Today in lesson i spoke with Miss about possible ideas for titles, originally we wanted to had an idea of having bullet time titles, whereby a scene freezes and the titles come in, however after viewing our clip and by evaulating the preferred reading of the clip and suspense built we came to the conclusion that this wouldn't be effective for our genre
Also we spoke about how essential it is to make sure that the titles are in a continous sequence and not just spontaneous
Outcomes
We have now decided that we will have titles in specific dark scenes whereby the titles will be interactive
Also for our title name we are going to use our last frame which is a shot of the girl lying down on the ground panning from right to left, we are going to lengthen the shot and incorporate our title name in the clip
Since recieving the Greenlightand audience feedback we have decided to adjust some ideas that we had whislt keeping others the same:
We are still keeping our idea of characters the same with the protagonist being played by an innocent looking girl and the antagonist being played my a male
We have decided that for our film opening having shots of the antagonist's POV would be effective as long as we can show it in a clear way, we will achieve this by having the camera move about as if it were a person as opposed tohaving a still tripod shot
Max and Henry, well done on some very good posts. There are still a number of tasks missing on this blog though. These must be done by this evening otherwise you will lose marks from your planning grade as i will be doing the grades tonight. One of you needs to go through the blog today with the list and ensure everything is up to date, post images and clips as evidence for posts, comment on each other blog posts and highlight key media terms throughout.
In today's lesson we viewed and commented on each others final production rough cuts so far. Although short Henry and i received some good positive feedback from our peers with very little negative feedback which was mostly based on our order of shots and the stability of some of out shots. Also other students thought that our soundtrack corresponded with our footage very well, although we just used the soundtrack as a tester
Our positive feedback included our shot of the girl laying on the floor with the killers feet walking into and out of the frame whilst picking up the camera as our fellow peers felt that this shot was captured well and was effective
Other students also like the use of the fish eye lense which was used to follow the killer in third person whilst walking to the shed as it made a relatively un-interesting shot more attractive and eye catching for the viewer.
Constructive feedback that we recieved including was that we needed to order some of our clips more carefully so that they would make more sense, particularly the shot with the antagonists feet where the feet should be at the end as opposed to at the end of the clip
The class liked the reversefast forward montage that we had at the end of the clip
Today we put a soundtrack into our film opening clip, we found the track on 'freesound.org' and simply downloaded it onto a usb, from this we were able to open the soundtrack and save it onto premiere elements together with our clip
We were able to then open the soundtrack file and simply drag it down onto the bar where you can see the soundtrack heading
The next step in our editing process will be to cut the soundtrack in various parts to make the visuals
Having finished our final shoot at Max's house today we were able to capture the various types of shots that we wanted to shoot, this included the extreme close ups of the antagonists belongings in his box which we were most worried about shooting as we wanted to show them in a way which makes them appear suspicious and link them to the final scene of the girl on the floor.
However due to unpredictable weather conditions with rain coming and going and only a limited period of time we had to be patient to allow for continuity in our shots which meant filming when light levels matched our previously filmed footage to make sure that it would not look out of place when edited together with the other footage.
Whilst filming our establishing shot of the antagonist exiting the car we were struggling with filming a smooth pan of the antagonist walking to the boot of the car, however we found a slate in the garage and a scooter, this enabled us to create our own track thus allowing us to shoot the smooth pan that we wanted.
During our final shoot we changed the lens of the camera to a 'Samyang fisheye' lens which we liked, it gave objects surrounding us whilst filming an obscure look which looked which made over the shoulder and other shots that followed people more interesting for the viewer to watch.
-We made a decision whilst filming that we would like to include a tracking shot within our production but as the school recourse's only has one track available to use we were unable to use it as other groups had booked it out before us,due to this we decided to experiment using a very simple idea which included a kitchen work top and a scooter which eventually worked very smoothly due to the wheels on the scooter and the smooth worktop producing no bumps.
Institutional context- Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 1 & 2
Has a high profile star been used in this film and why is it important?
Daniel radcliffe has been used in the film opening
This is important as Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) is the main character in the clip and this is the last film in the sequel and so the audience will be especially interested to see him in action.
