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...
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
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.
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...
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.
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 daSilvaMarch 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 couldnteventell....imasuming 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.
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...
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...
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.
Social Realism-Lexis: eg. "depressing side of life", "dramatic climax", "glumness", "stereotypical conceptions of femininity", "black and white cinematography".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
As you can see from this Youtube clip, the footage is black and white, this add's some mystery to the sequence.
Hand-held camera makes it more difficult to focus on the character
Natural lighting is used (however a spotlight is focused on the girl)
Diegetic and non diegetic sound is used
Themes/issues seem to be confusing
Costume and hair is kept simple to convey a message..what that message is with 'Lou Lou Lives here I'm not too sure.
The use of black and white throughout the short film was very inspiring, and this is one reason for our own use of black and white.
As further research into social realism we also looked at other short films such as:
(Eight - Daldry1998)
(Joyride - Gillespie1995)
Wasp - Andrea Arnold 2003)
Conversational piece Tunmer 2009)
Unfortunately i wasn't able to find clips of these to show you, as these short films were all on one DVD shown in class.
However a definite pattern was clear to see after making notes on each film, some common conventions used were:
Diegetic sound
A wide variety of shots used such as, extreme close ups, tracking shots, low angled shots, establishing shots, birds eye view, long shots, and pov shots
I also noticed that a lot of the close ups and extreme close ups, were of specific props that aided the narrative.
For further research we also watched shorter films, also showing social realism films and these can be found at http://www.virginmediashorts.co.uk/
I thought the idea was simple, yet really creative at the same time. It uses real locations, with natural lighting and a simple script. This short film was the perfect way to begin the research for our own media product.
Our media product uses the style of social realism, this means the following conventions are used: (however this is also challenged with our use of green-screen)
Our theme is Romance/Fantasy
• Our film is set in a real location (British locations) these are used for realism
• Natural lighting is used • Cast (actors used)- are not well known
• Mise en scene – (costume) is kept simple we’ve kept both characters in black and white
• Non Diegetic sound – the characters voices are recorded using the camera
• Desaturated colour (but in the case of our film black and white)
• The themes/issues are real (and audiences can relate to the themes and issues represented)
• Narrative is presented like a story
• Naturalistic body language and facial expression and body language ( our film uses this to show emotion, and guilt)
• Costume and hair is kept appropriate for the time (we’ve kept our characters in black and white clothing, and simple hair and makeup to maintain realism)
• Dialogue is sometimes improvised
• Continuity is maintained throughout
• Although we have used the style of social realism we have also used a fantasy element to it too, as Rich is a ghost. This was portrayed with our use of green screen which proved to be very challenging, (I'll discuss this more in depth later on) But he has stayed around so that he can tell his girlfriend Amie that he’s sorry.
We kept the camera work mostly handheld, but used a variety of shots such as extreme close ups so the audience got the full impact of Amie and Rich's facial expressions as these help to convey the story, and the emotion felt by the characters. We also used long shots so the audience can establish were the characters are. this is true of actual media products too and so for that reason we have used forms and conventions of actual media products.
When it came to editing we wanted to create the feeling of how desperate Rich's character was too make Amie believe how sorry he was for leaving her, we portrayed this through editing, because we showed Rich's character looking and speaking straight at Amie, and then cut to Amie, so the audience could see her blank facial expression to his words.
This gave the audience a clue that she couldn't see him.
• The aims of a social realism film is to represent certain themes and issues, such as:
• Realistic issues
• Class
• Relationships
• Professional issues
• Political issues
• Crime
• Real life – (Hard hitting)
• Ethnicity issues – (depending on the time/related to time)
• Moral questions/issues
• These are all forms of representation found in social realism films such as in Wasp (Andrea Arnold 2003) deals with issues such as relationships, morals, and social class these issues are represented to us, the audience by the characters used, mise en scene, British locations, and dialogue.
Another example is 'This is England (2006) Shane Meadows'
Costume represents: working class Doc martins- seen as 'the thing' for the time. set in: 1983
Hair/Make-up : popular style for the time/trends/working class
props- cigarettes, beer (drinking)
British locations
Graffiti
Having watched these films, and made notes on how the themes and issues are represented in social realism, this helped us to define the themes and issues within our own film such as
Romance
Relationships
Real life/hard hitting issue (suicide)
A strong female role (characterisation)
• Social realism films are created to show the audience the illusion of reality this allows the viewer to engage with the on – screen subject as being ‘real’ • Realism can be found in fiction and nonfiction and therefore it result in the distinction between the two being blurred, as some fiction can appear to be very real.
