Directorial Inspiration: Steve McQueen

During the production of the film, me and Jacob would plan shots in styles of our favourite directors. Another director whom we are both hugely inspired by goes by the name of Steve McQueen. McQueen is a very special director in the way he makes films. He comes from an art background and always brings this aspect of his mind into films. He directed a film in 20011 named “Shame”. This film has incredibly dark subject matter which is filmed in the style  of documentary and naturalism. McQueen also has his art flare in his back pocket and uses this to explain narrative in single shots. Jacob and I were very keen to use some of McQueen's techniques in our film. 

Directorial Inspiration: Destin Daniel Cretton

During the production of “Eleven, we appointed roles very quickly, Jacob would would direct. We discussed the style we wanted and there were a couple directors that inspired us. When thinking of the premise of the film it seems fictional on the surface although is inspired by true events. The first director that Jacob was inspired by is someone who made a similar type of film. This director is named Destin Daniel Cretton. Cretton directed his first Short Film in 2008, called 'Short Term 12' (Short).The film was soon after picked up and made into a feature. The film is about a woman called Grace who works in a foster home, this film is also fictional although it is based on true events. Cretton shot this in a way that looked very much like a documentary, this is something Jacob will bring to the table when shooting Eleven. He used a wide variety of handheld techniques for example, shoulder mounts and stedi-cams. 

Eleven: Final Titles

We liked the idea of using minimalistic titles so the audience could focus fully on the narrative. Despite our passion for visuals, we didn't want to get carried away with titles and keep them as simple as possible. Here are the titles we're using in our film:

Eleven: Survey Feedback

This week I showed eight members of my class mates Eleven. I gave each of them the questionnaire that I made a few weeks ago. This was extremely useful for me and Jacob for improving our next short film. 7/8 viewers were eighteen years old which summarised what a younger market thought of our film. After looking through each survey this is what the majority of people thought:

Favourite character: Blake because of his cute and innocent character. The audience were sympathetic towards him.

Were you bored at any point? What moment? No audience members were bored at any point.

Were you confused at any point? Two audience members couldn't identify the relationships at the beginning of the film. This is the argument in the park.

Would you recommend this film to friends/family? All audience members ticked definitely and yes.

What was the best part of the film? It was a spilt between the narrative and visuals.

Overall how would you rate the film? The majority of the audience gave it an 8-Fantastic.

So far me and Jacob are very pleased with the positive feedback. Hopefully this will continue when showing a wider age range and type of film fan.

Eleven: Written Magazine Review

‘ELEVEN’. The title says it all. What is the world like seen from an eleven-year-old boy’s point of view? In this case the eleven year old is Blake, a boy who watches the gradual break-up of his parents’ marriage. In eight short minutes we see the fractures occur until – at the end – his parents are apart, and Blake’s happy family life is in pieces.   The trick of the film is that we see all this almost entirely through Blake’s eyes.  In fact the piece could quite accurately be re-titled ’P.O.V.’  – because the ‘point of view’ is at the very heart of the story telling, and it allows us to truly enter the feelings of the young boy. 

The danger of ‘family dramas’ is that they can end up like ‘EastEnders’ with endless niggling families in drab living rooms, or couples combusting in overblown rows in the streets. But ‘Eleven’ is subtler, with the young boy gradually picking up clues about what is going on around him. It is also intensely cinematic, telling its story through images – often fleeting images caught out of the corner of the eye of the eleven-year-old lad at its heart. 

Burgess and Rabin, the writers and directors of ’Eleven’, were inspired by the recent film adaptation of Henry James ‘What Maisie Knew’, which depicts a young girl’s life dominated by her parents divorce. Their take on this situation has resulted in a warm and sympathetic short drama that surely has appeal to a wide demographic. The themes of childhood, family relationships and break-ups are explored tenderly and effectively. Director Rabin’s quirky style of long shots and POVs, writer Burgess’ sparing use of dialogue, and a score of subdued acoustic guitar and lone voice create a world that the audience can enter, and it has resulted in a bitter-sweet narrative that is full of feeling.

The performances are especially note-worthy. Alex Walker as the father has a curt charm, that makes him a complex character, close to his son, yet still capable of betraying his wife and walking out on his family. Oona Kirsh as Blakes’s vulnerable mother is totally believable as the wounded wife. But the casting triumph of the film is Blake.....(?) as the young lad at the heart of the story. He carries a lot of the film, with scrutinising close-ups focused on him much of the time. We wonder what he is thinking and feeling and it is this that draws us into the story more than anything else.   This little film is certainly a testament to the power of the close-up and the reaction shot. 

