Main Task 4 - Group Meeting

My group and I held a meeting wherein we discussed the appropriate genre, plot and description of our opening sequence. Everyone contributed ideas to this discussion to come to a conclusion of a comedy genre and what we will be creating. I have highlighted who said what and what has been agreed.


My idea for out group was to use two of our group as the actors and plot out our story as if one character who was an outcast student, was taken under the wing of a popular classmate who had seen the outcast being serverly bullied. This would become a comedy through the actions of the two and how they grew in learning about each other and through a journey of self acceptance.
Sabene, part of my project group suggested the idea be about an excel student landed with the responsibility of encouraging a rebellious popular student to change their ways, the plot would include both characters growth in coming to understand one another.
The other person in our group, Hannah, had this idea of every character in a school being kidnapped, and it was the mission of one character to set them free. The story would focus on that main character and their journey as they solve the mystery of the missing students.
As a group, we finally decided that our film plot would be that of  two students who are left in a school, while everyone else had disappeared. The genre has been chosen as a social comedy, the plot about everyone in school disappearing with only two kids left whose personalitites contrast to provide the comedic element, and it is their mission to find the missing individuals. Our description of our opening sequence is as follows: it shall contain the conventional cast member credits and title, dramatic music which will contrast with the comedy on screen, set the scene and include hints at the plot of the film to draw in the audience.

Main Task - 3 Further look at opening sequences

Film opening sequence of 'Casino Royale' 

For this post, I made a Prezi, choosing the points I felt were the most significant.

Main Task - 2 Choosing your genre

To choose out genre, we sent out a questionairre to 10 people to find out what they thought about films and opening sequences, providing 6 questions, all of which are shown in the document linked below, a copy of the questionairre. With all the multiple choice questions, the person answering was able to tick as many boxes as they desired, so therefore those results have greater than 10 answers.

After we took in the results of the questionairre, I set out a page to order the results, with tables for each question. We looked over the results and decided that the genre for our opening sequence and our film, we were going to produce, was a comedy. As this was the genre that the has the greatest response in the question relating to what film genre they wanted to see more of.

The opening sequence for our film will have to include credits of the cast and crew, set the scene and have aspects which show what the film is about.

Below is a copy of the results of our questionarre, which showed us what genre of film we were going to produce and the features that people wanted within it and the opening sequence.

Main Task - 1 Conventions of an Opening Sequence

Conventions of film openings

Film 1: 'The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe'

 

Details of Cast and Crew:

After 5 minutes during the opening of the film, an overhead/bird's eye shot of the train is shown, as the train goes past, the opening titles appear, leading onto the production of the film, the actors, and the director.

 

The film's title:After the opening film titles, of the production and the book that the film is based off of, the title of the film appears within in a wide shot of the train. This is then preceded by the credits of the actors and crew.

An Introduction to character or character type:All of the children of the family's names are not given until later in the film, except for Edmund, but it is evident that these characters are close siblings, each with different traits. The eldest boy is shown to be the protective, head of the group; the eldest girl is shown to be doting and motherly, her arm around her little sister though-out the train journey; the younger boy is shown to be rebellious and not on the best of terms with his brother, as when the elder goes to pick up his suitcase, he shrugs him off and picks it up himself; the younger girl is evidently the scared, naive little girl.

Indication of place:Although because of the character's accents and the country they're in, it is not obvious where in England they are, although it is assumed they are in London, as the opening appears to take place during the start of the Blitz. Through the train journey, it is evident the children are being taken away to the countryside, but where exactly is unknown until the end of the opening sequence, where the siblings are standing in front of a sign of the train station.

Indication of historical period:The opening consists of a family within a war, hiding in a bomb shelter while bombs are being dropped and the air siren is going off. We are then shows evidence of it being World War II, one the planes, the Nazi Swastika is evident and with the evacuation process of children taking place. The children of the family are shown to get onto a train, leaving behind their mother, along with many other children, the train leaves and during the opening sequence, when the train is in a station, a few children are shown to have the tags and are taken with the family they will live within the country. In relation to this, there is evidence of the evacuation, as the train goes though countryside, far away from the dangerous cities of the time the film is clearly set in. 

 

 

 

 

Information regarding mood and tone:
During the opening titles, the children are all shown to have forlorn expressions on their faces, evident that the mood is one of fear, curiosity, through the two youngest sibling's expressions during the train journey, and confusion, shown though the youngest girl's expressions and body posture during the train journey, on the edge of her seat most of the time.The mixture of both dark lighting and bright lighting suggest that the mood during the opening is dark and moody, but that through the rest of the film, the tone will be brighter than the tone of the situation these characters are in.

 

 

Information to signiture theme tune:

The music of the opening is a theme tune composed by Harry Gregson-Williams, a well known music composer for films and video games. This music used in the opening is titles 'Evacuating London', created using an orchestra  the composer has stated that he employed instruments used in ancient folk music to create 'colour' and to underscore the dramatic nature of the opening, along with the rest of the film.

 

Information about genre:
The genre setting isn't exactly set, as all we know of the film is that the main characters are four siblings evacuated from their home in the city to the countryside during World War II. All the the audience know, unless they are aware of the books and the story behind the film in the books,






 


Questions that the viewer finds intriguing:
Throughout the opening sequence the audience isn't aware of where the children are going, just aware they are going away from the city into the countryside.

