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
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.
Here is the DVD cover for my film, I am incredibly pleased with it, I decided to keep it fairly 'simple' because obviously my film is a short - the plotline isn't thaaaat extravagant and short films typically don't have DVDs unless they are made by Pixar etc.
Seeing as I am very interested in the post-production side of making a film and particularly the aspects of media production involving design, I came up with the idea of designing a DVD cover for my short film. When researching the designs for films similar to my age range and genre, these were my favourite designs:
When creating the name for my film, I wanted to choose something that meant that there was a possibility to have more films in the future. Rather than just having 'Oscar & Quin' because I feel like having 'The Oscar Chronicles' adds depth and also the audience thinks, "Ooo, will there be a sequel/prequel?!" Or I hope they will ask that question anyway. :)
Creating a storyline which could be followed was a very important factor for me because I really feel like I believe in my characters and because I designed and created the puppet for Oscar myself, with help, I feel like I want to 'exploit' it/him as much as possible, so to speak.
In the summer of this year, I will be travelling to Costa Rica for a month and my intention is to take Oscar and Quin with me to either capture footage of them together, or Oscar prior to meeting her and how he comes to live in Norfolk, England. :)
As our famous
old friend Shakespeare wrote in ‘A Midsummer Nights Dream’ way back in 1598: “Ay me! for aught that I could ever read, Could
ever hear by tale or history, The course
of true love never did run smooth; But either it was different in blood—“,
the challenges new lovers face are as common today as ever before. This is
certainly the case for Oscar and Quin, who feature in The Oscar Chronicles,
created by first-time British director, Nicole O’Malley.
Oscar & Quin, a four minute stop-motion animated short
film follows the story of Oscar, a furry blue character, destined for a gloomy
life in a landfill site. Within
seconds of the film beginning, we’re thrown into the turmoil of discarding
outgrown toys and thrown in the literal sense into the rubbish bin. All is not
lost when Oscar finds true love with Quin, a broken mannequin. Together
they defy the odds and prove that hope is not lost but when faced with a
life-threatening situation, their future becomes compromised.
Created on
a shoestring budget, O’Malley describes her reasoning behind combining stop-motion
and live action in The Oscar Chronicles
“when intertwined with live action, stop-motion brings a timeless quality in a
way that no other medium provides”.
There’s something gratifying about seeing the
animation process in action, the giving of life to inanimate objects, be they
hand-drawn images, computer-generated models or articulated puppets. But
there’s something particularly special about stop-motion animation. It’s not
the process itself, which is painstakingly laborious, but what goes on behind
the scenes.
Set in a rural Norfolk village in contemporary
England, it’s a quirky tale of optimism and romance that compels and captivates
the audience into the first instalment of The Oscar Chronicles.
Prior to designing, writing and creating my film magazine review, I researched into existing film magazines and the kind of articles that they include.
Empire Magazine is a British film magazine published on a monthly basis by Bauer Consumer Mediam, first published in July 1989. It is the biggest selling film magazine in Britain and is also sold in America, Australia, Turkey, Russia and Portugal. In terms of coverage and approach, Empire is very popular and takes on a more 'irreverent' and less 'serious' approachre, like Sight & Sound. Empire caters for a wide audience as it reviews not only mainstream films, but also arthouse.
Similar to Empire, Sight & Sound is published on a monthly basis in Britain by the British Film Institute (BFI). It was initially published quarterly when it began in 1932, until the early 1990s when it merged with the Monthly Film Bulletin, another BFI publication. Sight & Sound reviews all films released during the month - both arthouse and mainstrean feature films.
Total Film is British film magazine published by Future Publishing every four weeks, 13 times a year. Its original launch was in 1997 and offers cinema, DVD and Blu-ray news, reviews and features. 'Each month, Total Film provides a range of features, from spotlight interviews with actors and directors, to making of and on-set pieces for new and future releases. Each issue always includes the Total Film Interview, which is a six-page in-depth chat with an actor or director, along with a critique of their body of work.'
When creating my film review, I constantly kept in the back of my mind that my film was a short and so if it were to be reviewed in a magazine then it would have to be a 'special occasion'. This was why I decided to make my insert a 'Spotlight' and so it was enabling the reader to witness, read about and potentially watch a short film. Empire Magazine don't really tend to do this kind of thing so initially this cast doubt in my mind, however, Total Film really encouraged me to do it because they often provide 'spotlight interviews' :).
Upon making the initial design for my film review, I have come to think about when the release date of my short film. Originally I dated it as 'January 2013' however, my deadline for the project falls in February and I want my magazine to be in March and so I've reached the decision to change the date, otherwise the audience interprets that my film is slightly old.
