Continuity

I was waiting for misfits to start on e4 and saw this advert. It explains how important continuity is in television and this can apply to our coursework as our 2 minute opening coursework has to be continuous so it makes sense. It gets the message through effectively as it has a silly side to it with everything changing making it hardly continuous whatsoever throughout the whole advert. Here's the advert..

Se7en

Today in class we watched Se7en, this was a film about a murderer killing people he believed were committing the seven deadly sins. These sins being:

1. Pride - This sin is considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins. This sin is identified as a desire to be more important or attractive than others, and that means that people fail to acknowledge the good work of others, and love themselves.

2. Envy - This sin relates to people whom resent what some people have that they may not. By this, they wish the other person is deprived of their quality as they do not have it themself or perhaps they are lacking in whatever they envy.

3. Gluttony - This sin name comes from the word 'gluttire' meaning to gulp or swallow. Gluttony is the sin involving over-indulgence and over-consumption of anything to the point of wasting it.

4. Lust - This is usually thought of as the sin which includes somebody having thoughts or desires of a sexual nature.

5. Despair - Despair describes a feeling of discontent, which causes unhappiness to somebody, this can also involve thoughts of hopelessness

6. Greed - This is a sense is similiar to lust and gluttony, as it a sin of excess. However, greed is applied to a large desire and pursuit of wealth, status, and power.

7. Sloth - This may be seen as one of the less serious of the sins, Sloth meaning laziness and the lack of doing things.


The film follows two police detectives during an investigation to find a serial killer. Firstly the Policeman do not understand the strange muderous ways of their case, it is then later revealed through their research that the murderer is killing culprits that he believes have committed one of the seven deadly sins, using this to his advantage and killing them in a way relating to whatever sin that person has commited. When the police realise this is what the murderer is doing, he still has many victims along the way and it becomes almost like a race to find him, until he turns himself in.

Se7en shows its viewing audience all the different ways in which these victims are killed, most of the time leaving the viewer disgusted. The man is made to seem very sick in the head. When the killer turns himself in to the police, straight away they know that he still has a murder left to commit. The killer then offers to take the police to where the last murder/sin will happen.

The police stand around with him in a field and make him bend down on his knees, looking extremely inferior to themselves. He said he only wanted a specific policeman there but as he was a dangerous man there was many surrounding and watching out as it is very unpredictable. As an audience it becomes really tense as he makes the policeman drive him to the middle of nowhere, and then a delivery van drives along down the road. At first i thought it may have been a bomb, but then the box is handed to Brad Pitt, the policeman with the killer. This moment in the film builds up lots of tension as the viewer has absolutely no idea to what is in the box, it is then when he opens it that he see's his wife's head. The camera angle used is very clever because it does not show the head, leaving the viewer disgusted at the thought of whats in the box. This completes his task of completing murders of the se7en deadly sins, as Brad Pitt commits the sin that is Anger, by shooting the killer himself and murdering him.

Se7en was an extremely good film, it had a very clever storyline. I particularly liked the credits in se7en as well. I thought these were very effective because at the start we have no idea of what is going on in the credits but by the end of the film you have a much clearer understanding of it. The music that accompanies the credits is also very eerie, this helps to set the film genre of se7en.

Heres a video of the credits:

Filming in the dark room

Yesterday we started to film our footage of my dad in the dark room. We filmed the credits in the dark room as well as some footage of him developing photos of Charlotte, and we also panned the camera across the room to show pictures of past girls he has taken pictures of and stalked.

We had the choice of two dark rooms in the school that are used for photography students. There was the choice of the new, modern dark room which is bigger and would have had a lot more space, or we could choose the small old dark room which is not in use anymore. Aimie, Charlotte, Molly and myself all being photography students as well as media students decided we would take a look at the old dark room to see what it was like and whether it would be suitable to film in. When we walked in we knew straight away that it would be better to film in. In comparison to the newer dark room, it was far more creepy, it was very small and looks like it could be a room that the stalker has in his house/garage. We looked around the dark room and found a board where we could stick pictures of girls he had stalked in the past up. There was also a line with clips where we could hang up pictures of ourselves for the credits.

In my free period, Charlotte, Aimie and Myself made 'profiles' for past girls the stalker has stalked. We stuck down pictures that we had got developed from Aimie's camera of people from school, and wrote down random information facts that could make the stalker look really creepy. We crumpled up the paper, and made some rips in them too so it looked old and tatty, we pinned them up on a board next to the door in the dark room as planned.

