POSTER: Sketching possible images/fonts

We wanted to keep our font plain and simple to read. We firstly chose a font that was slanted with the picture of the ace which looked like the lady was leaning against the 'L'.



After looking at our choice a few times we decided that it looked too pixelated, we tried to resize it to make it look better but in the end we decided to just change it completely to a more simple font (below).

REVIEW: Editing final product

When editing our review page we had to keep in mind several different things for example the colour scheme. We decided that the conventional colour scheme of a poker game would be green, red and black. We thought it would be best for us to stick to these conventions as it would be easier for the audience to understand. We wanted to keep the pictures at the top of the page around the title again this is conventional of reviews but we decided it was best to keep it simple for the audience to follow. We made Jack H the biggest image and wanted him to be the main image, you could argue this is conventional and unconventional, it is conventional because he is the largest image on the page, It's also unconventional because the image is not in the center of the other images. We wanted Jack H's image to be the main focus point because it can be seen in different ways because of the alcohol in his hand, he could be calming himself down or he could be celebrating, by himself.

REVIEW: Drafting layout

Our review page started off as a double page spread. It was filled with about 75% writing. We decided that as it was a short film the amount of writing we had wasn't neccassary. Also towards the end of the second page we had a section where the was alot of space, we tried to add things in such as cinema dates to cover the space but it was too obvious it was there just to cover space. We decided to change it to just a single page with shortened down writing. In our first draft we also included things like 'in association with MTV' then we realised that our film wouldn't be that significant so in our final draft we changed it to our youtube page. This way it would be easier for the audience to access and find out more.

Below is the image of our first draft.



This is the image of our final draft.

REVIEW: Choosing most appropriate images from film

On our review page we only included 3 pictures from our film. We decided carefully what 3 images we would use because we wanted the audience to be able to find out enough from these images in order to make them want to find out more.

Our first image was a picture of Jack H in his suit pouring out a glass of whiskey. We chose this image because we believe with this image alone the audience is able to percieve an image of what this character is likely to be like.With him pouring a glass of whiskey it gives the audience the idea that he is trying to relax himself before a tense game of poker.

Our second picture we used was of Jack S knocking at a door. From looking at this picture is may be unclear to some of the audience where he is arriving but this wasnt out main objective of this picture. Our main aim was the way he is acting, he seems to be looking over his shoulder and standing very close the door which makes him seem eager to get inside before someone sees him. This is how we wanted to portray jack, as a shady mysterious character.



 

Our third and final image was a picture of all 3 characters, Myself (dealer) Jack H (winner) Jack S (loser), sitting at the poker table. We decided to use this image because as our film is a poker film we wanted to include a poker related picture. This one seemed perfect because it had Jack S pulling in some chips as he just won a hand. We thought this image would help us to lure the audience in to find out more.

REVIEW: Drafting text

Drafting text turned out a very useful process for us. This was because after our original text had been made we were able to read back over it and find out that it was far too long. We had enough time to shorten down our final text for it to tightly fit on to one page rather than being spread out over 2 pages. Below is our draft text after it had been shortened down to fit onto one page.

DRAFT TEXT
Enthusiastic and captivating it is clear that feature film newbie Scott Griffiths has put All In to hit the bright lights. Exciting and ambitious the film radiates in drive and integrity as it follows the protagonist’s, Jack Shaw and Hindley on their search for financial gain through illegal means. Cleverly Griffiths has penetrated the film industry by entering into a niche genre with its only competition being films with momentary flashes of poker; such as the nauseating Casino Royale which helped to establish Daniel Craig as, ahem, an average interpretation of a so-called suave and sophisticated James Bond. However although brimming with potential and eagerness it is obvious that Scott’s lack of reputation has cost him the ability to higher the Tom Cruises, the Will Smiths and the Johnny Depps, but has instead been provided with the likes of George Remins and Craig Presley. Who? I hear you say. Exactly.

So does this poker/gangster tie-in fold under the pressure? Or does it persevere, wait for the perfect card and seize the opportunity? The initial answer is the latter but All In is not without its faults, as you’ll read later. The audience is taken on an intriguing journey of twists, turns, and sublime suspense watching the two main characters as they develop throughout. It is this that sets Griffiths story apart from others; his creative contrasting of characterisation with a juxtapose of confidence with nervousness and apprehensiveness. From the outset it seems the two characters are big money players but with high praise to unconventional director Griffiths, not everything is at it seems – particularly the stand out twist at the end. Keeping with Griffith’s early established un-conventionalism he turns what should be a slow paced and sophisticated game of poker into a fast paced and at times frantic perception on what a poker flick should be. And it works. Particularly as the game unfolds, the quick cuts integrated make for a seat clenching and mental thrill ride as the match comes to the final card flip. Also the setting of All In can only be described as perfect for the semi-legal theme that’s meant to be portrayed; by introducing working class houses as the venue for the film it is established that this would be a film of grit rather than glamour as the poker players stake their money for further gain. In contrast from a large casino to a suburban working class house it is evident that perhaps this film is aimed at those closer to the protagonists own situation, but however the classy apparel worn may appeal to those of a higher class. Coincidentally this film should appeal to all.

