is’ the words would have worked well as it’s both romantic, melancholy and misunderstood but without them it just sounds odd. I put the footage all in slow-motion to semi-ironically mimic the classic romance film. In black and white and frozen it amuses me that the two appear to mimic the cover to ‘Double Fantasy’ but this is pretty irrelevant. It then fades to black with an animated drawing of a heart with ‘J+M’ written in it to bring the film full circle and sustain the visual style established in the opening scene.

The final shot it of Joe taking Michael’s hand which should leave the film on a high note and the ending satisfyingly ambiguous. It then fades to white which I hope will confirm the positive feel I’ve intended and I’ve put ‘Blackbird’ to the credits.