Who would fund my video?

As this would be a very independent production and not something that would be considered as commercial, I would like to think that someone like MTV or Scuzz music channel would fund and air my 'Rockumentary'.
As MTV has shown films from the likes of Beavis and Butthead who also did rock and metal music videos/mini documentaries I could imagine my Documentary being on a similar wavelength and given a slot on there or a metal music channel such as Kerrang or Scuzz.

Primary and Secondary research.

For my presentation on my film that I will produce I have had to research a lot to find what will be the main content of my film.

I have created a questionnaire that I have proposed that will enable me to gain information and statistics to use in my film.
The questions are as follows:

• What is the question you would like answered most in this ‘Rockumentary’?
• What elements of Rock culture do you think are the most important? Clothing, the music, memorabilia, artwork, live venues/festivals, merchandise or the culture in general? And why?
• Who do you think is the biggest rock icon ever? (Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Ozzy Osbourne, Jim Morrison etc.)

• What do you think helps keep rock culture alive today? (open question)
• What subgenre of rock/metal do you think is most popular/scene at the moment? (open question)


My secondary research has come from books, DVD's, CD's and videos on youtube that have given me inspiration for the over
all content of the film.

'Headbangers journey', quotes from various music videos such as Silent Civillian and Steel Panther to give instant impact on the video.

Visual Style of my Rockumentary.

The visual style of my documentary is very important in the way that people interpret it. The colours used throughout the credits, titles and any artwork will definitely be black white and red as these are the main colours associated with Rock. I have created a mock-up of the style of the logo which is shown above. Names of people who will be interviewed will also come up on screen in this style.

I am hoping to produce a small animated logo as well which will help create the tone and mood of the film.

Questions I want to answer in the rockumentary.

There will be a main question within my documentary that I will focus on however will definitely answer sub-questions that are directly related to the main question.

The main question I will be answering will be "WHAT ELEMENTS DEPICT THE MAIN STEREOTYPES OF ROCK CULTURE"

Other questions that will be answered throughout which are relative will be decided via my primary research by a questionnaire that will help me see which questions would most like to be answered by people who participate in 'rock culture'.

The answers that people give will help me see what people in todays society who are interested in this subject would like to know and find out. I am doing this documentary for research purposes and to try and establish a wider understanding of the lifestyle I lead.

My final idea for my short film.

I have finalised my idea for my short film and am definitely going to stick with the idea of producing a 'Rockumentary'.

I have made a proposal which depicts the content, structure and visual style of my Rockumentary in the format of a powerpoint presentation.
I will copy and paste the written content as follows:

For my short film idea I am proposing the production of a ‘Rockumentary’. A ‘Rockumentary’ is a documentary but of the Rock genre, culture, and livelihood. I am hoping within this 3-5 minute documentary to find the answers to a specific question I will propose throughout the film. I am hoping to use a number of filming styles, I want to include standard filming which would be complementary of typical documentary style films however want it be more visually interesting by having short montages of shots associated with the subject with a voiceover and music playing along with it. I want to input stylish credits and titles for each part of it, for instance interviews.

Structure of my ‘Rockumentary’:
Intro: Discuss who I am and what my aim throughout this documentary is. Propose a question and how I will try to answer it. (See question ideas below).

Shots I will possibly include: Interviews with relevant persons. Shots of venues, clubs, pubs, shops to make a montage. Things associated with alternative rock culture and alternative lifestyle. Live bands. Studios. Camden Town.
Credits: Make credits to go with each section that are relevant to ‘Rock’. Distorted and interesting. Possibly made in either After Effects or Motion 4 or Livetype.
Elements to cover throughout the documentary: Artwork, books, CD’s, DVD’s, memorabilia, merchandise, venues for hosting live music.
Possible interviews: Fall Mckenzie- Artist for bands. Dante Bonutto- Band manager, Mina- classic rocker, My Grandad- Drummer.
Other elements to use: Royalty free footage of festivals? Shots of typical Rock n Roll behaviour. Already use interviews I have conducted to be voiceovers etc.

