My Group has been decided

Our group was put together randomly and it finally worked out well. Although you could possibly be put with someone you do not see eye to eye with, thats how the movie business works. You do not work with your friends in the real world in most situations, so we all knew we had to just suck it up and deal with it. 

My two new partners?
  

Imogen, bubbly and kind. She has a lot idea's. I am sure she will be confident with creating everything together when it comes to the acting and camera work she knows what she is talking about. I will really enjoy working with her, hopefully we see eye to eye. 

Phoebe, great at drawing so she is going to all over those story boards. A like Immy, Phoebe has a lot of ideas so I hope that we will get on very well and we can come to a final decision on our idea together quickly and sufficiently.

Initial Idea 4

A girl is stumbling home, she is drunk and alone. Vulnerability is what I want to get across in the opening. She is trying to call someone and hail for cabs but nothing is going her way. She goes to message her friend which in the voicemail you learn that her friend has left her by accident. The message she sends after is "It's okay. Will walk home then, no free lifts." She starts walking home and goes by a small children's swing park in the dark. The camera moves in the swing park, filming the girl walking past and then stopping. The camera is pointing to show someone's point of view. This shot then brings in some underground rap music, showing that the person watching her is listening to this. She walks and then stops and looks in the camera's direction. The screen goes black, she is not safe.

The girls ex boyfriend . He is put under cover to find the killer, forcing to be mixed in with the gang that killed his ex partner. 

Initial Idea 3

Candles, walls with scraped walls, noises of screaming, scratching nails. Her bones clicking makes the audience screech. It all starts with a shot outside the country home, all you can hear is noise going on inside. The screams will be heard from outside, faint, trying to be naturalistic. It will then go in the room and have close up shots of everything in the room, to show a satanic ritual going on, shots of things that will make the audience uncomfortable, like the girl in close up touching her eyeball. This opening will be styled like Kyle Cooper.

This will continue to be the story of a girl is apart of a church which has it's own organisation, which is secret. When joining she realises that they are performing exorcisms, she takes part. But unfortunately she become possessed herself.

Initial Idea 2

Eating her dinner, a young girl, around 15. Shot is from his back not seeing his face. He eats slowly, shots of the dark outside. You see he is eating a large cake, alone, dark. He gets up, walks off. As this happens the camera tilts up to find his whole family on top of each other dead.

The eating of the cake will be slow, so that when the bodies are introduced, it is a large shock to the audience. You know there is something coming, suspense builds, but the audience will not expect this. I want the boy quite young, so that it makes it worse. My inspiration was a documentary was the story of the Richardson family, a 12 year old girl who massacred her family, including her 8 year old brother. This would be a similar story for the full film, but it will be from the detectives point of view trying to hunt this girl down. They think that she has been a victim, captured by the murderer, but in fact it was all her.

Initial Idea 1

A women is sat at dinner. She is silent, not speaking a word. But her mind, her mind is thinking, thinking hard.  Sat across is her young pig like husband. Her main thoughts are dangerous. She is exploring how to end his ‘miserable’ life. Poison, overdose, stabbing, suffocation… a gun. A gun attracts her. But when. Sleeping? Away from home? … or just now?

She shoots him.

This movie fully would be about her going on the run. In style wise, I will be very inspired by the colour scheme of Reservoir Dogs, just the black, white and red (the blood), also Funny Games Michael Haneke. I want to keep it clinical, which will make the thrill even more immense

Analyzing a Thriller Trailer - Mystic River

Connotation and Dennotation?

Connotation

Connotation is a meaning of an object. What you would automatically associate the object with. Almost all objects have a connotation 

Best Example?

The Classic Kitchen Knife!

When you see a kitchen knife in a close 

up shot in a film it will, most of the time,

relate to being a soon murder weapon. 

Obviously it could easily just be for cooking

the characters dinner but we have been watching

films all our life with knifes as murder 

weapons so commonly and naturally this would 

be our first thought. 

Denotation

The actual definition of what something is.

What is a Thriller?

