Plans for filming

We now have our main actors lined up, so we shall begin
to film this holiday as the majority of actors are available
to shoot over Christmas.

We have booked a lighting kit for the holidays as we think it
will greatly benefit our film.

Prop list

We will add more too this as we finish off the script

Prop Guns x4
Fake Blood
Suits + Gangster Clothes + Hats
Plans
Balaclavas
Rope
Cigars

Shot list

Shot 1 - (5s) [Very Long Shot] {Establishing shot of location}

Shot 2 - (6s)[Long/Medium Shot] {Camera zooms in on low lit table with 3 people around it}

Shot 3 - (3s)[Medium Shot] {Camera stops zooming, men are talking}

Shot 4 - (6s)[Medium Shot] {Camera pans around the table as the boss talks}

Shot 5 - (6s)[Medium Shot] {The focus switches to Vinny}

Shot 6 - (6s)[Medium Shot] {The focus switches to Jimmy}

Shot 7 - (4s)[Close Up Shot] {Close up of Vinny, he suggests Rosebud for the job}

Shot 8 - (3s)[Close Up Shot] {Switch to Rosebud, establishing his charecter}

Shot 9 - (6s)[Medium Shot] {Freeze frame, with effect overlay and title of Rosebud}

Shot 10 - (12s)[Long Shot] {Action sequence/Montage of Rosebud}

Shot 11 - (4s)[Medium Shot] {Back to table}

Shot 12 - (3s)[Medium Close Up Shot] {Jimmy suggests Franky}

Shot 13 - (3s)[Medium Close Up Shot] {Cut to Franky}

Shot 14 - (12s)[Medium Shot] {Franky's action sequence/Montage}

Shot 15 - (2s)[Long Shot] {Freeze frame on Franky with effects and title}

Shot 16 - (3s)[Medium Shot] {Back to table}

Shot 17 - (4s)[Medium Shot] {Boss gets out blueprints/map}

Shot 18 - (6s)[Close Up Shot] {Viewing blueprints/map on table}

Shot 19 - (5s)[Medium Shot] {Cuts to boss}

Shot 20 - (3s)[Medium Close Up Shot] {Cut to Dino}

Shot 21 - (12s)[Medium Shot] {Dino's action sequence/montage}

Shot 22 - (2s)[Long Shot] {Freeze frame with effect and title of Dino}

Shot 23 - (4s)[Medium Close Up Shot] {Cut back to table, all 3 in the shot, agreeing on plan}

Shot 24 - (5s)[Close Up Shot] {Cut to boss, she is pleased}

Animatic

Basic Synopsis

This is the initial idea for our movie, please comment and give feedback as to what needs to be changed or amended.

"A group of 3-4 criminals are sitting around a make shift table, making plans for the large back robbery that is to be executed in the future. They have to discuss things such as target bank, weapons, and people. They mainly focus on which people to hire for the job, the leader knows a lot of crooks in the business but they need to pick the ones who will best help carry out this heist.  As they go round the table, everyone suggests different people that they know  or have worked with in the past, they discuss their good and bad points and focus on their individual skills. Whilst they do this, the film will cut away to said criminals in a flashback style, reviewing their past work, getting a real feel for what they can bring to the table, this will be narrated by the individuals around the table. These are a bunch of crooks not to be reckoned with."

Genre Research Summary

1. What do the titles tend to look like? Fonts, transitions, pace, contents?


The titles in crime films are often quite bold using a font such as impact. The transitions
are usually quite fast paced and clever, they give the film a different angle and help
it too flow better.

2. What kind of music and/or other non-diegetic sounds are used?

There are two main types of soundtrack used in crime films. When the criminals are
planning or preparing for a crime, the music will be a lot quieter and will be used to
build the tension, whereas once the action is taking place, we get much more fast paced,
louder music, this increases the excitement of the scene. There are also quite a lot of non
diegetic sounds used in most crime films, such as car tyre screeches and gun shot sounds.




