Initial Charactor profile

The Psychologist - This character will be the brains behind the documentary, what she says will give weight to what we are saying. Essentially, like nearly every documentary, we need someone to explain the 'science' behind our main character and his condition. We thought for this character we would get a psychology teacher as they will have the knowledge already to talk about any condition our main character might have.

The Main Character - Documentaries tell a story, and so, with the nature of our documentary, it might be that the audience develops a relationship with the main person. It is likely they will feel sympathetic towards them, and this is likely what we will try to achieve.

The Family Member - Again, this character will help to add weight to the documentary, a bit of emotion. This may make the audience more sympathetic towards the main character, or depending on how they answer the interview questions, may help the audience to see a different side to the situation e.g. is the main character actually quite cruel to obsess over his search and cut off his own family?

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Location Ideas

For our short film/documentary there are two main locations; the house which is meant to be David's house where the interviewer will meet David and speak to him. The other main location is the place that David dreamt he met this person and where he goes to wait for the person every day.

For David's house we looked at a couple of different locations, two in Hethersett, one in Wymondham, both of which were either houses of friends or one of our own. However two of these three houses we looked at were very typically suburban and on larger estates surrounded by many other houses. One of them was a smaller cottage, although it was surrounded by other houses it looks way more of an individual house and has an overgrown garden. This we felt was a perfect setting for David's house. This is because, due to his mix up of reality with dreams, we wanted to portray David as not quite your normal person and therefore we required a house that did not look like an every day typical suburban house on an estate. In addition, the overgrown garden we felt we could use to show how David's dream of meeting this person has overgrown into a reality for him and, like the overgrown garden, has got a bit out of control. Also the house is quite simply decorated so if we wanted to decorate it in any particular way or add any props into the house it would be relatively easy to do. This is what the house looks like inside and out:

     

        

Furthermore, the house is in Hethersett so it is easily accessible to us all making filming there easy. 

Our second location we are using is central Norwich. This will be where we film the scenes in which David takes us to the place that he dreamed he met the person. We decided to go for a busy place like central Norwich rather than a secluded place as we wanted to show that you could wait in a sole place all your life for someone who may never come whilst everyone else around you moves on in life without waiting around - that is what reality is like. Therefore, we needed a busy place where we could easily show lots of people moving. Norwich is the closest big city to where we live and the centre can get very busy and so we felt this was perfect to film this part of the short film/documentary. In particular, we were looking at filming around Gentlemen's Walk and outside the City Hall.

 

 

                                          

      

 

 

 

 

Any interviews we do we plan to do in an empty class room with a dark wall, this is so that it will be quiet and so that if we use lighting efficiently the dark background will look very good and similar to what you would see in a real documentary.

All these locations are quite close to each other and are all easy to reach for all members of the group. In addition myself and Emma both drive so we can also provide transport for any actors we decide to use. Also as all locations are near each other it is likely that the weather will be very similar at all locations.

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Prop List

For our coursework, as our two main locations of filming are a house and a busy street in a city centre, we do not require many props. We plan to use the natural environment of the busy city centre and the small slightly overgrown cottage house. We do not want to add anything into the environments. This is because we are making a documentary-style short film so we want it to come across as realistic, and not as if we have placed things within the environments so that it looks real. However, we do require a couple of props for certain scenes. These are those props:

 

 

Car - We need a car so that the interviewer can drive to David's house in the documentary. The car we will use is a Hyundai Getz in red. This is Jasper's car, therefore it is always available for us to use whenever we want to film. Furthermore, as Jasper will play the interviewer it is the easiest car for him to drive.

 

The other main prop we will require is a load of drawings of the person in David's dream to stick on David's wall. This is to represent David's obsession with this person in his dream and finding him. Above are the pictures we drew of the person from multiple angles to stick up on the wall of the house.
 

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Final idea

Since we decided to change our idea from a music video to a short film we have a had a few rough ideas. However, now we have a final idea.


