RUMOURS- Official Film

The Official film of 'RUMOURS' is now available to watch... Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmToPNvsryg


A level students Andrew Games & Duncan Morrison brings you this feature film... RUMOURS!

*Warning: This film contains adult humour/themes and strong language*

One man comes into school with a stack of serious rumours on his back! His job is to find out where the rumours are coming from and to protect his reputation!

Cast
Lead Boy- Andrew Games
Lead Girl- Amber Briers
Transvestite- Luke Chandlor
Chav- Peter Oldrid
Boy#1- Duncan Morrison
Boy#2- Calum Madden

Filmed by- Duncan Morrison
Edited by- Andrew Games
Make-Up- Rachel Triggs


Many Thanks to:
Get Back Colquitt
Alan Thompson
Pensby High School (Both boys & girls school)

Posted by Andrew Games

RUMOURS- Film Poster

One of the things myself and Duncan tried to avoid was to fall into the trap of making our film poster
stupid and slapstick, like most film posters such as 'Nacho Libre' & 'Don't mind the Zohan'. Many of these posters have characters of the film pulling pathetic, unnatural facial expressions to deliberately look stupid. These posters are so bad, it shows how desperately hard their trying to make the film look like a comedy. Because these posters get so cringy and off putting, the public is drawn away from watching the film, which is just the cause of bad advertising.

I left Duncan to come up with ideas for the images, as he was already streaming out ideas for a comedy film poster which would naturally look funny. Duncan took several different shots around the school, shots of myself with various other characters of the film, even just shots of myself.

In the end, Duncan chose Luke (who played the transvestite in the film), to stand being me whilst I'm reading the Leon Trotsky book. Luke would be pulling a facial expression that would show that he is taking the mick out of me. Duncan chose this image due to the fact that it showed a message to the audience and that it would already hint the character description. The fact that Luke was mimicking me whilst I was reading a Leon Trotsky book showed that I am the butt of everyone's jokes, as well as the fact that I am trying to be intelligent and to hide my clumsiness and idiotic, bizarre behaviour. What really sparks the joke off is that Leon Trotsky was a Russian general/communist in the second world war, and a character of my description is trying to study the backgrounds and persona of a Russian communist.

The colours I chose were colours that were already on the picture itself. An example of this is black, white and red, as they were the colours located on the Trotsky book, and I would use these colours to create other things, such as the titles.

The certificate 18 is labelled on the picture to warn the audience that the content in the film maybe offensive or uncomfortable for others. The film does contain adult humour, bad language and some sex references.

As you may of noticed, there is a spelling mistake as 'Nominees' is spelt 'Nomaniees'. This has only been noticed recently. However, I am unable to re-edit this error as the software I used is now defunct since the 19th of April 2012. The software I used was 'Picnik'. 'Picnik' was bought out by google and has now been transformed into a whole different website, with different purposes and themes.

Photo taken by Duncan Morrison, whilst picture was edited by Andrew Games

Posted by Andrew Games

RUMOURS- Radio Advert

Myself and Duncan thought long and hard about what type of music to have in the background of our radio trailer. In the end, Duncan choose Sublime- Santeria. This in the end became a perfect choice for our radio trailer!

After downloading the instrumental, we had to plan what to have in our radio trailer, such as narration, possible dialogue from the film? We choose a few sections of audio of dialogue from the film, whilst I done narration for the trailer, saying lines such as "This summer, Warner Bros brings you... RUMOURS". This would be the hardest task for us, as we would experiment with narration and  dialogue in different places of the trailer. After many experiments, we decided which order to have it in the end and what to say in narration.

The reason why I chose to do a 'Trailer guy' voice, was because it would fit in the gaps between the dialogue from the film and most trailers such as 'Meet the Spartans' would have the trailer voice over. Its quite common upon comedy films on the radio, whilst other films of other genres would usually have actions speak louder than words so to speak... Such as action films.

Music chosen by Duncan Morrison whilst edited and voiced over by Andrew Games


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPNMZgEINAc

Influence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAlGUO4el_0

When planning our film, we eventually settled on producing a five minute short film. After several ideas, we eventually setlled on an Inbetweeners style comedy about how rumors are spread and distorted, becoming incredulous.