• When using props in social realism, they need to be real things that you use on a day to day basis. These are usually handbags, wallets, mobile phones, and keys, anything that can aid the audience expectations for it being real such as in our product, we kept props to a minimum because this helps to make the narrative seem more real, as Amie wouldn't have a lot of things with her, as she's in the park, all she has is the letter (this is our main prop)
• Social realism films tend to represent real people, with real life issues because that is the audience that they are trying to target.
• And our issue is the same, our film is about real issues that some members of our audience may of gone through (without the boyfriend being a ghost) and so we are addressing themes and issues that relate to them.
• Our media product fits into the style of social realism as we have used most of the common conventions noted above that social realism films include.
Because our main demographic is girls aged 16-24 (the blockbuster audience) we wanted to include the themes and issues that would target them, and so we new we wanted our film to include romance and also an element of fantasy as this genre is becoming very popular with a teenage audience, such as with the Twilight saga, its become popular with not only teenagers, but also grown up in there 20's because of the element of the super natural boyfriend that would do anything to keep his girlfriend safe. This use of the male character attracts a female audience so without even trying to target an older audience use of the fantasy/romance/male character can open up a whole new audience without it even being directly targeted for them. Such the "Twilight Mom's"
www.edition.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/11/16/older.twilght.fans/index.html
This link shows that even mum's are interested in the Twilight saga, even though the films are not targeted at them.
This link shows that the Romance/fantasy genre doesn't stop being appealing to women over 24 years old.
An older female audience such as girls in there 20's would also be more likely to be targeted by our film in the Little White Lies magazine, as earlier research showed a slightly older demographic reads the magazine.
To watch our film, and see the social realism conventions used just click the link below:
Looking at real media products such as these posters made me really notice the content on each of the posters viewed.
I noticed that all posters have these conventions:
A big bold title
The actors clearly visible
Directors name
Tag line near the title
A main focus image of main characters relevant to the narrative
A certificate rating such as 12 A
Star's rating the filmReviews from Magazines or Awards from festivals
Logo's of funding such as British film council or National Lottery
Credits there are always slightly squashed up and directors, actors names are in bold
and also a website address (this can sometimes include more about the film) info etc..
After noticing all of these conventions on actual posters i realised these were what we needed to include in our own poster.
As you can see from our poster i have included all the content that is on real media posters. I also added a realise date for our film, as i noticed that most film posters include this information somewhere on the poster. For this reason our poster uses common forms and conventions of a real media product.
we have used:
A bold title which connects 'My and love' this had technical difficulties which i hadn't thought of when i came up with the idea to connect them, this was to do with the use of transparent lettering, but was overcome with the use of the 'Move tool' in Photo shop
A bright main image with Amie's character looking directly at the camera, this suggests to the audience she's a strong character
Rich's character looking down on Amie, this could suggest he's looking down on her because he's not around anymore (heaven reference maybe)
Also suggests he's caring
There body language suggests romance
Transparent title suggests fantasy element, and raises questions
star rating from magazines that our target audience would read 'Glamour' and 'Cosmopolitan' magazine.
Certificate rating showing 12A shows that its not going to contain violence/inappropriate language
Tag line suggests mystery, "the boy the girl the letter" creates suspense.
Representation of characters:caring/loving/in a relationship
It took a long time to decide on a main image for the poster and i even made a few different versions with titles and different fonts to see which ones worked and which ones didn't, the ones that didn't work, were the ones that didn't meet the conventions of real media products, for example when using fonts, an example of this is:
As you can see the font i used was 'Lucinda Handwriting' which isn't used in real media products as the font is too curly, which means it doesn't stand out, and also it cannot be read easily from a distance.
There are many other things wrong with with this first draft image.
Firstly the size of the title is far too small
Also the characters names are too small and they dont look eye catching
Also making Rich's character transparnet gives the plot away too much.
Next we started research into Little White Lie's Magazine, and how there reviews were presented on the page, we started out by looking at handouts for the magazine, something i learnt from that lesson was that Little White Lies Magazine featured one particular film throughout there whole issue, so for example with the issue we were looking at the film 'Kick- Ass' was featured throught the copy, this meant little pictures/drawings of characters from Kick-Ass were presented throughout each page.