Inspiration of 'Heavy Metal- A headbangers journey'.

Inspiration week- Proposal Ideas.

As aforementioned I have proposed two ideas that were inspired by secrets on a postcard.

However one completely different idea that I gained from a film that was very inspirational to me was the idea of a 'Rockumentary'. I am very interested in Rock culture, rock iconography and in general the whole subject, as this is the industry I want to pursue.

The film in which I watched was 'Heavy Metal- A Headbangers Journey'. It was an american documentary formed by a guy who- like me, is very interested on the whole culture of rock and metal and where it started, and how its progressed into todays society.

I was thinking I could do a mini UK version that researches into all different aspects of Rock and metal alternative culture. Clothing, venues, artists, pubs, artwork etc would all be aspects included in my 'Rockumentary' and I would interview people throughout who are significant to it. I think this would benefit me in many ways and is something I would have never ocnsidered doing until now.

I was quite adament on doing a dark gothic avant-garde film/music video and now I have gained inspiration from another media that has made me really want to do this subject and distribute it virally to inform and entertain people about the way I and the majority of my friends live and why we live that way.

Inspiration week task 2- Secret postcards.

Within this lesson we had to gain inspiration from postcards in which had other peoples secrets written on them. The secrets had to be turned into a narrative which could possibly be an idea for my short film.

The first secret I got was: "I thought I was in love with him"

This is the idea I formed from this secret:

He stood there in the wedding dress and dramatic make-up, staring at himself in the mirror. He went to drastic lengths to try and turn his unrequited love into mutual feelings. No matter how hard he tried to stand out and conform to what he thought his love wanted, it never seemed to suffice.
Trying to love a straight man and make him see the beauty both on the outside and inside of a male body was excrutiatingly painful. So one day he wiped the make-up off and threw the dress away. He thought he was in love but in fact it was just a fantasy.

The second secret I got was: "All my life people have told me I'm not special....I'm very easy to replace. After 43 years it has finally sunk in. I finally get it"

The ideas I brainstormed from this secret are as follows:
The woman makes a suicide tape and forms ragdoll that resembles her in every way- to resemble that she is easy to replace, in the form of a doll. The doll is placed next to the dead womans body after she commits suicide and has been gagged, and taped up to stop her blood flowing. A needle was beside her. She has seemingly overdosed and made a replacement to take over her life, to prove she unerstood she was easy to replace- the doll.


Both of these ideas above formed very avant-garde dark ideas in my mind for a short film. However the formation of the films were quite difficult in my mind to see myself creating effectively.

Inspiration week task 1- Fold over story.

To give myself and the class inspiration about stories that could possibly be used and storylines that will contribute to our short films, we wrote a fold over story and passed it around the class to form a narrative that would be an idea for a short film.

Mine came out as follows:

A man called pedro was a manicurist, a women is called Candy and she is a drag queen. It was a cold night, 10pm on the dot. Ding dong ''Hi love it;s me!'' ''who?''. She woke up and said ''OMG I gave birth to a kitten in my dream...''. The man picks his nose and snot flies everywhere. He then sneezes all over the females chest and exclaims ''phwoar look at the snot on them!''. The next month a shocking discovery was made; they were actually brother and sister. What were they going to tell the children?

I translated this story into one which resembles the Torodov theory with equilibrium, disequilibrium and restoration.

When two opposite characters meet at night, sharing no similarities in personalities, a new era has begun. With the male a manicurist, the female a drag queen, they both had strange dreams. Candy was disturbed during the night by being awoken by a nightmare she had been given birth to a kitten. The next day Candy had even more bad luck because Pedro her partner sneezed all over her chest and snot flew everywhere. They made babies and everything was fine again, but then found out they were brother and sister. This disturbed the family so they broke up and started their lives again.

