Post 15 - Ancillary Task 2 - Film Reviews

Analysis of Exsisting Film Reviews

Conventions and Differences of Industry Magazines vs. Newspapers

Summary of Magazine Annotations:

• Content: The reviews analysed share similar content, a brief synopsis of the plot of the film, comments on the acting/ actors, references to other films, comments on direction, a reference to the genre of the film, and an opinion of the review's writer. However, depending on the writer, some reviews also comment on soundtrack, location and make references to the target audience, such as "Targeted at a PG-13 teen demographic" in Sight&Sound and "Twihards" ans "Tweenage audiences" in Total Film.
• Level of Critique: The Sight&Sound reviews are much more critical of the films than the Total Film reviews which tend to just comment on the films and if anything compliment them, and Screen International only contains minor criticism.
• Language used: The Sight&Sound reviews use a very formal, industry-level language, using phrases such as, "The character's childlike vulnerability and intensely felt grief" and "the films taps into a wealth of psychogeographic associations, bringing deep resonances to a flawed narrative with a vivid sense of locality." Whereas, the Total Film reviews use a much more informal language, including slang words, with phrases such as, "Who gives a toss about Easter" and "Its hard to hate a film whose hero craps candy." From this brief comparison alone, it is clear to see an obvious difference in language, and since short-films are often aimed at a sophisticated audience who have an interest in the industry, I feel that it would make sense to write in the style of an industry magazine, such as Sight&Sound. 
• Layout: The reviews' layouts have the conventions of a block of text, positioned next to an image from the film, with the title of the film in bold above the block of text, with the opening letter in a larger font. Additionally, they also share the conventions of having the review's writer named in bold at the end of the text with information about the film, including release date and with Screen International and Total Film a star-rating, but with Sight&Sound extra information such as when and where it was released, the director, actors, certificate and the duration of the film. The cast and credits of the review in Sight&Sound magazine are displayed in the format of a very narrow column, whereas Screen International displays a brief block of credits above the main review, but Total Film only displays a few credits at the end of the review.
• Additional Information: Other features which the reviews include on their pages vary, depending on the different magazine. Sight&Sound includes a very descriptive synopsis next to the main review, but not much more as the reviews are quite long. Total Film includes a range of four other mini-reviews on the second page, as well as the title of the page, "Screen - every new movie reviewed and rated" but again, the reviews take up most of the page with the large image next to them. Screen International also includes weblinks to the the editor, how to search for full credits and a reference to the Sundance Film Festival. Total Film and Screen International also include a small block of text called 'The Verdict' which is a very brief summary of the review. 

Summary of Newspaper Annotations:

• The Independant: I found that The Independant gave a much more concise and to-the-point review, using a much less formal language than The Guardian. Not only is the review considerably shorter in length, but it also tends to comment more on the success of the film such as the awards and praise it has recieved, than the actual film itself.
• The Guardian: However, the language which The Guardian uses is much more formal and similar to that of Sight&Sound magazine (industry) in terms of the phrases which it uses, and the comments which the writer chooses to make about the production of the film - instead of simply just commenting on how successful it was at the box office. The writer (Peter Bradshaw) makes more constructive comments about the supporting cast, the script, reference to the history of the setting of the film and includes some of his own opinions.
• Similarities: Both of these reviews share a very similar layout and style; including image/still from the film at the top of the review, and the title of the film and a small introductory sentence above the image. To the side of the review there are links and adverts relating to film which the reader can click, as well as additional general adverts in the corners of the pages. The font of the review is sans-serif black, and the hyperlinks are in blue. Both websites also give the reader the opportunity to "share" this article via social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter at the click of a button, next to the large image from the film.

In Conclusion

From this research, I have chosen to use the style and format of Sight&Sound because this magazine is better suited to a sophisticated audience who are interested in the film industry and Independant films, where as Total Film and the newspapers appeal more to the mainstream audience. Therefore, since our production is a short-film, which are generally made by indpendant, non-mainstream companies (which is what I would class our production as) I feel that this would relate to Sight&Sound magazine better than any of the other reviews.

Page Drafts:

I began by writing a draft of my review in a Microsoft Word document, baring in mind the language and content of the Sight&Sound review which I have researched.

This is my film review:

This modern day interpretation of what could be perceived to be a shortened version of the classic ‘Brokeback Mountain’ love story may not actually be as cliché as one might assume. Given that the duration of Status is only around five minutes, Goodman has managed to cram the ‘ups and downs’ of a confused teenage boy’s life into her first short-film.