The first review we looked at was for '44 inch chest' it was written by: limara Salt
the layout was very presis in the number of paragraphs, and on further research i noticed that on the online version of the magazine, seven paragraphs are used on each review.
Amie created the layout of the review so that it incoraparted the style of little white lies magazine, she used three different fonts to keep the copy looking exactly like it was from the actual magazine.
As mentioned earlier, Little white lies magazine had a recuring theme throughout the magazine, and so we decided to choose 'An Education' as our theme. This was because Amie and Emma had decided that this would be the perfect theme to target our audience.
Little White Lies is mainly targeted at a male audience, and also an older audience, however a lot of girls read it too. also i found out that the Little White Lies website has a section that is deadicated to friends of the magazine, and it even has the function to 'like' the magazine on the social networking site Facebook. The site has over 2,572 fans/friends on facebook and a lot of them are our target audience 16-24 year old females.
Because Amie made every little detail of the layout look incredibly like an actual review from the magazine, i think our review uses the conventions of an actual media product.
How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary tasks? We started looking at distribution and how it's the distributors job to design film posters, and market them appropriately to there specific target audience, it is also the distributors to make sure film reviews are widely available within the media.
I used this website for research at the begging of the task.
• The poster for our film ‘All My Love’ is effective because it doesn’t give too much away by the images used, however it includes the elements necessary in order for the props and characters used to attract the audience’s attention.
As you can see from the finished poster, the characters intrigue the audience because there pose makes the audience want to know more about the storyline because the characters positions in the frame suggest mystery, and allows them to ask questions.
Our target audience is females aged between 12-24 the certificate we chose to make our film was a '12' because we didn't want to totally dismiss a large proportion of our audience by making it a 15. I think this was a good decission, becuase it allows our target audience to a lot wider.
When coming up with the title for our film, we realised that at the end of the suicide letter that i wrote, (see earlier post)
Rich ends the letter with "All My Love" this seemed a good title for the film because it allows the audience to be intrigued by the title without giving too much away.
This is the original photograph that i took. As you can see the photo itself has changed on the actual poster.
• The location that we used for the poster is very minimal and the viewer can only see the characters and the letter, and also the grass on which the characters are lying on this suggests to the audience that the characters pose is romantic, and with the title "All My Love" the audience can tell it's going to be about love, and the two characters.
• From the way in which the characters are lying down, it’s clear to see that they are romantically connected, and the viewer can also see that the male character Rich is holding a letter. – This will generate questions by the target audience.
• For the poster we kept it in colour, even though our film is in black and white.
• The use of colour makes the poster stand out a lot more, and I think our target audience is a lot more likely to want to go and see our film, by the use of colour used within the poster.
• Another visual decision that was made was not to make Rich look ghostly like in the film, this is because we didn’t want to make it too obvious what the narrative was about. Also making Rich look transparent, posed some very challenging consequences, because it didnt make the poster look like a real media product.
• I think the poster would work as part of a marketing package because it includes all the right information, that a real poster would have, such as the poster for ' The edge of Love' it use's all of the same content, such as listed above in the first question, and it also intrigues the viewer, because it invites the target audience to ask questions, such as:
• Who are those characters?
• Are they boyfriend and girlfriend?
• Why isn’t the boy looking at the camera?
• Why is he holding that bit of paper/letter?
Allowing our target audience to ask these questions creates enigma within our products.
• And it’s not until you looking closer at the poster that some key information about the style and genre of the film is given away.
• Such as the reviews that have the star ratings, and quotes from magazines that our target audience would enjoy reading. The quotes read: “Ultimate summer romance” and “A must see tear jerk er” these give a little information away, without the viewer being able to guess the plot.
Although i didn't personally produce the review, i think this would also work really well in a real commercial context becuase Emma and Amie did a really good job in producing the review.
As a group we decided to split the tasks up into what of our own strengths were.
Emma is an English student, and so she wanted to create the main body text for the review. Amie wanted to focus on the design and the copy of little white lies, and so she created this in Indesign.
And as I mention above I wanted to create the film poster using Photo shop.
As you can see, this is the review that Emma and Amie created for Little White Lies Magazine. The Image used was taken as a still from our film in Final Cut Pro.
From this i believe that our target audience would want to read the review, and then want to find out more about the film. Because our specific target audience would probably be intruiged by our use of the male character and so they would take a look at our review, and thats when they would notice that our film, is infact for them, through the narrative.
