Final Post

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Audience Feedback...

In today's school assembly we showed all of our film openings to the sixth form and a few year 11s from our school.
It was strange to watch our film opening on a big screen in front of other people because I feel like I have watched it so many times now that I no longer know whether it is effective or not.
We got everyone to write down some feedback about the film openings and here are five examples of what people wrote (most people were writing the same sorts of things);

1. "Liked the combination of what was happening to Leyla visually and the voice over of her mother talking to police."
2. "Music makes suspense. Writing looks good and fitting. Good cliff hanger of Charlotte (Leyla) actually waking up."
3. "Interesting. Liked the flash backs and the flashing credits. Gripping - made you want to watch on."
4. "Really good! I liked the cup and the milk! Everything was great, story was good! Gave me chills."
5. "I liked the journey through town in a car!"

All of these were positive and we were happy with the feedback we got.

Final draft of our film opening...

Here is the very last draft of our film opening 'Leyla' both in HD and not in HD (because the HD version crops a lot of our shots which changes the way we wanted our film to look)




HD Version;


I am so happy with the way our film opening turned out in the end, and after fixing the few small problems that we had with the sound it is now complete and we are all quite happy with it.

Twelfth Draft with GarageBand track...

Here is the twelfth draft of our film opening, probably the penultimate draft, due to a few small issues with the sound that we need to edit. Other than those few issues, this is pretty much the finished product!

We turned the volume of the birds down and made the fades in between sections of sound much smoother but now I think the music is too loud so we will need to turn that down too in order to be able to hear the voiceover clearly. I really love the sound of the birds when it carries on going even after the screen has gone black. We also got rid of the random shots of Charlotte that were at the end of the film opening before. Ending our film with 'Leyla' walking off down the path is much more effective.

'Kickass'

Went to the cinema at the weekend to see 'Kickass' and really enjoyed it! It is a film about a teenage boy who wants to help the world by becoming a superhero but ends up getting put in hospital a couple of times and gets in much more trouble than he expected whilst meeting some other - slightly more ruthless/violent - "superheroes" along the way. It wasn't what I expected it to be, I thought it would be thrown on the same pile as 'Superbad', 'Pineapple Express' and the like, but it was quite different in my opinion. Although some of the humour was fairly similar to that kind of film that has grown increasingly popular recently, the content was strange and not what I was expecting at all! Lots of the people that I went to see the film with said that they were quite offended by the way the 11 year old girl was portrayed in the film as she is seen swearing constantly (I can see why people were offended because she did say a word that should never be said by anyone let alone a little girl, this is shown on the clip below...), having a ridiculously extensive knowledge of weapons and even shown as an object of "lust" by the main characters' best friend. To be honest I was more offended by the fact that Nicholas Cage was in the film...
Here's a trailer for the little girl's character called Hit Girl;


There has been lots of debate about the moral issues behind the film and there are loads of different websites that have discussions about it but here is a link to one that I found quite interesting as two guys with very different opinions on the subject discuss whether or not it is right that we - as an audience - find a little girl killing everyone funny. >> click here to read the discussion <<

This man's point particularly interested me; "I don't really think this is going to spur random acts of violence, but it does have me questioning our tolerence for violence in movies, and if we should have a limit. Watching Kick-Ass made me wonder if we've passed the event horizon of mainstream depictions of graphic material. What does it say about us that we enjoy watching a little girl gleefully killing people? And does it even matter that we don't have limits? I don't
know yet."

Here is the main trailer for the film...



I really enjoyed the film and thought it was hilarious (especially when Hit Girl is running down a corridor full of bad guys killing them all whilst a very fitting song plays...) and I thought that it was questioning society about it's increasing naivety towards the influence of violence on kids rather than promoting violence, but that's just my opinion. I would definately recommend this film, and it is so interesting to see how different people react differently towards it.

Eleventh Draft - Background Music...

This is the latest draft of our film opening which has the background music on it. We decided that the film needed some music behind the voiceover, otherwise there was too much emphasis on the voices and not enough on the visual elements.
This draft sounds very rough because we recorded the track over the moving images on iMovie, rather than actually putting the GarageBand track onto the film permanently. We just did this in order to be able to have a rough draft with just the music on it.
The recording is bad quality (will be much better when we actually use the GarageBand track itself) and the fades in between different parts of the music are not as smooth as we want them to be but we can edit that to make it much better.



