Institution Research

We will need to use a production institution that can handle the production of our film. There are various production comapnies that we could use such as:
20th century fox
Fox searchlight
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Universal
Paramount
Tristar
Pathé
Warner Bros
New Line Cinema

However we have decided to choose Working Title as it supports British Films being a British company itself and helps support the British film industry. Working title has produced films such as Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead, The Boat That Rocked. Due to their extensive reach in the British film industry and links with national companies they would be a fantastic choice of production institution and could help the film develop.

Certificate Research

We have decided to certificate our film as an 18 due to the violence, violence and some upsetting scenes that would not be suitable for anyone under the age of 18. We have also looked at similar films to decide what rating they are given and whether they reflect our film and if so we decide whether we will use that certificate or a higher/lower one.

Pulp Fiction = 18

The Godfather = 15

The Godfather Part 2 = 15

Goodfellas = 18

The Usual Suspects = 18

Se7en = 18

Reservoir Dogs = 18

Due to all these films being between 15 and 18 certificate and with our scenes more similar to those in an 18 certificate film we have decided to choose 18 as our certificate.

Characters

We have decided who are going to be the characters in our opening.

Mitch = The Don
Matt = Henchman/Mobster
Kieran = Henchman/Mobster
Harry Kent(drama student) = Mysterious Stranger

I will upload pictures of the characters in the near future.

Media Opening Ideas

Today in lesson we gathered together our ideas for our opening and we will start storyboarding in the next lesson or when we have free periods together.

• Credits (possible sticky notes idea, sticky notes round house showing credits)

• Character getting ready in morning ( process sped up eg. Kettle boiling, eating breakfast etc) – possibly link these two ideas together

• Flashback when don exits house eyes looking straight to camera shot filled just by his eyes. Then fades to flashback in Pleasantville effect

• Flashback shows the two henchman/gangsters running possibly away from something. Run to a hedge and pull out a suitcase they open it to see documents, money and gun in it. They then carry on running away, get to an alley and get halfway down it and a silhouette of a mysterious man appears at the end of the alley as the characters get close to him he has a weapon and manages to injure the characters and take the case and walks calmly off. 

    

• Fades in from flashback and colours slowly seep back into next scene. Characters walking down the street joining paths from side streets looking suave and cool. (Don possibly falls over)

• Shows title of movie and then fades to black

End

In our group when we were storyboarding our ideas we had an idea that at the begining of our opening we can have the characters walking down the street looking cool and gangster such as the effect used in  reservoir dogs. But in our opening it starts with one character and the others join him as he gets to a certain point down the road such as what is shown in this video.

From 0:35 - 2:10 on this video the effect we want to use is shown however we will not be using as much characters or props as our charcters are meant to look sophisticated and cool and ultimately gangster. 

This clip uses lighting really well to emphasis the rider and grab the audiences attention. We can use this effect in our opening as we want the audience to be paying constant attention to our opening and as it is only an opening most of it will be setting the scene so using something as subtle as lighting to keep the audiences attention would be very worthwile. The slo-mo effect is also used to emphasis the riders tricks and we can implement this effect in our opening to emphasis the characters visual apperance when they are walking down the street. At 28 seconds there are two different camera angles showing the same piece of action which we can use in our opening to emphasis a certain piece of action to the audience to show it's importance.

Film Planning and Storyboarding

Today in lesson our group started planning our 2 minute opening and storyboarding our ideas on a sheet which i will scan in and upload to my blog once we have finished.

Crime Film Cliches

In crime films police are as bad as the gangsters.
The gangsters are shown as tough guys who have turned to a life of crime because it is the only way to get ahead or they were wronged at a young age by the authorities.
In crime films there is a vaugue code that cannot be violated.
Crime movies almost always have a rat, the rat can be an undercover cop, member of the gang or even the gang leader himself.
Gangsters always have a hard time identifying the rat, even though the rat is the newest and best-looking member of the gang.
Gangster movies often include a scene in a restaurant or nightclub where somebody says the wrong thing to the wrong guy and later regrets it.
In crime movies there is usually one straight narrow whom the gangsters respect as he is not completly crooked like them.
For a crime film to work, there must be a wizened, cynical cop who is close to retirement and a young cop who is about to get married who will most certainly die and there must also be a full dress funeral service, preferably in the rain.
Finally gangster movies would not be gangster movies without the crucial scene in the hospital where a good looking young cop comes on duty to replace a cop who is guarding an important witness and turns out to be a hitman. Never once is this cop asked for ID.

