Evaluation

In terms of this unit and the production that I had delivered, I am personally content with the
quality and the end result of the research, planning and evaluation of each week of the
production's lifespan. The length of research I personally wanted to reach was not executed
for the production but I was still able to create enough research to support my production
and actively worked with feedback I was given and even pushed for more feedback to
extend the quality of my work.

Now following the guidelines of the festival I had chosen to

work from, I had managed to follow the guidelines and the
competitions with what applied to my short film. The film festival
I followed was the Aesthetica Short Film Festival, and was
simultaneously following the rules of the college's exam board.

The rules from the short film festival were as follows: Must be under 30 minutes in length.
Submission fee is £24. The submitted short film must fit within its chosen category. Whereas
the colleges rules were to make no reference to drugs, nude or sexual themes and scenes
throughout. All work submitted must be your own and to follow the rules of your selected
short film festival / production company / client.
When relating this to my production, I
followed the under 30 minutes mark of
ASSF, with my aim for my production to max
out at around 10 - 15 minutes, which ended
up resulting in around 6 minutes. My
production genre was to follow thriller/horror
and then also fit within the animation genre,
as my production was both a short film and
an animation in one, with the majority of the
short film being that of an animation.
It originally was planned to be about 50%
animation and the other 50% being the short
film, but found as I was editing and rereading
the script, that the majority of the film was
made up of the animation. Although this was due to my unsure understanding of the script
as I was writing it, I wrote more animation than actual filmed scenes.

One fault was the length of lines I gave each character that appears in the animation
especially with the narrator being a character with lengthy lines which in turn extended the
duration of the animated sections. Coming back to the guidelines of the short film, in terms of
the college rules, I had noted the college rules of no drug reference and had specifically
asked if prescription drugs and medication fell under this rule, as the ending of my short had
a overdose reference and I wanted to still do my best to include as many of my original
planned scenes as I could. After receiving a message that the reference would be allowed, I
got back to continuing the planning and writing of my script. I was able to contiue the rest of
my short film with the rules with no issue as my short did not include any nude or sexual
scenes whatsoever.
I spoke briefly about genre just before, and I am expanding on it. I followed the festival
genres of horror, thriller and animation and personally followed more on thriller and
animation. I found that when researching both horror and thriller codes and conventions that
they both follow the majority of the same rules, with thriller only having one code added to
the list. For example, both thriller and horror have the convention of religious iconography
and young children used within a film of said genre. However, while researching, I found that
thriller focuses on foreshadowing as well as the other listed conventions. I didn't confirm
whether horror also uses this convention but when I was researching it I had only
foreshadowing appear in search results of thriller c&cs. I personally followed the codes of
using or implying the use of young children. The presentation of the animation was childlike
and friendly, which plays into the destruction of innocent and kind nature of children and the
aesthetics that surround them in horror and thriller. By using ‘pop’ colours and friendly
character designs like Benji the Rabbit, this played into the deception of the short film itself,
presenting as a safe and innocent production, only then to be flipped to a thriller film with the
‘truth’ tapes of the rehabilitation centre and the glitching of the actual animation, referencing
the unsettling pictures of the patients and doctors, along with the cross realism and cartoon
design of Benji in scenes. [BELOW]

When discussing characters within my production, I was basing them off character traits and
development from award winning psychological folk horror film, Midsommar, 2019. For
instance, Doctor Folklore, or more easily known as The Animated Doctor, was heavily
influenced by the actions, demeanour and overall development from the antagonist, Pelle.
The character from Midsommar is first presented as trustworthy, dependant and a character
trope deceiver, which was the exact design I had in mind when writing my doctor character.
The first greeting from Pelle and his approach to Dani and others was friendly, kind and
almost affectionate, and I wanted to translate this when introducing Folklore. I created a
small subtle hint as well with my character, as Pelle is from a folk horror and my character's
name is Folklore.

