CCR

 • How do your products represent social groups or issues? 

Our product represents social issues of antisemitism. This film is about World War two. Although we do not specifically highlight the atrocities that were caused by nazi Germany they are still indirectly mentioned. We are bringing awareness to an issue that many think is only dealt with in the past and we have more forward from the problem. However, this is not true at all there are still so many cases of antisemitism to this day. For example, when shooting on location we found a swastika already etched into the tree. We were able to use this to show the time period of the war and the amount of Jewish hate that was prevalent. We are able to show that there is still hate lingering today using an unaltered setting that emphasizes that amount of work that needs to be done to still make progress. The way that our product highlights this and still reflects the story of the past ensuring lessons are learned. Also, we wanted to highlight the importance of psychological stress German soldiers were put under. Everyone is quite familiar with the Milgram experiment which was inspired after World War two. In our film we are highlighting this many German soldiers were programmed and did not have intense hatred for Jews initially. By painting the story of the two soldiers we are able to show audiences their perspective making them human. We are showcasing the causes of disinformation and easy answers that causes blame with other groups. The consequences of these actions are that we are dealt with tyrannical leaders like Hitler who causes these wars where people conform to his laws. The humanization of these German soldiers represents the full picture that many people do not want to deal with. That picture being is that German soldiers were subject to Hitlers rain as well and we know based on Milgram's study there were psychologically forced to do these horrible things and we must understand the circumstances, so we do not repeat these mistakes and ensure Jewish safety.   

 

 
• How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of 
‘branding’? 

The two major elements of my production that worked together to create our branding were the short film tied perfectly to our website for the film. They both represent the genre in unique ways. The film’s entire purpose is to evoke the war scenery through the use of camera angles and diegetic and non-diegetic sounds. We have captured the realistic consequences of war and then connected it to our website which has images of moments in the war. This is where we built most of our inspiration for the film. We had to make sure that we made it look and feel like the images of actual World War two moments. This helps build the brand that we are here to make realistic films. We really became “realistic filmers”. We ensure this by posting our production work where there was close of our costumes and props. The Instagram another with the other two elements promotes our use of actual realistic filming to make it feel like a real war film. All of these ties together solidify our brand that we take pride in realistic props and use of special effects. Also, we are solidified that we take things seriously by the use of our postcard and website. The fact that we have been to a film festival and won an award made our short film come across as more professional. The fact that we take pride in awards and strive for the greatest and respect the seriousness of awards makes us more approachable as a brand. People take us seriously because they know we take our work seriously and take pride in recreating powerful moments in history. These powerful moments are then appreciated ensuring that we maintain an audience who is engaged in our brand and wants to follow it. That is why we use social media and our website to let people know of our brand. 

 
• How do your products engage with the audience? 

Our product purposefully uses a realistic approach. We have life-like costumes and lifelike props. They are used to purposefully make the short film more realistic. When researching our genre, I found that it was incredibly important to ensure the realism in the film. Many war film movie enjoyers are very peculiar about the use of props and costumes. They want to ensure the realism, and we made sure to maintain that in our film. We made sure to ensure that our short film felt like a real warzone we emphasized the setting. It is extremely important to make sure audiences are aware of the scenery to make the product feel like a warzone. The fact that we can bring them into this world through suspenseful shots of zooming into our characters expressions during critical war scenes. Also, we used tracking shots and close-up shots of the shoes in the forest to create an exhilarating atmosphere filled with incomplete total pictures. Giving the audience snip bits. Making them crave more of the entire picture so they are engaged with what is happening next. Plus, we used non-diegetic music and sounds in post-production. This was vital for the realistic sounds of war in this film and tying that to the natural diegetic sounds of the forest made it feel like a real battle zone. We are in the night in the depths of this fort and surrounded by darkness and the bullets of war make audiences aware of the dire situation that the characters are in. This further emphasizes the later death of one of the beloved characters marking the real consequences of war. Ensuring the camera angle is at eye level as the two characters express their dialogue, we are at their level understanding their struggles further selling the product for audiences to engage in because they not only have been built up to the suspense of the movie but understand their characters connecting them to their later tragedies.   

     
• How did your research inform your products and the way they use or 
challenge conventions? 

When researching our genre, we made sure to use a lot of conventions for a war film. It felt extremely necessary to ensure conventions were followed for our film. It is pretty hard to deviate from the conventions. The importance of tracking shots and using diegetic and non-diegetic sounds to make it feel like a real battlefield is what helped make our product a success. The fact that we maintained realism and made sure audiences really felt like they were experiencing a battle during World War II is how we got film festival success. The use of dialogue in this short film deviates from original conventions. Usually in our genre dialogue is short and is dramatic to emphasize the current battle. While in our product our conversations are much longer in order to build on the story we are showing. There are many gaps in a short film and the use of dialogue helps close those gaps creating a more complete picture for audiences. Overall, the careful measures we took to make sure that we utilized the general conventions for this short film helped us greatly. Now that we made sure the setting props and costumes were all realistic and followed many shot sequences of war films, we made a product that is powerful but true to its message.