Group discussion...

Yesterday we had another talk about our plans, and we came up with a couple of ideas for our film opening, such as having the first shot fade in from black and have diegetic sound (e.g. sound of cars driving past/police sirens?/etc.) playing for a bit before any image is seen on the screen. This will make the audience wonder why these noises are being heard and who is hearing them.
An example of this can be seen in the start of this clip from the film 'Sin City';


When I was searching for another example of diegetic sound being used before the first shot is shown on screen, I remembered the opening credits of 'Monty Python; The Holy Grail' and how the humour of it is enhanced by the sound, although it is non-diegetic it will still help us to understand different ways in which sound can be used to create a feeling in the audience members.

We also decided that we'll be meeting up over the christmas holidays to plan every shot, make our storyboard and sort out everything about our film, that way we will be ready to start filming as soon as we get back to school in the new year.

'Crash'

Watched the film 'Crash' in lesson yesterday and really enjoyed it. It was very sad and quite tragic to me but I loved everything about the way it had been produced, it seemed very simple and to the point which was very effective. Probably more effective than if they had used loads of complex editing techniques etc. It was a great film and I really enjoyed watching it (also, the voice over on the opening credits was very effective).

Our original idea...

Here is a video of what we had edited so far of our original darkroom footage (most of it is just us playing around with different effects and colour balances to see what looked good);




The first part I quite liked as the camera slowly focuses on the man going through the door, which gave it quite an eerie effect but all of the shots in the dark room are very grainy due to the limited light that we had in there. This part is also very long and there is not much too it. The viewer can't really see what the man is doing anyway because it is so dark, and the pan shot from the pictures of the girls to the man when he drops the beaker is not smooth at all which makes the whole thing look very unprofessional. The audience would be bored by this part because notmuch is happening and we want our film opening to be much more fast paced.

The next section starts with the shot of the man walking past a house and the camera is very shaky at the start of this bit which also looks very unprofessional (we tried to eradicate the camera shake on iMovie but it did not work as well as we hoped). This is also where we tried out the 'Day To Night' effect which made everything look slightly blue which we wouldn't have used if we continued with this film. Again this shot is very long which means tension is lost, and there is no dramatic build up.

There is then a over the shoulder shot of Charlotte leaving the house which is slightly wonky which again makes it look unprofessional and the lighting is not very good here either, everything is dark. The only thing we liked about this particular shot was the fact that we'd managed to edit it so that it was all muted apart from the loud door slam!

There is then a shot of Charlotte leaving the house and the man following her and we edited in another shot from another angle of this which breaks it all up a bit, stopping it from being one long shot again but it is still not fast-paced enough to be an effective film opening to me.

The next shot is my favourite part of it all because it is the most effective of all the footage we had. It is a point of view shot of Charlotte being followed by the man. I like this bit because it seems believable and I like the framing effect we put over it to make it seem as though he is focusing on his victim. To break this part up we added in a couple of shots from a different angle but it looks very jumpy because we hadn't put the same framing effect on those shots.

That is as far as we got with editing our footage before we decided that it was not working well as a film opening. It had too much of a storyline to be a 2 minute opening and we did not have enough different shots/camera angles to make it an interesting and intriguing opening.
We have now decided that we want to film something much more edgy and fast-paced in order to make it more interesting.
Myself and Aimie found a great location in the woods (in Forty Hall) with lots of tall eerie trees and a path that is covered by trees where we could film our person waking up after having all there weird dreams (or possibly flashbacks of the night before; character's involvement in drugs, prostitution, etc?). I thought we could have a shot panning across the sleeping body of the chracter at the start without showing the location, and then close up of the face twitching in their sleep then add in loads of flashing, really fast clips of dreams/flashbacks the character is having etc. before they suddenly wake up startled then zoom out to show where they are etc.
These are just initial ideas and we need to develop them, but the fast flashing images would be almost in the style of the opening credits of 'Se7en' and we are also looking at loads of film openings to get ideas. Here are some that I was looking at;

This clip of Trainspotting is good because it includes lots of different random shots and I love the effect where the man is falling over in two different situations and then the shot of him laying on the floor could be very useful to us in our filming...


This is an AS media piece that is only good for the location and for some of the effects they used. (the dialogue and storyline isn't very good at all!) Love the delay/blur effect they used when the boy gets up from being concussed and I also really liked the tilts up to the tree tops.



This piece really made me laugh! The idea has definately been taken from the film 'Rock N Rolla' (one of my absolute favourite films, see below) but I loved the way they freezed the footage abruptly to introduce each person and I liked the 3 different shots on one screen (possibly use for dream sequence in our film?) Also loved the shot from a car right at the end and the way they showed a date in the corner of the screen making the viewer want to continue watching.

Pulp Fiction...

Watched 'Pulp Fiction' for the first time the other night and was once again blown away by Tarantino's style of directing/producing (even acting!).
Loved the way the opening went straight into action without giving the viewer any background information/establishing shot. The viewer is thrown into the plot with no clue about what is going on, who these two people are, their significance in the story, the setting, the exact time period, etc.
This fits in with what we want to do for our film opening, as it is very random and intrigues the audience as they want answers to the questions that this opening scene provokes. Here is a clip of the first few minutes of the film;
(I also like the opening credits, as they are simple but effective. Great track playing over the top of them as well - even if Black Eyed Peas did ruin the song later on...)

Continuity Editing...

Here is a short clip about continuity editing;

Change of plan...

In yesterday's lesson, our group had a discussion about whether or not we had enough footage to produce a decent film opening - following the criteria - and we eventually came to the conclusion that the footage we had taken and the content was not sufficient enough to produce a film that we would be happy with and that would fulfill the criteria.
Although we will be starting from scratch, all of the research we have done so far will still be relevant because we can take the essential elements of this research and apply them to the conventions of the genre we choose.
We will most likely be still doing a thriller film opening but we have also had some ideas about doing a spoof/comedy. Both have their benefits and faults; for example, a thriller would be easier to make in the sense of keeping it simple and just having good camera angles and shot composition, whereas a spoof/comedy could be fun to make and potentially interesting if we get it right, but it would be really easy for us to find it all hilarious in the moment, but then watching it back it may be really not funny at all.
We are going to research previous years A2 media films before deciding on anything, but I am leaning towards doing another thriller film opening.
We had a few vague ideas, such as - after looking at the opening of the film 'Donnie Darko' - filming something very obscure in order to intrigue the viewer.

For example, we discussed having footage of somebody sleeping and showing quick flashes of bad dreams they are having mixed with flashs of close-ups of their face flinching and then at the end it zooms out as they wake up and they're in an odd place, such as a field, a car park, etc.
These are just very early ideas and we will continue to brainstorm more ideas.

Garageband...

Here is a video on how to use Garageband, this will be really helpful to us when we begin to add sound to our film.