Distribution

Baba Yangu is an original film with a theme of documentary mixed with drama that has not been used many times before. This aspect could enhance the success of our piece as it could be seen as a groundbreaking, unique creation that explores relatable issues with a controversial twist that gets people talking and thinking about this issue. On the other hand the documentary aspect of our film could hinder the categories and competitions it could fit into as it is not one clearly defined genre and it cannot be clearly categorized.

From the research I have done there are a few short film production companies that I believe would be interested in our film. The first would be Coffee Shorts as from my previous research of the films they showcase, I have seen that documentary is a clear genre that they are keen in. Also from watching one documentary on this site called “Your mummy kills animals” I have seen that Coffee Shorts is a company that is not afraid to explore controversial topics. Coffee Shorts are also interested in drama that is relatable and interesting, which is what our film is all about. Therefore Baba Yangu would be accepted fully by Coffee Shorts.

A film festival that we would send our short film to would be Exposures. This is because it is seen as the UKs leading student film festival that take a large range of genres including drama and documentary. The deadline for entries to this competition this year is July 31^st which means that we will be able to enter our film as soon as possible.

This is a screen shot proving we have started filling out the Exposures submission form.

We also uploaded our film on social networking sites that we use regularly such as Facebook, Vimeo and Youtube. We asked friends and colleagues to comment and let us know their feedback. Alot of it was positive and many people agreed and enjoyed the film and the views expressed throughout it.

This is a screen print proving our film was uploaded on Facebook.

This is a screen print proving our film has been distributed on Vimeo.

Our film was also submitted onto the BBC Film Network. I filled out the submission form leaving a short description and synopsis of “My

Father (Baba Yangu)”. After this was all done and I had created a profile on the BBC Film Network, the next steps to this process is to print off and sign the contract and send a copy of our film to the address given.

These are a few screen prints proving that we submitted our film to the BBC Film Network.

Audience

Our short film targets our audience as, firstly, the topic of the whole film being about fatherhood which is a topic that every person may have an opinion or view on. It is also a relatable subject to an audience of any gender, age, ethnicity or class. We also tried to engage the audience through using younger actors and actresses as we know that the short film audience is a niche audience and younger people tend to discover and watch more short films through social networking sites and convergence, as this is the more technology literate generation.

Also through our editing pace we looked to engage our younger audience and keep them interested. For example when we edited our documentary style interviews we used the jump cut technique to get all the necessary information we wanted to include. This could have also made the audience concentrate on what was being said if they noticed the sudden jump. However this could have confused some viewers. For example, through our questionnaires one comment stated that this effect “worked well but seemed unprofessional.” Another stated that “it worked well but they initially thought something was wrong and that this style was not intended.”

I learnt a lot from the audience feedback that we as a group might not have noticed, being so involved in our piece. The audience all agreed that the scripting of our piece was realistic, relatable and believable, which is the effect we were aiming for. I also learnt that this audience did not see an issue with representation but rather, the majority thought it was well represented. Some comments we got to support this view were “It shows both sides”, “You have an interview with both a father and a mother to be” and “It is represented well”. On the other hand some people did believe we could have improved our representation. A comment we got to support his view would be “Dads often don’t get heard”.

Our use of facts and the definition of “father” were also appreciated as the audience feedback stated that it made the piece more understandable and clearly stated what the film was about. I believe that these facts also helped enlighten our audience on some facts or information they may have not known before which shows the success of our film as it is meant to be an entertaining and informative piece.

The music in our film worked well as it set the tone of the piece without influencing the audiences’ perception or emotions towards the piece. I believe that music helps engage any audience in any film and the fact that we composed the music for the beginning of the piece and the music at the end of the piece was composed by one of our class mates through our vision and input of what we wanted it to sound like, made the music unique and original whilst being different from any other film soundtrack.

Looking back at the audience feedback and all the comments and results we have gathered proves to me that our film is strong and we achieved our goal of exploring a relatable issue to everyone whilst conveying many varied views and opinions on the topic in order to engage an even larger audience. I am very pleased that the audience found our scripting understandable and relatable and the fact that the stylistic theme of documentary and drama was appreciated and not immediately dismissed by our younger audience.

