Key Information/Tips

Key information/tips for making an opening sequence:

MAKE SURE IT'S NOT A TRAILER/SHORT FILM
Some people put too much into an opening sequence and give away the whole story, you have to leave your audience asking questions and reason to carry on watching your film

SOUND = 50%
Sound is just as important as the visuals you see when making a film, if your sound does not match your visuals this breaks continuityand your audience will not believe your film, therefore won't bother to watch it (which is what you want!)

FOLEY (SOUNDS ADDED IN AFTER)
Similar to the point above, foley sounds are important to get right and in time with the action happening in your film, again this breaks continuity and your film becomes unbelieveable (not in a good way) - this also reinfocres my first point in that SOUND IS JUST AS IMPORTANT AS THE ACTION/VISUALS

THE COMMON 6
The main types of films that students usually create are:
- Saw
- Gangsta Films
- Scream
- Waking Up
- Flashbacks
-Se7en
These are good types of films, but have been done a million times before and aren't very original, so when deciding what type of film you want to base your opening sequence on come up with something different to these 6 types of films.

Opening Sequence To An Action Film

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/buried/

I looked at an opening sequence to a film called Buried. I thought that for an action film it had a very slow opening sequence and wasn't very thrilling. Even though you're not supposed to know the whole story of the film in the opening sequence i felt that it didn't really grab me and make me want to watch the rest of the film. It had snapshots of action film stereotypes such as money but that was the only give away. However, i did like the movement of the titles and the colour scheme as it didn't have many colours and was quite basic.

First Production Meeting

Date: 6th December
Present: Jess, Andere, Josh and Alex
Agenda: Discussing ideas for film/opening sequence

Bullet Points:

• Action Film
• Motorbike? Car?
• Snapshots of actual story
• Use of props
• Video run down areas
• Voiceovers over titles
• Peaceful -> tension chase
• Peaceful music - violins/piano
• Chase music - faster/louder

Action Points:

• Look at opening sequences for action films
• Look at chases/car chases/motorbike chases
• Ideas for setting
• Ideas for storyline

Making A Video

A brake down of everything you need and need to have for making a film.

THE  CREATIVE TEAM
-Executive Producer
-Writer
-Producer
-Director
-Production Manager
-Storyboard Artist
-Camera Operator/Lighting Director
-Sound Technician
-Talent (actors)
-Editor

THE BRIEF/CONCEPT
-States intention and purpose of target audience
-Clear about target audience
-How long the project has to be                            <-- CRITICAL
-Completed in X amount of time
-Limitation (budget,timeline)

PRE-PRODUCTION
-Scripting                                          
-Scene-breakdown
-Storyboard
-Shot list/shooting schedule (where,time needed, different camera angles, when, how long)
-Casting
-Locations
-Equpitment hire
-Catering
-Transport
-Informing people

PRODUCTION (the doing stage)
-Involves shooting of the script
IMPORTANT TO:
- Keep to the budget/time schedule
-Get the accurate shots
-Safety
-Keep continuity
-Quality control (image, sound, performance)

POST-PRODUCTION (editing)
-Offline (rough-cut edit)
-Online (final edit)           <-- ELEMENTS ARE ALL COMBINED
-Sound mix

Opening Sequence Brief

Film the opening sequence of a new fiction film, including titles and a soundtrack to last approximately two minutes.

Media Trip - BFI (British Film Institution)

A couple of weeks ago we went to London on a media trip to the BFI (British Film Institution). We had 3 speakers come and talk to us about their jobs and about media in general. The first was Pete the media studies examiner, who started giving us a talk about the course and our main task of creating an opening sequence, showing us videos and asking questions, so this session was quite interactive. The second talk was from a visual-effects supervisor who was recently directing a tv series based on Davinchi. He gave us an insite into his job and some useful advice, his main advice was that "planning is key". The next speaker was director of Attack The Block, Joe Cornish, who talked to us about his movie and all that is involved in creating a film. He explained how an opening sequence is one of the most important parts of film as it grabs the audience. We had a chance to ask questions at the end of their talks. The final part of the day was when Pete showed us a number of past opening sequences and we were shown what was good and what was bad. I found the day very useful as it gave me ideas and tips for when we produce our own, it also showed us what to do and what not to do.

Preliminary Task

Key Representations of Media

During the otherside to our Media Studies course we learn useful information that could also be used to help us create our film. Media representations are used to represent a real life person or event to make the piece seem realistic and believable to an audience. These are the seven key media representations of media:

- Sexuality
- Gender
- Social Class
- Ethnicity
- Disability/Ability
- Regional Identity

- Age

 This a representation of AGE i.e. old and young.

First Storyboad

This Is my first draft of a storyboard from the first 17 seconds of the chase in Taken 2.

Sound

We looked at the Lord of the Rings sound design videos and how the sound team created the sounds for the film, I learnt a lot from these as before i didn't realise how much work went in to sound for a film. For example, one part of the video shows the sound team going to a grave yard late at night so it would be absolutely quiet and filmed them screaming. Another example was that they used the noise of a donkey to create the noise of the Nazgul.