Which studio produced this film?
Warner Bros. Pictures
Is it an Industrial or Independent film production?
Industrial film production
What strategies were used to market this film?
Two minute trailer for the film was released on 22nd september 2010
ABC Family broadcasted interviews and additional scenes from both parts 1 & 2 during 'Harry Potter' weekend which began on 8 July 2010
On 29th September 2010, three character posters for Part 1 of Harry, Ron, Hermione were released via Yahoo! Movies
On 15th October 2010 tickets began selling on Fandango for the US release of Part 1 and on the 19th October, a 50-second clip featuring never before seen footage was aired at the 2010 Scream Awards
On the 3rd November 2010, the Los Angeles Times released an extended clip of Harry leaving the Burrow to find the Horcruxes titled "No One Else Is Going to Die For Me"
Is the institutional context evident in the production values of the opening?
Media Audiences- (Triangle,2009, Smith)
Who is the target audience?
The target audience for Triangle is a 15-24, this is due to the film being a pyschological horror and having some elements of blood and gore although this doesn't seem apparent in the opening title sequence.
What are the probable and possible audience readings of text?
The possible audience readings of the opening scene are that its not a stereotypical horror, the opening scene consists of bright lighting and doesnt really give the text a stereotypical look of a horror. However the music that plays and how the titles appear distorted connote the genre of the film and informs the audience that the film is a horror genre
How do you, as a British teenager, read and evaluate the text? to what extent is your reading and evaluation influenced by your age, gender and background?
The way I read the text is that it doesn't have the look of a typical horror film, infact when going to watch the film in the theatre i didn't realise that it was a horror until the middle of the film
I have watched many other horror films and usually they all have a similar look to them in terms of isolation and greyed colours, however with Triangle this is the opposite with many characters and people in the scene where they are boarding the boat.
Has a high profile star been used in this film and why is this important?-The actor Danie Craig has been used in previous James Bond films as well as in other large productions such as the girl with the dragon tatto which attracts audiences from other genres to this production as some people may want to watch the film purley because he is the main character.
Which studio produced this film?-Eon Productions
Is it industrial or and independent film production?-Industrial film production
What strategies were used to market the film?
Strategies used: -The main theme tune that runs throughout the film and the trailer is performed by the very famous singer Adele which opens up the potential audience to all of the people that support her work as a singer. -There was also a large Heineken advert campaign that stared Daniel Craig and promoted the film the film Skyfall. -The film was also promoted at the 2012 Olympics with a short 30 second preview being shown to draw in huge potential audience numbers and create buzz. -A symbolic partnership was also founded between coca-cola and skyfall.
Is the institutional context evident in the production values of the opening?
Media Audiences-Dawn of the dead
Who is the target audience?
-The film was released in the UK with a guided rating by the BBFC of 16 both fort he theatrical and uncut version but the directors cut of the production was rated at an 18 because the extras that were featured we more graphic that the footage used in the final production.Due to the removal of these scenes it shows that the target audience is obviously the middle aged teenager which fits in with the trend that most horror productions target audiences are males that are between the age of 16-35.
What are the probable and possible audience readings of the text?
- I feel that the audience agrees with the preferred reading. My reasons for this is that the audience agrees with the codes of the production which make this production effective and conform with the usual conventions of a horror film.
-An example of this is the titles used, the titles are the same colour as blood and with the footage in the background of zombies covered in blood and prosthetics to create a gore look they emphasise the genre of the production.
How do you, as a British teenager,read and evaluate the text?To what extent is your evaluation influenced by your age,gender and background?
-I felt that the text does conform with the different aspects of the horror genre that you would expect to see in a production of this type so i would read it like any other typical horror film of this type.
-From watching the opening scene i can gather enough information to suggest that this production is not suitable for children who are young due to the graphic content that is shown and the general narrative. I also feel that the male audience members like me watch productions like this due to the thrill and excitement that they experience rather than the actual plot of the production.
