Kevin Breel- Inspiration Quote

'Unfortunately, we live in a world where, if you break your arm, everyone runs over to sign your cast, however if you tell people you have depression, everyone runs the other way.

That's the stigma, and we are so so so accepting of any body part breaking down than our brains.

Thats the ignorance 

Pure ignorance 

And that ignorance is what has created a world who doesnt understand Mental Health.' 

-Kevin Breel

Mental Health- Uses and Gratifications

Uses and gratifications theory (also known as UGT) explains why and how people actively seek out specific media to satisfy specific needs. UGT is an audience-centered approach to understanding mass communication. Diverging from other media effect theories that ask "what does media do to people?", UGT center their importance around what do people do with media. 

Films are used by audiences to achieve specific needs that an audience may require. John Fiske once said 'a genre defines a moral and social world', which means that by looking to movies now and the past we can look into the needs of the audience of that time. Successful films answer a dominant theme in society, for example in the 60's most films wanted to depict the image of fun, rock n roll and rebelling. In Today's society young teens are pressured into conforming to what the media portray as 'cool' or 'normal'. However, it underplays the fact that many young teens experience feelings or emotions that they may feel ashamed to express. I wanted my film to portray someone who fits the stereotype of 'normal' but actually, he is experience something far from normal. Although I have taken it from a view point that could be seen as unrealistic, I wanted to share the importance of talking about mental health and destroy the social stigma associated with it. 

Films tend to have physical and emotional effects on the viewer, which leads to people liking certain genres more than others. For example, people when watching action films, as an audience we tend to relate with the hero of the story and aspire to be like them. When creating my short film I wanted to create something similar. I wanted to create a character that an audience could somehow relate too and aspire to be like. The protagonist is a 17 year old boy called Alex who eventually seeks help and explores his mental illness further. 

Contradictory, Rom-com's give an emotional effect of escapism, either through a romantic love story or a fatal tragedy. The sense of escapism is what draws the audience into watching the films. With short films this whole process is intensified because you have less time to create this impact. 

Also, Rom-coms have a 'wish-fulfillment' idea to them, that people wish something/someone was like something/someone in the short film. Although my film does not come under the Rom-com genre, there is a sense of wanting to defeat inner securities. The physical side to a movie would be the crying or laughter that comes from a tragedy or comedy. My film does not use comedy as such however the physical element would be empathy for the protagonist and possibly an insight of someone struggling. 

My film challenges certain conventions of a short film. I didn't want too create a super-hero esc character, but someone that an audience could relate too, therefore my film does not make the audience want to be like the protagonist and aspire to have similar qualities. Nonetheless I think this is what makes my film a niche genre and what people would be interested to watch. 

Applying 'Uses and Gratifications' to the internet will play a large part with my short film and my audience. The internet allows anyone to research different ideas and creativity whenever we want too. The internet is an on-going thing, it never sleeps, meaning creativity is uploaded every second. With the help of search engines, we come closer to finding what inspires us. Short films have benefitted from websites like Vimeo and YouTube as there is a global archive of short films at your fingertips with a diverse range of genres. I hope to upload my short film to YouTube to get the best coverage and to remain global for as long as it can be.

Organising My Actors

Conforming to the typical conventions of a music magazine, I decided to use minimal amount of characters (3). In order to create a successful short film I believe that using a small number of talent is crucial. One reason for this is that the audience have a shorter time to establish each character, therefore if you were to over complicate the plot it would be confusing and uneasy to follow. 

My Talent

RECCE

RECCE

 

When producing a short film I believe it is vital to conform to the codes and conventions of a short film. One crucial convention is limited locations. This is so that the film is not portrayed as too complex and gives the audience time to establish the settings where the characters are based.

Here are a few RECCE images of where I shot some of the footage included in my film.

this is a forest behind the back of my house, I felt that it portrayed the mysterious and eary feel, similar to what my film portrays.



DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY

Under digital technology comes three things,

• hardware
• software
• online technology

hardware is the equipment that I would have used throughout A2 media in order to create my 5 miute short film. These include:

•iMac OSX
•Iphone
•Canon EOS 1100D
•iPod
•Laptop

Software
is the technology that is already on the computer, or device that I am working on. For example these included:

• iTunes
• Pages
• Word
• Serif applications
• PPT
• Garageband

 Online technology, is similar to software however it is devices that you can find online, these include:

• pixlr
• facebook
• youtube
• blogger
• slideshare
• prezzi

 

influence- The Mind

Short Films About Mental Health and Illness Emerging on YouTube: ‘The Mind’ – Joint Winner of 2012 Frame of Mind Award

‘The Mind’ is the 2012 joint winner of the ‘Frame of Mind' award. The Tamil film tells the story of a young man with Paranoid Schizophrenia who tries to manage his illness alone and the experiences he has. Film is an excellent way to easily communicate issues about mental health and illness which otherwise might be hard for the audience to understand.

'Animated minds' Influencial theories

'Animated Minds'

this is a series of animated documentaries using real testimony from survivors of mental illness, combined with engaging and sometimes humorous visuals, to climb inside the minds of the mentally distressed. Windows into experiences rarely seen, each piece draws us in to these people's inner worlds, journeying around the landscape of their minds, and leaving us with a greater understanding of what it is to suffer from mental distress.

This learning object contains four documentaries, examining panic attacks and agoraphobia; psychosis; obsessive compulsive disorder; and manic depression. 
This learning resource is based substantially on material from the series of animated documentaries "Animated Minds" which is reproduced and adapted here with permission from The Documentary Filmmakers Group and APT Films. Copyright © 2004 Documentary Filmmakers Group/APT Films

Link: 

http://content.iriss.org.uk/animatedminds/

Darren S Cook

Guest Speaker

Darren is an independent British film maker, he is well known in the industry for editing, directing and producing all things short film. Coincidently, he is also step dad to one of the students in our class, therefore we were advantaged to have him come in to speak to us and share his knowledge mainly surrounding British short films.

In the two hours Darren spent with our class, we spent watching several short films that he had either produces, directed or editing, and in some cases done all three. Every short film he showed us, he would explain in detail what challenges he faced, what inspired him, and also how proud he was. It became very clear after a short while that working in the film industry is very exhausting and competitive, however Darren's passion shone through when he responded to a question 'this job is a passion, what I do day to day enables me to challenge my creativity and that anything is achievable, the only thing stopping something coming to life is you'.

Although all the films he showed us were on low budgets, or even zero budgeted it wasn't obvious at all. He explained that in order to be successful on a low budget, you have to be a person that people want to work with for free. A lot of the time Darren had to rely on friends, co-workers or family to help out. Similarly he would use old props and paint them to make them look new, or raid charity shops to find low cost clothing.

As a class, I felt that everyone could really relate to what Darren was telling us. In some way or other, we have all made our short films on a zero budget and used what we can to make it as successful as we can.

One aspect he spoke about was the editing and he told us about the story where he was editing part of a advert I believe for a company and the producers and directors shot the footage they wanted and gave Darren a short amount of time to edit it all together. This at first I thought was understandable as everyone is working on a countdown to get films and adverts out and published however it wasn't until he started to speak about editing until I understood why it was impossible to get it done in time. He said ''it takes 1 hour for every 1 minute of filming to edit'' therefore say if she was editing a movie, it would take him over 100 hours to edit the film together  therefore the editing is the most time consuming process of the whole cycle. 

Here blow is a link of Darren S Cook talking about the short British film ''Three''. When we was looking and watching some of his short films, it was apparent to me straight away after watching them that ''Three'' is my favourite out of all of them, just because of the comical elements. The plot is so simple, however so funny and the simple storyline just makes the audience interact with that's going on and make them enjoy and appreciate short films.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw3StNd67dI