Writing Block Appeared!

I have hit a bit of a writers block with the Film review. I have tryed to mix positives with negatives to not create too much of a scathing review. Here's what I have so far:


With Lost finally retiring into cult obscurity with the arrival of the final series, short film directors Lauren Edwards and Kyle Bamford have attempted to construct the same levels of confusion and obscure events— In 4 minutes. Waking up in the middle of nowhere, Jack (Jonny Ellis – Pirates, Ninjas and the Stone) soon finds 2 equally clueless teens in the form of the overly melodramatic John (Tom Bircham) and Matt (Darren Stapleton – Pirates, Ninjas and the Stone). Little known to them, while they stumble helplessly around looking for a way out, a much sinister evil has awakened…
Like its characters, the style of this film wanders aimlessly but bashfully through each scene. Happily this is a refreshing break from the oddly perfume advert smoothness of Lost, but in places the amateur nature is rudely thrust upon its audience with slightly off camera cuts slicing through that low budget charm. It might be that the directors have intended this to be a rebellion against the aesthetic focused cult television productions of today. Yet they have done so in such a vague way, to anyone looking for escapism, this will be taken at face value.
That would be a shame because Edwards and Bamford have made intelligent veiled jokes at the expense of various aspects in modern media that bloat our television screens. One such is the inclusion of the advert ‘Lawyersthatsueforgold’, which pokes fun at the plague of identikit daytime advertisements that circulate for months on end. But in the end the unfortunate thing is these jokes often are better than the more narrative driven parts of the film.

So far it isnt quite right so im going to think about it for a while

Its the Final Poster .. TBC

This is the roughly finished Poster. I looked at other posters including 300 to get a rough idea of the poster to credits ratio. Key ideas I picked up from the poster was the size difference between the Names of cast and crew with their job titles (Names are larger, meaning I made a seperate layer for some areas of text, halved the size and ran it on two lines to match the size of names.

Another feature I added were the Production company logos. They are pretty basic but i think they work well. Because we are parodying Lost, Lauren and I decided to parody their production company names (ABC Studios - CBA Studios (aka Cant Be A(censored)ed) and Bad Robot - Bad Reboot) so I based my designs around simple indicators of each thing. The lazy guy as if he cannot be bothered for CBA Studios and the computer on fire for a bad reboot. I also included the Lawyersthatsueforgold website as most films include their websites in posters and this is the closest to our film website.

I'm Going to speak to Lauren today to make sure that she agrees with my decision for film poster.

Freedom! and No we dont have to edit another 5 series!

We have finished editing our film!! We may make changes but to be honest this is a definate final template if any changes need to be done. Considering the Heroes link, we changed some of the colours to make them seem much more vivid, like a comic. This is what took most of the time as we were often staring at the slow red imovie editing bar to find that it was too bright or vibrant. However in the end it turned out really well. We included some outtakes at the end for the credits as this is twisting a conventional way a parody/comedy series presents its credits. In the film Airplane! and the serie's Allo' Allo' and Dads army they have a 'you have been watching .. ' title followed by clips of the different actors with their names. We incorperated the outtakes instead of serious clips for a comedic effect as other series have done similar. For instance the sitcom 'My Wife and kids' plays some outtakes from the episode as the credits play.



All in all, there has been an obvious improvement through the editing phase of production. The adding of music and sound effects in particular really created tension , and in the case of the advert, a silly but dated feel. Some of the effects and transitions work well to highlight points that weren't so well pointed out in the film (such as Darrens 'talk to plushie' power). We used letterbox and QT margin subtitles to convey the mental conversation between Darren and the plushie. Other special effects we included were the circular highlighting around the hello Kitty after Jonny says 'Oh No!' (Much like a poor japanese dub - not to say this is a bad thing!) to add to the whole comic book feel . Personally i think the editing has been of big importance to the success of our film, however if i had one criticism it would be that perhaps changing the colour values and contrast might make larger playback screens really pixelated.

Attention Duelists! My blog gives me the power to post about Parodies

One parody I know of is the Brilliant Yugioh: The Abridged Series. The maker of this series, Little Kuriboh, has taken original Yugioh Raws (Japanese episodes with no subtitles) removed the sound and recorded the sound for each character. He clearly knows the series well as he often redicules characters for their key traits (ie: one character constantly saying 'Attention duelist' in the actual series)and has worked hard to make sure the voices are similar to the actual characters english voices.
At times he also parodies various aspects of real life. A good example of this is Episode 17:




At 5: 15 LittleKuriboh parodies Mastercard Adverts in the context of the series using Kaibacorp as the basis. As a series he has also parodied various songs (This is My United States of America - Bandit Keiths catchphrase in the Abridged is 'In America , Brooklyn Rage - Copying Poker Face and Im on a Blimp - Lonely Islands Im on a Boat). Additionally he has created 2 Christmas Specials (1 parodying Charles Dickens Christmas Carol and the other parodying Dr Seuss's Grinch).
The Series is an interesting insight into how anime or cartoons are not free from the possiblity of being parodied (within themselves). It is also a testiment to how We- Media can generate popularity and whole new markets for user made videos, as Yugioh The Abridged Series has caused several others to create their own abridged series (Such as 'Team Fourstar'S ' Dragonball Z abridged and Naruto Abridged (Interestingly both of these have been referenced to in Yugioh the Abridged series, with Little Kuriboh making his own parody of the Naruto Parody and referencing Team Fourstar in later episodes of YOTAS)).

