Aaron's A2 Media Blog

When producing a film, it is important to understand who the audience for the film is, the audience are the main consumer. To understand the demographic of our audience, we constructed a survey that would ask questions about short films in general and questions that relate to the themes we want to convey in our short film RIVER. We sent this survey out over social media to friends and family in order for it to reach a large variety in age groups. This is the result of our survey. From these statistics we can see that people from the ages 15-21 are interested in low budget films and films that present death in a different way. These people usually find out about films by watching youtube, youtube advertisements and TV. Most people favour surrealism and symbolism within a short film, this is great as we can display these attributes within RIVER due to its story concept. We should target RIVER to 15-21 year olds as they consume most media online and RIVER will appear online....

In one day we managed to film the scene with the limbo character scene, the message scene and most of the ending scene in one day. The weather for this day was great and provided us with very nice looking and consistent shots. The wind speed was high causing a lot of audio to become unusable even though we tried to prevent it as much as possible. I had to act in the Limbo scene and in the message scene. I was the Limbo (a hobo of the afterlife) and I tried to act as unnatural as possible, I recorded audio of myself making weird noises. Being the Limbo was a very fun experience as it was a very unusual, I also couldn't see very well as there was a mask covering my face. The second character I played was Kevin's "friend" who died before him, he leaves an emotional message that makes Kevin really upset. This character was more emotionally demanding while I was acting, I tried to make myself upset in order to create a realistic emotion. I went off script and improved the...

In River, the characters go on a journey that takes them to many different locations. These locations all have meaning and context within the story. The setting within a story can make a world seem believable and the setting can be symbolic for themes within the film. The Ferry Man's House - Aaron Esteban's House This is the location that only appears at the beginning of the film. It shows how human the Ferry Man is even if he is other worldly. The Scene of Death - Twinbrook This location provides a humble rustic background that includes broken structures and nature overgrowth. This place allows us to create the contrast of life with death. Amy's House - Also Aaron Esteban's House We used this house again because the upstairs wasn't shown, this allowed us to frame the house as a completely different location. The End- A Hill overlooking Lagmore

For the production of River, I will be editing the shots, sound effects and the music together. I will be using Final Cut Pro X on a Macbook. Editing is new to me so I will have to teach myself how to use this program. Luckily, Final Cut is a very intuitive program and understanding how it works will not take long. When I do encounter problems, I can search for the problem on the support forums and usually I can correct these problems effectively. Thankfully, I was able to use my knowledge that I gathered when editing the test footage. I have begun editing River. This is using the footage that we captured on Sunday 18th March. This footage included one scene that plays after the opening scene of the film. Editing this footage before the rest of the film is shot allows me to understand and create the general atmosphere and pacing of the film.  Firstly, I add the shots into the timeline in the appropriate order. This allows me to set up the flow of the scenes shots. I then s...

We filmed the scene in which the Ferryman has to get ready for work. We did this scene as the weather for the day was terrible. This indoor scene went really well as there was no problems while filming. This scene had complex elements such as the ellipsis we planned to implement but everything and everyone worked well. We had to record audio of the kettle boiling and water pouring. We also made a fake Linkedin profile for the ferryman to be displayed on his laptop screen although it is hard to see in the final shots of the laptop. Here is the profile- Eoin and Ciaran Recording -  Favourite shots -

Today, we filmed the scene of the Ferryman meeting up and introducing himself to the recently deceased Kevin. Ryan O'Neill was directing the shots, Ciaran Hines was recording audio for the scenes, Eoin McCoy was filming with the Google Pixel 2 on the steadicam and the tripod. I was incharge of telling the actors what lines they were saying in the scene and also showing the director what shot from the storyboard we were shooting. In the beginning this filming day was productive but the weather began to worsen as we were filming as the wind picked up and the rain began to fall. The temperature also began to affect the production as the actors were visibly uncomfortable and impatient due to the cold air. We had to wrap up this day very early as we were all affected by the cold and dreary weather. Some of the shots that we had filmed looked rushed when I was looking back at them and they needed to be filmed again. On the other hand, the shots that looked great gave us motivation as we...

Colour Correction can add a lot to a film, here is a video showing how I used colour correction within River.

This is a video journal showing how I created the Ellipsis scene within River. This ellipsis scene is inspired by Edgar Wright as in many of his films, he exaggerates specific sometimes meaningless actions to make the scene look more interesting. Here  is an example of this type of scene.

The Interview Scene - This scene involved a flashback of the ferryman at his interview for his job. This interview takes place in a small cramped room that is very monochrome and dull, this was perfect for the scene as it created an atmosphere that is claustrophobic in nature and dull representing the corporate lack of personality. This scene had John Campbell and Cathal Tierney (who portray the Ferryman and the Interviewer respectively) conduct an awkward yet comedic interview and overall the filming and audio recording went extremely well. Audio was crisp and the shots were simple but effective. As the editor of the film, we captured too much footage for this scene and there was a lot of unnecessary footage that had to be left on the cutting room floor. The acting was good and the scene conveyed the atmosphere it should have. Here are some of my favourite shots.

Here is a video of the process of making a panel for the storyboard.

DAY 1 Sunday, 18th March 11am - 4pm Twinbrook, Lagmore John Campbell’s house, Aaron Esteban’s house, Main twinbrook road Main walking scenes, Opening scene in John’s house, DAY 2 Monday, 19th March 11am - 4pm Twinbrook, Lisburn Main twinbrook Road, Ciaran Hines’ house, Kevin Friend scene, Amy’s house, DAY 3 Tuesday, 20th March Night-time (9pm) Twinbrook street Drunk scene

This is the storyboard that I created in the program FireAlpaca. I have a video of how I make these panels in another post.