Media Stuides 2009-2011

With Nail And I

As With Nail And I opens the opening credit is the shot of the studio ident, this is placed on a black background shown for a few seconds in a white font, a fairly basic design but clear.

The title sequence starts almost instantly with it firstly showing the names of the 3 main actors within the film, usually you would expect to find between 3-5 of the main actors names in a short film featuring in the opening credits. After this it moves onto the minor actors with the names fading in and out of the sequence, all in the same basic white font which is a theme which continues throughout the whole of the title sequence.

Other titles include: Production designer, Camera Operator, Editor.

Throughout the whole sequence there has been music playing and plays a prominent part in the title sequence.

Ending credits – This was a very typical ending sequence where all the jobs are listed in comparison to the  opening credits the speed of the sequence is rapid and only just gives you a chance to skim read them.

Wickerman

This opens in a slightly different way to With Nail and I, as the first shot shows both the producer and British Lion on the same screen rather them being on seperate screens, after this it follows the same pattern as With Nail and I as it now shows the major stars of the film, in this film it names 5 of the characters which again fits the typical amount. During this it has a music track playing in the background which then comes to an end and a new sound track begins to play half way through. Again towards the end like With Nail and I although this is a full length film it follows the same structure as the short film, it goes onto a black screen and then comes up with all the different jobs involved with making the film.

This is another slow opening title sequence, again it opens with the title of the film and writer appearing on the same shot, this may be typical of a short film due to not having enough time to place them on different shots. Again like the two previous films which were analysed it has the same amount of stars shown in the opening credits, this is proving to be typical of films and we will choose to follow this idea in our film as well. With regards to the soundtrack playing over the title sequence it becomes gradually louder and more prominent as the titles are starting to stray away from the stars of the film to try and help keep the audience captivated. During this title sequence the production company isnt mentioned which seemed strange in comparison to the other two films which were analysed. Although there were some differences with this film in comparison to the other two films the ending title sequence was still the same, fading to black then a rolling list with all the different job titles and names.

For the A2 project this year we are required to make a 5 minute film containing a full narrative also including the opening and closing credits.

The genre which our film will be in is the real crime section with a film on football hooligans.

The film will be split into 3 sections, the opening section which leads into the action, then the second which contains the action and then finally the aftermath

Firstly – this will show our main actors in anticipation of the action and the journey they will take to get there

Action – Fight scene

Aftermath – this shows the reaction of the characters after the fight scene and a possibility of a death of one of the characters.

Here you can see the editing program which was used by our group ‘Adobe Premiere Pro’ it is a powerful piece of equipment and is highly professional more than capable of editing our film, we had 3 main sections in our film, opening coffee shop scene, the flash back and the ending coffee shop scene, we also edited in these 3 main sections starting with the opening coffee shop scene which was filmed at the same time as the ending scene, we split this footage up and then focused on editing the first scene, after the editing of the footage alone was complete we moved onto the next scene which was the flashback, we wanted to move in chronological order so this was why we edited this part next, after removing parts which we didnt need and being left with our wanted footage we then moved onto the final scene, this was the ending coffee shop scene, we already had split up the footage from when we did the shoot so we had to place this on the timeline and then remove any parts which we didnt want, when we had done this for all 3 main sections we had the footage done, however there was still more to do.

Next we focused on the audio aspects, we firstly added in a audio track for making it sound like there was people talking in the background of the coffee shop to make it seem busy, we then had to adjust these volume levels to make sure that you could still hear the character talking over the top of it. Another audio aspect was that we had to add in a heartbeat track for when the character enters and exits the flashback scenes.

After the footage had been trimmed and audio tracks added we moved back onto editing the footage, we needed to create a special effect for the flashback, we used a simple dissolve and we thought it worked effectively as it then goes to black and white which is seen as in the past relating to a flashback. Another effect we made use of was the freeze frames, freezing title frames of important characters. After all this was complete we were only making very small adjustments to the film.

As apture does not allow annotations to work on wordpress you must copy and paste the link into your browser to view the annotated copy of our film about how ‘How did you attract/address your audience?’.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5jsZD6zA70 - clicking this link alone will not make the annotations show, must be copied into browser.

Here is a gate which we will use to introdce two characters into the scene, the victim and the two criminals, we would like to pick up on the sounds which the gate creates to add tension into the scene

This shot is looking towards the gate from the previous picture, this path will play a notable part in the scene, as the characters will go along here to reach where all the action will take place.

This picture shows an object which we may use within the film again to create tension, the swing may be made to swng back and forth and make mysterious noises, this will help us alert the audience that something is going to occur. 

Here is the other location which we will use, this is supposed to be our coffee shop where some more action will occur.

This was a brief lay out for how we would have our coffee shop looking, we would like to spend more time laying it out with more props and covering up some of the unecessary background objects

This is the sign outside of our coffee shop we will hope to use this to aware the viewer to where the current location is, an establishing shot may be used for this.

