Credits

As a group we have had ideas on how to make our credits but we didn't really have a definite idea of what we were going to do. We discussed what we thought would look best and the credits in the opening to se7en were some we really enjoyed.

In the opening credits to se7en, it's very jumpy and jolts around the screen. We decided we'd aim to make our credits similar to this using iMovie. The first thing we had to decide was what font we were going to use. We sat and looked through various fonts on iMovie and we all agreed that they seemed too basic for what our film was about and didn't provide the eerie look we were aiming for. We then decided we would browse the fonts on reliable website www.dafont.com, which has thousands of different fonts. The website has different themed fonts making it easy for us to navigate around to find a suitable font for our film genre. I have print screened some of the fonts we liked below:





We decided on a final font of this:



We thought it gave the eerie effect we were after and when typing our names in this font looked really effective so we decided to use it.

Psychological Thriller

Here's a breakdown of what a psychological thriller is:

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.

(Reference - Wikipedia (2010) Psychological Thriller. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_thriller. Accessed 06.05.2010 )

Our new film opening

Our new film opening:

We realised what dissappointed us with our last piece and we decided we would refilm a complete new idea to start fresh. We made a mind-map with all different ideas and as a group we discussed what we thought would be best and thought of various ideas that we could film.


Our new idea:

We storyboarded our new idea, this being a young girl waking up in a field after a flashback. Instead of focussing on the storyline we can focus on the camera shots because the flashback the girl has is going to include random things that do not make sense to the viewer at the beginning of the film, but as the film goes on more will be revealed to all the objects that are shown in the flashback. To distinguish between normal time (the girl waking up) and the flashback we decided from the start that we would edit the flashback images to be in black and white, and leave the current time of her waking up in colour. This then makes it easier for the audience to understand what is happening to the girl as she lays in a field. Our opening ends with the girl getting up and walking away looking stunned, the audience still has no idea to why she is in a field but this is what the rest of the film will reveal.

Here's our storyboard:

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button

I went and saw this film a while ago after seeing the trailer on the TV and thought it was good but it didnt quite live up to my expectations. I had really high expectations of it due to the media coverage hyping it up beforehand.

Benjamin Button is about a man who ages backwards. He is born as an elderly man and gets younger as years go by. He comes across a young girl called Daisy when he is an old man, who is visiting her grandmother. As she grows older, Benjamin Button obviously becomes younger. They meet in the middle and have a romance which obviously can't work because of the unfortunate condition Benjamin goes through.

This particular scene in the film stood out and is definitely my favourite part. It is about Daisy being a victim of a car accident and being run over, but the way it is narrated by Benjamin Button and the whole principle they have used to portray the scene is very clever, the voiceover used could also relate to our film opening as we are going to use a voiceover ourselves:

Voice-over ideas

We had some ideas for the type of voiceover we could use in our opening and the main one that stood out for myself was that we could make it seem like a police interview.

This could be done as we could get somebody to speak as a policeman/policewoman interviewing somebody who we could portray as Charlotte's character in the film. It's an idea for the police officer to ask Charlotte the questions in the parts of our opening where she is in the present time and not in her flashback. This is because Charlottes answers could explain various things happening in the flashback giving the viewer an idea of what's going on yet not revealing too much.

In order to do this well we would have to really think about the voices we are going to use. It would be good if we got an adult to portray the police officer's voice as that seems more realistic. It would be okay for any of us to do the voice for Charlotte's character as it is a young girl.

We have an external microphone that we can use to record our voiceover. The next thing we have to consider is whether we would like quiet music in the background creating an atmosphere when perhaps Charlotte's character is reflecting on what has happened or whether we use an eerie silence as this is more likely in a police interview.

Voice-overs

Looking at our opening so far, we have realised it could be seen as quite confusing. we have made the flashback clips black & white, and the whats made to seem like current clips of Charlotte lying in a field colour so people could distinguish the difference but we were thinking about ways to make it more obvious.

A voiceover could be a really good idea. It could improve the viewers understanding, whether its by giving loads of information, or very little. But whatever is said is going to be important to what is going on in our footage, making it easier to comprehend.

Here is the opening to trainspotting:



A voiceover is used in trainspotting as there is a chase going on in its opening scene. There is the use of music in the background which is also an option for our opening. We could make music to accompany the voiceover in the background with a dipped volume, to add tension. We could have the voiceover, and pause where music can fill the gap, or another idea was that we could just simply have a voiceover with eerie silences involved.

