A Lost Soul ( All 3 Final Tasks)

'A Lost Soul' Future Aspirations

Now that my media product has now been completed, my aspiration for "A Lost Soul" is to enter the product into short film festivals such as BFI, Cannes and Sundance. From these film festivals, my product will be able to reach a much broader audience which could benefit from the word of mouth. Another potential benefit would be to gain recognition from studio executives and producer in order to then gain funding to produce a feature film based on the short film "A Lost Soul"; examples of previous cases are with Wes Anderson's "Bottle Rocket" and Damien Chazelle's "Whiplash" all films that were based of the film-maker's short films created to pitch their feature film.

As for other future aspirations I have for my project, as the director if I am granted the opportunity to revisit the material within a feature film; I would like to expand on the world within the story by increasing the visual scope of the film through the IMAX experience. If the studio granted my project an IMAX release, I would then be able to edit the sequences and the sound mix accordingly ensuring that my film will certainly be able to offer the audience the best possible way to be fully immersed within my story through the large format and extensive sound system that IMAX theatres can provide.

Overall these are predominantly the main aspirations I have regarding my project and it's potential success in the future as well as the different aspirations I have as a film-maker.

'A Lost Soul' (Age Rating)

During the planning, I researched the BBFC and their age rating classification. Within my research I looked through the different age ratings and evaluated the various reasons as to why the BBFC would classify particular age rating.

In regards to classifying the age rating for my media product "A Lost Soul" it has been given a "15" as my product consists of the following:

•   strong violence
•  frequent strong language (e.g. 'f***').
•   portrayals of sexual activity
•   strong verbal references to sex
•   sexual nudity
•   brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence
•   discriminatory language or behaviour
•   drug taking

My product meets four of these points; strong violence/blood, strong language, discriminatory language/behaviour and drug use. This is ultimately why my film has been granted a 15 certificate by the BBFC. This will strengthen the product as our target audience is young adults and older. Ultimately I am happy with this certificate as it still allows me to present may original vision without manipulating the product to fit a lower rating as this still allows me to cater my target audience, the mature demographic.

'A Lost Soul' Final Poster

This is the final version of my poster, where I have addressed all of the feedback made from previous drafts; last main adjustment made was to the fonts besides the title as they needed to be separate from the title in order to help focus their attention to the red font on the main title but also in some areas particularly with the release date on the bottom is to help with visibility.

Overall I am extremely satisfied with the poster as it does a perfect job at encapsulating the tone and style of my media product whilst teasing what audiences can expect to see.

'A Lost Soul' Film Review

Final Colour Grading & Sound Mixing (Editing Session #5)

Within my 5th editing session, my main task was to finalise the colour grade and sound mix of my media product. The overall colour grade and sound mix if good, however there are some sequences that need to be edited further.

In regards to the colour grade, there was a small aspect that needed to worked on and that was the sandwich shots; in previous drafts the colour of the shot and the sandwich has differed from the rest on the sequence and the shots to follow. In my previous drafts, the sandwich had appeared green which was off as the sandwich was made from brown bread; this was a result of the shot consisting on a blue tint and affecting the sandwich's colour overall.

Colour grade from "Rough Cut #4"

How I approached the colour grade is by revisiting the old treatments of the shot to help me understand what I had previously done with the shot in order to aid my decisions when making changes to the new edits.

For this colour grade, I edited the shots individually and edited them from scratch. I used RGB curves to adjust the various colours within my shot, reducing the amount of green and blue in order to return the brown colour into the sandwich.

Final Version

As for the sound mixing, there where moments within the media product that had no ambient sounds which made the sound feel empty. In order to fix this, I added background noises from the machines within within the basement in order to make the sound feel organic but also make sense to the mise en scene.

But after all of these adjustments have been made, my product is finally complete as I have made all of the adjustments and changes to believe the product I believe is of high quality and I am satisfied with my final cut as it presents my original vision; now it is ready to been seen.

