Pre-Production Stages in the Film Industry

Production Stages of a Film on Prezi

This is a Prezi that I made online exploring Pre-Production, funding, crew, scriptwriting, Pre-Production packages and equipment. It is important for me to research into this, because for my film I am treating this as a professional shoot with all of the relevant planning and Pre-Production work.

My Film Shoot Experience

This is a short podcast about my recent experience I had on two film shoots, Snow White and the Huntsman (a Universal Pictures Blockbuster) and a small music video shoot with director Ian Bucknole.

What makes a short film good?

This is an interesting article that I found:

http://pov.imv.au.dk/Issue_05/section_4/artc2A.html

The title is called 'What makes a short film good?' and is a large study upon the short film industry. Using quotes from film critics and heads of film organisations this essay explores themes such as funding, productivity and public demand.

A section I was very interested in of this of study is the debate into "How "good" are short films in terms of giving the director valuable experience for future feature production?"

This is because, in the future I wish to study film production at University and I would like to think that I would gain sufficient experience from making short films for when I go to University and perhaps onto bigger film shoots in later life.

Through these points, I feel I have benefitted largely from this article, as I have read that I should use various points to make my film successful. The article takes quotes from film professionals such as:
"Probably anything sub 30 minutes narrative/non-narrative designed to entertain/challenge a theoretical audience.' Paul Swadel".
"For me a short film is a piece of work under half an hour which tells a story - narrative is very important to me.' Jeena Murphy"
I personally think that if I want to create a successful short film, I should listen to these professionals, to help me along the way.

Moodboard

This is a layout of famous characters from various films, which I have posted on here to show my inspiration for when I finally create my short film.

Film and Magazine Review Results

Survey Results on Prezi

Film and Magazine Review Survey

"The making of the new and re-arranging of the old" Bentley (1987)
To create a market successful product you need to look at existing and similar media projects, and take inspiration from the way they target their audiences. Through the use of demographics created for this particular task, such as the BARB classification of social grades and Maslow's Hierarchy of needs, I have decided to target my audience against these profiling structures, as this what real media professionals do. I will also conduct primary research which is particularly relevant to my own productions, also meaning that I represent the needs of my target audience directly.

To find out my target audience and what genres and styles of films are the most popular to increase the success of my film, I have created an online questionnaire on a website called ‘Survey Monkey’. Using this website, I can create a user-friendly questionnaire which can easily display the results that I receive in an interesting format, such as diagrams and charts.

This is important for my film to be a success, because I need to know that my film is appealing to the right audience for it to be a success. I have already made assumptions about the social grades of my target audience and where my possible viewers could fit into ‘Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs’ (as pictured below).

With this in mind, I feel that the people that would be more prone to watch my film would be ‘innovators’, ‘self-actualizers’ and ‘disconnected’. The reasons why I think this is because my film is going to be something different to most films, and innovators seek new and different things. It is focused on relationships and will be very creative, therefore fitting in with the self-actualizing audience. Finally, I feel my film would fit in well with the disconnected, because I think it would appeal to people who live in the ‘ever present now’ as it is a very modern film.

BARB, Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board, is the organization responsible for the official measurement of UK television audiences. While doing surveys, they measure a household status using a social class system:
A classification of household social status based on the occupation of the chief income earner. BARB reports the following social grades:
AB - higher (A) or intermediate (B) managerial, administrative or professional
C1 - supervisory or clerical and junior managerial, administrative or professional
C2 - skilled manual workers
D - semi-skilled and unskilled workers
E - state pensioners, casual or lowest grade workers

With this in mind, I feel that my film would appeal more towards C2 upwards, because I feel as I am creating a short film, it would generally be shown in art houses and small cinemas and the lower social grades would not generally go to see it, or be aware of its existence. However, I am not ruling out that D and E social grades wont see it; I am just predicting that higher social would probably be more likely to see it, while the lower grades might go and see a Hollywood Blockbuster. I don’t think any AB’s would see my film as having such high jobs might mean they are literally too busy to watch it and show no interest, regardless of if it being five minutes long.

Short Film Analysis 3

3x3

3x3 is a Portuguese short comedy, which has won numerous awards from many film festivals over Europe. The film is a comedy, professionally shot, simple with a great location. What I love about this film after watching it the first time through is that it can appeal to people in every language, as it has no dialogue just like a black and white comedy with funny characters, over the top characters and a comedic storyline.

The film is about a security guard at a basketball court who is a typical male, muscular man who we see trying to throw the balls in the court and successfully scoring many hoops. Then there is the janitor on the court who sees the guard playing basketball, and when the guard has gone to his security room he sees the janitor trying to play basketball through the CCTV camera screens. The guard laughs at the weedy janitor’s pathetic attempts to score a hoop. The janitor stops, pulls up a table and starts measuring distance from the hoop to the centre court line, the weight of the ball etc. The janitor draws up a formula and figures out a technique to score from the centre line. The security guard is amazed by this and runs down to the court to see with his own eyes, the janitor is dressed in a basketballer’s outfit throws the guard his own outfit to play with him.

The purpose of this piece in my mind is to tell the audience the moral of the story, ‘Don’t be arrogant and give everyone a chance’. For this reason I think that the target audience can be quite a young age group because it is a good lesson for children to learn, much like reading fables. The film opens with an establishing shot of the basketball court with the two contrasting characters, which immediately places the audience in a setting. Just from first appearances you can see the contrast in characters, as the guard is big, strong and handsome whereas the janitor is thin, young, weedy and not particularly handsome. This could connote different stories with contrasting characters such as David and Goliath.

There are lots of long and mid shots in this film, with not many close ups and extreme close ups. Unlike the other films I have analysed, there isn’t much focus pulling and interesting camera movement and angles, with simple cuts between each clip. There are no special effects, and the only transitions are when the establishing shot fades into the frame from black, and fades out at the end, creating a smooth start and finish.

There is a good backing music track to this film, which is very well used considering there is no dialogue. The music is comedic, and builds up in certain places, telling the audience when there is going to be a hilarious moment and creating a perfect atmosphere.

With all these point in mind, I think 3x3 is a great film, and a prime example how not using interesting camera angles, edits or movements can still be successful. In this film it’s definitely more about what happening then using camera angles and shots to make something more exciting.