Annaleigh Quinlan - A Level Media Studies Blog

  One way films gain traction is by touring to different film festivals. At the festivals, they could win different awards adding to credibility and marketing. Film festivals are found all over the world and can be a good jumping off point for short films and indie businesses. Some major ones are found in California along with European countries, but places like Miami have some too (Miami Film Festival). Major film festivals include: - Sundance Film Festival - Florida Film Festival - Raindance Film Festival - London Film Festival - Toronto Film Festival - Venice Film Festival Each of these have several categories for awards and are very popular overall. Most of them accept online submissions for festivals. The Palme d'Or from the Cannes film festival is widely considered one of the most prestigious awards for festivals.

 The sixth instagram post was made with a few behind the scene photos, cheerful upbeat music and a photo of Gwenn and I after filming. The post was supposed to have a slight different tone to it; being more upbeat and less overtly focused on marketing. It was more of a thank you to Gwenn than a overt marketing post.  However, adding content about the film and using behind the scenes photos can draw interest from a crowd. Actors are often talked about on official social media pages. This was part of the reason I chose to write a more subtle marketing post than others.

 All of the weapons and props used in the film are fake. The sword was made by 3D printing a free model from Thingiverse and then spray painted and snapped together. Afterwards, I added some superglue because the pieces felt unstable. The sword measures at about 32 inches and is modeled after old naval cutlasses, which fits the theme around pirates, since it's a similar weapon to what they could have used. The gun is from Colonial Williamsburg, is fake, and does not fire anything, although you can simulate firing the gun. It's modeled after flintlocks from the 17-1800s. While this time period is after the golden age of piracy, weapons from the 18th century are commonly used in period films, even if it's not entirely accurate to the setting. The props are almost entirely used for mise-en-scene rather than any story-based purpose.  The cutlass

There are several differences between a feature film and the short film genre. Feature films usually run between 70 and 90 minutes, while short films are usually 40 minutes or under, with some being under ten minutes. Their plot structures are different as well, due to the shorter run time. Short films can't give nearly as much exposition, since there's not as much time, so its usually a two-act structure. On top of that, short films are usually used as a way to get interest in a story idea without having to create a full film, which can be because of budget. Short films have a shorter run time, so are less expensive to produce. Sometimes, releasing a short film is used to collect funds to turn the short film into a full series. Short films are also used by people new to the film business as a type of "business card". When trying to market, having short films in your resume can help aspiring creators to market their skills to join teams of/create higher budget project...

An audio clip on the minimal audience interactions with the Instagram account

One of the settings I used for the edited film Exposure: -58 Highlights: 19 Shadows: -14 Contrast: -29 Saturation: 12

Original Reshoot  The biggest difference between the reshoots and the original is the lighting. The original footage was filmed on a cloudy day with little sun exposure, while the reshoots were filmed on a sunny day. There's a lot more contrast in the reshoots, since it's strong high key lighting. The footage is steadier on top of that. It's still shakier than I would have expected, but it's steadier than the original. To make the footage look as if it wasn't filmed in direct sunlight, I edited the videos in the Apple editor, since the interface is easier for me to understand than the AfterEffects one. However, if I find the right tutorial, I might redo footage in AfterEffects. It's not a huge difference, but since the Apple editor is more basic, further changes could make the videos look messy.

The fourth Instagram post is about the filming, giving behind the scenes shots of the short film and pictures of the location. I also tagged Gwenn in the post, with an acknowledgement of her acting in it, like what was done in the Mutiny! Instagram posts. There's several pictures in the post, to give more variety. The fifth Instagram post is a behind the scenes video to add something lighthearted to the page. For several companies, behind the scenes clips of the actors messing around is a part of their marketing, to make the project and actors seem more relatable to the general population.

 Reshoots took place at Fort DeSoto beach and went well. The gimbal from Amazon ended up being what I used to make the final product more professional. I also used the cinematic mode on the iPhone instead of using a DSLR camera, something that has been emerging in professional products like 28 Years Later. Danny Boyle's sequel film was filmed entirely on iPhone 15 Max. The sunlight wasn't a huge problem, despite filming in much brighter light than I had intended. A big part of the lighting was making sure my shadow didn't get in the shot and making sure that Gwenn's face wasn't too shadowed either. The effect was high-key lighting through all of the shots. We started filming around nine in the morning, so the beach wasn't super crowded, giving it more of a deserted island look and making it easier to keep people out of the shots.

We're going to film the reshoots over the course of one day, since the beach was much closer, going to the East Fort DeSoto beach instead of across the state to Cape Canaveral. Preparing for this, I went over my shotlist again and made edits to it since I didn't feel that I had enough footage from the first time. Furthermore, I made a list of all of the props and supplies I would need to counter problems I ran into for the last shoot. To try and balance the camera better, I made a gimbal out of cans and duct tape based off of a YouTube video. That. being said, when comparing it to the footage gotten on the gimbal made by the YouTubers, my test footage was still shaky and I bought a gimbal off of Amazon just in case.

 The third Instagram post is about a minute and a half from the rough cut of the film, starting with a loop father into the sequences. The caption just describes the video and gives where the survey is. I thought about putting the survey in the caption, but a lot of the time, posts with external links are in the bio, not the caption. Captions tend to be shorter, rather than extended paragraphs, unless the video or post specifically states that. Two things to improve on in future posts could be tagging people and creating hashtags for the posts, neither of which I've done with the three posts. The short film Instagram accounts that I found both use those aspects to connect their posts and spread the brand father. Tagging posts can make it easier for audiences to find a specific post based off of its topic and tagging people in posts could let audiences see more with that person/creator in it. The Mutiny! Short Film Instagram uses lots of hashtags and tags all the people involved wit...

