Anything But Social (2017) | Short Film

Anything But Social | Film Review

Anything But Social | Film Poster

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Evaluation Question 2

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Evaluation Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Camera angles and movement

‘2AM: Smiling Man’ (2013) uses a collection of camera angles and movement to highlight rises in tension throughout the short film. These shots include; medium shots and closeups to examine the character’s emotion and fear, handheld tracking and over-the-shoulder shots of the character for a voyeuristic feel, low-level wide shots to magnify the vast space around the character and focus on the isolating setting, slight high angles to depict inferiority and superiority between the antagonistic pair - conforming to Levi Strauss’ binary oppositions theory, and extreme long shots that illustrate the distance between the two characters. With framing, the smiling man is positioned in the right third of the frame, connoting a mysterious, menacing characteristic. I gained inspiration from these techniques and decided to use a selection of these shots when producing the storyboard for Anything But Social to depict the seclusion she experiences, to concentrate on how she is made inferior by her binary opposites - the cyberbullies, and to make her body language and emotions of sorrow a focal point for the audience.


Sound

Media products of the drama genre use various capabilities in terms of sound, this being the use of a non-diegetic soundtrack, diegetic and non-diegetic dialogue, and sound effects. It is crucial to have sound within a drama as it is used to convey different feelings and helps to create atmospheric tension.

An example of the use of sound in a short film is in ‘The Strange Thing About the Johnsons’ (2011). The media product consists of diegetic dialogue throughout, with returning bass beneath - used as a suspenseful sound, resembling that of a heartbeat to show anticipation. This heartbeat-like effect suddenly stops when the male character confronts his father about the story he wrote, recalling all of the instances where his son has abused him. Three minutes into the short film sweet, fairytale-like non-diegetic music is played. This makes the idea of a child masturbating to a picture of his father nonsensical - almost comedic, reflecting the positive times that the father and son shared before the obsession and sexual abuse occurs. The music contradicts what happens throughout the short film as the acts that take place are deemed wrong in society, relating to Gauntlett’s theory (2002).

In my short film, there is no dialogue. This is because we desired to build suspense and agony and drive the narrative through sound non-diegetic music. I made sure to include sound effects to add to the actuality factor of the product. Initially, it was planned to have a line of dialogue from Lucy Merrill’s mother to indicate that she was getting ready for school and insinuate that she is glued to her phone, practising Tessa Perkins theory of stereotypes as teenagers are typically fascinated by technology. Still, we decided not to include this dialogue in the final edit as it made more sense for the events in the short film to take place when her parents were not home, leaving her free to provoke pain on herself. The dialogue also interrupted the atmosphere created by the sound.


Editing

A wide range of editing techniques was used when producing my short film to enhance the alluring factor of the narrative. Continuity editing was used to make sure there was a flow of the narrative, adding to the realistic aspect of the piece. The continuity takes the audience on the protagonist’s journey of depreciation, allowing them to feel for the character and relate to them via similar emotions and experiences. Stimulated by ‘A Social Life’ (2016), I decided to apply match-on-action and superimposition (e.g. when she throws the book and when the images of her flashbacks are layered over a medium shot of her looking distraught). The match-on-action furthers the continuity and actuality of the short film, while the superimposition allows the audience to get an insight into the mind of the character. From watching ‘A Social Life’, I also engaged with the idea of exhibiting the activity on her phone and incorporated this into my short film. When editing, the messages that the protagonist receives as shown as closeups/extreme closeups rather than being layered over the frame. This is so that the audience could focus on the messages and the character’s emotions separately, as the two in the same frame would cause one shot to be distracting from the other. These full shots, therefore, invade her privacy and display her in a vulnerable way. This editing makes these shots almost appear as point-of-view shots for the audience as they are engrossed in the social media cycle just like Lucy.

I thought very carefully about the types of transitions that I would need to use to portray the narrative effectively. As well as using standard fade in/out transitions, I used crossfades between each flashback to show the passing of time and highlight her weakening due to occurrences driven by the narrative, and a ‘dip to white’ transition to distinguish the present from the past. When separating the flashbacks from the present day, I also changed the saturation of the footage. The present-day consists of a cold palette each flashback is a warmer palette, displaying how the character used to be full of life but is now dull and damaged inside. The use of this technique was inspired by the TV Drama ‘13 Reasons Why’ and the short film ‘Tick Tock’ (2011).

