Short Film Package Blog

 

Short Film Package Blog

MY SHORT FILM PACKAGE

Lost treasures

https://youtu.be/ShkMEWR6J-g

 

link to our website: https://losttreasuresthemo.wixsite.com/website

The postcard: 

CCR questions

 1.) How do your products represent social groups or issues?

-Our product represents a Social issue, that many people get affected by In society. In our movie, the main character is missing a parent (Which was hinted that they passed away.) In the movie, he does a treasure hunt made by his mom from around ten years ago. With the treasure hunt he connects just a little with a person he never really met, his mom, with the different little puzzles she left. The fact that The main character lost a parent is something that hounded of thousand of people could relate to. Not having both parents, because of one passing, or just leaving their Childs life for good is something that commonly happens in society. With us making this treasure hunt movie we made it where these people who have the same life could just imagine if there "lost" parent did the same. They could imagine the whole thing, and just put themselves in the main character shoes and experience something they never thought of. Another thing that we did was that we represented leaving home. Its not as big as a issue as not having both parents, but still its something that many people are affected by. One more situation that gets represented is a single father. In many mainstream media, its the mother that is the single parent, and the father is gone, either a dead beat, or they passed away. In our movie, we have a single father so we could represent the many single parents in America, and across the world.

2.) How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?

-In our product, our elements of the production do and don't work together to create a sense of branding. This sounds very confusing but hear me out. Compared to other projects that we did in the past it conventionally doesn't create a sense of branding. In our first production we did, The Nike commercial, The whole thing is a bout branding. We probably said the word brand/branding in every sentence. If you compare this project and the one we did just recently, the one we did right now, lost treasures, would have no branding. However, it does have branding, But the branding is a little hidden in the project. In the movie, and all of our projects, we have some little techniques that we do in every movie. We do them with no intention either. Its just somethings that we always do. like half of our movies start with a panning expositions shot, we always have some low angles for scenes where the main character is moving fast, and we always have a reference to an inside joke in the script. With all these little things, this creates a branding for us as directors, and us as a production studio. If we continue filming there will be even more things that we would add to our "style" That would be ever changing through each movie production. So in the end, you can say yes, we do create a sense of branding, but its not as out there as other branding. 

3.) How do your products engage with the audience?

-Our product engages very well with the audience. In our movie we tried our best to keep the attention level high. One thing though that we had on our side when we were making our movie is that it is a Short film, being only five minutes long. On the other and, a full length movies average time is around 90 minutes to a whole hour. Comparing these two, we have a great advantage because you cant fall asleep during a five minute short film, but you can in a whole two hour movie. The next aspect that we did to engage with audiences was pacing. Pacing is one of the biggest problems in engaging with audiences. Pacing is how fast the plot of the movie is going, and it can be easily messed up. sometimes in movies the pacing is very slow, where it gets to a crawl. This is when people disengage with the movie and loos interest because it gets very boring. A lot of T.V. shows suffer from this problem because they try to drag out a short plot into a whole season. The other way you could do pacing wrong is having it too fast. This is where the plot and other aspects of the movie zoom by the audience, and its so fast that they cant absorbed the information at all. Book to movie adaptations suffer from this problem greatly because they try to cram a whole book into 90 minutes, even though it deserves a trilogy. With us Knowing the Problems of pacing, we used that to our advantage to make a paced well movie.

4.) How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

-We our research informed our products and the way we used to challenge conventions. The first thing we did for our research was to watch a bunch of short films. The best source of short films was Omelet on YouTube. They have years of short films that are very interesting. I still even watch them on my free time because they are that good. With watching them we got a better understanding of what a short film truly was. After that it was time to focus on the genre, which we would challenge its conventions. The genre is Adventure. These movies now a days have really lost the real aspect of adventure in  my opinion so we decide to watch some original adventure movies that really have the touch. The one movie that we loved watching when we were researching was 'The Goonies". It was such a joy to watch so we used some of the aspects of it in our movie to try to attain that "touch" it had. We also watched movies like 'E.T', and the Jungle book, but they were not as good as the goonies. With that we used it to challenge the conventions of modem adventure movies by going back to the old aspects. We tried to add the childhood curiosity that these old movies had by the treasure hunt. We also tried to capture this genre by just creating an exciting adventure, witch we hopeful did. 

