Monday 28 November 2011

Preliminary Task - The Game

This is our first attempt at editing and filming on our own, as you can see its not the best but we know how to edit and film our major piece properly. due to a unsuspected stoppage in filming the film jumped a little but we edited it as much as possible to overcome the effect it had.

Friday 18 November 2011

Preliminy Research.

Continuity editing is where you select the good parts of the film and edit them together to make a good movie,and a story line, which is something that the eye can do naturally. The two categories include 'Temporal cutting' and 'Spatial cutting'. This also means that you can put in special effects and animations after the scene has been shot.

Temporal cutting is showing the audience that the narrative has changed. Also temporal cutting connotes shots to support the narrative development and may be linear progression or not, flashback or flash forward establishes the progression of time.

Spatial cutting is used to create unfilled space through editing shots from different sort of angles and framing shot/reverse shot. Kuleshov effect and parallel editing. Spatial Editing also has a 180 degree rule where you have to imagine there is a line going across separating the room in two. The camera women or man have to follow these rules to stay on one side. If the camera women/man was to change sides they have to show the camera movement because if you didn't show the movement it wouldn't make the film more realistic as it should. There has to be 30 degrees between the shots of the same subject, if their wasn't it would make the film look unnatural and bizarre.



When the camera women is filming a conversation between two people the best camera shot to use is called the 'over the shoulder shot' because when the camera is focusing on the person speaking it will engage the audience to listen carefully to the conversation. Also when using the 'over shoulder shot' its clear to see their facial expressions. An example of this is in the film 'Mean girls' Another name for this is the shot reverse shot as then the camera normally switches to the other actors shoulder. This shot is normally used for dialogue between two people and can focus in on the person talking.
This is a match action shot from Johnny English Reborn. here we can see the scene opens to a long shot, then as the action unfolds it zooms in to a medium shot but still has the same focus point in that shot. It has zoomed in to this shot so we can see the emotion on the actors face which makes the scene more effective.

I think that continuity editing is very important in the process of shooting a film. I think this because  it's important that the transition between shots run as smooth as possible to ensure that the audience has maximum enjoyment and excitement form the film and no attention is drawn to the change in shot. Without it wouldn't make the film run smoothly it would jump between different shots, also it creates a more stable platform viewing and helps the audience not to be not disturbed by the transitions.


Filmography
2004 - Mean Girls (Mark Waters)
2011 - Johnny English Reborn - Olivia Parker

Monday 14 November 2011

Improved Treatment.

The set up for our film opening is set in a park. We decided to use the wooded area of the park for the film because it would create a tense atmosphere and it would invite the emotion of being scared into the audience because they know that the woods is a quite, isolated and threatening place to be, especially in the dark when out film is going to be filmed. Also, the horror genre portrays the woods as scary because some films contain scenes which are filmed in the woods, and that usually ends up with a death. For example, The Blair Witch Project. It is set in the woods because our film is based on a camping trip and we thought that the woods would be an ideal place for the film to commence. This would automatically stop the audience from suspecting what might happen.
In our film, the protagonist is Chelsea, who portrays herself as the popular beautiful girl who has a mean streak and a history for breaking boys hearts. Her character changes throughout the film and realises life is not just about her. Towards the end of the film, she portrays herself as the hero/heroine because she tries to solve the murders and goes out of her way to try and find out who his identity is. She also realises that its not just her and her friends at stake, its the whole community.
In our film, the adversary is Scott, who portrays himself as a geek that is lonely with barely any friends. He is known to have a crush on the popular beautiful girl (Chelsea), but when he finally plucks up the courage to asks her out, she rejects him to send him into a rage, which then completely changes his character from the innocent geek to a totally new character from what he has been portraying from the start. The audience will then see a side of him nobody thought that they would see. The theory of our film from this will be based on friendship, but will also see elements of identity and also a twist of love and humiliation.
The 3 act structure for our film are as follows:
  • The Set Up (Equilibrium) - This is the start of the story when the setting is shown and the characters are introduced to the audience. The equilibrium of our film is when the characters are at school and have planned a camping trip. Then Scott asks out Chelsea, but she rejects him, which sends him into a rage. Then they go camping later on then it gets into the disequilibrium.
  • The Setback (Disequilibrium) - This is the part of the story when the characters have a problem to solve. The disequilibrium of our film is when I get killed after the killer mistakes my identity for Chelsea's. This is because I dressed like her to mimic her. Then Chelsea finds me and gets caught by everybody else and it looks like she had killed me. But she sets out to try to find out who is the real killer.
  • The resoultion (New state of equilibrium) - This is the ending of the story when the problem gets solbed and everything is back to normal again. The new state of equilibrium of our film is when Chelsea finds out the identity of the killer and kills him to save her remaining friends and the community.
Our film also has a good use of character types. The character types of our film are as follows:
The Hero is Chelsea because she goes out of her way to find out the identity of the killer so that she not only saves herself, but everybody else in the community.
The Villain is Scott because he gets rejected the the popular beautiful girl (Chelsea) which seems to be the final straw that sends him into a rage and that makes him kill everybody around him. He sees it as his way of revenge for being rejected.
The Sidekick is Siobhan because she is Chelsea's best mate and helps her on her adventure to find out the identity of the killer and also is there when the hero needs someone around for her.
Our story also uses one important binary opposititon.
The binary opposition that we use is good vs bad. This is because Chelsea is the good character and Scott is the bad character.
  • The set up- In our film its the setting which is the park/woods. We have chosen this setting as in connotes the typical horror genre of a dark scary woods at night, and it has moving shadows and creates a eerie setting without much help from us. the equilibrium in this sert up
  • The set back which is when a character is killed due to mistaken identity.
  • The resolution which is the ending, e.g. solving the murders,running away from the killer screaming and shouting and trying to save your own life and others by fighting off the killer and winning.
The Character types for our film are the hero which is Chelsea, because she tries to stop the killer and save everybody, the villain is Scott because when he gets rejected by the popular girl, its the final straw for him so he decides he wants revenge which is what our film is really about. The hero helper (sidekick) in our film is myself because in the film i follow the hero on her adventure to stop the killer and I'm there to support the hero but also the back her up when things go wrong.

