Showing posts with label Research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Research. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Ident
This is our ident we had first attempted to get video footage of a TV in a dark gloomy area and then tried to edit in our effects over the top but unfortunately we couldn't get hold of any TV's that were small enough to move so we had to settle with taking a picture of a TV and editing over that. We were having trouble with making the white noise sound and so we emailed the person who we had got our ident inspiration off and they sent us the audio clip they had used and gave us permission to use in it our film so we didn't have to spend lots of time looking around for a sound clip that would fit our ident.
Film Music and Sound
Finding the music was one of the hardest tasks we had to do for our film being as we were restricted to using copyright free music and this meant we could not use music that we had heard previously even though it might have fitted quite well in our film. The first thing we did was look at other media films for inspiration to see what music they had used and we spent a large amount of time going through videos that were assigned to the horror/thriller genre and after a long time of looking we decided to search some where else. So the next thing we did to find the music was search on royalty free music websites and we came across this horror music track that fitted perfectly to what we had in mind and work very well with our end product. In order to get the music we downloaded it from the website and then added it into our film through teh editing.
Music: www.incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/index.html?keywords=Devastation+and+Revenge&Search=Search
This is the video we got the camera sound from again we looked on youtube to find the sound and again contacted the creator to get premission to use it in our film.
Music: www.incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/index.html?keywords=Devastation+and+Revenge&Search=Search
This is the video we got the camera sound from again we looked on youtube to find the sound and again contacted the creator to get premission to use it in our film.
Editing
For all of the films we have made we used Sony Vegas Pro 8 () to edit. This is a very good software to use being as it is very professional and allows for very precise editing to be done. It also has a lot of built in video effects and media to use which helped largely with the making of our film being as we didn't have to add in the effects ourselves but we could chose from the range available with the software. Although the software can be quite confusing to sue to start with it is a very good editing software to use when you know what your doing and luckily I had used it previous to making my media projects.
Film Fonts
In our film we had decided before making it that we needed to find some scary looking or distorted fonts to fit along with the theme of our film. First we looked at all the default pre loaded fonts on our computer but there were no fonts that pacrticulally stood out. So we looked online for a free font download website and found www.dafont.com a free font download website witha large variety of fonts accesible to all. We downloaded several fonts for our film but in the end only chose two; 'BASE 02' and 'El & Font Gothic'. BASE 02 is a slightly army styled font but has a nice distorted effect that we were looking for and at the same time it still stands out well and it fairly easy to read. El & Font Gothic is a very dark font it fits in very well with the horror genre as it has quite a distinctive gothy theme and we thought it worked quite well for our film title.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Ident Inspiration
This is what we will be basing our film ident on. We like the idea of having a dark room with a TV in it and also like how it turns on very mysteriously. For our film ident we will also be trying to use a similar idea to this with a TV in a dark room turning on mysteriously and when the TV turns on we will be text that will say 'HELM Productions'. The reason we have chosen the text HELM Productions is it is the first letter of all of our names and it is the only word we could make with our names the sounded slightly realistic and scary.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Film Draft
We made the draft film in around 2-3 days overall. We spent the first day getting all of our filming done and making sure we had a sufficient amount of clips for each shot to make sure we had atleast one good shot guaranteed. The large part of the filming was done by Lauren and Emmy but we all had a chance to film a some stage. Whilst one person was filming the others would be setting up the set (adding props, setting lighting e.t.c) or getting the actors ready (briefing them through the shot and its place in the film e.t.c). After we got all of the filming done we then had to get all of the editing finished. The editing was done largely by myself and by Harry but again like the filming we all edited some of the film and were all together for the editing to make sure we still all had equal input.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Our Film (Further Detail)
The Plot/Action
Our film is based around a young male who is taking pictures of a young girl who lives in the area near him. She is un-aware that he is doing so and continues to carry on her life as normal. As time goes on he begins to become more obsessed with the girl and start filming her and risks getting caught. We see clips of him cutting out photos and sticking them onto his wall as if to create a shrine of the girl and begin to become a little creeped out by the character. Later on we see him filling in a job application form possibly linked with the girl he has been stalking. Then we see a clip of him filming the girl and we have a flash back or forward in time and see him staring at her window and suddenly the blinds close.
The Genre/Theme(s)
Our film raises the issues to do with stalking/stalkers, obession and strangers, the reason for this is because of main character is a teacher in his everyday life and could be seen as 'normal' but then when we see him on his own he is a completely different character he is now strange, mysterious and a little creepy. We chose to portray our character like this to show how even the nicest most normal looking people could easily turn out to be the most nasty and strange. Based on these issues and themes we decided that our film ebst fitted a psychological thriller/drama.
