Smiling Elf Productions

Company Background

Smiling Elf Productions has a powerful meaning to the company. Dedicated to Patrick Munsie, an A* Star student who took a gap year to go across the world before going to university. He began his journey in America but it sadly was cut short when he died in a car crash near Denver. 18 years old with an entire life and an countless memories to not be lived out. Kathryn named the company after her own school nickname "Smiler" and Patrick's nickname "Elf" to create Smiling Elf Productions. This story is to remind people memories are fragile and un-replaceable, but so often over looked.

Smiling Elf Productions, established on 31st January 2014 by founder Kathryn Pogue. Built around an ethos of capturing peoples memories through photography and film. Working with companies and bands such as Darkher, Brigantes and Square Chapel. Here are a couple of examples of work prior to the academic year 2015/16.

Darkher in Subterranea Magazine, Background Photograph by Smiling Elf Productions

Still from "Racket" Music Video, Filmed and Edited by Smiling Elf Productions.

Robin Hood, Christmas Show by Square Chapel. Photograph by Smiling Elf Productions

All of these projects were in Calderdale, West Yorkshire. The company is hoping to expand over the next 12 months to Staffordshire as this will be more accessible for the founder and CEO whilst studying at Staffordshire University.

In August 2016, Smiling Elf Productions were honoured by one of their clients, Darkher who used all the images from shoots over the year in a limited edition hardback 48 page book version of the album available on Big Cartel for £25 http://darkher.bigcartel.com/product/darkher-realms-special-edition-2cd-48-page-book. Over the summer period other projects such as Rushbearing also supported the small company by producing postcards to be sold during the event to tourists.

Cassettes - Pre Production Diary Part 1

Students at Staffordshire University were given the assessment to work on a project on June 3rd in which they would make a "short film consisting of three scenes all containing dialogue, each around one minute long, at least one scene indoors and one scene outdoors. The work should demonstrate proficiency in camera operation and setup, audio recording and mixing quality and lighting. (Use of natural, practical and artificial where appropriate). Keep the film simple concentrate on the technique. Don’t spend time writing content, use something that already exists. Plenty of stage play scripts that you could nab a few minutes worth of dialogue from."

Scripts were considered across a varying range of websites from SimplyScipts to AustralianShortFilms. Students looked across the internet at over 50 scripts such as Serine by Madonna Weaver and May to August by Robert J. Lee.

May to August is a story about a young girl who is curious and interested in cassettes, she stumbles upon a garage sale in which there is a box of cassettes. She buys them and takes them hone to find out that they are actually answering machine cassettes. The cassettes reveal the last words a woman wanted to say to a man who it is revealed is already dead before the tapes are recorded. Students felt that this story fit the criteria of both the brief and what they wanted to achieve.

The short only contained two scenes but students discussed a potential extra scene in which the girl, Daisy takes the cassettes to the grave of the man as a way to close the piece. This was amended and the script underwent 6 drafts.

Below is a copy of the script which was used on set.

Introduction - An Investigation into Digital Cinematography Techniques

To study and explore the inner working systems of the camera, focussing on shutter speed variants, lenses, lighting techniques, colour theory, ISO and composition. Using these skills then 2 - 4 short films/ music videos will be created to show the skills which have been developed through the tests.

Learning Aims and Objectives

1. Investigate the different lighting styles such as Film Noir and how they can affect an audience through tests.
• Recreate famous lighting shots and then shoot using a different style using artificial lighting such as a shot from Blade Runner then show footage to an audience of varying ages asking how the two scenes made them feel. 
• Replicate one test conducted by Shane Hurlbut and discuss the different results and the effect this has on an audience. (Potential focus on soft/ hard light)
2. Compare the technical capabilities of cameras available through Staffordshire University.
• Test each camera in the same environment changing the ISO and comparing their noise capacity
• Test each camera’s depth of field comparing the focal distance of each camera using the same lenses.
• Test each camera’s logs colour balance and how it affects the footage. Primarily comparing C-Log and S-Log.
3. Display Lighting Techniques researched through the creation of a Music Video.

• Create a music video which displays lighting techniques from one of the lighting styles researched in Aim 1.
• Use at least 2 lighting set ups which have been studied from Shane Hurlbut throughout the shoot. 

The Call

Students at Staffordshire University on the BSc Film Production Technology course were tasked to work in groups of 4 to create a 5 minutes short film which is based on a script taken from an Australian script writing website. Below is the final render of the film.

• Student learnt that they need to record better sound as there were issues with the sound throughout this film.
• There were issues with continuity and the editing was very slow paced which led to the film feeling quite boring. To combat this the editor required a larger variety of footage and to edit much more frequent throughout the film. 
• The editing only seems to go with the footage, it doesn't create emotion or a feel for the audience it just imply shows what is happening. If the editor was to do this again then they should add more shots and move to create emotion and create tension rather than just seeing the action. 
• Overall this film tells the narrative well and the edit is very stylish but the pace of the film is quite slow and by tweaking it could have enhance the film by a vast amount.

This film was edited on AVID Media Composer 6.0.

Potential Pathways