Friday, 8 February 2013

Little White Lies; Research and Review


About Little White Lies




Little White Lies is a film (and sometimes gaming) magazine published by Church of London. They release their magazine every other month and theme each issue around a particular film they have enjoyed recently. The typography of each issue represents the theme (The 'Django' issue (above) featured tiny chains in between paragraphs). 

Little White Lies' primary audience are middle and upper class males although they are growing in popularity with young adults, particularly those studying film. A large part of the magazine is taken up by film reviews. They also post reviews on their website


^An example of a Little White Lies Review

We are creating a review for our film 'Yobs' in the style of Little White Lies. The graphology of the review contains the following:

  • Title- Century Gothic font, size 30
  • 3 Pieces of information under the title- 'Directed by', 'Starring' and 'Released'. Aparajita font
  • 3 Columns of review content- approx 550 words/ around 6 paragraphs. Aparajita font. Columns are 52.4mm wide x 107mm long. 
  • 'Ratings' at the bottom of the right column. 'Anticipation,' 'Enjoyment,' and 'In Retrospect.' Each scored out of 5. 
  • Large 168mm x 70mm still image from the film at the top of the page
Language techniques used include:

  • Puns
  • Distinguished and superior adjectives
  • Metaphors and Similies
  • Sarcastic, dry humor

We are going to create our film poster using this structure. We will create it on Adobe InDesign as it is a better programme for text than PhotoShop. 




^ above is the template for our review that Shannen made on InDesign. We will insert our review into the three columns when completed.


The first draft of the Review

London's burning, London's burning etc etc. In Summer 2010 the whole world watched in horror as the youths of the capital decided it would be a brilliant idea to decimate the town;  let's face it, we've all been there when we were younger, our parents didn't understand and so forth, however we never actually acted on our temporary misjudgement and 'shanked up' the city .  Thanks to novice directors  Colette Newey and Shannen Smith we got to relive those devastating, dreadful scenes in what sounded like The Daily Mail's nightmare  and we couldn't bloody wait (we could).

It could be argued that this film is a debut for all actors involved, which is unsurprising when noting the short film platform and although they deliver to a satisfying and authentic standard we are still left wondering who the antagonist is. Mark Newey makes his debut as a suave news reporter Mark Smith, working for the audaciously named company 'CBB News.' Inventive.  Aside from this blatant filched title the news report is impressive- especially when taking the director's student budget into account and the fact it was actually shot from Newey's kitchen in a tiny rural village in Sussex. We then find ourselves thrown into the news headline Terror in London.

Cue hoody and balaclava wearing teens wreaking havoc on the poor, unsuspecting residents. We behold the yobs, Charles Newey, Angus York and Edward Newey, mugging an innocent old lady, demolishing a ford fiesta and running riot through the streets whilst filming every move on their newly hijacked mobile phones. This is perhaps the most arresting part of the film; we follow the young delinquents on their expedition around the city and relish in the pure carnage they evoke. The young actors perform brilliantly, suspiciously so, and we can't help wondering whether they've partaken in an event like this before.

Meanwhile we cut between the scenes of destruction to a dingy, grotty kitchen where we witness an enigmatic character obscured from our view partaking in your general kitchen shenanigans; cutting a red  blood-like object, lighting a gas stove with a match and limping threateningly across the doorway. It's erratic and strange and sends our inquisitiveness into overdrive. To say any more would impair the film's big reveal but take it from us- this is undoubtedly one to watch.

Although without the big budget effects, grittiness and screen time of other cinematic products involving hoody clad minions such as Attack the Block and Kidulthood, Smith and Newey  still manage to deliver a refreshing and humorous portrayal  of a seemingly mundane event. Albeit the deceleration in pace towards the climax of the film, this invigorating short film is a breath of fresh air- Newey and Smith shine as new directors.

A social realism/comedy hybrid short  film depicting 'the humorous side' of the London Riots? We were sceptical too, but incredibly these five minutes of supposed cinematic puerile delivered us with a few short minutes of escapism, intrigue and a tiny smirk at the end.  


Anticipation:
Enjoyment:  Refreshing, playful and damn right ludicrous 4
In Retrospect: Our nan would look great in a hoody 4

-Review Written By Colette, Review Template Designed by Shannen.

To Improve: 

  • We may need to add a bit more to this. It is 520 words and the LWLies reviews tend to be 550-600 words. When we have inserted this into the template we can see if we need to up the word count.
  • We could talk about the plot more, however it's hard to do this without giving away the twist at the end of the film!
  • Add more film terminology. LWLies write for a film-educated audience and use a lot of film terminology.



By Colette :) 


Final Poster!


For how I made this final poster, please read our previous post on which features from both poster we decided to put into this one.

By Shannen

Thursday, 7 February 2013

Updated Film!

After the added filming yesterday - as explained in the post below - we have spent the morning editing and fixing the previous video. We also edited some sound issues that still remained in the previous video. So here is the new film below:


Wednesday, 6 February 2013

BAZINGA! We have an idea..

Whilst watching through our first cut of our film (in one of the posts below) we thought something was missing to connect the ending to the rest of the film. We tried to watch it through the audience's eyes, as if we didn't know the theme of the film. We found that:
  • The ending was quite slow compared to the rest of the film - the movement and speed really slowed down.
  • The ending was kind of disconnected - how were those people relevant to the rest of the film?
So we thought for ages, and with help from Andy and Marion we thought of shooting a small scene with the roaming news reporter. This would be around 30 seconds long and would be her discussing whats going on, and then saying things like "who are they?" "where are they now?" etc. We would put this inbetween the "want a cup of tea?" shot and the rest of the ending. We feel this will really break up the film and make it all the same speed. This should also help the problems understand the humorous twist more!

We are filming this today (Wednesday 6th February) with the following equipment:
- Green screen
- HD camera
- 2 x LED lights
- Tripod

It is very important that the character looks exactly the same, so we are making sure she wears the same costume and has her hair and makeup in the same way. We are also going to make sure that the lighting and positioning is in the same way too.

We will then edit this in our free period first thing tomorrow. This shouldn't take too long as we only need to apply the filters we previously applied to that news reporters' scenes and put it in the right place.

Hopefully this will give our short film the final "umf" that it needs!

By Shannen

Tuesday, 5 February 2013

Final Poster Ideas

Now we have both created our first mock ups of the poster we are deciding on our final layout. We are taking elements from both the posters and combining them together.

Colette's Poster




Shannen's Poster


We have decided to use the first poster as a landscape photo gives us more space to add text. We will take the logos from the bottom of Shannen's poster, the tagline and the 'coming soon.' From my poster we will be deleting the top line of actors (as the actors are relatively unknown), move the website to the bottom right corner, add the tagline from Shannen's poster, delete the age certificate as this would not be on a short film poster, and change one of the reviews from the Daily Mail from another company.

The Daily Mail has a reputation of giving negative reviews to small, indepedant films. Also, they would oppose to the ideologies in our film. We also need to remake the title as it's  not crisp enough and looks blurry. We will also be removing the wording from the reviews and just keep the stars as it will stop it from looking messy.

We will be using the credit block from Shannen's poster as it is a sans-serif font and it is smaller. We will adjust the sizing and spacing according to the new page rotation. We will also be making all of the text bold and a good colour such as grey so it fits with the background, as white is not very clear.

Finally, we will be cutting the title from Shannen's poster and putting it onto the final one as it is brighter and crisper.

By Colette/Shannen

FINAL VIDEO!

We have finally managed to fix the sound & quality of our short film. So, here it is!


Friday, 1 February 2013

Poster draft - by Shannen

This is my first draft of a possible film poster for "Yobs"