Final Film

Little White Lies Review

Final copy of the review

This is the final copy of the review, all that's left to do is to insert this text into the Little White Lies template that we created earlier.


Whilst Michael Bay is off planning his new film, Pain and Gain with his smallest budget yet, amateur directors Dani Hubbard and Charlie Smith are revelling in the success of their first short film. Capturing the suspense of a thriller in what appears to be a normal day, as it focuses on the routine of a teen girl.

Hubbard and Smith’s character driven piece targets the teen audience with a sense of familiarity.  As what starts out as a normal day for the character turns out far different from what she expected. With a dark sinister twist that as you may have guessed, you have to watch it to make sense of it. Little White Lies as an organisation do not take too kindly to spoilers, so we strongly recommend that you go and see this film for yourself if you want to experience the big ‘Surprise.’

The most crucial aspect of the character’s day is when we first meet the other character; a key moment in the film that takes the audience from a day like any other to the disruption. The use of enigma to hide the identity of the mystery character works well and really helps build tension; point for the directors there. Another key moment, and probably the most important was executed poorly by the main actor, she lacks expression, making it hard for the audience to empathise with the character emotion. Due to the fact that we never actually see the surprise on screen, her facial expression at this moment was crucial in the making of the film.

Although the film appears to have been a reasonable success so far, however it is clear throughout that the actor has minimal acting experience and this is evident in a couple of shots. She shows no real emotion throughout the film, and your right it isn’t really necessary when half the film is of her walking down the street. Yet there is one key moment when the use of facial expression needs to be executed perfectly to make sure the ending is not anti-climactic. Perhaps a bold strategy that wasn’t performed in the right way, may not have worked to their advantage this time: but better luck next time.

So we go from the casual walking down the street, and driving around for the majority of the film to the quick surprise at the end which is over far too quickly; it is a shame that most of the film focuses too much on the build-up. Seeing as the film title is called ‘Surprise,’ you would expect more focus on that aspect of the film, however although not overly successful, it shows a sophisticated understanding of film and makes for a good first outing for these directors.

Little White Lies research - Dani

Little White Lies is an independent film magazine, published by The Church Of London, it is released bi-monthly.

Each edition of the magazine revovles around a main theme, involving the new release film shown on the front cover. It consists of articles which throughout the magazine follow on with this theme; the typography and page detail also reflects the theme.

The magazine is primarily artwork based as you can see from the graphic design of the front covers. Each frontcover is handrawn and often the use of bold colour, can cause them to look almost like pop art.

Unlike other magazines there are very few advertisments featuring in the copy, therefore this is not their main revenue stream like most magazines. Instead they rely on the cover price and subscriptions to the magazine for profit.



The main target audience for the magazine is adult young males, around the age of thirty, however this demographic is shifting as they develop younger readers that study media and film. This is shown through the restricted code in language used which relies on an assumed knowledge of the reader.

This video shows the intricate stages and process that each magazine edition goes through before publication. Most of the artwork is handdrawn and edited in keeping with the style of the magazine. It shows the journey from pen to paper and the distribution as it ends up at your door.

The Making Of...




































This is the review style of Little White Lies which is what we will be replicating for our own review. I have annotated this image with the aspects of the review that we are to use in our review.

review image

3 Titanic. Charlie

2 Avatar. Charlie

Film Poster Analysis - Dani

Film Poster Analysis - Dani

Review first draft

This is the first draft for our film review, however there are some main points to change for the next draft. The tone of the review is very much negative which we need to change and be able to talk about our own film in a more positive light. The tone of the review also becomes too chatty in places where we tried too hard for it to be like that of a Little White Lies review. These are just a few main points which we will take into consideration when re-drafting the review.


Whilst Michael Bay is off planning his new film, Pain and Gain with his smallest budget yet, amateur directors Dani Hubbard and Charlie Smith are revelling in the success of their first short film. Capturing the suspense of a thriller in what appears to be a casual day like any other, as it focuses on the morning routine of a teen girl, with a sinister twist which turns out to be not so sinister at all; in fact it’s actually pretty anti-climactic if you ask me.

Hubbard and Smith’s piece is about the character becoming lost in a river of confusion, as what started out to be normal day for the character turned out far different from what she expected. With a dark sinister twist that might not seem clear at first; as you may have guessed, you do have to watch it to make any sense of it. Little White Lies as an organisation (as you loyal readers will know) do NOT take kindly to spoilers, so we strongly recommend that you go and see this film for yourself if you want to find out the big ‘SURPRISE.’

There are two key moments in the film, firstly when we went from equilibrium to disruption, the main character was walking to her car when BOOM she was abducted by an anonymous character, the use of enigma to hide his identity works well and really helps build tension, point for the directors there. However his lack of identity might actually go the other way and make the film more confusing for the audience to understand! Perhaps a bold strategy that wasn’t executed in the right way, may not have worked to their advantage this time: better luck next time guys. The other key moment which should have made the whole film was executed poorly by the main actor, she lacks any expression making it hard for the audience to belive there is any surprise and due to the fact that we never actually see the surprise on screen, her face at this moment should have been crucial to the making of the film.

Although the film appears to have been a bit of a success story so far with the, new to the biz directors, it is clear throughout that so is the actor, she shows no acting experience in her amateur style. She shows no real emotion throughout the film, and your right it isn’t really necessary when half the film is of her walking down the street; which is supposed to be emotionless to communicate her normal everyday meaningless tasks. Yet there is one key moment  when the use of facial expression needs to be executed perfectly to make sure the ending is not anti-climactic, which it turns out to be seeing as she cannot seem to act surprise, anyone would think this girl had never been surprised in all her nineteen years.

We go from this casual walking down the street, and driving around for the majority of the film to the quick surprise at the end which is over far too quickly for my liking. Seeing as the film title is called ‘Surprise,’ you would expect more focus on that point in the film, however all big time directors had to start small and they are well on their way to a possible success in the business; just maybe after a bit more practice.

Poster Discussion

After doing a poster each, we talked about the advantages and disadvantages of both posters and decided on a final product, combining elements of both.

Final film poster

Film Poster explanation...

we have a video that will be posted shortly explaining the reasons why we have changed our mind about the film poster and made a compromise between both of our efforts. as explained in the video above we used the layout of my original film poster, and the main image from dani's film poster. we feet this works better as she is looking directly at the camera which just makes more sense as films posters have certain codes and conventions, and direct address more often then not is important to include.

Film Poster - Dani

When creating the film poster I used photoshop so it was possible to achieve certain effects on the images and text.


I used a still image from the film location to create a sense of continuity between the film and the poster and did the same with the costume of the character image. Instead of just plonking the image on top of the location, I thought it better to somehow merge them together so I went through the effects until I achieved the right one.

The use of the black and white in both images made it possible to create effect with the use of colour in the titling on the poster. I went through quite a few colours when deciding which to use and in the end decided that a shade of green would work best as it compliments the countryside location where the majority of the filming took place.



The contrast on the main character image, allows it to stand out from the background location image which was the effect I wanted to achieve. I also slightly stretched the image in an attempt to replicate the famous 'scream' painting, however it didn't work as well in the poster, so the stretch is only slight.


All I had left to do was add the final touches of the poster, the billing block and the review stars. I chose to use 'Little White Lies' and 'Empire' as the reviewers, as this was the most realistic choice when it came down to who would watch our short film. After playing around with the opacity of images and text in relation to each other, I have come to my final product.

Film Poster Analysis (Charlie)

Film Poster Analysis - Dani

Bridesmaids

Bridesmaids film trailer