Our Idea..

Myself and Maya have come up with the idea for our production task. Through inspiration of watching other opening sequences and looking at mood boards we have decided to do a murder mystery with the emotions of heart break and vengeance involved. Our story is about a man who has lost his wife to murder. The film will show him trying to seek vengeance and get justice for his wife by finding the murders, through this, he also has to deal with the harsh reality that all he has left of her is memories. This is reflected through flash backs. We are having some main props such as a clock, a candle and a wedding ring. The clock shows the tension, the candle shows the mysterious side of it as it is blown out at the end and the wedding ring shows the heart break side of it. We want the audience to feel sympathy for the man as he is heart broken.

Foundation Portfolio- Main Task Brief

Our task is to create our own opening sequence of a fiction film. This must include titles and sound effects. As its only a opening sequence it's duration will only be 2.5-3 minutes long. Our aim is to not tell the whole story but still make people want to continue watching. Its been made clear to us that the music must not be copyrighted and that we should perhaps use different sound effects throughout to reflect different moods and feelings.

Preliminary Task

Maya and I have filmed and edited a short clip. We made sure we used match on action, shot reverse shot and tried to make it look as smooth as we could using continuity editing. We also tried to involve the rule of thirds to make sure the main action in the shot is in the right places.

Lighting

Lighting is a huge part of film. This can automatically change the mood of the scene. Here are just a few examples;
-High Key/Bright, few shadows (friendly, safe, happy environment)
-Low Key/Dimly lit, shadows (shady, untrustworthy atmosphere)
-Chiaroscuro/Extreme lighting, lots of shadows, some very bright part (dramatic, unusual)
-Naturalistic/Very natural light (believable)
-Artificial/Fake lighting
-Ambient/Background light to make it seem real
-Accent light/spot light/Highlight or zoom in on a character
-Fill/Full on lighting (fill the atmosphere)

Coming Down the Mountain

In class we studied a clip from this movie, Coming Down the Mountain. We watched up to around 5 minutes. I looked at how disability was presented.
The very first thing I noticed was the Mise-En-Scene at the beginning. We see the setting of their bedroom with a typical teenagers room on David's side and a colourful room with  lots of toys on Ben's side of the room. This extreme contrast presents their emotional differences. Perhaps they are always physically together, however their maturity and emotions are very apart. Ben seems to be much more child like than David. Perhaps, this could mean that due to Ben's disability they are unable to emotional connect  as brothers.
The next thing I noticed was a medium shot of them both walking to the bus stop. David was leading with Ben following slowly behind. This shows that Ben is extremely venerable as he needs someone with him at all time. It also suggests that he has no control as he is being led by David.
Furthermore, when Ben is on the bus home by himself, he is cuddling his rucksack. This emphasises his child like actions as he is holding it like a child would hold their toys. This again presents his vulnerability. They imply his emotions on the bus as they do an extreme close up. This shows his rare emotion of worry and shows his feeling anxious. Finally, there is diegetic sound from the other students on the bus fighting, singing and laughing while Ben sits silently holding onto the seat in front of him. This shows how he is not just unlike his brother, but also most other people his age. Perhaps they are portraying the message that having a disability isolates you from people your own age. This creates huge sympathy for Ben.

Camera Editing Task

Today we edited and filmed our first video! This is an example of continuity editing which also includes lots of camera angles.

Sound!

          

Sound is a huge part of any TV show or film. In fact almost 70% of all the sound we here in films is added on after they have filmed it.

There are many keys words when learning about sound, for example diegetic and non diegetic sound. Diegetic sound is the sound we can see being made e.g. dialogue between characters. However, non diegetic is all about the sounds that isn't in the scene e.g. background music or a narrative voice. They are only a couple of examples and there are many more!

Mise-En-Scene

Mise-En-Scene is a Frech term meaning literally what is in the frame. This is very important as you need to make sure you have only relevant objects and people in the frame.

Continuity Editing

Today, we looked at continuity editing in movie clips. The first clip below is from LA Confidential:

This scene starts with a continuous shot of the camera following the two police officers. This puts us in the police's shoes and shows it in their narrative. This automatically makes us support their side of this situation. Also, when they are questioning the man, the camera switches between the police and the man creating a tense environment. Finally when the police start to push the man around, the cutting rate speeds up. This creates panic but also excitement as the viewer wants to see what is going to happen.
We also looked at this clip from Jaws:

A reverse shot is used right at the beginning to show what the man is looking at, and to portray his worry about something in the water. The directors also use something that is not seen as much in movies. As the man sees the shark attack they zoom in onto his face while zooming out. This is extremely effective in this case as it shows the mans panic and shock while viewing a boy being attacked.

History of Editing

Today in class we looked and studied the history of editing. We watched the following video to understand the background of editing:


Continuity editing is the style of film editing and video editing in the post-production process of filmmaking. The purpose of continuity editing is to smooth over the inherent discontinuity of the editing process and to establish a logical coherence between shots.

Camera Angles Examples

Today (21/09/15) we took pictures of Ellen, Matt and Patrick and used different camera angles!

Camera Shots

Today (12/09/15) we studied the different camera shots and why directors use them! There are many camera shots which are effective when used in movies. One example of a camera shot is an 'extreme' close up, these mainly focus on the eyes in order to show their emotion. In addition, close ups usually focus mainly on one character or object however you can also see more of their surroundings than with the extreme close up. Today we looked at this extract:

In this piece they use an extreme close up of Superman's eye after being shot in the eye, this shows his power as the bullet bounced straight off it. They also use a low angle shot of him as he is walking towards the bullets; this again shows how strong and powerful he is. Shortly after, they show a medium close up of the guy that tried to shoot Superman. This is effective as it suggests he is in panic and perhaps is now terrified of Superman.

Likewise, in this extract they also use low angle shots to show how powerful iron man is and high angle shots to show how vulnerable the people are.

1st Blog Post

Today (04/09/15) was my first AS lesson in media! Throughout the next 2 years I will be doing weekly blogs on the new things I learn in media. Media now a days is a huge part of our lives. From radio to television, it influences us more than we think and I am very interested in learning all about it.