I particularly like the bird noises at the end when it fades to black, but for some reason the bird sounds are slightly too loud but we can edit that too.

Final Evaluation...

Here is my final evaluation of this whole section of the course. I chose to do it in a powerpoint presentation;


Molly - Media Evaluation Presentation

New part of the script for our voice over...

We had previously written part of a script for our film voice over and we recorded that part with somebody else who was not available for recording the new part of the script which we had written yesterday. Therefore we had to record the whole thing again with different people, so to make it easier for us Charlotte was the police officer and Aimie was 'Mrs. Richardson', our main character's mother.
We recorded it yesterday and began to edit it but cutting out all of the times that anyone said 'Richardson', and putting a distorting effect on that word, in order to create the mysterious/creepy effect that we first discovered on a song called Suzanne by an artist named Plan B.

Here is the second part of the script that we wrote yesterday when we realised that what we originally had was not long enough to fill the majority of the film opening;

(after Mrs. Richardson says: Maybe you should be talking to her boyfriend, not me.)
Police: Why? What was he like?
Mrs. Richardson: I didn't get to meet him. She never let me.
Police: What about her friends?
Mrs. Richardson: I only really met Sarah Underwood and Stephen Land, but they haven't been to the house in months.
Police: Do you know if she is still in close contact with them?
Mrs. Richardson: No, like I said, she never told me anything like normal daughters should.

We are going to add effects to this voice over and edit it all to fit in perfectly with the moving images on the screen.

'District 9'

Here is the opening of a film called 'District 9' which is possibly one of my favourite films that I have seen recently. Just like our opening, all of the production names, etc. appear at the very start of the film with some sound before any images are shown.

The special effects of this film are incredible too and it is generally a good plot. I would definitely recommend this film.

'The Life Of David Gale'

I watched a film called 'The Life Of David Gale' the other day and it was not what I expected it to be, but it was even better than I had thought. I had heard a lot about the film and got the impression that most people that watched it had thought it was amazing and loved it but I was intrigued by it because I had never heard of it before and felt that I should have heard more about it if it was as good as everyone said it was.

When I was watching the film, the thing that struck me most was the intensity that the film managed to create. The whole way through the film dramatic tension is being continuously built up further and further by every aspect of the production; Mise-en-scene, editing, sound and camera work.

One of the techniques I especially liked was the swirling camera movements and flashes of words every time that there was a flashback shown on screen. I also liked that the viewer was shown the end of the film at the beginning.

I definitely did not see the twist at the end of the film coming and it shocked me, which serves as proof as to how cleverly produced the film is.

Also, the opening credits of the film helped us to decide that our title for our film opening would be right at the start too in order for it to look more like a film opening rather than a trailer.

Explanation of the rest of our film...

Here is the basic storyline of our film if it were to continue after the opening that we have produced...

• Leyla has gone missing
• Mother is concerned
• Friend is made out to be the villain
• as the film develops, the mother starts behaving strangely and saying odd things.
• In the end, it turns out that the mother has been trying to frame the daughters friend as she was the one who actually drugged and dumped her own daughter due to her psychological health issues.
• Leyla is still not found...

This explains why we used certain stereotypes in our film to lead the audience to believe that Leyla's friend is the villain, when in fact it is the "loving" mother who has disowned her daughter.

Tenth Draft...

Here is our tenth draft of our film and this one has a sample of the news report voice over that we recorded and edited (to distort Leyla's last name) on it. We have not put the whole track on yet because we've got to edit the whole track before we put it on the film. The recording is not very good because we recorded it on iMovie from the original recording on GarageBand.

Psychological Thriller Research...

Research;

"Psychological thriller is a specific sub-genre of the wide-ranging thriller genre. However, this genre often incorporates elements from the mystery and drama genre in addition to the typical traits of the thriller genre. Also, occasionally this genre will border into the also wide-ranging Horror genre.
Generally, thrillers focus on plot over character, and thus emphasize intense, physical action over the character's psyche. Psychological thrillers tend to reverse this formula to a certain degree, emphasizing the characters just as much, if not more so, than the plot.
The suspense created by psychological thrillers often comes from two or more characters preying upon one another's minds, either by playing deceptive games with the other or by merely trying to demolish the other's mental state.
Sometimes the suspense comes from within one solitary character where characters must resolve conflicts with their own minds. Usually, this conflict is an effort to understand something that has happened to them. These conflicts are made more vivid with physical expressions of the conflict in the means of either physical manifestations, or physical torsions of the characters at play."