The layout has been re created to look exactly like a review from Little White Lies, and i think any fan's of the magazine would be intersted in reading it too, not just our target audience.
Our use of layout invites our target audience in, as the big picture along the top of the page allows them to ask questions, and want to know who he is, and what film he is in. After this use of image has drawn our target audience in, the style of writing and film literate language used will also draw our target audience in, and at this stage the audience will make up there mind if the film is for them or not, and hopefully it is because we have incorporated themes and issues that our audience can realte to, and identify with. For these reasons i believe that our review appeals to a potential audience, through these factors, and also from looking at Little White Lies magazines facebook fan page. The magazine has a lot of young male fans but also a lot of women too, and so our review would hopefully catch there eye through our imagery used, and then through use of lanuage, and decription from our film.
To see other reviews from Little White Lies check out there website:
From the website http://www.launchingfilm.tv/ i found out some very vaulable information about how actual distributors target their audience when they have a new film out, and how they gather their target audience information, having watched this interview with Hugo Gumbar
www.launchingfilms.tv/planning.php?video=2&autostart=1 I realised that it is very difficult to target a specific target auidence as you never know if your product is 100% going to target the audience you want.
• Our audience demographic is: females aged 16-24
Our media products are targeting a film literate audience, but that's mainly for the review, as its for little white lies magazine, and there target audience targets individuals that are interested in films.
Our audience feedback was made easier by the social networking site Facebook.
Emma had the idea of creating our own facebook page in which people could see our film, the review and even the poster and tell us what they thought,
• From the audience feedback that I received I think that overall our storyline was a success and females from our specific target audience liked that our storyline covers the theme of romance, loss, and the role model of a stronger female character as Amie moves on at the end of the film, instead of giving up on herself and letting her grief stop her from living her life.
• However one thing that I have learnt from reading our responses is that a lot of females didn’t understand that Rich is a dead boyfriend from the start.
• A good response to our film was that to make it more obvious to the audience that Rich has committed suicide would be to of made his voice echoed when he spoke.
• Another issue, that slightly linked to the one above was that a few of the girls I had asked was that they didn’t understand that Rich had gone because he’d left Amie, or that he was dead. And so again, we would need to make it obvious to the audience that he was dead, and that his spirit was just hanging around waiting for Amie, because he felt guilty for leaving her.
• Many of our target audience have expressed a great deal of positive comments which has been really good.
• Such as quite a few have commented saying that they enjoyed the film and thought the storyline was creative.
• However nearly everyone I had asked (of our target audience) had said that they either didn’t understand the green screen or that it was a bit ‘fuzzy’ around the edges of Rich’s character.
• And this was a main problem within the film, and sadly there wasn’t much that we could do about it, given the time we had, and locations used.
• Some positive comments that I received from the social networking site, face book was: “Overall I think it’s really good! Well framed and you used a variety of camera angles that were really effective”
• “All My Love is a really touching film”
(A screen grab of our target audience from the site Facebook)
This is some of the audience feedback that we recieved on our Facebook page, that allows people to comment on our film, poster and review. The page is open to everyone however the comments selected are only from our specific target audience.
Film Comments:
"Really liked it - made me want to find out more and see what had happened to lead up to this point. The only suggestion I would make is when Amy is walking towards the bench in the beginning, you hear some of the traffic in the background. I would try to drown that out by maybe using some parts of your theme music to keep up the atmosphere you ... See morehave created quite well in the beginning of the video. And while Richard is talking, adding some of the music, very very softly in the back, to give it a more surreal feel.
Anyway that is my opinion, but loved the video and the music too. Well done to everyone who participated in the making."
"Really Really Cool. Simple but effective. Glad to see yours has people actually talking in it
I agree with some of the points in previous comments but apart from that, i cant think of any negatives"
"i think it was really good, i like the feel of it being very distant, but close at the same time. i think maybe at the start- you could have focussed on amy a bit more- rather than him- and introduced him with just his voice, then with him as a person"
"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.
The green screen was good, though it was a bit fuzzy round the characters. The scene when they are lying together in the field is really good, it's really sweet as you show there pov of the sky and then we get a birds eye view of them which I really liked! I liked the bit when he was hugging her too, but felt like that scene was dragged out a little too long. When he disappears reading the last bit of the letter is emotional! I liked as she walked away you went from black and white to colour, this was a really good effect as it showed her moving on.
The music was really good, it made it different to other films as it was unique and suited the film, though it may have been an idea to have it playing when they were both lying in the field.
