Q2-48 : FILM OPENING PROJECT 2008/9

contenuity task

2009-03-20T08:38:00.000-07:00

more screen grabs

2009-03-13T08:43:00.000-07:00

Sreen Grabs for Our evaluation

2009-03-11T03:13:00.000-07:00

2009-03-11T02:50:00.000-07:00

Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? Include a still from each project. What technical and analytical skills have you learnt from the first project to the second?

we have had done a lot of research for this opening sequence, thought about the different emotions and feelings that people go through when dealing with drugs, and the effects that would happen.

we learnt how to do things such as how to make a montage of different clips,how to change the colours to black and white. For making our production logo, we learnt how to make an object from a still picture jump and also how to add music to this.
Although we learnt how to use and make music in the last task with this one we experimented with using a wider range of sounds and changing them to make them sound more diagetic and by varying the music more in our footage we created a longer continuous piece that was less repetitive.
we improved on how to produce a montage with this task. We managed to show a range of continuous shots of the stereo in a long space of time, we made this effective because we used a lot of different shots together and changed the positioning of the stereo on the screen.

Attracting Target Audience

2009-03-11T02:40:00.000-07:00

How did you attract/address your audience? Use four stills from your sequence and identify how the micro features attempt to engage your target audience.

we attract our target audience using situations that they could relate to.It shows them different situations and ones that should be avoided as well as ones that are every day.
We show the extreme side of binge drinking and the consequences that come with that and taking drugs. we are showing the different social backgrounds, to give an inside of how people are. We showed how different upbringings can effect people in different ways and how these can effect their sense of judgment and decision making.

Other Producton Companies

2009-03-11T02:12:00.000-07:00

Our film is a British based film that would probably not be produced or funded by a big Studio but a independent British company. With this in mind we have researched different production companies and the possibilities of them funding our movie.

2 Entertain , BBC films, UK film council, Blueprint pictures,

These our a few of the well known British production companies, the one that most appeals to us is the UK FILM COUNCIL. They show a range of opportunities for all films -

"We fund script development, film production, short films, film export and distribution, cinemas, film education, culture and archives, festivals and audience support schemes."

It's aims are also -

"We're here to make sure that the UK has a dynamic film industry fit for the digital age and to help UK audiences enjoy the best of British and world cinema. We have a clear strategy to make this happen."

This is good as our film is showing the lifestyle of typical British teens and justify the aim that we would want a British company to fund us. They specialize in different and separate areas of funding such as Socialist films and realist films. Although these companies are very well known, we could go for a more low key and independent production. films such as Kidulthood and adulthood were sponsored by a new productions company CIPHER PRODUCTIONS. Even Green Street being a part American production had its main funding from Baker Street.

Overall the funding would ahve to be a british film companie that wouls specialise in our film and understand its motives.

Classification criteria

2009-03-11T02:10:00.000-07:00

Who would be the audience for your media product? Look at the BBFC website. Which classification criteria do you think would be most appropriate for your film and why?

we think after producing our opening sequence, we have thought about what would happen throughout the film. after consideration we have decided to rate it as a 15 because it will have strong language and refrence to drug taking, it would also include sexual activity, and some violence which may be strong but doesn't dwell on the infliction of pain or injury.
But because we have rated it as a 15, it reduces our target audience from anyone below 15. This may be a problem but we think that the age rage of 15+ have a very strong attraction to the film because it is situations that people of that age can relate to. It is a nice middle ground for age range, between 15 and 18, it gives the sense of becoming and adult, from only being able to see a 12A.

2009-03-10T04:20:00.000-07:00

The male character you can see in the images is Danny Dyer, he is about to go for a night out on town, this will include him spending his money on drugs and drink. We thought this related well to our character because she decides to spend her time and money on partying drugs and alcohol. Both characters show their bad habits and problems that they can bring, as well as occurrences in the night. We thought these represented British social realism well because when we did our research we found that Britain was a large area of ever growing binge drinkers and the main people that were the problems causers are teenagers. The research showed that teenage girls are larger binge drinkers, so for our footage we decided to use a female character as these fitted better with the facts we found.

