Short Film CR

1.  How do  your products represent social groups or issues?

With making a film, comes many elements that go unthought about. I do not believe when we film we intend to think through all the social groups we will be addressing when it comes to pre-filming. But the fact that social groups and issues are addressed based on the stereotypes of the chosen genre. The social groups and issues will follow. One way our products developed arising social groups, is by using the gender of a female as the antagonist in the film. In thrillers it is very common to see the roles of the victims to be commonly portrayed by women; they can be seen easily as emotional and unstable. Men are typically the protagonist and are portrayed in thriller movies as those who do the victimizing. Another common element is social class in which our product does seemingly address. Our character Tatyanna did take a different career path from her sister Bryanna which led Bryanna to lead an envious spite towards her own sister. This social group addresses the fact that the rich are often the ones to be punished, usually a clue they are stuck up or not grateful. With these discussed social groups comes identifying the issues that come along with it. Our products represent all of our outlined social groups very well, and we even challenge a fear convention in which I will discuss in the upcoming question. 

2. How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of branding? 

This is actually a very tough question, but, in our short film with the relation of other production work of course. We really wanted to stick to the theme of sisterhood and betrayal.  The protagonist is someone who Is jealous of her own blood sister, and ends up turning on her simply because of the difference in lifestyles. We really wanted the protagonist as female as well because it goes against your typical inferiority of masculinity. We kept everything simple with our postcard and even website to portray these details. Another sense of branding comes from the name of the film “My Sister's Keeper,” it really drives our theme of sisterhood and actually bounces off the entire idea of how such a close courtship can lead to betrayal and despair in the end. 

 

3. How do your products engage with the audience?

Engagement of the audience is by far one of the most important principles, I believe when it comes to creating a film. If it isn’t appealing to the audience, your views may drop along with your ratings of the film. A 5 minute film is by far the easiest way to keep an audience engaged because you don’t have to figure out a way to do so for hours with a regular length film. We actually used a modern take on it by including a quick flashback with TikTok videos created by the sisters, as a memorabilia to their fondness of each other growing up. Allowing viewers young, and even old, to even enjoy one of the most famous apps out right now. I think our product is also very engaging because of the story it has to tell, and how even the closest of sisters may have to watch their own backs. 

4. How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge convections?

When we originally looked into different genres to create a project out of, we knew thriller was going to be one for the books. It was the easiest and everything seemingly turned into thriller/ action when we sat down and jotted ideas; almost all the storylines we were going for pointed to thriller. Being that my partner and I are both sort of hip to the background of thriller we didn’t do much research but while we did look a few things up we found common elements that simply must be incorporated into our genre. Our product uses all the basic elements; suspense, female antagonist, cliffhangers. But the one way we do challenge the conventions is by using a female protagonist. In thrillers it is always likely the protagonist (the one trying to kill, steal, or harm the antagonist) is male. We thought by going against this will really thicken the plot and not be so stereotypical when it came to what was expected when watching this film. Also the protagonist and antagonist weren’t complete strangers, in fact they happened to be close sisters, when one grew spite of the other as the years went on and they took different career paths. One sister (Tatyanna) had a better life; nice job, car, house, etc. while Bryanna struggled to make her way. Lastly we included the plot twist in the end that revealed it was Tatyanna’s own sister who betrayed her by kidnapping her. 

Short Film Package

 My Short Film Package 

                                                        My Sister's Keeper

https://youtu.be/dVOGE4_mGnQ

https://laurahoward225.wixsite.com/mysisterskeeper

 