Overall I think it's really good! Well framed and you used a variety of camera angles that were really effective! Only cons or things you could of improved on was when he was speaking making it a bit echo-y and shorten some of the scenes!
Well done!!!"
Key points on reflection:
This audience feedback is only that, from our film and our target audience have made some really good key points that would definatly improve our film.
One key element noticed, was that our film title font doesnt match the font used on the title on our poster, this was because we wanted to make the font within our film, seem almost like handwriting, to fit into the theme of the letter.
However when trying to create this within our poster, we realised that that particular font is rarely used within actual media product posters, and also it was very difficult to read, and so this is why we did not have matching titles with the poster and the film. Although this is justified, its a very vauled point because nearly every actual media product has matching titles in the fim, and on the poster.
Another key element mentioned was that we could have focused on Amie a lot more in the beggining, so that the audience could instantly relate to her, and then bring Rich in to show he was a ghost.
This would of worked really well, and if we could do the task again, i think this would be a very vaulable scene.
Another scene that was mentioned by our target audience was to make Rich's voice echo at the start when he says "Hi Amie" to give the audience a clue that he is a ghost. This would also of worked really well, and on reflection i think would of made our film a lot more creative.
Poster Comments:
For some reason our target audience hasnt commented on our poster or review directly onto our facebook page. However after showing our target audience the poster a lot of people commented on it, and also whilst i was working on the poster, peers mentioned what they thought of it.
One creative critisism was that with the main image Amie is smiling directly at the camera, and they thought that she was meant to be upset, however the image on our poster reflects that Amie has moved on (as she says in the film) and this is also symbolished by the use of colour, as it shows that she is now happier, and in colour.
This also shows that Rich hasnt moved on...and he is still there with Amie even though she doesnt know it.
Apart from that our targert audience seemed to like our poster, specific things being:
Use of title 'linking' symbolising together ness.
Main Image clear and in the center of the frame
Tagline: The boy The Girl The Letter...meaningful (tells the story)
These useful comments helped us to realise that we were probably targeting our audience with the use of image and title.
Review comments:
Overall the comments recieved for the review have been good, our target audience have enjoyed reading the review and thought it gave a good indercation of what our film was actually like.
Content mentioned: Good use of film langauage/terms
intruiging insight into what the films about
Main image creates enigma towards the film
Layout seemed to be just like the actual little white lies magazine
Good theme from the magazine to choose 'An Education' appropriate to target audience.
Overall i think all aspects of our media products target our demographic well.
Previous poster ideas
Previously when we were first putting our idea's together about how we wanted the poster to look, we all draw some rough sketches of the ideas we had. By the end of this task we had decided to go with a totally new idea.
However this is one of the ideas that i had sketched:
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
• I used a new digital camera to take the photographs for the blog. I used a Samsung L313 digital camera. I used this particular camera because it had 13.6 mega pixels, and this was an improvement to the digital camera I used in the previous task.
(This is the camera i used)
• I also used this camera for the photos of green-screening that are also uploaded to the blog.
• The camera provided a nice clear picture of the day filming, and also the image used for our poster. It’s clear and sharp without looking too ‘photo shopped’.
• By using this new camera I learnt that the photographs produced make a much better image because of the amount of pixels the camera has. This also helped to improve the overall look of our blog.
Another new technology that i used was the Sony HD camera and a Samsung video camera.
I used the Sony HD camera to film two scenes within our film, as it was Emma's job really. I used this camera in the sequence when the camera is behind Rich sitting on the bench, and we see Amie walking towards the bench in a Long shot. The only problem with this scene was because i filmed it hand-held, the spare tripod was in the corner of the shot. Luckily with the help of editing we were able to expand the footage so that the tripod got cut out of the film.
Using the Sony HD camera meant that the quality of our footage was clearer, it also has a mic so that sound can be recorded a lot clearer than a normal camera. This is really important for us, as the dialogue is the most important convention used within our film.
I also used a Samsung video camera that i hadnt used before to film the footage of the sky used when Amie and Rich are laying down. these shots were "worms eye view" and i layed on the ground and held the camera towards the sky to get the right perspective.
