FINAL FILM

Here is my final film, I released it on YouTube on February 3rd and since then it has received 186 views to date, a number of comments and 6 likes. I am incredibly happy with the response because it included a wide range of ages and a lot of people had something positive or constructive to say. :)
Facebook comments: 
such a good idea!
that's awesome!
too cute!! :D
this is great - all the hours have paid off!!!!
very well done! does he die at the end? lovely to see your mum, brother and house!
what can i say?!!! that is excellent, well done.
21 likes

YouTube comments:
very good, how long did it take to get the stop motion bit right?
wow! That must have taken hours of work and what a great end result! Your first attempt at film making was a success. The sound track was beautiful and I really enjoyed watching it.
THATS SOO COOOOL!
6 likes

finished film review (double page spread)

Here is my finished film review, I am really pleased with it! I made a number of changes during the production process because I found that having the background image fully visible made it difficult to both view the text and also to find a text colour that was visible on all areas. For this reason, I changed the hue and exposure to tone down the image and to give it more of a washed-out effect. This meant that I could use simple black text on top (I actually layered it twice to make it more visible) and the orange type was also clear. I decided to put my blog site on the bottom trimming because I found that a lot of magazines either had links to the magazine's site or the film's individual site. It also provides a nice 'link' (excuse the pun) to my production company - Juxtaposed Productions.
When creating my review, I found that a number of people asked me why I rated my film as '4 stars', not because they thought it was too high but because they thought it should be rated '5 stars'. The reasoning behind this was because I didn't want to come across as pretentious and also, '5 star' ratings are fairly 'rare' so to speak and for a film to be of such a good quality, I feel as though it should be perfect. 

added scene

Upon showing my film to the class, I received really helpful feedback and from this I made the enhancement of adding a flashback scene to mix up the narrative, rather than just being linear.

Rather than focusing on Oscar or Quin this time, I decided to make it more human so that the audience can have an even greater rapport with the characters, and so I filmed my brother opening a present, with Oscar inside. I filmed a variety of shots, closeup, mid-closeups, POV shots but I decided to simply use the one type of shot, rather than a mixture because I felt that within my film I had used a wide variety of shots and by using more than one for the one scene, it seemed to make it a bit disjointed. With regards to editing, I chose to add an effect that would give the clip an aged and vintage look because the rest of my film doesn't really have many effects because it is more driven by the narrative and storyline. I also sped it up slightly so that it didn't last for too long, (because my brother was a little bit slow at opening!!), and also changed the saturation/gamma.

ROUGH CUT YAY

WATCH IN HD OR 480p! :))

Audience Feedback

In Monday's lesson I got the class to watch the video of my idea pitch and then to post comments on my blog what they thought of my initial idea and then to pose a question for me to think about. I was pleasantly surprised by the feedback that I received as everyone was very positive and had constructive questions for me to think about.
Aimee - I think stop motion is a good idea although it is lengthy it could be worth it. Would it all be in stop motion or would you consider having part of it real life filming?
Farah - I think you have a very creative idea which could work very well - the puppets would be very entertaining! If you were thinking of stop motion that would also be very effective - but you would have to already start planning to make sure you manage your time efficiently; if you do it will work greatly! Good luck :-)
Caitlin - I really like this idea, I think it would be really cute for the puppet to fall in love with the mannequin, this still has a fairytale-esque feel to it and the idea of him living in your shed is really good. How would your brother fit into the film? Would he be friends with the puppet? 
Martha - I think your idea is a really good one. I think especially for a young audience, its such a nice juvenile idea, which is refreshing because I think a lot of other people get bogged down in subtext and seriousness. I think you should really use the idea of stop motion as its creative and original. 
Evie - Sounds you have the building blocks of a really fun and creative idea! I'd be very interested to watch this short, should you choose to make it. Have you thought much about sound in your film? 
Alice - I love the idea, think it shall work really well. I personally think that maybe give a try out of the stop motion, because if it works for you I think that will look really effective, but I also think it is good that you have considered how time consuming it can be therefore have thought of an idea where you can also film it through 'real' action. Have you thought about whether you will use diagetic or non-diagetic sound, whether you will include much dialogue etc?
Lizzie - Really interesting idea; it's great that you have already considered actors and have a good idea of where you are going to film and how it's going to work with your vision. Do you know where the story is going to lead?
Ben - The idea is very simple, the stop-motion could be a problem as Alice said; it is very time consuming. But I think that if it does properly stop-motion can add so much more to a piece especially in the case of fantasy as it provides a much more unreal but also fragmented and sharp final product. How do you feel on working with a young actor? And how do you plan to keep his interest in making the film with it being such a tedious production?