We settled on this, becuase we wanted to produce a product that was original, unusual and different from average.

Posted by Duncan Morrison

Influences

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnusc9Rlx6w&feature=related

When trying to settle on a subject for the film, we were inspired by this sketch from That Mitchell and Webb look to make the film revolve around a character's drunken misadventures, and how different people see those events, and how this differs from the protagonist themselves.

We also decided to adopt a similar style of humour in the film, focusing on departures from reality, and unfortunate misadventures.

The show also was a huge influence on the scene in which the main character is inebriated, in which we use a very similar camera shot to convey drunkeness, and follow a very similar style of humour.

Posted by Duncan Morrison

Writing plots and scripts

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080228170048AAGm1ZF

When writing the plot and script for the film, we have browsed as many drunken and embarresing stories as is possible online, to try and Frankenstein these stories into a workable plot.

When writing the script, we have taken into account the disposition of the character that we are writing lines for, for example when writing line for Pete's character, the chav, we consulted him on the lines, and indeed headed many of his suggestion as to line ideas, so as to get a third party perspective on the believability of the lines.

When deciding which drunken embarresments to include in our plot, we selected the ones that we found the most homourous; we originally had an alternative scene, but after thought and consultation, we decided it was too risque for this particular project, and decided to change it. Obviously for this genre of film, we needed to include blue humour; throughout this we will endeavour to ensure it is not overly offensive to any parties.

Posted by Duncan Morrison 

Classification research

http://www.bbfc.co.uk/BFF278474/

When researching what classification our project would likely fall under, we looked at The Inbetweeners, a film with similar themes and homour style to see what rating it would likely recieve. Although not going for as strong references to sex and not as much strong language, we still feel that a 15 would be appropriate for our film. Our desire to fall into this category add to the argument against including a scene that was particullarly offensive, and in the end we decided not to use this in the script.

Posted by Duncan Morrison

Genre research

http://www.filmsite.org/comedyfilms.html

When deciding on a plot and script for our project, we researched the codes and conventions of different subgenres of comedy, attempting to follow some of these; however we did not want to use excessive cliches and outdated homour. We have decided to include slapstick elements to the film, such as drunken stumbling and over the top fighting. We will use this to create an increased sense of confusion in the drunken scene, and add a touch of homour to the fight scene, which could otherwise be taken relatively seriously when compared to the rest of the film.

Posted by Duncan Morrison

Target audience research

When planning our film, we decided the target audience should be the 18-35 age category; we came to this conclusion based on the blue homour sometimes included, which this age group would find acceptable, whereas other age groups may find it offensive or otherwise unnaceptable.

By setting this age category for our target audience, we were able to include more crude homour without concern for alienating the target audience with the topics that we address. However, throughout writing it we tried our best to make sure there would be nothing that offends people outside of the target audience too, as we want our film to have the widest appeal possible.

Posted by Duncan Morrison

Music research

When researching music, we were holding several ideas in mind. First of all, we did not want the music to give our film a dark or somber feel, so we knew we would have to medium to high tempo music. Secondly, we wanted our film to have a youthfula ad bouncy feel, and we wanted the music to reflect this. This once again narrowed the range of tempos and genres we could use; doom metal would unlikely be appropriate in this instance. Thirdly, we wanted the music to be recognisable to certain members of the audience, but not the majority, as people may focus more on the song than on the film. For this reason, we avoided the pop music world.

When music was allocated for different scenes, we had to consider carefully the overall atmosphere of the scene. For instance, in the party scene, the music was happy and upbeat, and reflected a happy and carefree enviroment. This was to help create an atmosphere of youth. However, later on, when the main character is attempting to chat some one up, we switched to the funk genre, attempting to play on its stereotypical associations with sex and seediness. Finally, for the ending of the film, we settled on an upbeat, happy and easily recognisible song that contributed to the overall light hearted atmosphere.

Posted by Duncan Morrison

Rejected ideas

When planning the film, we initially considered many different types of film. Early ideas was for a world war two era drama, a horror film, a spoof action film and even surrelist avant garde style films.

