The Advanced Portfolio Evaluation Question 4, Part 2-Amie Nelms

Indesign-Review

http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign/whatisindesign/

http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign/features/

Concerning our film review for 'Little White Lies' magazine, I felt that my strength and interest was in the layout of the review, and sticking to the conventions of the magazine.

I started off by creating a basic layout, where I roughly marked out each section of the review...

I then added the image of the review, and aimed to find the correct fonts for each part of the copy. I used three fonts...

• Elephant-for the page number, issue, number rating of film, anticipation, 'enjoyment and in retrospect' section
  
• Bookman Old Style for the main copy
  
• Haettenschweiler for film title and coloured boxes text

Emma then wrote the copy which I added to the document and attempted to sort the columns out my lining each text box with each other, as there was no column tool on indesign...

Emma retouched the copy, and we decided on the colour scheme of our review, theme, and which issue the review would be from by referring to the online edition of 'Little White Lies' to look at past issues. We then resized the review from A4 size to 24.5cm by 20cm, so it would fit into the 'Little White Lies' magazine...

Photoshop-Poster

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/family/

For our film poster, we all sketch some ideas to how the layout and image of the poster would look like. Here are my two ideas which I came up with...

From these ideas, we then came up with the concept of the image for the poster. We took pictures when we were on location filming, however we felt that none of these pictures would be eye catching enough for the final poster.

We then attempted to use the pictures off the mac, screen printed from our film-however the quality and pictures just weren't right when constructing the poster.

We the re-took pictures at college, and came up with 3 different poses which we picked the final one.
As Jo was the main person who produced the poster, we all had an input in...

• Helping to align the text-so it read well and was composed in 'lines'
  
• Content-what to put on poster
  
• Image-what image to put on the poster; suggested poses


• Font style

Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/reqs.php#!/group.php?gid=111980338820198

To collect our audience feedback, we decided to use the social networking site 'Facebook'. We chose this method because...

• We had loads of contacts between us, and enabled us to reach out target group
  
• Was free way of collecting feedback
  
• Easy
  
• Use the social networking site frequently anyway-easy to set up group, know interface of facebook, tools etc.

Emma created a group called 'All My Love' and made me and Jo admins, so we can control, view and monitor what the contacts think of our short film.

Here's a short clip on how to make groups on Facebook...

Blogger

Blog definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

Blogger has been an easy and effective way of recording my progress through both my foundation and advanced portfolio. It is simple and widely accessible from home or college which made it easier to record our research, planning and processes. It has helped me understand the format of a blog...

• Precise bulletpoints
  
• Clear headings
  
• Images


• Embedded videos


• Links/hyperlinks


• To create a multimedia non linear text

Blogger.com has been an effective way of communicating with my group members and catching up on work missed due to illness, as well as staying in touch with our supervisor (Andrew Mann) who has helped give feedback by posting comments on our individual posts on what to improve on our ancillary tasks (poster and review) and also progress throughout this process.

There's a wide range of things which you can do to personalise your posts and layout of the blog. Changing colours, font sizes, fonts, inserting pictures/videos/links, bulletpoints, bold/italics etc. are just some ways of doing so-this keeps the presentation of blogs simple and organised...and most importantly-EASY TO READ.

Amie Nelms

The Advanced Portfolio Evaluation Question 4, Part 1-Amie Nelms

How did you use new media technologies in the construction, and research, planning and evaluation stages?

When creating our short film 'All My Love', we used a number of new media technologies throughout...

• Sony HD Camera-To shoot our film
• Final Cut Pro-To edit our footage/music
  
• Garageband-Music
  
• Green screen-To make Rich ghost like
  
• Indesign-Review
  
• Photoshop-Poster
  
• Facebook-Collect audience feedback
  
• Blogger-To record our progress with our film in posts

My personal roles for this task were...

• Actress
  
• Props-Costume
  
• Location Scouter
  
• Sound
  
• Editor
  
• Music/sound editor
  
• Review creator-layout

Here's how we used the technology and ways in which I contributed to the final product.

Sony HD Camera

We chose to use this camera due to...