Influenced by the French New Wave, particularly the work of Jean-Luc Godard and Italian Neorealism, Goodman has reinvented Goddard’s style regarding audio as she too has literally and entirely dropped the sound half way through their piece. James (Jamie Yates) is listening to his girlfriend talk continuously when he begins to drift off into a world of his own, and at this point, the sound has been muted. Whether this is entirely successful or not is arguable though, as it could be interpreted by an audience who are not familiar with the work of Goddard as an unprofessional mistake.

The short-film explores the difficulties that a male teenager may have when revealing his sexuality in a modern-day British culture; particularly if he is seen as a dominant masculine figure amongst his peers. Jamie Yates’ portrayal of the central protagonist, James is believable and endearing. His concern and discomfort draws sympathy from the audience, and triggers instant satisfaction when the narrative is resolved. The use of the camera work does create a very low-budget appearance due to the ‘hand-held’ and unsteady footage used within the football shots, and the setting of a college seems very conventional and unimaginative given the age of the characters. However, the use of natural lighting which anchors the natural and normal college environment is successful as the desired social-realism genre and tone has been achieved by doing this.

What’s interesting about ‘Status’ is the way in which Brown has directed the ‘text message’ to appear on screen. Taking the modern approach to editing text into the film via post-production, as opposed to simply capturing a shot of the text message on a mobile telephone screen, the text in the form of a messaging conversation on a smart phone fades into and out of the corner of the screen. This clearer and cleverer way of displaying text allows the audience to fully understand the message which has been received, and indeed the consequences that this has within plot development.

Once this was complete, I then began to select what other features I should include onto the page. I decided to have a medium/ large image from our film, (as I found from research that all of the reviews had this) two long coloumns for cast and credits (as the Sight&Sound reviews all had these on the pages) and a small text box of information beneath the larger bold title of the film, as this is another feature which Sight&Sound had.

I chose this image, which was captured using a Sony SLR camera.

I have chosen this image because I feel that it gives a good insight into the film, what with James facing away from Roxanne on the bench, as if he's 'facing away' from his problem, but at the same time it doesn't give too much about the film away.

I then used the software Adobe Photoshop to begin to put all of these elements together.

 

I used the paint brush tool on its smallest setting (1px) and maximum hardness (100%) whilst holding the shift key to create the perfectly straight lines.

I then used the text tool to identify and match the text fonts which Sight&Sound magazine use, and inserted the text.

Once all of the text was completed, I then moved onto looking at the minor details of the page and adding these, in order to make my page look as realistic as possible. These included the tiny little red square, the margin lines, the page number, the Sight&Sound logo and the 'Short Film Special' at the top of the page, to establish that Sight&Sound do not usually write reviews of short films, and this was a one off special.

This is my completed film review page.

Post 14 - Ancillary Task 1 - Postcards

Analysis of 2 Exsisting Film Posters:
British vs. American

I have chosen to analyse, compare and contrast the film posters for the American film, 'High School Musical' and the British film 'This is England.'

It is immediately apparent simply by glancing at the two posters that they have two very different target audiences. The 'High School Musical' poster is filled with bright, bold, warm colours, along with six gleamingly happy male and female teenagers, as well as the Disney logo, suggesting that this film is aimed at a much younger age group, perhaps male and female sixteen year olds and below. However, in contrast to this, the 'This is England' poster consists of much bleaker colours, dull blues, grey and black, and features a line of mixed aged people standing unhappily against a metal fence. Therefore, I can see that the film poster is targeting a much different older audience, eighteen years and above of both male and female.

Another feature of the 'This is England' poster which makes it significantly different from the 'High School Musical' poster is that the awards that it has won at film festivals is displayed in black across the top. This suggests that 'This is England' was produced using a completely different institution, budget and marketing strategy to 'High School Musical,' which being an established American Studio, high-budget film would never bother with film festivals. Therefore, this suggests that 'This is England' may also be aimed at a sophisticated audience who enjoy watching low-budget independant films.

The text on these posters both represent the themes/ main messages of which the films are about really clearly. The American 'High School Musical' poster displays a large, sans-serif yellow font in capital letters, which is covered in lights which resemble the lights which surround an actor's mirror, thus portraying the theme of being on stage, and the 'musical' element of the film. Similarly, the title font on the 'This is England' poster mirrors what the film is about as the three words are written in the three colours of the Union Jack; red, white and blue. Therefore, it reflects the 'England' and shows the audience the themes of the film.

A final difference which I have noticed is that the posters also set the scenes of the different films with the use of the buildings in the 'This is England' poster and the stage and curtains on the 'High School Musical' poster.

