Final Website

http://jeppelaursen97.wix.com/digital-media

Final Film

Final Postcard

Evaluation Question 5

 VIDEO

1)From the opening scene, what can you deduce about the short film?

2) can you see an immediate difference between the two characters? If so,what? And how does that make you feel towards the short?

3) do you notice a change in music from jeppe’s scene to abduls scene ?what affect did that have on you?

4) if you have any previous knowledge on diabetes can you add anything on to the information given through this short film?

5) on a scale of 1-5 how important  did you find the statistics at the end of the short film? And why ?

6) after watching this short film, do you feel you have more knowledge about diabetes? any specifics?

WEBSITE

7) Is the website easy to navigate? Would you feel confortable using this as an ‘every day’ website

8) do you like the colour scheme of the website? Is it easy to understand and read? F not give examples of what you don’t like.

POSTCARD

9) in terms of synergy, do you the postcard and website match as a campaign? If so what stood out to you the most? If not,why?

10) what was your overall view of the postcard? Does the information on it want to make you watch the film? If so/ if not why?

Evaluation Question 4

For this questions we all contributed to the final video.

Me- i discussed how we used Final Cut Pro and also editing the whole question on Final Cut Pro

Jeppe- jeppe discussed how to use six to create a website and also talked about how we used blogger to present our work.

Abdul- Abdul talked about what equipment we used such as cameras and dolly's.

Maya- lastly maya discussed how to use Photoshop where she is showing you how she created the postcard.

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 2

Question 2 from Taylor Brooks

Evaluation Question 1

For this question jeppe and i collaborated on it. For this Jeppe wrote the script and we took it in turns to read out different conventions for our film, website and postcard. I edited the question on final cut pro.

The script:

Short Film:

Narration- A lot of short films have narration; this means there is a speaker which is not necessary visible to the audience. This voice is usually very clear and sophisticated, this is the general convention of voice overs. We chose to use two narrators; these were not professional speakers with an excellent voice but instead we used our own actors. We felt this made the film more personal, we were trying to reach our audience on a personal level. The reason for using narration is that it allows us to cut out certain parts of the film to make sure it fits the allocated time limit and still have a clear story because details can be explained by the speaker. It also helped the editing process as we just removed all sound from the clips and re did the voice overs. Using a voice over we are able to approach the audience in a settle way, they become more familiarized with the actors which allows them to feel their emotions more, this makes the piece more powerful in showcasing our message which is diabetes isn’t a joke and it needs to be treated.

Interviews – A very conventional aspect from our genre which is educational films is to use interviews. We originally planned to use multiple interviews of both doctors and patients. This idea we quickly got rid of, we were very limited in time and the interviews were taking up a lot of film time. We completely scratched the idea and used text facts instead to help promote our message throughout the piece.

Characters – this is one of the more obvious conventions, short films tend to only use one or 2 main characters. This is down due short films, literally being short therefore there is not a lot of time to establish a deeper story behind multiple characters. We followed this convention in our piece, we only used 2 main characters and the whole story was based around them too. This worked out really well as people were able to understand their backgrounds through a combination of clips and narration. 

Twist- Short films usually have a twist in the short time period, this is similar to normal films where you get a twist and a resolution. The reason for using a twist is that it makes the production more interesting for the audience, films use them because no audience wants to watch someone in their regular lifestyle, they want to see the lifestyles be challenged. We establish equilibrium by introducing the two characters, the twist then comes in when one character’s health is endangered. The resolution then comes after, for our film we followed this convention and media theory a lot.

Situation – Similarly to the twist short films usually take an everyday situation that the audience is able to relate to and then flip it on its head is some way. We do this by establishing our actors in their everyday lives, their lives then coincidently conflict each other which helps the film move to its resolution. It allows the viewer to relate to the issue which is promoted in films and at the same time intrigue the audience.

Postcard:

Color Scheme: Postcards conventionally follow a color scheme of 2-3 colors to generate a cohesive and pleasing text for the audience. Our color scheme is a calm purple essence, we continued this color scheme throughout our products to create a sense of branding. The colors on our postcard are not complicated to look at, most of the attention is lead towards the actor who is the main subject.

Star: By featuring a well-known person on the postcard, audience members who are familiar with the ‘star’ I’ll be inclined to see the film, acts as a persuasive device. We are using one of our main actors as the so called star on our postcard to help the audience be familiar with it and relate it to the film.

