improvements to the pre-production

Considering the feedback that we got from our teacher last Friday, Using Facebook i asked the group what things could be added to the risk assessment.

Presentation

On Friday our group presented our Pre-production things to our teacher. We got good feedback. The only thing that we can improve on is the risk assessment, that is to add more things to it.

Acting-Extras

Seeing as there are more characters in our opening scene then there is in our group, we have thought about hiring people from an acency, however we dont have the time, and more than likely we wont have enough money, we will ask some of our friends to be the extras in our opening scene.

pre-planning update

Laura has made a very good script which i think works well for a gangster type film.
I haven't finished the shooting script yet becuase i need to use the storyboard which hasn't been completed yet

pre-production planning

Over the the past few days, and over the next week or so, our group are doing of our pre-production planning.
We have split the jobs ups between us so that we all do something to help out.

Storyboarding is being done by Chelsea and Shaun.
The shooting script is being done by me.
The script/stage directions is being written by Laura

Practise

Today we have practised for the exam. We did not do a full practise but we had watched a 1min and and half  clip of a film and we all looked at different aspects of the film, for example i looked at mise en scene. i compared my answers with other people who was also looking at mise en scene.

Main ideas continued

We were givin two sheets of paper to fill out.
One sheet was for the script for shooting and another is for the storyboard.
We split up into groups to what we would do, seeing as Laura cound not make it today I am working on the script for shooting and Shaun and Chelsea are working on the storyboard.

Main production ideas

Today we are going to talk about our main production. The things that we are sorting out are the script for shooting and we are working on making a better storyboard.

Ideas for main project

Costume ideas
The things that we will be wearing will be suits, so things like ties,
-Jackets,
-Trilby/Beanie hats,
-Smart shoes,
-Red heels.

                   

film observation study

Yesterday, i was given a task of watching a 2-3 min clip of a film and we had to analyse it. The things that we had to analyse were: Setting and Props, Costume, hair and make-up, Facial expressions and body language, Lighting and colour, and postioning of characters and objects within a frame.

The clip i chose to analyse was a scene from Batman, Dark Knight.

Opening to films

Here is some opening to films



The Godfather is a classic opening of a gangster film. The setting is dark to represent badness in the gangsters the light shows a little bit of the gangsters face shdoesnt fully reveal hte face of but gives an idea of that the gangster isnt isnt up to to anything good. The gangsters were pretty much all black to blend in with the darkness, this is done to show that they blend in the darkness to hide.

Codes and Convensions

Codes and Conventions are what makes up the film.

Here is what the codes and convensions are in a ganster film:

The opening scene in a ganster film :

• Sets the scene of what is going on  
• Introduces main characters. What they are like, the sort of things they
• Creates an enigma/suspense to keep the audience interested
• A crime happens to set the story for the rest of the film

Codes Of A Ganster Type Film:

• Dark nightclubs
• Lots of money
• Normally film-noir
• Fast cars 
• Tommy guns
• Crowded city
• smoking (cigars, ciggerates etc)

Conventions Of A Ganster Film:

• Characters are usually operate outside of the law.
• Characters are usaully criminals (normally tend to be bank robbers) 
• Criminals struggle to Gloryfy against the other rivals
• A crime happens at the beginning and the storyline of the film follows how the victim's/criminal's trebulations which follow after the crime
• The criminals are always caught at the end  of the film

Characters Of A Ganster Film:

• They are Matrialistic and Street-smart
• They are Immoral
• They are criminals who work in gangs, Every gang has a 'history' and rivalry with another gang or criminal
• Most(If not all) of the criminals are tough on the outside, however they can express sensitivity

Main ideas

Here is a powerpoint slide which Shaun harrison has created to show our idea for our main project.

ideas and planning for main project.

Today we are diccussing ideas for our main idea.
We are discussing things like scenes, characters and other things aswell.

Juno Editing

Today we are editing our version of the Juno opening.
We will edit our own versions and then we analyse them when we have finished.