Despite their low budget, Burgess & Rabin have put together a very creditable film.  The subject of divorce is a tricky one for such young filmmakers, but they have met the challenge with a beautifully modulated story. Their visual style perhaps owes something to Wes Anderson, and it will be interesting to see what path they take in their next production. I look forward to their future collaborations, and would definitely recommend ‘ELEVEN’ to all audiences. Heart-breaking and tear-jerking its subtle yet powerful narrative is complimented with strong performances

Eleven: Colour Correction

Once the fine edit on the film was finished we could then move into the minimal additions that we wanted to make to the visual style of the film. This being the colour correction and the colour grade. We finally sound and picture locked the film and then began to discuss what type of feel and tone we wanted. We first colour corrected, this essentially means taking your image and making all thee shots in the film match. We achieved this by using a plugin within Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 called “Fast Colour Correction”. This was our main tool for this portion of the editing process as it was the most efficient and achieved the best results.

Analysing Magazine Reviews

Here are a few more magazine reviews that I've researched. I've looked at a variety of styles to see which one we will use for our own. The image, fonts, style of writing and colour scheme are the key attributes we'll focus on when deciding our preferred style. Below are some more conventional magazines that use a lot of bold colours and font. These stood out to me a lot, including the main image. Sight & Sound is an independent film magazine that we are big fans of. Their simple yet classic style fits out art house style. The genre and subject matter of our film would fit that style of magazine more. 

Eleven: Stills from the shoot

Here are some stills from our shoot. Looking at our storyboard, these are some of the closest shots that we managed to achieve in pre production. The majority of our film is through Blake's perspective. Our variety of close ups define the style of our film. We want to the audience feel sympathy towards Blake, this comes through the different shots, mainly POV and close ups. These close ups are some of my favourite in the film. 

Magazine Review: First draft

Here is a first draft of our magazine review. InDesign is a software that I've never used before however it's been very useful for designing and structuring our review. We wanted to follow the independent conventions of more text and less images. Our review will apply to a niche market who look at film in a technical way. This explores the shots, symbolism, themes and other aspects. We are already starting to sharpen up our design so it looks more professional. 

Eleven: Our Poster

This is the final poster for our film using all of the inspiration from all of the other posters that we have been looking at. Firstly we used the “Prisoners” poster for the theme and the tone, for example the tone of “Prioners” is dark and seedy you can see this by the facial expressions on the characters faces. This compares to our poster because you can see Blake and his facial expression looking off into the distance and the fact that the poster gives Blake room to look give the film some sort of enigma. We also used the credit layout from the poster for “Short Term 12″ and we used the colour scheme idea from the poster for “Frances Ha”. Altogether we used inspiration from all of our other posters that we looked at. 

More Magazine Research

Here are some examples of magazine reviews that have given us great research for starting to design ours. The independent style is one which we aim to achieve. This style will be more text and less visuals. Our review will appeal to film fans who are interested in the technical aspect of film. Our review aims to highlight the understanding of film in a less conventional way. We want to focus more on the deeper understanding of narrative and visuals in a technical way, something that real film fans will relate to. 

Both reviews use a variety of fonts, colours and pictures to capture the audiences attention. 

Eleven: Social Media Feedback

Social Media has been a useful software to receive feedback from friends about the narrative and poster. Me and Jacob continued to post different poster ideas and narrative changes to our friends and they were very responsive. We posted our poster ideas on Instagram and received some very positive feedback. These were a couple of positive comments we received through Twitter. After seeing this response it gave us a lot of confidence to confirm our final poster.

Inspiration for our poster

This is the final poster that we were interested in looking at for inspiration for our film. Although this is not an film from the independent circuit of films the poster is interesting and captures a lot of the story telling devices from the actual film itself. Our short film is about relationships and their collapse through the eyes of someone who has not had this experience for themselves, more specifically in our film, a child. When we look at this poster the tone and the images of the characters along with the colours the titles and the background image are all very similar to that of themes and symbols in the actual film, this is something that we want to be able to replicate in the poster that we will produce.

