James Gibbon's resources for print based media
10 years ago
Wednesday 26 October 2011
Who reads Reviews?
Film Reviews are their to be read by anyone who wants too see someone's critical opinion about a certain film, whether it's a drama, horror or action. There are many types of people who read reviews, most commonly those who are known as 'film-buffs', these are people that have a profound interest in films and all the aspects that go into creating them. This type of audience are usually the first to see a new film released, so therefore want an insight into what film critics think about it, before they can go and judge it themselves. These type of people are usually of a higher class status, and will maybe read a specific newspaper or magazine, which again can determine on who is reading reviews, as some magazines are specifically designed for a certain catergory, such as music magazines, or film magazines.
Does a bad review ruin the film chances?
A film review is done to provide the public with an analysis and evaluation of a particular motion picture. In general they can be divided into journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, and other popular, mass media outlets. Film reviews can also appear online, for example 'Rotten Tomatoes' and 'Metacritic' which are both popular film review websites. Filmgoers use reviews to help them determine whether to view a particular film. It has been claimed that positive reviews have been known to spark some interest in films, however negative criticism can also do the opposite and push people away from seeing a particular film. I believe that certain types of people listen to reviews, whereas others, mainly in my age group would decide to see a film depending on the advertising. I think the main type of people who really take in a review are the true film buffs, however this usually wouldn't change their attitude on seeing a film, as they like to make there own critical opinion on it. I think the majority of people go to see a film based on 'word of mouth' from their friends. This could also be seen as a review, through the case of somebody giving a film a positive or negative feedback to their peers, which again could determine whether people would view a film or not, I also believe this has more of an impact than maybe a review you read in a magazine, as a magazine is more general, and less personal, whereas if it is a review coming from your friend, it's more likely to be personal. I personally don't usually read reviews of films before i see them, however if I do read a review, it never really puts me off seeing the film, as if it's a film I really want to see, then i will see it no matter what. The only time a review effects my opinions on a film, is if the review is really good, in which case just makes me more eager to see that film. So i believe the majority of people will watch a film whether it has a bad or good review, simply because they want to see it, and judge it themselves.
Monday 10 October 2011
How are Short films consumed?
Short Films have a rather diverse market, even though they can be very versatile, they don't have the same 'must-see' factor that feature films have. Film networks such as the BBC, and short film festivals all feature theses short film, and support and develop the talent of those who produce them, and give them some recognition. Having these networks and festivals support the short film industry, it produces new talent, meaning for those who do enjoy watching a short film, they're still getting a range, even if it is relatively smaller than the bigger film markets.
Shorts are occasionally broadcasted as a filler, when the film is to long for it's time slot, again giving them recognition. However Short films are slowly but rapidly growing in popularity, as many see it as a chance to break out into the film making industry, as it's a huge amount cheaper to produce a short, with a lot less equipment needed. They are also very easy to access, with many on You tube, which is a great way to get your film noticed, with over 100 million viewers every day. However much publicity is given to short films they will never be a world wide phenomenon, which is exactly why they can push the boundaries, and experiment a lot more.
Below is a short film created by Zax Short, called 'Bad Eggs'
My Idea's so far...
I have had some thoughts about what I want to do for my final project, for creating a short film, which have been inspired by more dramatic, and serious short films that I viewed on the BBC Film Network.