Juno part 2

Even though i could not join the others, because i had a meeting to go to, Chelsea, Laura and Shaun met up on Wednesday of this week to finish off filming.

Juno

To practise filming and getting used to the acting and the way the camera works etc. We stated to film our version of the opening to Juno. I brought a 4 pint carton of juice and on friday afternoon we started filming. Laura is playing the part of Juno. We havent finished yet but we are going to meet up after school one time this week to finish it.

Music/sound

Another thing we learned on Thursday was music/sound.
We learned about Diagetic and Non- Diagetic sound.

Diagetic sounds are sounds that can be heared from within the scene itself, for example footsteps, conversation etc. Diagetic sounds can be used to provide clean transitions from one image to the next.

Non diagetic sounds are unnatural sounds that are not within the scene itself, e.g. background music when there is no jukebox or stereo. Voiceovers and sound effects (car noises, explosives etc)are other examples of a non-diagetic sound.

Colour

On Thursday we learned about colour.
We learned about how different colours shows different things:

Black- Power,sophistication, depth,, formality, wealth, mystery, fear, evil, unhappiness,  style, evil, sadness, remorse, anger, anonymity, underground, mourning, death (western cultures).

Red-  Aggression, Strength,danger, fire, blood, war and violence.
Pink- , romance, excitement, love

Purple- Royalty, Nobility, spiritually, enlightenment, cruelty, arrogance, wisdom
Beige-  Quiet, Pleasantness, Calm
 
Blue- Peace, Tranquillity, cold, calm, stability, harmony, unity, trust, truth, confidence, conversation, security, cleanliness, order, loyalty.

Yellow- Joy, Happiness, Betrayal, Idealism, Imagination, Hope, Sunshine, Philosophy,  Cowardice, Jealousy, Conventousness, Deceit, Illness and hazard.

Green- Nature,  Healthy, luck,  youth, spring, generosity, fertility,enjoyment, jealousy, envy.

Brown- Stability, hearth, home, outdoors, reliability, comfort, comfort.

White- Reverence, purity, birth, simplicity, cleanliness, peace, humility, snow, good, sterility, marriage (western cultures), Death (eastern cultures), Cold, clinical.

Meeting

Yesterday we met up at Laura's house for a few hours to talk about our opening scene and talked about the plot and we sorted out a storyboard.

This is our firstdraft of our storyboard for our opening sequence.

Goodfella's-Opening

Even though this clip is 10 minutes long, I am only want to look at the first 3 minutues of it.
In the opening scene the main lighting is dark and they have done this by putting a defuser over the light to produce a darker shade. They have done this to give sense of badness and something bad is going on. The darker shade gives sinsister impressions to the viewers.
When showing the credits, it shows that it will start off on a moterway because the credits come onto the screen like a car moving and they have added car effects to make it look like the titles are cars.
The camera angles in this clip include:
Establishing shot, this is used to show people where the scene is set.
Close up, this is used to give the sense of the persons facial features to show how they are feeling.
Extreme close up
Medium shot

If the camera is close up to the actor and there is darkness around the characters this gives a sense of evil and tension within the scene.

Sin City opening title sequence

This is the opening title sequence to Sin City.
Lighting
The lighting in this opening tiltle sequence is animated lighting, this means that there is lighting in this but it has been drawn in. (this also applies to most animations).
The colours used in this opening sequence include black, white and red. This resebles plain and simple, the black and white draws attention to the red. The red in this may represent evil, this is because something bad is going to happen in the film.

Opening scenes part 1 intro and Sin City

In the next few blogs i upload, i will show the opening to some of the American Ganster films i listed in one of the blogs i posted earlier.


This is the opening to Sin City.