After school, we took pictures of Molly, Aimie and Charlotte gagged as the stalker has already gagged Molly and Aimie, whos pictures are hanging up on the line. Its then Charlottes picture that he had taken recently (which we will be showing in our opening) and then he changes round her picture to a picture of her gagged also. We end the opening on a picture of me, alive, on the phone, being his next victim. It ends in suspense as the rest of the film will be about the stalker trying to get hold of me. We panned across our pictures, with our names attatched and these are our credits. We carried on setting up the dark room until my dad arrived. When my dad arrived we took these shots, and we also took a shot of him walking in to the dark room. This caused a problem because we wanted the red light that switches on to be in the shot but we also wanted a reasonable amount of my dad shown. Where we placed the camera you could clearly see the red light, but when my dad stood in position ready to walk into the dark room, you could just about see the top of his head. We moved the camera back further and managed to get more of him in the shot and it looked much better.

I think the filming in the dark room went reasonably well and we had a time limit as the school shut at half 5, we managed to keep inside the time limit and got everything we needed to get done. Our filming is more or less done now except one more clip of Charlotte that needs to be filmed, then its just editing left to do!

Filming our two minute opening

We were keen and excited to start filming our opening and started filming straight away in the half term. We obviously couldn't film the bits in the dark room as the dark room is based in school, but we could however film the scenes down my road. Although this is the middle of our opening, it doesn't matter what order we film it in because when we are editing we can place selected bits in whatever part of the opening we fancy.

We decided it would be better if we filmed more than one camera shot for our different shots because it would be better to have more than we need rather than less, and being disappointed with not having thought of filming a certain shot. Charlotte and my Dad were the actors so that left Molly, Aimie and myself directing and filming the piece, making sure that we were happy with shots, however Charlotte also put in her input too and we worked really well together as a team, building up our ideas and making them better together.

The first shot we filmed was an establishing shot of the house, we placed the camera and the tripod on the opposite side of the road and we filmed my dad walking past the house and walking down the ally where he was able to see Charlotte but she unable to see him. The only annoying thing about shooting down my road was the cars that kept coming down my road, luckily my road is usually quite quiet but it was a little busier this time so we had to wait for cars to stop driving past. We filmed my dad coming from different directions towards the house and ally so we could choose what one is best when we edit.

The next shot was from right outside the house when we showed Charlotte coming out from the front door and walking towards the second alley and then Sarah's dad walking across the camera after her. We then filmed this same part but from a different angle. We placed the camera upstairs and filmed out of the window to give a different perspective. This also gives the feeling that Charlotte is vulnerable as is it from a high angle.

For the next shot we placed the camera closer to the outside of the hosue and we showed Charlotte coming out from the front door and walking out towards the ally. We then showed my dad walking across the camera following her. We used different shots for this part too and we used a shot filmed out of the window upstairs to give a different viewpoint as it is a high angle shot. Here is a picture of us filming upstairs:

Following this shot we decided we would take a shot of Charlotte inside the house about to walk out so it gave another different camera angle. We then started to film the part where my Dad follows Charlotte down the ally. We decided we would film Charlotte turning around to realise somebody is behind her and my Dad would put his head down so she cannot see his face. When she realises he is there but thinks little of it, she walks a little further and my Dad puts his hand out as if he is to grab Charlotte's shoulder from behind. When we filmed this we decided to film it in two different shots. Firstly we filmed a handheld point of view shot and my Dad held the camera as he walked up behind Charlotte. Following this shot we then used the tripod and placed the camera on it to film Charlotte walking towards the camera with my Dad closely following behind. Here is a picture of my Dad getting used to holding the camera..

All in all i think we did a good job filming and got everything we needed done, we were aware of cars and people walking past and had to stop and be patient but it was fun and I am looking forward to filming more shots in the dark room!

Our film opening idea

Basically, we have decided on making our opening based on an obsessive stalker.

The Stalker: My Dad
The victim: Charlotte

We chose to have my Dad and Charlotte in our opening because they are both reliable as Charlotte is in our group and as we were planning on filming some of our opening down my road it seemed logical to ask my Dad if he would play the part of the stalker.