A four minute-ish audio recording about reshoot prep. Pictures of Fort DeSoto Park

 The second Instagram post is about the location and preliminary shooting, with a vague introduction to the actor. Removed from my original plan, the next post will likely be an official cast introduction. I just don't have a good picture of Gwenn to use for the short film's Instagram. The post has the Pirates of the Caribbean theme music since that's a pretty recognizable pirate theme song and uses the name of the short film to create branding.

 I want the film to roughly come out around March 5th. Until then, I want to plan what to post each week. Most social media accounts for films post once or twice a week. Bigger projects post more. I plan to post once or twice as well. There will be more clearly promotional material than behind the scenes material, most likely. The current plan is as followed: Tomorrow: Post about location Week One: One post with part of the rough cut with survey to gain audience opinions and create interactions and branding on the Instagram and one post with a behind the scenes still. Week Two: One post thanking people for participating in the survey and one post about the reshoots, the former with a staged photo and the second with stills from the filming. Week Three: Two posts of behind the scenes stills and one staged promotional photo talking about how many days left Week Four: Three to five countdown short posts with staged photos.

 On Friday, about a week before reshoots, I'm going to screen the film to as many people as I can, either by sending them the video electronically or sitting down to show it to them. Afterwards, participants are going to take a questionnaire on Google Forms. I plan to use this form to see if there are any audience suggestions to consider before reshooting. The form itself is pretty simple as consists of six questions. Four of them are written, while two are yes/no. The yes/no questions are asking whether they enjoyed the film and whether they would be interested in seeing final project and/or receiving updates. Asking participants whether they want updates and asking for their email can be used as branding for the film. The form has the logo for the film as its header and the text is as close to ones that I use in the header as I can. While the title of the form is a completely different font, the name of the font is Seaweed Script, which falls into the ocean theme.

 The main thing I want to improve on when reshooting the dolly zooms is the shakiness of the camera. I also want to try to increase the speed without the effect looking choppy. I might also use a dolly zoom on the landscape like Peter Jackson did in The Fellowship of the Ring. In theory, the new zoom would be used in addition to the other ones and would be placed in the first and second loops when the pirate wakes up. Since professional steadicams are incredibly expensive, I was researching how to create one myself. Originally, I was just planning to use my tripods, but I don't like the shakiness in the dolly zoom. Because of the nature of the film, and trying to create a slight sense of anxiety, I plan to keep a lot of the movement handheld.  I liked the videos below the most for making a steadicam. I think the top video would give the best reach, but the Cannon camera I have is out of date and much harder to use than my phone. I'm going to try and find a way to combine the t...

The first Instagram post is just a quick introduction to the film with a call to action. It features the two images I made on Procreate. It established the company and film with promises of more material later. Audiences get both the name of the company and the film established again in the post, as well as on the account page.  The short film Have A Good Day has an Instagram page with a similar mechanic for their first post. They start by introducing their short film rather than immediately jumping into behind-the-scenes content without additional context. The call to action on the post is important, since it gives viewers a suggestion of what to do and things they could be interested in seeing.

 Instead of a full poster, I want to use a picture I took while doing the first shoot and some text to make a cover for the film for the first Instagram post. I didn't take a lot of pictures, which did make it easier to pick one that I liked the best, as most of them are for behind-the-scenes posts. I chose a picture of the main character looking out at the ocean with the journal in hand. I want to use the logo on the Instagram and theoretical website as both the profile and part of the first post.  I took inspiration from the logo for the Mutiny! short film. The cover images for all of the videos are taken from various parts of the film and have some text, creating branding and intrigue. My images aren't directly from footage I took, but stills based from moments in the story. The font is from Procreate as well and I want to use the same text for every promotional image with text on it to further establish branding. The image for the profile was made by layering two of the sa...

 I took the sketch of the logo and drew it digitally on Procreate. I used all of the preset brushes to create the textures for the sand and water. It's almost entirely a recreation of the sketch, although I didn't include the detail in the foam, because I thought it made the design look too cluttered with the texture on the brush that I used. The color palette mostly came from a preset one called Night, although the sand wasn't part of that and used a hex code that I looked up. The only custom brush was based off of the Luminance brush and I changed it to make only one star instead of several. I used that to create the stars in the ocean to map out the letters. My design is more cluttered than a lot of production company logos, which mostly rely on text and a small image to get their point across, as well as an animation. I'm not going to use an animation, so that allows the logo to be a little more cluttered. All the logos have the production company as a centerpiece, ...

One of the aspects of branding is a logo. I'll need one for the company and the film. I started on the company logo. I made it on paper and plan to retrace it onto Procreate. My company is the same from the last year, but I didn't have a logo last year. Last year, the company name was ARQ Studios. I changed the name, but I want the company to be the same. This will be addressed in the Instagram and website. The reason for the name change on the website is horizontal integration, with ARQ and Starry Seas merging. For the logo itself, the design itself is relatively simple. I drew an ocean scene, with waves hitting the beach. While a lot of photos and/or illustrations of beaches are done with the ocean in the background and the beach in the foreground. I flipped this around in my logo, so the ocean is in the foreground. This makes the scene look as if its upside down, playing into the science fiction themes of the company. The ocean is scattered with stars that make up the name o...