The girl with the dragon tattoo:Media Language
How does mise en scene convey meaning in this sequence? -The characters and objects filmed are covered in a black paint or a dark
liquid, this conveys a sense of mystery among the characters as we cannot see their faces properly. The Meaning of this is to reflect the film and its secrecy
as the opening title doesn't give any information away about the film.
How does camera shot size, movement and angle convey meaning? -The opening scene uses two different camera
shot sizes, movement and angle convey the meaning of the film to the audience. We see a large number of
close ups again creating drama in the title sequence.
Furthermore all camera shots are moving rather than static which means the audience has a limited
time to view the on screen content so further creates
mystery.
How does sound
anchor the images?-The song used in the opening
sequence of 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo'. The immigrant song by led zeplin
is a loud powerful soundtrack that builds the tension and i widely recognised by a large number of people..
What do we learn about the
characters through dialogue and non-verbal language? -There is
no dialogue featured in the opening sequence of this film which has been done on purpose
too create a sense of mystery and build
suspense.
What other visual
techniques does the director use and why?-The director uses
other visual techniques that include shots like panning and zooming shots, this is used by
the director to keep the clip fast pace and sustain mystery. For example there
is a shot of one of the characters but a zoom or pan is used to hide their
face so that no information is given away.
Before we could film Henry and i had to fill In a call sheet and a risk assessment of the are in which we would be filming to evaluate any potential risks that we and the actors should look out for to reduce the risk of injury as much as possible.
The call sheet includes details such as the date,meeting time,location of the shoot,equipment needed,props needed,who is bringing the different equipment and a list of different shots that have been pre planned to make the filming process run as smoothly as possible.
The risk assessment states the location and hazards that the environment,people and objects may pose to the crew when on the shot at the designated location.
The risks are assessed by Henry and I so that we cam make a decision on whether the location is too dangerous or if nothow we can reduce the risk level as much as possible so that the chance of someone or something getting damaged is as low as possible.
We are planning to shoot on Sunday the 17th of march at Max's House as we need to film the extra footage that is now required due to our further treatment development.We are again using Max's sister as the main character involved with the story line and Henry playing the killer.
We will be filming close up shots of the girl writing a diary and shots of the man acting suspiciously with his belongings and then seeing the girl looking thorough them.
For this shoot the only props that we need are the tools and murderer has hidden within the shed in the garden and clothing items that connect him with the killings.Within the box will also be either pictures of a SD card/camera on which are photos of murder locations that the girl is supposed to recognise.
When we went on out trip to hadlow down we decided to shoot footage to practise and make this short film.We travelled by minibus with both media groups also present on the trip.
Our trip was successful in terms of filming and getting used to filming in outside conditions as we learnt allot from our difficulties that we experienced from wring outside in the cold winter weather.We tryed to experiment using different shots to create different effects with some of our shots being POV shots,Long shots,Close ups and shots which are obscured by nature etc.
One trouble that we had was that we found it hard to film in the woodland without capturing the voices and movements of other groups who were nearby,this meant that some of our shots do have slight dialogue which is caused by people in the distance.
It was also hard to give the impression that Henry was being followed throughout the woodland as watching our footage back in the final cut posted above it is not seeming apparent what the narrative is straight away.
During Today's lesson we were doing more brainstorming and research about what we could do for our opening scene to make it more interesting and we came up with an extended treatment.We spoke to our teacher Ms Johnson and discussed our new and improved ideas with her and used her feedback to develop and improve our film openings structure.We wanted to use a different location apart from the woods so we decided to use a house and having looked at (Sinister, Derrickson, 2012) we came up with this treatment which uses similar ideas to this film.
Scene 1- In the house
First shot is an establishing shot of the House/ shot of antagonist getting out of car
Second shot-Shot of antagonist coming out of the shed looking suspicious in long shot, camera will be positioned in kitchen making the shot look like its from the protagonists POV
Third shot- Shot of girls face in reaction to seeing the antagonist acting suspicious in Close Up
Fourth shot- Shot of antagonist walking away from the shed looking through window again, but not the same shot.
