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.

'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.

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.

'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;

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.

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);

'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).

'New Moon'

Went to see the second film in the Twilight Saga on monday night called 'New Moon'. I really enjoyed it and thought it was such an improvement on the first one. I later found out that 'New Moon' had a different director than the one from the previous film. There seemed to be such a huge difference between the two films, not just because of the content but because of the editing techniques, etc.

This film was a lot more fast-paced in terms of editing than the first one which made the film more enjoyable (this could be put down to the fact that more action occurs in the second book than the first one, not because of the change in director) For example, when showing the character's flashbacks or if a character has just realised something, a few very short shots of things would flash up on the screen in quick succession in order to show the audience that character's thought path (fast-paced editing).

I also particular liked the shot of Jacob's character jumping over the camera as he turns into a wolf. The effects they used in order to create the visuals of these wolves are probably the same/similar to those used in the film '300 (see my last post). It can be seen in this advert at about 1:33;

I loved the film but I still prefer the books, even if they are badly written, I love the story line (apart from the very end which is awfully written) and I'm looking forward to seeing how the producers/directors manage to get the next book from paper to screen.

Skins Presentation

As a group we had to choose a scene from a TV drama and analyse the mise-en-scene in that scene. We chose to analyse a clip from Skins and focus on the characters' sexuality. We split the different aspects up between each of us and I was focusing on lighting and props. We analysed the camera angles together.
Here is a link to the clip we analysed... >> Skins Clip <<

Skins Presentation

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Jaws Shot Analysis

This is a slide show that will help me with my analytical skills. It goes through each shot and gives detailed analysis of everything in that shot.

Jaws Shot By Shot - Part 1

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