3. What types of character do we see in the opening sequences? How are their characters established through technical features (e.g. costume, make-up, setting, cinematography, sound, editing ...)


We often see the main characters who are key to the plot, introduced early on to show their
significance to the scene, often the shot is freeze framed and there name is shown in the form
of a title, this character building style can be taken a step further by having different fonts or
music to go with each individual. Quite often, especially for the leaders / bosses, the camera
will be positioned at a low angle to them, so portray their power.

4. What kinds of mise en scene dominate? What are typical features of setting, lighting, props?

There are a few props that are almost always used in crime films, examples of these are:

guns, balaclavas, get away cars/vans, blue prints/maps and possibly a hostage. The films are

usually done in low light as this helps create a dark atmosphere. The settings vary, but often the

planning is done in an inconspicuous room, such as a cellar or warehouse, and the action often takes

place in a bank or on the road in chase. 

5. What narrative codes are employed and how?

Crime films often follow Barthe's enigma theory, in which the film stars in a situation that the

viewer can not understand, they need to continue to watch so that they can understand. Some 

examples are when the criminals are executing the plan, the viewer does not know how it will

be executed so they must continue to watch to find out, or perhaps once the crime is over and

the film starts in the aftermath or consequence of the crime.

6.Is there a particular form of cinematography or editing that is specific to the genre your working in?

Crime films often use low angle shots to show power and control and high angles to show weaker more

insignificant characters. The editing is often fast paced and quite clever, with use of in depth transitions and

special overlay effects.

Audience Research Focus Group Meeting Analysis

After meeting with our focus group, we have decided to remove, modify or add certain elements to our film

Originally we were going to involve some sort of car chase scene for when our charecters were talking about the plan, however Joe and Megan agreed that that would not be practicle in the time we have to draft, shoot and edit our film, we would also have to find someone to drive for us, they may charge for fuel money which would add to cost production. We were keen on using weapons in the film, as it is an essential entity in most crime films, Zac was able to suggest a few places where we could borrow / rent a few of these said weapons, Jay added that they should be de-activated as to reduce cost and danger on set, not to mention the fact that it is illegal to use working weapons, making our risk assesment smaller. Originally we had planned for our cast to be a mixture of male and female actors, as we assumed this would be more appealing to the audience with a majority of males, however, Joe explained that from past viewing of movies, he prefered an all male cast as it helped him relate to the characters, which increased his enjoyment of the film, he also pointed out that crime films seldom include many women at all, so if ours were too, then the authenticity of it would be lowered alot.

Audience Research Focus Group

Jay is 17, he likes action and horror films, and listens to drum and bass and dubstep.

Meg is 16, She likes Comedy, Horror and Romance Films, she listens to screamo and metal.

Joe is 16 and likes Action and Stoner Comedy films, he listens to electronica and mashups.

 

Zac is 18 he likes Comedy, Horror and Crime films, he listens to prog rock and heavy metal

Target Audience

We have decided out target audience will be males of the age 15 - 20, we feel that these are the most common demographic who watch crime / thriller movies, so it makes sense to appeal to the largest market. Generally, this audience would enjoy violent films with lots of action and adventure, as well as suspense to keep them gripped, they may have watched other films such as Pulp Fiction or Snatch. Our target audience would most likely congregate in large groups, and have a wide knowledge of the genre. If we were to plot out target audience on the JICNARs scale, they would most likely fall under the ABC1 category, with perhaps some from C2, the family of the viewer would have to be well off to support the viewers love for the genre. The audience would mainly appear as Rebels in terms of Psychographic segmentation, as crime movies are not as common and mainstream as other films such as Shrek or Harry Potter, however they could also be considered Individualists in the way that they don't want to follow everyone else.

Film Openings: Genre Specific Analysis

We will analyse two films closely related to the crime genre, these films interest us and have useful elements in that we could use in ours. They are both produced by Guy Ritchie.