I had faced many problems during this production. Surprisingly, my time management was
not the issue of this production. I did have one slip up and that was me not clarifying or
checking availability of a room, which then delayed my work by a day or two. I had lost the
tablet I was using for animation during the first 3 days of the 2 week half term we had. This
set back my animation by almost 3 weeks, which was detrimental to the rest of my work as I
had already filmed, and could not edit from home, so I had no work to complete. I had no
other way of fixing this issue other than animating from my phone but I had settled with a
new phone during this so nothing was connected to my new phone, and my old phone was
out of use. I had eventually found the tablet but having that fear of not being able to
complete my production was something I did not know how to work around.
Another issue I had to face was Premiere Pro not working with me. It had shut down on me
multiple times while editing, so on one occasion I had to work from a past edit and then
catch up on what I had already edited, and then had to continue working on it as if nothing
had interrupted me. Issues that I could have faced like finding actors was no issue for me as
the actors I had chosen were people I am in contact with daily and even confirmed that they
would be in my production before the planning of filming was even proposed. I only faced
one issue before filming, which was location. I had no idea where to film my short film as I
owned no rooms that were fully white, and neither did my actors until it was proposed that I
use one of the studios on college campus. I had emailed the teacher who is in charge of
those rooms asking to use it, but did not receive a response until too late. I was planning to
use it on the Wednesday before half term but he had not emailed me until I was already on
campus ready to film, I was able to use it for the Friday morning of the same week however
and had no issues or problems then, and filming went smoothly.

When actually looking at my production and the ones I had researched like The Walten
Files, Petscop and Local 58, I feel as if I had hit the target of reflecting the same aesthetic
and structure of each of these. Looking at some of my feedback on the survey I sent out
after finishing my production, one person answered something in support of this. The genre
I was specifically following and referencing was
analog horror, and with this person referencing that it
showed me that my production reflected that style
and followed it in a way that I hoped it would.

This helped me feel more confident in the end result

of my production as I felt one of my main
weaknesses was relating my own work and film to
the ones I chose to analyse and follow.

The responses from my survey have helped

me understand the way my short film is
received as all of the responses praised it
and said they enjoyed what they had
watched. This showed that not only did I hit
the genre on target but also showed that I got
the audience correct as all of my audience
had voted that they enjoyed the production a
lot.
I also asked them what specific things they
lied and disliked to give myself an idea of
what I did right and what i didn't do right
within my production.
I asked the question of:

To see the good of what I had created. This would help me see both the enjoyment of the
viewer, and also the technical application of if the editing was received well etc.
Majority of my answers
appreciated the art style and the
choice of Benji being a bunny for
the mascot, and his design. I
chose Benji to be a bunny as I
have experience with animated
bunnies, and I was able to
reference Roger Rabbit and
Bugs Bunny in his design
development. That as well as,
bunnies are ‘cute pets’ so they
would be enjoyable to watch. Having been complimented on the art style helps my research
as I aimed to create an enjoyable and kid friendly style to bring a sense of comfort and
happiness to the short for the added deception for the short.

With the other statement, the ending of them realising the situation they are in was also a
choice I was happy making. I was aiming to add the audience to be involved into the world of
my short film. The viewer had come across the tape and the Doctors had realised it had
been recording and tried to stop it too late, after we had seen everything. This was the idea
that I had hoped to create with such an ending.

I then asked if there was anything they didn't enjoy about my production as a baseline of
what I could have done better to present to my audience.

