Evaluation

For my media A2 project me and my group chose to create a 5 minute short film. At first we mindmapped possible ideas for short films, although our main source of research was the internet as this enabled us to view existing videos on broadcasting site 'Youtube'. Also short film sites such as Depict! and the bbc short film site inspired us into coming to a final idea. We came up with the idea of a running man trying to get somewhere as he is running late. A clip from comedy show 'Horne and Corden' on BBC 3 inspired us to take the idea of somebody running through many places to reach somewhere, as this was a clip from this show, where a character is running after another character called Julie. Another inspiration was a short film from Depict! named 'Le Cheval'

Le Cheval 2.1 from UWE Bristol Media Practice on Vimeo.

, it is a french film about a man who wishes he was free to run like a horse. This helped us to take ideas for certain shots we could use.

So our final idea was the 'Running Man', where a character is running to get somewhere. We thought about how this character could be running late, so he is trying to get somewhere on time. We came to the conclusion that we wanted our character to be a male student, as we felt this would have great appeal to a mass audience. Our target audience would be aged between 15 and 20- particulary students. This would reflect our character as he would lead a student lifestyle. In our short film we followed the conventions of a student bu his dress. He wore jeans and a short which were put on quickly when he woke up without any thought.
We took feedback of our ideas from creating a questionnaire on social networking site Facebook. We asked our peers as we knew they were the age of our target audience. We wanted our short film to have a certain twist to it. Taking inspiration from the film 'Sliding Doors', we thought how we could use a split screen effect to show the possible outcomes of if our chacracter gets on the bus and what would happen if he doesnt. The character that manages to get on the bus is involved ina fatal crash. To show how our character misses the bus, the main turning point is that he loses his hat and therefore has to pick it up. He then sees the bus driving away. We took the idea again from 'Sliding Doors' as the woman misses the tube as a little girl gets in her way. Also the effect of rewinding the film was a inspiration to us. As he has missed the bus the bus he returns home and turns on the radio to hear the bus that he would of caught was involved in a serious collision - this is what happens to the character that caught the bus. It shows how his day could of had 2 possible outcomes depending on the bus.

Although we followed typical conventions of a student, we challenged it by not having a genre to our short film, as we couldnt assign a particular one to our film.
We went out a few times to film, as we mainly shot at a member of opur groups house, the streets around the house and a bus stop. In the house we used the bedroom for our character waking up shot, the bathroom for him to brush his teeth and the kitchen for the part when the one who missed the bus returns home to turn on the radio. Everything mostly went smoothly when filming, although a tape we were using broke in our camera so we had to get another, which on day 1 of filming, cost us valuable time. Technology has enabled us to create a good quality film. The camera we used to film was only a small digital filming camera, but it did the job. To create the radio link at the end of the film we used a program called 'Garage Band' on a Apple Mac. This program enabled us to make a near real sounding radio link by being able to add radio jingles and background noise of sirens and people talking to make it realistic to our audience.
After our film was completed and the final touches were made, we had to use the Adobe Premier Pro editing program. This helped us to create a split screen effect.
We also had to short list some songs that we wanted our character to be running along to as he is listening to his ipod. The 2 songs we finalised were 'Vanpire Weekend- A Punk' and 'The Rumble Stripes- Girls and Boys'. We managed to sync Vampire Weekend to the point where our character turns on his ipod. With our film now in the editing process we had to upload the songs to the film and make sure our split screen works. After some feedback we found that our film didnt come across as confusing as we first thought.
For the 1st part of the project- the ancillary tasks, we chose to create a film review and film poster. I feel the combination of them together is very effective. As we have linked them by quotes from magazines and our short film - The Running Man is featured in our short film revierw. We tried to use the same colours too.
We looked at existing film reviews such as 'Empire' magazine and website 'Total Film'. This helped us in creating our film review. We based our film poster on the 'London to Brighton' poster, which is also a short film.




Overall i have really enjoyed making and creating 'The Running Man'. As a group we have worked very well together and have succeeded in our assigned jobs.