Snatch

Snatch has a very strong opening, the style of editing coupled with the non diegetic music makes it quite appealing to the viewer, it comes across as light hearted even thought we know that they are about to commit a crime, however the charecters in the movie do not know this, they seem like four normal Jewish men, this creates a feeling of omniscience for the viewer.

This enigma is sustained until they enter the room with the diamonds in, the movie cuts to some close up of the diamonds they plan to steal. (establishing their motive) Once the movie cuts back to the four 'Jewish' men, loud, non diegetic music begins to play whilst the men are arming them selves, this creates drama in the scene, which is then reinforced when the camera zooms in to one of the workers face, which has a look of shock all over it. We see some initial credits as the scene freeze frames on one of the robber's guns. The opening in enticing  as it has a strong enigma to it, the viewer wants to keep watching it to find out how the heist goes. The excitement of the opening is also reinforced by the fast pace of the editing, its harder to look away, or to stop watching it.

Once the men have obtained the diamond, they proceed to flea the scene in a van, which once inside, they begin to remove their disguised, this possibly instills a feeling of satisfaction in the viewer, who is now encouraged to continue watching the film. One of the men then begins to examine the diamond, at this point, the movie zooms in to the diamond and the background rotates, perhaps to portray the importance of said diamond to the movie.

Another character is then scene with the Diamond, and he is introduced in a very stylish way, where the scene freeze frames, an effect is overlayed, and his name is shown on screen. This is also quite an unusual editing style, again making the movie opening a lot more interesting to the viewer.

The film then has very intricate transitions introducing all the characters in the same fashion.

This happens for all the main characters. In this sense the opening is now introducing the characters to the viewer, summing up their basic persona by the transition, this helps the viewer decide if he or she wants to continue watching the movie. 

Revolver

Revolver's opening sequence is quite different from Snatch's instead of going for the action packed, fast paced opening style, is used clever mis-en-scene paired with quiet but tension building non diegetic music to intruige the viewer and make them want to continue watching.

The movie starts with an elipsis of two years on, this suggest prior events will be revealed later on, this in turn creates an enigma to to the movie, the viewer wants to know what happened. Alot of phone calls begin to take place inside the casino, possible in preparation for a big event that is about to happen. A phone call is quiet a clever way to draw in the viewer, as people are naturally nosey and want to know who was on the phone.

The two thugs that surround this powerful figure connote his status and allows everyone to know that he is not to be messed with, this type of charecter is very common on many crime films. Showing these stereotypes in the opening sequence may instil a subconsciously feeling of familiarity in the viewer, they may assume that because of these stereotypes,  the film will be good.

The man at the game table... (another stereotype)

Is later shown escorting several men through the casino, this is perhaps to establish his power and position within the casino.

The main narrative technique used in Revolver is Barthes enigma theory, alot of questions are set up right from the start, the film relies on this to keep the viewer entertained and hooked.

Both of the films have serious crime undertones, and while nothing directly happens in revolver you definitely get the feeling the men in the opening are organised criminals.

Moodboard

Here is a moodboard depicting the general feel of our opening.

First Ideas

The genre of our film would be a action, crime thriller. Our target audience would be mainly males from the age of 16-40, the reason we say males is because they seem watch more of these types of movies than women do. The main narrative technique would be Barthes enigma theory, where the movie opens with a bunch of gangsters/crooks huddled around a table/crate in a dark room/warehouse who are planning a robbery/heist. The viewer immediatley wonders what is going on, what the plan is and how it will go, thus drawing them in. The general mood of the movie will be a dark and suspicous one, similar to alot of crime related movies, especially those from the 40's (although we have not yet decided on a specific theme such as italian mobsters). In our group there is Phill Scargill and George Devereaux.

From script to screen: How does the credit sequence from Dexter work?