We eventually decided to settle for a comedy due to the belief that comedy is the most widely regarded film genre, and hopefully we could make something that everyone could enjoy, rather than panderind to certain people (ourselves).

There was initially some disagreements between Andy and myself over certain concepts and ideas. This, however, was not a serious obstacle, and we eventually decided to settle on a comedy film, due to our mutual love of the genre, and our belief that most people enjoy a well-made comedy film.

Posted by Duncan Morrison

Cliches

In producing the film, we attempted to avoid using cliches, and sometimes when we had an idea and found it un original upon completion, and disregarded it so as to avoid using these cliches. In the particular genre that we were operating in, these are often plentiful and hard to avoid, and we were anxious to not succomb to this stereotype.

We did not accomplish this one hundred percent however, as a certain amount of cliches are necesary.

In our eagerness, we also discovered a paradoxical situation: we were trying so hard to avoid including stereotypes, that we were rejecting ideas not on their merit or what they would bring to the film, but on their lack of uniqeness. This led to a situation in which our film actually did become a stereotypical "convention-less" film. In the end, we decided to try and better meter the amount of stereotypes and cliches, so the audience has clues as to identities of characters, and can follow the plot easily, but at the same time, ensure that the film does not become stale and boring.

Posted by Duncan Morrison

Evaluation part one

What haveyou learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback is of course essential for makers of any films, and it provides us

with a valuable opportunity to get an independent assessment of our work. We have shown our film to a variety of people, mostly in the age brackets 17-19 and 30-51. People in the first age bracket were essentially friends of ours, and the second were mostly teachers, parents and

family. What we learned proved very useful in the following weeks.

One of the most significant things that came about as a result of audience feedback was

the removal of one of the scenarios, as it was deemed to be too offensive for

inclusion. This scene was not deemed too bad by the younger age group, but the older age group had a very strong reaction to it, and as a result we decided not to include it, as we wanted our

film to appeal to this age group, and we knew that we would have to make more

effort for this; the humour naturally appeals to the younger age group.

Our feedback testing was extensive, and we showed our film to as many people as possible in

the hopes of gaining an insight to as many differing viewpoints as possible. The results were mixed, with some reactions favourable, and some not so much. We attempted to gain as much constructive criticism from everyone as possible, as this would enable us to develop our

film as much as possible. Some were more useful than other, with more to say and more opinions on a wider variety of topics.

The specific age group we found to be the most useful in our research was the 30-51 age groups,

who on average were better able to articulate their ideas, and recommend a

course of action for us.

A very important function of audience feedback was to tell us when we were going too

far with jokes. When we were making the film, we found it very easy to get carried away with some elements, and the group opinions helped us to stay grounded and understand what was and what was not acceptable to certain audiences.

Posted by Duncan Morrison

Evaluation part two

How didyou use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and

evaluation stages?

Media technologies have been vital for us, of course; without them we could not have

produced our film. The technologies we used in the construction of our product included the camera, obviously, editing software, a virtual storyboard and a photo editing software. These were used to create and hone the products, and to polish them off to the best of our extent.

Whilst researching, the main technology we used was the internet on the school

computers and our laptops. This enabled us to look up funny stories from around the world and diversify our influences.

Once again in the planning stages the main technology used was computers. We used a virtual storyboard for planning camera angles, shots and the like. We

wrote up a script on Microsoft word, and had a general outline of what we hoped to achieve on that same software. It was also used for writing a synopsis.

In the evaluation stage, once again the main technology used was the computer. I am writing this in Microsoft word, all the stuff on our blogs was obviously uploaded using a computer. We also used a projector to show groups of people our film.

Overall, technology has been very important for us; without it we could not have

produced our film at all, let alone got it to a standard that we believe to be

our best. We did not use all the technology available to us though; we chose not to use a green screen in our film, as this was unnecessary; we feel we would just be using it for the point

of it, and this would cheapen our film.

We also chose the same fate for an ultra-slow motion camera; we decided

that, for our purposes, regular slow motion done on a computer would be more

than adequate.

Posted by Duncan Morrison