However, like most films, along with positives come negatives; which are mainly due to the director’s inexperience and lack of ‘materials’ i.e. acting, time and equipment. Often at times the acting seems unintentionally awkward. This is most evident when player 2 or Jack Hindley wins and clearly the director has asked the actor to portray happiness but instead receives a look of mild relief from constipation. Griffiths has clearly been dealt a bad hand in terms of actors, and the film almost suffers because of it. If it wasn’t for the clever subtleties of character design earlier mentioned then decisively the opinions of this film would have dropped considerably. A final hindrance of the film is the random changes in lighting which many critics have interpreted in several ways, ‘its his [Griffiths] inexperience’ or alternatively ‘it’s his way to again show the contrasts in characters’, either way it doesn’t affect the film greatly – unless you’re a nit-picking movie critic, (not pointing any fingers) ‘it’s his inexperience’, please?

Verdict – An extremely imaginative twist on a niche genre with little room for much character development – but this pulls it off. Thumbs up. Small little faults hinder overall quality. 4/5

REVIEW: Analysing design & language conventions of magazine reviews

When looking at design and language of other magazine reviews we realised that the conventions a film review would be that it contains, a synopsis, quotes from the text, advertisements (cinema screenings, websites) and pictures from the film. We soon decided it would be difficult for us to make a good review if we tried to challenge these conventions. We thought that there is clearly a reason that almost every review uses the same structure, because it creates a good review.

When coming up with ideas of what our film page will contain, most of the conventional content was included in our early planning without us realising that it was widely used in most other reviews.

REVIEW: Researching different film magazine audiences

Researching different film magazines was an important task when it came to us making our review page. This is because by looking at different film magazines we can identify which genre can be linked to what audiences. A way we could identify a magazines target audience is when we found magazines that used question and answer pages we were able to see what audience were reading a certain magazine.

Empire magazine's target audience is males between the ages of 18-30 as it often features action films that are certified as 18+. This makes it obvious what target audience they are reaching out to.

              

POSTER: Drafting/ Editing

Making the film poster became a challenge for us because we had a image in mind and we didn't have much of a backup idea incase our original didn't work out for some reason. It turned out that our original idea didn't work for our film poster therefore we had to spend more time thinking of new image ideas and finding time to take the pictures. While making our film poster and thinking of image ideas we had to keep in mind our colour scheme. Our colour scheme was red, green and black.

This was our first poster idea.



Here is our final product.

We feel this is a massive improvement a now directly relates to our film, from colour scheme to main image.

POSTER: Choosing most appropriate images

Our original image for our poster was going to be a picture of Jack H (poker winner) standing with a 'pokerface' while having poker chips thrown up in the air behind him. Our original idea was that the poker chips would show some sort of celebration while Jack kept on his pokerface. When it come to getting the picture for this the camera could not capture the image fast enough and the poker chips became a blur.

We finally decided to have just a simple image of someone just holding two cards infront of the camera. We wanted to use this because is was simple but as it's showing a picture of two cards it feels like it's letting the audience in on the film more because they can see cards that in poker shouldn't be seen. Below is the image used in our film poster.

POSTER: Exploring fonts

When deciding what font we would use for the title we thought we would use a simple font. In order to make it slightly more interesting we changed the 'A' in 'All in' to a picture of an ace with a woman on the card instead of the usual picture. We thought this picture card would fit in more with the poker scene.

Below is the final outcome of our title, at first we changed the picture of the ace to also be black and white but we soon decided it looked too dull and boring so we decided to keep it in colour.

POSTER: Setting up mise en scène

While making our short film we had to think about mise en scene which would make it seem realistic. We wanted certain things to reflect the characters in a certain way, e.g the way the character was played, the way they were dressed. We also had to use props, some of the props we used were;

• Playing cards
• Poker chips
• Glass of whiskey

These are all conventional of the genre of film we made.

POSTER: Pitching ideas for posters

When pitching ideas for the poster, you have to recognise the type of film that's going to be created. Colour co-ordination is key in creating the outlook and interpretation, along with other factors like realisation of the pictures. This is because if a photo-taken picture not a digital made one etc, is on the poster, it may look odd and uneffective in creating an idea or atmosphere.

