Auditions and Casting

My group and I took the liberty of holding auditions as part of our casting process. Four females between the age of 16-18 were auditioned for the role of Lucy Merrill, aged 17. We were only able to film one audition (Emily Mellows') as equipment wasn't available to us when the other auditions took place.

Emma-Louise Edgell-Reeves

Emma-Louise is 17 years of age. We selected Emma as a potential actress as she has studied GCSE Drama and is currently studying A-Level Drama. She takes part in a weekly drama club where she mentors children, allowing her to perfect her performance skills. She also performs in productions inside and outside of school, such as school drama production Treasure Island, and the current school musical Big Fish where she has an exceptional role.

Unfortunately, we have decided that Emma-Louise is not suitable for the role as her height exceeds that of Lucy Merrill's, so we would have trouble taking certain shots such as a high angle (as our equipment is restricted). Also, she wouldn't be able to give up the time to be committed to filming our short film.

Emily Mellows

Emily is 17 years of age. We selected Emily as a potential actress as she has previous experience acting in a GCSE Media film. Because of this experience, she is familiar with the commitment needed to successfully shoot our short film.

Emily Mellows' audition was very well done, however, we decided that she is not suitable for the role as she appears too young to be the character.

Elizabeth Reynolds

Elizabeth is 16 years of age. We selected Elizabeth as a potential actress as she studied GCSE Drama and is currently studying A-Level Drama, where she has to act using different emotions on a regular basis. She has also performed in previous school productions and has achieved a successful role in the current school production.

 

We have chosen not to cast Elizabeth Reynolds as it is finalised that our main character will be a blonde female. She also appears too young to fulfil the role.

Emily Styrka

Emily is 18 years of age. We selected Emily as, similar to Elizabeth, she has also studied GCSE Drama and is currently studying A-Level Drama. Emily is also the Drama Captain, as leads a weekly Drama Club for younger students. Her mentorship allows her to gain experience in working with others and develop her understanding and performance of acting. She enjoys taking part in drama productions inside and outside of school, as has had main roles in both last year's drama production and this year's production.

With much thought, we have decided to cast Emily Styrka as Lucy Merrill. This is because we felt that she suited the description of the character the most, and her many experiences have allowed her to perform emotions exceptionally and cry on command - saving us time when filming.
We also know that she will be a reliable actress as she has free time to dedicate to filming and has a passion for drama.

Animatic Feedback

After presenting our animatic to members of our audience, we were able to receive some constructive feedback, to which we responded to in this video. We wish to take this feedback on board and adapt our short film so that it reaches its highest potential.

Animatic

My group I produced an animatic of our short film using the storyboard that I previously created on www.storyboardthat.com. We were able to screenshot each frame from the storyboard and import it onto WeVideo, were be embedded a soundtrack that we found on www.freesound.org.

Actress Request: Emily Mellows

Actress Request: Emily Styrka

Actress Request: Emma-Louise Edgell-Reeves

Schedule Update: Week 3

Recce

Our short film will be set in a semi-detached converted bungalow. We were able to take pictures of various areas in the bedroom and also the bathroom, as our main character is situated in these two settings throughout the short film.

The Application of Conventional and Unconventional Narrative Structures

Traditional narrative theory

Commonly, the structure of a narrative follows a formula analysed by the theorist Tzvetan Todorov. Todorov's theory of equilibrium suggeststhat all narratives abide by a chronological 3-part structure (5 overall stages). This set-out direction is as follows. The equilibrium is disrupted, creating a disequilibrium. This is the typical climax of a film, which is then restored to reveal a new equilibrium where the characters in the narrative have changed in some way. In simple terms, narratives have an apparent beginning, middle and end. This conventional story arc configuration is recognised as a linear narrative. An example of a film that follows this structure is Shrek (2001).

Steps	What happens
1	The narrative starts with an equilibrium
2	An action or character disrupts the equilibrium
3	A quest to restore the equilibrium begins
4	The narrative continues to a climax
5	Resolution occurs and equilibrium is restored

- table sourced from https://www.bbc.co.uk/education/guides/zqdhrdm/revision/3

Unconventional narratives

An unconventional narrative does not always start from the beginning (chronologically) and usually jumps around the timeline of events (e.g. Kill Bill (2003)).