Image: Instead of using a ‘star’ you can use an image and have the subject displayed as a silhouette or participating in an indirect mode of address, a mysterious atmosphere is generated which may intrigue the audience and persuade them to see the film. We did not follow this convention as we felt we could not use an image to represent or film well enough. Our production is not focused around something materialistic, it focuses on the lives of two individuals and therefore we felt it was important that the emotional connection was made with a person.

Awards: A very simple and common convention that the short film postcards are to have the short films nominations displayed on the actual card. This is usually done through a small clipart of two feathers bending outwards, then the name of the nomination or the film festival it is being shown at is pasted in the middle. We followed this convention as it is very generic and basically necessary to fit the nominations onto there. It helps make the postcard appear more professional.

Social Media: To create a sense of branding through our products, we are sharing our social media links on all of our products. This is a convention that we follow from professional products as it allows for audiences to have a quick link to news about the film. Almost any level of production company is able to use social media to promote themselves, pasting the URL to promote the links.

Website:

Theme: We created the website using WIX which is an online tool that enables you too easily create websites; you start out with a template which you can chose. Here obviously, I searched for film themes and found one which was relative to films. This theme then outlined the website, from there we input all of the information relevant to our production.

Social Media: Likewise, of the postcard, the social media links were posted onto the website. These links lead to pages which were created for our film, this includes Twitter[JL1] , Facebook and YouTube. These links are the same which were pasted on the postcard, this creates a sense of branding for our products. 

Interaction: A successful website usual allows for the user to interact with the website, using certain features such as click videos and browsing galleries the user is not just reading information of the page but instead they are able to interact with it. This convention we deemed very essential, with the creation of web 2.0 it came really easy to hand as well. 

Text: A more obvious convention was to limit the text; users are generally not interested in reading large amounts of texts on pages. We limited the usage by incorporating more images and videos instead as it appeals more to the user.

Postcard Process

Originally we had an idea to fuse 2 photos together of both of our main actors together showing half of their faces. One of the actors was going to be in a healthy environment and the other in a fast food restaurant of some kind, showing he was unhealthy.
These are the 2 photos we were going to fuse:

however we decided not to go for this idea as it seemed like too much was going on in the postcard. Instead we decided on just having jeppe on our postcard, using the same image that we were going to use for the original idea.

We created our postcard on Photoshop as it was the easiest to use. First we imported the picture and then removed the background. 

We did this by using polygonal lasso tool and then once we removed the majority of the background we zoomed in and used the erase tool to remove the smaller areas to make it look more professional. 

Then we added the title which we got from fonts101.com using the 'Jeepers' font after trying out different fonts to see which one fit best. 

This is our final title that we decided on:

Once we decided on it we added the text that we wanted on our postcard. Text such as production company, the film awards and the names of the actors in the film.

Next we added in the background. We wanted our background to be plain and simple and we wanted to follow our colour scheme of pinkish/purple. So we added other layer where we added the colour and moved it to the back so the image and title overlapped the background.

Then finally we moved all the text and awards around to a position we felt was best and smoothed out everything else and that is how we created our postcard.

Website Process

For our website we didn't want to make it too complex but rather easy to navigate and fairly simple. We used a website called Wix which is a website that allows anyone to create their own. It is a simple website that guides you through the basics of creating a website, giving you various templates to work with.

For our website we wanted to create a constant sense of branding, so we wanted to keep the same colour scheme throughout our whole project. So we did this be finding a template with a pinkish/purple kind of colour because thats what we used throughout our project. 

We followed a short films style of website, the short film website we followed was 'Curfew' which was found to be very basic and easy to navigate. Exactly what we were looking for. All we did was change the colour scheme and move the title.

like most websites we also added information tabs to allow the audience to found out more about the film and its origins. We wanted to use as little text as possible and more images if we could because we wanted to make our website visually pleasing 

Film Festival Research

Tribeca Film Festival:

Tribeca Film festival is a festival available to amateur film makers and is held in New York. It is one of the most famous film festivals around and it allows people to show off what their potential in film making. This would be good for our short film because we have the opportunity to submit our film to promote it as anyone is allowed to sign up.

they even give you an opportunity to win free tickets which is good because it interacts well the audience because it involves everyone and draws in their attention because they are offering free tickets. 

they make it very easy and simple to sign up by just visiting their website and making a account, which is beneficial because it is free and allows you access to more information if you are interested and could also link to other potential film festivals.