• Ease to use-touch screen facility
  
• High quality picture-brighter colours, sharper quality
  
• Enabled us to experiment with depth of field
  
• Sound recording-attachable microphone, sharp sound, clear dialogue and ambient sounds
  
• White balance
  
  
  

As Emma was camera operator I had little hands on action with the camera, however I did have a go at using the camera whilst setting up for filming. When waiting for Jo to arrive at the set, I did do a few test shots with Rich sitting on the bench at the beginning to check the tripod wasn't wonky and to get the framing correct. It was very easy and great to use. The picture was excellent quality and gave it a real professional quality.

Final Cut Pro

This programme was used to edit our film footage extracted from out tape, and also for me to edit the music.







Reasons for using Final Cut Pro...

• Accurate to cut scenes due to the scaling toolbar at the bottom of page, enlarging the scale so you can see and put the exact cut


• Can view footage/scene in separate screens, overlapping-two scenes on separate screens at the same time


• Allowed us to use green screen through key framing


• Chroma key filter-replacing green screen with black and white picture of grass and park area, which we couldn't do on any other software eg. iMovie


• Variety of fonts for titling


• Variety of transitions-eg. different kinds of fades


• Variety of effects-eg. black and white picture

I managed to grasp Final Cut Pro software this time round compared to the foundation portfolio task. Despite the small break from using it, I familiarised myself with the software again and found a new understanding to visualise something, the converting that mental image onto Final Cut Pro. For example, the ending sequence of Amie walking away with the colour of the image moving from black and white to colour, was my input in constructing it. I suggested we copied the shot where we wanted it to change colour and placed it on top and faded one image out with the other coming in. This gave me much more confidence in my own personal development with the programme.

I also used Final Cut Pro to the non diegetic soundtrack in and out. I had to select, cut, fade in and fade out certain sections of the song I used from musician contacts. Final Cut Pro was easy to use in this as its simple tools helped me finished the music in no time flat.

Before I managed to get my hands on this track from my musical contacts, I did propose to use Garageband to create a track myself. I did create a basic track, however we felt that the option of using an original song which suited the short film perfectly was the better option. I also wanted to use Garageband for the ambient diegetic sounds such as birds, cars, wind etc. Although, we did manage to use our own ambient sound from our filming as it was clear and realistic enough.

Here's a short tutorial of Garageband..

Green Screen

This part of our filming was the most difficult as we had to pay attention to small details such as lighting and actor positioning, to make sure we maintained continuity. We used green screening to make Rich ghost like by changing the opacity-however we had to film Amie and Rich separately so we could do this.

Lighting-we had to use a three point lighting system to give the audience the impression that the characters were still outside. We had to be careful in eliminating shadows on the actors faces when filming their laying down shots, and on the wall/green screen itself as we wouldn't be able to edit it out on Final Cut Pro.

When filming, we had to take extra care in maintaining the camera framing and angle when shooting Amie and Rich separately laying down. We also had to make sure that the background setting of the park looked realistic in distance from the camera and actors.





Here's how to do chroma key filter on Final Cut Pro...



Amie Nelms

The Advanced Portfolio Evaluation Question 3-Amie Nelms

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Audience Demographic

• Female


• 16-24


• Lower-Middle class

We decided to collect our data through the social networking site 'Facebook' by creating a public group which invited members can view, and others can join. This enabled people to leave comments on the film via the youtube link and embedded video. Me, Emma and Jo were made admins, so we could control and monitor the group.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=111980338820198

Via 'Facebook', we also sent emails out to our friends and asked them to give feedback on our film.

Here's some comments on our short film from our female, 16-24 target audience...

Feedback 1

squiditch has made a comment on All my love:
Hey guys, first of all well done! (Its Nicole btw)

points i noticed.. I'm not sure if this was on purpose but the first shots of Rich, from what I can see was handheld yeah? Might have been nice to see it completely stationary with a tripod possibly?
Really liked the show of time passing by intergrating the start credits with the picture :)
Dissolves were used very well, specially matching Amies look to POV.
Dont worry about the green screen.. didnt look too bad at all!
The shot with Rich being all ghost like and hugging Amie is so lvoely.. but possibly held for a tad too long,
Rich fading out was so very nice too.
Hope my comments help :)

P.S.. loved the music ;D

Feedback 2

Anita da SilvaMarch 19, 2010 at 5:43pm
Re: Audience feedback
think its brilliant well done i got goose bumps wen she was reading the letter but the green screen with richard is obvious but the one with amy was fab i couldnt eventell....im asuming she laid on green screen too=/ but i love it the story is really moving loved how all of the sudden he wasnt next to her on the bench anymore made it more real and emotional Xx

Comments

• Camera work was mostly handheld due to the tripod being broken, Emma had to hold the camera on the tripod, did try to rectify this problem by bringing in my own tripod, however wasn't strong enough to hold the camera; too heavy! Could have checked the tripod when we got the equipment-however we felt the handheld camerawork gave it an observational point of view for the audience.