Here is our poster the we originally made althought we have now changed it, as you can see its very cliche with chips everywhere and the A's turned into aces. I think turning the A's to aces was a good idea because it hightens the sense of gambling. We took this one step further in our final product by using a Las Vegas style playing card.

POSTER: Analysing conventions of film posters

Film posters are an important part of making a short film, or any film for that matter. They are used to draw in an audience and make them want to come and see the film you have made. The way in which they do this is by using suggestive pictures and taglines.

Conventionally a film poster will consist of; the largest text being the title, followed by smaller text of a tagline. Sometimes there will be small font showing the cast of the film because sometimes seeing someone in a film who you like to watch will make you want to go and see that film. It also contains details such as a website, music details and an age certificate.

A film poster we studied was 'silence of the lambs'. I thought this was a very good poster because it didnt give away to much but the moth with a skull represented death or pain therefore you can gather that it's going to be a horror. This made me want to know more therefore this film poster is very effective as it lured me in, to make me want to watch the film

FILM: Researching other short films

Short films can sometimes be more effective than feature films to get across a certain message. This is because a short film would only concentrate on one storyline which would be condensed into a film usually less than 15 minutes. A feature film however would have possibly 2 main storylines with sub-stories all going on at the same time, a feature film will not get the message across straight away but a short film usually would unless there is an unexpected twist at the end.

We looked on Youtube for our short films, Youtube is a good place to find short films because it is free to upload to and anyone can upload their attempts at short films. It is also easy and fast to find any particular short films we were looking for.

In preparation for us to make our own short film we looked at a few other short films made by professionals and also a few made by amateurs. Many of the short films we looked at had very little dialogue, this made us think that not using much dialouge in our own short film could help us build up the tension we want.

Here is a couple of short films we looked at:

Teeth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87AkewNcgwU

Strangers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpjHSiQLPmA

FILM: Shooting schedule

The majority of our shooting will take place in the Eastbrook School conference room. We had to book the room in order to use it. We had some trouble doing this sometimes because the conference room is usually busy.

The conference room was used on the following dates:
- Friday 12th November
- Monday 22nd November
- Tuesday 23rd November
- Thursday 9th December
- Tuesday 26th January

We filmed at Jack's house on:
- Wednesday 24th November
- Sunday 28th November
- Tuesday 26th January

We filmed at my house (The establishing shot) on:

- Tuesday 26th January

FILM: Organising locations actors etc

The location we choose was the conference room in our school, we wanted to do it round one of our houses to make it more accessable but our houses didn't suit what we pictured our film to look like.

Futhermore we decided to have all male actor's because poker is generally an all mens game, originally we found it hard to find actors because we could only go in the conference room on certain days.

Below is some images showing what the room we used to shoot our film looked like before we set it up ready for filming and after.

Before:




After:

FILM: Storyboard

I feel like storyboarding is important when creating a film because it helps the director to stay on the focus, eg. not forgetting parts of the movie, it may only be one shot but it could prove very effective.

Here is the storyboard we created, this was our very first draft so it hasn't got colour but as u can see it doubles up as providing stage directions, this in a way is also another script for the actors because body language/mise en scene is normally contained in a storyboard so the actors know how the director wants thier roles to be percieved

Below is our original storyboard plan.

FILM: Scripting

A script is used so that actors/actresses know what they have to say, when and how they have to say it during the film. Stage directions are used to tell the actor/actress how their lines should be delivered. Using this information they can build upon it to gain the body language and emotion of their character. Without the use of the script much more time and money would be spent.

While writing our script we included that player 1 (Jack S) would be portrayed as confident in his body language and facial expressions, however player 2 (Jack H) would be portrayed as nervous and worried which was also shown in he's body language and expressions. For example player 1 would maintain eye contact with player 2 while player 2 does anything not to keep the eye contact.

Here is some pictures of our original script, however during the film we made some creative decisions to change some of the script so this may not reflect our end product.

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FILM: Developing a pitch

Our pitch is an 'underground' poker game. We wanted to use low lighting to give it a more illegal feel. While filming on our first day we realised that we could not have the lighting as low as we first intended because the camera didn't pick up the lighting well. Our idea follows conventions of short films because it is based in one place and only has one set of characters and one storyline. Following conventions of a short film allows us to concentrate on effective camera angles and edits to create the right tension.

Below is the kind of low lighting that we would of liked to have in our short film, we soon realised that this was a hard task as we did not have the professional equipment to create a low lighting but have enough light for the camera to pick up.

FILM: Research into target audience

When researching our target audience we took into consideration the theme of our short film which is poker. This made us believe our target audience had to be of a more mature age to understand whats going on in the short film and to be able to understand why the tension is there. We decided to have the target audience as 15+.