Final Short Film - A Vida Doce

Short Film Final

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Title - A Vida Doce/The Sweet Life

Written & Created - Johnny Fonseca

Narrator - Carlos Fonseca

Target Audience - PG

Length - 5 minutes 18 seconds 

Music - Andrea Guerra - Welcome Chris (The Pursuit of Happyness)

Here is the final outcome for my short film, overall the short took around 10+ hours to create and that's not including learning how to use the software. Overall the short came out perfectly, if not even better than I expected. I was always a little worried about the narrative but in the end, I feel that the audio turned out crisp and clear. I really wanted this short to hold a message within about family and so far I feel it has connect to a lot of my family members, I shared the final copy of the short to a family member and it got spread over Facebook and I didn't even post it up myself! I received so many comments from members of the family explaining their thoughts on the film and they all loved the film and each person received the message. From this another problem arise when I thought maybe other people who aren't in my family won't like get the same feeling about the short, and this is right but it's not a bad feeling, it's just audiences outside of my family think about their own family instead of my own! Everyone interprets this film completely different however everyone receives the message. I created a survey to also get further feedback on the short.I first uploaded the short to YouTube as my video was too big to upload to a basic account of Vimeo, after I used the schools Vimeo account to upload the short. I wanted to put the short on both platforms as I feel target a different audience in a sense of YouTube being for everyone and Vimeo being used by professionals and the industry.

Audience Feedback

Emma/17/UK

I feel that this short film is very creative which makes it enjoyable to watch. The use of non diegetic and diegetic sound allows us as the audience to experience the feel of Portugal and the activities occuring. The voice over and translation is unique and give the short film an extra edge to it. The bright colours used also give off a happy feeling which makes me too feel positive and in a good mood. Overral I think this short film is really well edited and has a range of great camera shots, angles and also beautiful settings.

Alex/20/UK
This film touched me dearly as it reminded me of my own family experiences and how it felt to be a part of one. The whole way it was laid out and the time, it wasn’t too long as it was just the right length. I loved the vibrant colours and song which was chosen in the background as it made me feel happy and brand so many memories to my heart.

Final Magazine Short Film Review DPS

Final Magazine Review

My main inspiration for this layout was from Sight&Sound review section, however I felt that their article was more formal and just full of text whereas I wanted mine to be more colourful and bright, I wanted the article to stand out and so that just a glance will pull readers in. I really like that I used lots of screen grabs to really sell the short, the overall layout and has professional trates and makes the DPS looks realistic.

Audience Feedback

Ana/English(Portuguese Background)/18

The article functions well in that it is stylistically interesting yet simply structured and easy to follow. The graphics that the editor chose to showcase moments of the film are accurate examples of the subject matter and the candid, montage style of the film. These photos also carry a lot of the cultural elements and the closeness of family that the film hinges upon. The pull-text pieces are useful for readers who prefer to skim rather than plunge into the meat of the article itself, but the perhaps the most important element, the title of the film itself and the name of its author, are a bit lost in the shuffle. I would suggest a much more prominent title, top and center, in order to cement the film title in the mind of the reader from the first glance. 

Rating 5/5.

Tony/UK/20

 The film review article is really well formatted, and definitely looks like something one would find between magazine covers. The pull-quotes used perform their task quite well, drawing the attention of the reader and piquing their interest with small extracts. One bit that seems oddly used is the photo of a person enjoying their can of soda. It just seems that there could be something more fitting, without even needing to change the image subtitle. The actual text covers film in depth, and the author gives the readers a lovely description of the events and their meaning. Overall, a very well made article.  Hats off to the author for an enjoyable retelling.

Rating 5/5.

Final Short Film Poster - A Vida Doce

Final Poster (English)
After fully completely the English film poster for my short, I felt the need to create another film poster with the exact style however instead of being in English I would make it Portuguese. As the short itself is in Portuguese language it seems understandable that I would also create a film poster to represent the film in Portuguese.

 Film Poster (Portuguese)
Simple,classic and beautiful is what I was aiming for and I think I have achieved it! I found that my feedback from previous drafts were probably the most useful piece of information I could acquire. I worked on the feedback which basically lead the film poster to hold all conventions of a stereotypical poster. I can actually say that I am so proud of myself for creating such a poster and I can not say it any simpler, feedback is key to a successful poster.

Audience Review/Feedback
I wanted to acquire a board feedback so I asked some friends from around the globe. This meant that I would be reaching audiences from other countries and also meant that I wasn't going to get feedback from just British Citizens.

