Media Studies 2009-2011

Braindead is a 1992 zombie based movies directed by Peter Jackson on a very small budget.

The Opening scene starts in a very mountainous area, with two men hastily slideing down a rocky slope. One of which keeps giving hints on the main story, “This thing is evil, man!” “Let it go”. Giving subtle hints on the plot from the very start builds the atmosphere that it isn’t going to follow the criteria of most zombie movies. [Some kind of virus infects mankind and turns people into zombies] The contents of the crate are only revealed when the higher class one of the two says “Its only a bloody monkey”

This movie contains cheesy and mainly black comedy. You can tell this by a small clip further in the scene. A large group of tribals appear trying to stop them from taking the ‘Monkey’  a quick reaction was to pull out a piece of paper, shove it in the chieftains face and go “Permit, PERMIT”.

This leads to a hasty escape in a jeep a little further down the slope, adding two extra member to the crew. At this part you may think that the scene will end however the employer goes “Ahh the little bugger bit me” leading to one of his crew saying ‘Sangaia’ clearly not english but the true meaning is never told. This leads to a very gorey ending for the employer, he got bitten on his hand so the crew pulled out a very large sharp tool and cut his hand off [No Censorship, but an obviously fake plastic hand] They then noticed a cut on his other arm closer to his shoulder, so they took that off. While screaming flat on the floor another cut revealed itself but on his forehead. This ended the opening scene, as he swung it gave the hint he took the employers head off but instead of showing it they put the movie title on

Studio Canal

Director

Edgar Wright

Writers

Simon Pegg

Edgar Wright

Actors

Simon Pegg

Kate Ashfield

Nick Frost

Lucy Davis

Dylan Moran

Produced by

Tim Bevan..Executive producer

Eric Fellner..Executive producer

Mark Hudson..line producer, additional photography

Alison Owen..Executive producer

Nira Park..Producer

Ronaldo vasconcellos..Line producer

Natasha Wharton..Executive producer

James Wilson..Executive producer

Original Music by

Daniel Mudford

Pete Woodhead

Cinematography by

David M.Dunlap

Film Editing by

Chris dickens

Casting by

Jina Jay

Universal Pictures Presents

A Strike Entertainment/New Amsterdam Entertainment

Dawn of the Dead

Sarah Polley

Ving Rhames

Jake Weber

Mechi Phifer

Ty Burrell

Michael Kelly

Kevin Zegers

Michael Barry

Lindy Booth

Jayne Eastwood

Boyd Banks

Inna Korobkina

Produced by

Marc Abraham..Producer

Armyan Bermnstein..Executive Producer

Thomas A.Bliss..Executive Producer

David E.Jones..Executive Producer

Michael D.Messina..Co-Producer

Eric Newman..Producer

Rupert P.Rubinstein..Producer 

Original Music by

Tyler Bates

Cinematography

Matthew F. Leonetti

Film Editing

Niven Howie

Casting by

Joseph Middleton

The title sequence begins with the company logo. the sequence carries on so that we can see how people have  been affected, with people looking like zombies. More titles appear later with the title of the film. After this it shows titles of the actors in the movie while inbetween have short quick cuts of zombies. Shows more scenes of reporters and people talking about the massacre. The sequence shows us clips of what is happening all round the world.  Shows more titles as the sequnce goes on. The titles have been edited so that it looks like the wrting has been done in blood.

The sequence begins with the company logo and identity. The first shot cuts straight into shaun where he is in the pub. The opening shot uses a close up of shaun. . The camera then cuts to Ed which is away from the conversation. The camrea then cuts back to a two shot of the conversation with Ed in the background. Over the shoulder shots are used after that to represent the conversation that is going on. The conversation goes on for a while before it cuts back to Ed. The last shot of the sequence uses a close up of Shaun, then the screen goes black. The part ofter the black screen is the opening credits and titles.

For the opening of our film we are trying to make an enigma so that people would want to see the full film. For the first shot we have our company logo and identity, then we have some film which have the credits over the screen as the sequencing shots are being taken. for our first shooting shot we have chris ford, who is our actor, walking into the college entrance, then walking towards the teachers office to get his grade A. These shots are to show the beginning of what appears to be a dramatic story. For our next shot we have a house establishing shot with chris walking towards a door. We hear shouting at the other side of the door, chris then overhears the shouting which means that he is going to get a job to solve money problems, it then cuts out to the title which is “Beyond the Line” then cuts back to chris lying dead in a bush.

This is our preliminary film which we made during lesson time. This video includes a wide variety ofg shots to try and maker it look preofessional. The good points about the movie is the variety of shots and the editing looks pretty good. There main bad point is the dialogue, the sound isn’t very clear, we should have filmed the dialogue part again to make it look better and to make it more professional. We used an establisher at the beginning of the movie to show the place where it was being filmed at. We used close-ups, medium shots, long shots, over the sahoulder shots, shot reverse shot. The shot reverse shot is where the dialogue is being taken place. We also tried to stick to the 180 degree rule so the shots didn’t look different. We followed to the brief to make it look better. We also had to film again because we had Tim to be walking down the hallway and getting the briefcase, but he wasn’t in one lesson so we refilmed it with Tom being the person who recieved the briefcase.   

They use a wide variety of shots. They first use an establshing shot of the place. They use close-ups and extreme close-ups for when they either open the door or close the door. They use an over the shoulder shot when there is dialogue. The framing is good but i think it could be better by either cropping the top to have his head tight against the top of the frame or use the camera and use the zoom lens to see if the framing is good.

For the preliminary exercisem, we have to produce an opening shot of a movie. The exam board requires we create this exercise so that we have a starting point to work from before we actually start filming.

Planning and Research

20% of the coursework is for this part. The storyboard we have to create has to be an animatic storyboard, We need to blog the research. The research includes the research of the openings of films with the same genre that we want to follow. We also need to research the conventions of any opening sequence. E.g. Titles or job titles are examples of what you need to include in your piece of work.

Film

This part is the most important part of the coursework. While we are filming we have to think about editing. We have to produce an opening sequence and we need to think about the use of mis-en-scene, e.g. the camerawork (the shots and composition), The sound (wether it is non-diegetic, diegetic or wether the sound levels are too high) and lighting (is the scene too bright or too dark?)

Evaluation

This part is worth another 20% of the marks and it cannot be an essay. It has to be a multimedia presentation. We need to include things like screenshots of the film, audio (which could be talking to the media teacher about the film) or it could be a powerpoint presentation.