Here is the overall layout of the cafe we would hope to incorperate this into our film however it is a tricky lay out to work with which could present some problems.

 Frame 1 – The film opens with the company logo. the company logo is fairly basic, but i feel it does the job which it needs to do which is put across which company has produced this film and it stands out well and is recognisable.

Frame 2 – This shot is of our main character just sitting down at the table, a gentle paced first shot which allows you to become accustomed to the character, he seems like your typical person, with a newspaper and sitting down to drink a cup of coffee, you would assume he lives an average lifestyle judging by the clothes which he is wearing, at this point some audio editing is introduced with background noise to a cafe is added.

Frame 3 – At this point there is a freeze on the shot and the title appears for the character this is to become a motif for the rest of the film with major characters having there shots freezed then the titles appearing this was done to how the importance of the characters.

Frame 4 – This is an important shot, as it shows the character as he first enters into the flash back, just before this there is the transitional shot which is a dissolve with a heartbeat track added on top, it then also turns into black and white which the whole sequence will be showed in to represent the past, this particular shot is about setting the scene in a new location.

Frame 5 – Another important shot, shows two more main characters enter the film, as stated previously the main characters were going to have a freeze frame when their titles were ready to come on, this shot is supposed to reveal what sort of characters you would expect these two to be, with the type of clothing you would relate to them being the villains of the film.

Frame 6 – This next shot is revealing the importance of the whole sequence as you see the two newly introduced characters approaching the sole character you can anticipate that something of importance is going to happen at this point.

Frame 7 – This shot is showing the stand off between the characters, building up the tension before the big showdown where all the action will take place, this shot is mainly about setting the scene again.

Frame 8 – Here is another influencial scene where it opens up the story for it to continue, he receives a mysterious phone call with nobody on the other end, this ends it well as the story can continue in whatever way the audience want it to.

Frame 9 – Here is the final frame which includes the title of the film ‘recall’ there is a transition in this frame where all the letters of the film come in from different angles, i thought it finished off the film nicely and worked effectively.

|Here is a picture of me using the camera which we used to film there was other equipment used at the same time not just the camera, the filming was a lengthy process with various technology required

With the camera there was the need for headphones as well these were used to make sure that the sound quality was crisp and clear, and hear if you were picking up on any background noise which wasnt wanted. Also within the camera was a vital part, the tape we needed this to store the footage which we captured. A tripod was also used with the camera, the main purpose of this is to keep the camera steady so it looks more professional.

 This picture is showing me using the computer software, this was the most lengthy part of our production as the editing is very time consuming.

The picture below is where most of the time on the computers was spent, this is the Adobe Premiere, it is an editing software, Adobe Premiere is reasonably easy to use after you have spent time learning how to use it, there are many tools on adobe which were useful like cutting frames, stretching frames etc. As special effects was a very important part to our film it was critical that we got this part right, we needed a special effect for the flash back to make it look like a flash back, we used a dissolve then a black and white effect on the video so it represented the past. This picture shows the whole set up of the program, with the timeline in the bottom centre of the workspace and your viewing spot in the top right, effects are found in the bottom left hand corner.

 Other sources of material came from the internet, Google was used to find a couple of pictures, Youtube was another tool on the internet used, this was for our planning stages mainly, we needed to view other professional films to see what a typical opening for a film would be, also our preliminary and our main piece has been uploaded to youtube.

Wordpress – this was used to organise our blogs, a frustrating site however it did help us keep an order to everything and place our blogs in an easy place for people to view.

The contrast from the Preliminary exercise compared to the final project was phenominal, mainly due to the reality setting in about the importance of the coursework, the group members in the preliminary consisted of a group of friends which was not the optimal set up for the work to be completed to a high standard, in the main coursework piece we reduced our group numbers down from 4 to 2 which increased our work ethic and helped us develop our own skills as it allowed more time with the equipment rather than splitting it between for 4 people, also in the preliminary we noticed many continuity errors which we picked up on easily and helped us to eliminate them from the final piece.

From a editing perspective the preliminary was very basic, we had very limited skills on the editing studio but this was a help to us for the main piece which helped develop our skills greatly, allowing us to place music and other audio tracks into the main film, we also had our final piece looking smooth with the editing techniques we had picked up such as the speed/duration tool which we used.

The picture to the left shows one of our shots, this shot was supposed to show the case being opened but not enough to see inside, to act as a mcguffin, however you can see inside to see that there isnt anything of importance inside the case.

We did follow some guidelines whilst filming this exercise, firstly we followed the 180 degree rule, which is an imaginary line which would pass through 2 characters facing each other, your camera would be set up on one side, then if it was to move over past the imaginary 180 degree line, to the other side it would appear that the characters had switched position which is confusing for the audience. Shot reverse shots were also required to be used within the preliminary excercise this is something which we did manage to do to some success below is a screen shot of part of a shot reverse shot