CHASE

2009-03-06T07:22:00.000-08:00

What we changed

2009-03-04T01:57:00.000-08:00

For a final piece we decided that we wanted to make some changes after the feed back we got.
We decided that we wanted to keep an element of silence when the girl wakes up, but after this we decided to add diagetic sound as well as traffic to make it more interesting and create more of a realistic atmosphere. The diagetic sounds that we added to the footage were, traffic, toaster, kettle and an alarm.
We decided to edit out the footage where the girl is speaking to the camera, we did this because we wanted to get rid of the commercial element about our footage.
We changed our titles after the feedback we got and made them a darker colour, a bigger font and made more of them to make it look like a film opening. The titles we added were; costume design, screen play, produced by and four more cast names.
We did some minor touch ups to our piece, these included adding fades and making the transitions smoother, whilst also fitting the sounds to the footage more acurately.

feed back

2009-03-03T04:11:00.000-08:00

The feed back that we got form our rough cut was mostly positive. People said that they liked the black and white shots because they showed an edgy side as well as an emptiness when she wakes up in the morning compared to her drunken state the night before.
The footage of the girl in the morning had mixed feed back, some people thought that we should include subtle sounds to add more interest, but the majority of people said that they liked the no sound element because it represented the type of peace and quiet you want when you are hungover, but at the same time the silence could be cut down and diagetic sounds added because otherwise the silence goes on for a long time.
It was clear to everyone that our genre was British social realist, and that our footage related to the genre well. The different use of camera shots was noticed and one of the favourite shots was the bottle shot because it showed more and more bottles appearing as the night progressed.
The contrast of colour footage at the end worked well because it meant that people noticed the title more as there was a change in colour it drew more attention to it.
We got feed back on our sound that we should use more diagetic sounds with our footage and that parts of the clip make it look like a drugs commercial, so for this we decided that we would get rid of the end of the footage, where the character speaks.
We got positive feed back about our over lays of the footage at the beginning where its the stereo clips, people thought this worked effectively and didn't need to be edited.
People thought that for our titles, there were not bold or clear enough, that they got lost behind the footage, so we needed to work on them. Add more, make them a darker colour and make them a bigger font.

final location

2009-02-27T07:44:00.000-08:00

we decided to shoot our footage in a flat, we did this because it then allowed you to see the environment in which the girl was living and show more of an incite to her lifestyle.
We did a range of different shots in different rooms in the flat. The rooms we decided to shoot in were the bedroom,sitting room and kitchen. We decided on these places because it then allowed us to capture her doing what looks as though its a daily routine. By showing her in the bedroom and when she wakes up you can see the confusion on her face from when she wakes up, up until the moment when she realises where she is. By following her through the flat and in to the kitchen it allowed you to see that she was following a daily routine and having breakfast just like you do on an average day. We then cut in to a shot in the sitting room, this then allowed you to see how the girl is addicted to the habit an how it affects her life, that first thing in the morning before shes eaten or done anything else she starts with a line.

Rough Cut ! =) (woop!)

2009-02-25T02:05:00.000-08:00

More Editing ideas

2009-02-10T05:40:00.001-08:00

Another thing we are taking into consideration in our editiing is our transitions between clips, for the first half of the opening we have used a montage of overlapping, fading and static flashes to create a dream , drunk or high atmosphesre.

We ran into the problem of the secound half ofthe opeing where the main character wakes up and carries on witha hermorning ritual. the clips were a little too jerky and jumpy making it uneven,so we came up witht he idea of keeping the fades and overlapping in to represent the main characters feelings at tha moment. this could suggest that she is till drunk or high and phaseing from " how did i get form the bedroom tothe kitchen? am i still drunk?"

In films and Tv shows there is alwasy a use of fades as the person has just taken drugs and gothigh, we thought we could involve this into our clip.

These our a few examples of drug dream sequences

Human Traffic - at a rave in the 80s after they've taken Pills

Another trippy sequence after taking drugs

Titles

2009-02-10T03:55:00.001-08:00

We have decided to do a minimalistic approach on our titles, using only the film title, production name, director, and two actors names. We are going to use a very simple font to represent her lower social class. i think by doing this it gives the impression of working class, like in the TV show Shameless.