• Green screen was obvious in some parts, 'marching ants' were more visible on Rich's scenes on grass than Amie's-if we had enough time we could have rectified this problem by trying to reduce the noise, or even shooting it without green screen and using green screen for only the parts where Rich is 'ghostly'.


• We wanted to draw emphasise to the embrace, longer shot-shows relationship breakdown, emotional connection for audience, perhaps to chance to relate to romance.

Feedback 3

Kirsty Diane19 March 2010 at 18:16
Re: Audience feedback
Hello Emma!
Just watched your film, overall, very good. The sound is a bit patchy in parts and some of the camera work is a bit shaky. If that was tidied up a bit it would be better. Also some of the film was silent, was it supposed to be like that? If so, then maybe having that guitar music during those periods would make it more engaging.
Well Done though, hope this helps xxx

Feedback 4

Sophie Rae Denton March 23 at 11:47pm
hey doll! i shall try my best to get it from a media perspective and give criticism constructively!

Non Diegetic sound - good choice of music

Diegetic sound - okay if you want top marks, it needs to be balanced - it's pretty difficult to get the dialogue the same volume level as you've filmed it from different angles but if you can balance them out then that would be more professional.
The part where the girl goes "you're such an idiot"...maybe emphasise that a little bit more because it's too quiet - get her to re-record that particular line in a similar atmosphere, then overdub the sound so it's more clear.
(This is HARD so don't worry if you don't get it perfect).

Comments

• Rich's voice need to be balanced; was too quiet in some parts and louder in others, could have dubbed over/mix both-could have done this to improve sound quality or turned the diegetic sound levels up and down according to the scene.


• Silent periods in the film-were there to create reflection and to emphasise Amie's loss; we wanted silence to speak for itself and didn't want to over use the soundtrack, people would get bored of the motif, however could have used a different section of the track.

Feedback 5

Sally Piner20 March 2010 at 12:35
Re: Audience feedback
Hey Emma!!
I've just watched your media alevel film, i've also got a male view aswell... just incase you wanted some different feedback(:...
The only bad thing i would say is i don't understand the setting that much, why did she have to go to park/field/ to read the letter? it might of fitted better maybe at home when she recieved the letter through the door and then Rich appearing on her bed.. like the scene on the bench, then her moving to her back garden.. to look at the clouds?

Feedback 6

Now Bryns View...
Well sally pretty much summed it up but like I though it was made really well. It was ambitious but not over the top didnt distract from the story or anything. The emotion was felt throughout using many different effects such as music and editing (with the faded effect) all none of which took away from the story. The only things I felt you could have improved were perhaps the setting as I feel if it was set in a place special to them it would have made more sense. Or if that field was special to them perhaps make it more obvious. With the colour it was perhaps a bit cliche but I understand you havent got a lot of technology to work with. Overall really well made with lots of ambitious ideas most of which are successful.

Comments

• Setting confused some people-could have chosen setting personal to them, would have added more atmosphere, show relationship more clearer perhaps.


• Cliched black and white-wanted to use it to creative emotional atmosphere, to emphasise the end changing to colour-symbolise Amie's moving on.

Feedback 7

Chloe Thomson March 22 at 8:48pm
this is really good !!
i love the way the girl walks in extreme long shot and drops the paper and falls down! also the match on action with the hands is really good!
only negative thing i would say about this is when they are lying down on the grass, it kind of confussed me with like the opacity? but it's a good idea to show that he's a ghost (if that's the storyline lol)
But all together i think it's soooo good!! well done :)
hope you get a good grade aswell :) xx

Feedback 8

Maiken Davidson 21 March at 18:32
I like the opening shot, it's very well framed and how you bring the credits together with that shot to show that time has passed worked really well. I liked the way you experimented with the camera using different shots and different camera techniques, though at some points it was a bit 'bumpy' where it would have been better for a straight zoom and tilt of camera. The camera behind the female character as she walked towards the bench. I liked the reverese shot between both the characters as the letter was read, and that she was mouthing the words along, however i think it would have been best when the guy spoke to make it slightly echo-y to show that he isn't really there - giving it maybe a more emotional effect.

