CHASE

What we changed

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

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

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.

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.

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

Our Mood Board.

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

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."

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.