Here is the opening to mean girls:



There is a voiceover used every now and then throughout this film to update the viewer on what's going on.

Here is also a clip where another voiceover is used, this is one of my favourite films, The Emperors New Groove.



The voiceover at the beginning provides vital information to what the rest of the film is about, this is similar to our film as we are going to make the information we put in the voiceover important to the viewer.

We haven't decided on a voiceover yet, but I definitely think its an option because although we don't want the viewer to understand what has happened in our opening, we need the viewer to be interested and not completely confused within the first 2 minutes of a film.

Eastenders, live!

I don't usually watch Eastenders but when I heard they were doing a live programme I thought it would be interesting to watch. I wondered how they would cover up mistakes and my biggest thought was how it would look unedited!

Eastenders celebrated its 25th birthday by screening a live episode of the soap. It was made so interesting because of the huge storyline going on in the soap. There has been lots of curiousity about who infact murdered 'Archie Mitchell', the killer was revealed in the live episode. What made it so exciting for viewers was the fact that they were unaware of who Archie's killer was, and so were the actors. Script writers wrote 10 possible endings which were rehearsed and actors had to adapt to what was happening live being watched by millions of viewers


On the whole, I thought the cast did really well. There was a slight slip up at the beginning when 'Jack Branning' muddled up his words slightly, but other than that it ran smoothly up until 'Bradley Branning's' death. It was here that i noticed Bradley twitching after falling off of a building from being chased by police. I also noticed 'Max Branning' stick his fingers down his throat, attempting to be sick live for the programme at the sight of Bradley plunging to his death. This would have looked decent if the camera had cut away from him quicker.

The main let down in my opinion was the technical difficulties involved. There was nothing major, but it was easily recognisable where the cameras were cutting and its transition to the next scene was not as quick as perhaps it usually is. There was also an aspect of dodgy camera shake in 'Albert Square', a renowned place in the soap when people came out at the realization of Bradleys death. These problems couldn't really be helped though as they were filiming live and obviously had no time to edit what they'd filmed, which other episodes would have had done to them.

There were loads of possible killers purposely made to create suspense for the audience and throughout the programme people were pointing fingers at who they believed was Archie's killer. Lots of people thought it may have been Peggie, being his wife, or Ronnie, his daughter who reveals he sexually abused her in this episode. It was at the very end of the programme that 'Stacey Slater' admits to killing her rapist Archie following her newly-wed husband's death.

Alice In Wonderland

I can't wait for the new Alice In Wonderland film to come out in cinema, it's being released in on the 5th March and i'm planning on going to see it as soon as possible. It's about 19 year old Alice returning to her childhood adventure and reuniting with her old friends. She is then informed that the Red Queen's rule of terror must come to an end and its her job to stop it. I've just rewatched a trailer I've previously seen and Johnny Depp looks like he is going to be brilliant as the Mad Hatter.

Heres the trailer:

The Day I died - Just Jack

This is one of my favourite music videos to date. The way it has been constructed is very clever and there is a number of aspects in the video that i spotted which interested me. It features James Nesbitt who is a popular actor. The video is poor quality for some reason and the original is not on youtube but this was the best i could find.



The images in the video are to do with the words being sung in the song, this is introduced to the viewer instantly. One thing i noticed about the beginning was his little boy sitting playing with toy cars (17 seconds in) crashing them into one another and then bringing an ambulance into the scene meaning somebody has been hurt. This relates to the end of the video because his dad dies through being run over and an ambulance comes in attempt to save him. This relates because the car crash the boys dad dies in is a reinactment of how the boy is playing with the cars at this point in the video.

When James Nesbitt says goodbye to his wife and kids I noticed he has rips in his suit on the way to work. Obviously someone wouldn't leave for work with a ripped suit it was again until later i realised why he had a ripped suit. His suit rips in the car accident shown later on as he is hit and stumbles to the floor causing the rip and a blooded bruise on his head.

When sitting in the park on his work break, at around 1.44 in to the video James Nesbitt picks up a book, he opens it on the last page and then closes it again. This could symbolise he has reached the end of something, the song title gives away what he has reached the end of. As the song is about the day i died and the video is based around a mans last day alive, the closing of the book could symbolise the end of his life.

