'The Simple Truth' Extras

'The Simple Truth' Evaluation

The Final Film - 'The Simple Truth'

'The Simple Truth' Cast

The Protagonist - Nini Hadjipateras



The Boyfriend - Ryan Howard



The Best Friend - Kate Shurgaia



The Other Girl - Claudia Humphreys



The Older Guy - Woody Holding

Final Draft of our Magazine Article

Because we changed the colour scheme in our poster, we also had to change it for our magazine article. Therefore, we changed the article from this:


To this:

The Fourth and Final Version of our Poster

Above is the poster we designed for our film. We took the idea of the teenagers standing in front of something plain from 'Adulthood.' The poster shows a clear gap between the 'happy couple' and the rejected girl and symbolises how the main character went from having it all to having nothing. The space between the characters in the poster and their body language summarizes the film’s narrative. We chose to have the word 'Truth' in a bold red to make it stand out. As the film develops, the audience begin to understand why the word stands out on the poster as the protagonist soon learns the truth of what she's caused for herself.

When we first came up with the design of our poster, the word 'Simple' was in a baby pink and 'Truth' was in a baby blue. We originally chose this colour scheme as it represents both sexes in our film as well as relates to our genre of a teen drama. As a group we made the creative decision to change to a black and red colour scheme which is harsher and bolder. We felt that the baby blue and pink contrasted too much with the poster's narrative.

Third Draft of our Poster

As we had to re shoot, we had to take a new photograph for the film as the clothes we were wearing were different. Instead of having the characters pose against a red brick wall, we had them pose in front of a green hedge as it created synergy with our film as we broke one of the Dogme rules and used a green filter in certain parts of our film. We, as a group, decided to change the colour of the font for the actors names and the quote to black to make it stand out more. Another decision we made was to have the photograph cover the whole of the poster and put the font in front of it. We felt that this created a stronger image and conveyed the narrative better as the space between the characters was more obvious.

Second Draft of our Magazine Article

In the second draft of our magazine article, we changed the poster to the one from the film and wrote in the new characters and the roles we were all playing. As it was a still from the film it now looked like a proper magazine article.

Second Draft for our Poster

During filming, we decided to take a still for the film's poster. I as the main character and Claudia as the 'other girl' are both in the poster and we are also director and producer of the film. We had to create the look and pose for it.

Here is one try of the poster:


Here is the final image we used for the poster:

First Draft of our Poster

Above is the first draft of our poster. By having the photograph at the bottom it allows the title, quote and names of the actors to stand out. We decided to have the word 'Simple' in colour to also allow it to stand out. Having it in baby pink, in a way foreshadows what the audience are about to find out about the girl. The photo we used was just a practice one.

Creative Decisions for filming the Classroom Scene

After February, we came across a problem in our film whilst in the editing suite. In order to sort it out, a creative decision had to be made. The whole film had been shot with me as the main character having red hair. During a break in February I had to dye my hair back to brown. This caused a problem as we had to re film the classroom scene as some of the shots didn't work. If we had re filmed in a normal way, I would have had red hair throughout the whole film and then brown hair in the classroom scene. As a group, we had to come up with a decision and we had a few options:
- One was to film the door of the classroom and just hear voices, this could have been interesting but would not have fit in with the style of our film.
- The camera would be positioned as Nini's point of view so the audience would see the action in the classroom but would not see Nini, therefore avoiding the problem of her hair. Nini would be standing next to the camera and speaking so it seems like the camera are her eyes.
- Our final option was to film a girl with red hair over the shoulder and have Nini's voice next to the camera to record.

We chose to go with the second option and it actually turned out well and was an interesting effect on the film as it was a whole scene filmed from someone's point of view.

First Draft of Magazine Article

Part of this year's requirement was to also include a magasine review article about our film. This was done by Claudia Humphreys and tells of the film's narrative, filming aspects and information about the actors.

We created the magazine article on a program called Adobe InDesign. We combined the style of two film review magazines to come up with the layout for our own review. The magazines we looked at were Empire Magazine and Sight and Sound Magazine. In order to create synergy, we used the same colours that we chose for out poster which was a baby blue and a baby pink. We chose these colours in order to represent boys and girls similar to how they are represented in the poster for 'It's a boy girl thing.'

Questionnaire

We gave other students at our college a questionnaire to complete after watching our film. The questions were:

1. What mark do you give our film, rating it from 1-10?

2. Who is your favourite character?

3. Do you understand the story? If not, what was unclear?

4. Did you find you could relate to any of the topics or characters?

5. If you could change anything what would it be?

6. Did you find any part of the film went too slowly?

7. Did you find yourself feeling sorry for the main character by the end of the film?

8. What do you find worked best about the film? e.g. storyline, acting, editing, music, etc.

9. What character do you dislike the most in the film and why?

10. Did you think that the film represented teenagers realistically?

Technologies

We used a number of different technologies during the research and planning, evaluation and construction stages of 'The Simple Truth.' Without the use of media technologies it would have been impossible to our final product well as the ancillary tasks. We used different technologies and software at every stage of making out product. As we decided to shoot our new film idea in Dogme style, schedule’s and props list were no longer necessary as everything was more or less natural and improvised so we did not use Celtx. We also used a feature on our mobile phones called BlackBerry Messenger to get in touch with our cast and make sure they came prepared to shoot. Each person in our group has a Twitter account and so we used them in the planning stage to make our plans known.

