Ragged 2wice : Short Film

This is our final film "Ragged 2wice". We screened our film on the 9th of April and the response we got from our audience was very good and positive.

Evaluations

Q.1 In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

It is a convention that short films usually have short and simple stories that are very easy to understand and unfold within a short amount of time. Ragged 2wice’s story was designed with this in mind. We followed this convention. The short film Snap is a very good example of a film with such a story.

A second convention that I have noticed which is followed by many short film director is that the plot and basically the whole story contains a lot of twists and turns. Ragged 2wice is full of twists and turns from the part where Kamran enters the college till when he screams and the film ends. One such short film which also has a lot of twists and turns is “This is the Place”.

When researching short films , I found out that there is no doubt that short films have more action and minimal dialogues , this makes them interesting and easy to understand , while keeping the enigma still flowing. In Ragged 2wice , we made sure that the antagonist Kamran has been given the least possible number of dialogues possible , while the bullies have been given the major dialogues. The cigarette packet scene and the principal’s office scene keeps the enigma flowing onto the audience’s minds so that the story does not get boring and dull. Also the dancing scene and the scene where Kamran meets the bully leader again after waking up and entering the college.  True Face is also a short film where there are minimal dialogues but surprisingly the story has been made clear.

Usually shots in a short film are very fast paced and they jump from one shot to the other , we have used this technique in Ragged 2wice. “The Exam” is a short film that has also used the fast paced editing technique. Also that most short films have abrupt endings , which is exactly the case with our short film.  “This is the Place” is also a short film with an abrupt ending.

There is also this convention of using a lot of music scoring and sound effects and tones to fill up the gaps and spaces in short films so that the spaces can be filled using the audio instead of the dialogues. We have used background scores by Kevin MacLoad. Another short film that used a lot of music and background scoring was “That’s School , That’s Life”.

Since Ragged 2wice belongs to the Comedy genre , its music and background genre is bond to be upbeat and fast. This is what we have used following the convention. Most of the music that we have used has a fast tempo and 2/4 beats.

It is noticeable that short film do not focus much on opening and ending credits thus we made our opening/ending credits very simple and we did not spend much of our time on them.

Comedy films have been known to have a specific , special kind of clothing , dialogues and environment/feel. This is exactly what we tried to add to Ragged 2wice.

Above: The Sidekick of the bully had been given this specific “special” dialogue which made him unique. He says “The Choice is Yours” when the bully leader asks Kamran to dance for him so he can win a bet.

Above: The particular dialogue is repeated again in Kamran’s head when Kamran wakes up from the dream and enters the college again.

Forms, Codes and Conventions Developed

Ragged 2wice as mentioned earlier is full of twists and turns. The first twist is when Kamran enters the college and is about to walk up into his class when he caught by two bullies who take him to the back alley and tell him to dance for them if he wants to live in peace for the entire year.

The second twist is when Kamran is attending his first class of the term when the student sitting behind him puts a cigarette packet in his bag. The teacher , thinking that he had been smoking on his first day of college mistakenly takes him for a “trip” to the principal’s office.

The third twist is when Kamran is standing in the Principal’s office and both the principal and the teacher start telling Kamran to “Wake Up” , he then wakes up in his car and realizes that he  had been dreaming this entire time.

The final twist of the film is when Kamran gets up and goes into the college when he is caught by the bully leader from his dream and he screams in frustration.

In almost all short films , props are always used. In Ragged 2wice , a red tie , black paint and some ponies were used to make Kamran look as if he has actually been ragged. A Cigarette packet had been used to make sure that the teacher took Kamran to the Principal’s office. A Real Car was used to give the look of a modern day woman who knew how to drive and drop his son(Kamran in this case) to school.

We used a lot of extras to make sure that our setting looked like a college. If we had not used the extras then it would have looked as if the college contains only Kamran and the bullies and the environment would have looked abnormal.

Juxtaposition is used between scenes where for example, Kamran agrees to dance when the bullies turn around and look towards Kamran; this is a common convention which is followed in films. Juxtaposition basically creates rhythm between shots.