Marcus/Canada/23

                The film poster features a gentleman taking a picture of a beautiful sunset over a calm ocean. It is a fitting image for the movie, in that it is a happy moment being captured as a memory, however I think it could have been shown at a different angle in the same setting, and perhaps show more than one person enjoying the sunset, as the film has a family-oriented meaning. The newly-wedded couple would have been ideal for this! The poster does have a professional feel to it, in that the poster’s viewers have an easy time understanding and getting a general feel of what the film might entail. The text is appropriately placed and does not interrupt the main image.

Rachel/America/26

As an advertisement for the short film, A Vida Doce, this poster effectively conveys both the tone and subject matter in a concise yet attractive and stylistic way. The saturated colors are inviting and also suggestive of the warm ambience pervading the film’s atmosphere. The silhouetted photographer oriented to the left hints at the perspective from which the film was composed, without interfering with what we understand to be the film’s subject matter. The darkness of the figure suggests anonymity, and implies the universal qualities of the film’s message. The subtitle referring to the nature of happiness is a clever grab, and while it hints at  the film’s content, it does not betray any of the endearing moments the film itself has to offer.

Isha/UK/17

I think that this poster is really nicely done. A great job right here, a lot of beautiful colors and I feel gentle just looking at it. I really like that it comes in both Portuguese and English. It shows the cultural side of the movie.I feel like the poster really brings out the message of the video, too, like how happiness can be found in stopping to enjoy something simple like a sunset.I also love how the sweeping text for the title looks like what you might find on like a box of chocolates, so when we start the film it's almost like unwrapping something sweet.

Production Diary #37 - The Final

Here is the final production log that I will be doing for the whole blog - I felt this was the time to stop as after this post each post will be about the final products and that the whole purpose of the production logs was to keep track of the creation process. I have actually enjoyed my time when doing this blog and I have learn't a lot in the process. One of the main things I learn't from doing this blog was timing. I needed everything to be done on time so that I didn't fall behind and have to do everything last minute like last year.

RAW Narrative Audio

The studio was a successful one and I was able to record everything in one session which meant I wouldn't have to go back, the only issue I came across was that I didn't know how continue recording without overwriting the previous record. However hearing the final footage, they seems to be a bit of grain in the background so I will research into a way to reduce the grain. I used Adobe Audition instead of Audacity as I was told by my teachers to use Audition as it record high quality sound and isn't that difficult to use.

Here is the RAW audio clips placed into a timeline.

Alternations made along the way

Software changes was made half way through doing tasks which really held me back in terms of creating the piece. I had to use new software which I didn't even have a basic understanding of. I felt I should create a prezi as I kept using the blog format and the blog began to feel repetitive.

2nd Draft - Short Film

SELF-FEEDBACK

For my second set of drafts I wanted myself to evaluate my own work - I know that one major problem that most people have is evaluating and depicting their own work and criticizing it. I used this opportunity to find the needed improvements for my short film but also at the same time work on my feedback not only for others but also for myself - honest to myself is key. I will have to keep thinking what would I say if "A Vida Doce" was created by someone else and they showed me this.

What I felt was easiest for me was to view the short and jot down aspects of the film which I personally thought could be improved. I also then confirmed the list with fellow students in my Media Studies class to double check I wasn't missing any major aspect out - maybe an aspect of the short that I knew took a long time to do and still didn't look right and knowing myself I would push to the side and leave it. That's why asking someone else I could make sure I wasn't doing that.

Colour Correction
Anyways one of the easiest aspect I noticed needed work done to was my colour correcting. The problem with colour correcting was that if too much editing was done to a particular scene - the scene would get a type of colour bleed and green/red pixels would be visible in the background which ruined the whole HD shot. I then had to ask my teachers and googled the problem and found my way round some forums and found out that I was basically over editing the clip which created the static pixels. To resolve this I reset the colour edit on that specific scene and re-edit the shot. The purpose of the colour correction was really to make the footage stand out and give it that professional look that I was desiring for my short film. There was traits that this could also be rendering problems.

Subtitles
Another problem was that the subtitles for my short seems too in your face. I felt to keep with the overall theme and feel of the short I should fade the subtitles to really make the whole piece flow. However saying that I only faded in and out when a subtitle was emerging or after the segment of subtitles ended. I also noticed that I found spelling and punctuation errors which made the whole short look unprofessional and gave it a shabby look.

Scene Adding/Cutting + Credits
I also had to do the stereotypical move and edits with removing certain shots that didn't seem to tie in with the whole short - they seemed more off putting. I then had to replace these with new shots which would stand out and connect with the message and visuals of the short film. I also added some credits to the end of the short to reiterate the stereotypical information needed after a film - Who created the film, the did the dialogue and who composted the music.