Mass Effect of Reviewing Practice

(Image URL Source:http://www.thatvideogameblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/masseffect2_mar27_01.jpg )

Given that one of our subsiduary peices is going to be a review, It was helpful when a project for an interview turned out to be 'Write a review on a game of your choice' which has now given me some practice of writng an review:


MASS EFFECT 2
Console: XBOX 360/ PC


Mass Effect 2 is the much anticipated sequel to Mass Effect and it certainly delivers on several fronts. Continuing the rolling story from the first game, you once again step into the shoes of Commander Sheppard, who now must assemble a universe beating squad to deal with the new threat of the mysterious Collectors. Bioware have done a complete overhaul of the combat system from the previous Mass Effect, taking pointers from Gears of War, in that transitions to and from areas of cover are fluent. The shooting and weaponry are much more potent, with the ‘overheating’ system replaced with traditional magazines and Heavy weapons are now included in Sheppard’s arsenal.
The Graphical style remains largely the same, providing substantial and awe inspiring scenery. From the pristine skywalk of Illium, to the much more dark and seedy underbelly of Omega, it is likely to be the finest sci-fi universe to be created in a game. It is this, however that proves a slight disappointment for those looking for a similarly expansive experience to the first game when it comes to the large cities. The cities are slightly more downscaled in Mass Effect 2, with emphasis being placed on action segments of the game. These may seem very conventional at the beginning ; kill dozens of enemies before dealing with a ‘boss’ type character. The inclusion of heavy weapons at points make these battles seem too easy. That said, there are moments where it pays to use your head over your gun. These are in the form of the Interruption conversation feature. At points it will allow you to interrupt dialogue in either a renegade way (often involving blunt force trauma) or in a paragon way. This is an interesting feature that can save you trouble at points, much like persuasion. However it is done in such a way that is almost like twisting a scene from a movie, but for your own benefit.
For fans of the first game, there are a few surprises in store, especially if characters are imported from Mass Effect 1. Key decisions that were made make their ripples known in your travels. It is at points like this that the game becomes something unique. Using intertextuality from characters own exploits is something that is rarely done in games, but has been executed finely in Mass Effect 2. It is also a feature that is likely to continue into the 3rd game. In doing this, Bioware has ensured that players will become hooked in a gripping story that they are continually shaping. Not only that, but because of the potency of your decisions, and deepness of character back stories, it will be a game that will continually be revisited to explore various outcomes. With a good 20 hours in a singular play through, it ensures that Mass Effect 2 will become a classic piece of storytelling for RPG and action/adventure fans alike. Mass Effect wasn’t broken, but somehow Bioware and EA have fixed it.


9.1/ 10


Image URL sourced from:http://mycheats.1up.com/view/imageraw/67082/mass_effect_2_wall1.jpg

Poster Update!

i havent posted much about my work with Posters so heres an update. When we filmed the main section of the film I took several shots on the site to convert into a suitable poster. Of the ones I took, these two were the best.

Originally I had intended to mimic the Lost promotions, but with a few twists (like having a random person in the background ) The more zoomed out shot several problems that I needed to sort out. Firstly the sky and backdrop werent dramatic enough. This proved to be a major issue as in importing a darker sky the trees looked out of place as did the people due to the lighting. I increased the contrast, whilst repeatedly working over highlights with the burn / dodge tool to make the characters stand out. Initially I was concerned that the lighting on their faces was too dark but after looking at lost promo's, they lit faces in a similar manner

This is the second template for a possible poster. In this I went for a completely different look that focused more on the characters and used rigid division to increase this empathsis. In this poster, like the last I used the Burn and dodge tools to increase the contrast levels.

I also trialed some ideas for credits but as i havent looked at any posters, it doesnt look quite right yet. However what im going to do is look at some posters to get some ideas before i finish and pick which is the right template.

When Viral Marketing goes too far! (and general look at viral marketing)

Given our briliiant lawyersthatsue website, I have started to look up about viral advertising and I found another interesting article about when it can be taken too far. The article goes on about how the TV program True Blood has used viral marketing. It made use of postal avenues, posting fake blood to several office buildings and comic books to specific bloggers first before making several websites for subtle promotion. The long list includes bloodcopy(A mockumentary blog of sorts depicting what life is like for a normal vampire), The American Vampire league (A site that tries to intergrate vampires with society) and even a Vampire/ Human dating site (*one raised eyebrow*). It has even reached wikipedia with a trueblood branch of the popular We Media site.

I think in the modern era where user generated content can be accessed so freely and where various memes can influence and inticise people, viral marketing has become a large part of companies advertising campaigns.