The Narrative
Our film will have none or very little dialogue so we have decided to add in some non-digetic music to break the silence and add tension and create the right theme for the film. The change of music/tone will show a change in story line for example the music will get louder and faster when the situations becomes more intresting and prehaps more dangerous or scary for teh charcetrs within the film. The reason for not using any/much dialoge in the opening of the film is so that it doesn’t look unprofessional (and in order to create a proffesionaly looking movie you need proffesional actors and they tend to be hard to get a hold of).
The Character(s)
The Stalker/teacher is an attractive, tall, young man who has quite a few admirerers within his everyday job making his stalker side/personailty seem very strange and out of place. He will act completely normal when in teh position of the school teacher and will seem like and everyday person and then when he is on his own and is 'the stalker' he will be creepy and strange acting.
The Girl/Student who is being stalked by the teacher is a pretty, blonde haired blue eye girl (classic horror/thriller stereotype) who might also find the teacher attractive however in the film seem to have no knowledge that he exists. Being as the film will not really show her in the main spotlight we have not got many outstanding characteristics for her and she will simply come across andan average female, teenaged student.
The Location
Our film is located in a old house in a very quite village the house has a cellar were we will be filming the red room shots and two bedrooms one for the girl and one for the stalker. We will also be filming some shots in a school so we can show that the teacher and the student go to the same school.
Mise-en-Scene
The house in our film is set is very dark and old fashioned perfect for the stalker we will also be using older funiture in the set and a room will very dull coloured walls so that the audience will be forced to focus on the stalkers shrine of pictures. Also there is a very feminine looking bedroom with posters and things typically seen in a girls bedroom we will be adding in thigns like pink bed sheets e.t.c to help create the image of a teenage girls bedroom. The will be very little lighting in the teacher's/stalker's room only glimpses of natural light from what we imagine to be the moon. The clips in the school will have added lighting (if needed for fliming purposes) and the girls bedroom will be quite bright to show how the stalker focus on her and to connate that she is the light in his life.
Camera Work
In the opening scene we plan to use fast, quick paced camera shots of the teacher getting ready for work and putting up pictures of the girl. Every few shots we’ll have a camera flash and the camera noise to show the constant use of the Polaroid camera by the teacher and to keep with the theme of a stalker. Our camera angles will mostly consist of close ups and over the shoulder shots that only show parts of the teachers face, hands, clothes, feet to restrict how much the audience knows about the characters appearance and to maintain the mystery of him. We will also try to use alot of stranger shots e.g. low angle shots to try and keep with the genre of pyschological thriller.
The Editing
At the start of the film we are creating a montage almost of the teacher getting ready for work in his everyday schedule and fixed routine. We will crop down certain clips or maybe make them longer and slowed down to make sure that they fit in with the music and the film looks smooth and maintains continuity. We will be playing around with light and colour to help add certain things towards the mise en scene of the film.
Our film is based around a young male who is taking pictures of a young girl who lives in the area near him. She is un-aware that he is doing so and continues to carry on her life as normal. As time goes on he begins to become more obsessed with the girl and start filming her and risks getting caught. We see clips of him cutting out photos and sticking them onto his wall as if to create a shrine of the girl and begin to become a little creeped out by the character. Later on we see him filling in a job application form possibly linked with the girl he has been stalking. Then we see a clip of him filming the girl and we have a flash back or forward in time and see him staring at her window and suddenly the blinds close.
The Genre/Theme(s)
Our film raises the issues to do with stalking/stalkers, obession and strangers, the reason for this is because of main character is a teacher in his everyday life and could be seen as 'normal' but then when we see him on his own he is a completely different character he is now strange, mysterious and a little creepy. We chose to portray our character like this to show how even the nicest most normal looking people could easily turn out to be the most nasty and strange. Based on these issues and themes we decided that our film ebst fitted a psychological thriller/drama.
The Narrative
Our film will have none or very little dialogue so we have decided to add in some non-digetic music to break the silence and add tension and create the right theme for the film. The change of music/tone will show a change in story line for example the music will get louder and faster when the situations becomes more intresting and prehaps more dangerous or scary for teh charcetrs within the film. The reason for not using any/much dialoge in the opening of the film is so that it doesn’t look unprofessional (and in order to create a proffesionaly looking movie you need proffesional actors and they tend to be hard to get a hold of).
The Character(s)
The Stalker/teacher is an attractive, tall, young man who has quite a few admirerers within his everyday job making his stalker side/personailty seem very strange and out of place. He will act completely normal when in teh position of the school teacher and will seem like and everyday person and then when he is on his own and is 'the stalker' he will be creepy and strange acting.
The Girl/Student who is being stalked by the teacher is a pretty, blonde haired blue eye girl (classic horror/thriller stereotype) who might also find the teacher attractive however in the film seem to have no knowledge that he exists. Being as the film will not really show her in the main spotlight we have not got many outstanding characteristics for her and she will simply come across andan average female, teenaged student.
