postcard test shots

As a group, we went out to take test shots for the creation of our short film's postcard. Adrian brought his nintendo 64 controller to school and we took different shots of it from different angles to use for our postcard.

Above is what we originally had in mind when we took these shots.  As you can see we are looking for a simplistic design with our postcard. When taking these shots we had to consider the space necessary to include the title of the film, credits and other text that would be found on our postcard.

Documentary narrative analysis

Indie game the movie follows Todorov's narrative theory in which the narrative is split up into 5 stages

-Starts at a state of equilibrium

-A disruption of equilibrium

-A recognition of the disruption

- An attempt to repair the disruption

- A new equilibrium 

However some could see that the narrative of Indie game: the movie begins at a disruption of the equilibrium as all the interviewees are all unhappy with their current situation. However this could be the current equilibrium because they have been this way for years.

The narrative of Indie game: the movie follow several story lines at once and therefore contains multiple linear narratives. This provides the audience with more than one character that they are able to relate to and more than one video game production process to follow. However they are not different in terms of their narrative structure. 

The documentary begins at an unconventional equilibrium in which all the characters are unhappy and some, even suicidal. The beginning of the documentary works to introduce the characters and their location through text and establishing shot such as the one below.

The documentary uses a conventional style of interviewing in which they film the developer at PAX, the event that they have been stressing over for a while, this acts as a climax for the movie as it is the moment the players get to react to the game. This climactic experience is implemented through use of several clean cuts and shot shots which highlight the fact that there are many things happening at once.

  

Shot list

We created this shot list in order to better organise the filming day. This will allow filming to go smoothly and quickly.

Webpage design drafts

We created three website homepage designs. Clearly following the video game theme. Though we also tried to relate the design to our postcards to create a synergy. We did this using, related images and we will continue to follow this with our colour scheme.

The first webpage was created based off the typical design of video game's main menu, we also ensured the film title is clearly visible as well as the social networking sites where visitors can keep up with the short film's news. For this design, we thought simplicity would be the best way to go.

The second design was based off of this postcard to the right, it will

also follow the same dark background with a bright screen which

illuminates the links on the website.

For the final design we thought we would try to drop the simplicity and go for a complicated but slightly more common webpage design. Though in the future we think we would merge our ideas to create our final webpage, taking the best features of each idea to create the best one we can.

Website map

We created the website map above following the conventions of short film websites. We did this to help us create the website in the future, and so we are not unorganised.

Postcard planning

We have begun the initial planning stages of our short film's postcard. Our plan is to have a picture of a controller dominate most of the card's space. This simplistic approach is mainly inspired by the postcard of 'Indie Game: the movie'

We already managed to draw a rough draft of what we believe the postcard would look like just to get our idea onto paper and we are very pleased with the result. In the future we hope to recreate the drawing below digitally so that it may be used. 

We decided to use the classic nintendo 64 controller on our postcard as we believe it's a symbol for classical gaming and can be recognised by most if not all generations. We also wanted to use a different controller than the one used in the postcard we are inspired by, this helps to prevent claims of plagiarism.

 

We also had another idea which is to include a close up of our character, with the reflection of the television reading 'game over' clearly visible in his glasses. The fact that there is a character there shows that we will have a narrative story. And the 'game over' screen indicates that this is not just a fun short film about video games, but may discuss more serious topics.

Our third idea was to include a long shot of our character form the back as he sits on the couch and plays on an overly bright screen, the bright screen would be the only source of light in the room and the rest of the room would be extremely dark. The darkness can hint at more serious topics to be discussed in the short film.

Editing analyses - Free to play

Storyboard

We've created a storyboard along with the set lay out in order to better organise our filming sessions in the future.

Audience profile

Our demographic is mainly those who play or are interested in video games. This means that we will be basing most of our decisions on targeting that demographic. Every website states a different age for the average gamer, though after looking at several websites the most common age is usually between 30-36 years old. The most common gender to is male with 56% of gamers being men. Though the amount of females who play games is almost equal to the amount of males, meaning our product will have to appeal to both genders if it is to be successful.

Our product will many target gamers aged 18-24. We will also avoid the usage of too much field specific lexis in order to not exclude people who are not too familiar with video games. Furthermore, despite our target age we will refrain from showing any explicit content as to allow younger audiences to view the film as well. 