The Definition;

Psychological – Elements that are related to the mind or processes of the mind; they are mental rather than physical in nature.
Thriller – A genre of fiction that attempts to "thrill" its audience by placing characters at great risk. This constant unease throughout the story makes the narrative suspenseful to the reader by creating a tense atmosphere.
Psychological + Thriller – By combining these two terms, the definition changes to a narrative that makes the characters exposed to danger on a mental level rather than a physical one. Characters are no longer reliant on physical strength to overcome their brutish enemies (which is often the case in typical action-thrillers), but rather are reliant on their mental resources, whether it be by battling wits with a formidable opponent or by battling for equilibrium in the character's own mind.

Themes;

Many psychological thrillers have emerged over the past years, all in various media (film, literature, radio, etc). Despite these very different forms of representation, general trends have appeared throughout the narratives. Some of these consistent themes include:
Reality – The quality of being real. Characters often try to determine what is true and what is not within the narrative.
Perception – A person's own interpretation of the world around him through his senses. Often characters misperceive the world around them, or their perceptions are altered by outside factors within the narrative (see Unreliable narrator).
Mind – The human consciousness; the location for personality, thought, reason, memory, intelligence and emotion. The mind is often used as a location for narrative conflict, where characters battle their own minds to reach a new level of understanding or perception.
Existence/Purpose - The object for which something exists; an aim or a goal humans strive towards to understand their reason for existence. Characters often try to discover what their purpose is in their lives and the narrative's conflict often is a way for the characters to discover this purpose.
Identity - The definition of one's self. Characters often are confused about or doubt who they are and try to discover their true identity.
Death - The cessation of life. Characters either fear or have a fascination with death.

Voice Over Recording...

We recorded part of our voice over today and it went well. We recorded the news report and part of the police interview but we need to add some more to that part of the script. We still have a couple of things to record and then we can edit it all together but we were happy with how it worked so far.

Ninth Draft...

This is the ninth draft of our film opening, we have experimented with using the clicking sound when the title appears and we also changed the role in front of Charlotte's name to 'introducing' rather than 'starring' because we felt it looked more professional.



On this edit, the sound is very loud and not very good quality because this is the one we recorded on iMovie. We have recorded and edited a better one on GarageBand but did not want to attach it to our film yet, as it would then become difficult to edit.

Eighth Draft...

Here is the eighth draft of our film opening. We have moved all of the names back into the right places and given each one of us a title, just as you would see in any mainstream film credits. We have also taken the iMovie effects off the shots of 'Leyla' after she has woken up, in order to show the difference between her sleeping and her being awake, this is not an error in our editing.

Blind Side...

Watched the film Blind Side last night and really enjoyed it! It was slightly longer than it needed to be but such an amazing, heart-warming story (If it hadn't have been a true story I probably would have hated it) and even though it was a bit too cheesy for my liking, I would recommend it! Sandra Bullock gave a good performance too, I think she deserved the award.

Examples of Sound...

I was listening to my ipod the other day and 'In Regards To Myself' by Underoath came on and the start of the song gave me an idea for something we could do in our film opening.

I thought the clicking sound at the start of the song would be quite a good noise for us to use right at the beginning of our film as the names are appearing on the screen. This way, it would sound like the noise of the policeman recording the interview.

I think this would be an effective way to start our film as the sound could be quite creepy.

Click on the link to see the video In Regards To Myself - Underoath

Reason For Name of Our Film...

We came to the group decision of having our film called 'Leyla' because the whole story of the film is that a girl goes missing and the audience sees her waking up in the middle of nowhere so we thought that seeing as the whole film is about her, why not just call it her name? We wanted a slightly out of the ordinary name so we searched girls names and came up with Leyla.

We also thought this would be a good idea because it is a similar idea behin the title to the film that has recently been out in the cinema called 'Chloe' so we have research to back up our reasons behind the name.

Seventh Draft of Our Film...

Here is the most recent draft of our film. After doing all our research on opening credits and where the names, etc. should go, we decided to play around with different ways we could place the credits.
We watched the opening credits to Step Brothers and really liked the simple way that the names of the production companies just faded up onto a black screen before any action was shown. We attempted to create something very similar to see how it would look with our film.
We also put all our names at the start which does not work well but we thought we would try it anyway.
I also like this way of doing the credits because it means we can have the voice over playing whilst the names come up which is an effective way of opening a film as we've seen from our research.