Narrative Theories Research Task

Narrative is used for story telling to engage the audiences attention so it gets them hooked so much that it makes them want to keep on watching the movie from start to finish. Narrative are important becuase if you dont have narratives, it wouldnt make the storyline as interesting as it can possibly be. A mass number of people AND stories start with the classic line "Once Upon A Time". The films that usually start with this line are usually fairytales or fantasies. This makes is magical and easy to under for young children and also makes it more interesting for them.
Once Upon A Time is not just a way to start of a magical fairytale. It also has plenty of meanings behind it. It is filled with loads of secret connotations. For example, "Once" makes us think about the past and all the memories and everything else that may have happened in the past. "Upon A Time" can lead us to our own world and all of our wishes and wants. This creates our own vision of whats going on and is like a dream compared to our own world. At the end of most fairytales, good mostly always gets the better of evil, which is always told at the end of the story to keep the audience watching/reading on.
Narratives can put characters from films into character types, which makes it a narrative theory.
The character types are as follows:
  • The Hero: Leads the narrative and is usually looking to solve something (Puzzle, Problems etc.)
  • The Villain: Conflicts with the hero
  • The Heroine: Is usually some sort of prize or reward that the hero
  • The Father: An authority figure who offers a reward to the hero for completing their quest
  • The Helper: Helps the hero; often acts as a sidekick
  • The Donor: Gives the hero something; a clue, a talisman, a weapon; which helps them complete their quest
  • The Mentor: Teaches and guides the hero
Another narrative theory is Binary Oppositions. Binary Oppositions are a pair of related terms or concepts that are the total opposite in meaning. For example, Truth/Lies, Black/White, Love/Hate, Strong/Weak etc. Binary Oppositions can help to show who are the good and bad characters in a particular film. Another narrative theory is the Equilibrium theory. Equilibrium is basically the start of the film, before the character starts his quest which will carry on the rest of the story. Disequilibrium is practically the middle of the story when the character has set off on their quest and has found the problems that is stopping them for completing their quest. Finally, the new state of Equilibrium is the ending and how the character has changed after they completed the quest.
An example of a film that uses ALL of the narrative theories is Johnny English Reborn.
Firstly it uses character types with the hero being Johnny English (Rowan Atkinson), the villain being the evil gang Vortex, the heroine being Kate Summers (Rosamund Pike), the father being Pegasus (Gillian Anderson), the helper being Agent Tucker (Daniel Kaluuya), the donor/s being the Scientists (the ones who made all the weapons for Johnny English to use and Agent Tucker, and the mentor being the Shaoulin Monk. Also the Binary Oppositions was used in the storyline because the story was based on good fighting against evil with good coming out on top at the end of the film. And lastly, it also used the Equilibrium theory. The Equilibrium was when Johnny went to mountain camp. The disequilibrium was when Vortex disrupted everything and started killing high powered people, and the new state of Equilibrium was when Johnny defeated Vortex and then leaves mountain camp to pursue his career.