In terms of research, web 2.0 was essential for us. We visited websites such as IMDB, to look at conventions of similar genre films as well as looking for any further ideas. YouTube channel Future Shorts enabled us to learn more about short films and provided us with a background knowledge to producing our own film.

In post-production we used editing software such as iMovie and FinalCutPro to edit our footage together, as well as LiveType for our titles. We went against one of the Dogme rules and decided to create music and use it in our film. We did this using GarageBand. We used Indesign to create the layout of our poster as well as colors and taglines. We also used Photoshop to edit the image we used for the poster and adjust in within the final product. We used PowerPoint to create our Evaluation which includes our poster, magazine article, stills from the film and some of the film’s footage and music.

This is a snapshot of our film being edited on iMovie:



This is a snapshot of our music being created on Garageband:

Comparing and Contrasting 'The Simple Truth'

When trying to compare our film with others we found two very different films that both had similarities with our own. These are 'It's a boy girl thing' and 'Adulthood.' Both are teen dramas but the main difference is that 'It's a boy girl thing' and 'Adulthood' are higher budget films than ours.

‘Adulthood’ is more closely comparable to our film as it also has a gritty life like style in which its filmed. A lot of the time the editing also creates the feel of you watching things happen on first hand. ‘It’s a boy girl thing’ contrasts more with our film than ‘Adulthood’ as it has a much more positive storyline and has a more glossy Hollywood look to it. However, there are some similarities between ‘It’s a boy girl thing’ and ‘The Simple Truth' such as both are teen dramas and are about boys meeting girls.

‘It’s a boy girl thing’ contrasts with our film as the editing invites the audience to watch the drama as it happens but from the outside perspective rather than really drawing the viewer in to witness it as if they are present.

In the beginning of 'The Simple Truth' we decided not to give our characters any exposition and instead chose to dive straight into the drama with a brief establishing shot as the first image.

What also sets 'The Simple Truth' aside from other films is that there is no character transformation involved and no happy ending. 'It's a boy girl thing' contains a happy ending so the endings of the two films can be contrasted.

Dogme Rules

1. Props and sets must not be brought in. If a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found.
 
2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. Music must not be used unless it occurs within the scene being filmed, i.e. diegetic.
 
3. The camera must be a hand-held camera. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. The film must not take place where the camera is standing; filming must take place where the action takes place.
 
4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable (if there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).
 
5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.
 
6. The film must not contain superficial action (murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)
 
7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden (that is to say that the film takes place here and now).
 
8. Genre movies are not acceptable.
 
9. The film format must be Academy 35 mm.
 
10. The director must not be credited.

We followed the Dogme rules by filming with multiple, hand held cameras, filming on a carefully chosen location without any specific props, not using any artificial lighting and using improvised dialogue.

We challenged the Dogme rules by adding non-diegetic music, titles over the image of the film and a black and white editing technique. We also added red and green filters in certain scenes.

Filming of 'The Simple Truth'

Since we decided to film in the avant-garde style of Dogme, this meant that we had to adjust to using multiple cameras. This took a while for us to get the hang of and we ended up filming four times, improving each time and learning and developing new techniques. To film we used two Canon EOS 550D cameras plus an extra Sony PD-170 sound camera, allowing us to record sound seperately. This proved to be very convenient as the Canon cameras picked up a lot of background noise such as traffic and wind.

During filming, our cast used improvised dialogue, though there were specific phrases they had to include in order for the message of the film to come across to the audience. Apart from that the actors were told to speak normally about an eventful weekend and this is why the film is realistic to teenagers lives.

We told our cast to wear what they would normally wear to college as one of the Dogme rules includes having no unnatural props and/or costumes.

Filming

Our first scheduled shoot began with the filming of the interior jeweller's scene and the morning scene. These two scenes were filmed successfully, however, it was then that we encountered some problems. First of all, the actress we had hired cancelled last minute resulting in myself having to play the role of Daphne. This then proved to be difficult as I did not look old enough to play the role. It also meant that the other actors we'd have to use for the rest of the cast would be teenagers and would look too young. The short film would then look unrealistic.

We took the decision, as a group, to change our entire story and genre of film. We decided on a simple narrative with about five main points to it. We decided to film in the Dogme style involving multiple cameras and improvised dialogue. We called this film 'The Simple Truth.'

'The Simple Truth' is about a girl's day at college. It begins with her admitting she has cheated on her boyfriend, she then finds out her boyfriend has done the same thing. They then fight, she decides to follow up her relationship with the older boy with whom she cheated but gets rejected. This is a simple narrative which is easy to follow and is true to teenagers lives. We wanted to represent teenagers in a realistic way and did this by setting it at a real college with real students and using the dialogue we use in our everyday lives. Most adults believe that teenagers talk about relationships, sex and their social lives and this is what we represent in 'The Simple Truth.'