Film Opening Update 7

Film Opening Update 7

On Thursday 13th we, and other groups showed the first cut of our film openings. We got some good feedback, an example of which would be someone noticing an unintentional shake of the camera at the end of the shot of Red running down the hill. The feedback we received can be summarized quite well as we need more context, more filming and better soundtrack to improve our opening.

Film Opening Update 6

Film Opening Update 6

This weekend of filming was cancelled as a result of Dan being unavailable due to illness.

Film Opening Update 5

Film Opening Update 5

Today Dan continued to edit the opening and I went off to another computer room to do an animated sequence utilizing our company logo for the film opening. Unfortunately I cannot upload the video to this blog due to its size.  

Production Context

Production Context

The name of my group's production company is Terra Somnia. Which is Latin for  land of dreams.

Above is our logo, drawn by Amber.

Film Opening Update 4

Film Opening Update 4

On Thursday Amber and I began filming for our film opening, Dan was not present on Thursday as he had a history class. On this day we filmed in the decrepit old church, a run down old barn and we improvised a shot of Red in a ritual like circle in the forest which we found when returning home. Towards the end of the shooting day the weather became very windy and as such whilst filming in the circle I was almost blown over resulting in a very poor shot, so we are going to try to film there again at some point.

On Friday we continued filming, this time with Dan's assistance. We filmed the shots of  Red outside the nicer church, Red standing atop a hill, Red running down the hill. While we were filming outside the church a group of elderly people came past and held up filming, though not in a belligerent way. On Friday Amber and  Paige(our actress playing Red) were booked for hair cuts and Dan had to leave at 14:30 coinciding with the hair cut, this limited the amount of time we had to film but while Paige was having her hair cut Amber and I attempted to film the shot of Red's cloak falling, whilst we had the technique figured out the prop that we were using to hold the cloak up lacked any kind of shoulders meaning that the cloak had no real shape to it. After we had done this we decided to call it a day and go home.

Saturday's shoot was cancelled due to foul weather.

On Sunday we returned to shooting, minus Dan who did not show up due to a communications error. We decided to shoot outside the decrepit old church and redo the interior shots that we did on Thursday. Whilst doing the outside shots there was an accident which resulted in a very large tear to the cloak. We also redid the shots in the barn, but after these we decided to go home due to the rip in the cloak and worsening weather.

Over all I believe that we made pretty good use of the four day weekend.

Film Opening Update 3

Film Opening Update 3

Yesterday Amber, Dan and myself met up in Wadesmill and went to all of the potential locations. Amber and Dan took photographs of  the locations  as we had a look around and some of these photographs are available below.

As you can see we are still planning on filming our opening in a countryside forest type of environment but we are also considering using the run down old barn and church for some shots.

Film opening Update 2

Film opening Update 2

Above is a picture of my group, from left to right you see: Myself, Amber and Daniel.

In today's lesson we continued to develop our opening. We have decided on the costume. Red will be wearing a red hood, possibly two different ones, a nice clean one and a shaggy dirty one. Red may also be wearing black underneath her hood when she is in her wolf persona, and more casual clothes when she is normal. She may also be barefoot in her wolf persona  but wearing shoes in her normal persona.

The wolf persona will be wearing fake nails and the normal girl will be made to look pale by use of make up.

We have also allocated our roles. I will be the cameraman, Dan will be the Editor and Amber will be the Director.

Props will be a wicker basket, fruit and mouldy fruit.

Our shoots will mostly be on Sundays, on the 11th we will be going to the potential shoot locations to get a feel for the place and possibly do some practise filming. On the 18th we will be doing costume and prop gathering and some idea developments. On the long weekend the 22nd to the 25th we will be returning to the locations to do some filming for the outdoors shots and possibly the shot that will have the moon in it. Then on the 2nd of December we will go to the location for the darker outdoor shots and shots of the church(s).

Film opening Update

Film opening Update

Shoot location has been decided as the Wadesmill/Thundridge area, some photos are available at the bottom of this post. This is as there are some good 'countryside' areas such as fields and woods and it is a relatively close location which is convenient.

Music has also been decided, initially Amber proposed that the music be CMYK by James Blake; however this song was copyrighted so it has been replaced by the copyright free song Little Red Riding Hood by Sam The Sham & The Pharaohs . We feel that this song will work with our film opening in the same way as the opening theme and video work for the television series True Blood.

Photographs taken by Amber Law

Film Treatment: Red

Film Treatment: Red

For the film opening task I am going to be working in a group with Amber Law and Daniel Faint. Our Idea for a film treatment is a variation of the tale Little Red Riding Hood.

In our idea, Red is an orphan who has lived with her grandmother since her parents died in mysterious circumstances. However her grandmother was no darling old biddy. Instead she was a cruel old lady who abused Red as a child. The abuse is too much for Red however and she flees to the forest, and lives there alone until her teenage years where she develops schizophrenia and a multiple personality disorder.

