Short Film Evaluation

Eventhough our film is really short (under 2 minutes) it still feels complete and has all the components that a short film should have. The idea of our film is that it is easy for our target audience to relate to, a teenage girl complaining about her boyfriend and her ex boyfriends but it has a deeper storyline which makes it more exciting in that her boyfriend murdered her. Our whole film had a voiceover so we had to match it up with the footage which we did well as I think the shots we got piece together well with what the script says and it was timed well so that we could put certain shots with certain parts of the voiceover. 
   I also think the way our opening title sequence and end credits are in contrast with each other make our film different. The film title ‘’I Hate Boys’’ sounds like a light hearted teen film and the opening titles suggest that too as they look like a childish drawing. The end credits are more sophisticated, we used scrolling silvery/grey text that fades at the bottom of the frame when it appears on the screen and the music we have used sounds cold and chilling. The opening titles and end credits reflect what happens in the film, a fun opening and thrilling ending.
   Overall I think that Rochelle and me worked well together. As there was only 2 of us in our group I thought that it would be a lot more hard work but I actually preferred it than working in a large group. In the planning process we found it easy to decide who was doing what as both of us knew exactly what we wanted to do and we both had an equal amount of work to do. I did the production schedule, storyboard and shot list individually and we both worked on the monologue and we each did half of the slides on the powerpoint. In the filming process Rochelle did the shots of the main character on her own and I filmed all the shots of the main character and her boyfriend. I also found working in a two much easier for the editing process as there is less people to compete with. We were both able to get our individual ideas across and I was able to do more for myself rather than having to wait for my turn. 
   Some of the short films we have researched influenced our film. The film ‘’About a Girl’’ inspired our film a lot. We also liked the way that the film looked quite happy then there was a shock ending, we used that in our film by starting the film off with the girl being really chatty, then the storyline gradually gets darker and darker. Mud Boy also influenced our work as we liked the idea of the girl finding her dead brothers body and seeing him as still being alive and having a conversation with him, in our film the girl is dead but the audience sees her as alive talking while standing next to her dead body.
   The film is about a boy stalking his ex girlfriend so we did a lot of shots from the boys point of view with the camera handheld so the audience can see through the eyes of the ‘’killer’’ in the film. You can also feel the fear of the girl as she doesn't know who/what is behind her.

Where would you exhibit your short film?

We would first put our film on YouTube as anyone can watch it on there, you don’t have to have a specific genre so by putting it on YouTube everyone can watch it and also leave feedback for us. YouTube is also popular with our films target audience so that’s how we would get people within our age group to watch it. A short film festival we could enter our film into is Bang! Short Film Festival, based in Nottingham. You don’t need to have any prior experience in filmmaking and they have a section within the festival called ‘’community’’ where you can enter short films that have been made in school or college. It is also free to enter. Another place we could screen our short film is a website called www.renderyard.com . It is a free film network for filmmakers to watch free online independent films from around the world and upload films and contact each other to provide a global film network for new filmmakers. Renderyard lets filmmakers, musicians and actors create a free film profile to upload your short or feature films online in HD quality and 100MB in size for Free with no film length restriction, including music, showreels and voice over to share with each other and the world.

 

Who is your target audience and how have you reached them?

Our target audience is teenagers, mainly girls as they can relate to Harley, the protagonist, in the film. She is talking about her bad experiences with boys and all her annoying boyfriends and teenage girls can watch it and understand what she is talking about. Everything, other than the murder at the end of the film is something that the majority of teenage girls have experienced or will experience.

How does this piece conform to short film codes and conventions; think both in terms of technique?

Our film conforms to the general codes and conventions of short films. It is really short, it’s under 2 minutes yet it doesn’t feel unfinished when you watch it and the plot is strong enough to be that short. As the majority of short films have a low budget, so does ours.  We didn’t have to buy anything for the film and any props/clothes we used were our own. The film didn’t cost anything to make as we just filmed in a park and we used our own props and the schools facilities for the rest of it. We only have two characters in our film as well, a boy and a girl, but you never see the boy properly, just the back of his head so it is basically like there is only one character in the film. The film isn’t really genre specific, it could be a thriller but the majority of the film is quite happy and it is filmed in quite a chatty way so it can’t really be designed as one specific genre.

Editing Process

Our editing has gone really well and has mostly gone to plan. We have kept the script the same and the order of what has been shown the same as we had it in the storyboard. We had to change the last shot, which was supposed to be a layered shot because we weren't sure if it would work. We changed it to Rochelle, as the boyfriend, running away from the scene of the crime, I think it looks more effective than the layered shot as the audience don't see the dead body so it leaves a lot to the imagination. 
     We have completely finished all of the editing and all we have to do now is just work on the effects. We've done a few things to the footage already, some of our shots were too bright so we had to make them darker. This was really time consuming because you can't just highlight all the shots you want to change, you have to do them indvidually. We want to add some effects to the cutaways so people can differentiate them from the rest of the footage.

I Hate Boys!

Filming Process

Our filming hasn't really gone to plan. Before half term we had everything planned out and we had all our work done in advance. Our first day filming went well and we got all the shots we wanted and we had 16 minutes of footage for a 30 second clip. We were supposed to be filming the next day as well but our actress wasn't available that day so we decided to do it on the next day evening which was the Sunday before we came back to school. By the time we actually got to film it was too late and dark and we couldn't see on the camera. We had to get the camera out to film again but they were none available on the first week so we had to get one out for yesterday, Wednesday 10th November. The camera we wanted wasn't available so we had to use a smaller camera instead.

 On the actual day of our filming we had to change a few things around because of technical issues. Our actress was supposed to be reading the script into the camera but we couldn't get any of the mics to work and we didn't have time to be trying to fix it because it would start to get too dark to film again. We decided that we would go back to Rochelle's house afterwards and get the mics to work and we would record the script as a voiceover. Apart from that we got all the right shots and we shot lots of the same footage but from different angles.

 When we got back to Rochelle's house we managed to get the boom mic working and recorded the voiceover without any problems.