There are different camera angles and techniques used.
Different camera angles/techniques include:
Establishing shot, this is to show where the scene is set. In this case it is set in a city lots of things are going on and it is a relly busy atmosphere.
Long shot this shows where the character(s) are in the scene, this shows what they are doing, where they are going etc. This may show what sort of person the characters are. Evil, good etc.
Medium/Long shot. This is to show what the character(s) look like from the whole body, how they walk talk, etc.
Medium shot, this is mainly used for dialogue,
Close up is used to show expressions which is being
Medium close up
Shot Reverse Shot
180 degree rule

Lighting
There is not much light to this scene.
It is mainly dark. A key light is used with a defuser to dim the light on the characters faces.

This also has low key lighting to create a mysterious atmosphere which keeps the viewers attension. The red draws attention to certain areas because it stands out from the black and white.

Film Ideas

Seeing as we are going to focus on American Ganster theme for our main idea me and the other guys decided to look up some different American Ganster films to get some ideas that we can use.
Some american ganster films include:
Casino
Sin city
American Ganster
Scarface
Goodfellas
The untouchables
The god father
The road to perdition.

Lighting

Today we learned about lighting and different ways lighting can be used.

Key light - main/ most important light
Back light-

Main idea feedback

Today we presented our ideas to the rest of our class.
Everyone seemed to have liked our ideas and thought that they were good. They liked/preffered our main idea. They gave us some ideas that we listened to and thought about them to help us with our main idea.

Main project Ideas

Seeing as i joined a new group at a late stage, the guys in the group already had ideas. They told me and chelsea the idea(s) that they came up with. I found these ideas interesting and liked them.
The main idea which I was told about was doing a gangster type film and the style will be a bit like Sin city.

the colour of it will be black, white and red which stands out from other things because it will only be used for certain objects e.g the womans dress.

New Group

Me, Chelsea and Dan have seperated and are not in the same group anymore, due to some problems that we had. Me and Chelsea have stayed together and joined another group and Dan went to a different group.
The people who are in the new group include:
-Me
-Chelsea Tufton
-Shaun Harrison
-Laura Lee

Camera shots in Gavin and Stacey

there is a variaty of camera angles shots used in this five mins of Gavin and Stacey
The camera shots that were used include:
Establishing shot- shows audience that they are in London
Medium close up *
Medium long shot  *     Lots of these are used throughout the scene    
Medium shot *
180 degree is used
Long shot

Premiliany exercise part 2

When i put my premilinary exercise on youtube. I put it facebook to see how i could improve it and what comments were made about it.

As Media Studies premilinary exercise

This is our premiliany exercise.

Camera shots/angles

We have learned different camera shots/angles.

ES- Establishing shot- ELS - Exteme Long Shot
An ES is a camara shot that is shot extremily far from the character. This shot shows the character in an area to show where they are and what they are doing(e.g walking down a street in a city).

LS- Long Shot
A LS is a shot that is shot far away, but not as far as a ES.This shows them in relation to their surroundings.

MLS-Medium Long Shot
This shot shows more details of the chracter than the previous shots. Also, the mise-en-scene is shown quite clearer.

MS-Medium Shot
This shot shows a character from between round about the knees- waist area to just above the head. This shot is sometimes called 'mid-shot' or 'three-quater shot'. MS is similer to MLS

MCU-Medium Close Up
The MCU is from the mid-chest to just above the head. This shot shows more detail of the character (what they look like etc). It can also contain two people talking.

CU-Close Up
CU is even more detailed than the shots before. It shows the head and shoulders of the character.

ECU-Extreme close up
This shot shows a small part of the face or an object. This can also show extreme emotion if the camera is extreme close up on the eyes.
BEV-Birds Eye view
A Birds Eye view is a camera shot which is filmed from directly above (overhead ) the scene.

There are lots more which are used within the filming industry

TV Drama

Yesterday we learned about different tv dramas.
There are different types of TV dramas:
Type Of        Example Of TV
Drama          Drama
Teen drama-The inbetweeners
Soap Opera-Eastenders

Youtube part 2

Here is our Premiliany exercise we have uploaded to youtube.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fUC3qPUszU


We used the continuity techiniques:
Match on action
180 degree rule
shot reverse shot

Youtube

I have made a Youtube channel to upload our premilany exercise.
We named the channel TheOneAndOnlyStudio.
I still have to upload the premilany exercise.

