FINAL DRAFT

"I found the final product very mesmerising and visually appealing. The use of sound was also effective and fitted the imagery well. I really enjoyed watching your product and think that you've created a production to be proud of." - Hannah Louise Emery, 17.

"I thought that the product itself was of a very high qualty and was visually appealing. Not only were the visuals of a great quality, the audio was of the same calibre!"- Charlie James Razzell Gower, 17. 

"I thought the product was very well made, the cinematography was very effective and I found the use of lights and sillouttes really interesting. I also feel that the music went well alongside the visual" - Leanne Clarke 18.

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

Having come across The Words Of Bokeh whilst at a university open day, it inspired us to create an experimental film piece. We were inspired by the bokeh effect, and immediately wanted to learn more about it and how it is achieved. The film spells out a phrase "the time is now" using blurring of lights. This then became the narrative of our film, and we chose the phrase "not all those that wander are lost". A quote in which is personal to us. Finally we had an idea that we were passionate enough about, to put everything into. The shot below shows a screen grab from The Words of Bokeh (left) and a screen grab from our own film. As you can see, the blurring of the word 'now' inspired me to add a Gaussian blur, and a slight glow to our own use of the word 'lost'. The brighter the light, the clearer the image, brighter colours are more visually captivating, and it allows the audience to read the word accurately without any difficulties.

The Words of Bokeh takes this technique one step further to make it unique by blurring natural sunlight into words. We found this difficult to create as the brightness had to be prefect in order for it to blur into a distinguishable shape. Miranda captured the sunlight flickering on the waves (below right) and used a lens cap to create a bird shape. Filming during the day allowed the shot to be clear, creating a broad visual for the audience. The overall balance of night and day worked really well, creating a piece that flowed beautifully. 

Several YouTube tutorials helped us when creating something more unique. This one in particular shows you how to create the lens caps, set the aperture values and then goes on to show you some effective ways of using the bokeh effect. The merging of lights (below, left) inspired us to layer our footage not only in the filming stages but in the post production stages too. The colours did not clash, instead they creates something very visually pleasing, which our audience loved and the feedback we gained was outstanding. Our film does not have a conventional linear narrative and so it was important for us to capture them in other ways.

The last shot of our film, which features a pan of the pier- with simple bokeh lights was inspired by Bokeh Beautiful, which uses simple non manipulated bokeh blurs. The merging of colours and change in opacity, again became hugely inspirational for us. We wanted to use a simple shot for the ending to show that it is just as effective as those shots which have had effects added. The way it pans into the darkness was also a perfect way to introduce the credits (below right)

The opening of Love Bokeh (below left) shows a beautiful shot of a vehicle travelling in the rain. Bokeh lights shine through the window revealing rain drops. The main theme in our film is travel, so Miranda filmed journeys on various different vehicles and captured various lights on the way. The image on the right shows the raindrops on a train window, introducing another form of travel to our film. 

Our film challenged the forms and conventions of other Bokeh films through its cinematography. We decided we liked the effect of using the lens cap as a vignette. To achieve this Miranda zoomed right out so that the lens cap was visible (below). This became even more visually engaging as we captured a bird flying through the bird lens cap. Although we are very proud of this technique perhaps it would have been better if the lens cap appeared darker. We could have also cut out the shape to decrease the amount of smokiness in the centre. 

POSTER

Miranda came across the film poster for Martha Marcy May Marlene when researching into posters. We really liked how the image was only visible through the letter 'M'. We found this quirky and so applied it to our own images. Our audience like the use of colours, and they liked the use of different images, rather than just settling on the one. Martha Marcy May Marlene was a more mainstream film so it was important for us to combine this idea with posters from the art house genre. We looked at experimental film posters to see what kind of information was included. 

We found that most posters have who the film director/production team is, with no distribution or release information.  This is why we put little information on our poster.  If audience wanted to find our more about the project, they could look on our youtube/vimeo/twitter and facebook pages. 

If we were to improve our final poster we could put social networking and online distribution links at the bottom in smaller print.  This is so our audience knows exactly what website to go to instead of going through search engines like google or yahoo. 