One critique I got was to add more disturbance to the short film. I agree with this as a lot of
my short film had followed a lot of the same scare elements, the loud glitch of the vhs tape,
the realistic elements added to it like the face distortions and the inclusion of the fake people
headshots. I had researched different scare tactics in shorts like mine, in Petscop and
others. They do use a lot of childlike imagery, which I had attempted to include but to use
actual imagery and allusion to children would have added more of a fear factor to my short.
‘Did you like the editing?’ was the next question I had asked my audience, as my short was
heavily based on its editing.
My audience all agreed that the
use of the two medias of film
included into one was a good
choice. It showed both of my
technical skills and included what
my audience would want to see, as I got positive
feedback from it. I wanted to focus more on my
animation side of the production as I knew this
would be the most difficult to tackle as its time
consuming on both creation and editing. The work
I had put in was worth the effort and time however
as my audience had voted that it was a good
choice, both technically and aesthetically. Another
thing to note in this regard, is that my choice of
transitioning into the animation and the short film
after each other was another good choice as it
threw my audience through the deception and the
confusion I had aimed for, but if I had just shown
all the animation in one full sequence and then all
of the live action footage after, it wouldn't have
sold the idea I was going for, which was to further push the narrative that the Rehab Centre
was lying to you in a way, but that they didn't realise we the audience could see the truth.

I last asked if I could have improved on anything. All of my answers had mutually agreed that
there was nothing that they thought of that I could improve on, at least nothing that wasn't
already mentioned. However, one response commented that I could have done better on my
transitions. This is something I agree with as I felt like I had not worked to transition the
scenes as well as I wanted to. I had reused the same clip for glitch transitions a few times,
as I had struggled to find the ones I had originally saved, and also struggled to use the ones
I had then went to find and save, as they did not fit with how I was editing my short.

When looking at my research specifically, I looked at VHS tapes and the set up of how they
are presented. I looked into the details of the physical display that we all recognise when
thinking of VHS tapes, the
writing on screen. The research
I used here benefited the
execution of the vhs aesthetic I
was aiming for in my production
by finding layouts and the
meanings behind the writing
used on VHS recorders.
 In my production I used layouts of PLAY SP and
timing frames in each corner of the screen. This
helped my production reach the presentation I
wanted as the VHS added details created the right
aesthetic I wanted. By looking at how VHS and VCR
showings used to look, it helped me create a specific
atmosphere of the time period these were
manufactured. Comparing the VHS style to my
research again, the productions i had researched also
relate to this as by looking at them, it gave me the
understanding on how
to present VHS tape
style videos in a horror
aspect.
For example, the first Walten Files tape is an animated short
in a VHS grain style of video. Using this style created an
unnerving sense as the old ‘vintage’ style leaves us on edge
as we don't know what to expect, as its a form of media that
isn't commonly used anymore, so we see it as something that
we aren't to see.

If I had more time, or could re-work anything I had worked on during this project, I would
have focused more on the quality and range of my animation. As much as I am happy with
the end result, and the journey of creating this production, I feel as if there was more
potential to create more diverse scenes within my short, For example I could have made a
new scene when Doctor Folklore is talking about therapy. There was room for an entire
scene of Benji and The Doctor to mimica therapy session, and I could have researched more
into what Introduction Tapes look like to follow the steps and potential animation scenes they
include and relate it to my own animation segment. Another thing I could have improved on
was problem solving. Even though I had followed my production schedule, one of my past
weaknesses, I was evidently set back by losing the tablet I was working on with animating. I
was doing what I could to retrieve it but made little effort to find another solution to the
problem in case the tablet would not come up. I had gotten into contact with my teacher and
I was offered a WACOM tablet to work with, and struggled to use it. I had found that if I had
continued to work on this tablet for the rest of the production, I would not have finished any
of the work I needed in time. Obviously I had found the iPad at a time where my work was
still in a good time to animate the rest of what was needed, but I should have come up with a
safety plan to fall back on in my hazards and precautions list I had created. I had only listed
issues with the iPad under storage and battery life, two things I was not concerned about but
deemed necessary to list.

Overall, I am happy with the quality, journey, planning and end result of my project. I had
faced some challenging turns and twists throughout but I had still managed to reach the end
and submit the short in its final form. I do recognise some of the faults in the short, like
missing or low effort transitions, not enough diverse movement in my animated characters
and not enough live action scenes or narrator description to explain what is actually
happening. This just helps me understand and teaches me to fully explain and flesh out my
plot writing for future projects.