Comments

• Could have made it clearer that Rich was a ghost-use an echo effect on diegetic dialogue of Rich


• Be more careful with the opacity of Rich laying down-could have controlled it better so he looks more there than not, made it look less artificial.

Amie Nelms

The Advanced Portfolio Evaluation Question 2-Amie Nelms

How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary tasks?

Film Poster

This is our poster for our short film 'All My Love'. This as well as the film and our review for 'Little White Lies' magazine (as I will talk about later on) would be part as a marketing pack for our film. I'm now going to explain how each element of the poster communicates to the audience what our film is about.

Representation of Characters

Rich

• Suggestion he is a ghost though the high contrast used for the picture
  
• His facial expression and body language of hugging Amie, suggests he is caring and loving in their relationship.
  
• The way Amie's gaze is at the camera suggests she doesn't know Rich is there-ghost
  
• Costume-dressed in white, ghost, dead, clear indication
  
• He's holding the letter she threw away-emotional memory, sensitive, sentimental value

Amie

• Wearing black, grieving for loss
  
• Facial expression and body language positioned at camera, unaware that Rich is there
  
• Although I do feel her facial expression doesn't really convey the pain, heartache and sadness that she is feeling, as is in the film-might be unclear to the audience the tone of the film.
  
• However, this picture could be seen as her life without Rich-him not letting go, however she has moved on-parallel to the film (goes from black and white to colour), in colour now, she's moved on.

Themes and Issues

• Relationship-couple in an embrace
  
• Supernatural-body language, unaware he is there

Location

• Park setting-the grass on floor, highlights where the film is set

Colour

• Black and white fonts-film is shot in, influenced by characters costumes
  
• Picture in colour-could be symbolic as the 'moving on' stage, when Amie has walked away
  
• High contrast-ghost like, supernatural element to film
  
• Green-grass, her life is brighter now, more colourful-moved on

Font

• Simple font, title 'All My Love' with opaque quality-to emphasise supernatural element
  
• Title 'All My Love'-'M' and 'L' joined, could represent their once strong relationship

Other Features

• Actors names-tells audience who's starring in the film
  
• Cast and industry information at bottom (small font)-informs audience on who the film is created by and what roles the took
  
• Star ratings-encourages audience to go and view, indicates to the audience how good the film is
  
• Reviewer quotes-to encourage audience to view film, reviewers opinion is trusted/influences people whether to see film or not
  
• Lottery funded logo-shows that this is a small budget independent film,
  
• BBC Film logo-tells audience who funded this film, media literate people would be encouraged to view this film due to this connection


• Date it comes out-informs audience on when they can see this film, during summer holidays, when our target group will be free to spend their leisure pound/have time to view the film.
  
• Where the quotes and star ratings come from-Cosmopolitan and Glamour magazine, aimed at females, 12-24's, same target audience as film, will want to see the film due to their favourite magazine advices to see it; "Tear jerk" and "Romance" echo relationships and romance.


• Web address-people with internet access can find out more about the film-target audience is the most likely group to do this as they have been bought up with the internet; is popular due to social networking sites etc.


• Tagline-"The boy. The girl. The letter"-nouns show to the audience the importance and significance of each mentioned to the film; hints what it's about.

I did some research into film posters earlier on in our project. I also did a few sketch ideas on how we could construct the basis of the poster. So here is what I blogged regarding the conventions and information to include on the poster...

http://advancedportfolionelms.blogspot.com/2010/03/film-poster-sketches-amie-nelms.html

When sketching ideas for our poster and later on in the process, we experimented with different poses of the characters. We knew we wanted them laying down, but wasn't quite sure how to portray their relationship through body language.

We took a look at the poster for 'The Edge of Love', as we thought the two characters laying on the floor was a casual, simple but effective way of showing a relationship between two people. We tried to mimic this pose when creating the image for out poster, but found the composition didn't really portray that there was a romantic relationship between our characters (Amie and Rich). We liked the simplicity of the characters laying on a blank background (wooden floor) and wanted to incorporate this into our own image.