Possible locations

Me and Matt thought up some possible locations to shoot our opening.

We thought of using matt's house as we can use the fast forward morning routine technique when we record a morning routine (making tea, breakfast etc.) from different angles and in editing we speed the clips up and emphasise the sound to give an intersting effect. we might use the post-it notes as the opening credits technique during this scene aswell.

Another location we will use is a quite road that we can do the slo-mo walk down with side streets on it.

We will also need to find a threating area for the trio's old boss to be shown such as a junkyard or a building site as it is very dangerous and threatening for the characters and the audience. 

we will look for these locations in the near future and i will take my camera to photograph them and upload them to my blog.

Narration

An idea we are definantly going to implement into our opening is the monolougue/narration from one of the main characters (possibly me) in the flashback explaining what went wrong and how it is going to effect the trio and have this effect used again towards the end of the opening to engage the audience and keep them wanting to watch more.

More Ideas

me and matt carried on thinking up ideas in our free period. We thought that we could get some of our friends to play extra characters in our opening and use an A-level drama student to play to old boss. We also thought we could introduce characters by having the camera moving slowly down a road infront of Matt  looking at him and then Mitch enters from a side street and then i enter after mitch from another side street and we are wearing suits and we all put our shades on in a very reservoir dogs style slo-mo walk.

Ideas For Opening

Today in lesson me and Matt were thinking up ideas for our opening as Mitch wasn't in lesson. We thought the opening will show the main characters getting ready looking nervous about something and then there will be a flashabck in the pleasantville effect which shows the trio failing their last job it then flashes back to the present and they meet with their old boss who gives them 24 hours to sort out their mistakes or else!

Lighting and Colours

This video shows how we can play with lighting and colours in our two minute opening. The video uses light flares when the rubiks cube is picked up from the stone which tells the audience that the object is of importance and will have connections with the rest of the film. The changing of light can convey different emotions and change the audiences view and emotion towards a character or a scene because of the lighting used which can enhance our scene and add more depth to the opening two minutes even though it is such a short time we can build a base of emotions and feelings that the audience have towards certain things in the film.

The colours have been very cleverly editied in this clip as the colours in the shot are black and white except for the colour of the side which has just been completed on the rubiks cube. This effect engages the audience as the colour is changing often which catches their eye and keeps them intersted in the clip instead of getting sidetracked or maybe even bored. We can use this effect to draw attention to certain objects in the scene or characters. This would make the audience more interested in the opening and can symbolise certain objects of importance that could feature later on in the film.

Layer Cake Analysis

This opening scene has a few techniques that we can use in our opening scene. The main technique from this clip is the monologue that is playing over the clips, this could be used in our opening as it creates a special link/bond between the character and the audience which makes the audience feel more involved in the film as you know more about the main character than other characters in the film which makes the audience feel as part of the the main character.

Another technique is when Daniel Craig is walking through the pharmacy and all the products on the shelves are changing as he walks past them to show a change in time which also links in with his monologue. This technique could be effective as it can show we have a extremely good use of continuity editing and it can be combined with the pleasantville effect towards the end of the clip so colour gradualy comes back to bottles and products one by one to show the scene changing from the past (flashback) to the present.

Smallville's Time After Time

Today in lesson after we analysed the crime film cliches as a class our teacher gave us a really good idea for our opening two minutes. She said we could film in the cemetary just down the road from our school to film a very cliched funeral in the rain scene. Even though this is very cliched in crime films it is a very effective scene for the audience to see and can create all kinds of emmotion from anger at a main character dieing or sadness at innocent gang member getting killed in crossfire.




Even though this clip is not from a crime film you can see the effect that we could use in our opening and the effect it can have on the audience.