Firstly I came up with an idea for a short horror. It starts with an old-ish man, with a lot of hair, pale skin, cuts on his body, and rather plump. He is wearing old styled clothing, with grey trousers, and a tight white shirt tucked into his trousers. He has an apron over his clothes, with two front pockets, with cutting utensils in them. His apron is really dirty, splattered with what looks like blood. You see him walking around in his small-ish, dimly light kitchen, with a few candles planted around the room with jars of meat on the shelves. He slaps down a big slab of meat onto the work surface, he starts hitting it with a rolling pin. Then you see a close up of him grinding the meat through a mincer. Then adding salt and chopping more meat. A radio is playing faintly in the background, and he starts singing along to the Christmas carol 'Silent Night' and looks at his cat which is perched on the window seal. He carries on with his meat cutting, and begins to sniff it, we then see more close ups of his mouth, licking his lips, then his eyes, gleaming, his forehead sweating as he wipes it with the back of his hand. Then the doorbell rings. He looks up at the door, and smirks, and shouts out merrily, 'Just a minute'. He quickly pulls his apron up over his head, and opens a drawer, where we get a glimpse of children’s shoes, a watch, a football and other belonging of children, and he throws his apron into the drawer. He wipes his face with a napkin, and heads towards the front door, pulling the kitchen door slightly closed behind him. As he opens the front door, there is a group of 3 small children, who begin to sing the Christmas carol, 'Silent Night'. From a distance we see the old man smile, and he opens his door wide, and opens out his arms in a welcoming gesture, and ushers them inside his house as he tells them he has some change on the kitchen table, as they walk in, he takes a quick look out the door, to check there's nobody with them, and slams the door shut behind him.
My second idea is more of a serious topic focusing around neglect and abuse. My initial inspiration for this idea came from the short film, 'The Sofa' written by Marcus Shepherd, however this is based more on a comedy, but is still focused around children accidently breaking things, and dreading their parents finding out.
It's about a young boy who is crying in his room, sitting against his bedroom door, covering his ears with his hands. We then see a flashback shot, of the young boy (roughly aged around 8) dropping a glass on the kitchen floor in slow motion, hence the reason why he's crying. It then goes back to the present, and we see the boy on his bedroom floor suddenly look up to the lens on the camera, as we hear someone coming from outside. The boy knows he's in big trouble for breaking the glass. A close up shot of feet walking towards the front door of the house then appears. The shots then continuously cut between the boy, clearly getting more distressed and the feet getting closer. We then see a hand shot of a person putting a key into the door, but then the person drops them. They pick the keys up again, and enter through the door. The door swings open from the inside, and we see the feet step into the house. We see another side angle of the boy sitting against the door, trying to keep it shut. Still focusing on the boy, we hear the person standing on the broken glass, and yelling violently. The camera then fades on the boy's face, as a tear strolls down his eyes.
Firstly I came up with an idea for a short horror. It starts with an old-ish man, with a lot of hair, pale skin, cuts on his body, and rather plump. He is wearing old styled clothing, with grey trousers, and a tight white shirt tucked into his trousers. He has an apron over his clothes, with two front pockets, with cutting utensils in them. His apron is really dirty, splattered with what looks like blood. You see him walking around in his small-ish, dimly light kitchen, with a few candles planted around the room with jars of meat on the shelves. He slaps down a big slab of meat onto the work surface, he starts hitting it with a rolling pin. Then you see a close up of him grinding the meat through a mincer. Then adding salt and chopping more meat. A radio is playing faintly in the background, and he starts singing along to the Christmas carol 'Silent Night' and looks at his cat which is perched on the window seal. He carries on with his meat cutting, and begins to sniff it, we then see more close ups of his mouth, licking his lips, then his eyes, gleaming, his forehead sweating as he wipes it with the back of his hand. Then the doorbell rings. He looks up at the door, and smirks, and shouts out merrily, 'Just a minute'. He quickly pulls his apron up over his head, and opens a drawer, where we get a glimpse of children’s shoes, a watch, a football and other belonging of children, and he throws his apron into the drawer. He wipes his face with a napkin, and heads towards the front door, pulling the kitchen door slightly closed behind him. As he opens the front door, there is a group of 3 small children, who begin to sing the Christmas carol, 'Silent Night'. From a distance we see the old man smile, and he opens his door wide, and opens out his arms in a welcoming gesture, and ushers them inside his house as he tells them he has some change on the kitchen table, as they walk in, he takes a quick look out the door, to check there's nobody with them, and slams the door shut behind him.
