Initial Ideas
For my Final Major Project I know that I want to create a Short Film. Throughout the film I want to follow Wes Anderson's 'Style' to add that memorable aspect to it. I also know I want to create a short which takes inspiration from Black Mirror which pokes fun at at some fundamental flaws in society.
My first step to help me narrow down on my idea would be to create a mind map based on 'flaws in society'. I took four ideas of flaws in society and just briefly listed my ideas of each of them.
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This was exciting to me as it allowed me to start developing deeper ideas of what I want to do.
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The first idea I have developed in my head from the mindmap stems off of the social media branch. My idea is to create a short film around a world in which people's lives are controlled by social media. The story would follow a protagonist who is obsessed by getting likes and shares. He realises the humans algorithm is that the more likes on a post the 'better' a human you become. Ofcourse, the idea of being 'better' is a twisted one. Eventually throughout the short film you would see him get more negative ratings, this would lead to his collapse, depression and disappearance. The whole idea of 'Flaws in Society' is quite extreme in this case. In this story there would be a physical correlation between likes and someone's state of health which is not currently true to life, however some people do suffer this idea that the amount of likes and ratings they get defines them. This is a flaw. This should not be happening.
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This short film would be fun to make. It would require a lot of post production to show the screens of all sorts of devices with social media on. This would be exciting for me to embark on as I really enjoy editing and visual effects - it would also be a nice challenge. From a filming point of view there is so much that could be done, from point of views to tracking and crane shots I am already creating a vast variety of ideas. It would be an opportunity to develop my skills beyond what I currently know.
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My second idea revolves around the idea of companies selling data they have on us. While I haven't really defined exactly where the plot of this short film would go, I have the idea of the story following an average internet user and then the story goes on to follow his 'data'. It would highlight how the massive conglomerate companies choose what do with the data and profit of you - without you knowing. The twist would fall right at the end of the story when a company unknowingly sells the data to a dangerous company.
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From a filmmaking point of view this film would take place using majority visual effects over physical recorded footage. It would allow me to develop my skills in visual effects.
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Finally, the idea I came up with is based around the flaw of technology. It is about a piece of technology that is created with the intentions of making people more social, however, it can make people less social. The phone. I want to create a story that shows how phones make social situations or locations less social. This idea was inspired by an article I read online.
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The whole aim of this story will be to provide that message to the audience - the message that next time, maybe they should choose the more social way and put their phone down. This short film will have a strong message and will come with lots of opportunities for me to develop my creative skills along the way. I will get to develop my camera work as this will require a lot of footage from inside the coffee shop as well as developing my editing even more. This short film will fit perfectly in the Wes Anderson style which I am going for.
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This idea will also be easily doable with current covid restrictions due to the limited cast and locations.
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Rationale
Since September 2019, I have been on the UAL extended diploma in media technology course. I entered this course with a passion for film and specifically film editing. This course not only allowed me to develop on my film passion but also explore new areas of media such as graphic design, podcasts and music videos. These have all helped me to develop skills such as teamwork, working in new software and much more. Throughout the course I have enjoyed filmmaking the most. Making a short film on the course taught me a lot, it taught me the details of the pre-production process from mindmaps, scriptwriting to reccees and costume design. I also learnt how to use a camera to shoot at the most optimal settings. I learnt to shot log the footage after it was digested and I learnt how to achieve certain effects in post production. While I was learning all of this I found myself really enjoying it. I was happy to learn new ways and implement them into my own work and build on them. I enjoyed the entire process from start to finish. Having enjoyed working on a short film so much, I knew a short film would be the route I would have to go down for my final major project.
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Knowing that I wanted to do a short film I started to brainstorm what I wanted the film to be about. I think that right from the outset I knew that I wanted to have an almost 'Black Mirror' feel to the narrative. In the sense that a fundamental aspect in society that is flawed it being poked fun at. To start with I brainstormed several ideas in my head. One of my ideas was to take the idea of 'rating' on social media and putting it into a real life scenario. However, how I imagined this in my head was with a large amount of people, which is not really practical in the current circumstances of the world. The next idea I had was to look at the dark side of social media, and how it collects your data and sells it. It would of looked at how someone's life could have been destroyed by one piece of information getting sold on. The reason I did not take this idea was because I did not see it being a 'gripping story' which would be fun to make.
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After spending some time considering ideas, the final Idea which I came up with was the one that I settled with. This will be a short film that pokes at the fact society is becoming antisocial due to the use of a means of technology which is meant to make us more social - phones! The idea I have come up with revolves around a coffee shop worker who loves talking to his customers. One day the coffee chain starts mobile ordering and everyone does that leading to less social interaction. This leads to the coffee shop man being sad. There is several reasons for why this is the option which I picked such as the fact it will not require too many actors which is fitting for making a production in a pandemic. I believe editing will pay a key role in telling this story at its best. I love editing and it is the industry I want to go in which is another reason I decided to make a short film. I also believe this will allow for development in my camera skills as well as creation of a interesting and gripping film in the genre of drama. I plan to follow conventions of Wes Anderson's style when creating this short film which will add another level of thought in the cinematography stage.
