The Filmmaking Journey of Tom Swales

1. Understanding the characteristics and context of Christmas films Researching the Hallmark Channel When we were given our brief, I needed to accumulate research about Christmas films and how they have been created in the past and how they have changed. I wanted to do further research in the hallmark channel and look at their style of programming, the typical narrative tropes of the genre and investigate their successes and failures. During my research I watched many hallmark films on the hallmark channel, in hallmark Christmas films, the world is often idealized and only interested in Christmas, which is nothing like reality. At its core it is aspirational and the message that I perceived from the hallmark channel in general is that each movie often tries to echo the joy and innocence we felt as children during the festive season. The Hallmark channel often follows the same narrative formula throughout their many films. There is usually a woman facing relatable stresses, includin...

 APTA launch - Promo for college Tuesday 3rd November 2020 We arranged a meeting with head of marketing about the video that she wanted. We met her in a small cafe in the college (socially distanced). We discussed what video she wanted and wrote down notes about what video she wanted and how she wanted it filming and editing. She wanted a 1 minute promo video promoting the creative subjects. We also discussed the pricing and we said for 1 video it is going to cost around £100. We further discussed the time schedule for when she wanted the video finished by the end of November. After the meeting we discussed what the client wanted with the rest of our team and discussed how we would film it and the teams that would be filming on each day. Monday 9th November 2020

Pre-Production Wednesday 16th September 2020  Today we were assigned our project for the Horror Short Film. We went through a presentation about what makes a good horror. We went through the music and how the build up of sound keeps the tension and often a sound makes a jump scare. Furthermore we went through. We learnt that the hero for in horror films is usually an average person but are apart of the typical social group. Furthermore, many horror's have a universal moment, an event that many of us will have experienced. Then an incident that kicks of the story and creates drama at the beginning. Other important things in horror is mise-en-scene, this includes props, costumes, SFX and makeup.  I began to write down ideas for our horror film, I was very intrigued and interested in a physiological horror. I brainstormed and came up with the idea of homeless people going missing and are used for organ donors. I wanted this short film to be a microcosm for how society treat homel...