Poster-Further talks and new idea.

We have had further talks about our poster idea and decided after seeing the posters for Trainspotting that we should do multiple posters with the same main theme that we thought could be a storyboard in which Simon the main character  could make different poses with the gloves. This could allow us to use our promotion posters as a collectors item and as long as they all have the same colour scheme and themes like the Trainspotting posters people should be able to recognise it as a poster for our film straight away.

 

Video Blog

As a group we have recorded a video blog talking about our ideas and thought processes that we have been through and what we hope to achieve. Our video blog was based a bit on that of an "An Idiot Abroad" as there are three of us infront of a still camera and we kept with our theme of the mockumentary as although the things we are saying are serious. The informality of our blog and our laid back approach matches that of the mockumentary and this I feel is important as it shows we are comfotable as a group and we know our ideas that we have.

Mood Board.

This is the mood board

 

Sam and I were the two out of our group who put the moodboard together. We skimmed through various empire magazines as well as others and discussed themes and pictures in them that linked to the narrative of our film. Mood boards work off peoples own connotaions and different people interperate different images to represent different things. Alot of our images and words represent the anger and upset of our characters lack of acceptance by society by some people. Things such as "slate" and "keep cool" we imagined our character to be saying and thinking as people judge him 0n his phobia and the way in which he also almost isolated himself from society. Along with the words there are the visuals of the fists to connote his anger and frustration as well. The fists are also obviously hands and fit with the theme of our film which revolves around his phobia. My favourite image on the board is the

Ancillary Tasks.

For our ancillary tasks for our short film we as a group have chosen to create both a teaser poster for the mockumentary and a radio advert. The idea we had for a radio advert however was to advertise the mockumentary in the form of an interview between a radio presenter and either someone playing the director of the mockumentary or the presenter myself. This could include things such as sound extracts from the short film of parts of interviews to advertise and encourage people to watch the mockumentary. This could also be an opportunity to spoof a radio presenter for example and research and portray over excited dj presenters to make the radio interview amusing to fit in with our mockumentary the idea of the radio interview would be real but the same as the mockumentary the humour would be suttle and the audience would be encouraged to  

An idea that I talked about in an earlier post was to use the Borat teaser poster as a reference for our own poster. With Borat being of the same genre film as ours it is a relevant poster to work off of. Although it will be difficult to get the point across of the mockumentary as our character with the phobia obviously isn't as widely recognised as Borat. As a group we think replicating the simplicity of the poster is a good idea and will suit our genre. We are thinking of having the same sort of high angle shot and concentrating on the main character of the mockumentary Simon. As he is not known we will make it blatently obvious about the humour through his facial expression and the props such as the oven gloves.





Main Idea.

In our group we have chosen to go for the choice of creating a short film and our genre that we have all agreed on is a mockumentary. This would mean using traits of  a documentary such as voice overs and varied shots of the person being documented such as mid shots for interviewing and shots of people who don't want to be recognised of them in the dark. Montages of things that the person being documented about would do in their day to day life would be needed to reassure the viewer that what they are watching is of a documentary type of genre though, subconsciously almost, they will pick up on the humour of the topic and laugh at the seriousness of the mockumentary but only if all the traits and conventions are done well will the humour come through . This would also include imterviews between the interviewer who at the moment is going to be played by me and the boy who has the phobia of hands, and his family. As it is a mockumentary humour is essential but not jokes as such the humour we as a group are aiming for is more suttle and for the audience to pick up on the sheer stupidness of the phobia rather than making loads of jokes about how it affects his life.

Short film and mockumentary research.

Sign language is one film that I found and is a example of a good short film and in my opinion, it's very hard hitting and clever. I like the style and humour in the way in which it is almost tongue in cheek though still has a hard hitting story line. The first person aspect in which the main character is telling the story is a very popular technique used throughout many short films and one that I feel our group may look into as at the moment we are leaning towards a mocumentary sort of short filmin which the narrative would be more important and would get the point across alot more than the visual which should be suttle and humorous at the same time. Short scenes and a fast tempo are vital for the success of short films and sign language utilises these alot. I like the style of the narrative by the narrator style voice over with the person talking in the first person as if it is their life. This would add to the mise on scene of a documentary as well as the varied shots that would be needed such as wide pan and long tracking shots along with voiceovers giving the viewers the idea that they are actually watching a sad story when really the idea and narrative is extremely bizzarre and the audience feel sympathy for but at the same time a little humour at the expense of the main characetr or person in the documentary. Another good example of this is the louis Theroux dicumentaries in which he follows strange people and their lives on a day to daybasis. This idea is one that our group is going to run with and make a mocumentary about the boy who is scared of hands.

Borat is another kind of mockumentary, although it is a feature length film it displays many traits of a documentary but again it's theme is ridiculous that what makes it humorous and a mockumentary. The themes I am talking about are things such as interviews not only with members of the public but also with field experts which again conveys the realism that a mockumentary needs to work. Borat is played and written by Sascha Baron Cohen and is a news presenter from Kazahkstan. Our idea for our mockumentary is not as real or as drastic as this as ours will be loosely scripted whereas Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen) completely improvises and plays his character as naturally as possible in hard situations and this is how acheives the humour of the film. Borat is a good example for another aspect of our film the poster ancillary task which I will talk about later on in my blog in another post.



The office is an award winning and successful mockumentary written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. It is renowned as the first of its kind, shot in a mockumentary style, creating characters that audiences can relate to whoever they may be. The style allows sililoquies that would not make sense in other shows, and can convey more about the character, as they can speak whilst alone. The office also contains conventions of a serious documentary, it features silent shots of the characters working within the environment adding to the mise en scene and verisimilitude. This style does add boundaries, for example, shot reverse shot cannot be used as continuity would not be relevant. It also creates high demand for the actors, as their characters must be as believable as possible when talking alone, and not always conversing with another character.

A2

This year for our A2 syllabus as a group of three we have chosen to plan research and complete the making of a short film. To start off with i am going to look at some short films and analyse them to try and find out the tricks of the trade so to speak and how short films can become a success and what techniques maybe different to a feature length film.