 

Revisions and Publishing.

 Hi blog. Today, me and my partner did some revisions, reediting, and Publishing on you tube. The first thing that we did was to revise our work. We went back first to our website. It had no problems, and it didn't loose any of its data. The next thing we did was To revise the movie. We didn't revise our social media accounts, because we did that yesterday, while we were changing the profile pic. When we were revising the movie we realized something. 2 scenes were out of order in the movie. Me and my partner were super surprised when we realized it. We had no clue how we just passed over that when we were editing. It was a walking away scene and talking scene. It was switched where the main character walks away before he even starts talking. We quickly switched the scenes around, so they are now in a correct order. After that, we did another revision over the movie just to be safe. After that, it was time to publish to You tube. We got ready to publish it on my partners computer, but during mid-publishing, his internet went out. I had to wait for him, because he had the fixed movie downloaded, and I didn't, so I couldn't publish it on my own. After that dilemma, when he finally got his internet back, we could finally publish our work. Today, we didn't have that much work at all to do, but we did what was needed.

-Here's me and my partner arguing over facetime because were idiots. 

Postcard creation, and Logo remaking

 Hi blog. Today, me and my partner did our Postcard, and revised our logo. So the first thing we did was make our postcard. This postcard is online, so we can print it as many times as we want. The website we used to make the postcard is Canva. Its a online graphic designer software, and the best part about it, is that its free. Its was pretty simple to use, and it reminded us of using Wix. It had some already made presets that we could browse through and modify. We picked this really cool looking preset with mountains on it, but they are just filler for later. After that we made the title for the postcard, and made it bold so it would stand out from the background. The next thing we did was add our social media accounts to the back of the post card. While doing that we realized something. We realized that our logo is pretty bad, and that we needed to change it. So we put that on our list to do. After adding that. we put a QR code above the social media accounts. This QR code automatically brings you to our Website by just putting the camera over the code. Then, we had some finale touches to do, and then we were basically done with the post card. After that we then went to work on our logo. We used another free software that worked in the google browser called photopea. Its basically a water downed free Photoshop. It did what it needed to do, and i created a title with a cool gradient. With that, we had finished our work for today.

-Here's us editing on the software for the logo

Wrapping up the movie and a recap

 Hi blog. Today we have finally finished up our short film. Our journey was not an easy one but we pulled through. With our background from last year, we had an easier time with the basics in this project. However, it was also a lot harder in some aspects. With it being 5 minutes long, and being an actual short film, with a beginning, middle, and end. We had a lot to do. Thinking of a plot for the movie was one of the hardest parts. We basically at the deadline though of a quick idea, and ran with it. It was bad in the beginning, but we kept modeling it like a piece of clay, until it turned into the art piece we have now. Creating a story board was in my opinion the hardest part of the journey. Fleshing out the basic plot we had then, into a 10 page story board, was a very difficult challenge compared to last year. It was more than double the work, but like everything in this project we persevered. With this detailed story board, we were able to easily put it on film. This was probably the easiest part of the project. We just had to film the shots, and we were able to do other fun stuff after we were done. The next part was the editing. The editing part was easy this time, because we didn't have to use the school computers, but the huge problems that we had to solve were the only hard parts. The Wi-Fi problems, time constraints, and the many bugs were big problems, but at the end of the day, we got through. All and all we did the best we could with the recourses and time we had. We are both proud of what we did for this project, but there are still some things we could improve.