The Location
Our film is located in a old house in a very quite village the house has a cellar were we will be filming the red room shots and two bedrooms one for the girl and one for the stalker. We will also be filming some shots in a school so we can show that the teacher and the student go to the same school.
Mise-en-Scene
The house in our film is set is very dark and old fashioned perfect for the stalker we will also be using older funiture in the set and a room will very dull coloured walls so that the audience will be forced to focus on the stalkers shrine of pictures. Also there is a very feminine looking bedroom with posters and things typically seen in a girls bedroom we will be adding in thigns like pink bed sheets e.t.c to help create the image of a teenage girls bedroom. The will be very little lighting in the teacher's/stalker's room only glimpses of natural light from what we imagine to be the moon. The clips in the school will have added lighting (if needed for fliming purposes) and the girls bedroom will be quite bright to show how the stalker focus on her and to connate that she is the light in his life.
Camera Work
In the opening scene we plan to use fast, quick paced camera shots of the teacher getting ready for work and putting up pictures of the girl. Every few shots we’ll have a camera flash and the camera noise to show the constant use of the Polaroid camera by the teacher and to keep with the theme of a stalker. Our camera angles will mostly consist of close ups and over the shoulder shots that only show parts of the teachers face, hands, clothes, feet to restrict how much the audience knows about the characters appearance and to maintain the mystery of him. We will also try to use alot of stranger shots e.g. low angle shots to try and keep with the genre of pyschological thriller.
The Editing
At the start of the film we are creating a montage almost of the teacher getting ready for work in his everyday schedule and fixed routine. We will crop down certain clips or maybe make them longer and slowed down to make sure that they fit in with the music and the film looks smooth and maintains continuity. We will be playing around with light and colour to help add certain things towards the mise en scene of the film.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Mock Up/Editing Practice
This is a mock up of our film we have made. We decided to make this because we needed practice with the editing and effects we were going to use in our film, it also gave us a chance to have a play around with lighting and camera angles which we found very usefull. We didn't use a tripod to film and and only filmed a small part but we got a chance to try out the thing we needed to do and now feel more confident about making the final thing.
Location Shots
These are a few shots of the location that we want to use, we have taken pictures of the places we think we will film in. We have also tried putting some props into some rooms so we can get a better image of what it will look like when we are atcually filming.
Stalkers Bedrooom
We have choosen this room because it has enough space to fit in a desk and chair for us to film the stalker cutting out photos and putting them on the wall, it also has a clean white wall which we will be using to put the photos on and with the wall being white it brings more focus to the photos because the walls have no real colour.
Girls Bedroom
Stalkers Bedrooom
We have choosen this room because it has enough space to fit in a desk and chair for us to film the stalker cutting out photos and putting them on the wall, it also has a clean white wall which we will be using to put the photos on and with the wall being white it brings more focus to the photos because the walls have no real colour.
Girls Bedroom
We have two possible rooms for the girls bedroom because we have no set layout for her bedroom as we are trying not to focus on her as a character and trying to just make her room look like any other bedroom. (All of the things in the photos can either be taken out or kept as props).
Dark Room/Red Room
We have choosen this room to be the dark room because it is very dark and mysterious already and we thought that this would be perfect for a place were the stalker goes to develop his photos. (This room also really fits in with the genre of a pyschological drama/thriller because it is quite an old scary room that would often be seen in that type of film.)
Outside of Girls House
This is the outside of the girls house and we have chosen the front of the house so that the bedrooms can clearly be seen into from the outside and we would lke to include this in one of our shots.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Actors
These are the actors that we chose to be in our film. We had to think about what we wnated teh atcors to look like and come together on a joint idea of what we had in mind for them as a group. Once we had decided what we wanted the actors to look like we had to find them. Although this was the hardest part of getting the actors we luckily knew some people that fitted the ideas we had in mind.
The Stalker - Danny, the reason we chose him is because he looks older and could pass easily as an adult. We decided that we either needed an adult to play the part of the stalker or someone who looked adult and being as it was hard to get hold of adults and they didn't have much free time we knew we would have to pick someone who looked adult. We also thought it was important that the character was dark and mysterious so we decided it would be best for our character to have more browny/black hair than blond. Also Danny is a media student himself so he can provide input into our film when he is acting and have his own say on certain shots.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Target Audience/Certificate
We think the main age group of our film is going to be young adults and teenagers mainly ages 12-25 however we cannot say for certain that people older than 25 won't watch it so although the main target audience is 12-25 the market is anything from 12+. We think the general background of the people who watch our film would be middle class people and probably students who are receiving some form of education (School, College, Univeristy). We feel that our film is not targeted to either gender in particular and have tried to inlclude things both genders would like. The general likes of our audience should be films mainly horrors/thrillers and might be into TV dramas like Skins, Waterloo road general dramas that have some relevance of a school theme/stalker theme. We don't think that our audience needs to dislike anything in order to like our film being as it is mainly about what they will like. The music within the film will be classic of a thriller and used to generate tension and try and raise the audience's heartbeat so they should be into mainly instrumental music that creates high tension. We have not decicded that our audience should have anyone that they particulaly idollyse but in our film we might present teachers in a bad light so if they are a big fan of teacher this film might not be for them. We think the general media habbits have got be watching/reading things that fit the horror/thriller category whether it is at the cinema or at home aslong as they have some kind of intrest and watch them in the leisure time.