Thimun Film Festival: 

Thimun Film Festival is a festival based in Doha, Qatar which is ideal for us because that is where we live so it was easy for us to apply. We were also lucky enough to have our teacher part of the festival itself so we were able to gain a lot of knowledge about the festival through him. 

The festival is easy to apply for by just simply visiting their website like most film festivals, but we sent in our application through our teacher because that was the easier option for us. The festival is open to anyone around the world, getting application from places such as the Philippines, Singapore and many more asian countries, and this is good for the festival itself because it allows it to expand world wide and make a name for itself and maybe in the future become a big film festival that many people will attend and apply to. 

First Draft (with response)

We then asked a few people to analyze our first draft and give us feedback on what we did well and what we needed to improve. We then took this feedback in to consideration and changed our final piece based on the feedback.

Targets:

The overall response we received on the first draft of the sweet truth is negative; however we will use this as constructive criticisms and set ourselves targets moving forward with editing and additional filming if necessary.

The feedback on this question was that it is doesn’t come off serious enough and it was seen more like a comedy rather than an informative short film about diabetes, The editing techniques we used in this first draft were not suitable for this genre of short films. We will remove the effects that didn't suit the piece. One other thing mentioned is that the flow of the documentary doesn’t feel natural, we will overcome this by using transition between the shots to give a better sense of continuity.

The response on this is similar to the first question, the issue being the poor jump cuts and music being inconsistent.  We will find a track that fits the piece a lot better and has better consistency. As for the jump cuts between narrations, we will work on making the continuity of the short film more realistic as it is supposed to be done in a continuity editing manner to stay true to the genre. 

We also aim to give more information about Abdul's routine as we did for Jeppe because the feedback we got was that they didn't learn enough about the unhealthy diabetics routine because it only really showed him getting out of bed. So we will film more scenes of Abdul explain how he got his diabetes as well as what happens next. We will also try to give the equal amount of scene time between the two characters and this should present the story more clearly.

Production Company Logo Design

Costume and Props Planning

For our costume and props planning we wanted to create a contrast between our 2 actors. I will discuss what we decided on for each character:

Abdul:
Abdul is portrayed as the unhealthy diabetic and one way in which we wanted to show this was through his costume. So for his costume we made him dress up in baggy clothes to show he doesn't really care about his look, he just goes for the first piece of clothing he finds. We did this to try and reflect his attitude towards diabetes and show that he doesn't really care for his health and body.

Jeppe:
For Jeppe we wanted to portray him as the opposite of Abdul, a healthy diabetic who cares about his body and way of life. So we did this through dressing him up kind of smart with a polo top in some scenes to show he cares about his looks, also reflecting his attitude towards diabetes and we also have him in a Real Madrid top towards the end to show that he is a sporty character to show the audience that he does exercise and stays fit and healthy.

Props:
we didn't use many props in our short film because we wanted to focus on the actors but the main prop that we used was the insulin pen that is needed by all diabetics. We were able to get a hold of these through Jeppe who is a diabetic himself so we had a sufficient supply of the pens. We also including a few other diabetic apparatus to make our film seem more realistic, for example the device that test for your blood sugar.

Social Media Research

Social media is very important when it comes to advertising our final piece. now a days social media is used all the time for absolutely everything so thats why it is a good platform to promote our film.

examples:

Facebook

one way in which our film can be promoted is through Facebook. Facebook is the biggest social media out there and is used by a mass amount of people every day. Projects can be advertised through Facebook pages which anybody can view and gain information about the film from the page. for example The Avengers which is a well known superhero film has its own Facebook page that provides the audience with details and information about the film. it can even promote videos such as interviews with the actors or tease trailers of the film.

YouTube:

Another big social media website that is used a lot to promote media is YouTube. YouTube is a website where you can upload videos of your choice to be viewed by everyone in the world. You can create your own channel that you upload your videos to which you can use to promote you project with tease trailers, extended trailers, interviews, etc..

Editing (Titles and Credits)

Titles and credits are essentials when it comes to a short film so that the audience can identify what the piece is about from the title and who it is by from the credits.

For the title you want to make sure that it placed in an ideal area so that the audience has a clear view of the title and it stands out. For our title i placed it over the establishing shot of the doha skyline in order for it to stand out but at the same time informing the audience that the film takes place in Doha.

I added a cross dissolve to either side of the title for it fade over the skyline just to add a little bit of flair to the piece rather than have it just pop up because it looked tacky and unprofessional.