-Here's one of my favorite screen shots of the movie 

Editing blog: Finishing it all up

 Hi blog. Today was our finally day of editing. After yesterdays disaster of editing, we had to do it all today. We first started on getting back what we lost yesterday. We organized all the shots in order, exactly what's on the story board. When we were doing this, we discovered that we were missing one shot. A major problem you might say, but it actually didn't affect us at all. The shot was when my groupmate was walking up the stair case. Its in the story board, but we didn't need it. when we put all the film organized in the editing software, it was around 7 minutes long. 2 minutes longer than what it was supposed too. So we had to cut out some non important shots, which we would of cut out that missing one in the process. While shortening the film, we had another problem. The screen sharing on discord (the communication software that we have been using on our computers) stopped working. We then decided to use our backup software, facetime that is on our phones. After that bump in the road, me and my groupmate were able to basically finish up the editing. We cut basically every shot, to make them shorter so the time would be a short as possible. Its still a bit to long, but its the best that we can do. All in all, we had a really good day of editing. I'm proud of what we did, and so is my groupmate.

-This is me helping on Ft, when discord was not working (look how dumb I look)

Editing blog: Running through some problems

  Hi blog. Today me and my partner did/tried to edit today. We didn't actually get that much editing in though. When we started to edit, it was pretty smooth for the first 10 . After that, it started to go down hill. on the main computer that we were editing, Elijah's computer started to get some bugs. The pixels on screen started to bug. it got to the point where we couldn't see parts of the screen. After that the screen decided to freeze. We waited for a couple minutes for it to unfreeze, then another thing happened. My partners Wi-Fi  went out and we were no longer on a call. I had to face time my partner because that could use Cellular. When i called him, he informed me that his whole computer had to be restarted. This meant that we could of lost all of our editing that we did from these past weeks. We both got super frustrated. When we restarted the computer, it had saved what we were doing, but not todays work. We decided to end the editing of today then because we were already frustrated with us not being able to do work, and the computer needed time to breathe. What ever bad could happen today, happened. we got totally screwed from a day of editing. However, we persevered and got it all back.

-here's a picture when it first started to bug. 

Editing Blog: editing on Christmas eve (organizing, and transgering)

 Hi blog. Yesterday, me and my partner did some editing on Christmas eve. We didn't have that much time to edit on Christmas eve, but we got some work in. The first thing that we did was working on organizing our Film. When we filmed we did many retakes, and I mean many. We had done our filming in the highest quality of resolution, and which that it took up a lot of storage. We also took a lot of retakes As well. This lead to our film taking up my groupmates storage completely. With that, we had to convert the film to a lower quality so it didn't take a long time to transfer using an app on our phone. With the lower quality we could now transfer the film. We used google drive to transfer our film between the phone and our computers. However, we had to organize it first. This took us a while to do. We had a bunch of retakes that were equally good, but we both kept arguing about. We argued on and on, but we had to soon compromise because we were waiting time. After that we found the best shots for the film. With those shots, we Transferred film, but it took a while. Even though we changed the quality of the film to be a smaller storage, it still took some time. By the time we had it all transferred on to each of our computers, it was time for Christmas eve stuff. Even though we didn't do the largest amount of work, We still did progress for our project. 

-Here's a screenshot of our film in google drive on my groupmates phone 

Editing Blog: solving problems

Hi blog. Today me and my partner picked up our progress, first time this winter break. We had some problems to solve though. Since its winter break, and Christmas is around the corner, Both of our families are quarantining for this break because there has been a large break out here in our country's. This had lead to our plans of editing to be squashed. We were planning for my groupmate just to come over to my house and we would just edit on my computer together. very short and simple. So, with this problem of us not being to edit together, we found our solution. We found a communication software that we could download on each of our computers named "Discord". With this software me and my groupmate are able to talk and communicate on our computers while we both edit. This allowed us to both edit, better than just having one of us edit at my house. That isn't even the best part too. On the software we can share our screens so we can visible help each other edit our film. Its really helpful, Its just like if we are sitting right next to each other at school a year ago. With this we started to begin to edit. The editing software that we use is "HitFilm". Me and my groupmate both already had this software downloaded on each of our computers from when we both used to make YouTube videos in elementary and early middle school. However, I'm not that proficient in HitFilm, but my partner is still. He had to reteach me a couple of things, but I am remembering things from middle school. All in all, today we solved our major problem with tools of our own. \

-This is a picture of us editing together on discord.