My second idea is more of a serious topic focusing around neglect and abuse. My initial inspiration for this idea came from the short film, 'The Sofa' written by Marcus Shepherd, however this is based more on a comedy, but is still focused around children accidently breaking things, and dreading their parents finding out.
It's about a young boy who is crying in his room, sitting against his bedroom door, covering his ears with his hands. We then see a flashback shot, of the young boy (roughly aged around 8) dropping a glass on the kitchen floor in slow motion, hence the reason why he's crying. It then goes back to the present, and we see the boy on his bedroom floor suddenly look up to the lens on the camera, as we hear someone coming from outside. The boy knows he's in big trouble for breaking the glass. A close up shot of feet walking towards the front door of the house then appears. The shots then continuously cut between the boy, clearly getting more distressed and the feet getting closer. We then see a hand shot of a person putting a key into the door, but then the person drops them. They pick the keys up again, and enter through the door. The door swings open from the inside, and we see the feet step into the house. We see another side angle of the boy sitting against the door, trying to keep it shut. Still focusing on the boy, we hear the person standing on the broken glass, and yelling violently. The camera then fades on the boy's face, as a tear strolls down his eyes.
This idea is of a more serious topic, which if I do decide to carry out in creating, would have to be done carefully and properly to ensure that it isn't offensive towards anybody, and that it's to make more people aware of child neglect and abuse.
Monday 3 October 2011
Exercise Tasks
Documentary:
Our first task was to be split into groups, and we were given a certain style in which we needed to create a short film with, which for us was 'documentary' which I was happy with, as I have always wanted to look into the style of documentary, as it's something I'm quite keen and interested in. In our groups we then had a limited amount of time to begin filming in this style, and we were not allowed to edit either. So we decided to do a documentary about life at a High School, from both the teachers and students point of views. This worked well, as we had quite a lot of comedy involved within the film. This task has definitely made me consider doing my short film in this style, as I really enjoyed creating it.
The Smiths:
We were given a task to choose a song title from the band, 'The Smiths', which we had to then create a short film based around that title. Our title was ' There is a light that never goes out' which we choose as we thought we could come up with quite a number of ideas based around it. We decided to go down the horror route, in which we had a setting of an underground dungeon, where someone was being held against their will their. The story was about a student at a school was missing from her class, however her best friend saw her earlier on that day, as she goes to investigate where she could be, another male student 'tries' to help her, however his intentions of helping her weren't necessarily true. As he takes her down some stairs, which he states he was sure he saw the missing girl go down, he pushes her into the underground dungeon, where the other girl is laying. As he slams the door shut behind him, and everyone goes home, the light in the dungeon never goes out. This emphasises that everybody else will carry on with their normal day, unaware of these girls being locked away.
Telephone:
In class we were grouped up and give an object, which in our case was a telephone. We were then told we had to create a short film, based around and including the object given (telephone) without using any editing programme after, meaning everything had to be in order. After brainstorming a few ideas, we decided to base our short film around mysterious phone calls. The story involved a young female initially at her work place, receiving strange call on her phone, which she believe could just be prank calls or somebody messing around. However when she leaves her work place, she again gets a call on her mobile phone, when she begins to talk to this caller. However she is unaware that the mysterious caller is watching her every move and begins to scare the female character. She hangs up on the phone call, and starts to walk home, where suddenly someone come's up behind her and pulls her to the ground. The scene ends with the female lying dead on the ground, with the telephone cord wrapped around her neck.
Our first task was to be split into groups, and we were given a certain style in which we needed to create a short film with, which for us was 'documentary' which I was happy with, as I have always wanted to look into the style of documentary, as it's something I'm quite keen and interested in. In our groups we then had a limited amount of time to begin filming in this style, and we were not allowed to edit either. So we decided to do a documentary about life at a High School, from both the teachers and students point of views. This worked well, as we had quite a lot of comedy involved within the film. This task has definitely made me consider doing my short film in this style, as I really enjoyed creating it.