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The idea of taking the issue of humans becoming 'Anti-Social' could be almost controversial while at the same time important as it highlights a potential issue in society. This element of controversy is important as it will attract audience attention and increase people's wants to watch the entirety of the short film which is an important aim of a short film. This is also important as they will be taking the message in, in its fullest and allowing them to reflect on how they use a mobile phone in a certain situation in future.
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The creation of this short film will comes with it strengths and weaknesses. One of the strengths of me opting to choose a short film as my medium is my knowledge and enjoyment for making films. Choosing a medium I enjoy will allow me to look forward to the project and keep me excited about working on it and therefore create something of higher quality because I am passionate about the project rather than me taking onboard a project with less work but doesn't excite me so I don't produce work at a high quality.
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The main weakness of shooting any moving image production at the moment is the covid-19 pandemic. With the seriousness of the pandemic there is social distancing and lockdown restrictions implemented all around the country and world at the moment. With the ever changing nature of these restrictions it makes it hard to organise a shoot as you could be barred from entering that location at any time. This is a major problem and if 'backup' options are not considered the shoot could be tremendously delayed and impact the rest of the project. This could potentially lead to a fail.
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I have chosen to adopt some of Wes Anderson's unique art style into this short. In particular I am thinking about implementing the symmetry to create a vibrant memorable scene. This was a huge decision for me as I have never implemented Andersons style into any of my work before. If I do not give myself the correct amount of time and research into this then this could be a weakness for me. However, if I carry this out correctly and build my sets to a really high standard - looking like it was designed by Anderson then they will be effective at allowing people to remember the short much easier making it a success.
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When I enter the post-production process of this short film I will be following Walter Murch's six rules of editing. This will hopefully will work to be one of my strengths, allowing me to output the best cut that I can possibly output. Using these rules will help me develop even more in my edits while using skills I have developed myself or from the course in the process. While I already knew a large chunk of premiere pro, the course has taught me how to achieve much more with the software, such as how you can use masks to merge several shots into one. The course has also taught me brief basics in colour grading which will come in handy into the post production edit.
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Throughout the short film there will be some need for visual effects to show the audience phone screens. Before I started this course I would have found any way to avoid having to do this kind of visual effect as it was new to me and I did not know how to complete an effect like that. However, being on this course allowed me to develop on the basics of software like After Effects and become more confident with its tools and features. The course has shown me that it is impossible to know everything about these large pieces of software due to their complex nature so if I have to google how to complete a certain effect - it is not a bad thing! Now that I am more confident with After Effects I am not scared by the idea of having to complete this phone screen visual effect anymore and know with a bit of practice and research in After Effects I will have it nailed.
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Project Concept
The concept of this project is to create a short film which is poking fun at the flaw in society that is people becoming antisocial because of phones. The aim of the short film in itself will be to make people consider if they really need to use their phone in that moment or situation in the future. It aims to make people consider if they could do the same thing without the use of a mobile phone. This idea was sparked when I stumbled across an article by the daily mail titles 'Are Smartphones making us antisocial'. It talks about how humans thrive on social interaction- the idea of a mobile phone brings us so much of that. It talks about how the phone allows for so much interaction it 'drives the brain's reward system into overdrive'. It states that the devices 'tap into our basic needs as a uniquely social species'. These statements made me more and more curious on the topic and I continued to look into it by searching around the internet. I eventually found myself on another article which talked about scenarios we are all familiar with that show this human addiction in action for example, an elevator full of strangers on their phones or standing in a food line and everyone has their faces are stuck in phones. This article talks about a phrase called 'phubbing' which is the act of snubbing someone in a social setting by looking at your phone instead of paying attention. These articles lead me to want to create a scenario around phones causing phubbing to happen frequently in a social place.
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Macdonald, C. (2018). Are smartphones really making us anti-social? [online] Mail Online. Available at: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5475409/Are-smartphones-really-making-anti-social.html [Accessed 14 Feb. 2021].
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Matteson, S. (2014). Are smartphones making us less social? [online] TechRepublic. Available at: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/are-smartphones-are-making-us-less-social/ [Accessed 14 Feb. 2021].
The short film will closely follow an employee of a large coffee shop chain. This employee loves his job due to his extroverted nature and getting to talk to people all shift when taking their orders. This is what brings him happiness. One day however, the coffee shop chain introduces mobile ordering. The introduction of mobile ordering means the customers become less social, they complete the task they once did with a human on their mobile device. The staff member finds his mental health deteriorating as less customers talk to him. He makes an effort to socialise but people would rather plug headphones in. Eventually he is no longer needed, he loses his job - the thing that kept him happy.
