MAIN Post 5 - Title Timeline

For this post I was required to look at a film's opening sequence. This involved looking at the timings of the titles, when was the illustration showen etc. It had to be relevant for the film that we was going to make which is action, i showed my finding through a timeline as shown below. The film I chose to look at was 'The Spiderman'.

Summary
From looking at this timeline i can see that it is very important that we have the screening of the bpeople involved for creditation.

MAIN Post 4b - Narrative / Character Research

Following our groups decision to do a film based on a secret agent and a mafia hit group as the main characters for our film i have looked at the film Gangster Squad. My reasoning for this is that th main plot of the film is FBU type agents are against a gang of mafia hit men. As this closely resembles my film i feel i could take good information from it. As the number of people in my group are small we will be rotating roles so that we each get a spot in the light.

Gangster Squad
From looking at Gangster Sqaud i have come to the conclusion that the hardcore Mafia mobsters all had the politicians and police under the thumb. This resulted in gangs initimidating people they want and them not getting in trouble for it. This means that me and my group have to give the impression to the audience that we are intimidatign and dont take no for a anwser. Also within the film is a group of federal agents who have the guts and determination to ridden the streets if these vermin mobsters. This is where again my groups film can be related as we have a good cop who comes in and saves the woman. These mobsters are sexualy frustrated and treat women with respect they would show to a piece of earth. We have to incorporate this image within our film so that it is truthful to what reality was actually like. They also are money laundeering scoundrels who take power for granted. If we can include this impression within the mobsters in our film then we have achieved the mobsters look. For the federal agents they have a smart suit style who drive round trying to the the hero of the day, with big guns and busting down doors, this is how the federal/secret agents in my film should act.

MAIN Post 4a - Plot Development

Synopis
Name of Film Poker Face

Genre: Action

Target Audience: 15+

LogLine
An ex agent gets into a situation with the same mafia that killed his father, but this time the mafia strike again but they go after his girlfriend.


An ex agent Dwain Jefferson gets into another situation with the same mafia that killed his father for his money, but this time the mafia strike again but they go after his girlfriend. Its a tense hostage stand off, with the head off the mafia, Tony and his gang Vinnie and sonny duvalle holding her to ransom while they play poker, then BANG the door slams open and the ex agent bursts in gun at the ready demanding his girlfriend release. Dwain is then left reflecting on his past with an emotional ending.

MAIN Post 4 - Group Meeting

We have held a group meeting and after evaluating our research we have come to the conclusion that we will stick with the action genre, seeing as majority of our random people said that action was their favourite genre of film. We too brainstormed what we want our film to be about and also what the opening sequence will consist of.

Description of film
Craig Brooks, an undercover cop is on yet another case, as he hunts down a mafia squad holding his mother captive at her own will. Craig constantly searches for clues that may lead him to the whereabouts of the mafia squad and his mother. The mafia squad want nothing but Craig's father million pound fortune, will Craig eventually have to give up his fathers money for the sake of his mother? Or will the mafia squad torment Craig and his family at the same time as gaining the jackpot sum of money?

Opening sequence description
The opening sequence will consist of the opening titles as well as a flashback of Craig's past, in which we see Craig's fathers death (this gives the audience an overview of what the films background/past is). The scene would then cut to the mafia squad planning their next scheme to make money.

MAIN Post 3a: Further look at opening sequences

From looking at previous year group's work and opening sequence I feel that there are so many different conventions that I could us. For example i looked at the video below and i found that the opening sequence was very poor and was not releveant to the teacheer style film the students were going for. Some of the type in the opening sequences are irrelavent to the actual film, I believe if your going to make an opening sequence first review the film and take key points in which themes and type fonts and how the type fonts should be shown.

The strengths that i realised from the kyle cooper videos are that make the audience feel excited, and i want to try and make them feel 'in' the film but making it getting there attention. This way they forget about everything else within the cinema and just focus soley within the film.

MAIN Post 3: Research into Opening Sequence Designs

Kyle Cooper Interview
In the kyle Cooper Interview it made me realise that he looks behind the obvious and is very clever in intergrating the type with the film. For example with superman film he done he made the writing come out to the front of the screen throught thr back of the pictures. Listening to his interview makes me realise that in the opening sequence it should make the audience excited by it. It gives an overall impression on the audience and makes them ignore everything else within the world, and want to stay and watch the film and are in that zone, i feel that when i do my opeing sequence with my group we should entise the audience to watch it.

MAIN Post 2: Choosing your genre

From reading a newspaper article about the new james bond film skyfall, i came to the conclusion that it must be good to feature in a top newspaper The Metro. This paper showed me that ' made a significant breakthrough considering to this day it has only been in theaters for a month or so it is officially the top grossing film in the UK ever to this day. Other films included Aavatar and Harry potter. I came to the discove by doing secondary research on the internet via http://boxofficemojo.com/ this film is very popular and so have been all other James Bond films, and so as me and my group were undecisive about what genre to go for we all had a look and decided following this article about james bond that we was to do a action film. This website i went on shows the figures for the top 100 grossing films in the past year shwon on the website, it all showed mt that action dominates the big screen when it comes to the british public.