Summary
Age: 12-25 (12+)
Background: Middle class
Occupation: Student
Gender: Both
Likes: Horror + Thriller Films, School Dramas/Dramas with killers/stalkers
Dislikes: None
Musical Prefrences: High tension music (mainly instrumental)
Heros/Rolemodels: None (Able to see teacher presented in bad light)
Media Habbits: Watching Horror/Thriller Films, TV Dramas. Reading scary books that would fit the horror/thriller genre.
Certificate
In order to decide on the certificate we went onto the BBFC website (http://www.bbfc.co.uk/) and look at there certificate guidelines. After reading through we decided our film would fit the 12/12A certificate as it might not be appropriate for children under the age of 12 to watch the film unless of course they have their parents permission and they feel that there child is old enough to watch the film.
Summary
Age: 12-25 (12+)
Background: Middle class
Occupation: Student
Gender: Both
Likes: Horror + Thriller Films, School Dramas/Dramas with killers/stalkers
Dislikes: None
Musical Prefrences: High tension music (mainly instrumental)
Heros/Rolemodels: None (Able to see teacher presented in bad light)
Media Habbits: Watching Horror/Thriller Films, TV Dramas. Reading scary books that would fit the horror/thriller genre.
Certificate
In order to decide on the certificate we went onto the BBFC website (http://www.bbfc.co.uk/) and look at there certificate guidelines. After reading through we decided our film would fit the 12/12A certificate as it might not be appropriate for children under the age of 12 to watch the film unless of course they have their parents permission and they feel that there child is old enough to watch the film.
Pitch Feedback
After we pitched our idea to our class we received some feed back with possible problems that we might have in making the film, possitive comments about our film and general advice and suggestions.
The possible problems were:
-Hiding identity of psycho. *We are thinking about having some other characters in the film who are going to mysterious and strange at all times even when around people so hopefully the audience immediately thinks the stalker is them.
-Needs more of an enigma.
-Realism.
-Tough story line might be hard to make it look good.
-Getting an adult to play as the teacher. *We have choosen very carefully who we want to play the role of the stalker as they are quite adult like in appearance.
-Can’t make it obvious who the stalker is. *We will use certain shots to hide the face of the stalker and we will darken the lighting in some shots to add mystery and again hide him.
-Sound effects. *We are looking at some non copyrighted sounds for our intro and we our looking for some music to put in aswell.
The positive comments we received were:
-Good idea
-Seems well planned
-Like polaroid idea
-Original ideas
-Well researched
-Nice use of suspense/enigmas
-Like the idea of camera flash and sound effects
The advice and suggestions we received were
- Need more than two suspects
-Maybe show a scene of paranoia within girl she could be spinning?
-Get a good actor for the stalker
-Add more detail to general plot
-Use adults to act to increase realism
-Experiment with the edit to see what effects you can use and try and use different and unique sound effects in your film.
-Use unusual shots when editing, to keep the sense of it being psychological and don’t fall into usual film conventions.
Key
* - My reply to feedback
The possible problems were:
-Hiding identity of psycho. *We are thinking about having some other characters in the film who are going to mysterious and strange at all times even when around people so hopefully the audience immediately thinks the stalker is them.
-Needs more of an enigma.
-Realism.
-Tough story line might be hard to make it look good.
-Getting an adult to play as the teacher. *We have choosen very carefully who we want to play the role of the stalker as they are quite adult like in appearance.
-Can’t make it obvious who the stalker is. *We will use certain shots to hide the face of the stalker and we will darken the lighting in some shots to add mystery and again hide him.
-Sound effects. *We are looking at some non copyrighted sounds for our intro and we our looking for some music to put in aswell.
The positive comments we received were:
-Good idea
-Seems well planned
-Like polaroid idea
-Original ideas
-Well researched
-Nice use of suspense/enigmas
-Like the idea of camera flash and sound effects
The advice and suggestions we received were
- Need more than two suspects
-Maybe show a scene of paranoia within girl she could be spinning?
-Get a good actor for the stalker
-Add more detail to general plot
-Use adults to act to increase realism
-Experiment with the edit to see what effects you can use and try and use different and unique sound effects in your film.
-Use unusual shots when editing, to keep the sense of it being psychological and don’t fall into usual film conventions.
