1. A PLACE TO
BE ALONE
BY STEFFAN CRYSTAL AND TERRY FARMILOE
AN EVALUATION OF AN A2 ADVANCED
PORTFOLIO

2. BRIEF
Our brief was to
create a short film
lasting approximately
5 minutes.

3. BRIEF
We created a short film which was within the
Art House genre. Our film was conventional in
its use of camera work, editing and mise-en-
scene, but was unconventional in its use of
sound and narrative .
This is screenshot from the film

4. IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA
PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR
CHALLENGE FORMS AND
CONVENTIONS OF REAL
MEDIA PRODUCTS?
• Filmic conventions:
Titles, variety of camera angles, match on action
Short films can be considered a genre on their own. They don’t
necessarily follow filmic conventions, for example of feature films. They
often have:
• An element of comedy
• A narrative which usually centers on a moral dilemma
The Art House genre allows film makers to challenge the conventions of
established genres.

5. OUR FILM USED SOME BUT NOT ALL OF
THE CONVENTIONS OF SHORT FILMS
Just 1 or 2 characters Variety of Twist in the story line
camera angles
Strong use of
steady cam Low budget
Short film
Conventions
Real life situation
Use of a comedy
element

6. ART HOUSE FILMS
We feel that we have made an art house film , we have come
to this conclusion by looking at some other art house films
the conventions of art house :
• Film theorist David Bordwell identified some conventions
of art-house cinema
• The main protagonist does not have clear-cut goals or
discernible motives : Our protagonist goal is to have a
time for himself and some peace and quite
• Screen time is often used without driving the narrative
forward : In our film we use a lot of long shots where not
much happens to create an atmosphere and make it feel
like its in real time

7. CAMERA
This is a conventional low angle This is a shot from behind the head, It is
shot that we used in our film an unconventional way of doing a point
of view
The image cannot be displayed. Your computer may not have enough memory to open the image, or the image may have been corrupted. Restart your The image cannot be d
computer, and then open the file again. If the red x still appears, you may have to delete the image and then insert it again. computer, and then op
A low angle is used to make the
audience feel small and gives This shot allows the audience to
dominance to our protagonist feel that they are in his position
We have also used a medium and also shows us his
close up (mcu) to show his facial surroundings.
expressions.

8. ART HOUSE
CONVENTIONS
Slow pace film – this is an example of a slow paced short
film. Uzak by Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Lack of dialogue: Our film is a silent movie so we had to tell
the story through the actions of the character .
Incoherent narrative : the feedback from our film shoed the
we did have a coherent narrative.
No change in the character . in our film the change in
character is very minimal, he goes from being calm and
contained and in there pursuit of peace and quite and
progress to a person that would kill another person.

9. THIS IS AN EXAMPLE
OF A LONG SHOT
This shot lasting 7.50 seconds which is
a long shot and these are conventional
to the art house genre.

10. CAMERA
This is a great example of an
establish shot because
Batman is set in one city and
shows the audience loads of
detail of where the film is
based.
Establishing shots- Establishes where the
film is set or what kind of environment the
scene is set in

11. CAMERA
We have used these establishing shots to put the audience in
the mood of the scene and reinforce the setting of the film.
These are examples of establishing
shots from our film these shots are
conventional and show the audience
where the they are and the change
scenery.
They are essential for the film’s
narrative because they explain the
location of his escape.

12. MISE-EN-SCENE
This is a screen shot of our film
showing some props we used for
the daily routine sequences. This
established our character and
showed the audience he had a
daily routine .
This is an example
of different costumes
which we have used.
To show different
days in the film.
This choice of costume shows the passing of time and shows the audience different days. This also
establishes the character as a teenager, he wears conventional clothes for a character of this age.
Sandwich – Is a prop to signify the different days, we developed this idea from a short Youtube film
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-jVauuqRaE where the background of the central character changes.

13. EDITING
Continuity editing
Titles
Transitions
Match on Action
Sound

14. CONTINUITY EDITING
It is a convention to edit
the film to maximize
continuity to make the film
appear like it was filmed in
one go. This also allows
the audience get in the
mood of the film without
making the film jumpy
which can take the viewer
out of the film experience
Match On Action We used Continuity and
match on action editing
In this clip we can also we an example of because it is conventional
match on action when he gets up and
walks off and goes into the other shot.