One of the personalities is a savage beast, a wolf. Red does not know when or where she will turn, and is fearful of her "wolf" persona as it is an angry and demonic one. One day she wakes up in the forest covered in blood, and realizes that something must have happened and in her search for clues she finds that she has butchered her abusive grandmother, and in fleeing the scene kills an innocent woodsman. After her hideous crimes Red is now on the run from the law and herself.

The tagline for the film will be "Who knows what foul monster dwells within the mind?"

Some of the shots that we plan to shoot for our opening are the moon rising, Red running through the forest and Red packing her basket.

The Transformers: The movie Opening Sequence Analysis

The Transformers: The movie Opening Sequence Analysis

I have always been a big fan of the first generation of The Transformers, and the 1986 movie is no exception. I chose to analyse the opening sequence to this movie as it is a very well done opening sequence, and a long one too at that, lasting roughly seven minutes and twelve seconds.

The main reason that I chose this opening sequence is that it does a great job of introducing the movie. The  opening shot, zooming in on a mysterious planet like object moving through space does a great job of intriguing the viewer, then showing what the "planet" can do to other planets, and giving it a name and reputation makes it seem as though something bad is about to happen and that Unicron is going to play and important role in the movie.

Another thing that I like about this opening is the Star Wars style scrolling text, with narration by Victor Caroli. I like these as they help to explain the general idea of the story to anyone that is not so familiar with it, while also incorporating one of the key features of the television series.

The opening sequence also introduces several important characters, such as Optimus Prime, Megatron, Ironhide, Lazerbeak, Jazz, Spike and more. It also gives a rough idea of who is on what side, and the characteristics of some of the characters introduced.

The imagery of the opening sequence is also very important to why I like it, other than the scrolling text accompanied by the voice over, text is kept to a minimum and is not stealing any focus from the actual film itself, being quite infrequent and superimposed over the image in a colour that does not stand out too much.

Another part of the imagery is the colour scheme, it is all quite metallic, which it should be. This goes to establish that the film is definitely a futuristic science fiction movie, and that the transformers are robots,another important thing about colour is that it helps to introduce the two opposing sides, the Decepticons are generally quite dark, muted colours and the Autobots are generally quite alot more colourful and brighter. This shows the viewer who the bad guys are and who the good guys are.

Over all I think that this is a really good opening to a film, it gives the viewer enough of an idea of what's going on so that it doesn't go over their head but not too much that it spoils the plot and it gives a good idea of setting, time period and mood.

Preliminary Exercise: Evaluation

Preliminary Exercise: Evaluation

Camerawork

The camerawork is generally quite good, with a couple of questionable moments.

The main negative point on the camerawork is that the rule of thirds has occasionally been forgotten, making some shots look off.

 Good aspects to the camera work would be that the over the shoulder shots, and POV shots are well framed, and the POV shots do a particularly good job of following the subject, such as Max's hand.

Sound

The sound is fairly good in the production, though having to film during lunch hour meant that there were allot of people in the background making noises that, when edited, ever so slightly diddled the continuity; however I don't believe that this is particularly noticeable.

The most obvious negative part of the sound would be when the camera mysteriously "forgot" to record sound when recording the POV shot of Max opening the door, this was not detected until it was too late, and even more curiously happened in all three takes that we did of this shot meaning that there was no sound to be salvaged.

A good side to the sound however is that all of the dialogue is clear and audible, and it fits with what is on screen.

Editing

Editing on this exercise was generally good, but due to file conversion taking a longer amount of time than expected, shows some signs of being rushed. This is most evident when Max opens the door, twice, which breaks continuity and is quite irritating. This amateur mistake, made by myself, was noticed before exporting but too late however.

All things considered I would say this exercise has demonstrated at least a high beginner or low intermediate level of skills, and for a first task has went very well. 

Preliminary Exercise: Final Cut

Preliminary Exercise

Preliminary Exercise

         

For the preliminary exercise I worked in a group(pictured above) with Max Allum, Matt Elsom and Amber Law. We had to film a thirty second long short film. The purpose of the film was to test our ability to shoot a short film and edit together footage from multiple camera angles and takes, whilst maintaining the continuity of the piece. We filmed the footage on a Canon Legeria digital camcorder on Tuesday the ninth of October, in the media studies room. Once we had filmed all of the footage that we needed we edited together our scene on the computers using Adobe Premier editing software.

The shoot was good practise for several skills that we all need for media, Max and myself were both on camera so it was good practise for our abilities to perform on camera. At some point during the shoot I believe we all spent some time behind the camera, though the vast majority of filming was done by Matt with Amber's assistance; this was good practise for camera operating skills such as the ability to follow the rule of thirds, and set up a good frame around the scene. We all had a go at editing and this worked as practise for our abilities to use the software and the tools it provides to us, it also was good practise for reviewing footage and determining which shot is best and should be used rather than other takes of the same shot. It was also a good way of training us to work well together in groups, and to improve our ideas as we went along.

Over all the shoot went very well; everyone knew what they were doing and did it very professionally. There were many "fluffs" which meant that several shots had to be done multiple times, however these did not get in our way too much. Another problem we had was people walking into and out of the room we were filming in, which delayed filming several times but not for very long.