Key
* - My reply to feedback
The Pitch
We had to make a pitch for our film to quickly some it up and share our class to a small audience of people so that they could give us feedback and a chance to improve on our film.
This is the slide we had so the audience had something to look at whilst we were talking about our film however there are not a lot of slides because we decided it would be best to not give them too much to look at so they would focus more on what we were saying.
Verbal Pitch
First Slide (Intro) - "Our film is called Polaroid, the reason we have decided to call our film this is because it is a film about a character who takes picture of a girl with a polaroid camera so we felt it was a well fitting title and was short and snappy!"
Second Slide (Target Audience + Genre) - "The genre of our film is a Psychological Drama/Thriller and the main target audience is teenagers and young adults from ages 12 - 25. We feel both genders would like the film equally and although the main target audience is 12-25 we think the actual target audience could be anything from 12+. In order to gain ideas for our film we have researched into other films of a similar genre (horror/thriller) to try and get ideas the main films being; Donnie Darko, The Butterfly Effect, American Psycho, Seven (Se7en) and a few other films between us. From these films we have thought about characters general behaviours, editing, camera shots, music and almost everything within our film we have used alot of other films to inspire us for ours."
Third Slide (Plot) - "The main plot for our film is about a male teacher who is stalking and taking pictures of one of the female students at his school. The girl is completely unware that she is being followed or that the teacher has any intrest in him at all and she isn't actually seen with the teacher untill nearer the end of the clip. We have decided that opening titles we would like to use a simulatneous camera flash and camera noise and then put some credits on the screen saying something along the lines of 'produced by ,edited by e.t.c' and then after about 4 bits of text the main footage will begin without any transitions just straight cuts. We will have clips of him cutting out his photos and taking them into the dark room and then we will have clips of him getting dressed and putting his tie on so we immediately know he is a teacher at the school however we have decided we don't want to show his face so we are going to keep him hidden by using a lot of close ups or over the shoulder shots of our stalker."
This is the slide we had so the audience had something to look at whilst we were talking about our film however there are not a lot of slides because we decided it would be best to not give them too much to look at so they would focus more on what we were saying.
Verbal Pitch
First Slide (Intro) - "Our film is called Polaroid, the reason we have decided to call our film this is because it is a film about a character who takes picture of a girl with a polaroid camera so we felt it was a well fitting title and was short and snappy!"
Second Slide (Target Audience + Genre) - "The genre of our film is a Psychological Drama/Thriller and the main target audience is teenagers and young adults from ages 12 - 25. We feel both genders would like the film equally and although the main target audience is 12-25 we think the actual target audience could be anything from 12+. In order to gain ideas for our film we have researched into other films of a similar genre (horror/thriller) to try and get ideas the main films being; Donnie Darko, The Butterfly Effect, American Psycho, Seven (Se7en) and a few other films between us. From these films we have thought about characters general behaviours, editing, camera shots, music and almost everything within our film we have used alot of other films to inspire us for ours."
Third Slide (Plot) - "The main plot for our film is about a male teacher who is stalking and taking pictures of one of the female students at his school. The girl is completely unware that she is being followed or that the teacher has any intrest in him at all and she isn't actually seen with the teacher untill nearer the end of the clip. We have decided that opening titles we would like to use a simulatneous camera flash and camera noise and then put some credits on the screen saying something along the lines of 'produced by ,edited by e.t.c' and then after about 4 bits of text the main footage will begin without any transitions just straight cuts. We will have clips of him cutting out his photos and taking them into the dark room and then we will have clips of him getting dressed and putting his tie on so we immediately know he is a teacher at the school however we have decided we don't want to show his face so we are going to keep him hidden by using a lot of close ups or over the shoulder shots of our stalker."
Film Inspiration/Research
Although we got a large majority of inspiration for our film from other films (Fight Club, One Hour Photo E.t.c.) the biggest bit of inspiration for us was this episode of 'Skins' (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0840196/). In the episode a character called 'Maxxie' is being followed by a girl who is watching and taking pictures of him. Although he has never met her in his life and only has the feeling he is being 'stalked' but he is not actually aware of the fact. Within the episode there is a clip of the girl in her bedroom taking photos and sticking them on her wall we are going to use something very similar to this in our film we will have the main character cutting out photos and pinning them up to his 'shrine' of the girl he is stalking.
The video above is not the real clip it is a small video that someone else has made containing some of the clips from the episode. (Episode Link - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1188337/plotsummary)
The video above is not the real clip it is a small video that someone else has made containing some of the clips from the episode. (Episode Link - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1188337/plotsummary)
Moodboard
This is the moodboard that I made for our film. They are all pictures of other films that are similar genres or film style to ours (Psychological Drama/Thriller). I have made all the pictures look as if they were taken by a polaroid camera because in our film the main character will take all his picture with a polaroid camera. Along the top row of my mood board are the films I feel are most relevant to the film I am making as they have either provided me with ideas for the film or are very similar to the film. I tried to look at clips from all of the films in my moodboard (mainly opening sequences) and although I couldn't find a lot of great clip I managed to find all of their trailers and watch them and take down ideas.