Audio

Lastly after giving the video one last watch the audio kept bugging me. For instants parts of the song was faded badly and at parts became too quite or too loud which was an ultimate. I also had parts where the background music was way too loud and you could not hear the dialogue. This was easy simple tweaks however it was a huge improvement

From this I feel that "A Vida Doce" will finally look like a professional short film and that I will be able to ensure that these improvements were worth while by acquiring feedback for my final product and seeing what the audience think. 

2nd Draft - Film Review DPS

SELF-FEEDBACK

Quality

Almost instantly I can already see a major issue which I only just realized - the upload quality. For some reason when I uploaded the film review to issuu. I uploaded the file again however this problem continued to happen, the PDF looked in perfect quality when I viewed the file. I then took to good and researched the problem and made sure that the quality was at its best. I learn't that I should also double check anything I do whether its an essay or a product I should always proof check. 

Image Layout

Also looking at the film article as a whole I feel that the main screen grab is a bit obnoxious and I am just covering up an easy chance to add more images to represent the short - I think that if I used another similar screen grab the magazine would look more interesting. Also the way the article is laid out is a current issue of mine. Yet again I feel that I wasted room by adding such a huge picture during the article. I could have simply added two separate images and maybe pull in a quote like I previously done - these would grab the readers attention.

Film Poster Section

On the bottom right of the double page spread I have connected the film poster to the article which gives the whole product a sense of realism. The only problem is that right now it looks like I ran out of article so to cover it up I placed the film poster there which is not the reason. I need to add text to fill the space on top/below the film poster image, maybe some information about the creators of the film - like a synopsis.

Professional Look

Ultimately I feel that the article holds professional elements but in some parts it seems like I have placed stuff just to fill up space and I also have added many sub-headings for the images so right now they just look like a randomly placed image. I also forgot to label an age rating for the film in clear view of the reader, it would be a good idea if I could include it someone at the beginning of the article. Also some of the images look a bit bland and could do with a little touch up on Photoshop.

I feel that its the best thing for me to give myself feedback because I can work on the skill of self criticism which I learnt from A2 Media Studies. The way I do this is that I pretend I am analyzing someone else's work as I have noticed through my class that most students are careless about feedback to others and will say their opinion however they are very easy to defend their own work due to the heaps about of effort gone into the product.

2nd Draft - Short Film Poster

2nd Draft of Short Film Poster

SELF-FEEDBACK

Here is my first digital draft of my film poster, however my second overall draft. Almost instantly after completing the draft I already could see the flaws. The overall design was very simple but also keeping that professional element. I firstly used a photo which would overall illustrate the short as a whole for he its this simple photograph of an old person taking a photograph of the sunset.

Photograph
Being as I come from a background of photography I should have always edited the photo before even using it, however in this case I used the RAW file. This really gives the photograph no life and with a simple colour touch up I will be able to make this photograph stand out. The photograph needs some vibrancy and I will do this on Adobe Lightroom.

Reviews
The simple design might have become too simple and now just looks like I did a quick film poster. By only having two reviews the poster looks too plain and not as big. So by adding 2 more quotes. I also felt that but using 4 starts instead of 5 I am just underselling the short film and in actual fact give the film a bad image. The only reason for me giving the short 4 starts was that I felt I was giving that image of being "too good" however after speaking to fellow class mates of mine everyone explained that the best possible thing was to add more stars to give the film a better image.

Age Certificate/Awards/External Links
I also forgot to add very common factors/conventions of a film poster such as the parental age, any awards given and also any other information about the short for example social networking/websites. For the age restrictions I did not want to add a BBFF age certificate - specially those bright colourful ones as it will only distract the viewers of the poster. Instead I am going to opt for a more plain and simple age restriction with white text and boarders. For the award I wanted to give the short a real award to really give the poster the sense of life and that actually its really true. Saying this I had to go back into my blog and re-read the post on film festivals and begin to find one which would best suit my short (PALME D'OR - FESTIVAL DE CANNES 2014). Lastly I simply added the website, Facebook page and also a hash-tag to help the film trend on twitter. I placed all 3 of these things below the credits part of the film poster and used the same/similar font to the reviews.

Portuguese Edition/Landscape Edition
I also thought that as my short film is actually in Portuguese that I should also create a Portuguese film poster for that specific audience. As I am fluent in Portuguese most of the translations was very simple for me (My family did help me a little bit!). To further make this film poster unique and interested I also made a landscape edition of the whole poster which was simple to do on InDesign.This really illustrates that if this was real and that the poster was used for advertisement purposed that I was prepared for billboard/landscape advertisement space.