Eleven: Audience Questionnaire

Here is a survey for our audience to fill out. This will give us great feedback towards changing certain aspects of our film:

So far the feedback has been very positive. Every audience member's favourite character is Blake. This is due to the majority of the story being shot through his eyes. This lets the audience feel sympathetic towards him. So far no viewers were bored at any point in the film which is a great sign, meaning they never wanted to stop the film or didn't think a certain moment was needed in the narrative. Most of the audience felt that the best part of our film was the narrative and the visuals. They liked the 'unique' style of shots mainly through use of POV and shaky shots to show Blake's confusion. On average the film has been given a 9/10 which I am delighted with. I have shown a wide range of ages which gives me an opportunity to see who can relate to the film. Below is a survey for viewers to fill out: 

https://www.surveymonkey.com/MySurvey_EditorFull.aspx?sm=rD7gL_2BLOsyR7X72xKws_2F2K2j99rRirlj34oKQbL6f_2B4_3D

Editing: Final stages

We have finally completed our fine edit. This includes the more technical aspects such as foley effects, colour grade and the credits. After deciding all the footage which will be in our film, we can fully focus the little yet crucial elements that will make our film look professional. I didn't realise how important the colour would look in terms of the quality and elegance for our shots. After this edit I am a lot more positive about the final outcome. The narrative is now being supported by the slick editing which makes our film look very good. The music we've added has driven the narrative in a much clearer way. The first song by Sam Garrett conveys a happy situation Blake's in. This contrasts massively to the final more melancholy song that summarises Blake's story. His emotion is perfectly presented by the close up and song that we've used.

Poster research

The second film that I saw with similar themes to our film is called The Squid and the Whale. This is a film by Noah Baumbach about a small family of four during the first year of the mother and father’s divorce. The divorce theme is similar to our film along with the independent autuer style. This poster has many elements of an indie film style included within it. Firstly we begin with the characters in the foreground who are all in a circle having a serious discussion, this gives enigma for what this will be about in the film. We then look into the background which is drawn, this shows an idyllic setting for a family showing it is in the past. Finally we look at the titles, these are of the actors and the filmmaker, this is typical of a independent film to only show the main well known actors and the director or writer. We want to include this type of feel in our final poster i.e. A BURGESSRABIN FILM.

During the summer holiday, we were beginning to think about what type of subject matter we wanted to tell. Luckily as we were struggling to find an idea, we saw this film. This is a feature film about a young girl in america, who has a father who lives in London, and whose mother is on a world tour with her band. This was a huge inspiration for us in terms of subject matter as we also wanted to tell a story of divorce. This poster has a black vignette which gives it a dream like feel. In the poster we see Maisie who is in the centre, this gives the audience a good idea that the film is based around her. To the left and to the right, We see two people surrounding Maisie, this gives the audience questions before they even go into the film of who these people are. The main colour scheme in the poster is yellow, red and black.

Poster Analysis

While we were designing the poster for our film we came across another film by the name of “Short Term 12″. This is an independent drama about a foster home and the staff that work there. We took many features of this poster into our poster that we are designing. Firstly and most importantly the structure of the credits. When we began thinking of how we wanted to layout our credits and the institutional information we didn't really have any idea, so looking at this poster was a great help to us. Finally this poster’s tone and the way it reflects the theme and the symbols in the films is similar to the ideas that we had about our poster, this is something we are thinking of capturing in our poster.

Eleven: Our Titles

When we reached the stage in our editing process for the titles to be put in we wanted to allow the titles to fit in our theme whilst also complimenting whatever is in the film. Some of the titles that we look at were from other short films like “Stray Dog”, “Many Moons” and “The 56 Year Old Boy”. These titles stood out due to their simple yet very bold font. These titles are quite minimalistic which although is contrapuntal to our film, which has is edited in a fluid fashion, the titles work because they are so minimalistic they don’t take the audience out of the film. Here are come titles we looked at, and our own titles. 

Magazine Research

I've started to look up several magazine styles, conventions and how they're designed as research for my own magazine review page. This will give me a clear idea of how our review page will be designed and appeal to our audience. The image, fonts and colours are the most significant aspects of designing our review page. Here is an example of a review from Q magazine that I've researched.


 

More poster research

Continuing to looks for poster ideas, I recently discovered the film, Frances Ha directed and written by Noah Baumbach. This is a wonderfully sweet indie film about a woman trying to find herself in her late 20s. This poster is one we are inspired by in a few aspects. Firstly using the protagonist as the main factor in our image. Being inspired by this we will be taking stills of our main characters during the shoot to hopefully use for the poster. This also has a very clear colour scheme of black and pink, although we wont be using black and pink for our poster we will take inspiration for a clear blue and white colour scheme.