REVIEW PAGE

Most magazines stick to the same layout and fonts because the reader will become use to this, and expect the same thing from each issue. Because of this, it was not necessary for us to change or challenge the conventions of the review page. We used Daze of Wonder because it came from the magazine Sight and Sound. Having researched into different review magazines, this was most suitable as others only focused on blockbuster, mainstream films. Sight and Sound promotes unique, experimental niche films. We liked the simple layout of the magazine and the fact that it was easy to read. the targets for our film were those who are passionate and share a deep interest of the genre. Adding a page number and date to the bottom of the screen would help make it feel more professional.

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

When creating our ancillary texts it was important for us to maintain the quality we had been producing in our main product. Our film is very original, and the colours are very captivating. Our poster and review page both needed to reflect this originality and quirkiness of the piece. 


Bokeh is the main technique within our film,and for our audience to understand, or be intrigued by our poster we needed to introduce the uniqueness of our film.  Miranda selected both "untouched" bokeh (lights just blurred with no word/symbol) and two of our most eye-catching shapes (the stars and the people).  She chose the stars, because they are our brightest image, and will capture the audiences eye, and she chose the people because it is our most intriguing and thought-provoking image.  The main aim of the film is to intrigue people, and make them want to find out about the technique.  These particular images will certainly intrigue audience members to watch our film, and captivate them from the beginning.  

She decided on a dark grey background to introduce the surrounding dark area around the blurred lights.  Most of our shots are filmed at night, so we also wanted to introduce the way we present the bokeh lights in our film.  The grey background was also used to bring out the colours from the images further.  All the colours that are in the pictures are very appealing and attractive colours.  By contrasting them with a dark background they will become even more attractive.  
Miranda had been inspired by the film poster for Martha Marcy May Marlene when creating these letters. She also decided on this stencil idea because it is much like the lens hoods we used when filming. Suggesting to the audience that they too could achieve this technique themselves. 

Our poster became linked to our review page as we wanted to maintain the thoughts that were being represented in our poster. When looking at the film magazine Sight and Sound it was obvious that the majority of the page was dedicated to text, and a small part to the images, as most pages often only had one strong image to support the text. We chose the image we liked best- the one taken during our research stages as it showed the bright lights in the bokeh effect. The blurred lights of the cars suggest travel, and a sense of wandering which became the main theme to our film. Much like the poster, the bright lights were against a dark contrasting background. 

We used the same font throughout all products so that they could easily be linked together.

I think the products work well as a as a combination because they all maintain this 'house-style' and we have made sure we maintain the same feel, and professionalism throughout. Although each piece is strong enough to stand alone they work well together due to the connection in colour, font and strong memorable images. They all grab the audiences attention with their intriguing design. 

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Our teacher thought many of the shots from 'The Story of an Hour' were clumsy and not well thought out. She also didn't feel as though they wee best to our ability. It was obvious that we were not motivated or passionate about what we were creating, and so because of this our film suffered. It was then that we decided we needed a new challenging idea. 

We continually asked our teacher and target audience for feedback when creating 'Blur'. We used networking sites including Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter to gain feedback, which was very important as it helped us progress and develop our products throughout the duration of research and planning. 

Facebook. 

Facebook has been our main platform when communicating with our target audience.  Facebook has allowed us to embed videos from youtube, post screenshots from the film and pictures of our review page and poster to gain audience comments, whether good or bad.  Not all of my friends on facebook/people who commented and gave opinions are passionate about film.  Some had a general interest, others more passionate.  This gave us a wider scope of opinions on our products so that we could really develop our film

Above is an example of a post Miranda posted on facebook when creating our poster. The comment posted suggests we change the background colour as it makes the smaller text hard to read. We however felt as though this colour suited the letters but agreed that the text had become difficult to read and so we went away and changed the text colour. It becomes hard to judge your own work, and so this feedback was vital for Miranda to make any changes and to make sure we were keeping within our target audience. 

The first draft of our film also gained feedback from facebook. Below is a screenshot. 

Although our first draft had patches, our audience generally seemed to really like it. They loved how the editing flowed smoothly and the calming effects the footage had on them. Their only criticism was that the music became a little repetitive. When creating the second draft we took this feedback into account and focused on gaining the extra footage and re-drafting the music. From this feedback we were able to improve what we already had, and it taught us that our audience want more of the bokeh effect, and to keep the professionality of the footage. 

Although the feedback from Twitter, YouTube and Tumblr was minimum, we were able to post regularly on these to create interest and promote not only our film but the other products too. As Facebook seemed to have more interest we decided to post as much as we could here. 