I recently showed the rough cut of my film to the class so that I was able to gain an external perspective on it and to use the feedback to possibly adapt/enhance my film. Audience feedback.... Comment No#1 Good ident. Nice use of music. Good range of shots. A film that brought a smile to my face. Nice variety of locations - I think the beach works really well. Good use of stop motion. Love it!!! :) Comment No#2 I larvvve it! :) Love the dog camera. It must have taken a lot of time and effort. It is also an adorable plot! I really like the titling as well. Comment No#3 Amazing titles! Really good variety of shots. Very well trained dog! Falling in bin shot is amazing. Interesting editing. Emotive music. Really charming. I love it! Comment No#4 Love the incorporation of footage and stop motion. Such a quirky idea! However at the moment I feel like it's more of a film opening than a short. Comment No#5 Effective titling sequence. Variety of shots. Nice POV from the bin's perspective. YAY stop motion. So cute when they get married. Very good! Made me smile. I like that you incorporated stop motion and footage. :) Comment No#6 Stop motion can be very risky but you handled it incredibly well. Very good storyline and focus on shots. Worked extremely well. Very amazing film! Well done. :) Comment No#7 I like how you've mixed stop motion together with normal footage and I like how the music you've chosen changes the atmosphere half way through. Comment No#8 I actually love yours. The fact you've done stop motion as well as normal stuff is just amazing. I do think the stop motion stuff makes the acting in the start not so good though. The music also adds such a touching effect. WELL DONE! Comment No#9 The sections filming the dog work really well - I love your use of tracking. The shots vary and work/flow together. I love the narrative - it's so cute and creative. Comment No#10 Shots were all framed well. The stop motion parts were cute and also brought a little playful side to the piece. Upon receiving verbal feedback from my teachers, I learnt that to make my film even better I should insert one or more flashback scenes in the prolonged moments during the marriage and also before Oscar and Quin begin walking on the sand dunes. I am thinking of filming scenes in which Oscar is being unwrapped as a present whilst Quin looks on from a shelf to show how the two first 'met' and then possibly another, or making the flashback fragmented that I can insert it in both places. This was a great piece of feedback to receive at this time because I have enough time to film and insert the footage and if I had not received this feedback then I would have missed out on marks.
I was very pleased with the reception of my film; I was initially worried that the audience might not understand why the couple falls in love or lack an emotional attachment with the characters.
Another exercise we carried out was asking the audience to write in one to three sentences what they thought the message of the film was/what the film is about. This was, thankfully, very insightful and effective because as the sole director, producer, scriptwriter, cinematographer, editor, you assume that the message of the film is clear and that people will be able to understand it. This didn't prove to be a problem for myself because as the feedback demonstrates, people understood the plot of my film. Yay.
Upon reviewing the opening of my short film, I came to realise that the changes that I made during production meant that the Photoshop images that I had created were no longer relevant and actually detracted from the effectiveness of my film. This was because the 'backstory' that I had created for Oscar no longer fitted and if anything, made the plotline less seamless and quite confusing. For this reason and because I didn't want to put my hard work to waste, I decided to draw out some new images which I hoped would be better. I thought that I would create just two images, rather than five or six, and the first I decided would show Oscar alone in the garden and then to fit with my dog Holly carrying Oscar out later in the film, my dog carrying Oscar in from outside. However, I felt that they didn't really work and I preferred my short film without them.
Regarding my film title.....
Initially, I couldn't find a font that fitted either my genre, style, theme, colour scheme, target audience or anything of that sort so I turned to finding one to download from the Internet and then I came across a font which I layered on top of each other in two colours to make it stand out. :) I chose the colours because the orange matched Oscar's nose; blue for Oscar's fur and the pink was a good contrasting colour to match with. Regarding the actual words in my title... I wanted to create a title that suggested the possibility of it becoming a series of short films following the life of Oscar. To go with this, (similar to Harry Potter and the .....) I chose 'Oscar & Quin' because it is short enough to fit with the length of the full title and it is enough detail to just suggest the characters and plot. Also considering that my film is a silent film, it works well to have the character's names in the title otherwise these would be lost and less of a connection would be made between the characters and audience.
Additional note, I really like the way the blue looks behind the title because it adds a drop shadow making it stand out more but there's actually a relevance behind the colour. (MISE EN SCENE IN ACTION...)
Snoooooooooopy. When preparing to edit my short film, I watched a few episodes of Snoopy to gain an idea of what music was used and how the lack of speech was approached. I then came across a clip on YouTube of Snoopy's wedding (which sadly goes wrong...) which was really helpful because I was worrying about what music to use and it showed me that I could just use a basic song (copyright free, of course) which fitted with my whole film, mixed up with a few others.