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In an opposing view to my whole idea the second article I referenced talks about phones making us more social than we would be without them. It brings up the point that people meet people they may not otherwise have known because of phones and their social features. This allows you to think of the other positive aspects of the social aspects mobile phones bring us like the ability to arrange to meet people, the ability to talk to people when you physically can't - an example of this is could be a long distance relationship. I think it will be important for me to reference this side of the theory into my short film in one way or another to shine a little light on the positive impact phones have had on humans rather than just highlighting what negatives they can have on people.
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This short film will aim to get a target audience of teens and young adults. This is because this generation is the generation who use the most technology like phones. The target audience could finish this film with one of two main attitudes. They might have understood the underlying message and realise that they do not need to use their phone much. They will be gripped into watching the whole short by their relatability to the main character and his use of technology in social places. However, some of the target audience could also find this almost attacking them, they may not find the information being fed to them positive. My target audience will be seen as an 'active audience' in terms of audience theory. This means they will react to the message differently depending on who they are - as stated above. This is not like a passive audience who will largely accept the message given to them. Throughout the short I will use elements of the Hypodermic needle theory to 'inject' audiences with the message in a subliminal way - this will all lead to the message and the aim of the short being completed.
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Throughout the project I will produce a detailed selection of research and pre production documents in order to ensure that the film is able to achieve the best results that is possibly can. In order to gather the best and most accurate research I can I will ensure that I use a range of academic sources such as journals or articles from trusted places such as Academia or Google Scholar.
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Throughout the post production stage I will be taking into heavy consideration Walter Murch's theory on the six rules of editing. This will be in order to help me achieve the best cut in which I possibly can. I will take into consideration the depths of each rules, for example I will study how the actors blink in order to understand the emotion being portrayed and when to cut to show the emotion the best.
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I am very inspired by the 'Wes Anderson Style' which I researched as part of my research project. I aim to implement aspects of the style into my short film to make is aesthetically pleasing and memorable for the audience.
Evaluation
Evaluating my product at the end is a vital part of developing my skills in filmmaking. It will allow me to recognise points in the project where I struggled and points in the project which I believe went really well.
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In order to evaluate my project I will employ a couple of methods. To start with I will take the final film and screen/send it to at least eight people who did not have any relationship to the production. These people will then receive a survey which will ask questions such as:
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What do you think the message of this short was?
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What was your favourite bit? (In terms of Cinematography, Mise-en-scene, editing and sound)
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What could be improved? (In terms of Cinematography, Mise-en-scene, editing and sound)
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Did you enjoy this short?
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Did it make you want to keep watching, if so, why?
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These questions will all help me to understand the stronger and weaker points of the short. I would take these results and place them into a spreadsheet in which I can look for recurring themes within the comments. I will then write up a short text on my thoughts on my own project as well as talking about the survey results.
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Throughout the length of the project I will create a 'Thought Log' which will be a place I log any thoughts or progress I make every time I work on the project. This will be good when it comes to evaluating at the end as I can look over my thought process and understand if a certain decision I made was good or not.
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All these stages (plus my schedule) will allow me to reflect on my decisions and choices in great detail. The use of my diary will be essential to allow me to work out if a decision I made on a certain day has an effect on the final project. An example of this would be I could look at the date I made a certain decision and how that sat in my schedule and work out if that was a bad decision to make and realise I should have done things differently. This will all contribute to my development and allowing me to realise for future work, or even future decisions on the same project. Essentially I will be able to analyse what I did right and what I did wrong at the end of the project. This is important for myself to recognise what I did not do so well and what skills I can develop and have learnt for future work and projects.
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Strategies
I will be completing this project during a global pandemic. This is not ideal and will have an effect on my project in one way or another. In order to make sure it effects me in the least possible way, one of my strategies is to consider social distancing restrictions at all times. An example of this is by limiting the characters in my story, this means when it comes to production I can have less people on set, allowing for social distancing.
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Another strategy I am implementing is the strategy of having one location. One location in my short film gives me the time and ability to spend more time building a set for this one location that I can use even if we find ourselves going into another lockdown. This is much more sensible than using a real cafe or coffee shop at this time. It also allows me to be able to shoot whenever I want rather than being limited to times that fit a business.
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Action Plan and Timetable
In order to help myself and others visualise how I intend to progress with this project I created a gantt chart. This can be seen by clicking on the image below:
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The Gantt chart does a very good idea of outlining the amount of time I estimate I will spend on each section of the project. Creating this allows me to use it as a guide to ensure that I do not run over on one part of the project too much.