Filming blog: Day 3

 This weekend, me and my groupmate finished filming in 2 days. This blog is about the 2nd day we filmed this weekend, which is the 3rd day we filmed in total. With having Friday being all rainy, Sunday was our day to film outside. We were very lucky with it being fully sunshine, and no clouds. First we did that day was do the missing shots we had to do. We first had to do a bunch of dialogue that we some how forgot to do. We had to retake many times because we kept laughing in the filming. In total that was around 3 or 4 shots we had to do. We also had to redo the filming of the opening of the box scene. We had to redo it because it turned out it had really bad background noise. After filming inside, it was time for the outside. The first shot we did was the riding the bike outside the house scene. That was easy enough, but my huge tortoise kept getting in the way so we had to wait for it to move. We ended up keeping the shot of where its in the filming because we thought it was pretty cool. The next scene we did was the tree scene. This one was easy, and i decided to do a low/medium angle shot too, to add some flavor to the filming.  The next shot was the last major shot, the lake scenes. Like the other shots it was fairly easy, but people kept walking by so we had to momentarily pause from filming. With that we were done with filming! Now its time for us to start editing our film.

Filming blog: Day 2

This weekend me and my partner finished filming. We took 2 days this weekend to film because we had some mishaps on the first day. On Friday my partner came to my house to film, but there was a problem. When got at my house it was raining very bad so we try to wait. We waited for a while and nothing changed. It kept poring and poring and there was no end in sight. We decided since that we were stuck inside that we would work on planning out the next time we were going to film. After arguing over and over, we figured out what day we would film. We decided Sunday would be the best choice, and i would just have to move the plans i had that day to Saturday. After that scuffle, we moved on the the other task. Me and my partner did the 2 shots we forgot to do inside the house last Saturday that we were supposed to do. We first did the walking down stairs and the walking down the hallway shot. That was easy enough to do, but we just had to match the lighting. The next shot we did was the opening box scene which we forgot to do. That was very simple, and what wrapped up our filming for Friday. Since we had time left before my groupmate would get picked up, We planed out the next time we would film. The first thing we did was circle the shots that we needed to do outside on our screen play, and we started the dialogue too. When we did that however, we found out we had to do like 2 more shots inside that we forgot to do. By that time though Elijah my groupmate had to leave, so we couldn't film. even though that day we couldn't film outside, we were productive and used our time manageably.

     

Filming blog: Day 1

Hi blog. This weekend, me and my partner started filming. We had prepared the props days before too. We filmed at my house this weekend. So my partner had to ride his bike over to my house, and leave before sundown, so we had around 3 hours to film. With that in mind, we decided to film in 2 different days. We decided this because we could barely fit the whole filming in 3 hours, but basically all the scenes would be rushed and that's not how we want our film to go. We decided to film for the second time on probably this upcoming Friday, the 11th, or the weekend after it. We picked those days because we have midterms this next week, and we need to get this filming done with this weekend. To get back on track, Filming wasn't that hard. We decided to first film in chronological order. The first couple of scenes were fairly easy to film. We then decided to make a game plan because after those scenes we realized that we needed to split the filming into 2 days. We decided that this weekend we would do all the shots that are with my dad, and inside/around my house this weekend. The next weekend would be all of the neighborhood scenes. So when we filmed this weekend, we basically got 2/3rds of the movie done. The only hard part that we had with filming, was with my dad. We just had to wait for him to stop doing yard work to film with him. Other than that it was a breeze. Me and my group mate might even get the foundation of our editing done too this week with the film we have so far. 

Preperation

This thanksgiving break, me and my group mate started on the preparations for filming. This upcoming weekend me and my group mate are going to film. We are probably going to film on saturday, the 5th of december. But in the mean time my partner and I did our preparations. The first thing i did was the props. I first got an old book. then i found some aged paper, and some sticky notes. I also got the rest of the miscellaneous stuff to put in the box. The next thing I had to do was find the actual box i needed to put those objects. After searching around for a little around my house i came down to 2 options. There's this really old box in my garage that i can use but it is on the verge of breaking. If i put anything in it it will break. My other box is this shoe box, which is styled vintage because the shoe was too, so it can kind of fit the part of being a old box. I could, and probably am going to ruff it up and put some wear and tear on it. So i'm probably picking the second option. The next prop is going to be the shoes, and they are right in my moms closet. The last prop i had to check was my bike. It is in perfect condition so im fine. The next thing i had to do was to make sure all of the locations were fine to film. I went on my bike and went to all the locations that are in my neighborhood. Nothing changed and there was no contractions so that was good as well. After all of that, all of the conditions were met, and were ready to film next weekend.