Completed short fim - Baba Yangu

Baba Yangu DV-Vimeo Settings HD from BDC on Vimeo.

Influences

We did gain some influences from some of the films we looked at such as “About a girl” by Brian Percival and “10 Minutes” by Ahmed Imamovic. From “About a girl” we took the idea of the character reciting their monologue into the camera as if the camera is an omniscient character listening to this monologue. We also were influenced to not use any music over our character monologues from "About a girl" as we realised this made the monologues more dramatic, natural and realistic. Our location choices could also be seen as influenced by this film too, as in "About a girl" the locations the character is reciting her monologue are all very issolated, quite places, which is the same for a few of our monologues. Editing wise we noticed how effective the fast jump cuts were in this film too and how fluid transitions would not be as effective. This gave us an idea of the technical aspects that worked well when exploring controversial and serious issues.

The influence we gained from “10 Minutes” was the tracking shots we included in our film. What we liked about the tracking shots we saw in “10 Minutes” were that they were not the typical, smooth tracking shots used in most films but rather shaky and jumpy which made the camera more of a character. These tracking shots also made the film much more interesting as they allowed our shots to be less static and engaged the audience as they had to concentrate a bit more to follow the narrative.

Our other influences were just life and the issues we believe need to be explored in every day life. That is how we came up with the topic of fatherhood. This is as this is a topic that every one can relate to and has an understanding about.

10 Minutes - An influence!

Completed short film reflection!

Reflecting on our final short film I believe it was a success. The merge between drama and documentary worked well to interest and engage the audience. Looking back at our class feedback I noticed that although the audience seemed a little confused with the mix between drama and documentary it interested them in the narrative and made them ask questions.

The locations we used in our short film were chosen as we believed they would be aesthetically pleasing. This is because we chose areas that had bright and colourful graffiti which we believed contrasted with our characters monologues but still made them more interesting.
We had some gritty, urban looking locations as we wanted a simple location that would not distract the audience from the emotion and message of the monologues. However maybe our choice for this location overlooked a few factors. For example one audience believed that this location aimed to represent our characters and target an urban audience which was not our main goal. Our main focus on this area was because it was a simple, accessible location that was quite enough for us to film.
The music we used at the beginning of the piece was simple and not too emotional as we did not want to influence the audience’s views or feelings on the piece but rather for them to come to their own conclusions about it. The music towards the end of the piece was slower and more emotional as it gave a more serious tone to the piece. I believe the music worked well as it kept the audience engaged by making the piece not as static as it could have been. Also with the opening titles, we edited the facts so that they would be cut to the beat adding some interest and rhythm to our piece.

We did have some technical difficulties during filming such as sound through the boom mic. This was as it was a windy day and the boom mic picked up the sound of the wind. This difficulty did affect the quality of our film and we did try and adjust it during editing. We managed to decrease the wind sound slightly but if we had adjusted it any more the monologue would not be loud enough to hear. To improve this we could have filmed on a less windy day or walked away from the wind and not against it, however we did the best we could and made sure that the monologue was still audible.

Our characters were all very successful as they were not over acting or over the top and they gave an accurate representation of the characters we wanted to convey. We wanted actors and actresses that would deliver the monologue effectively and so it would be believable to the audience, which I believe we achieved.

The scripting of our monologues was also very successful as it was realistic, informative and conveyed our message effectively. However as our characters were largely based on the talent we could get to play them the scripts had to be adjusted accordingly. For example with Matt’s character, I had to adjust the script so it would represent a younger character than we had first intended. Also with Ashley’s script a few changes had to be made because initially this character was meant to be male and older than the actress that was available.

There was a slight issue when it came to representation , which we may have failed to recognize during casting and filming. The issue was that there were not enough characters in our film to represent a wide ethnic range. This was because we had very little time to find people of many different ethnic backgrounds who were able and willing to feature in our film. If we had more time and a budget to cast talent we could improve this because the people would be available with the right skills.
All in all I believe this project has taught me a lot about my skills and strengths whilst also enlightening me on my weaknesses and what I need to improve on. I learnt that my script writing skills are one of my strengths as our audience all agreed that this was a strong point of our film because the script was simple but relatable. This project also gave me the opportunity to be more involved in planning such as storyboarding and casting which I enjoy and believe I am always successful in, however I have learnt about the impact representation and stereotypes can have on an audience therefore in future I will give this more thought. Also if we had more time we could have improved our film by casting a few more professional actresses .