The films in my moodboard are:
The films in my moodboard are:
- Donnie Darko http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246578/
-The Butterfly Effect http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289879/
-Fight Club http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/
-One Hour Photo http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0265459/
-The Silence of the Lambs http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102926/
-The Texas Chainsaw Massacre http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0324216/
-The Blair Witch Project http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185937/
-The Exorcist http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070047/
Research Opening Titles
Researching the Genre
Being as the guidelines for our film were to produce a 2 minute film opening I decided to look at some other film openings for inspiration and to get ideas. We had already decided as a group that our film would be a 'Psychological Drama/Thriller' so I decided to look on IMDb (Internet Movie Database www.imdb.com) and look for the top rated films for the genre's similar to ours (thriller, horror and drama).
Films I Researched
The main films I looked at were: Fight Club (www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523), One Hour Photo (www.imdb.com/title/tt0265459) and The Butterfly Effect (www.imdb.com/title/tt0289879). The reason I chose these films was I felt that they all had some sort of relevance to the film we want to create. They all have a character who has some sort of mental illness and from these films I can get ideas for camera shots, character body language, music, editing, and maybe mise en scene.
The film 'Fight Club' is based around a skitzofrenic character who believes he is fighting with another person but it is actually his imagination and he is fighting with himself. - Although the character for our movie will not be skitzofrenic he will seem to have a double personality because when he is taking photos and following the one girl he will seem very strange, mysterious and a little creepy. However when he is at school working as a teacher he is completely normal and you are maybe unaware that they are same person.
The opening sequence to Fight Club is very specific to the film and is almost all effects and only a short clip of actual footage. What we see is the inside of his brain and we are taken through all of the parts of his brain that are linked to his illness and we can see the 'abnormalities' or the causes of his skitzophrenia. (http://www.artofthetitle.com/2008/03/28/fight-club) - Fight Club Opening Sequence
The film 'One Hour Photo' is based around a very lonely old man who works in a photo development store and he begins to 'stalk' or follow a family who regularly come into the store to have their photos developed. He doesn't want to hurt them or have relations with them he just wants to become a part of there family. Along the way he becomes more and more obsessed with them and starts to find the whole thing alot easier and more 'normal'. This character and storyline is perfect for inspiring ideas for our film being as the plot and main characters are very similar they are both obsessed with one set of people or one person and begin to take pictures of them and follow there lives intensely. We will try to include mainly the character behaviours and characteristic of the stalker in this film into the one in ours and create a realistic effect of a stalker.
I couldn't find the opening sequence for this film so instead I had to analyse the trailer and clips off of YouTube. In the trailer we get to see both sides of the stalker in this film first off we see the nice friendly side of him and you would at a first glance assume he is an ordinary old man but then we are shown the 'stalker' side of him and he begins to get angry, stranger and shows alot of abnormal behaviour I would like to show a small amount of both of these behaviours in our film so that the audience can tell he is strange or a little weird simply from his characteristics. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjIBX5RrG4Q) - One Hour Photo Trailer
The film 'The Butterfly Effect' is based around a character who has a mental illness that causes him to black out for a few minutes and then we he comes back round to normality he has no idea what he has just done and sometimes he is even unaware of where he is. The main character in this film is not as similar to our film as the other two movies however the editing and camera angles are very bizarre and strange and I feel we could include some of these shots in our film. Also the effects used for when he blacks out might be use full to use something similar in our film when the stalker is taking pictures or starting to get a little more possessive.
The opening sequence to The Butterfly Effect is definitely used to grab the audiences attention and make them want more because the first scene in the film is also the last so we are immediately hit with all sorts of enigmas and questions that we want answering.(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxgeH8InR9g) - The Butterfly Effect Opening Sequence (0:00 - 2:00)
Being as the guidelines for our film were to produce a 2 minute film opening I decided to look at some other film openings for inspiration and to get ideas. We had already decided as a group that our film would be a 'Psychological Drama/Thriller' so I decided to look on IMDb (Internet Movie Database www.imdb.com) and look for the top rated films for the genre's similar to ours (thriller, horror and drama).
Films I Researched
The main films I looked at were: Fight Club (www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523), One Hour Photo (www.imdb.com/title/tt0265459) and The Butterfly Effect (www.imdb.com/title/tt0289879). The reason I chose these films was I felt that they all had some sort of relevance to the film we want to create. They all have a character who has some sort of mental illness and from these films I can get ideas for camera shots, character body language, music, editing, and maybe mise en scene.