Questionnaire

So as a group we created a nice and short questionnaire that we hope would help us into deciding what genre of film to make our opening sequence about. Below is a sample of our questionnaire that has been filled out by one of our random people. The questions on the sheet varied from 'What is your favourite genre of film?' to 'How often do you go to the cinema?'. We created these questions so that they were short and wouldnt take up too much of the publics time to fill out.

 

Above is a questionnaire that I asked the members of the public to fill out to categorize, this one is from a 24 year old called pete i aslo done it from people of various ages to get the best result i could achieve. My neighbours response was what I had expected, due to the previous researches showing that action films were the most popular amongst the British public. The trend continued with the rest of the random people and we tallyed it up as a total and from the 37 people that we asked to fill out our questionnaire, 22 said that action was their favourite genre of film. The other possible genres to chose from varied but in second it was comedy.

MAIN Post 1 Conventions of an Opening Sequence

When you view a film opening sequence there are alot of conventions you would expect to see in them, these conventions are most likely to appear in any genre. Be that the name of the film, the cast/crew members, or a background to the film itself. I will look at two film trailers from two different genres during this task.

Below are a list of conventions that I would expect to see in a film opening sequence.

• The films title
• The production company's name
• The release date for the film
• Details of the cast and crew
• An overview of the setting for the film
• Information regarding the mood and tone of the film
• The theme tune/soundtrack for the film
• An introduction to the main character and supporting actors
• Codes and conventions that would appear in the genre of film, for example I would expect to see explosions in an action trailer

Spider Man 2:
I looked at spider man 2 opening sequence for one of the genre's.When watching this for a few times I noticed that some of the conventions mentioned previously appear in this trailer, and so I took screen shots of the main parts of the trailer to illustrate this.





A convention that I noticed in the Spider Man 2 was the name of the production company. This is advertises the brand and helps viewers notice who funded and made the film for possible feedback.

The second convention that I noticed from the Spider Man 2 was the name of the film appearing at the start credits this is used to give the name of the film but to also bring an start to the flim in quickly so it flows into the first scene.

Another convention is that this shot screen shows not only who produced it but is reminding the viewer what happened in the first film.

My second film im going to focus on is Fight Club

This convention the title fight club with a rough look fits in with the film aswell as the name of the film and the bright yellow addsthe look off danger.

This convention is pretty self explainatory to a certain extent, for example the title is fight club, and in this photo shot a fist is punching its way through the credits meaning to the viewer it has aggresion and fighting in the film.

This screen shot shows that the credits pour in quickly and pour out and this convention relates to the fact the film is obviously fast past.

Independent Work Towards Targets

Targets

As we were all happy with how the short film went, we have decided that we will probably work together in the main task as we all get along and work efficently. However as always there is always room for improvement, so to see what i can improve on  SMART principle to make myself targets for the next task.

S-Specific
In order for me to improve i need to be specific in what i want to do. For example, what exactly is my aim in the next task. My anwser to this is that i need to have a very good action film, accompanied by opening titles. I want to be able to co-operate efficently with my group as this will benefit everyone overall. I also want to develop an understanding about opening titles and the openings of films.

M-Measurable
In order for me and my group to progress and achieve the action film that i have mentioned. we need to think about time issues, for example do we have enought time to carry out the filming and putting together of the script. Also are we going to need better cameras for us to get high quality picture which we are aiming for. Aswell if once this is completeed how do we know if its been successful, we will have to review the filming once in the edit suite to see if everything has gone according to plan.

A-Attainable
My group and I will have to stretch ourselves in the main production of the film, in order to achieve the measurable goals. We will need to commit ourselves to this project for it to be successfull. Each individual within the group will have to take responsiblity for certain aspects, eg. who's going to edit, who's going to be in charge of the camera.

R-Relevant
At the end of the day all of the above can only be achieved if it is relevant and realistic. For example, what would be seen as a success or how can it be a success. i know my ability and that some aspects of the film production may not be great as some within the group including myself have minute experience in some areas, ie. Im not very good at editing. But we will try our hardest.

T-Time Bound
As i mentioned in my measurable targets, everything that me and my group have to do has to make it time efficent. For example if i need to get everything done by a certain date then we need to work out the timing of how long things within the project are going to take. This will benefit us due to the fact once this is worked out we can see how much time we have left or if we will be going over the dead line.

Evaluation of skills developed

I believe that the premilnary task has been a successful for my group. we have developed and advanced in taking in new skillsduring the preliminary task.

