The Importance of Education Short Film

                                                 'The Icing On The Cake' 

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This week I have been testing the copyright free tracks against demo test footage I made as samples to see how the film would play out and I'm quite surprised that it actually came out better than I could of ever imagined. With knew knowledge of how my project would look I literally cannot wait to begin filming and am extremely excited about this project. 

I have decided to have the opening credits not to play at the beginning but rather to start the film and show a few actions (the student comes home and enters his house and closes the door to the camera) followed by a quick title screen displaying creator and contributor credits. I feel this would be a good way of getting the audience attention straight away by starting the film and while they are already watching just simply show a few quick credits. 

I developed this idea because I know that sometimes it can be a drag to get a film started when the credits take so long that the audience have already lost interest. I have also decided to have my actors be colour coded (if possible) I would like ideally to have my actress wear red because this I feel is a colour that is associated with love (red rose, love hearts etc) and my actress is playing an important role of being the emotional part of the protagonist's life and the cause of his inner pain when he is betrayed. 

I would have the villain of the story (the guy who steals her away from him) to be wearing dark colours which often villains are associated with darkness. (E.g: Mr Dark from 'Rayman', Master of Darkness (Vampire Story),the Dracula's dark clothes, and Ghost face killer from 'Scream'. There are more examples like this out there in the media but I think this is just a few to justify my point. 

Ideally I would want the protagonist to wear black and blue colours to show that he is feeling down and emotionally beaten up inside (''Feeling blue and depressed''). I think it is important to show the representation visually in the film what is being said spiritually in the story. 

I have also written descriptions of how each shot and scene will play out and unfold which will help me to direct the actors in terms of emotional expressions and visually aesthetically pleasing use of mise on scene. I feel that I have everything I need as I have a great meaningful story to tell my audience, keen experienced actors joining to work with me on this project, locations, music, wardrobe selection confirmed with actors, equipment (camera, tripod, batteries), script, transport, call sheets, risk assessments and location release forms (pending approval). 

Lunch will be provided and made available for the actors by me on request and any other needs my actors have will be handled, dealt with and assisted by me. I have also been working on three people's projects such as  'Tell Tale Heart' radio drama adaptation for Callum Blitzz second year Media Production BA student, 'Junk Mail' short film for Oliver Mays (Television Production student) and Wing Tam's ''On The Edge'' short film (Producing for Film & Television student) which this takes care of the experience part of the assignment of working on three other people's project whilst working towards out own graduate project. I was requested for this assignment to work on three different productions and I feel that these three productions was successful and I feel that these three productions helped me to gain even further experience in terms of acting which will help me direct my actors and gave me a great insight into what I want and will be looking for in these performances from my actors like I mentioned in my previous post. 

                             'Advanced Specialist Production Skills: Summary'

This project started off as a real life encounter that I witnessed and felt very strongly about because I witnessed a good friend of mine (now ex friend) who was on a good path to life with a bright future but due to negative life choices and bad influences surrounding him it had become clear to me that he is now no longer furthering his education and he has now given up on life to the point where even I couldn't help him as the rebellious attitude has taken over him and influenced him.

I always feel this huge sense of loss because I couldn't save my friend and I always told him from a young age that I would always be his Savior. I couldn't save him but I wanted to be able to share how passionately I disagree with his negative life choices as I believe he should have stayed with the choice of education and continue it further.

I was told that we were to make a graduate project and it was advised to me to provide a project that people can relate to. I looked inside my heart and realised that I knew exactly what I now wanted to create.

I studied existing media such as the famous Carlo Collodi's Adventures of Pinocchio story and the movie 'Educating Rita' starring Julie Walters which influenced my film's style which was to be a story of a student who has been mislead down a destructive path but later realises the importance of education and wants to come back to the right path.

Now that I had my own personal passion attached to this project I felt I should do something for the audience and show them something that I know will hype them up for sure which is that not only was the student distracted but he was distracted by a love interest who later cheats on him and adds to the character's confusion and problems that the protagonist needs to solve.

I set out to make a film about 'The Importance of Education' which is the title of my short film. However just because I had the idea doesn't mean I knew how I wanted to show this. Research is an area of the project that forms and influences the project. I had been working on three other people's project for this assignment for the team work experience part of the assessment but during these projects I realised that a pattern between the films I been making with others which was that I am typically cast as the male in his 20's who is going through a rough patch in his life either by going through a break up or experiencing stresses in his life leading towards possible depression.



I felt that this character type should be the leading protagonist character in my film. I attend editing workshops with Adrian Butterworth to tighten up on my editing skills and familiarise myself with the mixing of Photoshop masking on Premiere Pro Cs6 and the basics of editing, trim, cut, paste and export along with colour correction, picture tone, white balance and audio mixing.  


I had wrote a script for my film in the style of first person perspective telling you the story as the events unfold on the screen visually but more based on the moral rather than describing the action in this sense. The script faced several adjustments when I found actors interested in being in my film.

I researched the thematic signatures that my favourite auteur directors (Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino) play with to great affect in their movies which would influence my style of directing. This was the same for the movie scores they use which also played a big part in the influencing of my soundtrack.


The storyboards came soon and I found myself shooting test shots as place holders to create a music score to with the pictures. I also collected a selection of copyright free tracks. These tracks I found were from a long file which plays multiple songs so its not possible to put a legit title in my references and also I'm still debating if I'm even going to use these tracks as my original plan is to complete a soundtrack for the film that I composed myself.

I provided a risk assessment, call sheet, location release form for my tutor and the University to give permissions to film on their grounds. From here it was location decisions, location permissions, informing the actors, a plan for the shoot (what I want to film and how I'm going to achieve it) with a fixed time schedule. Next steps will be to finalise the soundtrack choices for the film, record the narration voice over, edit, export and provide a portfolio of all my documents related to the project along with programme as complete form.

And the further career aspirations for this project would be to gain it recognition at London Film Festival and other film festivals. The previous productions I worked on gained me practical skills experience in production and educated me in the process to follow to successfully complete a short film production. All I can say now is ''Sit tight audience and get for an eye opening and life changing short film''.