Premilinary Exercise Evalation

In our premilinary exercise we used the three forms of continuity; Shot reverse shot, Match on action and the 180 degree rule.

We all created and edited a premilinary exercise and we decided to use Dan's premilany exercise because it was the best one to use.

We had a couple of mistakes in our video.

One was Dan started to smile/laugh as he approaches the table.
The next one is before i go to talk i look at the camera quickly.

Premiliany Exercise

This is our groups Premiliany exercise.
In this exercise we have used Match on action, the 180 degree rule and shot reverse shot.

Here is our video of premilimany task. We used Dan's Premilinary exercise.

180 degree rule

The 180 degree rule is a guideline when making a film or tv programme. This guideline is that two characters (or other elements) that are in the same scene should have the same right/left relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the invisble axis which connects these two subjects, this is known as "crossing the line".

See this example of the camera on the left hand side, the person with the orange shirt will always be on the left hand side of the camera and teh person with the blue top will always be on the right hand side because the camera on the right hand side cannot pass the imagenary line running between the two people.

This is a clip of Dodgeball: a true underdog story film and see how the the camera always stays on one side of the "Imaginary Line" where Vince Vaughn is on the left hand side and Ben Stiller is on the right hand side.

                                      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhKQ-whmSBA

Match On Action

Match on action is a technique that cuts from one shot to another shot which matches the pace and action of the first shot. This gives an impresson to the audience that comtinnuity is happening even though the shots may have been filmed weeks apart. If a character is doing something in one shot (e.g walking or driving) and then completes it in the next shot, a visual "bridge" is created. This acts to disguise the cut from one to the other.

In this example of the t.v hit series F.R.I.E.N.D.S watch from 7:00 mins and watch the different camera angles as they walk across the room to put their keys on the worktop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYQ0G1Szhh0&feature=related

Shot Reverse Shot

Shot Reverse Shot Definition

Shot reverse shot is a technique used in film/tv where it shows someone is shown looking at someone else but who is off screen, then the other person looks back towards at the first person. since both characters are looking in opposite directions to each other. The viewers assume that the characters are facing each other.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-RJrTNLAbw

Watch this example of Shot reverse shot in hit T.V series F.R.I.E.N.D.S. In this example Joey is talking to Erica when Erica is not on screen and vise versa then it shows that Joey talks to Rachel Monica and Chandler when they are off set and vise versa. 

Continuity part 1

In the next few blogs i am going to decribe what three different continiuty principles which me and my group will be using in our preliminary exercise.

Continuity means showing a story but not being able to watch every single detail but still understand what is going on. for example if a man is going to london by car the first shot will be him getting in is car and going, the next shot will be him pulling up at a car park in london. People who watch this knows that the man is going from his house to London without being able to watch the whole car journey.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYQ0G1Szhh0&feature=related

In this video of F.R.I.E.N.D.S watch from 1:40 untill 2:15 and you will still see continuity been used because in the first shot Ross and Pheobe are at the airport then the next shot Pheobe is walking through the door of the apartment. this shows that they drove back from the airport without actually showing the car journey

Preliminary Exercise Brief

Our group are going to do a Preliminary Exercise.
 The Premiminary exercise consists of someone opening a door, walking through across the room, sitting down on a chair facing opposite someone else and these two people will exchange dialogue, then the first person will walk back out.
In this exercise we are going to be using three continuity princibles which should be observered in our Preliminary exercise:
These three continuity princibles are:
-Match on action
-Shot reverse shot
-180 degrees rule

Intro to Media Studies

My name is George Griffin
Age:16
School: Ken Stimpson Community School
People in my group
-Me
-Dan Mills
-Chelsea Tufton

I chose to do Media Studies to have a better understand of media.