At 2.19 in the video, James Nesbitt is pictured on "top of the world". He donates money to an artist painting the world on the floor but this could be a hidden metaphor in the video. The video is based around the day he died being the best day of his life, and him standing on top of the world thats been painted could relate to when people do feel on top of the world. Following this he misses the bus, and this could have meaning behind it because by doing a good deed, admiring and giving the artist money for his work he has missed his bus.

James Nesbitt is then walking across the street and the lyrics say 'I guess I never saw that taxi'. When this happens there is no singing from Just Jack anymore but what sounds like choir voices. This could be the realisation hitting him that he's been hit by a car and how his life froze at that point. During this we see him touch his head and it strikes him that he's been hit, we also see the ambulance that has come to attempt to save his life. This could be the way of showing somebody looking back at their death as it is acted out before the crash and then James Nesbitt just falls to the floor which indicates his death. As he falls to the floor, Just Jack begins to sing again.

As he lies on the floor, he has a flashback of his wife and kids and it relates to the lyrics once again. The flashback is similar to ours because Charlotte wakes up in a forest following a flashback she had of why she got there. This video however is a flashback in a man's dying moments of his wife and kids, and that day being the best day of his life.

Nowhere Boy

I recently went to the cinema to see Nowhere Boy. This film was based around John Lennon's teenage/young adult years of his life and how he made it to the top. It portrayed lots of different aspects of his life and conveyed things very effectively. I learnt a lot from the film and enjoyed learning more about John Lennon himself.



The film was very educational for me to watch. The Beatles weren't first known as the beatles but had a variety of different names that are shown throughout the film, so as well as being entertaining the film also provided some facts for people to learn. The mise en scene in the film is set in the late 1950's/1960's and this is shown very well. The use of music, costumes, props portray very easily the time when it is intended to be set.

The film contained a small flashback and although the way it was shown wasn't similar to how our film was it is the same idea. In the film John Lennon is forever questioning his mother and Mimi, his guardian/auntie about who his father is. It is then revealed to him that his father tried to take him away as when he was a boy at the age of 5 he was made to choose if he wanted to live with his mum or dad, and he chose his father. Mimi stole him so she could keep him as her own as she couldn't let his father take him away. The flashback shows this scene and shows how different John's life may have been if Mimi hadn't of stolen him. I enjoyed the film other than the ending, it ended too soon in my opinion and I thought it may have been more about his life with the Beatles too, but it just showed how the Beatles began to get somewhere in life.

Classifications

Below are the official guidelines from the BBFC on film certificates classification:

Classification Guidelines

And here is the student guide to classification:
Student Guide to Bbfc

For our film opening it can be told from the Classification guidelines that it would most likely be rated a 15 certificate.



Donnie Darko has a similar opening to our film so i looked it up on the website and had a look at its guidelines. It is also a 15 certificate and the website contained this information about it:

"DONNIE DARKO
Feature Film
Classified 13 May, 2002 .
Run Time 113m 11s
Consumer Advice: Contains strong language and psychological horror."

Looking at the guidelines on the website, as a group we have decided our film is most appropriate as a 15 certificate film. This is because it ties in with the horror and violence themes within the guidelines. By having our film at this rating we can hit our target audience being teenagers.

The BBFC guidelines for a 15 rating certificate are:

Drugs

Drug taking may be shown but the film as a whole must not promote or encourage drug misuse. The misuse of easily accessible 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.

Language

There may be frequent use of strong language (for example,‘fuck’). The strongest terms (for example, ‘cunt’) may beacceptable 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.SexSexual 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 issexual arousal or stimulation are unlikely to be acceptable.

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 alsounlikely 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.

Radiohead - Karma Police

Here is a link to radioheads video Karma Police:

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

This video has some similar shots to what we have used in our opening, these being similar to the shots we captured when we were filming part of our opening in the car.

Second day of filming

On our second day of filming, we continued to film some parts of the flashback. This included filming a clock and having taken out the battery the hands spun round quickly, we felt if we sped this up through editing it could look even more eerie. However we had a slight problem with this because we could see our reflection in the clock, we then turned the lights off and closed the curtains in Aimies house but it seems a little bit too dark to use but we are going to try and brighten it up whilst editing and see what happens.