(We also added in a couple of extra shots at the end of the opening just to see if they looked good as they are shots of 'Leyla' when she was awake before she went missing. Still not sure if these shots work but I like the idea of them.)

Typography/Credits Analysis of Three Films...

After doing some further research into credits and the order they are put into film openings, I found three film openings that I thought would be significant in relation to our own film opening;

ALPHA DOG: I really like the opening to this film because it shows old childhood footage of some of the characters and lots of different names, etc. appear over the top of these images, then after that, the screen goes black and then an interview with Bruce Willis appears on screen. This is relevant to our film opening because we are using a police interview as our voice over, and it will be helpful to us when we come to record our voice over.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk4Nalt3350

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN: This opening is also relevant to us because of the use of a voice over and the random shots that set the scene. I like the fact that all the credits are right at the beginning of the opening, so that they do not interfer with the rest of the opening.


TWILIGHT: This film opening is significant because you hear her voice before you see anything and it gives us an idea of what our film opening would sound like with 'Leyla's' voice over the top of the action that is going on. The production company and title come in after the voice over and they appear after the music starts.

Opening Credits Research...

In class yesterday, we watched a selection of film openings in order to see what the most popular order of credit appearance was and to help us decide how we should position the names/title/production company/etc. in our own film opening.

Here are some brief descriptions of the openings we watched;

BABEL: Immediately the audience sees the name of the production companies. Black screen and sound of footsteps comes before the moving image.

DERAILED: Again black screen with sound (someone coughing) before any visuals are shown. Technical name of production company comes first then names and these appear over visuals.

BOURNE IDENTITY: Sound before visuals again. Sets the scene first. Lots of action/fast-paced editing , then a black screen and then the title.

IN BRUGES: Names of people involved and production companies pop up in between still shots that are setting the scene for the film (establishing shots).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ilO75OmtUo

LIFE OF DAVID GALE: Title and production company come right at the start before any action is seen. Simple but effective.

THE MEXICAN: Sound before visuals again. Text appears very near the start. The title is in tiny red letters (contrast to the previous names that were in white).

ANGELS AND DEMONS: Title and production company names appear straight away, using the same fading effect on each one.

I think we should move the title of our film to the very start of the film opening so it appears just after the production company name and then our names can be spread throughout the film as they are now. This way, we can have the voice over of the police interview start up before any visuals are shown on the screen and I think this will be very effective.

Sixth Draft...

After watching our fifth draft a few times and getting other people to look at it, we have decided to make the present-day shots of 'Leyla' much slower and change the effect to an iMovie effect called Romantic which makes the shots much lighter, and slightly hazy around the edges. This definately gives us the dream-like effect we were hoping for and the slowed down shots definately make it seem much more like an actual film opening rather than a film trailer which is what it looked like before.

Also, when we were editing we decided that we wanted a black screen right at the start with sound over the top of that, before you even see anything happen on screen. Just as a trial run, we layered some walkie-talkie noises over the top of the very beginning of this draft. I quite like the effect this has, but we will obviously play around with this a lot more when we record our voice over.

We also made the 'Filmed and Edited By' a bit longer as we got told it was not on screen for long enough and the audience would not have been able to read it in enough time.

Fifth Draft...

On this draft we put a new effect on all the present day shots of 'Leyla' in order to try and seperate the past and present shots. Also, the effect we tried (iMovie effect called Vignette) was a circular black border which gave the effect that someone was closely watching her.



Unfortunately, I do not think that the effect worked in the way we wanted it to, so we will need to play around with other effects, etc. It didn't work because it made the shots look too dark when we wanted them to have a very light, dream-like quality.

Script For Voice Over...

Here are some rough ideas of what we could use as a script for our voice overs...

Policeman/woman: This is PC Smith interviewing Mrs.- concerning the disappearance of her daughter Leyla -. Time is 12:43.
(possible questions he/she could ask)

Mrs. -, when was the last time you saw or had contact with your daughter?

What was her mood like?

Did she say or do anything that you consider out of the ordinary?

Is there anyone that you know of that would have a desire to harm your daughter?

etc.

Mrs.-: (possible answers)

She was at home yesterday, we had a cup of tea and lunch together. Just like we always do.

Well she's a typical teenager, how do you think her mood was?!

