Evaluation

Completed Short Film
I feel that the short film that we created had many successful parts but also had many flaws. The success I believe outweighed the flaws but if there were time to add in a few more shots and edit the script a little I think this would have helped.

Aesthetically the film had a few flaws. The brightness looked good for the film as a whole when being watched on the editing screens, however when transferred to a different medium and watched on a projector, certain scenes were way to dark. This could have been fixed in a number of ways if we had have anticipated this flaw, we could have re-shot the scenes or we could have experimented with brightness and contrast and curves to get a colour and light that would work for us.

The film was created to a professional standard and was technically sound. The edits and effects used were all contributing to enhancing the films success. In the "fear" scenes this is particularly evident (see below). The sound levels and content were created to professional standards and audience and purpose were always kept in mind whilst working with these parts of the film.

During research and pre-production of short film, we noted that there were no particular codes and conventions of a short film. The only distinction from normal film is the length. Short films adopt genre and the codes and conventions of that particular genre, just as a feature length film does. Our film adhered to the many codes and conventions of the drama genre. The film tries to build up tension by making the main character attractive to the audience. This gives a sort of interaction with the audience which is what we were looking for during pre-production stages. We tried to also build up the tension with shots such as the flashbacks when Sean is looking in the mirror. I believe that the technique that we used to show the “fear” scenes worked really well in showing a distinction between reality and the imagination. By using flickering images the audience are forced to concentrate on the scenes which helped us to further get across our message. Within the genre of Drama, many films use techniques such as the above to make sure that the audience has some kind of emotion for the characters as without a connection between the two, the Drama will not work.

I feel that I played a major role in the group. During pre-production stages I helped a lot with the production of the shot list, props list, production schedule, writing up the locations and collating the data our group produced. I set up a Google Document which allowed us all to work on the same document on the same time, thus we could keep track of a time scale and of what we still needed to do.

Influences
We took many influences for the production of our film. Going through the various stages in our production timeline brought on new and different inlfuences.

The first influence was during inspiration week, we spent most of the time not really taking the week very seriously but I believe that it did actually really help us. We tried, during the week, to make up the most bizzare stories that we could which meant us really thinking outside of the box. This in turn put us in a certain state of mind whilst thinking of the ideas for our actual film. We tried to think of ideas that were weird and different, and were much more than an easy watch. We wanted a complex storyline and I think that during inspiration week we learnt how to go about developing one such storyline.

Another influence was actually a film we had created before. The music video for ASBO had a certain visual style that whilst creating the film we grew to love. The fear scenes are heavily influenced by this music video. I think that this was almost a natural influence more than a direct one. I believe that as a filmmaker you develop your own style and quirks, I think that as a group we have developed our own visual style.
The visual style of the film ‘Bouncer’ really influenced what I wanted to show in ‘Confined’. The use of light and dark to show a difference in characters and scenes is also used in the short film ‘Bouncer’. Our short film also concentrates on flicking between time, which I was greatly influenced by the use of time in ‘Bouncer’. The protagonist is telling his tale, much like how Sean in our film is showing us his tale.

Audience
A short film doesn’t have to relate to the audience in the same way as a feature length film does. For instance because of the niche audience that short films are generally aimed at, they can be more experimental and avante-garde than standard feature lengths. Most short film viewers are well educated in the world of film and spend a lot of time deconstructing the narratives and composition. For this reason a short film can be much more complex than a feature length. It is a specialist type of film in the most part.

Confined interacts with the audience on many different levels. On way that the short film targets it’s audience is through the protagonist’s age. Sean is a young man who is very troubled, this is easy to relate to for most teenagers as during a stage in their lives when hormones are raging there are numerous strange emotions running through their minds. The film confronts one of the growing problems today in the streets of London. Mugging is a big part of being a teenager in London today, not saying that everone does is, but certainly that it affects everyone. The film shows how a young teenager might deal with the mugging and confronts some of the slightly more major effects such as trauma.
We used music in the film to draw the attention to the character. The music builds up as the audience is taken through Sean’s various imagination sequences but then brought back to a slow when the film finishes. The audience is helped along the journey by the layering of the music and this also helps to carry the film through any lesser interesting parts.

The cutting between the current and imagination sequences was purposely designed to attract the audience and wake them up to the scene that is about to be shown. Sound is also used here to pull in the audience. The ‘fear’ sequences are designed to be edgy and require a lot of concentration. The scenes are also easily related to as they show obvious fears or phobias that many people will be able to relate to.

We carried out a quick survey of twenty 16-17 year olds and found some interesting facts about what a cross-section of our target audience might think of our film. The general response was that the film worked in many ways but the main storyline required a bit more attention to grasp it properly. This was something we had come to expect whilst editing the film.
Another thing that came out of the survey was that most of our audience was able to relate to Sean in some way. We had various comments about the different ways in which they related to them which included feeling sorry for him, and feeling similar emotions to him. This was the response we really hoped for as it was this complexity that we really strived to achieve with our short. The film was made to induce many different emotions and relate with each member of the audience individually rather than being a simple character.

Distribution
The film has already been uploaded to the popular video streaming websites YouTube and Vimeo. This will generate some knowledge of the films content but without any advertisement it will likely be lost in the mountains of videos uploaded every day to these sites. The popular networking sites Facebook and MySpace are a good place to get some free advertisement, a sort of online word of mouth. It is the perfect way to get the film noticed before submission to a festival. Rather than uploading the actual video to social networking sites, I believe that it would be a better idea to link to either the YouTube or Vimeo pages. Probably the YouTube page as it is a more popular site and more people have accounts to comment post their opinions on the video. The reason for not actually uploading the video to say Facebook is that if the video is only hosted on one or two sites it will be much easier to keep note of how many people are watching and if everyone is sent to one place to watch it, it will go up in the ranks of the particular site.

The film is also to be sent to the BBC Film Network, this is a great website where filmmakers can upload their short films and try to gain some recognition. There are obviously specifications that we will have to make sure that the film adheres to but after submission the film will go through testing in the BBC and hopefully make the cut.
We are to send the film to the Encounters film festival. This is another great place to gain some recognition and is a highly regarded film festival to studios and filmmakers alike. Due to lack of current funds we cannot submit the film straight away but can do so very soon. Again we might have to spend some time making sure that the film adheres to the regulations of the festival.