The structures of non-linear and circular narratives aren't straightforward. Non-linear narratives are able to move forwards and backwards in time, this is typically depicted using the flashback technique. An example of a film that uses this is 500 Days of Summer (2009). In this film, we see flashforwards and flashbacks as the story of the relationship between two characters progresses. The circular narrative can begin at the end of a story, working its way back to the start of the narrative. Commonly, the audience only clearly understands this type of narrative at the end of a film. An example of a film with a circular narrative is Slumdog Millionaire (2008). The film begins with the main character starring on 'Who Want to be a Millionaire?'. Over the course of the film, the narrative takes the audience on a journey through the character's childhood, explaining how he came to appear on the game show and how he gained the knowledge to answer questions correctly.

Barthes' theory of Narrative

Barthes theorised that texts need to be unravelled and because of this can have several meanings. Texts can be open and have many messages or be closed with only one obvious thread in the story. Barthes also speculated that an enigma code is crucial in engaging an audience in a narrative. This is created in Tick Tock (2011) through the use of sound as the short film consists of upbeat, sorrowful music with an interjecting heartbeat at the beginning and end of the piece and reversed dialogue with diegetic ticking. The audience questions the meanings behind this sound andusese it to understand the development of the narrative.

Levis Strauss' Binary Oppositions

Strauss suggested that opposites are needed to build a story (e.g. good vs evil, right vs wrong, known vs unknown etc.). This is evident in films such as Spiderman (2002) and The Conjuring (2013).

Bordwell and Thompson

These theorists believe that the narrative of a film consists of a chain of events and is the product of a cause-effect relationship. Although, sometimes films can flip the narrative using reverse chronology. Reverse chronology is a method of storytelling whereby the plot is revealed in reverse order. In a

story employing this technique, the first scene shown is actually the conclusion of the plot.

Application of Todorov's Narrative Theory

Applying Todorov's theory to the narrative of our short film, we realised that it does not follow the structure of a typical narrative as there is a disruption, yet no restoration. This adds impact to the message of the short film, emphasising the point of struggling to move past cyberbullying and magnifying the awful reality of suicide. There can be no restoration of the narrative as the protagonist is incapable of making this happen. Examples of Hollywood blockbusters and short films that also don't follow this specific structure include Pulp Fiction (1994) and Tick Tock (2011). Todorov's theory of equilibrium is not evident in the short film Tick Tock as it doesn't follow a conventional, linear story arc. Instead, a reverse chronological narrative is established through the use of editing.

The narrative of our short film has linear and non-linear qualities. There is a beginning, middle and end, however, the narrative revolves around flashbacks to tell the character's story. The short film may begin in the present but this is interrupted by images of the past. After review this sheet that my group and I had annotated (below), we realised that our short film only slightly depicts an open narrative - as the ending is ambiguous, leaving it up to the viewer to decide whether or not our character has ingested the pills and posing questions such as 'How many pills did she take?', 'Is she dead?', 'Did she decide to overcome her problems and not take the pills?' - our short film is in fact a closed text as the messages/themes of cyberbullying, emotional abuse and suicidal feelings are clearly implemented in the narrative and supported by the use of facts and figures, applying Barthes' theory.

Target Audience Research

Drama Films: Camera Angles and Movement (technical codes)

Lighting:

High-key and low-key lighting are used to create different effects across the genre. High-key lighting is used in a scene without any tension as it has little dramatic effect. It is also used relate/link positive connotations to characters and events occurring in the film. In comparison, low-key lighting is commonly used in intense scenes and scenes that derive negative connotations. It consists of a lighting pattern that has both dim and bright areas in the frame.

Movement:

Drama typically uses three camera movements: horizontal, vertical or both in combination. Filmmakers use pans or dolly tracks to illustrate horizontal movement - the dolly tracks can also be used to move into and out of a shot. To display vertical movement, a tilt up or down is used. When combining the two movements, a crane or a jib-boom is typically used. These two devices allow the camera to move left, right, up, down or diagonally.

Lens and Focus:

Zoom-ins and zoom-outs are generally used throughout the genre as a short-hand way to establish the genre promptly and efficiently. The depth of field constantly changes throughout a drama film. This generally happens during a conversation to display who is talking or is used to guide the audience when they should be focusing on a particular object. Focus pulls can occur, changing shots from shallow focus (part of the frame is soft/ out of focus) to deep focus (the entire frame is in focus).

