CHASE

More Editing ideas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Synopsis possibility

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

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

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

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.