Shooting evaluation

Audience feedback on poster

Link to my survey
I conducted an online survey about my poster to see if my poster appeals to the target audience of my film. The poster of a film is the films biggest advertising tool, so the need to get it right is crucial.

Final poster

When constructing our final poster I tried to stick to the codes and conventions of the real media models but  i also wanted to challenge them. The three main colours in the poster are red, blue and white. I turned up the contrast on the images and softened the colours to make them warmer in order to fit with the genre romance. The heart in the sky is a cheesy aspect to the poster but i think it works very well as it gives an uplifting feel to the movie. I photoshopped the two characters into the existing images we had taken used the shadow tool to make their appearances look more realistic. Since the mock poster i have added my own quote, billing block and certification. I made the billing block on Adobe Illustrator and later transferred it to photoshop. As ready made certification blocks are unavailable anywhere I had to make one, i also made it in adobe illustrator. The professional type face for billing blocks is very expensive so I used a different font and stretched it to try and make it look legitimate.

Research and planning - audience feedback from mock poster

We presented our first draft of the poster to Graphic designer Michael Leedham, he gave our poster back with notes on what he thought and what we need to do. He said we needed to add a quote in order to keep to the conventions of real media models. He also said that he liked the colour scheme and the heart in the sky as it clearly connotes a romance. He suggested that we make our tag line "life never waits" more bold in order for it to stand out, however we decided to not take his advise as we were worried it may look like the title. He also pointed out the absence of a certificate. We will take all of his notes into consideration when constructing our final poster.

research and planning - mock poster.

After drawing and thinking about ideas for our poster, Louise and I constructed this poster which is partly made up from imagery that we found on the internet. Although we had some of the production shots to work with we did not have the right pictures of the cast so we found similar looking models from the internet and put them in their place. This ended up working in our favour because when it came to taking our final photographs we knew the angles and positions we needed. After completing this poster i was worried that the title "Day By Day" did not stand out enough so we changed part of the poster into greyscale.
As it was only a mock poster the billing block was not ours and we got it from google. So when constructing the real poster we needed to create our own using Adobe Illustrator.
In conclusion I was happy with the final mock poster and after some essential adapting and editing i would use it for our real and final film poster.

Production shots

Me and louise took some production shots both before and during filming. We did this for a couple of reasons, when deciding where to shoot certain scenes it was very useful to have visual aids to help us decide for example what would work the best and look the best on camera.

For example this is a photograph taken at our school and it is where the "work place" scenes take place. This photo helped us to position our shot when it came to filming there, to make sure we did not capture anything school orientated within our shots.

This photograph was taken while on a shooting day and it is the cafe where the coffee scenes take place. 

This is the same location, the purpose of these photos was to get a better idea of the positioning of our shots. 

 This is a picture of me positioning one shot ready for us to start shooting.

A picture of louise setting up the tripod in the right position for our coffee scene.

Research and Planning -Filming permission for the London underground

For our short film we are using shots of the tube, to do this we had to contact TFL and find permission. Once on TFL website, we went to the LU film office where Leon Goswell from Commercial Operations got back to us. We applied for a student/low-budget filming permit which is £35 and emailed Leon our schools public liability insurance that we received from our school Bursar; Nigel. 

We had to work out which permit we were going to apply for, the category we fell under was "student/non-professional". 

This is a screen shot I took of the application form we had to complete in order to gain permission to film.

This is the information we received back from our application.

research and planning- shooting on location

When organising to shoot on location we need to think about the cast, the safety of equipment and our time management. to help us with this we constructed a table with the times we were going to shoot and what we need on location.
The safety of our camera equipment is one of our biggest concerns as it is borrowed. The location we are most worried about is on the tube, but we have come up with practical ways to ensure the cameras safety. For example we have a zip up bag that we can store the camera and tripod in when we're not filming, to protect the equipment from both weather and potential theft. We have to think about all the costume and props and make sure the camera battery is always fully charged in order to ensure that the days filming can run smoothly and not be interrupted by any unnecessary means.
Our biggest problem we had when first planning our locations is we needed to get special permission and insurance from TFL to film on the tube. We emailed the Media department for TFL and applied for filming permission.