Our final idea is a documentary-style short film focusing on a man named David who has spent his life searching and waiting for someone he met in a dream. Our documentary will feature an interviewer following David around for a day, seeing his daily routine in his search for the man he met in his dreams. This stems from our original idea of the blur between reality and dreams and some people not being able to tell the difference between what they're dreaming and what will actually happen in reality.
The documentary will feature the interviewer going to David's house to see how he lives as a result of his beliefs in his dream being reality. The interviewer will also get to know about his actual condition/belief. David will also take the interviewer into the centre of a city (in our documentary it will be Norwich) which is where he dreamt he met this man and where he goes every day to wait for him. Our documentary will also feature an interview with a psychology a-level teacher (who we will introduce as a university professor in the documentary) explaining some of the actual science behind how the brain reacts to dreams and how it can somehow confuse it with reality. It will also feature an interview with David's nephew or younger brother on how it has affected David and his interactions with his family.

All scenes of interviews/talking with David and any other characters will be linked to eachother by voice overs of the interviewer.

We are aiming to make the style of the short film/documentary very much similar to the style of Louis Theroux's documentaries where he follows round people who are the subjects in his documentaries. Not only this but we plan to use very similarly planned shots in the same way that Louis Theroux does.
This is our final idea and how we plan to achieve this idea and now we can focus on planning, storyboarding, filming and making the short film/documentary.

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Science Behind Psychosis A2 Coursework Teaser

This is just a short part of one of our interviews we filmed that i uploaded to youtube to explain the science behind our idea in our short film/documentary.

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A2 Media Coursework Trying Out Different Text Styles

These are just some different sizes, styles and positions of fonts that we tested out for use in the interview section of our short film/documentary.

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Target Audience

Who is the target audience of your product?

The short film industry seems to have it’s own target audience being somewhat a genre of it’s own. Although many people may come across short films every now and again there is a niche audience made up of mostly film makers and fans of independent films who follow the industry. With this in mind short films do not reach the majority of the population, so the target audience has already been narrowed down to creative/artsy types who interested in independent productions.  I would say that my target audience includes mature teenagers and adults; being a documentary, the plot being relatively complex may need a certain understanding of film, it's a serious topic and would have to be taken seriously and with an empathetic approach and appreciation for the art of short film, the general tone and language used would perhaps be difficult for younger audiences to understand and engage with, who may find it dull or boring.

How does your product engage with the audience?

The film should engage the audience by being an intriguing story line that makes them want to keep watching and with the sense of realism and real psychology the audience will perhaps relate the film to something within their life, wanting to understand more about the character, his story and why he is the way he is.

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Target Audience Continued

1. How will your ancillary tasks help attract your target audience?

The ancillary task such as the CD digi- pack as well as posters will significantly help attract our target audience. The design of the case should be original and showcase bright and vibrant colours which will catch the audiences attention. Within the Cd case a small insert will be made which will list song names, related imagery and lyrics. We could also create a poster to help further promote the band and music video. The poster will be either A4 or A3 in size and will be printed onto glossy paper for a premium finish. All the products made should be consistent in colours schemes and font types. This is to keep everything recognisable across the different media platforms.

We had already completed this post before changing our minds and deciding to switch over and create a short film... For short films the ancillary task includes a magazine feauture and a film poster.

A film poster will help to attract the target audiences by being technically successful; eye catching and clear. It needs to be bold, visually/aesthetically appealing to look proffessional and it must accurately reflect/relate to the film. The magizine feature will showcase the film, it must stand out and the style must relate to the poster in terms of imagery, colour scheme and font, a large image (perhaps illustrated rather than photograph as this can be more exiting to look at, inspired by the magazine Little White Lies) and snappy title will entice many audiences to continue reading the article. The artical itself must be written in an interesting, gripping, complimentary and original mannor and if possible it would be really good to relate to the lives of the reader in some way.

Furthermore, we could set up social media accounts to further promote the brand. Social media is perhaps the best platform to showcase the music video as it is instant and effective, being accessible for everyone. This could also be set up quickly and easily meaning we could update the pages and posts to advertise the final product and gain audience feedback.

By creating these ancillary products we will be able to extend the marketing of the music video and reach out to a wider range of people. The ultimate goal for the ancillary task is to mirror the media industry process from creating the idea, filming the video to selling the product to the consumer. If these products are made well will be able to gain more profit which would realistically go to the band. This is part of synergy, where each marketing campaign and process promotes another leading to more awareness of the band and its identity.

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