While it is important to gain a wide range of opinions from people with different passions and backgrounds, I also asked my teachers and class colleagues.  I was gaining some general statements of "I like this", which are non-detailed responses.  From my teachers and colleagues, I could get detailed criticisms which focused on "what worked" well and "even better ifs".  This helped us to keep on track, and to continually develop our products.  

From our first draft we have made the following changes to our products due to audience feedback:

• Soundtrack - we have made the music less repetitive, and more uplifting, yet maintaining the flow and rhythm of the piece.  
• We made sure that the theme and style of our film was maintained throughout our piece, and that all the shots were at the same level as each other
• We also posted screenshots from our film onto facebook, and asked them to vote which image would be perfect for a poster.  We then used the images that the audience picked and used them on our final poster.  
• We changed the font colour on the poster so that the audience can read the text. 

How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages? on Prezi

Final editing touches!

I was coming close to the end of finishing our film-with 30 seconds left to fill i was finding it difficult to scrape together enough footage. I didn't want to put footage in that i didn't like just to fill the time gap. 

To overcome this i took some of my favourite bits- the round bokeh lights- and i changed the colouring and the saturation to create something new and interesting. It was whilst i was doing this that i though i could create a series of colour changing bokeh lights. Either this or layer them up so that the colours are overlapping. 

Final Poster and feedback

Once we had a poster we were happy with Miranda posted the poster onto Facebook to gain feedback. 

After receiving this feedback Miranda went back into Photoshop and changed the font to something lighter, making it easier to read. 

Hello, I Like You

I came across this video whilst browsing Vimeo and it reminded me of our product. The words especially look a lot like our words 'wander' and 'world'.

Hello, I Like You from Mixtape Club on Vimeo.

feedback for blog

link to other films
analyse the words of bokeh- analyse more carefully
annotate pictures and how they can relate to Bokeh
invisible sign
more discussions on the rough cut, what is being suggested?
Work on evaluations

final review and feedback

review draft 1

"I like the image you've chosen to use as its very interesting and sums up the content of your film well, however, it doesn't show that you will change the light into a shape.  To improve it you could put the text into collumns, like they do in real magazine reviews, and put an image of a shaped bokeh." - Hannah Emery, 17

"The font used looks quite boring.  I know its more sophisticated than other film magazines, but I think it needs to look more fun.  I wanna look at the page and be interest, not put off by office fonts.  Maybe change the font to the same font used in the poster and film?"  - Abi Jones, 17


From this feedback, Miranda decided to change the image to a still from the film- showing the audience what techniques have been used. We wanted to show the complexity of our film and the skill involved. Abi mentioned that the font looked too formal, considering our film is quirky, and so Miranda changed this to the font we have used in both our film and the poster. Giving all of the pieces the same house-style will make them more recognisable as a pair. 

Film Review Drafts

Before finalising the information we were going to place onto our film review we wanted to create a few layouts and image selections until we had one we were happy with. 

I took a few of our favourite images and imported them into a word document. After doing this i added other elements such as 'star ratings', captions and speech bubbles. Although these layouts are fun looking, i don't think they are suitable for our film. We need something a little more professional and neat looking. 

Poster Designs

This is one of our favourite images that we took. Miranda uploaded this into photoshop and added the film title and production company name. I particularly like its simplicity but don't feel as though it is experimental enough for the film we have produced. 

I had an idea of re-creating the words from our film using the word 'blur' instead. Miranda had a go at creating this to create something similar to the shots we had been producing. Its more experimental than the first and offers something interesting to look at.

After seeing the poster for Martha Marcy May Marlene miranda was inspired to create something a long the lines of this. She used our favourite photo and transformed it into the word blur. We were both happy with this design yet felt as though we could be even more experimental. 

Miranda then took the strongest images and applied them to the previous idea. We decided on a grey background because we felt as though it bought out the colours more- the white background became too overpowering. The text we chose is clear and easy to understand, yet doesn't draw attention from the image and title. The images we chose show our audience the concept and techniques used within our film, such as the stars and the person. It introduces the audience to the bokeh technique, and it intrigues them to find out more about our film. 

Below are two of the posters i created myself. 

As talked about previously, this idea was based on Un Chien Andalou and Welcome to the Rileys. 

