Location 0.3 (CCTV)

When I went to my location to take the images I noticed a few CCTV cameras near to the spots  at the location where i would be shooting. This then triggered the idea that I could actually use these CCTV cameras in my film by shooting certain scenes as if they were captured by the cameras. 

Location 0.2 (Comparison)

In this picture I tried to recreate one of the images from my storyboard. I then put them into the same image to compare the two, showing original concept and roughly what the final shot should look like. I also desaturated the image and altered the brightness and contrast to get the look I am aiming it in my final production.

Location Shots

These are some picture I took of the location I am going to use, Pier Road car park.

Fight Scenes/Music

In fight scenes or scenes of extended violence in movies the music will change between calm (or none) to dramatic/epic or heavy music. This will normally depend on what type of film it is. For example in 300 the music during fight scens is quite orchestral and dramatic. In The Matrix: Reloaded though there is a fight scene in a mansion and the music is quite heavy and electronic. 300 is a film set in the age of the Romans and the music used is classical and is fitting with the time period and likewise with the Matrix. My film is set in modern day so i want to use quite modern music. In one film i looked at,severance, the music during the intro is innapropriate but it works really well because of this. I am currently looking at different songs to put in but as i do not have any footage to try them on it is hard for me to decide what songs will actually work with the final product.

My Animatic .1

Today i started on an amimatic of my storyboard. I put everything together but when all the pictures came together i did not like it. As i storyboard i feel ot works well but for an animatic I feel the gaps between scenes are quite drastic. I ideally need more pictures to go inbetween some of the scenes to link everything together, because at the moment some of the scenes dont seem to link together. To fix this i am going to go back and draw more pictures to fill in the blanks to make the animatic make more sense and give it more length, as the length of my animatic is no way near representative of what I aim to achieve!

Animatics

An animatic is an animated storyreel (or storyboard). They are often used to give viewers a better feel for what the final outcome will look like without doing any shooting. Animatics use the pictures from the storyboard(s) and show them in concession to create the idea of movement. SOme more advandced animatics will be animated, but never entireley, so that it is easier for the viewer (generally the production crew) to get an idea of what the final product should look like.
I have my storyboard finished, well page 1 of it anyway, and i am going to start working on turning it into an animatic, which i will then post at a later date. Below is an example of an animatic for the video of the song Dirty Harry by The Gorrilaz

My Storyboard (Page 1)

This is my first page of my storyboard for my film intro.  As you can see i have made 6 small drawings on the page showing the general look i want for each scene showing basic camera angles. The text underneath each picture describes any camera movement and actions in the scene. 

Storyboarding

A storyboard is a series of images similar to a comic strip which is used in the early stages of creating a film. The story boarding stage normally comes after the script has been approved. They help to visualize the film by showing actions, camera angles and dialogue in the scene. Although not rough sketches the drawings used in storyboards are never normally highly detailed as they are designed to give people a general fell for how the film will look. By not including great amounts of detail in the storyboard it keeps everything open to change if need be. 

Here is an example of part of a storyboard :

This section of the storyboard was used for Star Wars. It is not clear which one it is from because it is an early concept. As you can see there is very little in the way of backgrounds, leaving to open for change. Also the writing at the bottom shows camera angles, movement and basic actions of the clip. 

Tzvetan Todorov

Tzvetan Todorov is famous for simplifying the idea of narrative theory. His theory made narrative simpler yet more complicated at the same time. He made it simpler to understand but allowed more complex interpretations.

The Theory:

The fictional environment begins with a state of equilibrium (everything is as it should be in a state of equal balance between powers of any kind, where equality of importance or effect exists among the various parts of any complex unity).It then suffers some disruption (disequilibrium).New equilibrium is produced at the end of the narrative.

The 5 Sections of the theory:

1.A state of equilibrium (All is as it should be.)
2.A disruption of that order by an event.
3.A recognition that the disorder has occurred.
4.An attempt to repair the damage of the disruption.
5.A return or restoration of a NEW equilibrium

The structure of his theory creates a circular pattern where everything starts well, something bad happens, something good happens and everything is good again in the ending. Todorov's theory is still used in practically every modern day film and is responsible for most film master

Finished Preliminary

This is my finished video for the preliminary task. I finished it a while ago but I've only just gotten round to posting it! I shot it at my school using one of the empty design tech rooms. I put it all together using IMovie HD and created the "Priliminary" (sorry for the miss spelling) opening titles using a progam called Adobe After Effects. I really like the shot from above showing Will R's hand as he walks in through the door. Its quite an unusual shot to show him walking through the door but i think it is quite effective!

Preliminary Task

This week we have been working on our Preliminary tasks. We have to focus on walking up to a door, opening it, walking through, sitting down and having a short conversation. Me, Will B and Will R have been working on 3 different videos, experimenting with camera angles, including the 180 rule, and different shots. 

Finished Demo

This is the demo video we have been working on.

Editing

Over the past week we have been making a demo video to test out the editing services available to us in school. We have made a short video and edited it in iMovie to see what we could do. Installed on my own laptop i have adobe after effects though so i would prefer to use this for the final video. Because of this i have also been looking at some tutorials on how to achieve special effects.  I have mainly been looking at cool title scenes and lighting effects because i want a really stylistic film. 

My Films genre

I have decided on a genre for my film. I have decided to shoot my film in a Sin City style and have decided to experiment with the style in a thriller. I think that the style could be lent to the thriller genre really effectively.

Target Audiences

Every film has a target audience. For example a cartoon film will be generally targeted at a children and a teen comedy would be targeted at teens! On every film their is an age rating. This shows the level of explicit content and the target audience. U's and PG's will be suitable for most children under the age of 8. 12's will often have tame violence and mild/infrequent swearing. 15 rated films will usually have strong violence frequent use of strong language and occasional sex references. 18's can contain basically anything. There are very few restrictions on content. Every film must carry an age classification which is awarded to it by an outside classification body.

