Target Audience - Moodboards



Moodboard showing images which represent Despair, Loss and Isolation
By Lorna

Despair, Loss and Isolation

I have made a moodboard about despair, loss and isolation on Adobe Photoshop to create a visual image for our theme of despair. I wanted to make it feel cold and uninviting so I lowered the opacity of all the images on a single layer and added a blue layer underneath it and played with the image setting until i was happy with the result.

Despair can take someone to a whole new place and level of depression. They don't feel any encourgement to go out or do something. Most people in dispair will be in a place where they feel comfortable and sage in such as their bedroom. More often than not people wish to be alone and away from the rest of the world.

A dark room is one of the most common signifiers for despair. The room has low key lighting and gives the feel of isolation. A small ray of light breaking through the curtains could signify hope.

Possible possessions

Necklace - A heart shape to represent the love between the two sisters. Could be a necklace inscribed with their name(s).

Journal - Personal diary entries which could tell the story of the two sisters through one of their eyes. A note inside the journal apologising to the sister about a fight that they had.

Rose - Slowly withering and dying. Connotes the death of one of the sisters. No one lives forever.

Teddy bear - Sesisitive side of the lead character. She hasn't quite matured enough to accept her sister's death.

Sketchbook - Shows sketches or photographs of the two sisters which the lead character has drawn.

Moodboard based upon teenagers and young people between the ages of 15 and 25
By Lorna

I have also created a moodboard for our target audience of fifteen to twenty five year olds. Teenage and young women are more likely to be affected by our short film because it deals with the loss of a loved one; a sister. Sisters can often feel like best friends as well as family to their siblings and in that sense the loss of sister can have a strong impact on their siblings.

We have decided that our target audience is going to be:

- Teenage girls and young people between the age of 15 and 25.

- People who have lost someone they love and feel like they can relate to the film

- People who feel trapped or isolated in a situation and can't seem to find a way out; but there is always a way

- Young people often turn to other things when they are depressed such as smoking, drinking and drugs which all have a negative affect on themselves.
- Other people may find the need to go out on a shopping spree or comfort eat in order to compensate for their depression.

Drama Presentation

Research into our Chosen Genre - Drama

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Research Into Our Chosen Genre

Drama

Dramas are one of the most realistic genres and are usually rather serious films which have a strong emphasis on emotion. They are pulled together with strong characters, dramatic and/or intense situations which draw in the viewer or audience. 

- Dramas are serious, plot-driven presentations, portraying realistic characters, settings, life situations, and stories involving intense character development and interaction. Usually, they are not focused on special-effects, comedy, or action, Dramatic films are probably the largest film genre, with many subsets.

http://www.filmsite.org/genres.html

- Emphasis on Emotion and Character
Characters have moral ambiguities and complexities
More developed than stereotypes, these characters have ability to fail or make mistakes
Drama raises more questions than it answers
“How life really is.”

http://www.psu.edu/dept/inart10_110/inart10/narr.html 

Narrative Structure

Calm setting

Conflict or discourse where mistakes are made and consequences are realised

A struggle - Emotional between two people/someone vs themselves

Freytag's Theory - Freytag's Pyramid
Gustav Freytag was a 19th century novelist.

Freytag believed that every drama can be divided into five major acts or parts. These were known to be: Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action and finally Dénouement. They are also known as a Dramatic Arc.

Exposition: At the beginning of a film the exposition provides the background information needed to understand the story. Following the exposition is the focal conflict or problem which the story is based around; although this may not be clear until further into the film.
Rising Action: The initial conflict becomes more complex as other smaller conflicts become noticeable. These conflicts make the road of the protagonist more difficult and deters them away form reaching their goal.
Climax: The key turning point within the film where something could progress the story further or go terribly wrong. 
Falling Action: The point in which the climax is reversed and the conflict starts to diminish slowly.
Denouement: Also known as the resolution of the film where the conflict is finally resolved. The word denouement was derived from the French word 'denoer' which meant "to untie". More often than not this is the ending where the protagonist is better off than they were when the story was first introduced.

Our short film will be using Freytag's Theory and it will be based around a young girl who is in despair.