The ideas for Dexter was originally sparked when Eric Anderson noticed that the title 'DEXTER' could be flipped upside down, yet almost all the letters looked the same, Anderson personified this idea to Dexter, that he had a flip side, which was slightly different and unusual, but hardly noticeable. 

The basis of Dexter was that on the outside he seemed like a normal, middle class man, who worked as a forensics investigator who specialised in blood. However what only the viewer knows is, he has an 'evil' yet somehow loveable side to him, in which he is a serial killer, but a very proficient one, who is good at what he does. Dexter almost manages to make killing non sinister. Anderson's key point was that


"Everything, no matter how mundane or beautiful, has an undercurrent of violence to it. It is just a matter of how closely you look. We are conditioned to see a blossoming flower as beautiful. But if you look closely, if you look differently you will see it more like an explosion. Here we see a mundane morning routine illustrated in extreme close-ups showing the underlying tension found in everyday situations making violence a part of everything."


This seems to be what Dexter is able to do very well, the opening straight away initialises him as this suspicious, odd man who CAN infact make anything he does seem violent. I think also his look as a person helped to add to this feeling, with his small, stocky build and shady eyes, he does not seem like the kind of person you can trust. 

I think that the music played a key part in the opening to establish Dexter's character, the music is sinister yet playful, which I believe, is the actual tone of the whole show. It is slow and suspicious, just like Dexter himself. All the 'every day' actions that Dexter does in the opening are being related to acts of violence, this is done by the extreme close ups, which actually disguise what hes doing and removes human emotion from the scene, so the viewer can focus on how the action is disgusting, a good example of this is when he is squeezing the orange. Also, other than the music, there is a use of over emphasised diegetic sounds which make the actions seem even more malevolent, for example, when Dexter is tying his shoe lace, the noise of the lace going through the whole seems almost evil.

Research: Analysis of opening of Juno

5 Key points that are revealed by the introduction to Juno

Sound track. 
The music is quite a folk style, relaxed song, which would indicate that the film would have this tone. It is a lot different to a lot of other film beginnings, where more upbeat, action packed music may be used, exciting the viewer, whereas Juno seems to be more about relaxing the viewer. The sound track used is composed by Barry Polisar, who is a children's entertainer, this establishes a childish atmosphere to the opening.

Slow pace of the editing.

There are no action cuts, or fast paced transitions in the opening to Juno, again this is quite different to how other movies begin. It perhaps is to connote that Juno is in no kind of rush, and is quite a layed back type of girl, this builds up here character so the audience gets to know her better, thus being more interested and absorbed into the movie.

Juno's clothing.

Juno doesn't appear to be wearing the usual clothes of a 16 year old girl, her attire is that of a tomboy, perhaps an unconventional character (again, this builds her character up, and we come to understand that she in not like normal girls, this may interest the reader) Her clothes portray a sense of rebellion, perhaps this is why she is seen walking through a 'normal' town, Jason Reitman may have been using Levi Strauss' theory of binary opposition, the two contrasting figures being Juno and society.

Mis En Scene.

The general style of the opening is very different to most conventional movie openings, and this says alot about the genre of the movie, the playful music, childish rotoscoping and the movement of Juno all indicate this is going to be a fun, layed back, indie movie. Once she gets to the drug store, an enigma is established, 'Where is she going?' and the user can then begin to understand the coming of age aspect to the film, this narrative method is Barthes' Enigma Code. Another way to show that Juno is an unconventional character, different from society, would be the use of colour, whilst the background (ie, the town) is all washed out, Juno is in colour, which emphasises her individuality. Tzvetan Todorov's five stage theory is also used in the film, the Mis En Scene of the whole opening really helps to define the initial state of equilibrium.

Title credits.

Usually films opening credits are very bold and in your face, where as in Juno, they are alot more subtle, and again, childish. The way in which they are drawn onto the frame makes the movie seem playful. However, they are very clear and hard to miss, so the viewer is not likely to miss one of the cast/producers. Also, no one name seems to be favoured over another, there is a subtle feeling that everyone is equal, which is quite characteristic of an indie film. 