The Smiths:
We were given a task to choose a song title from the band, 'The Smiths', which we had to then create a short film based around that title. Our title was ' There is a light that never goes out' which we choose as we thought we could come up with quite a number of ideas based around it. We decided to go down the horror route, in which we had a setting of an underground dungeon, where someone was being held against their will their. The story was about a student at a school was missing from her class, however her best friend saw her earlier on that day, as she goes to investigate where she could be, another male student 'tries' to help her, however his intentions of helping her weren't necessarily true. As he takes her down some stairs, which he states he was sure he saw the missing girl go down, he pushes her into the underground dungeon, where the other girl is laying. As he slams the door shut behind him, and everyone goes home, the light in the dungeon never goes out. This emphasises that everybody else will carry on with their normal day, unaware of these girls being locked away.
Telephone:
In class we were grouped up and give an object, which in our case was a telephone. We were then told we had to create a short film, based around and including the object given (telephone) without using any editing programme after, meaning everything had to be in order. After brainstorming a few ideas, we decided to base our short film around mysterious phone calls. The story involved a young female initially at her work place, receiving strange call on her phone, which she believe could just be prank calls or somebody messing around. However when she leaves her work place, she again gets a call on her mobile phone, when she begins to talk to this caller. However she is unaware that the mysterious caller is watching her every move and begins to scare the female character. She hangs up on the phone call, and starts to walk home, where suddenly someone come's up behind her and pulls her to the ground. The scene ends with the female lying dead on the ground, with the telephone cord wrapped around her neck.
Short Films that have inspired me...
About Girl: (First film from UK version of Cinema16 DVD.)
When I first watched this short film it left a huge impact on me, and for shock value it definitely succeeded! It's a 9 minute short film directed by Brian Percival, and in 2001 won a Bafta Award for Best Short Film, along with many others. The film opens with a silhouette, against a sky-line of clouds on a field of a girl singing and dancing to the Britney Spears song, 'Stronger'. It then abruptly cuts to a close-up of the girl talking with a strong Manchester accent to the camera. She is walking along a canal with a backdrop of Manchester's Industrial landscape, talking non-stop about stardom, and mixing statements with random quotes from her parents, and talking about her life. We learn about her relationship with her dad, frustration with her mum and her desires to be a famous singer, in the band that she created with her friends, which is pretty typical for a 13 year old girl to talk about.
Her monologue is interrupted quite often with a range of shots of her with her family and dad, on a bench singing, watching her dad play football and on the back of the bus singing Britney songs with her friends. As the girl remains walking along the canal, the girl's stories become more underlain by an uncomfortable feeling that her experiences don't match her flippant retelling of her everyday life, and we get gradual hints that about her family troubles, poverty and domestic violence. It eventually leads to her light hearted story telling, turning into a shocking scene that reveals her throwing a plastic bag into the canal, stating that she has become "good at hiding things." The shocking reality of this film really hits the audience hard at how these experiences are so brutal and realistic. The Director has managed to create a Short Film which has moved thousands of people, even 10 years after releasing it. You can tell there's been a lot of detail put in, with coming up with the best back-drops, choosing the costumes, her strong accent and the connection with the lyrics she's singing from the Britney Spears song, 'Stronger' and even though we get an understanding of her broken home and sad life, you could never prepare yourself for the ending.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/films/p00fwg9h (Click to play 'Playground')
Playground: This is a thriller which is 9 minutes long, based on a man who picks up a hitchhiker, wh happens to be a young girl. As the awkrawdness builds in the car we find out more about the man's past and what his intenetion really are. Directed by Mark Kuczewski, he manages to create a chilling story, which leaves you on the edge of your seat, guessing what's going to happen, and just when you think it's all over, a huge twist occurs, giving it a shock factor and a sense of comedy. The editing of the short film was also done really well, as they managed to create the right setting and mood which fitted the genre. The lighting and the angles, especially when it cuts back to the main character talking about his past childhood, really give a sense of horror and lack of ease, as the shadow casts over his body, and the angle of his face makes him look very dominant. I truly believe that Mark Kuczewski has managed to create a sucesfull and chilling horror, which grabs your attetion and draws you into the film.