Patterns and type of editing that will be echoed in the remainder of the film:There is quick editing between the faces of the characters, specifically done to emphasis the different expressions they all hold. There is also quick editing between the inside of the train and the outside, usually just after at least one of the chararacters is shown to be looking outside of the window of the train carriage.

  

Mis-en-scene and cinematography that will be echoed or elaborated upon, later in the film:

The Mis-en-scene of the film is evidently placed to set the time period the film is set in, around 1940. This includes the clothing of the children and adults, along with the accessories, such as the bags the woman is holding in the screenshot to the right, to the tags on the children, to the setting the film takes place in, such as the train station and the countryside that we are shown throughout the opening. The editing of the opening is both smooth and 'snappy' with quick editing specifically around the expressions of the characters, particularly the two younger siblings.

 

Prelim Task - Post 12 - Independant work towards targets

For the first target, I set out in my head a list of criteria that I wanted to follow when we decided on the location of the filming, this criteria was:

• Does the location provided the correct amount of lighting for the shots?
• Will the sound reverberate from the walls of the location, thus will this effect the shooting in a good or bad way?
• Is the location free to use when all of our group is free to film?

After going through the criteria I inputted to the group, that TC8 was the best fit location for the film. Then we looked at each others time tables and decided when everyone was free to film in this location, to match with when the location was free.

For my final, self, target, when we were given the edit suite, I looked at the program I would be using and looked through all the tools it had, looking through the sheets provided for help. For the first time using the program, I looked at the tools and decided which ones I would need and practiced with them. Then when I began editing, I was able to use them better than I had originally thought.

Prelim Task - Post 11 - Targets

The first target I set myself was to, when the group was deciding on a location, choose fit a list of my own criteria, when looking at the locations that were available and the timings available, we decided that TC8 was the location perfect for our filming.

The second target I set myself was that of most importance to me, when the group began discussions on the script and who would be playing the character, I decided to help create a script that, as a target, would match all the requirements of the preliminary task, have a flowing plot which was easy for the audience to keep up with and to have camera shots that were not required, but would give more depth to the film.

The third target was to set out the jobs for all the group equally, it was decided who would be acting, who would film, who would direct/organise and who would edit.

My final target was that of a self target, as had been decided with the third target, I would be the one editing the film, because of this, as a self target, I decided to use this opportunity to improve and develop my skills of using the editing suite available to me.

Prelim Task - Post 10 - Evaluation of skills developed

Below is the final video of our preliminary task

Evaluation of our film
Overall, I was pleased with our film, however there were aspects which definitly needed changing for our next project. The first of which being how organised we were, in the preliminary film, we were not organised and ended up having to do a lot of filming last minute; this meant one of our actresses was unable to film on the day we had prepared for.
During the editing, we also found that two of our consecutive shots broke the 30 degree rule, I then had to use a fading tool in the programme used to edit to make these shots flow into one another in a way which looked much less like a jump-cut.
We also found that after being exported, the opening credits of the film were severly cut short, for reasons we do not know.

Assessment of Skills
From this task, I learnt how to edit, with no previous knowledge of this process. Although the programme usdd (Adobe Premier Pro) was pretty easy to get used to using, and had avaible information to help me. During the editing, I found that I was able to cut the shots down well, this also meant we were able to notice the mistakes of the two shots which broke the 30 degree rule very quickly. I also managed to figure out a way to fix this to the best of my ability.

Prelim Task - Post 9 - Post-Production

These are our rushes, which label the timing of the shot in the filming and a description of each shot, followed by whether or not that take was used. After filming one shot at the end of the first table, we had issues with the camera which resulted in us losing some footage and the camera went back to the 'in code' of 00:00:00. This is explained in the first table to give reasons for why the second table starts again with 00:00:00.

Prelim Task - Post 8 - Production report

Overall, I believe the shooting of the preliminary task went well, even though there were some difficulties we had to over come when editing and filming.

In regards to filming, the problems occurred with the camera not fully functioning when we filmed out first couple of shots, as the battery was near empty and would record any footage to the tape,
we changed the battery and the issue was overcome. Also, the camera and tripod was an issue, the tripod itself had a few flaws, one of which was that there was no way to secure the positioning of the camera as that part could not tighten, therefore the person filming had to hold the camera steady on the tripod.

Along with these issues, during the day of filming, one of our actors was ill and was unable to come into school, so our set camerawoman had to step in to take her place. Because of this we had to get another couple of media students to help us film the shots we needed that day. This however meant that one person in our group did not participate in the filming of the task, meaning we had to explain a lot of what we had filmed to her, in terms of the timing, the schedule of filming and the ideas that we had during the filming itself.

When editing, we worked well as a team, although with the editing only one of our group could do the work, which I ended up offering and doing, however I had help from my group to set out the timing of the shots to capture and had input when we had finished capturing and setting out our film, with the overall editing, such as transitions between some shots which needed improvement as they didn't flow, and the credits. In regards to the rules we were given, we did not break the 180 degree rule, however we did break the 30 degree rule, but with the editing done, we overcame this issue, and included a number of camera movements/editing techniques, such as Match-On-Action, panning and tilting.

While I am overall pleased with the footage, there were some issues with sound, because of the nature of the classroom, a reflectively empty one that was large, there were noises which we did not want to be as loud as they were, such as the squeak of the door opening. However, in editing, this was overcome. We could have improved if we had a working bridge-plate, thus allowing the shots to be more steady and less shaky, but I think we did well with what we were given.