Key Conventions

After watching a few different film openings, I have identified some key conventions, such as:

• The production companies title or logo.
• Non diegetic backing music, which can carry on throughout the opening, perhaps switching in and out of diegetic and non diegetic (on the radio for example), it usually peaks at the end of the intro for effect.
• An establishing shot to set the location.
• The first voice usually is the protagonist.
• The film could start with an ellipsis, in other words, the film starts ahead of the story, so events have taken place that the viewer is not yet aware of.
• Credits are also usually on the screen, showing the most important people such as the lead actors, producers and directors.
• The main characters are usually introduced at the start, it builds their characters with voice overs and footage of them. Another technique in films such as Train spotting is where the scene is frozen and a text overlay of the characters name is put on screen to give viewers a quick snapshot of what they are like.
• Often the girl who the protagonist is trying to win over is also introduced early on.
• Enigma is established early on, making the movie more mysterious, hooking the viewer. This is usually done with an ellipsis with a character in a confusing scenario.

The point of an opening sequence essentially is to hook the viewer into the film and make them want to continue watching it. Directors can use different theories and techniques such as Strauss' theory of Binary Opposition, Tzvetan Todorov's 5 stage theory or Barthes' Enigma Code. In binary opposition, there are two opposites defined, such as good and evil, establishing this at the start of the movie makes it alot more interesting for the viewer. Todorov's 5 stage theory states that in the 1st stage (ie. the opening sequence) A state of equilibrium is defined, which can be done through a variety of methods such as Establishing shots or character building, this makes viewers want to continue to watch ready to see the second stage, were the equilibrium is disturbed. Barthes' Enigma theory suggests a text should start with mystery, producing lots of questions which the viewer wants answered. The main use of opening sequences are to: establish characters, location and time, initialize plots and display certain credits.

Main Task

For our main task we have to make the opening of a new fiction film, to last as maximum of two minutes. I have a number of deadlines to work to, which are


Research Deadline: 30/11/10

Photo-storyboard Deadline: 3/12/10

Filming Deadline: 07/01/11

Production Deadline: 28/01/11

Evaluation Deadline: 11/02/11

Targets

To improve the quality of my work next time around I have decided to set myself some targets to focus on...

1. I shall spend more time thinking about how I can further my abilities based on the mistakes I previously made
2. I shall make sure that I find actors in advance of the day of filming to make sure they are fully prepared and can bring the best they can to our projects.
3. I shall spend more time checking the video camera, and give myself more lead in and lead out time on the filming, to stop untidy cuts and random jumps.

Evalution

We have learnt a lot about continuity editing since we started this project. Continuity editing is the process of editing together a video to make it flow better, making it more immersive and realistic for the viewer. For example, you must always keep the 180 degree rule established. Another continuity editing technique we uses was match on action, where the same action flows over to different camera angles of it, making it seem more natural.

We used the digital SLR cameras provided by the college to photograph our storyboard in preparation for filming, these gave us a good base to start from, and made the actual filming a lot easy to execute. They were rather easy to use, they had easy point and shoot features, but with plenty of technical settings too, if needed. We just simply used the optical view finder, while the camera was in capture mode. Once we had finished taking the photos, we took the SD card out of the cameras and into the inbuilt card readers on the PCs, we then simply navigated to the card's drive, and dragged the files from it into our own area. To create the storyboards from the photos, we used Adobe Photoshop CS5 along with a pre made template, all we had to do was import and crop the images into Photoshop, and then add text boxes to explain what was going on.