15. TITLES
This is our opening titles to
introduced the film , we
have also put sound in the
back ground to create a
busy atmosphere so that
the audience can
understand that our
protangist wants to get
away from the busy day to
day life .
The titles also gives the audience the name of
the actors, the production company name,
and the name of the film. To used titles in a short
film is also conventional

16. SOUND
Used, developed or challenged conventions of sound?
Our film challenged the conventions of sound by not having any
dialogue. Instead we used traffic sound effects to introduce the story.
• Sound effects for the opening sequence
• The first song has a beat which can be related to the routine of the
character’s day. The second song, which doesn’t have a regular
beat can be related to the spontaneity of the character’s nature.
Sound Effect
• These are the songs we used to
create atmosphere in our film. We
Sound track over used free music archive
our film

17. HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE
COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN
PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TEXTS?
• Creating synergy
We feel we have created
synergy throughout our film,
film magazine review and poster.
We film that our film directly
links to the style and content
of our poster and magazine.
If the audience were to read
the magazine review and
poster they would expect to
see the film we have created
Magazine
poster
review

18. Other magazines to compare to
We have researched other magazines which we thought would
relate to our audience and the genre of our chosen film. One of
the main magazines we thought would appeal to the same
audience was Sight and Sound.
Our magazine has the
same style layout of both
of these reviews. We can
see this by the way they
have a picture of the main
protagonist which is the
convention that stands out
most on the page. Our film
post also contains a quote
and a film rating this would
give some information to
the audience about what
reviews have thought of
the film. We have also put
film synopsis which would
sum up the film briefly.

19. This is an example showing the
synergy and our visual mark for
our film
This is an example
of good synergy.
Straight away the
audience can tell
that both of these
posters relate the
the design and by
the font used.

20. COMBINATION OF
MAGAZINE AND POSTER
How do they relate to each other? - Font, style & design,
colour scheme.
In the magazine review and the film poster we have chosen to use the two
different photos of our protagonist this would help the audience identify with
our film. In our film title we have used the same font and creates synergy by
the way both of the l’s line up so that when our audiences see this they
identify the film with the magazine and the poster.

21. THE COMBINATION OF POSTER
AND FILM We poster for example costume and setting. used in
the
can already see the mise en scene being
These are all
examples to
show how our
poster is
conventional.
The font
used hear
reinforces
the serious
Title of film
theme of
this movie
The film still
with graffiti
clearly
identifies the Picture of the main character.
film as being Connotes a pensive theme.
aimed at a The institutional information connotes The low angle shot emphasizes
younger professionalism that this is the main character
audience

22. Magazine Review
These are all example to show how our magazine
review is conventional.
This is a shot from the
movie, it is a low angle
shot and we can see This picture is of the
his expression on his main character in the
face which he is film and this shows to
feeling in the film. the audience that it
relates to the poster
and to the film.
This information This is the title of the
tells us about film and is the same
about the film for on the poster and on
example who film titles. This shows
directed it and the combination of are
the age rating of main product and how
the film. they are linked with the
ancillary text.
The text here is
directed at the
same audience
as the movie is Website of the
directed at. magazine for more
information
Page number and date
of the magazine

23. AUDIENCE FEEDBACK FROM THE
FILM
This is an example of one of the
questionnaires we handed out to the
audience to see what they thought .
Good Points: everyone was able to quickly
Identify the film’s genre.
The audience recognised that loads of
different shot sizes were used.
They also thought that sound effects and
tracks went well with out film
The music added to the relaxed nature of
the first part of the film.
Weaknesses: some of the audience
found it hard to follow the narrative.
The pace of the film was too slow

24. AUDIENCE RECOGNITION
OF SYNERGY BETWEEN
FILM AND POSTER
Having seen the film, would Having seen the poster
you say that the poster is a would you go and see the
good representation of the film?
film?
10%
41%
Yes
Yes No
No 59%
90%

25. WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM
YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?
Poster version 1
Having found out that only 45% of people who had seen our
poster would see the film we decided to make some changes
to the poster.
The main issues that were raised were about the colour of
the poster, the audience said it should be darker because
they felt that it would relate to our film more. Another issue
that was raised was about the magazine reviews who gave
our film the stars, the audience said the writing was to small
and hard to read with the background. After the audience
feedback. We decided these were the main issues that we
thought we would need to change.
Poster version 2
Here we decided to change the color from
white to black, this gave the poster a
darker look
Here we made the font bigger so it stands
out more so the audience can read it and
make sense of the stars
Here we changed the twitter and
Facebook sign so the audience knows
were to find out more about the film

26. HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE
CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND
EVALUATION STAGES?
• Open source software - Celtx
• Web 2.0 – Free Music Archive
• Media literacy
• InDesign
• Final Cut Pro
• Adobe Photoshop
• After Effects
• Abelton Live
• DSLR CAMERAS

27. USING MODERN
TECHNOLOGY
We used a DSLR camera to film our film (Canon 60D)
The reason this camera was
good to film on is because it
films in full1080p HD, it has
interchangeable lenses witch
makes it much easier to get a
variation of shots , it has a high
iso range
Some down falls of the camera
• It has a small field of focus
• It only takes SD cards instead of compact flash drives

28. RESEARCH
To help us with our
research into short films
we use Youtube, we
found this use full
because it had loads of
short film from in all
different genres.
This is an example of a short film that
our film could relate to. We find that
this is similar by the establishing shots
used, also the use of a soundtrack and
a voiceover which we thought we
would try but in the end we decided to
only use a sound track with sound
affects to create more atmosphere.
Some of the channels we prefer for
short films were future shots and blue
tongue films.

29. USE OF CELTX
1 INT. CLASSROOM.DAY 1
CONTINUED: 6.
Two 18 year old boys are sat in a class room alone, Eric and
Bob. Around them are groups of people chatting, high-fiving,
and talking about how fun their weekend was. ERIC
we will get you your money by the
BOY 1 end of the week i swear
(excited) DEALER
Yeah! That party was sick! Did you If you don’t get me that cash, you
see me with Holly? don’t wanna dream of what will
happen to you. Remember. End of the
BOY 2 week.
Yeah she’s fit, man! Did you try
any of the bubble? bob and eric run off panicking
BOB
BOY 1 (A little excited)
Yeah all day in bed come Sunday. I did you see me stand up to him
would do it again though! So worth Eric?
it!
ERIC
(dismissive)
2 CAMERA CUTS TO BOYS SAT ALONE AND QUIET. 2 oh shut up Bob
ERIC 9 INT. STREET.DAY 9
(To Bob)
Did you hear that? The party last ERIC
week that we missed again. Shit! Bob, how are we going to get
him his money?
BOB
Yeah, I guess they forgot to tell BOB
don’t worry Eric we have loads of
us. options.
ERIC ERIC
...again. well what are they then bob
BOB BOB
If we organised something on that ermmm...
scale we could get everyone hear to ERIC
come. what about if we save our pocket
money.... or we could, we could
ERIC sell our phones?
Yeah, right. You wish.
BOB
how about we borrow some money from
3 INT. LANDING.DAY 3 your parents and put it back before
they get back.
Camera leads up to a door with a 2 Pac poster on it. ERIC
no. we are not taking money from my
parents.

30. SCREENFLOW OF THE EDITING
PROCESS
This is a screen recording of some editing in our movie. It is an
example of a shot reverse shot. You see the character walking
down the path and you see that he is confused we go to a shot
over his shoulder to see what he was confused about then back
finally to his face for a reaction shot.

31. ABELTON LIVE
Abelton Live is what we used to
make a song for the movie all
though we didn’t use it in our
film it was very interesting to use
This is the display for the looping tool
This line represents the volume level
This is the sound bar it
displays the wave forms

32. WEB 2.0
This is an example of a website we used called free music archive, we found
this very useful because we could find free music of any genre to go with our
film and help explain our film by the track we used.

33. PHOTOSHOP
This is an example
of a tool called
curves which we
used, this help us
with the contrast of
our poster to make
it look professional
and get the color
more shape.
With Photoshop it is also useful for adding titles and
positioning them. We also used this tool to add some
conventions for example the stars.
We added this to our poster to
give our audience some
information out the film and
show awards it has won.