When I first watched this short film it left a huge impact on me, and for shock value it definitely succeeded! It's a 9 minute short film directed by Brian Percival, and in 2001 won a Bafta Award for Best Short Film, along with many others. The film opens with a silhouette, against a sky-line of clouds on a field of a girl singing and dancing to the Britney Spears song, 'Stronger'. It then abruptly cuts to a close-up of the girl talking with a strong Manchester accent to the camera. She is walking along a canal with a backdrop of Manchester's Industrial landscape, talking non-stop about stardom, and mixing statements with random quotes from her parents, and talking about her life. We learn about her relationship with her dad, frustration with her mum and her desires to be a famous singer, in the band that she created with her friends, which is pretty typical for a 13 year old girl to talk about.
Her monologue is interrupted quite often with a range of shots of her with her family and dad, on a bench singing, watching her dad play football and on the back of the bus singing Britney songs with her friends. As the girl remains walking along the canal, the girl's stories become more underlain by an uncomfortable feeling that her experiences don't match her flippant retelling of her everyday life, and we get gradual hints that about her family troubles, poverty and domestic violence. It eventually leads to her light hearted story telling, turning into a shocking scene that reveals her throwing a plastic bag into the canal, stating that she has become "good at hiding things." The shocking reality of this film really hits the audience hard at how these experiences are so brutal and realistic. The Director has managed to create a Short Film which has moved thousands of people, even 10 years after releasing it. You can tell there's been a lot of detail put in, with coming up with the best back-drops, choosing the costumes, her strong accent and the connection with the lyrics she's singing from the Britney Spears song, 'Stronger' and even though we get an understanding of her broken home and sad life, you could never prepare yourself for the ending.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/films/p00fwg9h (Click to play 'Playground')
Playground: This is a thriller which is 9 minutes long, based on a man who picks up a hitchhiker, wh happens to be a young girl. As the awkrawdness builds in the car we find out more about the man's past and what his intenetion really are. Directed by Mark Kuczewski, he manages to create a chilling story, which leaves you on the edge of your seat, guessing what's going to happen, and just when you think it's all over, a huge twist occurs, giving it a shock factor and a sense of comedy. The editing of the short film was also done really well, as they managed to create the right setting and mood which fitted the genre. The lighting and the angles, especially when it cuts back to the main character talking about his past childhood, really give a sense of horror and lack of ease, as the shadow casts over his body, and the angle of his face makes him look very dominant. I truly believe that Mark Kuczewski has managed to create a sucesfull and chilling horror, which grabs your attetion and draws you into the film.
The Black Hole: (Directed by Philip Sansom and Olly Williams)
Black Hole is also a very successful short film which won First Prize Winner in the Virgin Media Short Film competition in 2008. It's about a sleep deprived office worker and then greed gets the better of him. This short film immediately draws your attention in as we see a close up of the characters face looking very gaunt, and sleepy. The camera shots are very fast paced and the lighting is rather dim and bland, which is typical for an office. When we get the first shot of the 'Black Hole' it's very bold and takes up the whole screen, making it obvious to us that it will be a main focus. The angles of the film change rapidly, from above to down below in the bin, again making us focus on the worker. The film is kept very sharp and quick, making it engaging and not become boring. The humorous ending is a really good finish for the short film, as it's unexpected and also displays a message of greed. I think the fast-paced shots and range of angles used makes this short film very worth-while watching, and with the great storyline, makes it very unique and one to remember.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