The hardest part of filming was probably organising it, as you had to keep tabs on quite a lot of different things, who was acting, when the actors were available, and making sure they knew there lines, considering the fact that we haven't been in college long, it was not the easiest task finding willing actors. However I believe next time we go to film a video, we will be better prepared as we will know more people, and would have learned from our mistakes, (such as not giving the actors any real time to prepare)



The video cameras we used to film our task were pretty easy to use, considering most of our group had had previous experience with similar devices. All we had to do was turn on the camera, switch the mode to capture, and press record  to start filming. The cameras used DV tapes, so instead of having loads of cut files, we had one long video we had to capture sections off in Adobe On Location. The first time round that we imported it, the video was completely out of sync with the audio (this is still noticeable on the final version) So we decided to re-capture it onto the PC, but recording it in sections, as appose to in one go, the audio was still off in places, but overall, this improved the quality of the sync. We connected the camera to the PC using a firewire cable provided by the college, it was a simple enough process considering drivers etc were already installed.

The editing part was the most tricky part of the process, not because we didn't understand how to use Adobe Premier, but because we had to spend a lot of time re-aligning the audio and video tracks, along with having to cut out people mistakes. We imported all the clips we had recorded in On Location, into the media library of Premier, and then dragged them onto the timeline to arrange. We used the pointer tool for general moving around, and then the razor tool to cut of the video when we had filmed too much, or needed to cut off the end of a take, etc. When we had to attempt to fix the audio, we would unlink the audio and video tracks from each other, then move them independently until we were relatively happy with how the video looked, then joined them back together again. It was annoying having to constantly do this, and I think that the time and patience that it took, took away from the overall quality of our video.

Once we had finished the video and rendered it as an avi file, we continued to upload it to YouTube, this was done with ease due to the college's high speed Internet connection, YouTube automatically compressed it and it was up and online within about 20 minutes. We then embedded it on our blog using html coding which you can get from the video.

Blogger has been rather useful in this task as it has helped me organize my work in a clear manor, which made it easy to get my head around the work. Also a useful feature of blogger is being able to write bits of the post at a time, and come back and edit it at a later date, this is useful when we have big tasks to write, or I see a spelling or grammatical mistake.

Post-Production

Editing was not to bad as most of our group had some experience with editing in the past, the only problem was that the audio was out of sync.

Production

Filming the video was not hugely successful at first, as we had inexperienced actors, and it was the first time we used the cameras. It took us a while to get going and get serious. but once we did, we rolled through. Although we had to re film as the audio was out of sync

Pre-production Tasks

Before we started we had to plan and draw up a storyboard, followed by making a photo one. We had to use different actors as our real ones were not at hand. Making the storyboard has really helped out video as it gave us quick and useful references when filming. Also we had to do a risk assessment to make sure we didn't injure ourselves or anybody else when filming. When we wrote the script we had to consider making it flow natuarally to be more immersive to the viewer. We scouted out the other media room as it worked well in our  classroom scenario.

Continuity Editing

Continuity editing is a style of filming where the film seems as natural as possible, by matching up the shots etc, this makes the film more immerse for the user and so they are more entertained. It helps the viewer empathise with the characters more easily, and makes the text seem to flow a lot smoother. The viewer will not notice a good cut as it is supposed to move as the scene moves, making it almost invisible. The main 4 elements of continuity editing are: the 180 degree rule - This is the rule that makes sure the camera never moves to the opposite side of the scene (past 180 degrees) this stops the user getting confused and helps the conversation to flow. The eye line match makes the viewer feel that they are there in the conversation, as everyone is level with each other. Shot reverse shot keeps the scene interesting and stops keeps both actors in view, this also increases the reality of the shot as it makes the video more like a real conversation. The match on action shot is the way in which an action takes place, the angle may change but the action continues between both angles as if there was no cut at all, the less obvious this is, the better.

Preliminary Task – Video Production

For our first task we have to film and edit a short video in which 1 person opens the door, crosses the room and sits down in a chair opposite another person, they then have a short conversation, in which we should use techniques such as match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree rule. In addition we much also use a cutaway and a cut in, making sure the video still flows and that the cuts and relevant to the conversation on hand.

Introductions

Hey everyone, I'm George and this is going to be my blog about for AS Media for the next year.