Main task 4- Group meeting

In our group we held a meeting, so we can discuss what our genre and general plot was going to be about. In this meeting all of the members contributed atleast one idea and this was discussed and built upon to improve or combine with other ideas from the group. We decided in the end that we should do a opening sequence which is based on the genre Comedy. Below shows who said what in the group and what conclusions were made.

Firstly, I put forward the idea that every character in a school was somehow kidnapped, and that it was the mission of one of the characters to find out what happened to them and where they have gone. This would focus on the development of one character and their journey to solve the mystery of the missing students, we would have to incorportate our genre of comedy in there somehow, so it doesn't come across as being a completley different genre.

Laura came up with the idea that in the group we would have two people playing the actors, and one of them would play an outcast of a group, and the other actor being the popular classmate who has seen the outcast being bullied. Laura said that this would become a comedy through the different type of perosnalities coming across and learning about eachother. Finally, Sabene in the group suggested that it would be about a 'geek' student who had the responsibility of encouraging a rebellious student to change their ways. This general plot would be about both students growing as people and also understanding eachother.

In conclusion, we decided that our film would be about two students who were left in the school however the rest of the students had dissapeared, and their mission was to find out what happened. We also decided to do a social comedy, in where both personalities of the students contrasted and produced comedy elements in it. Our opening sequence will include the credits of the cast and crew, music which is different to the comedy in it and it should set the scene and provide clues the viewer of what the film would be about.

The pictures below are when we were discussing our sequence in the group meeting, we decided to brain storm ideas on paper and develop them later:

 

Main task 3: Further looking at opening sequence

I have chosen to analyse the opening sequence of 'Wall-E'.

The opening sequence started with the company 'Pixar' appearing and the classic logo. This has been put at the beginning of the sequence to advertise the film distribution company and to show that the film is going to be animation, as this is what the company specialize in making.

Soon after this fades out, it sets the scene by showing a galaxy background which shows what the general film is going to be about. It shows it's going to be about this futuristic time period, I like the fact that this galaxy theme is running throughout the sequence to reflect what the film is going to be about, it gives a great insight to the viewer. Further on in the sequence, the first title appears which is 'Walt Disney pictures present' which is in a bold font, almost animated and again it reflects a futuristic era. I like the fact it has a opening like this because it all adds up to the build up of what is going to happen later on.

To continue, later on it clarifies that it's futuristic when images of 3 planets appear, side by side to each other  It shows that there is something unknown and unusual to come in the sequence later on. I like that this is used because it makes the viewer want to know what this 'unusual' thing is, and they want to know what happens. The music that goes with this shot is slow and again sounds futuristic  All of these factors give clues to what the film is going to be about, even though there are not many clues.

When the camera zooms into the planet, which has been to shown as Earth, it is evident that there is something different about it if we compare it to the one we live in today. The graphics used have made the Earth to look brown and almost not efficient. Soon after this, the camera zooms in further into the planet at a person's point of view, which I like because it shows what it would be like if you were there, which makes you feel like you are part of the opening sequence or film, and not just watching it.

It has been clarified later on that the opening sequence is futuristic because there are images of landfill sites which are unrealistic because they have been made to look very big. Other images include chimneys and nuclear power stations. This shot has been shown in almost a fog or mist, to again show that there is something unusual or unknown which is yet to be discovered.

The best part of the opening sequence for me is how all the images and music combine together to represent a futuristic time period, and even right at the beginning straight away the viewer can tell where the film is set and what it's generally about. I also like it near the end of the sequence when it shows all these futuristic buildings, you can tell they are futuristic because of the unusual designs. Again this has been shot at a bird's eye-view, which makes the viewer included in the sequence.

At the end of the sequence, it fades out and does not completely end. This makes the viewer want to see more, because it has not explained what it's about and why it's set where it is. However, throughout the sequence it does not have any title names of the cast and crew, which is usually present in most opening sequences.