We are starting it as a young girl with her friends and slowing the clip down and adding in a camera shutter sound. We have practiced this on iMovie and it looks quite effective as if the girl is having pictures taken of her. We are then moving it to a different location, this will be the stalker in the dark room. We will be putting the video camera in night mode whilst we film this part because it's dark in there and it provides a different effect and when we tested this when we got our equipment we liked the way it looked. In the dark room there will be pictures of different girls around the room that have been stalked in the past, and hanging up on the line in the dark room there will be his past victims, we were thinking of making these victims us, and somehow making our credits based around this or something along these lines.

After the dark room, the next film location is going to be down my road. We are using my friends house as it is located next to an ally down my road and very close to the other ally down my road. We are going to have my dad standing down the ally to the side of the house and Charlotte is going to walk out, it will be then that he follows her down the other ally. Charlotte will turn round whilst she's walking down the ally and nervously smile at the man behind her not knowing of his obsession with her. We are having a handheld camera shot as she looks around as he is going to move it away and make it dark as he is trying to turn away from her to avoid being seen. We will end our opening on his hand reaching out as if he is going to grab her, and then the screen going black, and just the noise of a girl's scream. We will then shoot more clips in the dark room, as he changes the picture of Charlotte on the line to a picture of her once he has killed her. We were also thinking he could possibly be looking at a picture in his hand of the next victim (possibly me) and hanging this up on the line along with Aimie, Molly, and recently 'killed' Charlotte, showing that my fate is now in his hands and the rest of the film could be based on him looking for myself.

Practising with equipment

At school we were given our camera, tripod and all the items we needed to start on our filming for our 2 minute opening coursework in the half term. We collected all of our equipment and went out to experiment with it in order to get used to it and have a bit more understanding of how to use it all. We took our camera and tripod into the playground and it was quite bright outside, we noticed that lighting could prove to be difficult as the sun was dominating the shot. We moved the camera and the tripod to a different position, facing away from the sun, the logical thing to do.. and the lighting was much better and we could see objects properly. A couple of times we had just a black screen and kept forgetting we had left the lens cap on the camera, a simple but stupid mistake to make!

We got used to how the camera and tripod worked, adjusting the height of the tripod, and the angle the camera sat on top of the tripod. We filmed a small clip of me and charlotte sitting outside and then walking across the playground, as we wanted to put this onto the mac and attempt a bit of editing with it because we had an idea for our 2 minute coursework that we weren't sure would work or not.

For our 2 minute opening we have taken on the idea of a stalker man. As stalkers are often known to take pictures of their victims, we were attempting to slow down the clip we filmed and adding in a camera shutter sound. We wasn't sure if it would look alright or not so we had a go with editing it and we thought that it looked quite effective so we are keeping to the idea.

Another part of our film is going to be the man in the photography dark room. We were planning on using the new dark room, until we entered the old one! The old dark room was a lot smaller, older and looks slightly creepy. In the dark room, the stalker is going to be developing photos of the girl he is following in our opening. We thought this would make our opening quite effective by showing the stalker to be obsessed with his victim.


We took our camera into the dark room and obviously realised that it was very 'dark' in there. We decided we would experiment with the camera and turn on 'night' mode, this made a great effect and we are deciding to stick with it rather than filming it normally like we originally planned. Here is a picture of us in the dark room getting used to the lighting and planning where we can pin up photos of past victims around the room. We are going to put up photos on a line and have his next victim hanging up at the start of our opening so it shows she is next in line and is going to be stalked by the obsessed man. When we film in the dark room we are going to have to go in and set up as there are lots of un-needed things placed around the room in there.

Jaws shot analysis

This is an extremely helpful slideshow on Jaws. It goes into great depth about all the various camera shots. In comparison to the shot analysis I did myself on Chicago it goes into much more detail. It is very useful to look at as it gives thoroughly explained analysis of more or less everything in various shots.

Jaws Shot By Shot - Part 1

View more documents from The Cottesloe School.

Marking Criteria

G321 Marking Criteria

View more presentations from jfoster10.

Preliminary Task feedback

In friday's lesson, we watched everybody's preliminary exercises as a class and we gave feedback to each group. The feedback that was given to my group was that the continuity could have been better because we missed a camera shot and should have filmed Charlotte actaully sitting down on a chair after she had entered the room. We didn't realise we had missed this out when we were filming, we only came across it when we were editing our prelim on iMovie. We tried to fix it by putting another shot of my shocked/scared face in to cover up our mistake, but technically it would have looked slightly better if we had filmed Charlotte actually sitting down because it would have displayed more continuity in our prelim.