We then viewed the film poster for 'The Time Traveler's Wife'. We liked this image as the two characters loving and caring relationship is reflected through their close embrace. We managed to incorporate a similar pose for our characters with the idea of the simple background from the previous poster. I feel that this combination shows that the image doesn't have to be extremely complex to communicate something-ie. a relationship. Most of it is communicated through facial expressions and body language.

Film Review

For our film review we firstly looked at the house style and conventions for the magazine 'Little White Lies'. Here was the research I previously wrote on the blog about how 'Little White Lies' designs their magazine...

http://advancedportfolionelms.blogspot.com/2010/03/little-white-lies-magazine-review-amie.html

Here is our finished review which I designed, with Emma creating the copy, with a few suggestions from me...

I tried my best to match all the layout features as closely as possible. I used 3 different fonts ('Elephant' for 'Anticipation, Enjoyment and In Retrospect', page number and issue; 'Haettenschweiler' for the film title and the coloured boxes ; and 'Bookman Old Style' for the main copy. I over came the problem of unavailability of making the stand first bold, by copying the first line in a separate text box, and layered it over the top to create the bold font.

Due to 'Little White Lies' magazine having a running theme throughout the magazine, we chose the film 'An Education' for ours. This was because we felt that film ('An Education') would suit our target audience. We took the colours from the front cover of the magazine and introduced them in the 'Little White Lies' style in the boxes.

The target audience of the magazine however, is of a film literate audience who tend to be slightly older. This will introduce our film to the target audience of the magazine (mainly males, although females do read it), hopefully persuading them to view this film after reading the article.

Within the copy, Emma chose particular lexis and semantic fields to reflect the genre and strong qualities of our film.

Semantic Fields

• Supernatural/fantasy-Lexis: eg. "imagination", "ghostly", "spellbinding", "haunting".
• Social Realism-Lexis: eg. "depressing side of life", "dramatic climax", "glumness", "stereotypical conceptions of femininity", "black and white cinematography".
• Romance-Lexis: eg. "hormonal teenage romance", "teenage girl", "emotive dialogue", "affectionate", "failed relationship".
• Media terminology-Lexis: eg. "Ghost busters", "extreme long shot"

I also previously looked at ways to promote short films. Here's what I came up with...

http://advancedportfolionelms.blogspot.com/2010/01/short-film-promotion-research.html

Amie Nelms

The Advanced Portfolio Evaluation Question 1, Part 3-Amie Nelms

Conventions used for 'All My Love'

Themes and Issues

• Death
  
• Suicide
  
• Love and romance-relevant to today's society, target audience can relate to

Characterisation and Representations

Amie

• Independent character-ending "moving on" in slow motion, soundtrack emphasises her heartache but perseverance to move on
  
• Abolishes stereotype that women are dependent on men
  
• Introducing character in an appropiate way-showing her walking in, not using tilt, decided against because we wanted to avoid the objectification of Amie, Laura Mulvey's male gaze theory

Rich

• Not a traditional male-cares about relationships (Amie), emotive language used to show his emotions, sensitive
  
• Committed to relationship-leaves letter to her
  

Mise en scene

• Long establishing shot of bench at beginning, introduces the setting



• Location where people/public visit, realistic to read a letter in piece and quiet, gives time to reflect


• Naturalistic lighting created with natural sunlight, decided against using reflector, made it too bright
  
• Casual costumes to make it realistic: Amie in black, to show she is grieving to the audience; Rich in white to show he is dead and a ghost, connotations of purity and angelic-like.
  
• Natural hair and make up
  
• Used same names as actors, to make it seem more real, personal
  
• Props-used handwritten letter (actually written by Rich) to give authenticity
  
• Colour-black and white to connect to the audience the sad and grieving atmosphere Amie feels of her loss, and Rich leaving her behind.
  
• Exterior settings-houses in background, urban setting
  
• Facial expressions and body language appropriate to emotions-eg. opening shots of Rich in different positions on bench, emphasises he's waiting.

Sound

• Non diegetic soundtrack-motif used; emphasise certain parts of dialogue; eerie tone (guitar and keyboard parts); used at end to convey Amie's heartache.
  