Credits are always used in any type of film because it informs the audience who has starred in the film and who the film was created by. Just before our credits i added a few facts about diabetes in Qatar from professionals and diabetics effected in doha to try and engage with the audience and send a strong message to audience with deep impactful events that have happened to people. I used basic titles because it was a serious message and it wouldn't be as impactful if the title was flashy because it diverts the audiences attention from the message and for the credits i just used the stereotypical scrolling credits to give information to the audience in a manner they are use to.

Editing (Effects)

To make our piece more advanced i wanted to add some effect to improve our piece and add more flair to our final project. I used a lot transitions such as cross dissolves and fade to colour in our piece in order to speed things up by jump cutting but also at the same time be more attractive to the viewer rather than it just changing shot because it adds continuity to the piece. I used the fade to colour when changing location or time to inform the viewer that a change is taking place. for example when it transitions between jeppe's house to Abdul's house.

I also used some other effects to improve the final piece. for example the scene when Abdul passes out and wakes up dazed and disorientated, i added on the focus effect which blurs the screen to make him looked dazed. i did this to portray the fact that Abdul is dizzy and doesn't know where he is which shows the audience that he is struggling. 

This is the scene where Abdul is disorientated. i chose focus because it was the best option from the blur effects and also the blur was in the shape of an eye so it was ideal for use because we were showing it from Abdul's point of view. i decreased the amount of focus used because it didn't look too good with 50.0 because too much of the screen was blurred out and you couldn't see what was going on in the shot, so i reduced it 30.0 and increased the softness by a bit to get the right amount of blur but able to tell what is going on in the shot. 

Editing (sound)

Sound is very important in our piece as it sets the tone for the piece and also adds realism to our project. I wanted to use any kind of sound effects when necessary in order to make it seem more realistic and divert the viewers attention from the fact that it is a film not real life. I did this simply through final cut pros sound effect in the music category.
For example for the very first shot i added construction sounds to drown out the silence.

The main part when editing sound was the primary background music. I browsed the internet to try fit a soundtrack that would fit with our piece. i experimented with different pieces in order to compare and deduce which piece was the best option for the short film. I downloaded a few pieces off the internet and imported them in to final cut pro and added them to the film to see which worked best. 

http://www.audionetwork.com/content/music-for/music-for-documentary

this is a link to the main website that i got the background music from. 

script for voice overs

we wrote a script for each character so that we could record them speaking over themselves acting. we did this because we wanted to have 'the voice of god' effect in our piece to try and make the speaker seem more impactful. 

jeppe
Hi my name is Jeppe Laursen

I have been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes for just over 5 years now 

Since I was diagnosed at a young age I have had to change my lifestyle completely 

I like to get up early everyday and get the day started 

In order to stay healthy I maintain a good hygiene and eat well 

I make sure I take my insulin after every meal I have throughout the day and check my blood sugar as well to make sure I'm all good 

After my morning routines I like to go out for some exercise or if I have any doctor appointments make sure I attend them 

abdul 

Hi my name is Abdulaziz and I've been diagnosed with type two diabetes for just over a year now 

My doctors told me that I got this disease because of my lifestyle 

I get out of bed whenever I really feel like it, my room is a mess to be honest, I'm not bothered to stay very organised 

When I go out I tend not to bring my medicine because it doesn't look cool

Last month my life changed, I went out to get food at my favourite place, as I got my order I started to get dizzy. Everything started to fade and all the sudden I fell over.

After this I do not remember much, I heard peoples  voices calling for help

A guy apparently came to help me, he was also a diabetic. After waking up in the hospital I was told by doctors I needed to change my lifestyle otherwise I wouldn't have long left.

After this I met up with the same guy, he put me in touch with some good people who helped me turn around my life 

plot summary

Our plot is a pretty basic and straightforward plot. It is all about comparing the 2 different types of diabetes through 2 different actors. One is portrayed to be healthy and looking after his health by treating his diabetes and the other who has the other type of diabetes is shown to be unhealthy and doesn't treat his diabetes and eventually almost cost him his life. after the 2 characters have been introduced the film moves on to the crucial scene where the unhealthy patient faints and due to lack of treatment to his diabetes but then the other character, the healthy diabetic is at the scene at the time to save his life because he had the right equipment needed to help save him. Then to finish off the short film we see both the characters becoming friends and eating healthy together and the unhealthy character has changed his way of living and uses all the treatment needed to live a healthy diabetic lifestyle.