Research
The research into the film was the first obstacle I had to overcome. At first it seemed like an easy task, creating a powerpoint showing research into short films and how effective they are at raising money and getting distributed etc. For the first draft I managed to complete the powerpoint easily and quickly, recieving a good mark for it and I had to make no changes. But the schools folder got deleted somehow, and I lost my first copy. Panic immediately set in and I tried to find another copy, even though I already knew deep down I had put my only copy into the now deleted folder. As I searched through both my computers at home I found a nearly finished version of the powerpoint and new that I could redo it and to the same level of proffesionalism. I still had a moments panic, as I realised that the deadline was the next day, and I was running out of time! Luckily I had a double media lesson that day and plenty of frees, so I was able to proper complete it. Below is a screen shot and a downloadable copy.
Short Film
For the film itself I had already seen a lot of films, cop films, spoof films, comedy, drama the whole lot. I began using youtube to watch more short films so that I could get a good feel of what a short film should be like. We had lots of technology at our disposal for use in our short film. This included cameras (both filming and photography), tripods, editing suits (including Mac Editing Software) etc. The cameras were pretty good, yet they were only around £150, so they wern’t up the higher end of the market. They used mini DV tapes, which usually had a lot of memory on them, but they needed to be charged after each use, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to get a full days worth of recording. They recorded well, picking up most movements no matter how fast and direct they were. They did have a major fault which was that they didn’t really pick up sound, and when they did it was quite distorted and not easy to hear and understand, so we had to rerecord the sound separetly. Apart from that the cameras worked really well, and we were pleased with the results.
For the audience evealuation we used mini ‘flip’ cameras, which just recorded and then plugged directly into the computer, so we could upload the footage easily. However, it does not take a good camera to make a good movie, so we didn’t worry about the camera, as we know our movie was pretty good anyhow. The editing software came in really handy. We used Mac MovieMaker, and it performed its functions really well. We were able to the cut and clip and add in effects (albeit only small ones) and add titles and music. The titles were fairly simple but we didn’t worry as we only needed them for the credits and they came out looking pretty good anyhow.
I began by looking up posters for films sharing the same or similar genres, and the kind of posters they used. Some were fitting the genre of their films perfectly, but others seemed more mysterious. One of the posters for the spoof cop film ‘Hot Fuzz’ didn’t indicate any comedy in the film, just action. The only give away was the tag line. 
For the film posters I decided to use my strangths, and as a result I wanted to use photoshop. Having been a photography student for over a year and having lots of experience with photoshop, I thought that would be the best way to go about it. After I had sketched out my inital ideas I took some photos of the cast in multiple different poses. I uploaded these to photoshop and and began working on them. Photoshop is an excellent and helpful tool as it allows you to do virtually anything to a photo, however it is also incrediably complicated. The trouble with photoshop is that you have to play around and experiment with it. This was not a good time as I had a deadline coming up and results needed to be seen.
I started by making the teaser poster, with Bilal’s smiling face and nose-bleed. The blood coming out of his nose was from a random picture I found on google, then I cut the blood out of it and copied it onto the original photo. I then used a blending option so that the blood seemed like it was coming straight out of his nose. I then used an overall effect on everything so that it looked like the blood was coming straight out of his nose.
The feature poster was a bit more of a challenge. I already had Bilal and Charles posing with their hands facing each other, each using a different weapon pose. Charles was holding lipstick and Bilal pointing his fingers like they were a gun. I got a picture of some smoke from google and cut it out, then added it behind Bilal’s fingers, so that it looked like they were smoking. I then got two empty bullet cases and placed underneath his hand, so it looked like they were falling from his hand, just like a real gun. If I had no photoshop skills these posters would’ve been close to impossible, and wouldv’e taken a much longer time.
Film Review
The film review was the easiest of all ancillary texts. The lay-out for a LWL review was fairly simple to follow as I had studied it for a while. The text was also fairly easy to wrie, as I have an interest in film reviews and have written a few in my own time. I used microsoft word to create the entire document, and then I copied an advert from the LWL website and pasted that to the bottom and voila! My review was complete.
Blog
This blog itself is a new branch off into a more advanced media form. Uusally using log books or note books or just a planning folder, the blog brings an air of prefessionalism into the coursework. It was also an easy way to keep track of the work I was producing, especially as I could use it with my phone, so that it was with me whenever I needed it.