Okay so I intended to post a video yesterday of me talking about updates since filming and what changed during the production process. And A LOT changed. Firstly, I decided to take a trip to the beach to film the wedding and it was there that I chose to film more scenes than I had initially intended to. I feel that this was a great decision to make because it gave my film a great deal more depth. Although, there were actually a lot of consequences for choosing the beach which I didn't really consider or think would happen. The first was other people, being a public attraction, obviously there were tourists who I had to work hard to try and not include within my film. Secondly, sand. Never work on a sandy surface! It moves and is incredibly difficult when doing stop motion because it isn't really until afterwards that you are able to see where the imprints on the sand were left. Despite some imperfections, I am very happy with how the scenes turned out. Because I was so happy with the location of the beach, I decided to create an additional ending scene to utilise the lovely scenery and also an ending which is fun but also posing another idea. I hadn't really thought of a solid finish an so I feel as though this was a very effective choice :) Regarding the garden scenes, even more changed, for the better I hasten to add! Changing of scenes: 1. Having my mum packing old toys into a box to add a human element to the short film and also depth and history behind the characters. 2. Using a GoPro Hero camera attached to my dog's head to film her carrying Oscar outside. 3. My dog dropping Oscar on to the floor near the bin. 4. Having a stop motion sequence of Oscar and the mannequin meeting. So as you can see, I actually changed most of my film during the production process. Editing is my favourite process so I didn't really have too many problems with this. Although I did experience a few issues and delays because the stop motion images needed resizing for they were too large and I had to set the time for which they would be shown. I also had to use Colour Correction on the scenes filmed using the GoPro Hero camera because they were quite saturated and pale. These scenes were: my dog carrying out Oscar with the camera attached to her head!!! And the opening of the bin from inside. I like these two scenes because they are not only different but also when filming other parts (which I didn't end up using), it was very helpful to learn about multi-camera filming and editing:) I just need to sort out my music and titling. Yay.
Today I ventured to the beach at Wells-next-the-Sea with my mum who was going to help me with filming and moving the characters into position for both the video footage and stop motion images. The day was perfect because it wasn't overly sunny, absolutely no rain and the sky was blue. Yay! A lot happened, and surprisingly, a lot actually changed!
Suited and booted, Oscar is ready to go!
Pretty pretty location, perfecttttt.
Chosen beach hut, 190, WEDDING CEREMONY!
How cute is this couple?! (No? Okay, well, I think they're cute).
One of these images is going to be used for my poster, but I have no idea which, DILEMMAAAAA.
Helloooooo team!
ARE YOU READY FOR A PLOT TWIST?! *SHOCKED FACE*
AAAAAAAAND, READY, STEADY, CUE PLOT TWIST. DUN DUN DDDDDUUUUUUUUUNNNNNN.
Over the past week I have been thinking about how I can 'mix up' my short film to make it a bit more exciting and so I have decided to take a trip to the North Norfolk coast, beach here we come! I am thinking of filming the wedding scene, and possibly others, with the location of a beach hut. Not only do I think it makes it a lot cuter, but also a lot more exciting than just filming in my garden.
I'll be visiting a number of beaches, both pebble and sand, in order to capture the perfect footage for what I want. My aim is to get as much footage as possible which I can then sort through to choose the best scenes.
I found a particularly inspiring blog post which included images of the beach at Wells-next-the-Sea. The images are great and I would love to be able to film around beach huts and docked boats.
Film posters all have a very different appearance and reception based upon the genre and target audience of the film. Older film posters typically have quite bold primary colours and the main character's name is featured in a large type, sometimes even larger than the film title because this is what is being promoted. (DR.NO poster is an example of this). Other posters do not need a great deal of advertisement, actor/character profiling or promotion, or even much indication of plotline. (JURASSIC PARK). Some posters have a very artistic feel (PERFUME) and feature more editing than other film posters.
My favourite film posters are those made for Totoro and Harry Potter. I particularly love this poster for My Neighbour Totoro because of the colour scheme and its innovativeness. Harry Potter is my all-time-favourite film franchise and so I love the way that each poster gives a feel of the magic within and the plotline is suggested, along with the characters. I also favour the way that they clearly follow on from one another; i.e. the posters don't radically change in format, style or design and so you can witness the growth of the characters and plot. I'm currently undecided on what design I will choose for my own short film poster, I think I will take inspirations from both Totoro and The Muppets.
I recently reached the decision to create an image-based title sequence rather than just laying text titles on top of the footage or having a blank screen. The image above was a picture that I drew on to lined notepad paper and then scanned into a computer. I then used Adobe Photoshop CS4 and CS6 to use fairly translucent paint tools on top. I am really pleased with the outcome of despite it taking a fair while to complete because only one layer of colour could be used otherwise it would layer darker and this meant that I had to do lots of erasing too!