We were inspried to do very short titles by opening srequence of Quentin tarantino such as Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill, he uses very plain but bold titles almost like a slide show on a power point, this is an example of one....

Bits of Editing Ideas

2009-02-10T03:13:00.000-08:00

The reason why we have chosen our film opening to be in black and white is because it gives a very british art house feel to it. We are aiming our production not to be a big blockbuster but to be a low budget, like this...

Control..

Sin City.. Even though this is not a british social realist drama, is shows how black and white footage can be affected with a small splash of colour in either the forground or background.

Sommers Town Clip, this is a clip from shane medows most rectent film in 2008, it is filmed all in black and white untill the very end where the colour merges in and enphisises the climax of the film.

This is the beginning of our editing and we are still deciding how we can play around to make the black and white filter look affective. We are also deciding whether the whole film would be in black and white or just the opening, and debating whether to have colour shots appearing in the footage.
For example in the film memento, the black and white parts of the film is when the main character, Leonardo, is trying to remember where he is and how he got there. This can be related back to our sequence as the main character is trying to remember her very blurred and hectic night out the evening before. Later in memento it then goes back into focus and has colour making the black and white section very artistic and abstract.

filiming

2009-02-06T04:32:00.000-08:00

After finishing our planning, we got started on filming our footage for the project. one of our main problems during filming would have to be the jump shot of the alcohol bottles. This was a problem as we had to use my own digital camera for our filming compared to the schools video tape cameras. This meant that for us to be able to create a jump shot, normally we would just have to film then pause the footage then re film without changing the background only the foreground. unfortunately my camera does not let us do this as it films in clips. With this problem we had to leave the bottle scene for another date.

Another problem we popped up while filming would be the lighting for the dream flashback opening. As it is a clip of a stereo being trashed at a house party this meant it had to be relatively dark. We had this trouble in our last project, so we knew that one way of doing this is to film it in the light and then edit it on the computer. We tried different levels of light during filming to get a variation but once again decided that editing the light on final cut would give a better effect for the night feel.

One of the clips that i shot separately was the flashing club lights and the blurred images of drunk teens. we wanted it to be like you were there experiencing the madness of a rave while drunk. these are few example of what we wanted it to be like, but much more blurred and unclear to give the feel like she is dreaming or remembering the night before and trying to make out what was a very drunk and blurred night.

This is some footage of a house party and people dancing, this is a good example of a clearer version of what would have happened at the main character's party. but again we want a more unclear version of this.

This is obviously filmed by a hand held phone camera with very bad quality but the same sort of idea.

This is a good example of what we are going for.

Overall though, the filming of our footage went rather smoothly without too many glitches :)

Feedback From Our Animatic

2009-01-30T07:57:00.000-08:00

For part of the lesson today we watched everyone's animatic and then gave our feedback on what we thought about it.
The feedback that we got from ours is that it is an overall good animatic, with clear drawing to get the point across of what we are trying to achieve. They liked how we edited the eye, and how it zooms out into the face with the expression on it. They also the liked the blur we did to some of the pictures. For the sample of music we put onto the animatic they loved they thought it was trippy music and very affective.

Shot Listing

2009-01-30T07:16:00.000-08:00

Here are some of the shot listings that we could include in our opening sequence, we have narrowed it down to think about exactly what we want to achieve.

. a 30 second montage of jump shot sequences
. extreme close up of eye, then moving out
. general close up of face
. panning out shot
. mid shot of her sitting on the bed.
. another mid shot of her walking out bedroom
. tracking shot of her walking into the kitchen
. close up of her putting on the kettle
. another close up of her putting the bread into the toaster.
. tracking shot of her walking into the living room
. close up shot of her setting out the cocaine
. extreme close up of her snorting it
. zooming out to a mid shot of her speaking into the camera
. the a jump shot to the burnt toast popping out.

Possible Locations

2009-01-30T07:10:00.001-08:00

For our opening sequence we have thought about possible locations we could use to shoot it. We either want a posh and upper class location or a council flat. Depending what sort out way we go with filming.

