Distribution

Now we have created a short film, we have the chance to distribute it, for example upload it onto video sharing websites and enter it into competitions. Ideally, I would like the tale of the lady and the cake to be a link or actually put onto a website of a food writer like Nigella Lawson or maybe a quirky food forum. This would be appropriate, not because we show any good recipes or any successful home cooking, but because its target audience is for food lovers, and they may appreciate the film. The video is already uploaded onto face book, YouTube and video, allowing the general public to view them and the option for them to leave their feedback.
The London short film festival is a local short film festival. It holds their nominees for the best short film at various venues across London for example the Roxy bar, the shortwave cinema in Bermondsey and the Camden roundhouse. This would be a great opportunity to enter the lady and the cake into, possibly after a few small tweaks to the editing. The show is held in the middle of January every year, and the deadline for entering the films for the 2011 awards is September 2010.
No Limits Student Film festival is a student film festival held in sheffield and ran by univeristy students. There is no limits on the lengths, genre, or content of the films, leaving any student film being able to submit. The competion is held in april each year and entries for the 2011 competion will be able to be submitted later in the year. All we would have to do would be fill in the application film and send either a dvd, video tape or usb key holding our video to the address. You don’t win any money from this competion, it is a way of exhibiting your work and seeing what other people think about it.

Completed Short Film

After watching the final piece of the lady and the cake, I think the things I would like to go back and change would be the transitions between the music as it is sometimes to sudden, and I would of liked to of had more shots of Bethan when she was eating the cake as we only have three different shots of her doing this. I think the narrative to the story is quite strong and I like the simplicity of it, making people not really have to think about it, also I think the acting worked very well and the effect that was put onto it. I’m glad we chose to make it a silent film as I think dialogue would have maybe ruined, especially as we sped the film up. When it came to editing our piece we had mixed feeling to whether we should leave it in colour or put it in black and white, but I’m glad we found the effect we used, this also helped with making all the lighting seem similar and making it all seem more short film like and brighter.

The only code and convention for short film is the length of it and our film falls under this, but as a silent film it also fits into most of the more obvious codes and conventions, it uses music instead of dialogue and it’s sped up and all the acting is exaggerated. Although many silent films are in black and white, this is likely that when silent film was the mainstream, this was because the technology was not yet that developed, allowing our film to still fall under the genre of short film.

As we made this film as a pair I believe we both equally contributed to the making and pre production of this film. We came up with the idea as a pair during inspiration week and it spiralled off from there. I created the storyboards and the majority of the PowerPoint presentation that we showed the class. We both filmed together and edited together both coming up with different ideas of what to do, although we already had decided upon the outcome of what we wanted our piece to look like.

I think this was the most successful video project I have ever created at this school because it was half my say and I was working with someone who has a similar way to working as me. Most of the ideas we came up with both of us liked and we were both very happy with our final idea, leaving no negativity towards it. Also, I think because the tale of the lady and the cake was something we both enjoyed making as it was something we had produced on our own, we were a lot happier about actually filming it and editing it.

Target Audience

As we have discovered, short films aren’t for the mainstream and only have quite a small target audience, in the case of the lady and the cake, the target audience would be for people interested in silent film, and possibly food lovers. Although it’s not in black and white, it still works well as a silent film as the story is told with the music and it’s sped up. The film is quite quirky and colourful, making it appear happy, and the music is quite upbeat, also adding to the happy atmosphere. The title sequence is in pale pink making it quite girly; probably making the audience tell from straight away that it is quite a feminine film.

We made questionnaires to give to a year 12 media class to get their feedback about our short film once they had watched it, they had never studied short film before and it isn’t likely that they knew much about it. When we asked them what works the least in our short film the majority said it was the contrast of the modern and old fashioned environment as we were going for a 1950’s theme and then would have a big flat screen TV in the background for example, although this was the effect we were going for with the clash between past and present, it probably would have been better in a 1950’s environment. Also the cuts between music as often it was really sudden and they weren’t faded well together, leaving a sudden change of music.

Positive points that were given from the feedback were that it made everyone happy; this was our main aim when making the film. Also that the acting worked well and it was humorous.

I agree with most of the feedback that was made, although if I had the chance to go back and change something it would definitely be the editing between the music.

Our film was uploaded onto facebook so that the general public could view the film, the feedback was all positive, saying people liked it and the dog was a very popular actor from both the facebook feedback and the year 12’s.

Influences

The idea of the lady and the cake origionally came from the poem “infedelities” by Moyra Donaldson, we found this on inspiration week and our idea spiralled off from there. Most of the poem dosent relate to our story at all, but we used the idea of finding loose change. Our origional idea was of a woman that woke up and ran to the shop with the loose change she found to buy cakes and her husband catches her but we changed this when we decided upon the 1950’s theme, to having a typical housewife that stuffs her face, that then leads to her husband being dissapointed.
When thinking about having the short film as if it was set in the 1950’s came from trying to make the wife seem like a typical housewife, doing the cooking and cleanign while her husband is at work. We knew we wouldnt be able to use a 1950’s enviroment, but we could edit it as if it was made in the 1950’s. Instead of using a black and white effect on the film, we decided coulor would be more effective as when we think of the 50’s we think of very brightly coloured things such as crockery and clothing. We dressed our actress in a bright flowery dress to also go with this theme, also with a apron so it exaggerated the fact that she was a housewife.
Charlie chaplin was the main idea behind the silent film, we decided our film would ahve a much bigger effect if it was sped up and in silence as the music would do all of the “talking”. By speeding up the film we were able to make all the actions a lot more exciting and exaggerated.
From all the short films we studied before deciding on our own, tour eiffel by Sylvain Chomet from the Paris je t’aime collection influenced us the most just in the way that it puts a smile on your face. This is what we wanted from our short film as apposed to lots of hidden meanings, we just aimed for a happy lighthearted narrative. This film is a silent film and uses the clash of modern and old fashioned which is the stlye we went for in the lady and the cake.
Nigella Lawson also influenced our piece, the idea of the "domestic goddess" was very important to our film, the idea of being a good cook and cleaner contribute to being a perfect housewife.

The tale of the lady and the cake - After thoughts

After watching back the short film after not seeing it for a while, I thought it could of been improved if we changed the following...

1. cross faded the music better as it was sometimes a very sudden change

2. got more shots of her eating the cake so there is a more interesting variation of shots

I would say the strongest elements of the film is the acting, as it is very over the top and enthusiastic, it also adds to the comical feel. Also I think the music works very well, it is always in tone with what is happening and i like the way some of the songs are repeated. I think we made a good choice using a colored grainy effect on the film as apposed to black and white as the overall film looks a lot brighter and happier.

The tale of the lady and the cake - Editing

Thankfully, we had film enough footage for us to play around with editing our short film. We created a sequence and cut the footage to how we wanted and played around with effects and titles until we were happy with what we had. Music was probably the hardest part of editing our short film as we had to find music that cut well with it and that went along with the different moods of the film.

The tale of the lady and the cake - Filming

We did our filming at laurens house to take advantage of the modern kitchen and dogs. We used Bethan and Niall as our actors. Overall the filming went quite well, and the dogs were ecspecially very well behaved. It would have been useful though if we had more shots of the cake being eaten, as we didnt have much to work with when it came to the editing process. We filmed lots of footage this day to ensure we had enough to make our short film.