Annaleigh Quinlan - A Level Media Studies Blog

 I finished four and a half minutes of the short film and plan to leave the rough cut at that to save some effort for now, especially going into planning for reshoots. A lot of the content in the rough cut isn't going to be useable for continuity reasons and the last thirty seconds would likely just comprise of the same clips repeating and be relatively dull and take up a lot of time that could be used for other aspects of the production. That being said, I do plan to use clips that I'm not including in the rough cut of the short film to make a short trailer for the Instagram and website. I have a lot of clips that either didn't fit or that I didn't like that could be piled together to make a short trailer. The trailer itself would likely to be similar to the Mutiny! short film trailer. Another concept for marketing that I saw for Mutiny! was short videos introducing the character. The teaser trailer for Mutiny! was about forty seconds and each of the character profiles...

 I set up the film’s Instagram account. I made it unlisted so people can comment in real time, but it’s not officially public and I will include screenshots on the blog. At the moment, the account isn't very interesting since I don't have enough content to make original posts. That's also something I plan to work on during reshoots. The account handle is just the name of the short film, which is commonly used for promotional accounts for lots of different products, whether television or print. In the bio, I listed the production company and later plan to add links to the YouTube and website to help audience members learn more about the short film. The posts themselves will mainly be behind the scenes content, but I also want to add photos that resemble posters or small posters themselves. Another idea is to use the photos as a countdown until the film's release date to try and build excitement. One of the countdown drawings that Dana Terrace did for the Owl House and si...

 An important part of a product is the title since it needs to represent the product and draw the attention of audience members. A title that's too complicated doesn't work very well. It should be reflective of the genre, themes, or tone of the film. It often is the first interaction the audience has with the film, so the title needs to answer questions about the genre implicitly and make people want to watch it. One or two word titles are succinct and, if done well, can provide enough interest to make someone want to watch the film. While there's a lot of products that have lengthy titles, for the purposes of my product, I would like to stick to shorter ones. Many short films do this as well. I wanted to use something related to nautical terms. Parley is a term that was often used nautically to reference a meeting between two opposing parties to try to come to an agreement, coming from the French word ‘parler.’ Since it’s a time loop story, and the character is trying to c...

  In my first version of the story, the main character gets farther along in the loop each time. However, while editing, this has gotten complicated to try and put together. This might be because I don't have enough. I didn't end up filming a lot of the shots on the chart since I ran out of time. There are about four and a half minutes of film edited. Reshoots are scheduled for the 22nd of February. That being said, I'm probably going to have to redo everything. Reshoots are likely to create inconsistencies. Gwenn had henna on her hand during the first time shooting and won't for the second shoot. The weather might be different as well, with inconsistencies even being seen between shots filmed on the same day. My new plan is to have the same loop filmed from different angles and use those to create the time loop. The loop will be longer than the original one written. This would make it closer to the last loop in the original shot list. I might place breaks into each loo...

List of branding ideas on social media:  - A website linked to Instagram with updates and promotional material - A newsletter with updates and promotional material - References to past and future products by the company - A coordinated color scheme - Polls for audience members to try and engage them - Behind-the-scenes photos with short captions - Memorable hashtags based off of the brand - Capitalizing on the brand name as a selling point - Posters of characters I can communicate with the audience by adding the company's social media handle on the company's or product's website and on the film festival postcard. The website could also be advertised on the postcard, helping audiences find the social media pages.  Behind-the-scene images could be used to create excitement for the final product. Captions should be short blurbs followed by hashtags and the name of the film for reference. Images could also include the logo and shots of the filming location, meaning the company ...

My two products for this year and last year have both been science fiction and urban fantasy based, along with incorporating the idea of piracy somewhere within the story. My brand should reflect that. It should also be easy enough to incorporate into social media and shouldn't be overlong or complicated. Likely, the social media handle will be closer to the name of the film rather than the brand, but the two need to have some form of tie-in. The company, overall, would keep its focus on similar science-fiction products, so that should be referenced in the brand. Neither of the films is suspenseful entirely, but both have mystery elements to them. I do want the company to focus on science-fiction and mystery more than other genres and an interesting branding point could be the consistent appearance of pirates in some shape or form. I made a list of ten words I associated with my brand and then narrowed that list down to ones that I thought made the most sense before finding synonym...