Locations:
.Posh House
.Council Flat
.School
.Party
.Bathroom
.Bedroom
.Living room
.Kitchen

Prop List

2009-01-30T07:06:00.000-08:00

Here are some of the things we need to get for shooting of our footage. We are not sure if we are going to use all these props but just in case!

.Sugar
.Credit Card
.£5 Note
.Bread
.Kettle
.Toaster
.Bed
.Mirror
.Table
.Sofa
.Hoodie
.Mascra
.Bin
.Stereo
.Bottles
.Powder
.Fags
.Cds and Cases

anamatic

2009-01-28T01:36:00.000-08:00

This is our final animatic, we have added a sample soundtrack of party music to give the feel that it is a crazy party where the stereo is getting trashed and the bottles of alcohol have been drunk. we are not sure about this particular piece of music and we are planning to mix around with different samples so we use a combination of sounds. We found it hard to represent most of the shots in the animatic as we are using a range of jump shots and merging fades. This idea will come out clearer in our actual footage and editing. The scene with the protagonist will also be longer and mostly a continuous shot following her around. These our things we will take into consideration before shooting and finding locations

Our Mood Board.

2009-01-27T03:37:00.000-08:00

Here is our mood board, it represents our film opening and what you can expect to see in the footage.

some of these images are stereotypical images that you relate back to rebellious teens for example - cigarettes, cocaine, alcohol bottles and fighting. it also indicates the social class of the main theme and character of the film, we see council estates and common looking characters.

Another thing we have put in the mood board is everyday things such as toast, alarm clock and kettle. This suggests that the life of the main protagonist is involved with a partying lifestyle as well as a drug taker but at the same time shows that these sort of circumstances can be found in normal everyday life.

Synopsis possibility

2009-01-19T03:51:00.000-08:00

Once we chose our genre for our opening, we began to look over the conventions and weighing out our options on what our opening would actually include. We brainstormed some of the conventions and came done to the idea of doing a point of view of a girl living in a rough urban area, doing drugs, alcohol and other stuff just to get through the day.

This is a suggested idea we might work on for the actual filming -

A mid shot showing a girl sitting on a sofa with a small table in front of her, you can only see the middle of her, not her face. A long clip of her with a credit card, coke ( drug, some form of powder , sugar perhaps) and a rolled up £5 note. she is slowly fining the drug ready to take it. The next shot would be of a windowsill or recycling box quickly filling up with empty alcholic drinks, this would be done with jump shots. A third shot of a stereo playing music with party poppers, cigarette buds, drink cups, cds, cd changing, spilt drinks etc to show the progression of a house party through the night can have on a stereo and speaker. A shot of a Saturday night in a city of people falling out of pubs and bars, and then a final shot back to the girl with her drugs, she bends over and snorts the coke, looks up at the camera and says " Sometimes you do whatever you can to make yourself feel better" and then a black out with the title of the film.

This is just an idea and will be discussed and rethought if needed. This idea was inspired not just by films but books and TV shows. Fore Example -

Melvin Burgess book JUNK, which follows the point of view of a numer of characters struggling with drugs and family troubles. It's upfront, forward and graphic writing shocks the reader, leaving them surprised and aware of the difficulties of drug addicts.

Chanel 4s hit TV show, that again has left the viewer shocked to learn the reality of some teenagers circumstances and out of school activities. Although some would admit that this TV show is highly exaggerated, others would relate to their everyday life.

And finally Men haj Huda's Kidulthood, that focusses on the London area and its underage crime scene. Another focus it has is on the drinking and drug problem and how far girls would go to get there hit.

Research

2009-01-17T05:37:00.000-08:00

After researching on the dirfferent Genre's we were given to choose, we have decided to do a A British social realist drama. We had some trouble on deciding what exactly a British Social realist Drama was and what we would need to portray in our opening . After searching we found this definition for it;

'Social realism in films is representative of real life, with all its difficulties. The stories and people portrayed are everyday characters, usually from working class backgrounds. Typically, films within the social realist canon are gritty, urban dramas about the struggle to survive the daily grind.'

This then helped us to view other films that involved this definition, these films were such as Billy Elliot, This Is England, Kidulthood, once apon a time in the midlands, control and eat is east.