The box we are going to use looks like this:

The Making of Our Website

This thanksgiving weekend, me and my partner worked on our Website. Before this, we finished All four of the social media accounts. To start on the website we created A new gmail account for the account. the account was for Wix. With wix we were able to create our website with ease. We first picked out a template for out website. We picked out a moder dark theme, so the detail would be very outlandish and outstanding, so the main point of the website will just be our writing and pictures. We then added the first part of our website the title. Then we added The Title, very easy. The next thing we did was the synopsis. From like a month ago, we made the Synopsis of our film. So we just added it by just a simple copy and paste. The next thing we did was Creating an area for reviews. The next thing we did was plugging in our Social media accounts. We put icons for Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Then we added some credit pictures. So far we have me, my group mate, and my dad credited, however that can change. We also added pictures for the credits, but we are going to replace those because there from our last year's yearbook photos. Next thing we did was putting in a stand in for where to watch our movie because we haven't decided it. This website is mostly done, but i think me and my groupmate and tinker on it a little bit more, to make it the best it can be.

The Creation of social media accounts

Hi blog. Me and my partner this thanksgiving break made our website and social media. To start, we made our social media accounts. We couldn't use are personal accounts for this. We had to make brand new accounts just for the movie. We had to make 4 accounts. We made a Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, and lastly a Twitter. It was relatively simple to do this too. We had to make an email before that first so we could create the accounts. For the accounts we had to do 2 things. We had to make a Profile picture, and a short bio. The profile pic was kind of a problem for us. We decided after thinking about it, to just put a stand in picture. The final profile picture would be a screenshot of the movie. I created the stand in picture by using microsoft 3d paint. It was just a simple design i made, but i like it. The next thing we did was the Bio. It was just a very simple sentence with just saying what the social media account was for. all in all it was pretty simple for us to do. However it is a crucial part of our movie creation process.

Storyboard for short film

 Hello blog! This past weekend, me and my groupmate have been working and finishing out storyboard. This was a hard process, but we manage to get it done. We started making the story boards, by going over our screenplay. Last year, for each time we had to make storyboards for the films we made, we had no screenplay to base any of the pictures off. However, last year we only had to make like 5 storyboards for the films. This years 10-15 is a lot, but it isn't to big of a problem. Basing the story boards off the screenplay was a real boost to our productivity. It made it alot easier to make storyboards than last year. It still took me like 45 minutes to do a single paper. This is probably from me procrastinating, and going on my phone, and just "drifting out into outer space". Before we began this and the previous blog, me and my group mate divide the work so he would do the planing (the previous blog), and i would do the story boards. This was all good in concept, but it turned out to be unbalanced. Ten story boards take me a very long time to do, and i mean a very long time. The planing only took my groupmate under an hour to do, so we had to balance it. After i finished 8 story boards, which took me all day to make, i sent him the pictures of the story board, and made him do the rest. It was only like 3 story boards he had to do. It was not even half the amount that i did, but whatever. he will just do more editing than me when it comes to that. Overall, it was pretty hard to do, but we manage.

Planning for short film

 

In this blog, I will explain all the plans for our short film!

Schedule: For the scheduling, we are unsure at the moment but we are planning to do it on Saturday the 21st. Location: The location where the short film will be filmed is in South Lake and Roscoe's house. Participants: The participants will be Roscoe, His Dad, and I. Health and Safety: Health and safety is a big thing during these times. Before each filming date, each person will get a COVID-19 test to be safe. When filming, in case anything bad happens Roscoe's dad will be there to supervise. Props: The props will be a beat-up shoebox, A polaroid photo, beat up running shoes, a bike, sticky notes, and a buddha statue. Costumes: The costumes used will be day to day clothes.