 Branding is an important part of any product's marketing, giving the consumer insight into who is producing the product and other products associated with it. Short film brands could help consumers find products and would be helpful for producers if they're trying to get a larger audience to have a recognizable and trusted brand. Branding could also be centered on the film. Different films have different themes, characters, symbolic codes, and color palettes, which could impact the branding for the specific product. Specific branding would give the film recognizable elements, creating familiarity with the audience. For example, the short film Mutiny! uses a distinctive text for all of their titles, across the website, and for the short film and trailer credits. This same font and color is also seen on their Instagram when posts reference the awards won by the film. Furthermore, similar promotional images are used across the platforms, creating familiarity with the material. Mu...

With my schedule and Gwenn’s, we had to find a good day to film reshoots. Preferably, the weather would be similar enough that things could be reshot and edited with clips from the first shoot without conflicting backgrounds. With that said, there aren't a lot of good times to drive out to Cape Canaveral, so the best weekends are on the 15th and the 22nd, with the final dates to be decided later, Specifically, I want to reshoot Gwenn picking up the hat, any scenes with shadows, tripods, or other people, the dolly zooms, and more shots of the character interacting with the setting around her. When filming the first time, despite attempts to be prepared, I didn't bring enough food or water down to the beach and couldn't concentrate. However, reshooting everything would be the best option if the weather is too different from the original shoot. 

For the first day of editing, I stayed in CapCut and put together about a minute and a half of the film. I added music to the second half of the film to fill some of the silence. While there is ocean noises that I pulled from an unused clip, keeping those for the entire film got very boring very quickly. The song I used was Angelica from Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. This track has a more dramatic feel without it being super recognizable as Pirates of the Caribbean and still sounding pirate-y.  One problem I was having was the realization that my brothers, cousin or tripod were in several of the shots when I had thought during filming that it was too out of focus to be noticeable. During reshoots, I’m going to try to mainly focus on those scenes. Angelica

 On the second day, I added another minute to the film and the dolly zoom. The first loop was about a minute. The second loop was about the same length and the third hasn’t been finished yet. Unfortunately, I’m not a huge fan of the dolly zoom and I do want to try and redo it. The choice to use handheld camera makes the video unsteady and worsens the effect. Another mistake I made while filming was not double-checking the videos, something I’m realizing when I edit. Several videos that I thought were not in slow motion are. In the video with Gwenn throwing and catching the rock, I like it, but in others, I don’t. The shot with her picking up the hat with the bokeh effect is one I might redo from a different angle, but overall, I really like the shot.

 One of the first things I filmed was the dolly zoom. I did my best to hold the phone steady, but the unsteady camera movement messed up the effect slightly. I don't know if I'm going to be able to change that in the filming this time around. I want to look into buying some equipment to complete the dolly zoom more steadily. Editing the zoom in CapCut made the effect look choppy. My hope is that redoing it in Premiere Pro or AfterEffects might remedy that. I'll need to find a new tutorial on that, as CapCut is a much more simplistic interface.

 Recently, Gwenn and I went down to the beach to do early filming. The costume was made from pieces we both owned already. The location itself isn't nearly as crowded as other beaches in the area and a short walk from the condo we were staying in, making it a good place to stay at. Since the drive was long, I decided not to do any filming in costume and just get a general idea of how to set up the tripod and camera for the next day. Given the cold water and weather, I had to avoid the water as much as I could. Besides, the camera (iPhone 14 Pro) isn't waterproof, and I didn't want to risk dropping it. I filmed in the evening during Golden Hour, so the lighting was better than in harsh sunlight. I brought the skull down to the beach to get shots to practice the dolly zoom with. I took the pictures of Gwenn or the skull in Apple's Portrait Mode, took all the videos in Cinema Mode and adjusted the depth of field to get the effect I wanted. Looking back at the photos, I lea...

In preparation for filming, I made a shot list to have a better idea of what to film and what everything was. I tagged everything with the database in Notion. The list is incredibly repetitive and I don't know how much how much it is going to help. This is due to the time loop aspect of the story. Since it's going to be on the beach and the character wakes up in the sand, they would have to be sandy for the entire film, so I decided it would best to film all the shots where they're lying in the sand at once. I shot all the scenes with the skull at the same time as well In addition to the skull, I made a 3D-printed crab to use in some filler shots. A concept I've been working on is that as each time loop resets, then a second goes by, and slowly, the crab gets closer to the main character. I also was trying to figure out how to show that the skull is the main character's. Since a big pirate stereotype is that they wear bandanas, I'm going to include that in my co...