Guide To Crime Cliches

Today in the beginning of the lesson we were reading and highlighting key points in Joe Queenan's guide to crime cliches. This highlights some key points and cliches that can be beneficial to our opening two minutes. Points such as crime films having rats, we can include this in our opening scene to give the film a twist. Another main point from this sheet was that all crime films need to have police as it makes it more realistic and justifies the gangsters hatred and violence.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/oct/17/crime-gangster-cliches

Outfits and Weapons

This picture is from another crime film called Pulp Fiction
The characters again are wearing black suits and black ties showing a strong similarity between crime films. The suits show that they are organised but also ruthless which we could include in our opening two minutes because we only have two minutes to try and make the audience interested in the film so if the outfits can show this then we have more time to fit in other scenes. The guns add to the characters apperance and relationship with the audience and can be used to convey different emotions within the audience because a gun has the ability to end a life and the audience knows this and can get very emotional when seeing a gun used in certain ways in a film so using a gun in our opening could prove to be beneficial as it will help manipulate the audiences emotions. I have a BB Gun pistol at home that we can use in our opening. 

Crime Genre Outfits

This image shows the sort of outfits we intend to use in our two minute opening.
The picture is from Reservoir Dogs and the black suit black tie look is what we intend to use in our two minute opening as it is very stereotypical of this genre and the audience have a shared understanding when they see a group of males in black suits with black ties and black sunglasses.

Goodfellas Opening

This is the opening scene from The Goodfellas. This clip has shown me how we can use sound and light to enhance our opening two minutes. The sound is very detailed and amplified when they are stabbing and shooting the man in the boot. This tells the audience that these men are not very nice and catches the audience off guard because this murder has just happened within the first few minutes of the film starting. Then the main character starts reflecting/narrating and only the audience can hear his narration which causes a bond to form between the audience and the main character already and makes the audience want to know his story of how he got there and why there was a man who got killed in his car.

When the characters get out of the car you can hear crickets in the background which immediately tells the audience that they are in a rural setting away from anyone else. The sound in this clip is used to convince the audience that they are in a certain setting and intensifies the scene when the man in the boot is murdered.

The lighting used in this clip can also help us get ideas for our two minute opening because again the lighting is very natural, the car lights are the only things lighting the car and when they get round to the boot there are only the red tail lights to light up the characters which convinces the audience that the scene is real and because of the red over the characters you can relate that to anger and danger which there is when the boot is opened.

Genre

 

This clip shows some effects and techniques we could use in our opening that could be very effective if used correctly.

The film genre we decided to do our opening on as a group is the crime genre.We chose this genre because we didn't want to follow the stereotypical route that many other groups take in A Level Media which is to do an opening based on the horror genre.
We liked some techniques that are used in horror film clips that we watched on youtube that could be implemented into our opening based because techniques like the quick white flash to seperate camera angles we can use in our piece to show that someone has been punched without actually having to fake the punch in any way.

We could also experiement with the pleasantville effect in our opening. The pleasantville effect is when the whole clip is black and white except for one object which remains in colour. This effect could be used effectively in our opening as at the end of the clip it could revert to full colour showing that the pleasantville effect was showing a flashback. This clip shows the pleasantville effect for a short while when he is bleeding from the mouth, it is used to clearly show the audience his blood and empathise the bloods colour if everything around it is black and white. This effect was used most commonly in the film "Sin City" where the one object in colour draws the audiences attention to it and can be used to convey different emotions to the audience.

Media Preliminary Task

This is our preliminary task, the task was to film a character opening a door, cross a room and sit opposite another character and exchange a few lines of dialogue. We had to include match on action, shot reverse shot and the 180 degree rule.

I think we filmed the task well and had enough raw footage to cut down to a convinent length and had various shots of each scene so we could choose which one we would use when editing. The editing is strong in this task especially when Mitch opens the door and the shots quickly change to 3 different angles within 2 seconds. I also included a special effect which i created myself using somne footage we filmed that we wanted to show as a security camera so i used After Effects to create this effect and i think it has worked well in the scene.

There were a few thinks that could be improved on. One thing that could do with changing is the volume levels, the dialogue in the scene could be louder and clearer and we could achieve this if we use a boom mic. The shot where the camera zooms in on the folder looks quite amateur and disrupts the flow of the scene so if we were to re-film this task i would not include a zoom but i would find another way to add emphasis to the folder.

Editing

Today Matt wasn't in so me and Mitch started editing our clips in lesson using adobe premiere elements. The software was easy to use because i am used to using editing software. I finished the rest of the editing off at home. I also used adobe after effects to edit on clip to make it look like CCTV footage to enhance my skill using editing software and to show off my skill. I made sure i checked all the clips in editing for continuity so that the preliminary task flows nicely between shots.

