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.