Evaluation | Question 2

Evaluation | Question 1

Paradox | Short Film

It has been almost a year since I first began researching and planning the short film as part of our coursework productions. After several months of writing, filming and editing the short film alongside with Alex as well as receiving plenty of audience feedback to help improve the film, we are now both very pleased to be unveiling the final version of our short film "Paradox". For this final version, I added in the finishing touches to the film which were previously missing such as the smoke effects, the additional sound effects of the car escape and adjustment of the sound levels in the footage.

Alex and I are very pleased with the new outcome of this short film including the rest of the actors involved with this production and we are all very excited to be unveiling this to our final audiences.

Ancillary Task | Media Magazine

Prior to me making the the media magazine cover, I stated that I wanted to follow the typical styles and formats from classic double page spread reviews in media magazines. An aspect of these magazines which I really liked was how much detail and information the reviews gave to their audiences allowing to fully deconstruct the successes of the films as well as their weaknesses. In some of the double page spread, there were also some pops ups in bright colours of striking patterns to help inform the reader about a topic relating to the film. With these ideas in my head, I eventually went ahead to make my very own double page spread using the examples of previous media magazines I have liked reading.

Below is my final media magazine product I have made for my short film. It features a full detailed review of the short film as well as a brief summary explaining the narrative. I have placed in a large text format the title of the film to inform the audience the film review which they will be reading, pop ups at the bottom left and top right informing the audience topics relating to the short film, page numbers, website links, and even a screen grab from the short film itself. I have also included a predicted interest curve which highlights the likelihood of audiences enjoying to watch the short film, but to also entice new viewers to potentially watch it too.

Overall, the layout of my double page spread is very presentable, presentable and fits very well with the expectations of a typical double page spread.

Below is a speedart video of the double page spread being made right the way through to the very end.

Ancillary Task | Short Film Poster

After working for nearly 3 months on my short film poster, I am now satisfied with the finished outcome of this ancillary task. Looking back at my previous post about my short film poster, I stated that I really liked how the two characters have the gun drawn in the middle of their faces to create the "paradox" effect. This effect which I intended to use was also a real positive noted by the audience as the expressions on the actors faces are really strong and well defined.

Receiving my feedback on my poster, the main points which were made where to consider where the text was going to go. Eventually, I came up with the idea of increasing the size of the photograph taken but also only include Morgan's face in the poster with his face being cropped to the side. This allowed more room for me to place the text in whilst keeping the minimalistic poster style in tact. Using Morgan's face in the poster was a decision I made purely on the basis that his photograph was a lot easier to edit and to add more contrast in then Luke's photograph, but also since Morgan is the main protagonist for this short film.

When I took a 2nd look at the film posters I had initially researched, I noticed how they included the film credits and reviews for this short film in too. Whilst adding the extra details in, I also played around with adding release dates for this production as well as the distribution company and links to websites. I chose to use the "Bebas" font for my text since this font fitted best with the genre of our short film.  Overall I am very pleased with the final outcome of my short film poster and I truly believe that this poster is as good as it could possibly get.

Below is a speedart video of the poster being made right the way through to the very end. 

House Style

A key part of my research when creating my ancillary tasks was to research the format of "house style". This is a style guide that sets standards for the writing and design of documents, either for general use or for a specific publication. The style guide provides consistency in style and formatting of a document. Many publications use style guides to demonstrate the preferred layout and formatting of a published page. They often are extremely detailed in specifying, for example, which fonts and colours to use. Such guides allow a large design team to produce visually consistent work for the organisation.


I intend on following the house style format for my media magazine as this will allow my audience to read through the magazine as they have been brought up to read a magazine and signs due to their social upbringing in the 21st century.

Smoke Effect

One of the key aspects that make up the character of "Crimson" in our short film is his ability to use unsupported flight to travel between different locations without being detected to easily by the everyday person. His fantastical abilities were inspirations we drew from after looking at the way the "Death Eaters" in the Harry Potter series fly through unsupported flight as smoke particles through the air. For our antagonist villain helper, Alex and I wanted to replicate this effect as much as we could to the method used by the Death Eaters. In order to make this effect, I had to use modelling and animating software packages such as Autodesk Maya to create the smoke itself before importing it all into Sony Vegas.

Whilst I have some experience using Autodesk Maya with similar projects in the past, it was an incredible challenge to even be able to create this effect from scratch. The results of this effect so far look great and will hopefully work well when imported into the footage for our short film.

The video clip below shows an exemplar render I made in Maya based on the screenshots in the slideshow.

Short Film | Draft 3 & Feedback