Friday 11 November 2011

Our Group Genre Conventions. - Final decisions.

Firstly for our costumes, we have decided to go really over the top with our costumes as comedy/ horror normally portray. For instance in Scary movie the killers costume is very over the top as he is basically wearing a Halloween costume, which everyone is familiar with. The heroine in our film will be a very girly girl with lots of makeup nice clothes always caring about her looks, and if people are looking at her, like the girl at the start of scary movie Drew Decker would be the very over the top girly girl as she has a lot of makeup on and act out scenes from Baywatch as she runs through sprinklers, proving that she’s confident with her looks. Because of these costume choices this provides the film with a comedy element.

Lighting in our film will be very important but because of where we are setting it in the woods, it will be done for us so for example the darkness of the rest of the wood, Will help with the effect or mystery and make the audience feel a little scared, but the lights from around the camping site should help bring contrast to where the good and evil take place. Lighting use will help because shadows that will fall on the villains face will also help make the audience convinced that he is defiantly the evil and bad person in this film. The shadows created by the moving tree branches and falling leaves, will help as this will also connote that it’s a very eerie place where we are and that there isn't any around for miles.

Props is another very important area for our film as we are doing a horror/comedy we have to use a prop that be found funny but can do damage, so for instance when the killer first try’s to kill the victim we will use a banana as this isn't usually associated with danger or death but it makes the comedy element of our film glow, as no one expect someone to be killed with a banana. This also creates no murder weapon as then the villain can eat the weapon as has going back to his friend leaving no evidence of what killed the victim. Then the main proper killing will be done with a knife as is normally expected in a horror/comedy film.

Mis - En - Scene is actually very easy for us to accomplish due to our location of our film, the wooded area provides the scary mysterious setting we need to accomplish our theme and genre goals. Due to us setting the film at night the dark shadowy trees will reflect the moonlight creating a mysterious effect through the trees and focus all attention on the lights around the camp site. this creates the focus on the campsite but remains that the area that is in darkness is the most scaryest part of the setting.

 
Filmography
 Scary Movie - Keenen Ivory Wayans-2000

Questionnaire Results

These are the results to our questionnaire.












Now we have these results we can begin to shape out production around what people like and want to see in their movies, so that it is suitable and entertaining for the audience we are aiming at.

Thursday 3 November 2011

Final Cut Introduction.

My aim for today is to create a movie scene in front of the white house when a alien spacecraft blows it up.
 I am in a pair with Rhys, and we have created a short piece based on two tourists filming in front of the white house when it blows up. We tried to enrol a few comdey issues such as leaving the camera lense on and waving to the cameras a sign of comedy. We done this with few problems with learning lines but overall we think we done a good job. we encountered a problem with the apple mac computers in the mac suite where the camera had recorded the clip into a type of cut that the software we are using ( final cut express) didn't recognise the video we was trying to upload onto it. so to get around this, we converted the software to a format that final cut recognised and accepted.

Independance day - Roland Emmerich - 1996

Tuesday 1 November 2011

Primary research task
The target audience for “The Clock Strikes 12” is for 15+. This is suitable for this audience because it contains murder with plenty of gore which we think suits this category.
This is the questionnaire we have created to determine which audience will be best for our film and what they like the most about our chosen genre comedy/horror.


1.     Do you like horror comedy films?
       Yes?
       No?
2.     What interests you the most about horror/comedy movies?
     Comedy?
    Horror?
   Other?....................................
   Not sure?
3.     What are your expectations of a horror/comedy movie?
Violence?
Humour?
Blood/Gore?
Other?..............................
Not sure?
4.     What is your favourite type of killer?
Masked killer?
Serial killer?
Female killer?
Male?
Monster killer?
Other?............................................
Not sure?
5.     What is your favourite type of character in a Horror/Comedy?

Survivor?
Killer?
Victims?
Other?..................................
Not sure?
6.     What do you expect the ending to be like in a typical horror/comedy film?

Everyone is killed by the killer, and the killer lives?
Only one person survives?
No one survives?
Other?.............................................
Not sure?
7.       Would you expect to see much comedy in a Comedy/Horror film?

Yes?
No?
Mixture?
Other?.......................................
Not sure?


8.       Do you think blood is important in a horror/comedy movie?
Yes?
No?
Depends?
Other?.............................

9.       Do you think a horror comedy genre in suitable for teenagers (15+)
Yes?
No?
If watched with a parent?
Other?................................

10.   What do you find funny about horror comedy movies?


When the victims get killed?
The killers costume?
Silly actions?
Other?...................................


Added a picture, of a questionnaire. just cause.