Above: Juxtaposition between two shots. In the left shot, Kamran has been shown entering and scanning the school for his class after waking up in his car realizing that everything he had previously experienced was a nightmare. The picture on the right shows him turning back on the call of a stranger, thus Juxtaposition is established.

Slow Motion has been used in scenes which is convention followed by comedy films such as Madagascar etc. It had been used in scenes where Kamran is almost about to be expelled by the Principal, where the Principal and the Teacher suddenly tell Kamran to wake up and time slows down, and the camera focuses on the both the principal’s and the teacher’s facial features until Kamran wakes up in his car realizing that it was all just a dream. Time slowing down is usually used in scenes of action even in comedy films which is a convention partially broken , for example , in Madagascar 2: Escape to Africa where the monkeys are bringing the plane down as a part of a joke , time slows down until all the passengers in the plane realize it is a joke and the plane is brought back up by the monkeys.

Above: Screenshots of the scene where both the Principal and the teacher suddenly start telling Kamran to wake up. Time-slows down during this scene and their voices are tuned to give an even better effect. The purpose of the close-ups at this point is to create suspense in the audience’s minds since this is a suspense-comedy film.

The most common convention is almost all movies is creation and realization of fictional characters which is followed in Ragged 2wice. An array of characters is brought to life by the cast for example in the movie “Death at a Funeral”. In Ragged 2wice, there are characters such as Kamran , 2 Bullies , The Principal, The Teacher , The Mother and minor characters such as the students who are sitting in the class with Kamran(The Student who puts in the cigarette packet in Kamran’s bag.) All these characters create an environment that allows the director to bring his idea to life which is just what we have tried to do in Ragged 2wice.

Above: Headshots of the major characters of our film.

One convention that we decided not to break was at first we decided that in the scene where the bullies spot Kamran , we planned an action chase sequence where Kamran would run for his life and the bullies would run after him, eventually catching him and then they would drag him into the alley where they would rag him. Me and my partner Andrew , researched on this chase scene and realized that it is very uncommon for suspense-comedy film to use such action oriented scenes , so we decided not to break this convention. An exception to this convention would be “Wedding Crashers (2005)” and “Death at a Funeral (2007)” and “Snap” which contain chase scenes at one point or the other.

Above: Screenshots of the short film “Snap".

Another convention that we have followed in our film is the tuning of voices that is commonly used In suspense-comedy films/short films and tv shows alike. The tuning of voices in Ragged 2wice is in the scene when the Principal and the Teacher suddenly start telling Kamran to wake up(Time slowing down scene) and during that scene it is noticeable that after a brief moment , the voices of both the principal and the teacher change tone. The “tuning” of voices is commonly used in movies such as “Death at a Funeral(2007)” , “Balls of Fury(2007)” and “Madagascar(2005)” and in comedy television shows such as “The Simpsons” and the “Family Guy”.

The short film “The Exam” shows the scene in which students are sitting in a hall for their exam. This is particularly the case in our film except that the students are much younger and the environment is college instead of a formal examination hall. The classroom scene was loosely based on this short film’s examination hall idea.

Above: Screenshots from the short film “The Exam”. It can be clearly seen in screenshot 2 and 3 that the film depicts an examination room which is similar to that of our short film “Ragged 2wice” , the main difference being that the environment is different and that our setting is a classroom and not an examination hall.

Lastly , there were three conventions that we challenged. Firstly , in most short film the main character or the antagonist is the one who overpowers the other characters with his/her main dialogues but in our case , Kamran has been given the least number of dialogues and has been shown weak.

Secondly, mostly the antagonist is shown with a happy ending in short films but in our case , we left it up to the audience to decide the ending of Kamran , although we did make use of semiotics towards a sad ending.

Thirdly , Short Films usually have a very small number of actors but we used a lot of extras to fully develop a college environment.