She was on the phone for a long time, probably to that boyfriend of hers, and she wasn't paying me enough attention. I shouted at her for getting all tarted up in those heels and she stormed out. That was the last time I saw her.

No. Maybe you should be talking to her boyfriend, not me.

News Report;

Concerns are being raised after the disappearance of a 16 year old girl, Leyla -, who was last seen a week ago in North London. The police have stated that the case is becoming more serious than they initially thought it would be. Mrs.-, Leyla's mother is urging people to come forward if they have any information on the case. All those closest to her are being questioned but so far the police can't seem to find any suspects and no-one seems to know anything about the mysterious disappearance of Leyla -.

Discussion on Voice Overs...

Yesterday, after editing we had a group discussion about what we were going to do about our sound/voice over for our film opening.
We wrote out a spider diagram of all our possible options about who would be talking in the voice over (i.e. police interview and who's talking to them - 'baddie', Leyla's friends/family, Leyla herself? just narration by Leyla? news reports on a missing girl? etc.), people we know who have suitable voices for our voice over, when and where we could record the voice overs and what the script would be.
Eventually we came to the conclusion that we could do a mixture of all these things, so that the sound was just lots of different sound clips put in sequence to emphasize the chaos that is created when somebody goes missing.
Below is an example of the kind of sound clip we want. It is a song by Plan B and can be heard at 2:58-3:24. It is a news reporter reading out news of a girl who was murdered called Suzanne. We all thought the way they had edited the sound clip to blank out certain words was very effective and quite creepy. (The song is extremely graphic and horrific but he definately gets his point across).

Fourth Draft of Our Film...

After having a few technical issues with our film on iMovie (and thinking we would have to edit everything again!) we managed to get on with editing again and this is our fourth draft of our film opening.
We discussed the name of the film again and decided it would be most effective to name our main character and then just use her first name as the title of our film and we ended up calling it 'Leyla' as we wanted something slightly unusual to reflect the odd situation the character finds herself in.
We took out the shot of the necklace at the end because we felt that it didn't really work with our initial concept. We also added in a couple more shots of 'Leyla' in the woods to emphasize her situation to the audience. We have also sorted out the credits now and made sure that they are all timed correctly, etc.

'Alice In Wonderland'

I went to see Tim Burton's latest film last night at the cinema and was really looking forward to seeing it because of how much I had heard about it and because it was a Tim Burton film and I generally love all his films but after the film I realised that it was very different from what I had expected. I enjoyed the film quite a lot but it was not what I thought it was going to be. I think that they could have made it more obscure and it didnt seem as odd as the average Tim Burton film. There were some very funny parts of it and I thought the effects that were used on the film were incredible but I still left feeling that it could have been slightly more interesting but that is just personal preference. Having said all that, I would still recommend the film and Johnny Depp gave an amazing performance as expected!

'The Bank Job'

Watched this film the other day and really liked some of the fast paced camera shots of the cars as they speed off and they reminded me of the shots that we have in our opening.

Third draft of our film opening...

Here is the latest draft of our film opening which we have temporarily named 'Pulse'. We spent a lot of time trying to perfect our credits and I am really happy with the way they've turned out although we forgot to add in an 'and' before the last name and we might have to seperate 'Filmed and edited by' from 'Aimie Condon' just so that it does not go on for too long. We made sure the timing of the credits was not too long and not too short as well, and decided that about 4 seconds was just enough for the audience to be able to read the name in time. We chose a suitably odd font from a font website and used that for our credits and we made the font a different size each time and spaced them differently each time.

We also cut up the shot of charlotte walking away down the path at the end so that she disappears and reappears which I think creates a really nice effect.

Also, we've added in the shots that involve the symbolic clock/necklace so that the opening feels like it has darker connotations and raises questions in the audience, such as, who is swinging Charlotte's necklace at the end of the opening? We also changed the parts of Sarah (the 'baddie') to colour so that it appears as though she is causing Charlotte's situation.

We cut out a few parts as well after hearing some audience feedback about there being too much repetitive footage from the car so we edited it accordingly (and got rid of the clock shot which was really out of place because of the lighting, etc.).

I am really happy with how it looks at the moment and cannot wait to get started on the voice over!

Group Discussions...

We decided as a group that we had to change the flashback footage from being completely black and white to being slightly drained of colour, because the completely contrasting effects between the flashbacks and the present were too different and made the film seem very inconsistent. We then changed the flashback parts by adding a different effect on iMovie to them which is called 'Old World' and then manually changing the colour settings to drain some of the colour from the footage to give it a dream like quality.