Severance (Music)

The opening of Severance is of 2 half naked foreign girls and a middle aged fat man running through a forest. They are dirty and look scared. The backing music is a calm song with no lyrics, something not to dissimilar to what you could expect to hear at a ballet recital. Although it doesn't fit the mood it works well and creates a weird sense of tension. As the continue running the two girls fall into a pitfall trap. The man looks down and they shout for help in a different language but he keeps running. A few seconds later he is also caught in a trap and is hanging from a tree by his leg. You see from his perspective and you see the lower half of a man in a trench coat approach him with a hunting knife in hand. The man continues and sticks the knife into the mans stomach. As the blood starts trickling down his body and on to his face a really happy song comes on and then it fades away to a tour bus. The contrast of the happy song with the brutal act which has just taken place gives a really weird effect. Is it meant to be quite a violent scene but with the happy tune you also quite want to laugh, it creates confusion of emotions amongst the viewer because they are unsure wether it is appropriate to laugh or not! The use of music is greatly effective here as it creates the confusion and makes the opening memorable.

Cloverfield (Camera)

Today i watched Cloverfield. A fictional story of a group of friends trying to stay alive during a monster attack on New York. The film is shot entirely from a hand held camera and as well as giving some people motion sickness it really helps the immersion in the film because it is as if you are looking through one of the survivors eyes. Also becuase it is done on a handheld camera it gives the director way to make it seem like someones personal camera which inturn gives him a way of introducing charecters! Cloverfield opens with text explaining that the following footage is confidential footage on the case named cloverfield. The film than starts with footage of the main charecter being woken up by a female charecter (whom at thispoint you cannot see because she is holding the camera) and it goes into clips of a few days before the event introducing the charecters. I would not say that the opening of Cloverfield is anything close to a memorable begining but it serves its purpose. It introduces main charecters by having thier lives before the monster attack instead of trying to introduce these charecters to you in the midst of a fight between the military and the monster!

Current Ideas

So far from the research i have done i have decided that i would really like to shoot my film in a Sin City styled manor, where i don't use color apart from the odd bit to highlight something if it is possible to achieve this effect. As of yet i have not decided on a genre as there are many genres this style could lend itself to successfully. In Sin City it is used for a Gangster/Crime genre but i think it would be a very effective style to use for a thriller/Horror film because you could make just the blood red in a scene etc! I also like the way that Sin City uses cartoon sections where it is hand drawn to do certain scenes. This could be an interesting effect to use for a death scene because you wouldn't have to worry about bad acted or unrealistic deaths. This is away around a potentially film ruining clip.

Sin City

I have recently watch the film Sin City and was completely drawn in by it. It is based on the graphic novel of the same title and with that in mind the director chose to keep with the same style of the comic books, trying to stay as close to the original art as possible. Because of this the film has a very unique look. It is filmed entirely in black an white with the occasional section of scenes in color. This adds great dramatic effect and is used effectively to draw the viewers attention to certain points of a scene which normally have great relevance even if it does not seem to have any relevance at all at the time! This effect makes the viewer think why the attention has been drawn to that specific character when there appears to be nothing important about them and in a certain case the character is highlighted to the viewer (through having her cornea in color) quite early on in the film but it is not until much later in the film that you see her importance in the plot.

The use of camera angles is hugely effective. If you were to compare sections of the graphic novel to clips of the film they are very similar. Creating an angle in a graphic novel is alot easier than it is in a film because you create the scene and you can make it exactly how you want where as in films you are restricted by space and the 3D area around you as to where you can get the camera and although the film industry has improved alot and the range of camera angle a film maker is now able to achieve has vastly improved since the beginning of the film industry you can still not get the same diversity of shots as u could create with pencil and paper. The way that the director has tried to keep the camera shots as similar to the stills from the graphic novel as possible creating a great effect especially for fans of the series.



The only thing I found with Sin City is that you must be paying alot of attention to the film because the plot jumps around alot and the different story lines intertwine and all link together, meaning this film couldn't really be watched casually unless you don't care for story and your just watching for the over the top cartoon action. The main thing i would take away from the film though is the style in which it is shot. i would love to use this effect in my film as i think it could be used effectively in various genres(action, horror/thriller, gangster/crime) and still not look out of place.

The Hills Have Eyes

Today i watched The Hills Have Eyes, a horrer/thriller based on the orginal 1977 film of the same name. There is lots of stong violence throughout the film but the part i found most striking about the film is the intro. The film begins with a small block of text. The text explains the contreversy of the use and testing of atomic bombs during the the late 40's and how the american government to this day are still denying the fact that the nuclear falllout caused during these blasts has any genetic effects on living matter. The scene then cuts to a small group of american researchers in Bio-Hazard suits scanning an area of american dessert for radiation when they are ambushed and killed by a group of "mutants". The death of the final researchers triggers the opening credits. Behind the credits are various film reels of the testing of atomic bombs with quick snaps of nutated faces and bodies. The videos used are very strong and hardhitting, showing the power of the bombs and linking it to the mutants you have just seen, Comparing the huge destructive power with the incredible violnce of the mutants from the previous scene.

SE7VEN

Today in our media lesson we watched sections of the film Se7en. In this film you can really see the importance of locations for ambiance. The hallway scene with the police entering one of the victims room is especially effective because there is no dialougue but the way the producer chooses to have a barely lit hallway with a 4 men with barrel mounted torches on thier rifles moving through the halls. The way the torch light is used creates a creepy and suspensive mood to the scene.