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

Stanley Pickle (2010):

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

updated film poster - complete

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. 

finished dvd cover

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.

dvd cover DATED24THFEBRUARY

A few weeks ago, I decided to send off my ancillary tasks and DVD cover to a professional printing firm in order to gain multiple hard-copies as this would be the case for real media texts. The three pieces arrived quickly and I was really happy with the quality, aside from my film poster being slightly under exposed. I was incredibly impressed with the quality of my review and DVD cover J yay.

When designing my DVD cover, I found that the most difficult part was finding images that I hadn’t already used for my ancillary tasks. This was difficult because being a short film, there weren’t many production photos or storylines that I could exploit.

I researched into a lot of DVD covers to find what elements were the most successful, examples that I looked at were the Toy Story trilogy, a number of Tim Burton films and other age appropriate films of similar genres.

I decided to include a trio of images and borders that I also went on to use in my film review, because the colours form a good colour scheme for my film. J

Certain factors that I spent a long time on were the duplication of sand, the font of the text on the back and text itself. I deliberated for a long time about the font because I wasn't particularly happy with it yet I discovered that the font used is commonly used on the back of DVD covers; this was also the case with my film review, however, upon receiving my hard-copies, I love the way that they look! 

first draft of film review

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.

RELEASED February 28

DIRECTOR Nicole O’Malley

RUNNING TIME 4 mins.

designing a film magazine insert

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' :).

updated poster

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. 

current review design

new flashback

 





 

update

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. 

Completed poster design...

Initial title idea

Final poster

Poster design

CHOSEN FILM POSTER IMAGE...



Regarding my film poster design, I am choosing not to use an overly-edited or actor-driven style. Firstly, I couldn't really make it very actor-driven because of the lack of cast within my short film, being that there is actually only one human role. And I feel that using an edited image would detract from the style, genre and theme of my short film which relies on the characters to drive the plot and it is fairly simplistic, following the concept that I am not using an dialogue, only non-diagetic music and sound.
An element that encouraged and pushed me in the direction of a 'silent' film was the inspiration of Snoopy, a fictional character from the comic strip Peanuts, created by Charles M. Schulz. For the first two years of his existence, Snoopy was a silent character until on the 27th May 1952, for the first time, he verbalised his thoughts to the reader in a thought balloon. To begin with, he was a normal dog, only thinking in simple one-word phrases, e.g. "FOOD!", but as the comic strip continued, he became increasinly more articulate. The comic strips and television specials formed a considerable chunk of my childhood and it was this that influenced my decision to remain a 'silent' film. I also didn't want to detract from the themes and meanings of my films by layering on top of the footage, an unrealistic and ill-fitting dialogue.
The hardest decision I've actually had to make, regarding my film poster, is deciding on which fonts I will use for my film poster for both the title and credits. Adobe didn't really have any fonts which I would consider to use and so I have been researching into which fonts fit my film best and which are the easiest for the eye to read. Colours are also very important, I've concluded that the title either has to stand out from the rest of the poster, or to fit with a common colour scheme from my short film.

it's officially over!

FILMING AND EDITING IS DONE.
So, filming took place over a total of two days (Wednesday 2nd January and Saturday 5th January) and editing took 6 hours on Saturday, the whole of yesterday, and the whole of today. The reason that it took so long was because of the stop motion images which not only needed resizing and adjusting the duration, but for a number of them I had to clone stamp using Photoshop to remove the fishing line that was used to raise the mannequin and Oscar. 

messing around with designs

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY INSPIRED

CARTOON INSPIRED

TOTORO INSPIRED

Ancillary Tasks - Posters

So I've recently been having a play around with different poster ideas, mainly because I'm not actually too sure on what kind of feel I want my poster to convey to an audience. 
When I first started researching posters (see http://juxtaposedproductionsg324.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/film-posters.html), I realised how much I actually prefer teaser posters to the official film posters themselves; I think this is due to the lack of creditations on them and either the mystery of what a film could be about, or if it is a well-known film, then the excitement of the actors/actresses/plotline. 
My favourite posters to study and analyse have been for The Dark Knight, Totoro and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. In particular, my favourite posters have been quite 'dark' and mysterious. For this reason, when I think of designing my own poster, my instinct is to make one inspired by this, however......Sadly, my film doesn't reaaaaally have too much of a dark element because the film takes place AFTER a darker element occurs (Oscar living alone). So, I'm actually quite stuck on poster ideas....Another problem I keep encountering is the choice of font. I'm quite a perfectionist and so even if I had an amazing poster design, if the font wasn't to the same standard, I wouldn't be happy. So it's all quite a dilemma! I can't be dealing with this kind of stress prior to the deadline. HELP.

Title Sequence Image 3

Title Sequence Image 2

2nd image....this was surprisingly harder to complete than the first because I didn't think to do all of the images at the same time and so I lost the colours. This meant that I had to find as similar match as possible, using the eyedropper tool worked enough however, because I had used varying opacities, the colours weren't true matches. But, they work nonetheless. Particularly for this one in which the shed can be a darker colour because of the rain :)

Title Sequence Image 1

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!