Final Audience Feedback Survey

Here is the link to my survey I have created. Unfortunately I can't embed it into this blog post due to technical reasons that are out of my control.


https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/K3MZSW5



The questions are all related to my short film, and will give me understanding on some of the strengths and weaknesses with the short film. I've also asked them to rate their opinion of the film, from a scale of 1-10. This is just so I have an idea on how good people actually thought the short film was. Another thing I did was ask them about certain conventions and technical aspects of the film, regarding what they thought was the best and what they thought needed the most improving. For example editing, camerawork, mise-en-scene, direction, plot and so on. This was particularly helpful for me as it would later enable me to find out what was and wasn't so good about the short film, and if I were to return to it in the future, I would have the means to improve it.

NEW Script- Adapted for Draft 4

This is a new script I have made that is for draft 4. Given the fact that I had to change the opening scene, I wrote in a new sequence in a car somewhere mysterious, with the same 3 characters. The rest of the short film will play out the same as draft 3 overall.

[Scene 1]

(In a car, dark environment)  (Slow techno music in the background)

Man 1: Alex I heard you have a free house on Saturday is that true?

Alex: Uh yeah man

Man 1: Oh right can we do like a little gathering or something?

Alex: We could do but we’d have to keep it quite low key, because my dad put a safe upstairs, from all the jewellery from Sunny’s wedding

Man 1: Oh. We better be invited yeah (Looks slightly above the camera)

Alex: Yeah man off course, course

(End of scene 1, diegetic music slows down)

[Title sequence]

Atmospheric horror music begins to play, non diegetic

AB18 Studios Present

Intrusion

(Scene 2)

Two masked thieves are walking towards the camera and

they stand still and stare forward at something

Man two pulls out a corkscrew

Man two clenches his fist

Both of them walk across the road to the house, and walk to the gate

They begin to break into the gate and remove the lock from the door

They kick down the gate and pick the lock from the back door of the house

Man 1: We need to go upstairs to the safe

Man 2: Yeah let’s go

(Scene 3)

Non-diegetic moody, ambient music changes to similar music, but slower and darker

They begin to walk to the stairs, once reached they stare up into the darkness at the top of the stairs  

Once up the stairs, they open the door leading to the safe

They open an additional door in which the safe is presumed to be

[Scene 4]

Non-diegetic music stops playing

Straight cut to Alex in bed hears a loud bang 

Alex: What was that?

Thrilling-horror like score sounds

Alex walks over to the room, and peers round the corner

He then slowly walks over the to slightly open door

Man 1 pulls him into the door

Cut to a shot of man 1, holding the candle to his face (editing changes to a red threshold/added filters to change the colour) (It’s actually a nightmare of Alex’s)

Alex wakes up from the nightmare and breathes heavily from the nightmare; he then looks to his right

The two men are standing there, man one has a knife in his hand, and he then lunges forward and presumably kills Alex

Film cuts with midway action of man 1 stabbing Alex

Credits begin to play out

Directed by Ashley banger

Staring Aayush Joshi

Starring Ashley Banger

and Alex Patrick-Smith

Edited by Ashley Banger

Story by Ashley Banger

Director of photography Benoit Ganesan

Produced by Jamie Gerrish

Intrusion Draft #3 - Completion and Filming Issue- UNABLE TO UPLOAD

I have recently completed my third draft of Intrusion. I re-shot several things and made a new edit, tackling main previous issues such as the lighting and mise-en-scene being too dark upstairs, shots cutting to black unnecessarily etc. I also filmed a whole new sequence which takes place in school, and involves the 2 thieves talking to the victim about a new safe his dad acquired in his house. This new footage and new edit made my 3rd draft of Intrusion come to a total of 4 minutes. In addiiton to this, the new draft 3 was filmed using a new set of storyboards, which I completed a few weeks ago.

However, I had a considerable problem in this draft which is why my teacher didn't give me permission to upload the draft to this blog post. In a couple of my shots, there was confidential teacher/student data displayed on the walls and on some desks, and for this reason my teacher wouldn't allow me to upload the draft online due to data protection associated reasons. This was quite silly of me to do as I should of thoroughly checked the mise-en-scene and content of the room before filming, and then I could have prevented this mistake. Therefore, I will be re-shooting the opening scene in a different environment, but staying with the same script and overall direction of the scene. This is so that I can get the same purpose introduction, but just with different location and mise-en-scene.

Updated Animatic- Draft 3 and Above

NEW Full Storyboards for Intrusion- Draft 3 and Above

I recently learned that I wanted to change certain things about Intrusion, mainly regarding shots and content. I therefore re-did all of my storyboards, so that all drafts from 3 and so on will be updated and working around new story-boards. The new ones are as follows:

These are the 4 storyboards for ''Intrusion' draft 3 and so on, and bring the short film to a total run time of approximately 4 minutes and 30 seconds.

Intrusion Poster - Draft No.3 - Final draft

This is my third and final draft of the poster for Intrusion.

There were minor improvements with this draft, but I feel they had a good overall effect on the poster.

One of these improvements was that the captions were a bit too big, so in this draft I had them be a bit smaller. This is so that they are less eye catching and the audiences attention can be focused more on other things, such as the title itself, and the image in the poster.

I also made the text at the bottom of the poster smaller, because originally it was also a bit too big so it stood out in the poster more than it should.

I also changed the colour of 'A film by Ashley Banger' from red to black just to ensure all the text isn't the same colour, and just to add a bit more variety.


Characteristics of the poster? 


- The black and white background is used to connote the ominous theme I was going for in Intrusion. The colour scheme represents the darker mood and tone Intrusion was intended for, I felt that if I included colour in the poster it wouldn't quite pinpoint the tone and design I was going for.

- The 2 characters are facing away from the camera- this was used on purpose to create a mysterious relationship between the audience and the characters. The audience are left to interpret what the characters will be like, and what their intentions are. I thought this was good as it adds to the mystery behind Intrusion which is what the premise and poster is designed for .

Secondary Teacher Feedback- Short Film Draft #2

Recently I showed my second draft of 'Intrusion' to my other media teacher. He had certain, common improvements with my 2nd draft that were also found to be in my other feedback sessions from my other teacher and peers.

- One main improvement he told me that I definitely need to amend is the lighting in several shots that take place upstairs. He said some of the shots were just simply too dark and that this made the shots look noisy due to the lack of light, since I only sourced light from the candles. Next time, I will be using additional light sources when shooting however considerably dulling down the colours in editing, which will help me to achieve a similar effect of darkness in the shots. This is a good improvement I found and will make my next draft look higher quality.

- Another main  improvement/adjustment he found was that some of the sudden dips to black were considered to be unnecessary or lacking much point. Whilst I originally intended them to create suspense, and to help segment the story, my teacher didn't fully agree with this and would recommend I take them out. This is something I don't mind doing due to the fact that I partially agree in saying the sudden dips to back aren't fully necessary or structural.

- One other main improvement he commented on was the draft's length. The draft currently sits at 3.30mins approximately, whereas we should be aiming for a minimum of 4 minutes. This is something I definitely need to address in my next draft by shooting more footage.

- One last improvement was that I had several minor problems with continuity. However most of these were mistakes with things that I am going to be re-shooting so I'm not too worried about this for now.

Overall I'm happy with his feedback as I now have a clearer understanding of how to improve my product and will be carrying out these improvements as soon as possible.