Every teenagers instant thought when asked a question, how do you find the best specific answer? GOOGLE

Google's definition is pretty straight forward. So many films are categorized as thrillers. So many of them are my favorites. 

    

                                                                                            

Films likes these have all got something in common,

mystery, suspense. Most thrillers are focussed on 'crime and espionage'. This shows that there is usually some sort of large

objective which the characters must get over, this is usually 

the case with a film.   

"My Favorite Thriller?"

The Usual Suspects is definitely on that list. 

With one of the best twists in movie history or 

what I believe is, Usual Suspects has always been

a great inspiration of mine when it came to film 

making.

Prelim Immy Evans & Kai Gillespie Final Work

Our final edited Preliminary Task!

A Few Faults...?

Yes watching this final piece of our finished work, I really can see some obvious mistakes. This is such an important part of the film making process so my partner and I learned. 

Sound?

Sound is so important in editing, considering that it can create and change a mood. There was a lot of broken sounds during our clip, but I tried to keep it constant and flow as much as possible. 

Some Continuity Problems?

Between both of these shots the continuity

here was broken. As you will see when you 

watch the video. 

Defined Preliminary Exercise

Defined Preliminary Exercise

Video

Preliminary exercise: Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

Main task: the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.

All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source. Both preliminary and main tasks may be done individually or as a group. Maximum four members to a group.

Editing Our Prelim Part 2!

Second Editing Session

This time around in the editing session was basically having a fresh look at last weeks work on our Prelim task. Immy and I realized that the clip was very fast, with no time to breath. The shots were so close together, with the actors moving so quickly we decided to leave that on as the original and have a second try at editing it.

We decided to suite her 'lovestruck theme' that we would change it to Black & White. This suited the script and etc.

Last time, editing part one, my partner and I were so close to finishing editing. But rushing would have been silly because then we would not get to understand Adobe Premiere as much. 

Through this spear time, looking through our work, we realized that looking over the sound and continuity would be a great way to use up our time. Any damaged flaw was taken away. This was hard considering some shots included different surroundings such as the door being open or the flower not in the boys hand. This made it a challenge, and we tried our best. 

To add to our 'sequence' at the end of the shots, we added a fading black picture to fade the story away. 

Later while learning that it is always great to be creative when editing, we made a song out of words used in the dialogue of the actors. This was humorous and witty. 

Editing Our Prelim Part One!

After filming last week, our groups were split up into a group of two and a group of three. Immy and I were to then to edit the short clips we filmed the week before. The software we used was Adobe Premier, a software were I thought the lay out was much more simple is essence than final cut pro.

 There were a few steps we used to get our editing process going, first we imported the files into Adobe Premiere by clicking the already imported MXF files, which is the format of the film in the camera. Next we were too create a file in the small box area were our clips opened in Premiere, this file was called a bin, it is so that everything is organized, making you editing process easier. I learned that not only are you supposed to put your files all in a Bin which we called Rushes, but also make a file called the Log Bin which is the place where you put your good clips in, the ones that are going in your final work. It makes it much neater to edit when using a Log Bin. 

During you editing it is so important that you just keep saving your work, because randomly the compute could just cut out and all your work would be lost. A control that can make your saving much easier rather than using File and the save, you can just press Command S on the apple computer which will automatically save your work. 

When finally picking the best clips that will be best to edit, I watched them over and over in order to see which part was the perfect one for the sequence in the scene, it is very much like a jigsaw puzzle, you must always remember continuity. If the shot before does not add up, for example then sound or is a door is open in the last shot but i the new one it is shut, it can effect your editing and can capture the eyes of the audience watching rather than watching the actual short film. 

When selecting the moments that I wanted to put in the film, I would watch it, then when it came along press Command I, which means the start of what you want to drag down, and the Command O to have the complete short clip you want for the drag down board. 

Sound bridges were also very important in a part of the sequence. We used a clip with our main character speaking , then placed another clip on top of it, muting that one. This means that you can still hear the character speaking over the new clip, they are in sync. 

