These photos show the potential risks from our two locations that we will be using which are the loft in a house and Alexandra Gardens in Windsor. This shows how the risks can be prevented or dealt with if it does happen.
This is our storyboard with our preliminary piece of music. This piece of music has not been finalized as we want to wait until our final piece is edited to merge all the different tracks together. We may also change a couple of bits of music, which may be too dramatic for the final piece. This is our initial idea for our plot. We have left room for changes, are aware that this may change, but so far, we are happy with this.
Our character (Amy) is arriving home from her Grandmothers funeral. As she goes upstairs to the attic, we can hear her mother, telling her to bring down the box of her Grandma's stuff. While Amy is looking through the box, she finds a necklace, and some old photos, including one of her grandmother wearing the necklace. Amy then puts the necklace on. That night, she has a dream of her Grandmother's hand holding the necklace. The next day, she continues looking through the box, and finds a letter. A non-diegetic voice over tells the audience that it is from the original owner of the necklace, who wants it back, saying that one day she will have it back. That night, she has a dream of when her Grandmother was young. We see snapshots of her Grandma's friend, and her boyfriend. The boyfriend gives her Grandma's friend a necklace, while telling her that he has been called up to fight in the war. The Grandmother is looking on jealous. We then see the Grandmother and her friend arguing about her taking the necklace. The final snapshot is of her Grandma, walking through a park and feeling guilty about what she did. Amy goes to the park that she saw in the dream, and comes across a carving in the tree, from the soldier, and the friend. That night, she dreams again of her Grandma taking the necklace. While she is asleep, we see a hand try to take the necklace from around her neck. She wakes suddenly, and looks in the mirror, where somebody has written "I want it back." We believe that this film fits the adventure genre, because it shows the character on a quest to solve a mystery. We found in our research that an adventure film often has other sub-genres and we feel that there is an element of Thriller in our piece, because of the hand at the end, and also an element of mystery. As our short film will be mostly split between two time periods, the music and sound will have to reflect this to emphasise the differences.
In the present day scenes, we could include modern bands (e.g Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco) for background music which the main character, Amy, would listen to. The short film opens with Amy going through her grandmother's things after her funeral so there would be sombre, melancholy music to show the situation they're in. In contrast to this, the older scenes will include wartime tunes such as Vera Lynn's 'We'll Meet Again' and more time appropriate music to reflect the 1940s. There will be similar music to that of the grandmother's funeral when Anna's boyfriend is killed in action and Anna is visiting his memorial. As Harriet appears in the background, the music will change slightly, growing more intense or possibly more eerie to show Harriet's grief in addition to Anna's. During certain scenes that include arguments and sinister elements, the music would be central to the parts with no dialogue. The music would be more fast paced and if we chose an orchestral track, would include percussion that would make the audience jump, especially when something is happening on screen to frighten them. By looking at the results we gathered from the surveys we came to the decision for our final target audience. This was because we mainly asked teenagers and 100% of people we asked said that they liked watching adventure films. This was clear for us to realise that teenagers should be our target audience. This will be good for the production of our film as we can use actors that are a similar age to the audience so they can identify with them (uses and gratifications theory identification). This age group also use social media such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook where they can promote the film by tweeting about the film etc. They can also tell their friends, who are the same target market, about the film which will influence them to go to the cinema to watch it. The teenagers we will be aiming our short film at are between 12-19 years old and we will target mostly females but also males. Carrying out surveys to find out which target audience will be best for the short film is very useful as we get opinions from a variety of different people and take in consideration what things they would want to watch and what kind of things they find interesting to watch. This will make us sure that we are targeting the correct audience.
When you're only given a short amount of time to tell a story, it is important to accurately portray your characters in that same amount of time. Usually in short films, the characters are given stereotypical traits as there is not enough time to show character development as there would be in a full feature length film. In this Sci-Fi/Adventure short film, the characters are fairly generic in the way they are portrayed. The young boy (Kyle) is curious of the thing in the field whereas his elder brother (Jason) is generally disinterested, an archetype of an American teenage boy, especially with his choice of clothing. After the mechanical being appears, the young boy seems much more accepting of the impossible than his brother who's first reaction is to film it on his phone. These two characters are easily identifiable with other American boys their age. Bishop, the interrogator, is another archetype of an American soldier in high command. His clothing immediately tells the audience of his occupation and his placement, in front of the boy and looming over him in the shadows, presents him as someone in control and a threatening presence.
