Focus Group for my Short Film



I showed my short film to a focus group of media students and then asked them similar questions as that of which my survey asked to try to receive more criticism in order to be able to improve my short film, however I did not receive much in terms of improving my film apart from that of which I got previously on my survey so the effectiveness of the screening of the film followed by the questions was not particularly that effective due to the fact that the survey had acted as a much easier and clearer way for me to receive feedback on my short film; as I made it clear on the survey that I wanted people to explain their answers fully. As it was not particularly necessary for me to change too much about my film, the feedback wasn't overly effective, but it made it clear to me what parts people liked most about my short film, as I asked questions such as How would you rate the different elements of my short film? Of which the majority of people liked the costumes and the music more than anything else, as well as what did you like most about my short film? Of which people liked the lighting techniques and the props the most. I think it was equally as important for me to find out what people liked about my film as it is to know what people thought I ought to improve so that I knew that those parts were safe and well done so that they did not need anything more to be done with them, unless I personally thought that they did. In terms of the feedback that I got that actually did influence me to improve my film, the effects were very effective in making my film both more visually aesthetic, but using 'Luma Waveform' on the exterior shot of Lotta made the film more conventionally Film Noir by creating a greater contrast between black and white as well as making the rain that the light caught more visible; rain being another convention of Film Noir.



Film Article Draft

Technical Difficulties

Technical Difficulties During the Filming Process

The majority of technical difficulties I faced were during the actual filming process of producing my short film:

• The Camera- While I was filming for "The Huge Snooze", on multiple occasions the camera would automatically stop recording the scenes, and would present me with an error message informing me that the "Footage has been Automatically Stopped". I at first put this down to the camera running out of space, but then I'd check through the memory card and it would have more than enough free space, and would immediately allow me to film afterwards without having to get rid of anything. However, we had more takes which were not disrupted by the error message than we did with them so it wasn't too much of an issue; just an annoyance. 

• The Battery Life- The battery life for the Cannon EOS 550D was a ridiculously short duration. We would only get a couple of hours of footage out of it before we had to recharge the battery, which would take anything from 1 hour to 1 hour and a half to do, before we could continue filming again.  The main issue with this was that to achieve a genuine Film Noir effect without the use of black out curtains meant that I needed to film at night; and I needed to make sure my actors weren't too tired or too annoyed that they couldn't go on any longer. We finished filming at 4am on the 31st of October and the actors were both so tired that they were dropping lines and making mistakes throughout the dialogue scene between Lotta Clivage and Marshal Mallows; despite being professional actors who were very much used to acting so don't usually make these mistakes.

• The Tripod- When I borrowed a tripod from the school's media department, there was only the one left and it happened to have one if it's three feet missing. This meant that whenever I used the tripod, I could never get a perfectly straight shot. I got around this issue by putting the footless leg at the back with the two legs with feet at the front, and I lowered the two front feet to try to make all three legs match. This was never much of an issue as the tripod was sturdy enough to keep the camera still, and I did manage to make the camera straight, so the tripod still fulfilled it's function as a tripod. 

Technical difficulties During the Editing Process

However, there were also a few minor issues during editing:

• Matching Footage to Audio- Because I was matching the visuals to the soundtrack; which consisted of diagetic sounds such as sound effects, and non-diagetic sounds such as the music and the narration, I had to make sure that the visuals and the audio lines up perfectly; like making a music video. For example, in the scene where Mallow is describing the way Lotta's looks, the camera zooms into her eyes when the narrator (Mallow) says "Her eyes were the kind of green that would make envy jealous..." the actress looks up towards the camera as the word "eyes" are said, as well as lifting up her eyebrows when the word "money" is mentioned. However despite the timing of this matching perfectly with the audio, the actress reacts by opening her mouth in shock before the narrator says "As for her breasts". I got around this issue by cutting the footage into two halves, the first half was from the beginning of Mallow's description of Lotta's appearance up until the description of her lips, and the second was from the end of the descriptions of her lips up until the end of the description of her breasts. For the latter, I slowed down the frame rate ever so slightly so that the actress reaction was in time with the audio, but not too much so that it is noticeably slower. The result was unnoticeable as the footage looked the same speed as before, despite the timing now being a few seconds slower. It worked perfectly. 

• Filming Footage without a Backing Track- As the majority of the footage was shot with the backing track playing out loud so that the actors knew what to do at certain times, like how one would act if in a music video, it became quite problematic to film edit some parts of the film that would have had to be filmed without a backing track. For example, when we were filming the scene where Mallow is tidying his office in an attempt to make it look presentable for Lotta's entrance; which is shown at 250 frames per second to a sped up version of 'We're in the Money' to create a much more comical scene, the original footage was obviously filmed in normal speed so we couldn't work to an actual time, we just had to estimate. When I came to edit it, the footage was longer than the sped up section from 'We're in the Money' was, and if I made the footage faster to fit in time with it, the footage merely skipped like a movie being fast forwarded rather than Benny Hill style sped up footage. Therefore, I went back to the audio editing program and put the tune back in. This was a positive things though as the extended tune is actually funnier than it was prior to before.  