Technical skills
When it comes to filming my group and I were very good at it as we are all very good when it comes to technological things. Charlie was hands on with the camera. Charlie took charge of the camera as he had previously had experiences with handling cameras similar to the one used in the preliminary task. So he found it fairly easy to maneuver and operate the camera as well as the tripod.

Creative skills
As a group it was decided if we all sat together and discussed ideas and brainstormed them, then we would be working towards our potential and achieving good effiecent ideas. Everybody within the group contributed greatly and from this we came up with very good foundations for our short film.

Post-Production

Production Report

How did the shoot go?
I feel that the shoot itself went very well due to the fact we had all the equipment we needed eg. tripod for the camera to sit on so we had a stable and accurate shot, also we had our scripts in hand so that the actors could look at themif they needed reminding on some of their lines. We also had the shot list which was very usefull for the camera man because he would look at the shot list then put that camera in that accurate posistion within a matter of minutes. Also we had to carry wioth us two batteries incase one of them ran out while we was on set. also a tape just incase in a emeregency that the one being used failed to record anything, after all of this we were ready to film, all in all we had a succesfull shoot due to the fact we was prepared and me and the other actor did very wellwhile the camera man setup the camera in no time at all so timing was not a problem.

Did you encounter any problems?
We encountered some problems, one of which was that one of the actors had gone and had thier hair cut sowe had to reshoot some particular scenes otherwise it would have look non proffesional having two different styles of hair on the actor. Also other problems were for example a person unexpectedly walking into our shot, or one of our actors messing up their lines slightly, or we just had to re-shoot a shot because we felt that we could do better than the last take.

How did you overcome these problems?
We over came these problems by reshooting some scenes or refreshing the actors just before shooting so they would not forget them.

How well did you work as a team?
I thought we worked very efficently as a team to get the shoot finished, we would all help to get the neccesary equipment ready for the camera man before shoot so that we did not time waste and we could get on with the shooting. Me and Danny were the actors and jack was the "producer" holding the shot list and the scripts making sure everything went to plan while charlie did a very good job of being a camera man.

Additional Pre-production Documentation

Shot List & Storyboard

This is the shooting schedule for our group

Location	Scene	Shot	Description
Outside the school	1	1	EXT Day LS – one character GARETH, walking into school
School bus lane		2	¾ shot – GARETH on the phone to CRAIG
By the main office		3	EXT Day Crane shot – GARETH hangs up on CRAIG and looks at camera whilst putting his hood up.
Walking into the TC’s	2	1	EXT/INT Day LS – GARETH walks into building, looking around cautiously.
The TC classroom		2	INT Day MS -

Here we have the shot list of our film production, we have used the template given to us by the example blog, but we deleted the information and put our own in. We had to use the same amount of columns in the shot list because they had to match.



Jump Cuts, Over-the-Shoulder Shots, Cutaways and Point of View Shots

The Script

Continuity

Continuity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuity_(fiction)

Continuity is when you have a constisency of thr camera shot, for example one day of fliming a character could be wearing one item of clothing then the next day they were the same so the shots once edited all fit.

180 degree rule/crossing the line
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/180-degree_rule

This is when there is a axis going through the middle of two characters talking and the camera shows each point of view from shoulder view basically, if it goes onto the other side so that the camera crosses the line then its called crossing the line.


Shot-Reverse-Shot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_reverse_shot

Shot Reverse Shot, is when one character is shown loooking at another charcater and then this second character is shown loooking back at the first one.

Match on- action
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match_cut

This is a cut in a film either between two objects or two compositions, this helps to show strong flow of the film.

These are my own photographs of the concepts

Rules of Thirds Pictures

This is me representing the rule of thirds, as you can see my eyes are in the invisble third line.

However this shot is me breaking the rules of thirds as my eyes are halfway down the camera so the shot doesnt look good.
Below is me cropping the picture and making it acceptable within the terms of the rule of thirds.



Rule Of Thirds

The Rule Of Thirds is a techinque used for paintings or pictures, which is when the screen is slpit into nine boxes by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines. These help to capture tension or energy by placing different parts within the image on different intersections.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds

My Shot Sizes

This is a Long Shot (LS) which is when there is head room and walking space.

This is a Medium Long Shot (MLS) which is when the feet just show

This is a 3/4 shot

This is a medium shot of me (MS)

This is a Medium close up of me (MCU)

This is a extreme close up (ECU) of me

This is a close up shot of me (CU)

Storyboard Drawing, Shot Sizes and Framing.

Above are some pictures I drew to show the different camera shots commonly used in media.

Preliminary Task Introduction

This is coursework unit canidates produce two paired media artefacts from a series of briefs. This process involves progression from pre-production, preliminary exercise to a more fully realised piece. This unit assessed and externally moderated.