Ashley's Final Script

Twenty-year-old Ashley is walking down the road speaking to the camera about her absent father childhood and her fears that her boyfriend will be the same with their unborn child. She is an intelligent young woman and is seen wearing a casual outfit of jeans, shirt and a jumper.

ASHLEY

(TURNING TO LOOK AT THE CAMERA)

You see with my child I don’t want their dad to miss a second of their life, I mean what’s worse, the fact that I know my dad and he hasn’t even taken a minute to get to know me or that I sometimes wish I never knew he existed? At best I should be grateful that I know who he is. How many people in this world never get to know a part of where they come from?

I’ve never been this scared in my life. I’m about to bring a child into this world, but I’ve always vowed I would do it the right way. I grew up without my dad, and don’t get me wrong I didn’t turn out so bad but it was a hard life. I don’t think I could be a single mother, I just don’t think that’s a proper family.

But looking at my situation I have a decision to make. I could get rid of my baby and try and save the “relationship” I have with my boyfriend or stay true to myself and have this baby, but that means I have to give up my beliefs and values of the perfect family.

Matts Final Script

Matt is walking down the road delivering his lines about his relationship with his ex-girlfriend.
Brick lane.

MATT

(HOLDING A SMALL TEDDY BEAR)

I tried everything I could to be a better father. See I know the importance of having a father figure to look up to and I had to learn the hard way. I had to go through my childhood feeling unaccepted and unappreciated by the one man I admired. Now my little boy means everything to me. I never thought I could have this much love for anyone, but he’s my life
She took everything away from me in a flicker of an eye said she didn’t love me anymore and can’t stand me and now I can’t even see my own son.

“…. incapable of providing”

That was what the court ruled, now my situation has changed but Maria finds it fit to turn him against me. All I want is a relationship with him, move away from what I had when I was growing up at least stay true to myself, I always said I never wanted to be a father like the one I had, but the chance I had to prove that was taken away from me.

Editing

During editing our main goal was to clearly define the difference between our acted footage and our interviews. We had initially planned to use transitions between these two extracts such as cross dissolve or edit the footage itself such as convert it to black and white or de saturate it. After trying this method and not being too pleased with the results we then decided to simply brighten our footage and make the interview extracts glitch when necessary. This glitch technique added to the realism and grittiness of our piece whilst also allowing us to cut out the unnecessary information.

Whilst editing we also had to make sure the sound levels were consist ant throughout the piece which was difficult as the footage was shot in different locations. With the outdoor footage we had to adjust the levels when the wind was high and also adjust traffic noises whilst still making sure the characters dialogue could be heard clearly.

Another task during the editing process that we were faced with was to incorporate music to the opening and ending that was suitable to the topic and tone of our piece. We decided to have a drum like African style music at the beginning to relate to the African title “Baba Yangu”. This worked well as it set a neutral tone for the start and we also managed to cut the facts that we have at the start and the title to all appear on the beat which shows our very careful and detailed editing skills.

Filming

During the filming of Baba Yangu we initially planned to film in Brick Lane as this was an urban area that reflected our youthful target audience and gave the piece a colourful grittiness with all the graffiti available. To shoot in this area we were required to get permission from the council which proved difficult at first as permission was needed from college but we eventually sorted this problem out by getting into contact with the finance department at college.

When filming we had difficulty figuring out how to do the tracking shots whilst walking backwards as this was the first time we had ever used this technique. We managed to get smooth enough shots that added to the realistic, gritty tone of our piece and convey the characters dialogue effectively and realistically.

Another problem we encountered was unreliable actors and interviews which caused problems when it came to editing and handing equipment in. This is because we had footage that still needed to be filmed. To solve this problem we had to take out a DV camera to film our missing footage thus having to down convert all our footage and our whole project down to DV.