Short Film Poster research - Saurora

Saurora

Saurora is a short film directed by Pavel Siska which is an underwater rescue mission on a remote planet centred around two co-workers in heavy submersible suits which takes an unplanned course.

MRANG concepts

- Genre

- Media Language

- Audience

- In this poster, the title and tagline standout. This is because the producers want the audience to see this as it has rhetorical questions creating enigma possibly making people want to watch the film.

- The poster appears to have a snapshot from the short film, this makes people wonder what happens as the poster looks interesting to audiences. In the shot we can also see the face of one of the actors. This infers that this is the protagonist giving some information about the film.

- This poster has a dark theme as it relates to the short film which appears to be a thriller or action thriller. This is apparent due to the tagline and background image for the poster.

- At the bottom of the poster there is an of information about the film, and in this we can see they have made a Facebook page. This is good advertising as Facebook is used by a vast amount of people and can be good for gaining publicity.

Genre

The genre of this short film is most probably action thriller. This is because of the snapshot creating enigma but, is a snapshot of what appears to be a fight scene making the audience think it has aspects of action in it.

Media Language

By the image used in this we can see that the short film is possibly based underwater. This is because of the blue tint and suits worn by the characters. The font used has a light blue tint making it seem like it is freezing over. This infers that it is set deep underwater explaining the suits for water pressure and as it would be very cold due to there being little to no sunlight. This is also supported by the tagline "who will you become under pressure" which denotes they are underwater.

Audience

The audience for this short film would most probably be a teen or young adult demographic. This is because it has a genre which is appealing to this age group due to being interesting and exciting keeping the audience entertained.

Structure

This poster is in portrait. This could be because the producers wanted to get as much of the character in the shot as possible and keep the surrounding secluded to create enigma. This would also make room for all the text they wanted to have on to poster whilst not getting in the way of the background image. 

Initial Short Film Poster Hand Drawn Draft for 'Alone'- Connor Hilton

Initial Short Film Poster Hand Drawn Draft for 'Alone'- Connor Hilton

Image of the draft:

This is the Initial Draft of the poster. 

Some of the poster is hard to see in this picture so I have taken close up images of different parts of the poster. I am going to give some explanation after each image to say why I have included something on the poster. Also, my drawing skills aren't as good as my Photoshop skills so it may be hard to see what I am trying to achieve. 

Close Up Images:

Title

Title: The title is located in the top left of the poster and is in a bold font to make it stand out. I may decide to move the title to the center at the top of the page and I have taken images from multiple points to account for the title moving into a different place. This text will be in white to make it easy to read and make it stand out from the rest of the background image.

Reviews

Reviews: The reviews are located underneath the title of the poster. This is because people will initially read the title but they will also see the star ratings and the comments left by reviewers. On the main poster it will also say who gave the review and the quotes may be different, I have initially taken a few adjectives and put them in quotes to show what will be there later. 

Character

Character: The character is located in the center of the poster from an extreme long shot which means you can see the character's whole body. The character is standing in the middle of an empty road and is looking away from the camera. He is wearing dark clothing which con notates the way the character is feeling. On the poster draft I have simply drawn a stick man however, I will post one of the possible images at the bottom of this post so it is possible to see what the overall image will look like along with the scenery. 

Awards

Awards: I have added some awards at the bottom left of the poster. The idea of this is to convince our audience that the film is of high quality and worth their time. Again, I have initially chosen some generic film awards but they should be more relevant and useful to the audience on the full poster.

Possible Image:

This is the image that I am currently planning on using. I am going to experiment with the placement of titles to see what works best. You can also see the detail of the character in this image and how damp and low lit the area is to show the feel of the image. 

Taking the Pictures for the Poster - Short Film Poster

Taking the Pictures for the Poster - Short Film Poster

Today we went out to take the pictures that we will use for our short film posters. These are the pictures that we will use in our photoshop drafts.