Short film- Inspiration week. What is short film?

Within this lesson we listed as many possibilities as to what a short film could be. Here is my list:

• A number of incidents/occurences that happen that collaborate to make a narrative.
• Something with a message that influences the content.
• Structure- beginning, middle, end.
• Myths, hearsay, elaborated as time goes on through different generations.
• Something from the imagination.
• Grandparents- tradition-religion-generations.
• Books, tales, myths;greek, biblical, legends, fables, folktales, fairytales, tribal stories.
• Once upon a time, the end.
• Setting, plot characters.
• Structure; equilibrium, disequilibrium, restoration. Plot.
• Theme/genre.
• Series of events.
• Made to educate, entertain, inform. Popular culture.
• Cave paintings, Eqyptians, illustrations, hyroglyphics.
• Poetry, all differnet types of media.
• How one follows another. 'Kuleshov effect'
• Stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.
• Stories are culturally specific and give us comfort in life.
  

Film Festvals

Film Festivals are an innovative and creative way of showcasing short films. From Avant Garde films to music videos, the creativity of aspiring filmmakers is effectively exhibited via these events, as the films are broadcasted to thousand of people.

An example of where film festivals take place are at Glastonbury, Benecassim, Nokia Lab, and this is the Future Shorts film festival. Future Shorts film festival links up with the music industry to incorporate film and music together.

Production and distribution of films.

Film production is very expensive especially for short films when there isnt a mainstream market for them. Very little companies help fund the production of films so unless one has the facilities and money to do so, then it is hard to be funded. However by having alot of online outlets in todays society, the distribution of films and how they can be marketed is increasing a lot.

By using Youtube, Vimeo, iTunes and personal websites to sell and distribute films digitally, it saves people time from having to go out and physically buy the hard copy of a film. Everyone nowadays is using New Media and aren't as fussed as having hard copies of anything any more as everything is portable by things such as ipods and phones with a large capacity of memory.

Analysis of Future Shorts- Kurt Cobain Obsessive- Rocco Paris

http://www.youtube.com/futureshorts#p/c/627E973944334AD5/104/2XCyk6sXkJg

This is a video entitled Kurt Cobain Obsessive- featuring Rocco Paris. It is a very avant garde experimental film that depicts a young man who has a slight obsession with the rock icon Kurt Cobain. It reflects on his life and how he lives it accordingly to try and mimic Kurt Cobains. Throughout the film we see him buying the same guitar as Kurt, painting portraits of him copied from originals for his A level art class, and even shopping to drink the same beer as him.

The film has no consistency in style and has scenes in both black and white and in colour. The critics of this short film have described it as 'nouvelle vague' which is new wave. The dialogue at the beginning is very serious and describes the protagonists love for Kurt Cobain. The woman within the film even looks like Courtney Love, who was Kurts girlfriend.

Although the overall concept of the film is about the man loving Kurt Cobain and having an obsession with him, the film seemingly has no direction and the mise-en-scene is very experimental in the way that none of the setting or objects in each scene have any relation to eachother.

The sound throughout the short film changes from a monologue ins ome parts to music in others. The music has nothing to do with Kurt Cobain however is slightly drum n bass/ techno style. The music is mainly where teh shots are reflecting on his lifestyle and is seeminlgy non diegetic however when he turns his cassette player off, the music turns off too.
Different sounds are emphasised throughout the film and they aren't necessarily the important ones that we would consider to be emphasised.
Dramatic scenes like for instance where there is hardly anything in the shot apart from the character, guitar, amp and alcohol gives it alot of effect.

Analysis of films from Future Shorts- Music Video: The Black Ryder- Sweet Come Down

http://www.youtube.com/futureshorts#p/c/AA848728072276E2/2/MjyTLugBImc

The above link is the Link for the Short Music film- Sweet COme Down by The Black Ryder.
The video overall is approximately 2 and a half minutes. The music that is composed is very representative of Texas like culture using harmonicas and a guitar and a steady consistent beat. The vocals are very mellow and echoey, sometimes amale and sometimes a female voice. Both are very soft and mellow. The videowork is very complimentary of the song.

