Music

For there music we tried at first making our own music by ourselves. We tried composing some stuff on our own on Jade's piano but then later realised that the music we were making was not sad or depressing enough but we did come up with a few catchy tunes! It was useful having a piano in hand because that way me and my partner were at least able to try and see if we could have any success from it at all or not. Even though we were unsuccessful, I am happy that we tried anyway. We also asked a friend of ours if they could write a song or compose some music for our film but disappointingly even though they were in a band they did not use any strings instruments and therefore were not able to compose anything for us. We then searched the internet for any websites where we could make or find any non-copyrighted music, this is when we came across a useful website called freeplaymusic.com. It is a website where there are a lot of free songs (vocal and instrumental) which people can use for their own purposes. Me and my partner looked through there different kinds of categories there were, we specifically looked through the depressive and sad music list. We found a few in particular which we liked but then turned out to be too bright or happy for us so we settled for one called 'Everlasting Sadness' we thought it had a touch of loneliness in it and we both agreed it went well with a lot of the features in the film.  

Actors and Filming

At the beginning of the process of the film me and Jade did struggle a little bit to find appropriate actors for the film. And as I have mentioned before that we initially planned on doing three stories for the film itself but by the end of it they final film only had two stories which was Emily's (the pregnant girl) and Jade (the homosexual) this is because for the final story we did find the right actors (well most of them) unfortunately some decided not to cooperate properly. And therefore the filming didn't go down so well and I had to cut out the last story from the film during editing. For the first story we got or two friends Emily and Phil to act as our characters Emily and Stan. We chose them both because we had known them for years and therefore we know what standards their acting skills are at (very good). I personally think that they both portrayed the character very well as they picked up the characteristics and emotions properly. After and during filming I had asked both Phil and Emily about how they felt playing the roles they were given. Phil has told me that he has never really been able to play the role of an angry character before and so he is looking forward to playing a negative role, this way even he will be able to explore different emotions and facial expressions via his character. Emily was also interested in playing the role of a pregnant girl, when I showed her the synopsis for the film she was instantly interested in it and was eager to be part of it. That was a good sign and when she agreed to playing the role of Emily, I explained to her carefully how they character should feel and how they should portray their emotions and I believe that Emily has done a fantastic job in this and so has Phil. 


The second story is about Jade who was played by my partner Jade. It is about the girl who is homosexual and has problems with her family after they find out. She self harms also. Jade particularly wanted to play this role as it related to her the most and therefore her past experiences have helped her play the role of the character well. I think she has expressed the character's feeling very well. The roles of her parents were played by her older brother and his girlfriend. We asked them how they felt about playing roles. They were both really nervous coming up on camera at first but after a few practice runs they were easing into their characters quite well. We also asked them whether they would react as badly if their own child was in the same situation as our character Jade and they both answered no, or that if the situation ever came across then things would be handled differently rather than argued over. 


I did the filming for our short film except for the hand held during the Jade's scene where she has returned home and watched her parents argue and then runs up the stairs. I used my skills in filming and out them to test, I used a lot of close ups, this was inspired by a French film director Xavier Dolan. I particularly love the fact that Dolan uses a lot of close ups in his films and I feel that because we can see the actors face to clearly and up close it's another way the audience can connect to the character and by seeing their emotions so clearly the audience then has a better way to decided how they would express their feelings for that character, whether they feel pain and sympathy for the person or anger and hatred. I Also experimented with a few long shots to show some of the background for the opening outside scenes so I could give my audience a sense of where my actors are and how they might be feeling in that environment. I used an establishing shot at the beginning to instantly tell my audience where we are that that moment. Though most of the filming was done inside a house and mostly a bedroom I feel like this is also another good factor because I wanted my audience to feel just as trapped in a small space like the way my actors/characters were feeling. I am very happy with the result of the final film and how the filming itself went through out the process. I felt that by filming I was able to express myself through the eyes of the camera. That is what I love about filming so much. 

The Title

'I'm NOT Okay' is the title of our film. I came up with the idea for the title one day as me and partner were sat trying to think of a name for the film. We had a list of different names for the film but not one of them really stood out to us enough for us to use it. (e.g  'Secrets' & 'Hidden') these were two of many we had thought of. Although 'Secrets' and 'hidden' did attract us a little we then decided that they would be better off as a name for a horror film of some sort so we scrapped that idea. Then one day I was thinking and the idea of I'm NOT Okay came to me because there is also a song which has a similar title and I feel that his song has also influenced us in the making of our film. I said to my partner 'why not cross out the 'Not' to make it look like it's been purposely cut out?' and she agreed. We thought that this was a good idea because by having the 'not' it's putting more attention on the other two words and also when people do noticed the crossed out word they will begin to question/wonder why it is crossed out in the first place. Also because within our film the characters are asked the question 'Are you really okay?' and of course the audience can see that they really aren't but the characters will lie to the audience and themselves and say 'I'm okay'. So basically it's a way to show that they characters in the film are hiding or running away from the truth.