Q.2 How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

We had to make two ancillaries along with our main short film,  our Film Poster and Our Film Review Magazine Page. We made both of them on Adobe Photoshop CS5. Our product is a short film named “Ragged 2wice” which is recommended for younger audiences, however there is no age limit and anyone can actually watch the short film and enjoy.

The film poster basically tells everything that should be depicted in a film poster. It shows an image of our main character Kamran with a red tie on a uniform which is a semiotic that he gets ragged or either about to get ragged as it is not possible that the uniform code allows red ties on formal uniforms. The clouds shown floating beside his mind are meant to indicate that the characters and events are in his mind and might not be real.  The font also indicates red and white color which is the exact color of Kamran’s uniform and tie. We showed the main cast in the poster as it conventional for posters to contain the main cast and characters of the film. The last line “Get Ragged This April” is also used as a semiotic to show just a small part of the story , however it does not give away anything that we did not want it to. Furthermore , we used bright colors and images to show that the film does not contain much dark content. The bright colors also attract the audience’s interest.  The poster as a whole would be enough persuasion for the audience to watch the film.

The magazine review page does have some connection to the short film. Firstly, the heading “Ragging Rights” does reflect our main short film’s heading “Ragged 2wice”. Secondly , it includes the film’s poster as some of the magazine review does contain the poster. It also contains two behind-the-scenes pictures of me and my partner Andrew Jared Dean explaining the actors what to do. It also has a well written review about our end product which is probably enough to persuade anyone to go watch Ragged 2wice.

Q.3 What have you learned from your audience feedback?

There are many things which we learned from our Audience Feedback. First and foremost , we learned that our audience are very easily motivated(excited) or demotivated. The video we shot of the audience feedback clearly shows that the audience can easily lose interest and gain interest while watching a film/media product. It is the art of the media people to keep them from losing interest. Our audience was actually very positive about their response. We noticed that in some of the scenes throughout our short film , there was more activity and the audience became more excited and active. For example: Apparently the most “interesting” scene throughout our film was the scene where the principal and teacher start telling Kamran to wake up , time slows down and the voice are tuned until Kamran wakes up in his car and finds out that it was all just a nightmare. We carefully noticed the facial expressions and could tell that when the “time-slowing” down scene came that audience became excited and most of them were admiring the video effects that we had put in that scene. Still , according to us no one could clearly expect that Kamran would wake up in his car and that all of this would turn out to be a nightmare. When this happened, most of the audience clapped and some of them laughed and admired the creativity, this happened because most of them did not see it coming.  We also realized that in some parts, such as when Kamran was walking in the college , the audience did not actually feel that it was a college. We could not properly create the fictional environment we wanted to. We believe that this happened because the audience already knew that the “college” that was being shown to them was actually a “school” where they study in.  If the film had been shot in any other location , we believe that more suspense must have been build up because the audience would not have known the place and any unknown place does create curiosity and in time , suspense.  We noted that some parts caught more attention than the others such as the part where Kamran dances. The dancing part was actually meant to make the audience laugh and enjoy which is exactly what happened. The audience response was exactly the response me and my partner Andrew were expecting. There was one important thing that we noticed. The sound effects made the audience’s reaction change to a certain extent. For example: The scene in which Kamran enters the school after he wakes up in his car and the bully calls him from behind, there is this backing track running before the “Ragged 2wice” title comes into action. The backing track made the audience jump onto their seats and start clapping and all we heard was applause.

The basic meaning of the audience response was that throughout the scenes where there was a lot happening on the screen , the audience was very excited and attentive. The scenes were the movie slowed down in pace a little such as the part in the beginning where the car stops and Kamran gets out of the car into the college and asks the student where his class was, till that part , we noticed that the audience was a bit stiff and some of them were noticing and trying to grasp the story very carefully, they started to become more attentive as the bullies came in.

We have learned that sound effects and the content that is happening on the screen of the film makes a big difference to how the audience reacts to the film , it can either make or break the audience’s positive image about your film. The audience should not be dragged out of the action at any point throughout the film or else the feedback would be negative. In our case , the audience was actively engaged throughout the film , sometimes more than others.                 