The feedback in class was useful because it has made me more concsious to make sure every shot needed is filmed and that our storyboard is followed well. I think as a group we will be more careful to check that we have filmed everything we need to during the filming of our 2 minute film opening for our coursework.

Skins Presentation

As a class we had to get into different groups and make a presentation on how the mise-en-scene in a TV drama expresses an option of our choice, whether it be gender, status, sexuality, etc. My group chose to do our presentation on the hit UK teen-drama, Skins and we focussed on sexuality.

Here is a link to the clip we based our presentation on:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jZXM-G6YUc

And here is our presentation:

Skins Presentation

View more presentations from sarahisaacs1992.

Thrillers - Stalker themed.

For our 2 minute opening coursework, we are basing it on a thriller/horror genre. It is important that I conduct research to understand the genre at a better standard than what I do already.

A very well known thriller is Scream. Scream is about a group of teenagers who are brutally slaughtered or approached by a mysterious killer in a Halloween costume. It is a very popular thriller because the killer is unknown, yet there are so many possibilities of who the killer could be. It then turns out that there is not just one killer, but two! The storyline has its audience hooked as the murderers are not revealed until the end, and it is not until towards the end that the audience find out there are two killers. This keeps the audience on the edge of their seat as many different people could be seen as the killer, it makes it very tense as the audience get drawn into the storyline and do not know who to trust.

My group have decided to base our two minute opening on a stalker-killer. There are not actually loads of films like this but there are films that relate to this. Some of these films being Prom Night, The Watcher, One hour photo and Scream.

Fatal Attraction is also another film that explores the idea of obsessive stalkers. In this film, a married man has a one-off fling with a woman who then becomes obsessed and doesn't allow it to end. The woman claims she is carrying his baby in attempts to make him be with her, she then temporarily kidnaps his daughter in hope to win back his affection. The obsessed woman becomes psycho and this type of stalker storyline is going to be portrayed in our two minute clip.

Sleeping with the enemy also portrays a stalker based storyline as a woman tries to go into hiding when when her husband turns into a violent maniac, but he then begins to track her down. It is worrying because he has turned so violent, it is very unpredictable what he is capable of.

Preliminary task

In class we had been discussing our preliminary task. This involves filming a 30 second piece to be sent off with our final piece of coursework to prove we understand the 180 degree rule and that we are able to film various camera shots.

Being group 1, my group went first in filming our preliminary task. It had to consist of a simple conversation between two people, one already seated and the other walks through the door. I decided to take on the role of the person already seated and instead of a simple conversation, Charlotte and myself decided to talk through the Michael Jackson lyrics of 'Wanna be starting something' and put our own little spin on it. Although i was not behind the camera and filming myself i was able to observe Aimie and Molly who were filming and directing the piece. They kept to the 180 degree rule and filmed a variety of different camera shots, ranging from a long shot, over the shoulder shot and close up shots.


The script of our preliminary task simply followed the Michael Jackson lyrics of 'Wanna Be Starting Something' and went like this:


Charlotte: (Walks past door of room outside and cannot be seen, reappears in the middle of the door from below looks at Sarah angrily through window of door)
Sarah: (Looks shocked/scared as of seeing Charlotte)
Charlotte: (Storms into room and sits down opposite Sarah) Wanna be startin' somethin'?
Sarah: You've got to be startin' somethin'!
Charlotte: Wanna be startin' somethin'?
Sarah: You've got to be startin' somethin'!
Charlotte: Your too high to get over..?
Sarah: Yeah, yeah..
Charlotte: Your too low to get under..?
Sarah: Yeah, yeah..

Charlotte: Your stuck in the middle..?
Sarah: And the pain is thunder!