We tried different colours for the title to see which one stands out the most:

First of all we tried doing the first and last word in blue and the middle crossed out word in black to see if it is eye catching enough for us. We thought it was good at first because the colour blue has connotations of sadness,depression or unhappiness. It can show that could be 'feeling blue' but then we realised that it's not really getting the message across properly because in our film our characters aren't just feeling blue but there is in fact a lot more to their story and background. 

Then we decided to use the colours Red and Black because we thought that the colour red stands out a lot more than blue in many different ways. When Jade changed the colour to Red I instantly could tell a difference in the title and it attracted me so much. I automatically saw how the red made me think differently about the title and my opinions on it changed vastly. Also the colour red connotes death and danger but also love. So this was great because our film covers a little bit of each issue.  

I look up on the internet for things related to our genre or our short film itself and it is amazing how many things can actually come up to relate to it. People have all kinds of ways to express how they are feeling. For example, like the picture above, a lot of people express their feelings through art, writing or even just scribbling on a piece of paper. Some people even have blogs to type up their emotions and keep them private so no one but them can view it. People can feel differently to one another and most of the time they don't tend to tell even their closest friends. This is similar to our short film where our main characters, despite knowing each other for so long still don't tell each other what is happening in their lives and what they are having to go through everyday. 

What I really like about this picture (above) is how much it looks like the words 'I'm not okay' have been tattooed onto the palm of this person's hand. Sometimes I feel that there is nothing more permanent than a tattoo and sometimes feelings are just same I guess for a lot of people. Some people get tattoos to represent an event or series of events that have happened in their lives. They are kind of similar to scars, because one of our characters in our film does self harm it helps show that scars are also permanent once they have been cut into the skin and therefore sometimes it's better to think before doing something of that sort. Of course self harm is a more serious matter than getting a tattoo done but they similarities are visible here.  

Designing the poster

As we were thinking of a design for the poster, Jade began drawing randomly to see if she could think of anything. We had bits of paper where we just drew random pictures and sketches of what we thought we had an image of of what our poster could look like.

The thing about this design is that if this were to be part of the poster then the very first thing anyone would notice is the corner where the title is because they would want to know what poster of which film they are looking at. By looking at the name they would be able to decided whether it is their preferable genre or not. Our Tagline 'Are you really okay?' would have also been underneath the title so that then the audience can look at the poster and the title and question themselves with that same question. What also would stand out the most is the fact that from the title 'Not' is crossed out to look like 'NOT' so this way someone would instantly look at 'I'm Okay' and then suddenly realize the almost hidden word which many people would not notice at first. In a way it is almost making the word 'not' invisible or hidden and therefore it is representing key aspects of our stories of how our characters have to hide their true feelings and feel invisible in society or even in their own homes. 

Our poster was designed by Jade. She tried exploring different ways she could position the pictures of our characters in order to make the poster look a depressing or upsetting. The very first example next to the picture of the logo was supposed to be a picture from the three main characters from each of the three stories. Just a simple picture of each and then in one corner we would have the title. The next idea was to have the three faces kind of faded into one another in a black background and the title fading into the background also but then we through it would give too much of and eerie effect and our other idea was to have three pictures with the faces crossed out and it saying 'I'm okay' and then they actual actors faces underneath to show that they are hiding a lot from each other and themselves. 

Designing of the logo in process

For our final logo design of course we decided on the circle with the letters inside it. Now here's how it all came together and how our final logo was produced...

We started sketching out the logo in different ways to see which one  we liked the best. As we can clearly see here that the bottom two designs are similar to the very first design, this is because we wanted to try and see if we could come up with any other idea for a design which is different or which includes both two designs, but of course we didn't and finally went of the round logo. At first we did want each letter to be clearly visible and stand out as a separate letter but then we thought, if we mix the letters around a little it is a way to see if the audiences pays enough attention to work out what the jumble of letters actually say. We did a lot of random drawing to see if we could come up with anything else, we jotted down anything that came into our minds for future use.