Fortunately, gaming attracts a variety of people, meaning there is no one specific group we must include. People from the working class to the upper class can play video games, though we will be focusing on a middle class character.

moodboard

Above is the mood board I created highlighting the topics that inspired and the topics that will be covered in our short film, these include: Stress, video game violence, social anxiety and video game community.

Location planning

We have come to the decision to film our short film within our school. There are many reasons for this decision. It would mean we have more flexible filming times, as we can film during our school day, it also adds a sense of familiarity as many of our audience might go to school and relate. It also shows that our character is normal, making him more relate-able to the average teenager.

Above is our common room, this is where most of the short film should take place, the television to the top left is where our character will be playing a video game. We will film once the common room is emptier to create more focus on the character.

Above is the small counter shown at the very back of the first picture. We will start our short film here and follow our character to the couch in front of the television shown in the first picture. For this to happen we will have to move some tables out of the way on the days of filming.

The corridor above shows where the character would walk to receive a bad result or grade in the classroom below. We thought this would be perfect for that as it is quite a long walk and the corridor is empty most of the time, making it perfect to film in. There is little to no sunlight going into the corridor meaning we can film during most of the day without any effect to our film in terms of lighting.

title and logo

After a long discussion with the group we have decided to name the short film 'Beta' referencing the beta-testing of video games, which is the final development stage before a video game is released. We based our title's design very closely on the design of the first person shooter classic, 'Doom'

we managed to copy the stretched our first and last letters of the title, we also were able to follow the basic color scheme of the DOOM title. The bottom is still a draft and we will continue to improve it. We chose to follow DOOM's style as it is a classic, every gamer and even many who don't play video games would recognize it. This gives it the feeling of familiarity.

we first drew the title by hand and then managed to create it digitally.

 We also discussed creating a film production logo. We decided on the name 'Polygon productions' referencing the usage of polygons in video game design which revolutionized 3 dimensional gaming into what we have today.

Questionnaire and results

When thinking about about our short film we wanted to create a piece that we ourselves would've been interested in watching. For this reason our demographic is closely based on what demographic we fit into. Teenaged gamers who attend high school or university. Though studies show that the average gamer gamer is thirty five years old. The age range is quite large therefore we would not have a specific age group that we are going to focus on.

Contrary to stereotypes females above the age of eighteen make up a large portion of the gaming community. This means that our short film should appear to both genders. 63% of the people who answered our surveys were women which will make it easier to represent both genders within our film piece. We will also try to appeal to the older generations as they are usually the ones with strong negative opinions and views towards gaming.

 As you can see above, the majority of those who responded to our questionnaire were female, therefore our results might mainly represent the views of one gender and not the other, so we must keep this in mind when applying the results to our documentary.

The questionnaire showed that the theme most people would like us to cover is addiction to technology. Though this contradicts the results of our focus group and interviews as the results we got from them were that social effects of video games is the most wanted theme. We will discuss these clashing results as a group and decide on what to do.

As expected, documentaries are not common among our age demographic. Though video games are extremely popular, we hope that the actual topic of our short film will encourage people to watch it, no matter what style it is filmed it. We may also decide to create a short narrative film rather than a documentary due to these results. 

Production schedule

Production schedule

There were several guiding deadlines which split up our production process into several sections. This helped us organize our time and also split up the planning, filming and editing processes into different sections

 Our schedule was mainly following these deadlines with a few exceptions such as when people were not able to attend filming days.

Costume planning/evaluation

Due to the fact that this is a documentary we wanted the character to look as natural and friendly as possible, this is why we used a green sweater as it is a very casual clothing that is quite non-descript. We also wanted to have the gamer elements visible to the audience which is why we chose to have our main character wearing glasses. As glasses are traditionally associated with geek-culture and gaming 

 There was not much thought other than that put into the costume planning. This is because we simply wanted our characters to dress naturally in their own clothes and be more comfortable, which allows the entire documentary to feel more realistic and not scripted as it should.

For Mr stewart, we simply needed him to look professional and credible. This is why we chose to interview him during his work day as he would be wearing his work clothes. We also requested that he does not clear his desk as the several sheets of paper and other scattered objects showed the audience how busy he was and added to the credibility of his statements.