At the end of the film , some people who had really been judging our product were able to pinpoint the mistakes in our short film. This was great as we got to know our mistakes and we do plan to repeat them over again anytime soon. They told us that our film’s sound was too low in some parts and that they were not able to understand some dialogues in some parts of the film.

We also handed out 20 questionnares where most of them have been filled out properly. The Audience feedback was carried out on 9^th April and helped us in dealing with criticism and helped us in finding out our mistakes and how we could have corrected them and have made our end product better.                                                                                                                                               

Q.4 How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

We used editing software such as Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, it is very useful software that allowed us to crop, edit and properly align the raw footages together to make a proper film. The Juxtaposition mentioned in the first evaluation question was basically created via using Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. It does not have very strong system requirements and since the editing was done on a Intel Core i5 Dual Core Laptop with robust capacity for both RAM and Plenty of Hard Drive Space, it run fluidly and helped us in the aligning of our raw footages and rushes. We were also able to slow down time using the time elapse tool , this was basically how we created the scene where time is slowed down when the Principal and the teacher repeatedly start telling Kamran to wake up. Markers can be set from one time portion to another to make sure how time slowly time is elapsed. From there onwards we were able to play and modify the timings according to our likings and needs. We were also able to include different types of sounds and variations to suit the shots, for example modifying the “wake up” sounds where in the time elapse scene to suit the scenes so that suspense is build up. Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 also allowed us to download plug-ins for example: The Red Trapcode Plug-in which allowed us to properly color correct our videos and set the sound to the level we wanted to. . The Juxtaposition that we were able to create was basically by using Premiere Pro.  We were able to cut the parts we did not need and join them with the footage we thought would create fluidity between shots, for example : where the Student sitting beside Kamran puts the cigarette packet in his bag. That is actually not one shot , but with the help of Premiere Pro , Juxtaposition enabled us to create fluidity and therefore we made it look like it had been shot in one go.

Above: Cutting and pasting the raw footages in a single line to create a proper footage in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4.

Above: Arranging the lined up footage and adding sound and audio effects to finish off the edited footage.

Above: Adding the title of our film to our final edited footage in Premiere Pro CS4.

Above: Creating the ending credits in Premiere Pro CS4.

We also used software such as Adobe After Effects CS4, that allowed us to make our Title and add Color Correction to our Film. Color Correction basically allowed us to balance the lighting levels in our film and make sure that they are properly balanced so that there are no difference between the lighting between shots, which were shot in different environments, for example , the shots taken outside when Kamran is entering the school and the shots taken in the classroom where Kamran is taken by the teacher  to the Principal’s office. It also allowed us to the make the Title which we later included in our film and Poster etc. (Insert Screenshots of Adobe After Effects CS4 Editing here).

Software such as Adobe Photoshop CS5 helped us a great deal in making our film poster for our ancillaries part of the project. We were able to crop, paste and properly included and play with different screenshot that we took from our original film footage and thus we were able to make a professional looking poster.  Photoshop also enabled us to use external plug-ins and shapes such as speech bubbles which we included in our film poster.

Above: Creating our Film’s Poster in Adobe Photoshop CS5.

Since the emergence of fast broadband internet that has become available to both me and my partner this year we were able to communicate our ideas and data files that we planned to share with each other easily. It made it very easy for us to communicate ideas as they came through in our minds.  We emailed each other and made sure that both of us were up to date on the progress of our film. The usage of popular messengers such as Skype also helped us a great deal in this aspect as we were able to stay connected with each other while doing our work and discuss problems that arose and solve them one by one. As we are from Pakistan and there were some holidays because of the bad conditions of the city, me and my partner stayed connected via Skype and Windows Live Messenger and made sure that our work was not disrupted due to the conditions of the city. The usage of microphones and headsets allowed us to video chat and basically be there for each other whenever we wanted. This helped us to be together without leaving the comfort of our homes.

Above: Skype made it easier for me and my partner to stay in touch when we could not meet or when the school was closed due to some reason. In other words , our work was uninterrupted.