The Next Move

 SInce we have totally new actors 

Huge Problem

 This has to be the hardest film I have ever done. We thought that we were done filming and got all those shots we needed. The day after coming back from winter break our media teacher reminded us that we needed to have different angles and movements in the film. We had a big oh normal moment in realized all the shots we're in the same angle and move me. The biggest problem though was that our actors moved away. We plan to film ahead of time because one of our friends was moving away to college. Therefore, any retakes that needed to be done had to be done before she moved away. Now you were left scrambling trying to find new actors in re film the whole movie. Our solution was to use my partners boyfriend and sisters in order to refill. The only thing was some of them live in Georgia and some of them live in Florida. So, we had to walk through step by step on how to hold the camera in order to get the different angles in which movements to get them. Trying to film over the phone is not as easy as you think it would be you don't have as much creative direction because you're not physically there in order to get the perfect picture. Filming in Florida however ran previous smoothly because our partner was there with the sister and was able to be that director in that situation. We now have to rely on people outside the state to help us get our project finished in time for our release date. As stressful as this process has been, I have to say I now completely understand what people in the film industry go through. I'm not just talking about the actors and directors but also the people behind the scenes like marketing and social media. We should recognize all the other people other than just the actors in directors because without them the films would not be possible. I am grateful that I had a partner in all of this because if I was on my own already gave up a long time ago. Now we just have to get through these last couple of days and we should be able to release our film on time. One thing that I had did hope for was that we would be able to have a screening well other people immediate classrooms in order to showcase our room.

Editing

 Today I edited the rest of the film that we film over the past weekend. This time it was much easier than previously. I focused my time today on picking which takes to use. When I first tried to open the videos on my laptop it was not opening. I spent at least 10 minutes trying to open the videos before I went to my teacher. I admit I was starting to worried because I thought we were going to have a re-film everything we did on Friday. Most of what we filmed on Friday was a big chuck of our movie so it was worrisome. This part for me is the most time consuming because I have to watch four or five takes of the same scene. I was able to get some parts of the beginning scene cut. Most of what I have edited now is cut and ready for transitions and special effects. 

       After patiently waiting on pinnacle studios to load it popped up. So I took the flash drive and put it in the computer. This was where all our footage was. I got on the computer and deleted the sample footage. One of my teammates clicked the import button and we saw another tab pop up. We clicked the folder with our flash drive name on it. I then imported the stuff from the flash drive onto pinnacle studios. It took a great deal of time for the files to finish copying.  When the files finished copying the video was ready to be edited. Now it was time to decide what footage we wanted to keep.

      I dragged the scenes slowly to the editing strip. Then we trimmed a few seconds off each scene. Suddenly I hear that class is almost over. My brain stopped for a second. We had just started editing and class was almost over. So my group mates decided to edit on Imovie. We had to edit when we got home that night. So When I got home that night I called my group mates. We talked as one of our group mates edited the scenes on her phone. It seemed easier this way, rather then using pinnacle studios. After we finished editing, my group mate sent the video to all of us, so we could look over it.

Music Selection

 Since this our second time around making a film the music choice was fairly easy decision. We first toyed around with the idea of emailing some people in order to get permission to use some music to. We figured that the would be too much trouble as people are really take time to answer back emails. We finally came to the decision to use Walking on Sunshine. Since most our film is going to be natural sounds we wanted to stray away from using too much music otherwise the audience would not be able to focus on the action that is going on in the movie. Like I said earlier the hardest part about trying to get any music was asking for permission from people who own the rights to the song. 

Marketing Plan

 Before the platform release, advertising will only be located in the cities of the theaters showing the film. Transitioning to a wide release will call for an increase of the advertising. The out-of-home advertising includes billboards, bus advertising, and on-building ads. Print ads will be in various magazines and newpapers. On-building ads will be on large buildings on traf- fic-heavy streets or large highways in major cities. During the process of expanding to a wide release film the target audiences and the genral public need to become more aware of Many Faces. The cast members will all participate in a satellite media tour allowing cities all over the country to interview them. Pitches will be made to magazines and newspapers to persuade them to write about the upcoming film. Screening programs will be held at local college campuses with film schools including Chapman University, University of Southern California and University of California Los Angeles. As the majority of the crew on the film are women, there will also be screenings at women’s clubs around the Los Angeles area. These clubs include Women’s Twentieth Century Club and Woman’s Club of Hollywood. A premeire of the film will happen one week before it’s platform debut in Los Angeles. By inviting press to the premiere, there will be more coverage of the film. Publicity Strategy