Here are just a few of the photos that we took:

The Production Company For Our Short Film - Promotional Research

The Production Company For Our Short Film - Promotional Research

An important part to the promotional part of our short film is creating a company that is going to be the production company for the short film. This means that we had to create a name for the company and a logo. This logo will appear in the short film itself and it will appear on the poster for the short film.

The name for out company is 'White Wolf Productions'
Here is the logo for the company:

Titling of Our Short Film - Post-Production

Titling of Our Short Film - Post-Production

The titling of our short film is a very important element to the short film. This is because it will appear in the short film itself as well as on the promotional material for the short film.

Originally we were going to call the short film 'Me, Myself and I' because this connotes the loneliness aspect of the short film. However, this is the title of a very well known song which means that we would not be able to use this as the title for our short film. Instead we came up with the title 'Alone'. This is because the protagonist of the short film is struggling with loneliness because he has no one around him which makes him feel isolated and this leads to his depression.

After choosing the title for the short film we created some mock-ups for how the title could look:

1

2

3

Then once we had designed some drafts for how this could look we discussed each one and how it would affect the promotion and the effect/meaning is has.

1. The first one was very good because it is a very thin font which is spaced out a lot. This connotes the main characters loneliness. However, because this title would have to be used in the short film as well as on the short film poster we decided that it was not a good font for the poster because it was too thin. This would mean that it wouldn't stand out at all when on a poster.
2. The second one is good because the letters are spaced out, however, the font is very bold which puts a lot of emphasis on the title being ALONE. For this reason we didn't like it and we felt that it would not fit in well with the short film and it would not work as promotional material for the short film.
3. This is the daft that we are going to use for our short film title. This is because the font it not too bold, however, it is bold enough to stand out when on a poster. Also, the spacing of the letters connotes the protagonists loneliness. The only thing that we would change about this title before we put it onto our short film is maybe increase the distance between the lettering by a small amount.  

Inital Audience Feedback - Post-Production

Initial Audience Feedback - Post-Production

Here are some samples of the piece. There are rushes which means that they have not been edited yet and they are just the raw footage that we shot. We will show these rushes to the audience and then ask for some initial feedback to make sure that they get that same ideas as we had planned for them to get.

                                      

What we did:

We set up a group chat on Facebook with 10 members of the target audience in it. Then we showed them the clips above and we explained to them that these were all of the shots that we shot during filming and that none of the clips has been edited. The reason that we did this was get some initial feedback on our short film. We wanted to see from the target audience what they thought about the story, characters and the atmosphere at certain points with in key scene of the short film. We wanted to know if the views that the audience were giving up were the same as what we intended it to be.

The Feedback

Below is the feedback that we got from the sample group that we showed the clips to.

Scene 1:

• They felt that the character in the blue trousers (the protagonist) was very happy. This is how we wanted the character to come across in this scene.
• We had to explain to the sample audience that this scene was supposed to be a montage and once we told them that then they all understood that it was supposed to show the protagonist being happy with his friend.
• Also, they said that the friend appears to be sad which is made more apparent by the happiness of the protagonist. This is good because the audience will be shocked by what happens in the next scene, however, they will then be able to understand why the friend looked so and maybe they will be able to connect the dots to realise that the friend killed himself.

Scene 6:

• They understood that this was the part of the story where the protagonist is trying to fix his loneliness by connecting with other people and trying to make new friends.
• They felt sympathy with the character as he is trying to fix the problem he is having. This is good because it helps the audience connect with the character on an emotional level because loneliness and depression is something that can affect people within the target audience of the short film.
• On top of this, we explained to them that this scene was originally planned to happen on a computer, however, we changed it to a phone because we thought is would be more relate able. They agreed with us because they said most of the time people use Facebook on their phones to talk to other people which meant the target audience could relate to it more than if we had used a computer.
• They did have one negative about this scene which was because the atmosphere of the scene is happy they felt that the costume of the character was very dark and sad. They said that the costume should have been lighter to match the happy atmosphere. We do agree with this, however, at the start of the scene even though the character is determined to find a new friend he is still grieving over his dead friend.
• Finally, they said that the characters facial expression showed that he is determined which is good because we want the audience to know that the protagonist is determined to overcome his problem.