Mise-en-scene/ camerawork:
Throughout the video the scene is set in a desert-like place in seeminlgy an old western town. Bodies that are dead are shown with blood everywhere as the protagonist walks along. The film is taking on one long tracking shot like a timeline is being revealed of maybe what happened the night before? I believe there is alot of allegory in that only the persons feet are shown until the end, creating a sense of anonmity and not revealing much, only what this person has seemingly committed? Throughout the film we are led to believe this is a man who has killed the people lying on the ground and against a truck, however at the end a figure is revealed that can only be that of a womans. Her face is revealed int he last shot and then it fades out.

Within the shots the colour is very washed out and sepia toned, however colours of red are emphasised when blood is shown. The main persona is wearing black, which is the opposite of white; which means purity. So therefore the dark colours can connote bad things within the video.

The video is typically American and so is the music,as aforementioned the music represents the cultural aspects of the video which are represented quite obviously throughout.
With regards to the music again there are no dynamic shifts in the music, nor the camerawork. The musics tempo is level as is the camerawork. One could propose that this music video is a narrative of the lyrics in the song.

List of other innovative platforms that could be used to screen short films.

Other ways of exhibiting and distributing short films can be as follows:
Social networking- Facebook, Myspace etc.
iTunes- selling music videos/ other short films relating to music via this industry.
Screenings on building eg Leicester Square to promote short film events.
Uni pages- Universities may have websites created by students for students that shows their creativity and interest for short film making.

Exhibition of Short films- Future Shorts

www.Futureshorts.com is the website for Future shorts; one of the biggest short film labels that uses innovative ways to promote short films and use as many platforms as possible to spread the word and exhibition of short films.

"Since 2003, Future Shorts has created a rapidly expanding network that allows filmmakers the opportunity to have their work seen on the largest theatrical platform worldwide. "http://www.futureshorts.com/htmlViewer.php?id=12

Future Shorts is also a short film festival that has participated in many music festivals such as Glastonbury, Benecassim in spain, and Nokia lab in Russia. These are a few of the platforms in which the company has decided to exhibit and distribute short film. Other alternative ways in which they show short film are unconventional ways and not just at cinema screenings and film festivals. The company use music, and theatrical performances and other outlets to do witht he entertainment industry to show these films in an abstract and interesting way. By relating film and collaborating film with other medias, it shows that the company are using every outlet possible to promote the creation of short films and their filmmakers.

Also Future Shorts work globally with a number of companies to promote their name. Companies that are worked with are people such as Buena Vista, Shots and also work together with the 'Faster Films Uk' film competition. Future Shorts recommend directors of films they show to specific events, enabling them to act as a consultant with regards to the Film business in general, and not just for Future Shorts.

Coffee Short films. Research task.

Coffee Shorts are an independent company that deals with the exhibition, distribution, and production of films. Aspiring filmmakers showcase their work on the site that exhibits the work over many online andviral portals that the company has, therefore allowing the work to be marketed on a wide basis, instigating interest from industry specialists.

On the site all the links to different directors are given and the films in which they have made. The films are all categorised in things such as experimental, music videos, dramas, narratives, and animations. These categories make it easy to define which films are which and to choose which ones to view.

Coffee Shorts have many online/viral protals in which the work is exhibited on such as social netowrking sites.The site specifies that only film festival quality work will be shown on this site and although anything can be submitted, only the best will be displayed and promoted through various different means.

The site www.coffeeshorts.co.uk is overall a professional site with a layout that is easily navigated throughout and of good quality to the viewer. the logo is professional and relative to the name 'Coffee' and is simple but effective. (See site).