'A Lost Soul' Poster (4th Draft) and Feedback

This is near to thew final version of my poster, this addressed many comments made on the previous draft. Within this draft, the changes that I have added to the poster is the release date, actor credits and the release date. These improvements have made the poster more conventional, however there are some minor adjustments that need to be made in order for the poster to be complete. In regards to the text, I need to change the colours on the release date and the actor credits in order to help the title stand out but as well as to help visibility of the text. 

'A Lost Soul' Poster 3rd draft (Responses)

After creating the third draft of my poster, I gave it to my two media teachers in order to gain some feedback regarding my work in order to learn what works and what doesn't. Overall they like the layout of the poster, they find it effective and presents my product very well. However there are particular conventions that are absent on my poster such as: actor credits, release date and age rating; this point will be brought in the next version of my poster. The most unsatisfying comment was the fact that they didn't like the disintegration element within my poster as they didn't understand the visual message as they assumed it was dirty or tree leaves coming off from the subject's face. I was disappointed to hear that as I was eager to incorporate this idea within my poster but there perception of it was understandable as I received a similar reaction from friends and family which meant that clearly something was not clear on my part as the graphic designer. 

Overall there feedback was extremely beneficial and will most certainly be addressed within the next draft of my poster. 

'A Lost Soul' Poster (3rd Draft)

This draft was an experiment I made to see how my original vision for my poster would look, now I intend on gaining feedback from my media teachers on whether or not they find it effective or not; based on their feedback, I will determine whether I should continue to improve on this design or to just abandon the idea complete. Regardless of the outcome, I created this design to ultimately present my original vision for the poster of my short film.

'A Lost Soul' Poster 3rd Draft (Editing)

For my 3rd draft I wanted to create a new poster that resembled my original design for the poster. My overall inspiration towards the design was the poster for "Sicario". How I intend on being influenced by this poster is by using the concept of fading various images from my media product into the main image of my lead character's head. 

Inspiration

Another idea I intend on including within my poster is the element of disintegration, my inspiration for this idea was seen in form of promotional artwork for "X-men: Days of Future Past". The reason as to why this idea appeals greatly towards my product is because the idea of disintegration particularly regarding the "X-men" image it this idea of losing yourself and not being whole. For the character 'Wolverine' within the image, he appears to be struggling with the pain of loosing who he is, slowing falling apart one layer after another. This really intrigued me as this would be a very interesting concept to apply to my poster, adding the disintegration effect on the lead character 'Max' adding this visual metaphor of him loosing his soul and the impact that will have on the vessel contain his soul; without the soul the human body cannot survive and will begin the decay. This will add great depth towards the poster as it can hint a lot to the promotion of the media product as it can hint a lot to the audience as to what they can expect to see from this story.

Disintegration Inspiration 

In order to achieve this effect, I did some research towards on how I could achieve my vision. I came across this tutorial that helped explain I could present my idea of disintegration on my poster; this video provided me with a set by set guide to how I could do it.

Overview of responses from 2nd Screening

After reviewing all of the feedback from the 2nd screening of my film, I am pleased with the initial reaction to this cut of my media product as the test audience was positives; rating the film overall between 7-10/10. 

I did receive comments on minor aspects of the film, however these comments were addressing parts of the film that I as the film-maker intended. An example of these comments was addressing the grainy look of the cinematography; this was an idea I intended to add to the visual style of my media product in order to emulate and 35mm film look towards my product.  However this comment was constructive as it made me rethink the effect and glare at the entire edit in order to ensure that the effect doesn't seem to distort the audience's attention and focus to the story; this was in fact only 1 comment out of the 8 received.

Overall the reaction to my media product is significantly better in the second screening in comparison to the first, I will now continue to finalise the edit of my media product.

Feedback from 2nd Screening

Today I had another screening of my short film, during this screening I handed out response sheets to my test audience in order to gain some feedback; I designed the questions to be answered through numerical rating. This decision was to make the audiences more comparative in their response as they know there is a lack of writing involved but in also can provide me data that can be quantified.