Finished Filming

today in lesson our group finished the filming for the preliminary task. we finished the rest of the filming for the conversation and filmed mitch opening the door. I used various angles when filming to convey different effects. Next lesson we will use the editing equipment for the first time.

Today in lesson we arranged our groups and began the filming of our preliminary task.

I am in a group with Mitch and Matt. We got given our camera and tape and started to record the conversation of our preliminary task.

The preliminary task is too:
Film and edit a character opening a door, crossing the room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue.

Analysis of disruptive school class, busy office, dentists waiting room and romantic meal

In lesson our task was to setup a picture using mise-en-scene for each of these scenarios. I thought our group did really well at getting the scenes ready quickly and everyone had good ideas and we utilised a lot of props that enhanced the scene. There were some of our pictures that didn't work so well because we had alot of background in the picture which takes away from the illusion of a romantic meal if there is school work on the wall in the background.
Overall i think our group completed the task successfully and we came up with some really good shots but some didn't turn out so good. This task has made me think much more about what is in the background of the shot and just in the shot in general to give the accurate effect that i want to give the audience.

Media Terms

Close Up - A shot showing a character from the neck up. Used to show facial expressions

Medium Shot - A shot showing a character from the waist up. Allows other characters to be in view, used for sociable shots.

Extreme Close Up - Focuses on a small detail eg. eye or hand.

Long Shot - A shot showing a character or setting from a distance.

High Angle Shot - A shot taken from above looking down. Makes audience feel powerful and the actors seem vulnerable.

Low Angle Shot - A shot taken from below, like the audience is being looked down on. Makes the audience feel vulnerable and the actors seem powerful.

Panning - Camera moves in an arc from a fixed point.

Tracking - The camera is on tracks and follows the action, often used only left and right.

Zoom - Camera moves in to a close up, used to focus attention on something such as detail or a characters reaction.

Diegetic Sound - Music/Sound effect that comes from the scene.

Non-Diegetic Sound - Music/Sound effect that is added to the film during editing.

Denotation - What you can see

Connotation - The implied meaning

Kidulthood Opening

In class we watched the opening of Kidulthood and analysed it for its use of mise-en-scene in the opening 10 minutes.

Through the use of mise-en-scene us as the audience can tell that the opening scene is set in a school playground because of the characters wearing school uniform. Another way we can tell it is a school playground is because of people running in front of the camera, this is an effective use of mise-en-scene because it gives the audience the illusion that they are in the playground. One certain group in the playground are not wearing school uniform which separates them from the rest of the crowd and shows them as a higher power in the playground, this is also evident when one of the boys wearing a hoodie goes up to a girl and spits in her hair, him and his two mates surround her and look down on her showing them as the dominant figures and the girl as very weak and powerless.

In the few minutes of the opening the camera keeps switching to a shot of someone drilling something, this is a good use of mise-en-scene because it keeps the audience guessing what it is and makes them ask questions in their heads. When the person who was drilling emerges from the room he looks very cautious and hides what he had been drilling in a bin, this could foreshadow something that will happen later on in the movie and it shares secret information with the audience because only the person drilling and the audience know where it is.

The lighting is also used effectively in the opening scene, when all the students are in the playground it is very dim and dreary which shows the audience that it is the begging of a school day and early in the morning. When we are watching the classroom scene the lighting changes and it is very light inside and only the light is coming in one side of the room showing that it is a classroom with only windows on one side of the room. The bright light makes the audience feel more upbeat compared with the dim light outside despite the fact that a girl is getting beaten up inside the classroom.

Through mise-en-scene the audience can see that all of the school uniforms are untidy which shows that there is no power in the school forcing the students to look presentable which suggests that the students rule the school. This is evident in a shot later on in the opening when a teacher is telling students to get inside before the second bell and one of the students squares up to him and the teacher turns away because he is scared and feels oppressed by the students. Some of the  students are also wearing big hoop earrings and some have side ponytails which suggests to the audience that the school is in a built up area that is not very wealthy such as a borough in London.

Overall the opening to Kidulthood has been very well thought out in terms of mise-en-scene and it gives the audience a real sense of being in the playground and classroom scenes which can help to create emotional bonds with certain characters throughout the movie.