• Ambient soundbridge-to connect each scene to each other-make it seem like short film is happening in real time
  
• Diegetic dialogue-letter dialogue open to interpretation

Editing

• Moves from black and white to colour-to show she is moving on
  
• Fades in and out-to add ghost like quality
  
• Long takes to make it seem like audience is observing
  
• Match-on-action-walking sequence to show observation and journey/following her
  
• Eyeline-to show the audience what she (Amie) is looking at, POV
  
• 180 degree-maintain continuity, although broken to show walking to and from bench, following tracking handheld shots
• Use of green screen-to show Rich is a ghost, not really there-emphasises fantasy element to short film.

Camerawork

• Range of different shot angles, movement and frame to interest audience
  



• Well composed shots-making use of mise en scene around us eg. houses in background, trees incorporation etc.
  
• Birds eye view shots-Amie and Rich laying down
  
• Worms eye view-shows what character's are looking at, the sky
  
• Medium close ups on bench shots
  
• Extreme close ups/eye level observe-connect with characters emotions
  
• Handheld-observation, in action
  
• Establishing shots-emphasises real location
  

Target Audience Demographic

• Female
  
• 12-24
  
• Lower class-middle class

Reasons?

• Romantic theme-appeals to females, something people can relate to
  
• Blockbuster audience 16-24, leisure pound to spend
  
• Amie-strong, independent character, females might aspire to
  
• Rich- is the kind of male females would want in a relationship: caring, committed to relationship etc.
  
• Certificate restriction, 12 years +, however perhaps an even younger demographic could be established as film can be viewed with adult supervision.

Amie Nelms

The Advanced Portfolio Evaluation Question 1, Part 2-Amie Nelms

Narrative Theory

I found a little diagram to easily explain Todorov's Narrative Theory...

Short film narrative usually starts off with...

• The Equilibrium-set the scene, introduced characters
  
• The Disruption- the problem


• The Resolution- the answer to the problem/closure

Here's 'Wasp', an example of the short film narrative which I studied as part as my research...

Wasp (Andrea Arnold), 2003

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0388534/

http://www.britfilms.com/britishfilms/catalogue/browse/?id=D9CC705918c7f2A6BDkUg23C30C5

Genre- Social Realism

Narrative

Equilibrium-going out to pub with Dave, disruption-children, wasp in mouth (title-acts as a wake up call for mother, symbolic), resolution-going home in car with Dave

Tells story in a short space of time

Opening-children and mother marching out of house to an 'enemies' house, start a fight, creates a negative first impression of family-baby's bottom half not fully clothed

Ending-become more sympathetic towards mother as she struggles to balance being a mother and having a social life; sympathy for children as they are abandoned outside, resort to picking up food from the floor to feed the hungry crying baby.

Relating this theory to our own short film 'All My Love'...

• Equilibrium-Amie reading letter from dead boyfriend
  
• Disruption-Amie reads the letter, discovers Rich's feelings and emotions, breaks down
  
• Resolution- Amie comes to the conclusion that she needs/wants to move on, walk away to start new life, moves from black and white to colour.

Amie Nelms

The Advanced Portfolio Evaluation Question 1, Part 1-Amie Nelms

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

'All My Love' is our short film in the style of Social Realism with a combination of the romance and fantasy genre.

Here's some background information on what the style Social Realism is all about...

Social Realism

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/1037898/
http://filmstudies.suite101.com/article.cfm/social_realism_in_british_film

Definition: Social Realism is an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic. (wikipedia.org)

Here's a documentary I found which shows the history of Social Realism and how it all started.


Watch The Story Of Social Realism [Part 1] in Educational View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com


Watch The Story Of Social Realism [Part 2] in Educational View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com


Watch The Story Of Social Realism [Part 3] in Educational View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Still not clear on what Social Realism is all about? Here's the basics...