These films here, are based on the conventions of a social realist film, these are as so....

drugs
working class
unemployed
alchol
reality
violence
outside of society
crime
troubled/ misunderstood
personal relationships
real life situations
sex
urban locations
sometimes shocking narrative
slight humour/ black comedy

The general theme of the 'Social realist genre, has also become known as a Kitchen Sink Drama, we found more on why this is on Wikepidia.com -

"Kitchen sink realism was an English cultural movement which developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film and television plays. It used a style of social realism which often depicted the domestic situations of working class Britons living in council flats and spending their off-hours in grimy pubs to explore social issues and political controversies."

"The British New Wave is the name given to a trend in filmmaking among directors in Britain in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The label is a tranposition of Nouvelle Vague, the French term first applied to the films of François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and others. There is considerable overlap with the so-called "Angry Young Men", such as Osborne and director Tony Richardson, who challenged the social status quo with their dramas about working class life."

Opening sequence evaluation

2009-01-17T05:35:00.000-08:00

Opening sequence evaluation - Water World (Kevin Reynolds) 1995
I chose the opening sequence of Water World to study, it starts off with the universal pictures logo in which they edit so the land sinks and the water overflows earth, which is the prologue of what happened to the earth for the film to have its narrative of Water World. I focused on the sound element of this clip. It starts off with a non diagetic voice over of a daunting low a male voice narrating over the universal clip “ The Future, the polar ice caps have melted covering the earth with water. Those who have survived have adapted to the new world.” this syncs with the opening clip of the universal earth’s polar ice caps melting, it also involves the stereotypical bold voice over to go with this blockbuster. On top of the voice over is a small non diagetic sound of tribal drums slowly beating with an eary soundtrack on top, this gives the uncertain feeling of the “ new world” and how it is very wild and jungle untamed culture and world. The voiceover ends and the film title pops up, and the native drums come on heavier with a didgeridoo and a wind chime. They use this in the sound to move the futuristic new world back to the prehistoric survival of the fittest stage of mankind This leaves the viewer in suspense on how this will pan out over the film, as it is a physiological scare to think of the world in water, no land anywhere and taking a 2 million year jump back to basic human emotions.
We then see a low in-between the legs shot of Kevin Costner urinating into a cup which he then turns into drinking water. For one this establishing shot of the main character is so you don’t see his face, this is repeated a lot at the beginning of the opening sequence so you don’t get introduced to the protagonist. This is important to the narrative as throughout the film Costner’s character is a no mad that no one knows, a wonderer which fits in well that you don’t really get to see who he is in the opening clip. The first images of the water world is literally a mish mash hand made boat sailing on the never ending water. It is made up of hundreds of things from tin cans to pen lids. The never ending sea is represented with sound again as all you hear is the sound of waves hitting the “ boat”, the tinkling sound of liquid in Costner’s urinating cup, him gargling the water he is drinking and spitting some out. All these sound effects relate back to the main idea of the film Water world and the never ending fact of water itself is everywhere. Costners costume is made up of any piece of material possible mostly brown, grey and mouldy green , this suggests that he has been on sea for years. Backing this up also the “boat” squeaks and clangs, with the shots of its rusty brown look. This leaves the viewer with many questions how many years has the earth been covered in water. And the biggest one, is when Costner spits water out he spits it into a small potted plant? So if the world has no land on it 1) how did he get a potted plant and 2) how have the few drifters of the earth managed to survive?
All this is formed in the opening sequence of Water world.

Lisette Cooke

British social realist drama clips

2009-01-16T07:24:00.000-08:00

This clip form billy elliot, is simple but still effective opening to the film. It shows you his simple life style and the environment around him. although you cant hear the music in this clip, we know as we have seen it before that the opening relates to the end of the film, where billy says how he feels when he's dancing. he mentions that he feels like he is flying, like electricity and that he is free, this is a general feeling when people are jumping high in the air, let it be on a trampoline, sky diving or as in this clip on a bed.

Q2-48 FILM OPENING PROJECT

2008-11-28T05:32:00.001-08:00

Welcome