Fifth shot- Shot of girl going to the shed being careful not to be seen in long shot
Sixth shot-Shot of girl in the shed initial shot is mid shot,
Seventh shot- 360 pan finds box
Eighth shot - Kneels down and looks at the contents of the box(consists of tools, book, camera- within camera are pictures of people) all in close ups looks at the individual footage
Ninth shot- Shot of camera looking at the shed at a POV from antagonist (Suspense and music tension building)
Tenth shot- Shot of girl looking at pictures on camera and linking the pictures with notes that antagonist has written and music building up
Eleventh shot-POV shot getting closer to shed, hiding in the bushes
Twelve shot-POV shot
Shot of daughter filmed writing about hate for
foster dad, montage/close-ups
Shot of antagonist coming in the house in close
up
Foster child finds box in shed/garage with a box
of items/tools that show victims that he has killed, checks out in close up Foster dad sees that the box has been opened
goes to the girls room grabs diary sees what the girl has wrote Girl talks about going to the police station on
the phone Foster dad overhears Plans attack on foster daughter
Today in lesson myself and Max had a discussion with Mr Fiverash in relation to the footage that we have already captured for our film opening
During the discussion we concluded that in terms of the footage that we had caught, there wasn't enough variety of shots being shown and there wasn't much action going on for the audience to be interested in
In conclusion to this we have decided that this weekend we are going to spend time doing our research into films shot in the woods to see what types of shots they shoot and whether we can incorporate those shots into our film
Here is one short film that I found on Youtube, it includes some interesting shots using the woodlands surrounding and fast cutting rates to creates tension
For our soundtrack we would like to use an eerie type of music that can enhance our horror and convey the mood that we want the audience to feel.
We came across a website called 'freesound.org' where we found a wide variety of different horror soundtracks that we could listen to and potentialy download and use in our final production.
Here are the link to the two soundtracks that we felt worked best and were most effective at building tension and conveying our horror genre to the andience.
Film noir is normally associated with dark Hollywood dramas. Hollywood was producing noir's in the 1940's and late 50's. They are normally set in a pessimistic world that is corrupted which was thought to be linked with the mood of that period which was the Hollywood depression due to the anxiety and depression caused by the war .
Narratives:
Film noir is associated with having non-linear and convoluted story lines that frequently flashback or the opposite,flash forward as well as having a narrator that is usually the protagonist.
The narratives normally consist of false suspicions,false accusations,crime,heists and frauds
Visual techniques:
Film noir conventions consist of very low key lighting and generally in black and white. The visuals are emphasized with the use of contrasting between different shadows which are of different shades.
The characters are normally obscured by darkness and surrounded by shadows and shot in low angle shots with wide lenses.
The use of props is also key with mirror shots,curved glass and other glass objects to create refractive effects to confuse the audience.
Characters:
The characters that normally play noir protagonists are usually detectives,corrupt police officers,jealous husband or other morally flawed and misunderstood people.
Here is the link to our full survey:http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QPD8KMW
For our audience research we created a questionnaire via 'surveymonkey' asking questions specific to our film opening and the treatment that we developed
The results that we recieved for the location that is most for a effective for a horror was a house, what we initially wanted for the plan of our film opening was to have it set in the woods, however after recieving the feedback from the audience we have decided to have it set part in the woods and part in the house.
For our film opening we preferred the idea of not seeing the antagonists face to add more tension and from our audience research the majority also agreed with not seeing the antagonists face added more tenision
For the time of day that was most effective for a horror film a majority of people said night time was most effective, however as we are filming in the woodlands the tree cover the light which will give the scene a dark look
However when filming the antagonist making his way back home we will be filming in the nightime to show a time lapse and to further cover the antagonist's identity
The main concept that we wanted to include in our filming openning was a montage clip to show a series of different clips at a fast cutting rate as when we watched the (Se7en, Fincher,1995) film opening we thought this worked well
This was supported by our audience feedback as a majority of the audience said that they preferred a montage
From the start of our concept development we wanted eerie music playing through the background to further enhance the horror and tell the story, we didnt like the idea of having dialouge as we felt that it took away the suspense and tension out of the horror
From our results from the audience research most people ranked eerie music as the most important but however sound effects were not far behind
As a result we have decided that we will incorporate some sound effects in the clip and use selective sound to amplify the sounds we want the audience to hear
For us initially we didnt think that this was an important question for our audience, however as we are trying to appeal to teenagers around (15-19) to have feedback from around that age was very helpful to understand what connotations our target audience have of a thriller/horror film
For these two questions we were more open to intrepretation and were just seeing if what people thought were along the lines of our treatment and concept,
One that particularly helped us was the idea of an innocent character either by age or costume, with one of the earlier responses about having a female, as a result we are now going to use an innocent looking girl as our victim
Also the idea of possibly having a twist in the clip, as a result we having come up with an idea of possibly having a reverse clip were initially you see the victim on the ground but then you see the events of how the victim got to that point afterwards which differs from the traditional connotations of a horror/thriller film.