After watching ‘Post-It’ (2014), I understood that the conventional opening credits of a short film consist of the companies involved in the production and distribution of the short film. As for the ending credits, these consist of an ascending text with specific spacing between a job role and the person allocated to it.



Poster

A poster had to be designed for my short film as a promotional package, to raise awareness of the product and stimulate attraction to it. The codes and conventions of a film poster include the film title, an image resemblant of the film’s narrative, the leading actors’/actresses’ names, awards won by the film, and an institution blurb. Short film posters are a bit more abstract and stylistic than that of Hollywood blockbusters. Opposing Richard Dyer’s star power, short film posters do not focus on the stars of the production, but more on the meaning behind the image as a focal point. The designer of the poster creates patterns via specific placement so that the eye follows a path - this is the poster’s reading direction and is important in advertising as the reader ends up at the designer’s call for action, evident in the poster for the short film ‘Stutterer’ (2015). The short film title should take up the bulk of the composition.

When thinking about what image I wanted to display on my short film poster, I took inspiration from the drama film ‘Gladiator’ (2000) and decided to have the protagonist as the focal point of the poster. At first, I made it so that the audience could recognise Lucy Merrill and see the emotion of sorrow in her facial expression and body language, getting an idea of the overall theme of my short film. However, when playing with different filters and effects on Photoshop, I came across the ‘stamp’ feature and really liked how this made the poster more transcendental, conforming to the typical short film poster. Conventionally, posters for successful short films have awards from film festivals on them, highlighting how strong the film is as a whole and convincing a wider audience to watch the short film. As well as this, they contain social media handles, using convergence to promote the short film even further.


Film Review

Expanding my promotional package, I generated a film review. Before starting this, I looked into the different types of film review magazines that are available to the public and decided that I wanted the review to be of a casual tone, similar to Empire, rather than the formal style of the BFI’s Sight & Sound, to appeal to my target audience of 15+. As the critical analysis of an Empire review may not be as serious as that of a Sight & Sound review, I decided to take inspiration from both magazines, so that my target audience is engaged by the tone of the review, yet are still made to read about and connect with the serious topic of cyberbullying and its effect in people. This analysis will broaden my potential target audience and appeal to people from the age of 15 to the mature age of 25+, with the addition of enthusiastic media students/ students fascinated by the film industry. Driven by this inspiration, I examined the layout of various Empire film reviews, particularly the film ‘Joy’ in the December 2015 paper issue, and used this as a basis to construct my review. I was intrigued by the difference in layout between the physical copy of the magazine and the online version, but figured that it was more sensible to recreate that of the physical copy as the online page has technological features like hyperlinks to social media and other film review articles - which I wouldn’t have been able to achieve when creating my film review on Adobe Photoshop.

When studying the different film review layouts, I identified the unifying features between them. The header resembles the theme of the review magazine, acquainting the audience with what they are reading. The film title must be in bold to catch the eye of the reader and let them know the context of what they are reading. The information on the film would be the film's length, release date, certification, cast, director and plot outline. The reader is informed of these things to determine if they would go to the cinema to see it - i.e. a person under the age of 15 would be able to watch a 15 certificate film so they would not read the film's review. This information attracts the film's audience. An image from the film is also reviewed. It introduces characters but does not display them doing anything groundbreaking, as to not ruin the film. A strapline accompanies the image, summarising it in little detail as possible to ensure not too much of the narrative is given away. The summary (verdict) and rating display the critic's view on the film; it determines whether or not the film is worthy of praise. The review should be structured in columns and should not take up most of the page. This is because it is meant to be a short read. It should not take up too much of the reader's time. The issue information is located at the bottom of the film review page.

Adobe Photoshop was the most appropriate software to use for constructing my film review and making it look professional as it provides 3D effects, text boxes, shapes and adjustable marginal lines to help with the spacing of columns and the measurements needed to replicate that of a film review by Empire. To ascertain a successful review, I had to correspond to the layout, themes, and style of the content of Empire.