These three parts of the camera affect depth of field:

1. Aperture
2. Focal length
3. Focus distance

The Aperture

The aperture is the factor that most influences depth of field. The wider the aperture is, the shallower depth of field will be. A low f-number such as f/2.8 will likely render an image with some soft focus. Conversely, the narrower the aperture is, the deeper depth of field will be.

The figure below illustrates the relation between aperture and the amount of depth of field. For this illustration, image that the camera is on the left hand side of the image, represented below by the aperture. The 100mm value represents the focal length of the lens, which does not change in this scenario:

The area in red represents the depth of field, or the distance in front of the camera in which the picture is on focus. The black represents soft focus. Notice how the depth of field changes together with the f-number on the left.

The black vertical line represents the area that is sharpest in focus, which we call critical focus. Note that you always have more depth of field behind your plain of critical focus than in front of it.

Focal Length

Next to the aperture, the second factor that most affects depth of field is focal length. The longer the lens, the shallower depth of field is. A wide angle lens (a short lens), for instance, would render an image with more depth of field than one with a telephoto lens (a long lens). Study the figure below and notice that the f-number is the same while focal length changes:

Focus Distance

Focus distance is the last factor to determine depth of field. The closer the focus distance is to the camera, the less depth of field you have. You probably have noticed this. On close-ups of actors or objects, part of the frame is usually blurrier than on wide shots of landscapes.

Questionnaire & Results

We created a questionnaire to seek information on what elements would need to be incorporated into our short film to appeal to our audience.

 

From our research, we gathered that the majority of the public believe either gender can be the main character of a film, however, those who don't think this lean towards the male rather than the female being the protagonist. As for the victim within a film, the majority also believe either gender could be victimised, however, the likelihood of the female being victimised rather than the male is very high. We decided to make the main character of our short film female, challenging the typical gender stereotypes as a male protagonist is typically seen as powerful and intelligent in place of a feeble, reserved female. Our character 'Lucy Merrill' is, in fact, an intelligent female, but still possesses weak qualities as she is victimised - appealing to the audience's view of a female victim. As they are familiar with this gender being preyed on they will be drawn towards our short film. Regarding the villainous character(s) of our short film, we decided to make the character's cyberbullies anonymous as the bulk of the public suggest that the gender of the antagonist(s) can be male or female. If the cyberbullies of our short film were male, it would be clear as some of the messages that the main characters will receive will be quite crude and highly offensive. On the other hand, if they were female the audience would be able to identify this through how the cyberbullies comment on Lucy's appearance and style. We believe the gender of our antagonist(s) is irrelevant to our narrative as the focus is on one character.

The majority of people that filled out this questionnaire are female, allowing us to receive non-biased data.

Although comedy was voted the most favourite genre, we decided to make our short film a drama as the codes and conventions of this genre are very straightforward and are easily conformable. It would have been difficult for us to precisely produce a comedy or thriller as, typically of short films, there will be only one character and one setting within our short film. Also, because of the designated time frame of 5 minutes, we would not be able to explore these different genres effectively and would have to eliminate key elements of these other genres, e.g. an explanation of a love story, a fighting scene/shootout, and many more.

Following this result, we have decided for our narrative to have a linear structure so that the events that occur are blatantly clear to the audience. This will avoid confusion and ensure that our message of the negativity of cyberbullying and its effects on people will be understood by our audience.

We posed these two questions to get a better understanding of how often short films are actually watched and how they are exposed to the public. The short films stated by our audience will be used as inspiration while we research into similar media products to consolidate our narrative and conform to the codes and conventions of short films. Today, most media texts are delivered to the public via social. With that in mind, when making our short film poster we will ensure our target audience are aware of our media product being released on YouTube - this is the most accessible media outlet for the younger generation as it does not require payment. The short film could have more success online as it potentially enters its way into the ‘trending’ list of videos on YouTube, being promoted to a mainstream audience instead of a niche one and achieving the goal of exposing the short film to as many people as possible.

From this information, we have decided to include components of suspense and tension with the use and/or absence of non-diegetic incidental music. We will use enigma and action codes to pose questions to the audience and answer them with the drive and development of the narrative. The short film will end on a cliffhanger (slightly depicting an open narrative) as the last shot showed will be of a bottle of pills, posing the questions; 'did she or did she not take the pills?' or 'has she just taken her own life?'.