We tried all the other effects on iMovie but none of them really gave us the dark, atmospheric look we were going for.

We also wanted to make sure the audience would be very clear about which parts of the film were supposed to be the present day (Charlotte waking up) and which parts were supposed to be flashbacks so we thought the best way of doing this would be to use a fade to white before every flashback (where necessary) although, when editing we found it quite difficult to get each fade to white to last for the right amount of time, because iMovie kept automatically changing it so we need to figure out how to fix this eventually.

We also were deliberating about how to fill in a gap between two particular shots at the end of the opening where Charlotte wakes up, and then where she walks away so we experimented with all the different transitions on iMovie and found one which we thought looked the least obvious, where the two shots overlap each other.

Another thing that we discussed as a group was our credits. We wanted to attempt a similar style to that of the 'Se7en' credits because we really liked the creepy way that the writing flickered around the screen. So we tried out different ways of creating this on iMovie and came up with our own interpretation of this by adding in multiple textboxes in quick succession but changing the font size, letter spacing, etc. each time so that when it is played all together it appears as though our names are moving around.



Finally, we got round to talking about the name of our film and somehow we thought of simply calling it 'Pulse' because of the close up shot of Charlotte's hand at the beginning. We still are not sure about this name and whether it is right for our film or not but we have left as that for now and will change it later if we want to.

Voice Overs...

Whilst editing our film we were trying to think about what sort of music we were going to eventually put with our footage and we got given the idea of using a voice over/narration over the footage rather than making a piece of music that wouldn't really fit the images on screen.

I really like this idea because we could have the narrator talking through whats happening on screen so that it confirms what the storyline is to the audience and because quite a lot of films open with a voice over.

When we were having a group discussion about the idea of using a voice over, we had a slightly different idea which was to make the voice over a police interview, so that the audience is more aware of what is going on and the darker connotations of the plot are more obvious to the viewer.

Here are some examples of film openings with voice overs that I found on a website of top ten voice overs;
http://www.film.com/features/story/top-ten-movie-voice-overs/27339682



"The genius of the narration in Election is how most of the characters are saying the exact opposite of what they really think. You listen to them rationalize their immoralities or completely kid themselves into accepting delusion."
said Dre Rivas on his blog.






I really like the idea of using a voice over with some music in the background (we thought perhaps the beep of a hospital machine as we discussed the possibility of calling our film 'Pulse') and I hope we get to use this idea successfully in our film opening.

Up...

Saw the film Up for the first time on Saturday and loved it! Really sad at the beginning but the rest of the film was so good, and pretty funny too!
Here are some videos I found on YouTube;

'This Is Spinal Tap'...

Love this film. Even though it is obviously a completely different genre of film to our film opening, I wanted to put a clip of it onto my blog because I think the way it is filmed is so clever. There is so much subtle comedy in there due to the camera work (for example when Nigel is telling them not to look at one of his guitars the audience never sees it which leaves them wanting to see it) and it is a film that has to be noted! Here's one of my favourite scenes from the film;

Radiohead - Karma Police

This video has a lot of similar shots to the ones we took from the passenger seat of the car.

Here is a link to the video;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uYWYWPc9HU

Second Day of Filming...

On our second day of filming, we got all the shots of our main character (Charlotte) waking up in the forest, and lots of extreme close ups of her twitching in her sleep as she is dreaming/having flashbacks.

We went to Forty Hall and filmed lots of different shots in a small area surrounded by trees. We got some interesting shots such as spinning round whilst holding the camera to show the trees going round and round. Also a point of view shot of Charlotte waking up and sitting up. Another nice shot was a pan of her walking past the camera and walking away down a path.

We had also filmed some extra in between shots such as someone pouring milk into a cup of tea and a clock, although the clock didnt fit in when we edited it into our film so we will cut that out. Then we filmed some extra shots of charlotte's necklace with a clock on it (shot of her hand reaching onto the shelf to grab it and a shot of it swinging from side to side). This could be a recurring object in our film opening which could link the bad character with what happened to Charlotte, etc.

Here is a second draft of our film but we have not officially decided to put these particular shots where they are, we just wanted to experiment with our footage a bit and see what the whole thing would look like with the contrast between the flashbacks and the present time footage (and the black and white contrasting with the colour shots).