Style Conventions of Social Realism

Mise en scene

• Naturalistic lighting (may also not use any lighting to create the natural light and shade within the frame)
• Exterior settings-sometimes recognisable and mostly real buildings/monuments
• Costume and make up convincing for period
• Characters seen in context-eg. social or environmental context
• Unknown Actors-as if they are one of us, more personal, more believable
• Attention to details in props-eg. to signify class, working class for example
• Desaturated colour palette/muted colours-eg. blues, greys, browns
• Sometimes director doesn't use script, actor improvises in character to make it more 'real'

Sound

• Environmental/diegetic/ambient (synchronous)
• Non diegetic soundtrack-can sometimes be integrated with diegetic music
• Use of sound motifs (repeated patterns)-which can reflect emotional connections to a character
• Accents-relevant to place
• Background sound can sometimes be used to drown out the main dialogue

Camerawork and Editing

• Eye level shots-as if we (the audience) are observing, connect with character, evoke empathy
• Close up detail of character-to show understanding of character and situation
• Off centre framing-less manufactured result
• Group shots
• Handheld camerawork-as if audience is incorporated, observing
• Establishing shots-indicate real locations
• Static shots-suggest observation
• Continuity editing
• Long duration shots/long takes-to suggest real time, as cuts take away reality

Themes and Issues

• Everyday challenges eg. money, relationships, family, political, stereotyping etc.
• Challenging or conforming ideologies on a particular social group
• Stereotypical representations of a social group-eg. male and females
• Issues relevant to time period, social, environmental and economical (eg. wars, politics)
• Less publicised, gritty issues not found in mainstream films

Directors of Social Realism

Some key directors who frequently use this style...

• Ken Loach
• Mike Leigh
• Andrea Arnold

The director's main aim is to "represent the lives of ordinary people in ways that appear very 'true to life'". This is mainly achieved through the representation of certain social groups.

Examples of Representations

Looking For Eric, Ken Loach (2009)

http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1242545/




This film mainly looks at the British and perhaps male representation of the main character Eric Bishop, with Eric Cantona as himself appearing as a 'ghostly' life coach who is in fact just part of Eric Bishop's imagination. Loach uses the style of social realism through...

• The job of Eric Bishop-he's a postman (male job), ordinary job, could be anyone, iconic British industry; uniform, crest, trolley, postboxes themselves.
• Uses the theme of football-popular sport in Britain, male interest (stereotypical) uses an ex-football as it's star, recognisable to fans (previous knowledge required)
• Uses everyday problems/worries through Eric Bishop (postman)-money problems, relationship-wants to get back with his first wife.

This representation of a male from a males perspective (Eric, main character, seeing his life), gave us some inspiration into looking at a male lead character, Rich. The 'ghost' quality of Eric Cantona also intrigued us and so we experimented in ways which could incorporate this into our own film.

Similarly, Mike Leigh uses British representations in the film 'Happy-Go-Lucky', as well as looking at the representation of the female lead character Poppy.

Happy-Go-Lucky, Mike Leigh (2008)

http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1045670/



British iconography

• London monuments
• Gig-Brit Pop genre, uses song 'Common People' by Pulp, British band
• Underground signs
• Red buses
• Black cabs

As Leigh describes, his aim was to make a "positive" Social Realism film. He did this through the lead role of Poppy and her female representation.

• Modern female
• Go with flow, no worries
• Spontaneous
• Happy
• Positive/optimistic
• 'Happy-go-lucky'

Indications through the film that it's a Social Realism films...

• Naturalistic lighting as well as natural lighting
• Characters representing different issues-Scott (driving instructor) and racism
• Improvises dialogue
• Casual, natural hair, costume and make up-although Poppy's clothes are used to portray her bubbly personality through colours, prints and jewellery etc.
• Real setting-London, urban

We also decided that having a modern female charcter might be interesting to incorporate into our short film, and again drafted some ideas in which we could do this. Amie is a strong, independent character in our film which we feel we have represented successfully.

Research

After our own independent research, we brain stormed our ideas and took inspiration from different short films we had viewed. Emma and I had seen a particular short film which interested us called 'The Transaction'.

Inspiration we pulled from this short film...

• Black and white colour scheme to set the atmosphere-which we used to create emotional connection to the characters, and enabled us to play with colour at the end
• Non diegetic narration by poem-which we initially attempted to do, but instead created a letter
• Outside 'park' setting

This and many other short films as well as mainstream films helped come along with the fantasy and Social Realism combination such as: Twilight, Time Travellers Wife, (short films) Lou-Lou Lives Here, The Calling (see previous research blogs on comments).

Amie Nelms