The film 'Fight Club' is based around a skitzofrenic character who believes he is fighting with another person but it is actually his imagination and he is fighting with himself. - Although the character for our movie will not be skitzofrenic he will seem to have a double personality because when he is taking photos and following the one girl he will seem very strange, mysterious and a little creepy. However when he is at school working as a teacher he is completely normal and you are maybe unaware that they are same person.
The opening sequence to Fight Club is very specific to the film and is almost all effects and only a short clip of actual footage. What we see is the inside of his brain and we are taken through all of the parts of his brain that are linked to his illness and we can see the 'abnormalities' or the causes of his skitzophrenia. (http://www.artofthetitle.com/2008/03/28/fight-club) - Fight Club Opening Sequence
The film 'One Hour Photo' is based around a very lonely old man who works in a photo development store and he begins to 'stalk' or follow a family who regularly come into the store to have their photos developed. He doesn't want to hurt them or have relations with them he just wants to become a part of there family. Along the way he becomes more and more obsessed with them and starts to find the whole thing alot easier and more 'normal'. This character and storyline is perfect for inspiring ideas for our film being as the plot and main characters are very similar they are both obsessed with one set of people or one person and begin to take pictures of them and follow there lives intensely. We will try to include mainly the character behaviours and characteristic of the stalker in this film into the one in ours and create a realistic effect of a stalker.
I couldn't find the opening sequence for this film so instead I had to analyse the trailer and clips off of YouTube. In the trailer we get to see both sides of the stalker in this film first off we see the nice friendly side of him and you would at a first glance assume he is an ordinary old man but then we are shown the 'stalker' side of him and he begins to get angry, stranger and shows alot of abnormal behaviour I would like to show a small amount of both of these behaviours in our film so that the audience can tell he is strange or a little weird simply from his characteristics. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjIBX5RrG4Q) - One Hour Photo Trailer
The film 'The Butterfly Effect' is based around a character who has a mental illness that causes him to black out for a few minutes and then we he comes back round to normality he has no idea what he has just done and sometimes he is even unaware of where he is. The main character in this film is not as similar to our film as the other two movies however the editing and camera angles are very bizarre and strange and I feel we could include some of these shots in our film. Also the effects used for when he blacks out might be use full to use something similar in our film when the stalker is taking pictures or starting to get a little more possessive.
The opening sequence to The Butterfly Effect is definitely used to grab the audiences attention and make them want more because the first scene in the film is also the last so we are immediately hit with all sorts of enigmas and questions that we want answering.(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxgeH8InR9g) - The Butterfly Effect Opening Sequence (0:00 - 2:00)
Monday, January 18, 2010
Shameless Opening Credits/Title Sequence
I watched the Shameless opening credits (series 5) and this is what I have annotated about it.
Enigmas
- People running from shop, could suggest stealing. Audience might want them to be caught/punished or just find out who they are.
- Fire, small child buring things in a fire could suggest danger and attract the audience because they might fear for him or want to know why he is doing it. Also somethign on the stove is burning and we might wonder if this could lead to more e.g. house fire.
- Gun, we might want to know why the young lad is being held a gun point. We will want to know what he has done, why he did it and how he is going to be punished (killed, wounded e.t.c).
- Fight, again similar to the gun problem we want to know why a large fight has broken out in the pub and what will become of it.
- Police, we see several police standing around and then see a car driving off quickly with it lights and sirens on we want to know why it is doing this!
Editing
- The editing is all very fast and there are no transitions in between the shots to soften the cuts this makes the visual effect very fast and sharp. I would say personally that they have chosen to use editing like this to suggest that the program is very fast moving and sharp and prehaps they suggest danger like how quickly things can spiral out of control. E.g. The fight, the fires, the boy being held a gun point e.t.c. Many of these situations probably started off as calm, quiet situations but very rapidly became dangerous and threataning. Another possible reason for the fast editing could be to simulate a heartbeat as when we get in trouble or get scared we produce adrenalin and our hearts begin to work harder and these quick cuts could be respresenting there/our heartbeat as they get in dangerous situations.
Soundtrack
- The music in background (presumably non-diegetic) has been clevely selected and sounds alot like emergency service sirens the music is very repetitiv (again like sirens)and helps along with the editing suggest that these program is going to include things that we as the audience might consider 'taboo' and could attract the audience to want to watch as we will be able to witness things that we probably don't see in our every day lifes.
- There is also a voice over from the main character of the show and despite a lot of things happening in the background we are still able to focus on his voice and what he is saying and I think it is important that we can do this. Allthough if this character was real and we saw him in real life we would probably completely ignore what he is saying as we would probably just assume he is 'rambling' on about nothing. However what he is saying is important because it helps us get to know the characters (along with the visual appearance we have in thh background). He talks about how 'pikeys' have it better than him and are able to leave a mess where ever they want without punishment and complains that his life is unfair and that all his family does is moan to him. He then goes on to talk about how drugs and alcohol are a good invention because they can releive this 'stress' he is going through by getting him drunk or drugged up. We can presume that he is a jobless father who dosen't pay tax, recieves benefits and considers himself poverty and loses no pride in taking from others all from the things he says in the space of just over one minute.