We still have a lot more to edit in but this is just a tester. (I really like the shots of the tea and reversed shot of the cheese being cut!)
Here it is;

Film Classification...

Here is a document published by the British Board of Film Classification which explains the reasons why certain films are given particular certificates.



Classification Guidelines

Our film will be rated 15 because the content fits with the BBFC classification of what a 15 film should contain which can be found in the classification document above.

I searched for films that have similiar themes and content to our film opening on the BBFC website and here is one example of that which helped us to determine what rating our film was going to be;

DONNIE DARKO
Consumer Advice:
Contains strong language and psychological horror.

This work was passed with no cuts made.

The main spoken language in this work is English.

Directed by Richard Kelly

The cast for this work includes: Jake Gyllenhaal, Drew Barrymore, Noah Wyle, Patrick Swayze, Katharine Ross, Jena Malone, Mary McDonnell, Holmes Osborne, Beth Grant, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Daveigh Chase, James Duval, Stuart Stone, Gary Lundy, Alex Greenwald.

When submitted to the BBFC the work had a running time of 113m 11s.
The running time of this film was calculated from the measured length of 10186+13 ( feet + frames ).

CLASSIFIED 13TH MAY 2002.

The document below will also help us to evaluate our film as it includes a lot of information about why film classification is important and how it started;

Student Guide to Bbfc

Here is what the BBFC classification document states about 15 rated films;

Discrimination: The work as a whole must not endorse discriminatory language or behaviour.

Drugs: Drug taking may be shown but the film as a whole must notpromote or encourage drug misuse. The misuse of easilyaccessible and highly dangerous substances (for example,aerosols or solvents) is unlikely to be acceptable.

Horror: Strong threat and menace are permitted unless sadistic or sexualised.

Dangerous behaviour: (for example, hanging, suicide andself-harming) should not dwell on detail which could becopied. Easily accessible weapons should not be glamorised.

LanguageThere may be frequent use of strong language (for example,‘fuck’). The strongest terms (for example, ‘cunt’) may be acceptable if justified by the context. Aggressive or repeateduse of the strongest language is unlikely to be acceptable.

Nudity: Nudity may be allowed in a sexual context but withoutstrong detail. There are no constraints on nudity in a non-sexual or educational context.

Sex: Sexual activity may be portrayed without strong detail.There may be strong verbal references to sexual behaviour,but the strongest references are unlikely to be acceptableunless justified by context. Works whose primary purpose is sexual arousal or stimulation are unlikely to be acceptable.

Theme: No theme is prohibited, provided the treatment is appropriate for 15 year olds.

Violence: Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the inflictionof pain or injury. The strongest gory images are unlikely tobe acceptable. Strong sadistic or sexualised violence is also unlikely to be acceptable. There may be detailed verbal references to sexual violencebut any portrayal of sexual violence must be discreet andhave a strong contextual justification.

15 – Suitable only for 15 years and over. No one younger than 15 may see a ‘15’ film in a cinema. No one younger than 15 may rent or buy a ‘15’ rated video work.

Split Screen/Picture-in-Picture Technique...

Our group got told about this interesting concept that is used in the film '500 Days Of Summer' to show the character's reality alongside the character's expectations. We could possibly use this technique in our own film opening to show what really happened to our main character (or our main character's friends) the night before alongside what our main character wished had happened.
Here is a simple video on how to create this Picture-in-Picture technique on iMovie;

Arctic Monkeys Video...

I was watching a music channel the other day and this video for the Arctic Monkeys song When The Sun Goes Down came on and it had lots of car shots that are really similar to the ones we have already filmed!
For example the wing mirror shot and the night time, sped up shots at 0:56 and 1:08.

First Draft of Our New Film Opening...

Here is the very first draft of our new film opening, we just put together a few bits of our new footage to see how they look together. We still have loads more to add in like the longer shots of our main character waking up because it looks slightly too fast-paced at the moment.

We will probably change this quite a bit but this was just a rough draft to give us an idea of what we wanted it to look like.

(The night time driving shots were filmed on tuesday night after our first lot of filming and we forgot to mute some of the clips so mute the youtube video)

Filming...(again)...