I wanted to take Miranda's poster further and add a coloured background a long with small information at the bottom. 

Poster Analysis

Andrea Arnolds Fish Tank

The dominating picture is of Mia- the protagonist of the film. Her surrounding looks grubby, this introduces Mia's lifestyle and one of the main settings of the film. The title itself is a bright blue capitalised font. Its situated in the middle immediately drawing in the audience. The blue and pink colour scheme matches part of the writing and scratches on the wall. We are introduced to the main characters, the director and are also given quotes from various newspapers, as well as star reviews. I think this poster fits its genre, however i don't think it would fit our type of film, we have no actors and no set locations. Our film mainly focuses on camera techniques and editing. 

I came across the poster for Un Chien Andalou, an experimental film from Luis Buñuel. I really like the layout for this, its simple but offers the audience a glimpse of the film. Selecting the strongest or most significant shots of the film instead of using just the one may be more suitable for us, as we have been finding it difficult to select just the one image. After coming across this it reminded me of the Welcome To The Rileys poster, a more recent film with the same kind of layout.

Not only do we see some of the most rememberable shots from the film we also receive quotes from those that have seen it. This allows us as the audience to make up our minds, a positive quote often sways us into wanting to see the film. The colouring introduces the main characters, those that progress the narrative are in colour where as the other shots are a saturated blue. The text informs us of the name of the film, the actors- whether they be well known or not, the distribution and production company, and the names of others with important roles. 

Below is a poster i created using this layout, i selected a few of my favourite shots and played around with the layout until i had something i was happy with. 

Choosing the poster image

After looking at a number of the images from the film, we still couldn't decide on just the one. We showed some of the images to our friends to see what they thought. 

"I love this one!  I'm not sure what I love more about it, the texture and contrast of all the different colours inside the one shape or just the pure simplistic nature of it! I love how all the colours look so complete next to each other!  Great job!!"  - Ben Cockram, aged 18

Still, after no decision on what image to use, we decided to set out and find ways we could incorporate a few of the images we liked into one poster. 

Blur first draft

Below is the first draft of our film- Blur



Miranda and I both felt as though we needed to inject some more colour into our final piece.

Having recently found this video on YouTube-



The colours used in First Bokeh Film use vibrant saturated colours. Unlike our film, the light have not been blurred into shapes, however the colours alone make it captivating and engaging for the audience. when editing our film I am going to experiment with the saturation and brightness to create something just as bright.
The music in this piece is simple and calming, which fits the flow of the lights perfectly. The music used in our first draft is very competitive. From our feedback the audience didn't like the repetitive music.  This is another one of the elements we need to work on.

Feedback from first draft

It was important for us to gain feedback as it helped us progress and complete our project. 

I posted links on both of my twitter accounts and on Tumblr. As Miranda has a Facebook account she also posted the link there. 

Twitter

Tumblr

Facebook

Rating and Distribution

Due to the change in film genre it was important for us to re-look at the film rating- so that this could be inserted into our poster and film review. We re-looked at the information on http://www.bbfc.co.uk/.
Our film does not contain any sexual violence, swear words, drug related images or other qualitiesthat may make our film either an 18, 15 or a 12. For that reason we have decided to give our film the rating 'U'. Suitable for all.

After deciding this we had to decide on a distributor. To do this, i researched into other specialised films to see who distributed them.

Distribution

BBC Films is the feature film-making arm of the BBC. It has produced or co-produced some of the most successful British films of recent years, including An Education, StreetDance 3D, Fish Tank, Stage Beauty, A Cock and Bull Story, Nativity! and Match Point.

BBC Films co-produces around eight films a year, working in partnership with major international and UK distributors. Christine Langan is Head of BBC Films, responsible for the development and production slate, strategy and business operations.

Recent titles include Nigel Cole's Made in Dagenham, Stephen Frears’ Tamara Drewe, Debs Gardner-Paterson’s Africa United, Max and Dania’s StreetDance, which was Britain’s first-ever 3-D movie. 

Neither of these films however, quite compare to the quirkiness as ours. A lot of the films we have used in the research and inspiration stages have been published on sites such as vimeo, and neither have been distributed by a film distributor. Vimeo is a perfect website for our film as it allows a lot of experimental directors to post their films onto the site. Youtube is known for vloggers and music channels where as Vimeo is broad film interest. Short films are constantly being uploaded and viewed by other film critics and film enthusiasts. 