• Another new technology that we used was Final cut pro on the Apple Macs. In the previous task to edit our film, I used iMovie. Using Final cut pro instead made the editing a lot quicker, and after a few lessons in figuring out how it worked, a lot quicker than iMovie too this was because when you first begin uploading the footage to final cut pro, instead of it creating its own little windows like it does it iMovie, Final cut pro names each sequence of footage sequence 1, and so on... it also keeps the footage in the order of which you filmed it, this is a lot easier if you have filmed all the footage you want in the order that you want it to appear in your actual film.
• We used Final cut pro because of the benefits it has over iMovie, such as the ease of use, being able to split one clip is a lot easier in Final cut than iMovie because it is just one button in final cut.
• Also another advantage with Final cut pro is it doesn’t load each sequence on the right hand side, Final cut pro loads all the footage onto the left hand side, and automatically calls each scene ‘sequence 1’ ‘sequence 2’ and so on.. This made it a lot easier to find the footage we wanted and the footage we didn’t.
• One other benefit we found by using Final cut pro was that you edit the sequence in the ‘play’ menu that plays the final version for you. This made it a lot easier to cut the exact sequence we wanted instead of having to play the sequence and then stop it, and then cut it.
Later on into the task, we were also told that by using Final Cut Pro instead of iMovie we had made it easier to work with the green screen footage than if we had used iMovie because we were having problems with the green screen footage anyway, as were we had added the footage of Amie and Rich, the outline around them was all 'fuzzy' the technician refered to this as being "ants" and unfortuntly we were unable to do anything about this.
A useful video i found on youtube shows some basic information that was useful at the start of the project.
• I used Photo shop to create our poster. Before the finished product, i played around with a few idea's in the drafting stage
(this was one idea for the film poster)
This was one idea that we had. Again i used the Samsung L313 digital camera to take this photo. This specific photo was inspired by the actual film poster "Edge of Love"
In the end we decided that this was a good idea, but it was too similar to the edge of love movie poster.
Although I had used Photoshop before, I think that my skills have developed within this task, because I realised that I couldn’t just upload a photo and change just a few things to that image and it would be done.
• I had to really think about the image that I wanted to create and more importantly an image that would appeal to our target audience.
• And for that reason, the images that I had taken originally for the poster changed many times until I got the right one this is shown in prevous posts on the blog.
• The final image was inspired by an actual film poster, for a real film product “The edge of love” and also The time travelers wife.
• Another aspect of the film poster that I think really made me think about what our poster needed to communicate to its audience was the font, not only the style of font by the size too. I spent quite a long time looking through different fonts until i found the perfect one, and i even looked up different fonts at:
http://www.dafonts.com/ This site allows you to download different types and styles of fonts that other people have made. If you want to use a font for commercial use you need to contact the person who made it. The name of the font i ended up choosing after a long time of trying out different one's was ' Britannic Bold ' and as this particular font wasnt very interesting i decided to join the 'Y' with the 'L' so that the title "All My Love" linked together, which created a together ness approach to the title which i thought was appropiate for the film.
• As shown previously on the blog, I uploaded a first draft that I thought was okay at first, but then having spoken to teachers, and really researched actual film posters, I realised that it just didn’t work because the font wasnt clear to read from a distance, and after researching actual media products hardly any actual posters use this style of font.
• The font matched the font of our film titles; however the style of it matched that of handwriting. I think it was called Lucinda.
• And as you can see, this on a film poster wouldn’t work, for two reasons. One even if the size of the font was big, from a distance this would be near enough impossible to read.
• And two hardly any real film posters would use this style of font. And as our film fits into social realism this font wouldn’t work with the tone of the rest of the film.
• Another tool that was new to me, that I used in Photo shop was the ‘clone tool’ I used this to create the white background behind the characters, as before you could see house’s, as the angel in which I took the photo meant no matter how long the shot was, you could still see houses in the background.
• I used the ‘Ctrl’ and ‘Alt’ and the clone buttons on Photo shop to select the colour I wanted as the background. And then I used the ‘brush tool’ to conceal the houses in the background, I learnt that in order not to clone the wrong part of the image, the cross that appears on the screen must not move from the colour or image that you selected you clone. This video from YouTube shows the 'Clone Tool' being used: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhokPypW6Oo
Another new technology that we used was green-screen. This technique was totally new to us, and we needed to be shown how to use it.
With the help of the media technians we were able to create the effect we were hoping for. Rich does appear to look ghostly within our film, however it didnt work quite as well as we'd hoped. As it flickers around the edges. We spent quite a few lessons trying to fix this problem, however it the end there wasnt much that we could do to stop it from flickering.
Photoshop-Poster