In our piece, our characters will be fairly stereotypical in regard to their era. The modern day teenage girl will generally be the quiet, inquisitive sort so that our target audience can identify with her. The 40s girl will have to represent young women of the period and so audiences will not identify with her as much but will still be able to see clear similarities and differences between the modern day girl and herself. In relation to our production, we will use various micro-elements shown above which are commonly used in the adventure genre. Like the radio seen here, our character will find a number of items such as a letter and a photograph that will help her piece the story together and progress on her search. Mystery is a common sub-genre, used in CONTACT as well as our production, so we are considering making one of the characters quite elusive in their intentions to keep the audience in suspense. This will be done by numerous close-ups to show the main character's confusion or fear but not revealing what they are confused or afraid of.
![]() It is important that we know about the key elements in Adventure films, so that our Adventure film will be easily recognisable as belonging to that genre. The key elements of Adventure films include: Action-filled, energetic plots. Travels, quests and exploring new lands. The characters facing a struggle. Heroic characters. These are the key elements of Adventure films and are all things we need to aim to put in our own short film. It is important that we know about the main elements of Adventure films, so that we can make our film easily recognisable as belonging to this genre. The main features of Adventure films are: Action-filled and energetic plots. We are thinking of having a necklace in our piece, where the character has to find out where it came from, and how it ended up in her Grandmother's possession. This means it will be an exciting mysterious plot, that the audience will want to keep watching to find out the answers. Travels, quests and exploring new lands. There will be an element of a quest in our piece, with the mystery of the necklace. The characters will face a struggle. In our piece, this will be the haunting our character faces from the original owner of the necklace. Heroic characters. Although our main character may not have the traits of a typical hero, she should be someone who the audience will identify with. Todorov believed that the narrative of a film is a transformation, the characters are transformed through the events and disequilibrium of the film. He identifies five parts of a narrative structure. These are:
In order to help us make our short film the best that we could, I looked at another students short film, and analysed it in relation to the mark scheme. This is the film that I watched: Analysing with the mark scheme:Holding shot steady-I would say that this was proficient. The camera was generally held steady, without much shakiness.
Framing shot appropriately-Again I would say that this was proficient. The composition of the shots were clearly thought out carefully. There was some variety with shot types, although there maybe could have been a bit more. Variety of shot distances-They showed a basic variety of shots, with a few close ups and wide shots. Appropriate material for task-I would say that this was excellent. It is a short five minute film, and features many codes and conventions of short films. Selecting Mise-en-scene-This was proficient. The costumes fit the two eras in which the story took place, as did the props. The use of the letter, newspaper and necklace all fit in with the storyline and looked like they were from World War Two. The setting was also appropriate, with the more modern garden decorations and swing in the scenes set today. Editing for meaning to viewer-Proficient. The editing is clean and the scenes all fit together very well, although there are a couple of moments where I thought this could have been better (for example at 2:45, where it jumps a little bit) Varied shot transitions, captions and other effects- Minimal. There were minimal effects and transitions in this piece, however in some ways I feel like this fits the sample nature of the plot. Use of sound with images/editing-Basic. Both songs fit in with the two different eras in which the plays were set, however they did not create the music themselves and there were not really any sound effects. Using titles appropriately-Basic. I title is used near the beginning with the title of the film and the name of the student, and then credits at the end. Overall I think this film was good, and made to a high standard, relevant to the mark scheme. However I think that they could have improved on their use of sound and variety of shots, and these are things that we will try to include in our short film. Watching this film was useful because it again showed us how we could use a simple "adventure" to make an effective film. We like the idea of the two time eras, contemporary society and the 1940s, and this is something we are definitely considering doing in our piece. |
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