In conclusion, from analysing these posters I have learnt the importance of font choice, as it will influence the audience's instant assumption of the theme of our short film. I have also learnt that the subject matter of our short film post card is very important as this will also influence our audience's instant reaction to what they think about our short film, and will decide within a matter of seconds if it is something which they will be interested in or not; thus having an effect on the success of our short film. Finally, I have learnt that with our short film being both British and low-budget, I feel that our film will have more in common with the 'This is England' poster than the American 'High School Musical' poster, and therefore may have similar conventions to it, such as more text on the front, and similar facial expressions.

Analysis of an Exsisting Short-Film Post-Card:

 

This short film postcard by Rebecca Knapp has many different features in order to target its audience. The front of the postcard (bottom half of the image) uses five different images; one main large image which is the focal point of the post card, positioned to the right, and four smaller square images positioned to the left of the larger one. The images, (two of buildings, two of clouds, and a stamp) appear to be used as enigmas as they don't really give anything away about the short film, and could be representing absolutely anything; thus making the viewer want to watch the short film to find out what this could be.

The front of the postcard also uses text, but only in three places. This is in the form of the title of the short film, 'On a Life's Edge' displayed across the bottom in plain sans-serif white font, the company logo, 'Carlton' in the top left hand corner, and the date '2001' written across the largest image vertically with a low opacity. However, the back of the postcard has much more text as it displays the title of the short film again, company logos again, credits and a short summery of the film.

Similarly, the 'Divine' short film postcard shares many of the conventions which the 'On a Life's Edge' card has: there is very little text on the front of the postcard, one large image on the front, the title displayed in the largest font on the front written in white sans-serif, a blank square for the stamp and credits on the back, and the company logo on the back.

These are successful short film postcards, and so when designing mine, I shall use the conventions which I have analysed.

Why short-films may find it hard to market their films using these strategies and why we might use postcards:

Hollywood films have a much much larger budget to market their films with, and can afford to produce large scale posters and expensive televised commercials, and so being an independant film company with a much smaller budget, short-film companies may benefit more from making a postcard. This is because they are smaller to produce, and are cheaper to distribrute because not only can they be handed out like flyers, but also they can be posted by either the film company or the public sending them to their friends, and so the film is almost advertised by audience word of mouth. Therefore, I feel that producing a postcard is the best option for marketing our short film.

Initial Ideas for my Postcard:

My Postcard Drafts:

Using the conventions of exsisting postcards that I have researched and analysed, these are my first drafts for the postcard.

Draft 1:

I have experimented with using the program Adobe Photoshop CS5 to create a draft sketch of this initial design, as opposed to a hand sketch.

I used the pen tool to create a guide of the hands, and then stroked the path using the pen tool in black. I then created the goal net on another layer and selected inside the hands, to paint using a large, fine brush and added the shading. I also created another layer for the grass and sky background. I used the text tool in a bold, black sans-serif font to add the title of our short film onto the front of the postcard. I chose this font because it is eye-catching, and represents the harshness and importance of the 'status' of the character at risk. I used a different font to write the slogan 'Some things are best kept unsaid...' a white (innocent) and wobbley/ unsure font, with the layer effect of a drop shadow to make it stand out. Finally, I created the company logo 'KLS Productions' By using a different font, along with 4 different layer effects; outer glow, inner glow, drop shadow and a colour overlay.

I have used this subject matter because the holding hands suggests a relationship, but not showing the faces suggests a secretive/ hidden/ concealed relationship. The goal net in the background represents a large part of the main character's life, and the 'football' element which we show quite a lot in our short film as it represents James' masulinity.

Draft 2:

This draft was drawn by hand, so that I could see if this was a more effective and successful way of communicating my ideas. My design of the back of the postcard is the same design which would be used on the back of the above draft.

This design features the main character in our short film, James, standing alone in goal. His shadow is cast in front of him as the sun begins to set in the background (the time of day at which his hidden sexuality is revealed in the last scene) and there are two faded images of Roxanne and Ashley either side of James. This connotes the idea of James being at a 'crossroads' and the theme of the 'love-triangle.' I have chosen to show James in goal because football is a huge part of the character's life, and the reason why he has such a high 'status' amongst his masculine friends.

QR Code:

Within this design, I have also included a square for a QR code for the audience's smart phones to scan, and this will link them directly to the short-film's website. Not only are QR codes very popular at the moment, but they are also a very cheap and effective way of marketing and distribruting our short-film, which is essential for a low-budget Independant company.

Personally, I much prefer this design, as I feel that it has more subtle symbolism of the key ideas explored within our short film, and I also feel that I will be able to use my Photoshop skills more effectively within this design.

This is my final postcard, front and back.