Arran “Three Words” Evaluation

Three words is a short film created by Adam Rutherford, Dom Michau, Keira Smalley and I. We all settled on Keira’s idea of a failing romance in the style of social realism. We decided on social realism right from the start as we had recently studied it in media thus the style was fresh in our minds. After discussing the ideas we decided on keira’s because we felt the subject applied to our target audience more than others and the actors could also be our age which made finding a cast alot easier.


Knowing that eighteen to twenty-five year olds are the largest group of film fans (mainly due to disposable income) we decided to put our target audience between sixteen and twenty-five. Relationships are always a popular topic in film and our film would be appropriate for over 12’s so I felt this justified have sixteen plus in the demographic. This was also partly due to the age of our characters being seventeen and eighteen. I wouldn’t say we use any particular stereotypes however a college year relationship may appeal more to a younger age range than older.

Keira’s narrative was perfect for Dom and I as camera men to think up some really interesting shots. The main emphasis was on the three final words, hence the title “three words” the characters contradict each other by one saying “let’s break up” while the other says “I love you”. This made for a perfect shot reverse shot. My biggest challenge was the handheld camera. At times it was difficult to control a steady zoom and also to get the right amount of shake in the camera. I tried to be natural when using the handheld camera to create a naturalistic effect id seen in other social realism films. For example allot of the dialogue and indoor scenes from “This Is England” use a handheld camera. Despite having to take may takes of some of the scenes I feel this effect coupled along with the voiceovers show a definite social realism style and look very natural which is exactly what we all wanted.

Because of the social realism style of our film we tried not to worry about mis en scen too much. We allowed our actors to wear whatever they wanted but had to make sure they changed if the shot was set on a different day. After a bit of a tidy the setting was perfect and didn’t require any props other than what was already there and of course the dominos pizza for my favourite shots. We used very naturalistic lighting apart from the bedroom scenes where we used a torch and lamps to create a night time atmosphere. We also ran into trouble about four o’clock on our first day of filming when the sun started going down. Luckily we were able to counter this by just opening the blinds slightly as time passed. Overall we managed all the filming in less than two days and my group members were great when it came to availability and time management. We were all able to meet without any disturbance to each other’s previous plans and worked really well together.

The shots I feel worked the best are firstly Adams fades of Kate writing in her diary and moving around the room. This was really affective at showing expressing her feelings as well as the passing of hours in a few seconds. I first thought the lighting may have been to dark when we were shooting it however in my opinion it came out perfect when editing.

My second favourite is the Pizza shot that keira and I directed. This is also a time lapse of sorts and just sows the pieces of pizza disappearing followed by a close up of Tom eating grotesquely. This adds s hint of humour to a very serious narrative which I think is needed just to add a light heartedness to the depressing situation. I thought Doms tracking and establishing shot was also great for establishing to the audience this is a couple as well as being well centred and smoothly executed. It fits in perfectly with the voice over and really just helps start the narrative.

Dom and I took a long time deciding on an image to use for the poster. This was mainly because of conflicting ideas on the images and also the availability of our characters for photos. Originally I liked the idea of a poster for “him” and a poster for “her” however the bad quality images and time meant we focused on one poster featuring both characters in the end. My original rough poster was based on the conventions of other social realism posters we had researched. I focused mainly on the “Fish Tank” poster and I think there are obvious similarities.

I would have liked to upload my idea to show the simiralities only the phtoshop file is at college and i have ben ill all week, i will try to upload it at some point.


Before Dom and I even started the poster Keira was brilliant and found us a selection of fonts to use from a website called Dafont.com. We settled on the heart font called “Loverboy” because love is the main theme in our film. We used this font both for the poster and in the film itself in order to create brand identity for the target audience just as major film producers do to build a link and association with that font and the product. I think it is a really fitting Font. We Dom and I agreed to use the hearts only at the start of each word in the title instead of every letter just to keep it simpler and therefore more social realism. The cracks in the font also symbolise both the rustic style of the film and the flawed relationship.

The colour scheme came from the female character in our film “Kate’s” clothes. This works well for the title as we seem to instantly relate more to her and she is after all the more likable character. The font also looks like the love heart sweets, which everyone associates with young love and is why the pastel blue fits with the Title so well. The font is also has the “emboss” and “drop shadow” effects on it so as to stand out against the background.






I stand by our choice of a brick wall background because it is not visually demanding or attractive and also implies the urban setting in which our film and so many other social realism productions take place. For example brick walls are visible in both “This is England” and “Somerstown” posters. I disagree however with the representation of the characters and colour scheme on the poster. The group seemed set on using a “Somertown” like colour scheme. The “Somertown” color scheme works because of the contrast between the natural colours of the curtains and the boys shirt compared to everything else which is desaturated. Our poster however is different, there are no bright colours and bricks are not strawberry red, hence the three negative comments on facebook, all of them on the bricks. I also disagree with the portrayal of the character “Tom” in black and white. When asking people what they thought people agreed with me and presumes Tom was dead because Kate’s character was still in colour. On a good note though the photo Dom took was really good and shows the characters relationship perfectly through there facial expression.


A problem we encountered at the end of the poster was that there just wasn’t enough space for the award logos or comments. We struggled to find a place for them without obstructing the main image. Other facebook comments have also pointed out that the red can be overwhelming in places and that tagline should be more prominent. Overall I feel the poster would have been far more successful had we stuck to one of the earlier ideas, especially seeing as I wasn’t convinced by this one from the word go. It does however succeed in some aspects and was definitely a learning experience.

Technology has been incredibly important through all stages of our media production. I found http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/ and  http://www.youtube.com/ incredibly useful during my research process. Many shorts were available for free and easy viewing, YouTube also enabled us to show our short film. Unfortunately despite having over a hundred and being "bangin" we havnt recieved any usefull feedback.

Facebook was surprisingly invaluable to all aspects of our product. We used a group to create interest and this helped us decide on the title “Three words” as well as providing feedback on our story, poster and final product. as u can see some feedback was more usefull than others.

My favourite piece of technology used was the HD camera. Last year we used a standard camera and the difference was very noticeable. I found it easy to recall skills I had learned last year such as setting white balance and contrast. This became very useful, especially as it got dark early and we had to adjust the settings when filming in the evening. I am impressed at the quality we managed to get during the scene where Kate’s writing in her diary.

We edited our film with the apple program "Final Cut Pro". I had also used this for the animatic, plus remembered some of how to use it from last year. It’s a really important tool allowing us to cut scenes, place the footage together and choose the different types of cuts. It also lets you edit the colour contrast and saturation slightly which we found useful for the darker scenes.

Being compatible with Garage Band was important as we used it for all our sound. I am pretty confident with my knowledge of Garage Band, however Adam was assigned to the role of sound editor. The animatic was useful though, on deciding on some of the sounds in the final product. We used a mixture of our own recordings and already existing “loops” on Garage Band. Adam decided on an original soundtrack, written by Carl Williams for an original soundtrack. We did use some of the loops I had used in the animatic though, for example the birds singing in the park scene. Our own sounds and voiceover were all recorded onto a tape recorder then transferred and placed onto garage band. Without the clipping and editing abilities of garage band we would never have got the voiceover right, and it did take a while to perfect.


Overall I feel I have consolidated on skills I learnt last year and improved in many other ways. This year’s production is better and I had a clear idea of what we were doing from the start. This was mainly due to my group being great time keepers and all available when we needed to discuss or improve something. Above all our film was of a much higher standard this year than the previous and i think we all executed our roles in the group extremely well.