We made a storyboard to follow for our preliminary task and although we didn't stick to it completely and made a couple of small changes, here is a picture of one slide we did stick to:



And here is my groups completed preliminary task:

Chicago - camera shots

Camera shots in the first opening 2 minutes of Chicago:

The film opens with an extreme close up of somebody's eyes, followed by the film title after the eye is zoomed into further. This is then followed by a track shot on a camera, following round the audience in the jazz club, setting the atmosphere for the viewing audience. The same camera shot is used as the 'director' of the club searches for the Kelly sisters and follows his tracks. When one of the Kelly sisters gets out of the taxi she arrives in, the camera shot is a low close up shot of just her feet as they walk towards the club, as she nears closer the camera rises and has a mid-shot of her lower body ripping the poster next to her apart. The sister is then followed by another track shot into her dressing room, which is then moved in towards. The camera then focusses on the case that she opens which contains a gun, of which makes suspense arise in the audience. The camera then switches to a mid shot of her hands being washed and it is visible to the audience that she is washing blood off of her hands.

Genre Research

In class there was a discussion ofwhat Genre's would like to be explored for our coursework side of the course. "Thriller" seemed to be popular among a lot of people in the class so I decided i would carry out some research into the Thriller genre in order to learn more about it.

According to http://www.filmsite.org/thrillerfilms.html , Thriller films are a type of film known to promote intense excitement, suspense, a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, anxiety, and nerve-wracking tension. The main obvious goal of a thriller is to provide thrills and keep the audience cliff-hanging at the 'edge of their seats' as the plot builds towards a climax.

Some well-known Thrillers are:
Psycho (1960)
The Godfather (1972)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
The Dark Knight (2008)

There are many different types of thriller films such as Action thrillers, crime thrillers, psychological thrillers and many, many more.


Comedy was also discussed in class so I decided to carry out research on the comedy genre too.

Comedies are light-hearted dramas, crafted to amuse, entertain, and provoke enjoyment. Comedies are made to make the audience laugh making the film enjoyable. Comedies usually come in two general formats: comedian-led (with well-timed gags, jokes, or sketches) and situation-comedies that are told within a narrative. Both comedy elements may appear together and/or overlap. Comedy hybrids commonly exist with other major genres, such as musical-comedy, horror-comedy, and comedy-thriller. Comedies have also been classified in various sub genres such as romantic comedy, crime comedy, sports comedy, teen or coming-of-age comedy, social-class comedy, military comedy and more.

Chicago

In my opinion Chicago has a brilliant opening as the storyline is opened up instantly to it's audience. Chicago begins with Velma Kelly entering a Jazz club and getting ready to perform on stage for her audience who believe they are waiting to see the known double-act, the Kelly sisters. The opening of Chicago draws the audience in straight away as it is easily understood that there is no longer a double-act but just one sister performing in the club. This is hinted right away as when Velma leaves her taxi, about to enter the club she rips off Veronicas name on the poster of the two of them, leaving just Velma Kelly written on the poster. She then marches to her dressing room and flings open her suitcase. It is here that the audience grasp the concept that Velma has killed her sister as she pulls out a gun and hides it in a cabinet, she then washes the blood off her hands, continues getting ready and goes out to perform.

There are two spotlights on the stage, one for Velma and one for Veronica, but when only Velma is standing in her spotlight there is obvious concern on the pianists face in particular as he introduced "The Kelly Sisters" and didn't expect to be presented with just one of them. This provides some tension within the film as the audience know exactly what has happend, yet the audience in the jazz club must be clueless to why they've been presented with just one of the Kelly sisters. Velma Kelly continues to perform and the camera angle then turns to an admiring Roxie Hart, who in the film is later learnt to be a huge fan of the Kelly sisters. Roxie is introduced straight away to the film as an aspiring jazz singer as she imagines herself in the position of Velma Kelly. Roxie then goes home with "Fred", who seems like he is her partner at this point in the film. The police then arrive at the jazz club and Velma Kelly looks on as she performs knowing that the police were there for herself.

The film then goes back to Roxies home, where she is with Fred. It is then revealed to the audience that Roxie is cheating on her husband with Fred. Roxie Hart is an obvious fame hunter and would do anything to be famous, she keeps mentioning Fred's "friend at the club", who Fred admits doesn't exsist when Roxie persists on talking about him. Roxie believed Fred could get her a foot in the door and after finding out that he couldn't she pulls out a gun and murders him there and then.

I love the opening to Chicago because so much happens in the first 10 minutes. It is obvious straight away that Velma Kelly has murdered her sister to the audience by all the different signs. Roxie's aspiration to be a star is introduced quickly into the film to the audience which is important as it is referred to throughout the film, and when a distraught Roxie murders Fred it is a big shock to the audience as the gun seems to be pulled out from nowhere and fired so fast.