Research and planning - shooting schedule

Shooting schedule

Shots	Date /time	Day/ night	Location	EXT/ INT	Crew	Cast	Costume/props
11,12 29	28/10/10 10:30	Day	Louise's House/ bedroom	INT	D.K L.A	L.A	Bed, alarm clock, pyjamas
3,12	28/10/ 10	Day	Louise's house/bathroom	INT	D.K L.A	L.A	Towel, pyjamas
4,5,6, 21	28/10/10	Day	Louise's house/ hallway	INT	D.K L.A	L.A	Work clothes/ warm coat, work bag
7,13, 14	28/10/10	Day	Louise's road	EXT	D.K L.A	L.A	Work clothes/ warm coat, work bag
30,31	28/10/10	Day	Louise's house/ bedroom	INT	D.K L.A	L.A	Summer dress, make up, mirror, work bag
32,2	28/10/10	Day	Louise's road	EXT	D.K L.A	L.A	Summer dress, work bag
22,23	28/10/10 14:30	Day	Deema's house/ bedroom	INT	L.A D.K	M.O	Work clothes, scarf, warm coat, umbrella, briefcase
15	28/10/10	Day	Deema's road	EXT	L.A D.K	M.O	Summer clothes, briefcase
26	05/11/ 10	Day	School	EXT	D.K L.A	L.A 4 e xtras	Work clothes,
27,28	05/11/ 10	Day	School/ lift	INT	D.K L.A	L.A M.O	Work clothes,
37,38	05/11/ 10	Day	School/ lift	INT	D.K L.A	L.A M.O	Summer clothes, white paper.
39,40	06/11/ 10	Day	Cafe	INT	D.K L.A	L.A	Purse, food, piece paper
25	06/11/10	Day	Coffee stall	EXT	D.K L.A	M.O D.K	Winter clothes, coffee cups
34,35	06/11/10	Day	Coffee stall	EXT	D.K LA.	L.A D.K	Coffee cups
41,42, 43	06/11/10	Day	Southbank	EXT	D.K L.A	L.A M.O	Wrist watch, summer clothes, piece of paper
1,24		Day	Tube platform	INT	D.K L.A	L.A
8,9		Day	Tube carriage	INT	D.K L.A	L.A	Work clothes
16,17, 18,19		Day	Tube carriage	INT	D.K L.A	L.A M.O	Make up, book, briefcase, newspaper, work clothes
33		Day	Tube carriage	INT	D.K L.A	M.O L.A	Work clothes

D.K - Deema Khafaji  
L.A – Louise Adams      
M.O – Milo O'halloran  
INT – internal  
EXT – external

Research and Planning- Locations

Click on the link below to view my Final shooting location and the advantages and disadvantages of using those sights.
Slide show showing our final shooting locations

storyboard

Shot list

http://www.scribd.com/doc/40875327/Short-Film-Shot-List

Final script

Click on the link below to view script.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/40537622/Final-Script

Our production company

Click on the link below to view our production company logo and ideas

http://www.slideshare.net/deemamk/our-production-company

research and planning - Our target audience.

After we conducted our online survey we got a good idea of what are target audience would be. 90% of females answered romance as a preferred genre and they were the most enthusiastic responders to the idea of our pitch. The age group was also made clear too with the most response coming from females, who were roughly 15 to 30. This information will be very useful to us as it will give us a clear idea of who we should be advertising to and a better insight to the kind of already established material we should be researching.

Research and planning- poster ideas

After deconstructing some posters i began to think of ideas for our film. I liked the format of the Bridget Jones's Diary poster and the chemistry between the two characters in the When Harry Met Sally poster. This drawing on the right was one of my original ideas. As part of the film will take place on the tube i liked the idea of bringing the London underground in to one of the main focus points in our poster. I drew our two characters sitting on what will be a platform with the tube behind it. I dressed the two main characters in work clothes and gave them both something to hold in order to symbolise everyday life, for example as our film is based around the idea of the daily cycle i chose for the man to be holding a newspaper and the woman a coffee cup. Another reason for the man to be holding a paper is i liked the idea of him peaking over it as i think it suits our story line and makes the picture more interesting. Although it is difficult to tell from this drawing i tried to show the facial expressions on the characters faces. The man is looking over his newspaper and eyes on the women he is smiling but ever so slightly as if to show he doesn't want her to notice. The women's expression is quite similar as in she is also looking at the man but her smile is more that she is pleased and flattered. From this i wanted to make it clear to the audience that both the characters like each other and that the man is the one to make his move. I then scanned my drawing on to the computer and added the font, i chose this font as it reminded me of the old vintage train station text and i thought it suit the theme well.

After completing my first idea i decided i didn't like how small the characters were in relation to the whole picture, so i cropped the same image on the computer. I decided i liked this more, it gave off the same ideas and it was clearer what the story was about. The only thing i didn't like about this idea was it lost its sense of location, which for this film is very important. I added a red shape and inserted swirly writing, i chose this font because in my eyes in symbolises romance.

Although i was more pleased with my second version of my poster idea i decided that the poster lost it meaning without the connotation of the London underground. So i researched to find another way to complete my idea. I found this image on google and it seemed very appropriate for my poster. I cleared the writing on the original photo and replaced it with 'Day By Day' the title of our movie.

This is another photo i found while researching ideas. It sticks with the theme of the tube but places the characters in different positions. I would place the characters sitting on either side of the carriage facing each other with the text in between them. I liked this idea as it would a clear indicator of what our film is about. The facial expressions would be the same as in the other poster idea.

This was another idea i had, the location would still be the tube but the two characters would be sitting on the seats inside the carriage and the camera straight on. There would be a stranger in the middle of them and they would be looking over the stranger at one and other. I found this picture on the right and drew arrows on it to demonstrate my idea. When presenting these ideas to my class, they told me i might be in danger of making the stranger the main focus. To prevent this from happening i could ask him to hold up a newspaper or book over his face so therefore unidentify him.