Main 2- Choosing your genre

To decide what genre we should do, my group sent out a questionnaire to 10 people asking them general questions about what kind of films they like to watch and what they usually expect in a opening sequence. We used multiple choice questions to limit what the group of people could say so it would be easier to analyse. The fact that they could tick as many as boxes as they want, it means there are more than 10 answers.

When the results came in, we put them in a table and scored each response so we could anaylse them more clearly. From looking at the results, we have found out that our genre is going to be a comedy, because this drew out the most results amongst our group of people. We have also concluded that our opening sequence will have to include credits of the cast and crew, a setting of the scene and what the film is generally going to be about.

Here is a copy of the results from our questionnaires we sent out.

The pie charts below show some of the main findings from our questionnaire:

Main 1: Conventions of an Opening Sequence

I have analyzed the conventions from an opening sequence from two films with different genres. This will give me ideas for when I will be making my own opening sequence in the main task.

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Firstly, I anaylsed the opening sequence from 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' and this genre is of an Action one. I have anaylsed different aspects of this sequence including music and annimation.

This screengrab from the opening sequence tells the viewer a few things about what the whole film is going to be about. The fact that there is alot of animation in the sequence tells the viewer that the film itself is going to be animated and perhaps non-realistic, however action pact at the same time. Also, whilst in the animation, the music is fast and has a low beat. This shows that the film is going to be full of action which is fast paced and this is refelcted in the music, the low beat shows that the film is going to have a sligth darkness to it, perhaps something that will shock the viewer.

This screengrab to the right tells us other aspects of the film aswell. The opening sequence shows the credits which include cast and crew. The colours used for instance in this screengrab are very dark colours, like black and grey. These colours could reflect that in the film there is darkness within some of the characters meaning they will surprise the audience.

The next screengrab is of the title. This tells the audience of the actual film they are going to watch and leads them on to know what the film is going to be about. Once again, alot of dark colours are used to suggest the film is not one of happiness and does not have the charactersitics of a 'comedy' film for example. The opening title is again animated with the black background moving, which suggests that film is going be non-realistic in some parts just like the opening sequence.

Post 12- Independent work towards targets

The first target I set myself was to make sure the location that we chose is the perfect one for our production. By reaching this target, I had to make a criteria which I would check against the plot of our film, to see which location was the most suitable for it. This criteria included:

1. Does the location have a sufficient amount of  natural lighting?
2. Does the location have enough working space so the camerawoman has enough room to film?
3. What is the outside surrounding sound like? Could it possibly be disruptive to the film?
4. Does the location have access to artificial lighting?
5. Does the location have an 'echo' sound to it? If so this could be altered at the editing stage.

I also decided to make a criteria to decide which roles in the group were allocated to who. These roles included Camerawoman, Editor and actors/actresses. The criteria is as follows:

1. Who has had previous experience of editing?
2. Who is the most comfortable in front of the camera?
3. Who has had experience of using a large camera?

I made this criteria because overall, if I allocated the most suitable role to a person, then this would perhaps be less time consuming because it would save time learning a new process. For example, if someone already had some experience of editing in the editing suite, then this role is most likely going to be given to them. However, I am aware that they will not be the ONLY person carrying out this role, the other members of the group will be helping aswell.

Post 11- Targets

Below is a short video of me talking through some of my targets and some of the reasons why I set these:

Firstly, I set myself a target to make sure the location we were choosing was the right one. I wanted to make sure that the atmosphere of the location fit perfectly into our plot of the film. The lighting of the location needed to be right aswell, I needed to make sure the natural lighting was not too dark so that the characters were unoticable, but also not too light because this did not fit into the concept of 'the bully'. I made sure I achieved this target by looking around at possible locations for our production, taking into consideration of lighting and outside noises that could effect the whole production.

Secondly, I set myself the target of making sure the roles allocated to each person in the group was the correct choice. I set myself a type of criteria for each role (such as filming, actors and editor) and we all then decided who would be suited best to which. This target was set because then we can use each of our own personal attributes well when producing this task.