Yesterday we began filming for our new film concept. We started by filming some of the car journey shots out of the car windows and got some good shots of traffic lights changing, people walking down the street, etc. All of these shots will be sped up when we edit our footage to make an interesting effect. It was light when we filmed this part, so we are going to get some similar shots at night, so that we can fade the two shots into each other.
Hopefully it will look something like this once we've edited it (minus the awful music);

As we were driving around we saw a phonebox which was perfect for one of our shots, so we filmed sarah running into it from behind the camera, then another shot of her doing the same thing but from the other side of the road. Then we took two different angled shots of her frantically dialling from inside the phonebox. One looking down at her and one looking up at her. We want to make sure we get loads of different, interesting angles so that we have as much variety in our film opening as possible.

We then saw a street lamp flickering (it was getting dark by this point) but did not quite film it in time so ended up with just a shot of a normal lamp post! All of the things we filmed today are just filler shots anyway to use in our main character's dream/flash back sequence so we were filming lots of short shots of odd things. We also stopped off at Hillyfields to film some point of view shots of someone running. Then we put the camera on the floor so that the ground was at an angle on the screen, and got Aimie to run over it so you could only see her legs.

I think this will all look really good when we've edited it so that it is really fast-paced and choppy. The whole idea of our film opening is to be just lots of short shots of the character's flashbacks put together to make an interesting opening and one that does not tell too much of a story.

Tomorrow we will be filming the part where our main character is waking up in the middle of the forest.

Camera Shots and Storyboard...

Here are a few ideas for the different camera shots that we are going to use in our new film opening;

• point of view shots from passengers perspective in a car (both night and day time, perhaps fade one into the other when editing).



• point of view shot of traffic lights changing.



• canted angle shot of the ground and someone running over the camera (to look as though the camera has been dropped by someone).



• close up shot of someone changing the radio station in the car.



• point of view shots of sign posts - lets the audience know a bit more about the character's situation.



• close up of car clock (again informing the audience).



• point of view shots of character getting chased and then point of view shots from that character's perspective.



• wing mirror and inside mirror close up shots.



• over the shoulder shot of driver.



• steering wheel shot.



• blurred night time car journey shots.



• high and low angle shots of main character sleeping in strange surroundings.



• pan over main characters body as they're sleeping.



• zoom out shot of main character waking up abruptly and then pan across surroundings.



• close up of someone's hands trying to find something on a shelf.



• shot of a clocks hands spinning round.



• close up of cup of tea as milk is being poured into it (when this is slowed down on iMovie might look really cool).



• shots at wheel level of car as it is moving.

All of these shots will be put together in a way that will make an interesting film opening about someone having a dream/flashbacks and then waking up in the woods. We think this will be effective because the audience won't really understand what is going on initially, so this would make them want to continue watching the whole film which is the main objective of any film opening.

Here is our storyboard for our new film idea;

GarageBand Training...

Yesterday we went to a GarageBand training session and got taught everything about how to use the programme so that we know what we are doing when it comes to adding music to our film opening. We all got the chance to play around with creating different pieces of music by adding in loops, etc. Our group came up with a few different things that we really liked the sound of but now we have got to make sure that the different parts of the track we eventually make fit in exactly with the action on screen to give our film opening a tension building effect.

Here is a picture of our group (minus Aimie!) at GarageBand training;

Some more helpful clips...

After starting to watch the first series of 'Six Feet Under', an american tv drama, I realised how much I liked the opening credits for it. I think it is well put together for many reasons. Firstly because of the very interesting shots they use and secondly because of the way those shots have been edited together to match the music perfectly, for example when the viewer is shown some sort of container filling up with liquid (at 0:47), the music changes abruptly and almost sounds like water dripping and splashing. Another example of this is the shot of the dying flowers (at 0:57), the music matches the action on the screen. Although this is not an opening for a film, I love it and hope we can use some aspects of it in our own film opening, like the way that the audience has not really been shown any storyline yet, but they still get a hint as to what the programme will be about.



Here is a clip from the TV soap 'Hollyoaks' which shows somebody waking up (at 0:07) in an unfamiliar place and is a bit a of a dream sequence too, this could be helpful for our film opening idea;

Sherlock Holmes

Saw the latest version of Sherlock Holmes at the cinema on wednesday and really enjoyed it. I especially liked the technique of slowing some of the action down whilst Holmes' voice over explains step by step what he is doing and then straight after the audience is shown the same action at normal speed. I liked the effect this had on the audience and their understanding of his character. We could possibly use some aspects of this technique whilst editing our film once we have the footage. Here is a clip of the film (the slow motion effect I mentioned starts at 0:31);