BBC Films is perhaps too large a company for a film like ours and so we have gone for a film  label called 'dazzle'. 

"We are dazzle, the UK's hottest independent short film label, handles the exclusive distribution, exhibition and sales rights for a selective catalogue of award-winning, critically acclaimed UK and international titles. From 90-second, digital micro-movies to super-35mm masterpieces, dazzle's bijou short film collection is often provocative, always original and sure to inspire."

The films from this label are original, unique and inspirational. Our film will inspire others to try the bokeh technique and create their own original effect. Our film challenges and experiments the conventions of mainstream cinema. 

Funding

As our film is a British experimental film, it qualifies for funding from the British Film Institution (BFI). Funding from the BFI will enable us to create a product which is smooth and professional looking. Filmmakers must take 'the cultural test' in order to gain funding. They must receive at least 16 out of the 31 points to even be considered. These include British locations, cast and crew, British subject matter and English dialogue. 

Sight And Sound

Sight and Sound is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute. Sight and Sound was first published in 1932 and first published in 1934 management of the magazine was handed to the BFI which still publishes the magazine today.
Every decade, Sight and Sound asks an international group of film professionals to vote for their greatest film of all time.

Having already decided Sight and Sound will be the prefect magazine for our film, we decided to break up the conventions of a review page and see what it was we needed to include.

1)   Image – usually introduces new talent or the main character of a film.  In our film, because we do not have linear characters, we need to suggest the bokeh technique and the genre of our film.

2)  Title - Isn't usually the title of the film in Sight and Sound.  Writer creates a slogan that sums up the genre of the film

3)  Image description - lets the audience know whose in the image.  Usually has either a positive/negative thing to say about the actor/actress playing the role

4)  Main text - I was quite surprised to see that the text was not justified.  I thought that magazine articles were usually justified so that they looked more professional.  When creating our review page I will justify the text because it is easier for readers to read and it will look professional and slick.  I will use the same font as I used in the poster and film title, so that all our products are visually linked. 

5)  Film information - here the article has placed film information such as certificate, director name and all the different features.  

6)  Article sub-heading - introduces the tone of the article, whether it be positive, negative or mocking.  Audiences know what tone of writing the author will have from this heading.  

7)  Banner at the top of page - audiences know which section of the magazine the film comes under from this section.  Our film will come under "Short Film".

8)  Article type - audience know whether this review is a feature from this title - the title given to this review is "close-up"  this implies that more information will be given to the audience about the film.  

When creating our poster, Miranda followed these conventions as closely as she could.

Effects and Editing Techniques

For the opening shot/ title i wanted to use one of our stronger more simplistic shots with a font that was not too overpowering. Our film requires you to think but it is not complicated, therefore a busy font would not have suited it. This simplistic font is perfect, paired with a cross dissolve in and a cross dissolve out, it serves it purpose well.

To hide the dissappearance of the title i used the 'cross dissolve' so that it would fade out in the middle of the layered footage. By creating layers of different bokeh footage i was able to create a smooth and interesting effect.

We chose the phrase 'those that wander are not lost' as it acts as a bit of a summary to what we are creating our film about. The screen grab above shows the effect for the word 'those'. The diy lense cap is visible adding depth, which then slowly zooms into the sea. To create something more appealing we chose to keep the original sound of children playing on the beach.

To widen our use of techniques we took a series of still shots that appeared to move when placed close together. I chose the photo's of the arrow as they show a sense of direction. One of my favourite shots that Miranda created shows a bright blue bicycle bokeh with a textured almost green background. To link the two i added a 'dip to white' which created a flash and overlapped the two pieces of footage.

(this image shows the amount of layers i have overlapped) 

The above shots show the layering of footage, a theme i have chosen to keep throughout so that there is a sense of movement. The pink lights are three layers of bokeh lights which cut in together at different intervals to create a flicker and a hazy kind of effect. I like this effect so much that i have asked Miranda to get some new footage of the round bokeh effect, this time with perhaps different shades of blue or green.

Lastly, the 'world' image shows the lense cap on top of a landscape view of a harbour. The bright yellow lights that are visible at the back make the writing look almost graffiti like, with the reflection in the sea acting as the paint drips.