Short Film vs. Feature Length Film

 Hi blog. Yesterday i watched the short film "9" and its counter part, the full length movie also called "9", that was based of the short film. To start with, these two different films, are pretty similar, but also very different. The short film has some aspects that are far better than the actual movie. The pacing in the short film is very good. You have time to breath in between crucial parts of the story, and everything doesn't feel rushed. The actual feature length film is worse in that aspect. It has really bad pacing. Many plot points were one after another , without having room to breath. The short film was also more of a smooth experience to watch, there was not one point were my eyes didn't go off the screen. I was engaged on every sentence of the fim. The other one however, many parts i drifted off because i lost interest, but i think that reason was that it was a hour and a half movie, compared to a 10 minute short film. On the other side, the feature length film has a lot on the short film too. In the feature length film, it fleshes all of the ideas out, and adds world building to the setting of the film. The ideas that were introduced were very interesting and were one of my favorite parts of the movie. The characters are also a lot more diverse, difriential, and there's a lot more of them. You can tell now the difference of the characters by not just the number on their back, but their mannerisms, what type of material they are made of, the "clothes" that they wear, and their body shapes. The graphics are also a lot better too, since they have a larger budget. I don't really know which one i like better. There both enjoyable in my eyes, and have different aspects. I think i like the movie one a little bit more, just because of the concepts and ideas that were introduced in the movie.

Research 9, the feature film

 After i watched the short film called 9, it was time for the full thing. I had watched the movie , along time ago , when i was around like 7. When i thought about it before i rewatched it , it's just a faint lucid memory. having said this, when i rewatched it over the like 8 year gap i last watched it, it was a nostalgia trip. To get back into the critique, I have mixed feeling about the film. My impressions that this movie felt rushed. The animation was pretty good for the time. it didn't have that good resolution though, some of the close ups looked like it was from a video game. That was the only parts that didn't feel rushed, I feel like the creator had to many ideas that he wanted to implement, but not enough time and budget. The pacing was very fast. Story beats happen one after another, after another with out a moment of rest. It felt like there was like 5 different mini climaxes, back to back to back during the later half of the film. To continue on, the plot was okay. I really liked the concept and the hidden backstory revealed in the end, and what all the green stuff was. The end is where i really believed it got bad. That's where the plot felt rushed, and where they had to fulfil a time quotah. The characters were probably one of the best parts of the movie. I liked how they were all different, and there personalities were unique. They really did not  develop though. Characters died before they could really change besides like 3 of the main numbers. Some of the characters didn't need to die too. It was like ten minutes ago were we got introduced to them, and then they died. We had no time to get invested into there actual motivations and who they really were. The special effects were cool too, nothing that really stand out. Lasty, the directorial style was just ehh. It felt like it was his first real movie, which it was, but it is good for his first time. In the end, I do like the movie, but it did have a lot of problems.

Research 9, the short

Hi blog. Today i watched a short filmed called 9, made by Shane Acker. I had know about the full length movie from my childhood, but i had no idea that it was based of a short film. My first impressions of the short film, was that it was old. It turns out that the movie is from 2005, a little bit younger than me. The movie had a small resolution, where it was hard to see detail in the movie. It also had horrible texturing. However, these problems are passable, because Shane acker directed, and co-animated the short film over a 4 years, while being a student in college. I liked the plot in the short film, It was bare bones, but in a good way, the perfect amount of plot for a short film. It was new and fresh compared to all of the animated films that i have ever watched. It brought terror, and uneasiness, to a bare bones plot, i really liked it. The characters were also interesting. They didn't talk at all, it was all just body movements, and facial expressions to understand their feelings and ideas. I also really liked it. They did the expression of the characters perfectly, It was cleen cut and simple. You can easily tell what they are trying to convey. There's not much character development, but it's fine enough. The special effects were fine enough i guess. The directorial style is great too, The director directed it very well, it was also clean cut and simple. Overall, it was a very good, i enjoyed the short film.