Opening Sequence of Sexy Beast (overview)

The opening sound in this scene is just the noise of crickets, which always refers to a hot location. The opening shot of the beaming sun ties in with the sound here. The shot stays for a while, meanwhile the main character, Ray Winston (Actor), his voice starts to speak over the shot. We immediately know that it is train of though we can hear. The fact that he is consistently talking about how 'boiling' and 'roasting' he feels, because it is said over the sun, crickets chirping, you instantly feel as an audience the sticky warmth that the main character is feeling. 

The next shot of him laying on the deck char has great colours. As he is just so brown with his tan line visible, the light cream floor and white deck chair just give this vibe as if he is a piece of meat being grilled. The oil next to him, along with beer bottles let the audience know that not only has he been there for a while he has had three beers as well. 

During the dialogue with the pool boy, the rule of thirds is used here, the main subject (Winston) is sat on the rule of thirds line, this gives the shot good composition. 

The shots of the women in the car right after show his house, which indicates that she is on her way there...

The music, Peaches by The Stranglers, adds to the theme of the film, its cheeky and sexy. 

Opening Sequence of the Shining (overview)

Stanley Kubrick

This opening sequence is long, but yet Kubrick s creation of it is genius. The long non stopping shots keep you on age as the camera swoops down into all different angles. You immediate reaction as an audience is to believe that something is soon going to happen, as the opening sequence to this fantastic film is very long. You instantly believe that the main characters are going to be introduced. One of the main details that makes this apparent is the small bright yellow beetle driving along the road. The camera swoops down right next to car, with meeting the main characters, the audience believes this will put them more at ease, which is not happening because of the Horror Styled classical music in the background.

My Favourite Scene Presentation

 

I choose for my favorite scene from Clockwork Orange.I do prefer the scene that involves the most violence,with the brutal rape scene, but it was too explicit for my class.This scene is also very important in my eyes in Stanley Kubrick's, genius, clockwork orange. The music creates a dance atmosphere in the fight scene. There is so many things I like about it, which is all included in my presentation. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtRGeyznv7k 

Our Prelim Project, Filming

The start of our prelim project was interesting. I was gave the role of the director or I choose the role of the director. I like to be in control and know what is all going on when it comes to filming a sequence. 

• Libby (Camera Man)
• Imogen (Actor)
• Georgina (Actor)
• George (Actor)
• Kai (Director)

Libby and I, as we were behind the camera and in charge of keeping the camera at the right shots and getting everything we needed to get. We found it was difficult to get our filming 'monologues' as you could call that, but we soon knew our roles and what we needed to say, which I will discuss further down. It was hard with the actors at times because of the weather outside. When we as a group got a shot wrong, or lines were forgotten the actor found it hard to got outside again. But this I suppose is something that is normal to occur.

Our idea was mostly to have the actress (Imogen) come in and devote her love to the person in the room (Georgina). It was easy on dialogue so it was not so difficult to shoot every shot the whole way through every time. 

With every shot we were needing to capture, instead of just getting a small clip of every shot that we needed, we filmed the whole scene every time for each angle. This made so much more sense when you needed to see that angle multiple time during the whole sequence, meaning you would have it in one time. This will make the next part of the process, the editing much easier for us, this will help the clips run much more smoothly together. 

During this lesson I also learned some new sayings to actually help the whole filming process:


Stand by : the director is asking everyone if they are ready to shoot, if the whole set are ready for the word go.

Standing by: This notifies the director that everyone is ready to start shooting

Roll Camera: The director gives the instruction that they camera has to start recording with his/her knowledge that everyone is ready to film the scene.

Camera Rolling: This means the Camera Man/Woman has pressed the recording button for the take to begin. 

Action: The director calls this out when he knows the camera is rolling, this alerts everyone that is working on the scene that they can begin. Also alerts everyone to be quiet. 


The Sequence Plan ...

 
















We changed the total dialogue of the scene. This was slightly dangerous because it could confuse us when it came to keeping the new shots. There was closeup shots, were at times were difficult  with the actors sometimes getting there heads cut or possibly being covered by the other one, or just moving themselves out of shot. 

 

Pictures of the day :