The next target was a personal target for myself. I set the target to make sure I was organised for the shoot. This meant if I was responsible for any shooting schedules or shot lists then I would remember to bring these in for the shooting day, because this is a guidline for when filming. Also, when we were designing the storyboard, each member of our group was given a few scenes each to draw. When drawing my scenes, I needed to make sure that the quality was high because this way each member of the group has contributed enough to the team. I also need to remember to scan them so this does not disadvantage the other members of the group.

Post 10- Evaluation of skills developed

Here is the finished preliminary task:

Evaluation of the film

The image below shows a mindmap of my ideas and thoughts on our preliminary task:

In conclusion, I believe that the overall shoot and editing of our preliminary task turned out very well. However, there are some aspects of the whole process which I think I would like to have improved on. Firstly, when we were editing our preliminary shoot we realised we broke the 30 degree rule, which however was solved by Laura using a fading tool on the editing software to make it look more of a jump-cut shot. Me and my group needed to to improve our organsisation skills aswell. As I was unwell on the day of the shoot, it left us with little time to film. This may have disadvantaged us slighty and didn't enable us to film to the best of our ability.

Assessment of skills

From the preliminary task, I have developed and learnt many skills that I didn't have experience of before. I was responsible for some parts of the editing process, and I learnt how to cut and add music into the film. I did find this difficult at first because I didn't have any previous experience of this before, however we were given help sheets to guide us through the editing stage which made me more confident with it. Personally, from the production I believe I have learnt how to work well within a group, in a short space of time to film. I have gained confidence within editing and being in front of a camera, so I intend to use these skills I have developed in the next project we do.

Post 9-Post-production

We were required to keep a log of our footage and whether we used it in our final product or not. This was a helpful tool when editing, because we then had a clear idea of where to begin when editing.

Below, shows the rushes, which includes when the shot starts and ends and a description of what was included in the shot, to help when editing. When filming, we had problems with the camera which unfortuntly led to missing some footage and this is why the second table starts again at 00:00:00. These rushes where used when editing the footage, it saved us time because if we did not have these, we would have to look through the footage again and again and with the short amount of time we had to edit, this would not have been useful.

Post 8-Production report

Below I have embedded my Prezi presentation of my production report:



I believe the overall shoot of the production went very well, despite some technical difficulties, however my group and I did eventually overcome these problems.

Firstly, the main problem was at the start of the shoot when the camera was experiencing a few technical problems and would not film, however we decided to change the battery and this thankfully sorted out the problem. The second problem was that I was ill on the day of the filming, therefore I was not able to be there. On the other hand, the rest of the group resolved this by one of then being my stand in and then they found another media student to film some of the footage which required both actresses in the same shot. A problem that occurred from this is that the group had to explain to the media student what type of camera shots we wanted to capture, which would have been quite time consuming considering the short amount of time we had at the location.

Another technical problem which occurred was when the camera equipment was not holding the camera properly and was holding it loosely, therefore the camera woman had to hold it very steadily to get the perfect shot. Apart from that, most of the issues that arisen where overcome and solved.

In the editing stage of the production, I believe it went very well. One person from our group put themselves forward to edit most of the footage as it only required a single person to do this, however both me and another person helped her with the timings of the shots, for example telling her when to capture a start of the shot and the end. When editing we realized we did not break the 180 degree rule, on the other hand we did unfortuntley break the 30 degree rule, but this was solved easily when we were finishing editing. We did still include editing and movement techniques such as panning and tilting also.

To conclude, with the amount of time given to use and the amount of resources we had, I am very pleased with the final product. Even though we had some issues with the location, for example the big space produced echoes and unwanted sounds, however we did overcome this by adding non-diagetic music in the editing process, so this was not a major problem, and we were aware of this when we visited the location prior to the shooting day. It would have been a little more helpful to have some equipment which worked, such as the tripod, we had to use a steady hand instead which worked just as well, but it was a little inconvenient. Overall we did very well with what we were given.