Film Review

This is our finished article review.

In our magazine review, we decided to keep a cohesive sense of style in terms of layout and colours to keep in form with our Brand Identity As you can see the 'split' appearance is also used in our Short film as well as our film poster, which helps to juxtapose the characters really well. we decided to layout the article in a Profile kind of style, consisting of a profile picture and Questions like Name, Age and Hobbies, this makes the article seem a little more informal and allows the audience to have a brief idea what the characters are like, we also use ironic language for example Maggie's hobbies are 'eating' this also allows the audience to picture their own perception of the characters.

Looking back at the structure of the article we decided to use 'pink' for Maggie and 'blue' for Danny, the conventional colours for a 'girl' and 'boy. However the background is made up of a range of colour which is used to reflect on Maggie's character and sense of style.
To create our magazine review we used Adobe Indesign to create the split page for our magazine review. We put up pictures of clipboards that we found on the internet and added pictures of the two main characters to give it a kind of profile effect. We were mainly inspired to do this from websites like facebook and bebo.

Magazine Review Original Images

We used this image for our magazine review profile picture since we wanted to show the ugly version of Maggie and also since we were going to use it as a profile picture so we thought it would be best to have it just a shot of the face to reflect Maggies bad looks. Also it gives the audience a more clear view of her face and how we were influenced by ugly Betty's sense of style and copied the way Becky put lipstick around her lips for Maggie. This gave Maggie the messy untidy effect we wanted.

Film Poster

This is our final poster for our short film. it consists of a hearty background which we found on the internet, and thought it suited our theme well. once that was done, we took two images of the 'ugly' Maggie and 'Pretty' Maggie, in order to juxtapose these two characters, we decided to create an image with dual characters. Using photoshop helped us to crop both those images in half and place in the right proportion, we had difficulty doing this at the beginning because the face features werent leveled, but we took pictures again- and it worked better the second time round. So, In order to get the two images looking as different as possible, we played around with different effects on photoshop, such as liquify, which let us manipulate with the shape and width of the face, making the ugly side larger and fatter , and the pretty side more in tone and normal- again this is linking with contrasting the two characters. After this, we could finally put the image onto a new layer ontop of the background. To create a even more cartoonistic effect, we added a white ripple(almost as a paper rip)- down the middle of both the images to show that they are one character but with two different perspectives.

In terms of the Title, which we created using LiveType, we choose the font reflecting the characters personality and style. Maggie is in a bold colourful font whereas Danny is a more original subtle colour. after choosing the correct font and colour, we decided that was going to be our final Title.

The slogan that shows right below on the poster says ''The Dream of a Life Time...''

The elipsis is almost a cliffhanger, leaving the audience to imagine. Our film is mainly set on a comedy/romance, presenting us with that 'teenage love' story, that never seems to go right. after watching our short film, you will realise that the slogan line is quiet ironic and cheesy, which is the type of feeling we were trying to create.

Poster Original Images

This was the background image we used for our poster to give the typical girly feel we wanted. Also our film is based on a comedy romance so the hearts fit in well with our theme giving it the funny, puppy love feel.

Poster Inspiration

Although they are both completely different types of films and have different genres. We were still inspired by the poster for Terminator 3. This was because the poster alone foreshadowed an idea of split lifestyle. Both these posters included an image which also helped capture the essence of the character. The T3 poster follows the stereotype of men being dominating and this is shown by having Arnold take over the whole poster whereas we have subverted this stereotype by not displaying our male character on the poster and displaying Maggie on the poster alone,taking up the whole poster. Also, the Terminator poster displays it genre and mood of film through the use of its dark colors whereas in contrast, our poster uses bright and funky colors to create a happy and comical effect.

Audience Feedback

It was interesting to see what people watching our film thought since it would help us with adding and editing what needed to be changed. it gave us a better idea on what we were missing and what our target audience thought when they watched our film. Alot of people said our storyline was obvious however that was the effect we wanted on our audience, we wanted that cheesy, romantic storyline since it was what made it more funnier. We changed the ending so that the film would end without a obvious answer, we leave it to the audience imagination to what happens next. When people first watched it we hadn't added music to it and alot of people commented on that since they all thought it would go well with a nice dreamy soundtrack and thats what we did after seeing peoples comments on what music they thought would go well we added a sound track that we thought our target audience would enjoy and would suit with the mood of our film. People also commented on some of the dream shots being far away, to fix this we zoomed into these shots and made them more closer, we also cut them shorter so that it would'nt get too boring. Alot of people liked our mirror shots and split screening since it reflected the characters lives which is the effect we wanted. People also commented on good acting and good camera movements which boosted our confidence up to make this film even better. A few said it got a bit boring since the shots were too long so we decided to cut the shots making them very quick so people wouldnt lose interest. We made sure we took everyones comments in too consideration and fixed what we were able to fix to make it look even better.

Editing Diary

After capturing our footage onto final cut we watched everything we had filmed and made sure we didnt have any missing parts. An advantage was that we had filmed all our shots in order and repeated the same shot so all that there was needed to be done is to cut out what wasnt needed and to choose what shot suited best since everything else was in order of what happens in the film.

We started by putting all the same shots in the same folder so that we knew what shot we needed next. We then put every scene of the film in order and after sorting the whole film in order we started cutting out the parts we dont need. We had alot of footage however after editing and cutting down we managed not to go over 5 minutes for the whole film.

At first we had a few problems with the split screening since it was the first time any of us had used this feature however after asking Mr Hull and a few media students from last year we managed to fit the split screening to go with our film. The size of the split screening was a bit of a problem at first since when we began filming we didnt think we would have to film at a certain angle so that it would fit with the split screening however when it came to editing we noticed some parts might be cut out of the scene if we were going to use the split screening. To solve this problem we looked at the same shots we repeated from different angles and chose the shots that would fit in the split screening. We had to make each shot very short since we needed both split screens to have the same things happening at the same time. Such as both the male and female wake up at the same time and get ready at the same time.

We left the transitions to the end since we wanted to see which transition would suit in which part of the film. For the dream we used a blurry effect since it adds a more fantasy and dreamy effect. Also we played around with the sound aswell for the dream so that as Mr Hull speaks the noise becomes slower and louder so people can tell he has fallen asleep.

Our music was abit difficult to find since we had a problem in which music would give us the mood we wanted for our film. We were looking for a humourous however upbeat track. Since we could only use non-copywrighted music we looked at websites such as Newgrounds and free non-copywright music and checked out tracks we thought could go with our film. We found a few however we asked teachers and students what there opinions on the music was and they said it didnt quiet fit because it wouldnt give the mood we wanted. We even tried to make our own music however it still didnt give the mood we wanted. After alot of looking around for the right music rawad finally found two tracks that went well with our film and we all agreed on. We added them to the film to see whether it would give that mood and emotion we wanted it to and felt that this was the right music for our film. After we were all happy with it we asked Mr Hull and a few students and they all agreed that this was the right track to use.

We had one shot which didnt go well with the film since the lighting was too dark however we played around with the lighting and made it look much lighter so that it would look natural and not as dark as before. We used an alarm clock sound and put it on the film adding more realism to the film. It took us a while to edit however after finishing editing we were all so relieved and happy with the outcome.