We tried adding colour to the letters and making them bolder to stand out. We made them into block letters (bubble writing) to see if that looked better. I suggested that the 'T' looked like an umbrella inside the circle so we then experimented to see if we could make anything else out of it. We annotated some of them making small notes or writing keys words to help us remember what is needed to be added or removed from the final logo design. I personally thought hat the coloured version of the logo didn't attract me all the much and so my partner agreed with me and we did not use that one. I felt as though the plain black logo had  a hint of dullness and eeriness to it as well where as the colour one would have just changed the whole mood, making it more happier and brighter. I didn't want bright, I preferred having something that was quite secretive and dark to have a stronger effect on the logo itself.

Our production name and logo

Me and my partner had worked on the production name for out film and then we started working on the logo for it. We came up with the name TZV Productions as our company name. This is because we wanted to dedicate our name to a close friend who relates to a few of the issues involved in our ideas. We have asked him questions about several things that interested us and how he dealt with them and his personal opinions on issues such as homosexuality, depression, abuse and others.

This is our original logo which we decided on. It spells out TZV within the fine dark blue, purple and light blue lines. We experimented with the thickness of the lines to see which one stands out the most and which one we personally agreed on and thought was the best for our film. 

1

2

3

We thought at first that the thicker the lines of the letters the better it would stand out but then we decided that there was too much colour so we stuck to the original fine lined design. We also came up with one other design which is completely different to the ones above.

This was drawn by my partner (Jade). We both liked this one as it looked a lot more professional and the style of it stood out to us. It is constructed of a large circle, which is good because I feel that the roundness of the logo keeps everything inside it need and tidy. Then we can see carefully a 'V' which stands tall in the middle of the circle and going through the middle of that is the 'T' and crossing through both letters is the 'Z'. I feel that because all the letters are almost inside one another it makes a whole new design and the effect of its style catches my eye instantly which means it will catch our target audiences attention quickly as well. We decided to go with this logo because we were both very happy with the way the design turned out. We did not choose the initial design of just the basic lines to make 'TZV' because we thought that lines were too faint and weren't outstanding or bold enough to grab someone's attention. What I did like about that logo is how simple yet effective it could have been. To kind of show that our logo will show simplicity yet our film itself will have a gripping message behind it.

Target Audience Research Questionnaire

Questionnaire

1)      What is your name?

2)      What gender are you?

Male                 Female

3)      How old are you?

17-20     20-30      30-40      40-50      50-60      60+

4)      List some of your hobbies

     __________________________________________________________________________

     _________________________________________________________________________

Film in general

1)      How often do you watch films?   Daily     Weekly         Monthly         Yearly        Never

2)      Do you watch short films?    Yes        No

3)      How often do you go to the cinema?   Daily     Weekly     Monthly     Yearly    Never

4)      What is your favourite film genre? __________________________________________

5)      What is your favourite film? _______________________________________________

6)      What is the last film you watched? __________________________________________

7)      Did you enjoy it? _______________________________________________________

8)      If yes, why? ___________________________________________________________

9)      If no, why? ___________________________________________________________

10)   Who is your favourite actor? ______________________________________________

11)   Who is your favourite actress? ____________________________________________

12)   Who is your favourite director? ___________________________________________

13)   What is your favourite music genre? _______________________________________

14)   Who is your favourite artist? _____________________________________________

15)   How often do you listen to music? ________________________________________

Social Realism

1)      Would you watch a Social Realism film? ____________________________________

2)      If yes, why? _________________________________________________________

3)      If no, why? __________________________________________________________

4)      Do you think that Social Realism films have an effect on society?  Yes         No

5)      Why? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Issues related to our film

1)      What is your sexuality?  Heterosexual         Homosexual       Bisexual       Other      Prefer not to say     

2)      What is your opinion on self harm? ___________________________________________

3)      What do you think of domestic abuse? ________________________________________

4)      What do you think of child abuse? ____________________________________________

Me and my partner handed out copies of this questionnaire which we had made ourselves to friends and family and other people we may know from all different ages groups. The questionnaire is constructed of all kinds of questions related to our film genre and the topics which our stories overview. Of course a lot of peoples opinions would be similar to others for most of the questions therefore we have asked each person to try and word their answers as differently as possible. Although the fact that a lot of the answers are quite similar to one another shows that a majority of people agree with one another on certain things. For example: 'What is your opinion on self harm' many people answered that it is wrong and should be solved or people going through it should get some help etc.