Final Draft for 'The Huge Snooze'

As clearly seen, the role and purpose of my main product, which is my short film entitled The Huge Snooze, was to create a postmodern take on the genre of Film Noir, by parodying many of the genres conventions, in terms of certain shots used, the narrative, the characters and the props and costumes etc. For example, the protagonist's internal monologue is heard through the use of a hard-boiled non-diagetic narration; typical of Film Noir, however  in this case the narration is riddled with subtle jokes, establishing that this is a comedy. Every aspect of the film is a parody, even down to the films ident. Not only does the title 'A One Rehearsal Picture' linguistically resemble 'A Universal Picture', the film company who made most of the famous Film Noir movies, but the idiom replicated the 1930's-40's Universal one; with a DC3 propeller plane orbiting the Earth as it spins on it's own axis and then disappearing from view around the unseen part of the planet. I have also put a lot into the story in order to pastiche popular examples of Film Noir; in particular, possibly the most famous Film Noir movie, The Big Sleep featuring Humphrey Bogart. Not only is my film's title, The Huge Snooze, a clear parody of The Big Sleep, but the film following the life of Private Investigator Marshal Mallow, a clear homage to Bogart's portrayal of the character Phillip Marlowe. I even went as far as to put the book of The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler on Mallow's desk as an intertextual reference. Another reason as to why my film is an example of a postmodern comedy is due to it's near cringe-worthy, black humour in the form of the almost sexist nature of the film; for starters the fem fatale, Lotta Clivage, is played by a woman with a large cleavage; with explicit references to her breasts in the script, and with the narration and, in some cases, the shots representing the POV of Marshal Mallow, representing his voyeuristic nature  as he judges Lotta sexually. This links to the feminist critic Laura Mulvey, who speaks about the concept of the 'Male Gaze' in her Essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema by parodying the male gaze by literally having the male protagonists POV moving down very close to, and facing, Lotta's cleavage, which then cuts to a wide shot of the room, revealing that Mallow's face was right up against Lotta's breasts. Another, perhaps more extreme example of this is when Marshal stops paying attention to anything that Lotta says and instead the camera, again from his perspective, moved down towards Lotta's cleavage until the screen blacks out. Due to the previous shot from Mallow's perspective, the audience is shocked to realise that Mallow's entire face has perhaps now dived into Lotta's cleavage. Although this may seem sexist towards woman, I intended for the audience to realise that it was not mocking Lotta; in fact she is who the audience should sympathise with, the film is insulting the sexist nature of 1930's and 40's men, and the way in which they'd treated women; personified by Marshal Mallow's and his grotesquely misogynist and money orientated nature. For this, I was inspired by the comedy film Monty Python's Life of Brian which was criticised by the church for ridiculing Jesus, but really Monty Python intended for the audience to realise that they were mocking the Romans. I believe that my short film has served it's purpose in terms of people understanding that it is a parody of Film Noir, with obvious homage to The Big Sleep in particular. When I was collecting feedback on my short film, I asked an audience of people who had just viewed my film whether or not they felt that the comedy aspects of my film; be it audio or visual, were explicit enough for them to understand that my film was a parody of the Film Noir and not just another Film Noir movie, and they all agreed that it was clearly a comedy, as it contained both explicit and subtle comedy elements. For example, the sped up section when Mallow is tidying his office to a sped up version of We're in the Money is cleary comical; in a Bennie Hill-esque manner. Whereas a quick cutaway shot to the Cluedo board on the wall with red ribbon pinned to it, between cards stuck onto the board, to replicate a detectives cork board is a much more subtle joke. 

Original Footage in its Raw State

This is the raw footage from the ident which introduces my short film. I wanted the background to be completely black so that it actually looked like the Earth in space. When I filmed the shot the background was too bright on the right hand-side and some things can be seen faintly in the background on the left, so I used a tool in Adobe Premier Pro to create a circle effect that went around the Earth and gradually faded out so that the Plane could still be see going around the Earth, but the entire background was black.

This is the raw footage of the shot where Mallow is tidying his office in an attempt to make it look presentable for when Lotta walks in. I sped up the footage in Adobe Premier Pro by 250% to make it even more comical. A royalty free variation of 'We're in the Money' plays while during this shot which is also sped up. This was inspired by Benny Hill and is a good example of where my film is also a comedy, not just Film Noir. 

Rough Cut of 'The Huge Snooze'

Here is a draft of my short film, The Huge Snooze. Despite this only being a rough draft with clear things that have to be changed, I made this just to show the standard I am currently working at. There are only a few clips, such as the cutaway clips to the door, the phone and the cluedo board, that I need to make longer. Most of the changed I need to do revolve around the audio, such as adding in some more sound effects when needed, such as a gun shot and a match strike sound, as well as cutting down Lotta's theme during the dialogue scene as well as making the variation of We're in the Money longer during the scene when Marshal Mallow is tidying his office. When these changed are done, this film should be complete however I am likely to find slight problems that need to be changed on top of that. 

Photographs from Filming