music and planning

This week we have made sure our blogs are updated and we have developed an action plan for what needs to be done after Christmas. Steven has worked in garage band developing the music that we would like to go with our production.

loss of marks

When evaluating other peoples film openings that were provided to our teacher in her training we learnt that marks can be lost by not having steady camera shots unless its clear the ‘shaking’ camera shot is suppose to be there for effect. Other ways marks can be lost is through bad continuity, meaning that something has suddenly appeared in the background or someone is wearing different clothing. Title sequences can also lose you marks because one example in the low L3 lost marks because of this, due to the titles being inconsistent in appearance and too small to read. Another way marks can be lost is through using copyright music, the music has to be copy right free or from the original artist. When we heard about what marks they were given we were quite surprised as we marked some them lower than they actually were but once explained it was understandable why.

FIlming

When filming began we had a few problems which were linked to the mise-en-scene because when we filmed one shot of Paul spinning around in the chair we noticed a multi-coloured girly box in the background which ruined the effect of a mafia type gang. We then decided to go back and re-film this paying more attention to mise-en-scene. We also needed to re-film to add additional shots when two of our characters get guns out of the red locker this will be fixed by filming a close up of their hand with a gun in it, but we had to be careful to wear the same clothes as we did on the day so it doesn’t ruin the continuity. The re-filming will go on until we have ‘perfected’ what we think is a good production. One thing we have been successful with is achieving steady shots throughout filming. We have all acted in the film at some point and all filmed at least some of the shots.

Planning

Our working title is ‘The Package’ and this is an action gangster about two rival gangs one of whom intercepts The Package when it’s on delivery. Throughout the opening of the film we leave it so viewers are not sure what’s in The Package just yet and keep the audience guessing and leave them wanting to watch the full film.

We planned by writing a script and storyboarding from it, gathering props and deciding on locations around the school. Here is an animatics of our storyboard. Our script is in our 'on paper' section in our folder.

marking criteria and film openings

This week we discussed the marking criteria for our coursework. In our groups we looked at the grades and noticed which features will be key to making a good and effective film opening, we all agreed that continuity is a big deal and have to get it right throughout the opening.

We watched many different genre of films these were: ‘Pleasantville’, ‘Twilight’, ‘Interview with a vampire’, ‘Bugsy Malone’, ‘Halloween’, ‘Once upon a time in the west’, ‘City of God’ and ‘Click’ we all discussed how the opening of the film suited the genre of the film and how it catches the attention of the audience watching and how it will make them want to watch more by setting up an enigma for them.

To get some ideas and help with producing our production we analysed some of the film openings these included Pleasantville, Halloween and Click. The expected conventions for these films are very different as they are all different genres.

Pleasantville is a drama for example where the man in the film wants to have a perfect life like the one on the TV. Halloween is a horror about a little boy who kills his family and continues to kill later on in the film. The expected conventions for Halloween include it being a dark mise-en-scene with Halloween setting eg, pumpkins, scary sounds/sights and violence.

Click is a romantic comedy and is about a man who has a chance with this remote to fast forward time its self but he uses it too much and realises his mistakes. The expected conventions for this romantic comedy would be for the main couple to have a break up of some sort but then resolve their differences somehow and the scene is expected to be bright and have a happy atmosphere.

three rules

We were introduced to the preliminary task where we had to focus on continuity, the 180 degree rule (see attached image) and match on match action and shot reverse shot.

Match on match action is where you cut from one shot to another which keeps the same pace as the first shot; this creates an image of continuity although the shots may be filmed weeks apart. If the character completes the action in one shot and completes it in the next, a visual bridge is created which disguises cut to cut.

Shot reverse shot is where you take a shot with one camera from one side of the scene and then swapping to another shot which is taken from the other side with a different camera.

We then, made a story board of what we were going to do in the preliminary task, this allows us to visually conceptualise the flow of action and to work through the practical details, at some point we will probably depart from the storyboard as we may have thought of something better than the shot we drew on the story board.

We filmed the preliminary task and had to focus on the three things detailed above to create continuity, we then went and filmed to a timed schedule so we would get used to filming within a schedule. We then edited what we'd filmed so it was in order and so we could get used to the editing software, we needed to put the shots in the order which they should be in as we didn't filmed in the order the sequence should be in.

We felt we were successful as we had steady shots throughout and we had continuity with the shots being in the same room and the actors being the same, we used all three rules so this is also a success as we were told we had to use all three of them. We could improve the costumes that were on the actors as we had to film during school time and we don’t have time to keep on getting changed every time we film as we would not have enough time to film and edit what we needed told to do, however, the pre-lim task was really a focus on filming techniques and skills. The key things we learnt were the 180 degree rule, match on match action, shot reverse shot and that we must keep continuity as it makes it look more professional.

camera shots

After our tutor attended an inset (Nov) we began our blog today. We are going to sumarise what we have done so far.

In the week beginning 7/9/09 we did work based around TV dramas which is also relevant to section A of the exam, this also helps us in our coursework as we need to know what:

Camera shots: This is what you can see through the camera, basic common sense applied: a close-up is closer than a long shot as the names suggest. The attached image shows the different types of shots we studied
Camera angles: this is where the angle of which you take the shot.
Camera movement: this is the movement of the camera such as panning and zooming
The composition of the camera: this is how the shot is put together
Mise-en-scene: this is everything which is in the shot such as the background, the lighting, costumes, and the sounds in the background
Sound and editing: is the sound diegetic (sound which is already in the shot) or non diegetic (sound which is added into the shot in editing)