Film Review

Atypical Superhero Story - Completed short film.

Finished Posters

Ancillary task - Feedback

We had a lot of positive comments about the film poster. People like the simplistic design and that it's in black and white. 'Black and white with the contrasting colours of the eyes works really well'. Some thought it was a bit too simplistic and wanted more information about the film and the producttion company.

Our feedback on the review was the again encouraging, with a lot of people commenting on the effective use of our two main characters as the faded background of our review page. Most people thought the review was well written and included an interesting synopsis. The only consistent critisism was the layout out of the review. Most exepcted a more conventional layout of multiple columns. We did think about this but decided against it because our review is on one A4 page and thought putting the text into colums might make it look too compact.

Further audience research

I decided to ask my Dad the same questions Jack and I asked some of the students at our 6th form. I did this because I wanted to see if there was any difference in the interests and knowledge of short film and superhero stories between the generation. My Dad has no keen interest in film or the media industry; and I would say he is a fair representation of people his age who watch the occasional film or television series for a little light-hearted  entertainment and nothing more. It's these people that make up the majority of viewers and therefore the ones I should be trying to understand.

Audience Research

We wanted our audience research to be specific to our idea, i.e. we incorporated questions about how much people understand about about short film, as well as people's thoughts on superhero stories. In keeping it relevant and specific to us and our film, we can take more from the research.

Our Stop motion

We wanted to use a human-like figure when attempting our stop motion as it would allow us to shape the model into poses that could reflect that of a superhero. We did originally think about possibly using plasticine for our stop motion. We've used it before and know it has the capabilities to be transformed into a number of shapes and positions. In the end we decided against it we liked the look of the model we discovered through a friend. I'd never seen anything like it being used in stop motion before, and we wanted to be the first to use it within a film. The model it's self is made of wood and is constructed of 16 body parts (head, legs, arms and torso) that are connected together by smaller wooden parts which are carefully shaped to allow the model to moves it's limbs in movements that replicate actual human movement. 

To make the link between the model and superhero references we used an old one of Jack's socks to create a makeshift cape for the model. The idea with this was also to make it look like the model had crafted the cape himself through things he'd found in the bedroom. 

When carrying out the stop motion I found that using tape was vital to hold the model and the camera in position. If the camera or base of the model is moved at any time, the whole sequence has to begin again so as not to get any jittery movements when we combine all the shots together.

I took photographs of the small set we used before and after shooting, so that if we need to come back and shoot again, we would know exactly where everything was placed. This helps us reduce potential visual errors in the film.

My favourite pose was the 'superman flying' pose which looked quite effective with the cape.