 Please! - Paul Black - An Example of a Drama Short Film

"Why won't you just speak to me!?"A short film telling the story of a novelist named Peter Dunn who is struggling with his work and his relationship with his wife and daughter. The short film begins with the main character talking to himself which straight away tells us he is in a distraught state.The lighting is very low key with the only source of light being a lamp on the right-hand side of the room. The house/flat is an unhappy setting and so we are told from the exposition that the film may not end well. We know that he is a troubled man particularly when he looks at a photograph of who we believe to be his wife and daughter while holding a gun to his head. He is then seen on the phone in little clothing and drinking alcohol as he is shouting down the phone for someone to talk to him. These first couple of minutes could be used as the entire short film and it would not feel like anything would be missing.This short film works wells as a drama due to it's dramatic structure. There is a conflict between Peter Dunn and himself as well as his wife. The other conflict is when he is sitting in his car waiting for another driver when someone behind him is constantly beeping. This causes the car in front to knock on Peter's car aggressively and heightens his stress until he brings out the gun and points it at the driver and then to himself in a threatening way.Peter overcomes the conflict with himself and all seems well until his young daughter Lucy starts playing with the gun which he left in the car while he was on the phone. These final moments catch the audience and keeps them waiting for something bad to happen; which it inevitably does when Lucy shoots her father accidentally. This turn in the narrative makes the audience feel the emotion and sincerity of the daughter.The short film is pulled together using fluid pans and cuts which connect each setting and scene together continuously. Non-diegetic music constantly creates a mood in each sequence. During the last scene Peter's words from earlier in the film are ushered along with the daughter screaming "Dad!" This technique is used to tie the film up and loop it back around to the beginning.
When Five Fell by Wongfu Productions

This short drama was our initial inspiration for our own short drama which will be based upon a young girl who is in despair from the loss of her best friend. Wongfu Productions have used a collection of objects and a voice over to tell the story of the young girl we may do something similar.

Short Film - The Defintions

Online Defintions of Short Films

Definitions for 'Short Film' which I have found online.

- Any film that has a duration longer than one minute and shorter than fifteen minutes.

http://www.eicar-international.com/definition-short-film.html

- A trailer for a feature length film is sometimes mistakenly referred to as a "short" for the complete film Since the 1980's, the term "short subject" has come to be used interchangeably with "short film," an international, academic term used to mean a contemporary non-comercial motion picture that is substantially short than the average commercial feature film. There is no clear definition of the maximum length of a short film, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences classify it as 40 minutes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/short_film

- "For me a short film is a piece of work under half an hour which tells a story - narrative is very important to me" Jeena Murphy (Film Maker)

- "A simple, self-contained story, no great development of characters, enough to know who they are and their role in the story. Usually very few characters introduced"

- "An opportunity for a film maker to communicate their ideas consisely. By that I mean there is no extra information. Everything is there and there is no "padding"."

http://pov.imv.au.dk/Issue_05/section_4/artc2A.html

- "Short films don't necessarily need to have an iron-clad story arc or a decisive conclusion, but must create an atmosphere that, briefly, transports you to another world."

http://suchandrika.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/adventures-in-short-film/

My Own Defintion of a Short Film

My definition of a short film is an innovative piece of media which explores a concept and communicates it within a short span of time between 1 and 30 minutes. These concepts can have both complex and simple meanings; it can depend on how the audience sees them. They often have a few main characters whp the narrative is based around and sometimes none at all. Short films can portray an emotional message across to the viewer using a variety of techniques.

                     

  

‘Mankind is No Island.’ – Jason Van Genderen - An Example of a Short Film

"Do we love the people or the place"   

Two cities New York and Sydney which are divided by an ocean may seem very different but in fact have a lot in common – a vast amount of homeless people who are ignored by the public everyday. Images of words from restaurants, road signs and shops were used to create a message about the homeless. These images sync with the non-diegetic music almost making it seem diegetic. There aren't any specific characters except the homeless but the audience still feels connected to the homesless men who are shown. A red-shaped heart balloon is used as a symbol of love itself; when the homeless man is ignored by the people in both New York and Sydney it blows by across the floor as if to give a visual image to the emotion and neglect they must be feeling.
"Mankind is No Island" - Islands are beautiful places that thrive in the sun with lush greens and calm seas. Mankind can be heartless and uninviting. People wish to live in beautiful places where everything is perfect but instead live in places where people do not care for others who are less fortunate than themselves. This is why i believe this title is so powerful; it makes you think and wonder about other people's lives which are more difficult than our own.