We also captured some footage of Charlotte putting on makeup which will be included in the flashback as when she wakes up in the field she looks like she has been on a night out, so this therefore provides continuity.

Following this we went down to forty hall, an area made up of trees and long grass and a small river. We choose our location and began filming straight away. We had good lighting from the sun but it was quite damp on the floor from previous weather. We took a bin bag with us and we made this fit around Charlottes body so you couldn't see it and so she couldn't get damp herself!

We placed our camera and tripod in various places to get a range of different shots. We did close ups of Charlottes body twitching/breathing. We also filmed some close ups of Charlotte's face so you can see shes not conscious at first. We have some long full body shots of Charlotte so you can understand the particular setting of where she is.

Misfits

I have been watching the new teen drama, Misfits. Misfits is about a group of teenagers that have been convicted of various crimes and are paying for what they've done through community service. Whilst out on community service there is a storm. However this isn't any ordinary storm but it affects everyone in their society. It gives them all some sort of 'power'.

This relates to our opening because Curtis, one of the characters' special powers is that he has flashforwards. The way this happens is similar to our opening except we contain a flashback rather than a flashback. The way Curtis acts before and after his flashback is similar to when Charlotte wakes up, shocked and confused at what she has just seen. Curtis is the black boy in the clip and what it shows portrays one of his flashforwards.

Arctic monkeys - When the sun goes down

This music video shows some similar shots to our 2 minute opening. The video contains a camera in a car as it is being driven down the road, which has been edited by speeding it up. Our opening has similar shots like this as we filmed going down a street in a car to be used in our flashback. We have also sped them up so it is quicker and doesn't drag on which would cause the viewer to possibly lose interest. It is also done by a handheld camera and because it is shaky it causes disorientation with the watcher because its all over the place. This is probably what the arctic monkeys video was aiming for as it can relate to the song meaning.

First day of filming

Seeing as we weren't happy with our initial opening we thought up a new idea running along the basis of somebody waking up in a field, having no idea how they got there and keeping it so the viewer has no idea either.

We began filming and started by filming some shots out of car windows. We drove down different types of roads, some being very busy, and others being reasonably quiet. Our intention with these shots is whilst editing our footage to speed them up to be used in the flashback Charlotte has. We filmed day and night shots so we have a variety.

As we drove past some fields we were planning on getting some shots in we saw an old fashioned red phonebox. Its not often you see these anymore so we thought this could be used in a flashback as someone could be running into the phoenbox frantically dialling a number. I was filmed running into the phonebox from the other side of the road and then we also managed to get our camera and the tripod in the phonebox so there was a nice range of shots. This differed to our old film opening as the shots were too long of one certain thing, we learnt that by using different camera shots it breaks up our opening more.





We then went to hillyfields and got some clips of myself running, and i ran through a woody, forest like part of hillyfields to capture some point of view shots. We then put the camera on the floor on the ground, this got some of the grass in and we got Aimie to run over the camera so you could only see her feet/legs running away from the camera.

All of these shots are going to be used in the flashback in our opening. We are going to edit them to make them very fast-paced so it seems very interesting and grabs the viewers attention instantly.

Refilming our coursework piece

Our original coursework piece didn't turn out exactly how we'd planned it to. Here is a link to the first piece we made:



We realised our errors more or less instantly when it came to editing our piece. We didn't use very many camera shots. This made the shots longer and it makes it much harder to focus your attention on it as it doesn't seem interesting. The different camera shots add variety in to a clip and this is what our piece was lacking.

The idea we had was a stalker following a young girl, although we had our basic idea we didn't really think about each and every camera shot. We thought mainly about the story rather than how we were going to portray it via the use of different camera shots.

Another problem we had was filming in the photography dark room at school. Obviously, it is a dark room, so its bound to be dark inside. We struggled with the lighting, yet this was an important part of our opening because the stalker is developing photos of his victim in there. It was hard to show this even with the camera on night mode, and because the room was very small it was hard to get a variety of camera angles.

However, I thought the idea we had for our film was good, perhaps we just didn't go about the right way of preparing and filming it. I also thought our original establishing shot was a good shot as it introduced the location of the girls house straight away. In this shot we see the stalker walk past the house and stand down the ally ready to pounce on her when she leaves the house. It introduced the setting straight away. Our let down was the lack of different camera shots used.