Scene 8:

• When we showed this scene to the sample they said that the character appears to be happy with what he is doing.
• Also, they said that it is very clear what he is going to try and do, additionally, they said that they really like the cliff hanger ending because to makes them question whether he will actually kill himself. They said that is is effective because it makes them think back to the other parts of the short film and think whether he would go through with the act of killing himself.
• They did say that it looked good with the fog in the background of the shots which helped the scene seem more mysterious, however, they said it was very light out which gave the scene a happier feel than we wanted it to.

Overall, the feedback that we go from this initial audience research was good. This is because the audience understood the main effects that we tried to portray with the key scenes of the short film. This means that they understood the atmosphere of the scene, how it affected the story and they connected with the characters in the scene.

Research For Promotion, Distribution and Exhibition and the Role of Film Festivals-Connor Hilton

Research For Promotion, Distribution and Exhibition and the Role of Film Festivals-Connor Hilton, Sam Swinson & Jake Woolven

Promotion:

One way that we could promote our short film would be to create a website for the short film and share the website with others via social media. Having a website is better than simply uploading the short film to YouTube or Vimeo as it allows you to provide more information on the short film.  It will also make it seem more official. 

I feel that our main source of promotion will be social media and our blog. This is because we will be ale to share links on social media and our blog could be used to show the process that was gone through to make the short film which some of our audience may be interested in seeing. 

Reviews - Connor Hilton:

A review of a short film can provide useful constructive criticism, praise and most importantly, publicity. For some people reviews are their main way of deciding whether to watch a film or not, others like to see it for themselves. The majority of people will only watch something with good reviews which is why they are so important for the promotion of your film. 

If your film was to get a terrible review then it would obviously be bad in most ways. People would think your film wasn't worth watching and just not bother watching it. This is why it's important that your film gets a good review. There would be one upside to getting a bad review in that some people get enjoyment from watching bad films, so at least there's that. 

Certain news sites or magazine companies will only review a certain type of film. The film that we are making would get reviewed by a newspaper or magazine that reviews short films, for example "Little White Lies". This means that the people that read the reviews would be the specific audience of people that enjoy short films.

Some may argue that any publicity is good publicity, however, in our case I feel that this doesn't apply. I feel this way because if our short film got a bad review then people that read the review would be less likely to watch the short film, aside from the few who might enjoy watching something with bad reviews.

People who are very invested in watching short films may also share a link to a short film review if they agreed with what was being said and this would gain more publicity for the short film being reviewed.

Lastly, sometimes the site that is reviewing the short film may embed or link to the short film that they are reviewing so that the readers can watch the short film for themselves, which would give the short film even more publicity.

All in all, I feel that reviews are very important for a short films promotion. But, whether the review is good or bad it can make or break your promotional stage for your short film.

Film Festivals - Sam Swinson:

A short film festival is an event where lots of short films are enter in and they are showcases to a massive audience. The audience that go to these festivals are very specific because they will most likely be short film enthusiasts. Lots of short film makers will enter their short films into these festivals because it is an effective way of getting your work to be seen by lots of people that enjoy short films.

Most short film festivals will give out awards to the best short films at the festivals. These awards will help promote the short film because often the festival awards that a short film has won will appear on the short film poster.

There are lots of different types of people that go to short film festivals including:

• People that want to network and met new people to help their film making careers.

• People that want to learn from what others are doing by looking at some of the best work.
• People that want to get inspired by watching other peoples work.
• People that want to get a job.
• People that want to make a business partnership.

• People that want to create high quality content for their blogs.
• People that want to relay the knowledge they obtain onto their teammates.
• People that want to stay successful.

• People that want to spy on what other people are doing and collect intelligence.
• People that want to make a sale.