Max and Henry there is some good work on here but also too many missing tasks. You are not doing homework and the tasks completed are to minimal standards. If you don't start engaging with this more, you will get a grade 2 for planning. To help you with this, I want to see you in at lunchtimes this week catching up. I will review your progress at the end of the week.
This is the animatic we have created from our story board.
The purpose of creating an animatic is to test whether we have the correct amount of footage to make the opening scene the required length. It is also an opportunity to test out any effects that we might want to incorporate into or footage.These techniques included cutting rates, different angles and experimenting with different shot lengths to see what was most effective at portraying our genre.
This assignment meant that we could look at the lengths of our shots as well as how they were to be shot and determine whether we thought they would work well. The establishing scene starts with a very slow cutting rate which slowly begins to increase as the tempo and volume of the soundtrack increases which also increases the tension for the audience showing that the girl is starting to panic become lost.
We found this exercise quite useful as it showed us the number and of how long each of our shots needed to be in order to make the opening sequence the required length, it has also made it easier for us to both visualise each others ideas and when filming it makes it allot easier to set the shot up whilst using the storyboard rather that straight from memory.
Since our pitch the main concept of our film opening has stayed the same, however we have now made decisions on some particular areas that we weren't sure about.
Originally we were'nt sure about whether or not we would have a female or male to play the role of the victim, however as a result of our primary research and feedback from the class and teacher, we have decided that having a female to play the victim would be more effective for our thriller opening
We also weren't sure about what time of day to shoot, however since the pitch we have decided to film both in the day and night to show a time lapse
This weekend we decided to film for the first time at Hargate forest, our female character was played by max's sister due to the person who was meant to play the female character being unavailable.
Other problems that we encountered were that all the memory cards that we were using with our cannon 550D were not compatible with the camera apart from one 8gb card which had run out of memory, due to this we had to be careful with the amount of extra footage that we were capturing to ensure that we did not waste the memory and then not be able to film later in the day.
Another problem that we faced was the changing light conditions as we moved throughout the woodland, it would be dark in one section of the woodland but then a few meters away it would be very bright and over exposed which did not suit the theme of our opening sequence at all. Because of this we had to change the apature on the camera very frequently to make sure that the shots were all of similar brightness.
The weather was also not ideal due to it being very cold which meant that it was hard to use the cameras with numb fingers smoothly and quickly, it was also very wet which meant that the ground was unpredictable when walking on it whilst carrying equipment.
Below is some of the footage that we filmed today to create the scene in which the girl has supposedly been killed with the beginning of part of the sequence of events montage at the end.
We are going for our first shoot on the Sunday 3rd March 2013 at Hargate Forest, we are aiming to complete most of the footage that we will need the female actress in (Max's Sister) as we don't know her availability for other days and with only a short period of time to film in we would rather be solely dependent on ourselves
For our first shoot we will be filming our footage for the montage including the antagonist watching the girl make her way through the woods and also our establishing shot that we want of the girl lying down on the ground and having a slow motion pan of her in ECU
The antagonist will be wearing jeans, boots, and a big jacket juxtaposed to the girl who will be wearing colorful clothing
The props we are using for our shoot today include a camera and a bag, most of the other mise en scene comes from the location in the woodlands