Last year, being completely new to media we could not afford to invest in a better quality , high definition camcorder, so we had to make our last year film with the school’s camcorder which was fine in quality but we had to edit our footage very carefully and on “dv” mode to make sure that it did not distort and pixelate. It was not of great quality and to be honest when we look at the footage now, we realize that the quality was not of the standard we would expect our video to be of now. This year however, we were able to invest in a JVC HD Camcorder which shoots video at native 1920x1080 (1080p) resolutions. The depth of field and quality is noticeably of higher quality and that allowed us to make our video in full HD. Our footage is good to the eye, and what is good to the eye automatically catches the audience’s interest at first. Although this did create just one problem for us, which was editing. Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 slowed down as we started to edit our HD footage which is definitely understandable and completely normal. It did not lag however, since our laptop at which we edited contains high quality built components and this thus faster than the laptop we did our editing on before. The Camcorder also allowed us to carry out white-balance which allowed us to set lighting when moving from one location to another. The camcorder had options that we could choose from such as auto-white balance and options from which we could modify depth of field. This helped us greatly in modifying and editing the footage without actually having to transfer it to a pc first and use the editing software. The footage’s appearance was edited within the camera to some extent.

Above: My partner Andrew carefully using the JVC HD Camcorder. This is the same camcorder we shot our film on.

We were able to use Media technology in our research and planning by using Internet. The internet enabled us to research movies. Either by reading the critics reviews on websites such as www.imdb.com or www.rottentomatoes.com . This enabled us to get a grasp on the story of the movies as well as how the main characters played their roles in the movie , and then utilize the elements used in the movies we researched in our films. We were also able to go to www.youtube.com and watch short films and note down the conventions that they were following and then compare it to the ideas we had in our minds at that time. We were able to download films and watch them completely as well , which enabled us to closely watch how the makers of the films had color-corrected their films as an example , or how they had built the personality of their characters. We were also able to use www.google.com to search different websites on critic opinions and blogs for even the opinions of the general public. We were able to know whether the general public liked a particular film or not , why they did not like a film and what could have been made better so they liked it etc. All of this helped us in cutting out stuff for example , at first we thought of including an action chase scene between Kamran and the bullies which would include different shots in a short amount of time , but then after researching we came to this conclusion that it would take up a lot of time and that movies in the suspense-comedy genre do not usually contain such action-oriented scenes. We decided not to risk it and not to break the convention.

Above: IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes are some of the websites that we used to help research more on the genre of our film and to find out more information on the films that are alike the one we are making.

Ancillary : Film Magazine Review Page

We have finished our second ancillary which was a film magazine review page. It was a teamwork by me and my partner Andrew Jared Dean. We made up a fictional name to the magazine we were actually writing our review for. We came up with the name "Film Mag".The page basically contains the name of our main character "Kamran" , our film poster , a few behind the scene shots of me and my partner Andrew telling the actors the location of the shots to be taken and a few quotes that me and my partner told the magazine interviewer. We used Adobe Photoshop CS5 to design the magazine review page.

 

Ancillary : Film Poster

We just completed our first ancillary which was our film poster. This was teamwork carried out by me and my partner Andrew Jared Dean. We used Adobe Photoshop CS5 to make this poster. We had taken all the screenshots seperately and merged them into one using Photoshop. The bubbles shown below in the poster actually indicate that the characters were not real and they were actually from Kamran's nightmare. The bubbles were taken seperately from Microsoft Word and then edited to be put together in Photoshop. The other characters besides Kamran are put in cloud-like shapes to show that they were actually from Kamran's mind.



Kamran is also shown wearing the red tie that he actually wears in the film when he is ragged and told to dance. The tagline also gives some hints on the actual storyline of the film but does not give away any interesting parts so that the audience can enjoy the real film without getting to know the spoilers. The word "Nightmare" is used to give a hint of the storyline but we made sure that the poster is only as informative as we want it to.

We also used a specific font to write the credits of the poster to make it look like a real film poster.