Mise en scene
- The mise en scene is particually clever in shameless and very well thought out the characters they are trying to create are prehaps people who have little money and either have little wage jobs or no jobs at all and spend the little money they have on alcohol and drugs. We see what we might assume to be lower class housing/flat estates and alot of the streets are filled with people even at day time, and being as we assume this to be a small village we would usually not see many people in the day being as they would be at school or at work. The clothes they are wearing we might presume are cheap and not branded or of high quality we can say this because we don't see anyone wearing suits, ties or smart shoes, there clothes look damaged or dirty and don't quite seem to fit properly (we might think that the reason for them not fitting properly is because they are 'hand me downs' clothes past from one sibling to another to save money buy not having to buy new clothes for the other child(ren). Also we see alot of pint glasses/wine glasses and ash trays lying around because stereotypically we might think that these people are all lower class and take drugs and smoke and the creators have decided to be very over the top in this way and made sure almost everyone fits up to their stereotypes so the audience can see instantly what type of character they are.
"Shameless" — Series five opening titles.
Sue | MySpace Video
Enigmas
- People running from shop, could suggest stealing. Audience might want them to be caught/punished or just find out who they are.
- Fire, small child buring things in a fire could suggest danger and attract the audience because they might fear for him or want to know why he is doing it. Also somethign on the stove is burning and we might wonder if this could lead to more e.g. house fire.
- Gun, we might want to know why the young lad is being held a gun point. We will want to know what he has done, why he did it and how he is going to be punished (killed, wounded e.t.c).
- Fight, again similar to the gun problem we want to know why a large fight has broken out in the pub and what will become of it.
- Police, we see several police standing around and then see a car driving off quickly with it lights and sirens on we want to know why it is doing this!
Editing
- The editing is all very fast and there are no transitions in between the shots to soften the cuts this makes the visual effect very fast and sharp. I would say personally that they have chosen to use editing like this to suggest that the program is very fast moving and sharp and prehaps they suggest danger like how quickly things can spiral out of control. E.g. The fight, the fires, the boy being held a gun point e.t.c. Many of these situations probably started off as calm, quiet situations but very rapidly became dangerous and threataning. Another possible reason for the fast editing could be to simulate a heartbeat as when we get in trouble or get scared we produce adrenalin and our hearts begin to work harder and these quick cuts could be respresenting there/our heartbeat as they get in dangerous situations.
Soundtrack
- The music in background (presumably non-diegetic) has been clevely selected and sounds alot like emergency service sirens the music is very repetitiv (again like sirens)and helps along with the editing suggest that these program is going to include things that we as the audience might consider 'taboo' and could attract the audience to want to watch as we will be able to witness things that we probably don't see in our every day lifes.
- There is also a voice over from the main character of the show and despite a lot of things happening in the background we are still able to focus on his voice and what he is saying and I think it is important that we can do this. Allthough if this character was real and we saw him in real life we would probably completely ignore what he is saying as we would probably just assume he is 'rambling' on about nothing. However what he is saying is important because it helps us get to know the characters (along with the visual appearance we have in thh background). He talks about how 'pikeys' have it better than him and are able to leave a mess where ever they want without punishment and complains that his life is unfair and that all his family does is moan to him. He then goes on to talk about how drugs and alcohol are a good invention because they can releive this 'stress' he is going through by getting him drunk or drugged up. We can presume that he is a jobless father who dosen't pay tax, recieves benefits and considers himself poverty and loses no pride in taking from others all from the things he says in the space of just over one minute.
Mise en scene
- The mise en scene is particually clever in shameless and very well thought out the characters they are trying to create are prehaps people who have little money and either have little wage jobs or no jobs at all and spend the little money they have on alcohol and drugs. We see what we might assume to be lower class housing/flat estates and alot of the streets are filled with people even at day time, and being as we assume this to be a small village we would usually not see many people in the day being as they would be at school or at work. The clothes they are wearing we might presume are cheap and not branded or of high quality we can say this because we don't see anyone wearing suits, ties or smart shoes, there clothes look damaged or dirty and don't quite seem to fit properly (we might think that the reason for them not fitting properly is because they are 'hand me downs' clothes past from one sibling to another to save money buy not having to buy new clothes for the other child(ren). Also we see alot of pint glasses/wine glasses and ash trays lying around because stereotypically we might think that these people are all lower class and take drugs and smoke and the creators have decided to be very over the top in this way and made sure almost everyone fits up to their stereotypes so the audience can see instantly what type of character they are.
"Shameless" — Series five opening titles.
Sue | MySpace Video
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