<-- Nazgul from LOTR



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5cOgj4RsWg&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMNwotOm27g&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EW7lC6CTmbY&feature=relmfu

This gave me ideas of things that i could use, i.e things like scrunching up paper and shaking metal objects, like knives and forks, could create the sound for a lot of people moving and there clothing moving, if you were to move the objects faster would create the sound of people running or in a rush. another idea was to just use the voice to create different sounds like heavy breathing.

Camera Angle and Movement Experimentation

This is a video of our group experimenting with camera angles and movements, the first half of the video is of Izzy demonstrating an Extreme Close Up, to improve this i think we needed to consider the other space around her.

The second half of the video we included an ECU, MCU, Panning Shot, HA and LA shots. We took into consideration this time the head space above, although with the LA shot i think we should have had the camera lower down to reduce head space.

James Bond Camera Angle Analysis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRFkCIQAjBU

This is the link to a scene from James Bond that we analysed reviewing the camera angles used in this scene.

The main shots used were:
MCU- this was of bond and of le chiffre to show their facial expresson and also reminding the audience of where they were in this scene.
CU - this was more of bond but also some of le chiffre to show in more depth their feelings through facial expression
ES - to show where the two of them were, and make the audience know qand feel as if they were in that same situation
LA - this was of le chiffre to show that he had the power over bond in this particular moment
EL - this was of bond to show his emoitions through his eyes, making the audience also feel the same emoition

Film Language

These are all the things that need to be taken into consideration when producing a film:

- Location - Setting of the film
- Characters - Accent, Costume/Make-up
- Sound
- Props
- Dialogue/Script
- Camera Angles/Shots - Movement
- Lighting
- Mise-en-scene (everything in the scene)
- Editing - Must be seemless

Camera shots, angles and movements

This lesson we looked at all the different camera angles, shots and movements. These are all the abbrieviations of them:

SHOTS AND ANGLES
ECU - Extreme Close Up - This portrays emoition.
BCU - Big Close Up - Seeing face shape.
CU - Close Up - Face further away.
MCU - Medium Close Up - Head and shoulders.
MS - Medium Shot - For two people in a conversation.
MLS - Medium Long Shot - For a small number of people but capturing the environment around them
LS - Long Shot - Slightly bigger that a MLS includes more of the surroundings
ES - Establishing Shot - Captures a large area to 'establish' where the film takes place
HA - High Angle Shot - Shot from above making someone look smaller or vulnerable
LA - Low Angle Shot - Shot from below to make someone look bigger or powerful
BEV - Birds Eye View - Shot from directly above to make the audience feel 'god-like' to see all the action below
DA - Dutch Angle- Camera is on an angle to make the audience feel uncomfortable and to suggest something is not right
EL - Eye Level Shot - Camera is at eye level capturing mainly face and shoulders
RA - Reverse Angle Shot - Series of two shots showing what the person is seeing

<---- Example of a DUTCH ANGLE SHOT



MOVEMENTS
Panning - Turning on a pivet, horizontally
Crabbing - Moves across (like a crab)
Tracking - Camera moves towards and away from subject
Zooming - Camera doesn't move physically, but lense is changed to move closer and further away from subject
Pedding - Camera is placed on a moving vehicle to follow action
Tilting - Fixed on a pivet, like a panning shot but scans a scene vertically

<---- Example of a TRACKING CAMERA MOVEMENT

The Orphanage



This is the trailer for The Orphanage 

In today's lesson we watched the opening to the sequence of the film, The Orphanage, and made comments on what we could see and hear. I made comments on the character, location, genre, audio and language used.

Genre
We all established that it was a psychological horror/thriller before the film had even started as the front cover suggests that it is a horror film.

I learnt today that in the first few minutes of the opening sequence there are a lot of things that foreshadow later events, such as, at the beginning of the sequence the children are playing a game; a hand reaches out to touch the main girl (as part of the game) but could look like someone/something was trying to grab her, suggesting that maybe something bad is going to happen to that girl. Also, the last words that you hear in the opening sequence are "got you" by the little girl which also suggests something weird about her, backing up the idea about the grabbing of the hand. I also learnt that the audio to a film has a big impact on the mood and feel about different scenes/characters. Such as the old woman who was in the orphanage says the words, 'you're friends are really going to miss you', when she is on the phone, she then repeats this dialogue and the music and her voice changes when she is looking out to where the children are playing, which may also foreshadow later events.

First Media Lesson

In our first media lesson we were given an introduction to the subject and told about what we were going to learn throughout the year and what kind of things we will be participating in. We then set up our blogs and customised them. Mr Buckmaster also gave us some useful webistes and blogs to look at.

www.marlbouroughmediastudies.blogspot.co.uk - this is Mr Buckmaster's blog with information and tips for our own and about media studies in general

www.petesmediablog.blogspot.co.uk - this is the examiners blog with extra tips and information

www.ocr.org.co.uk - this is the exam board website so we know what we need to do to acheive the best possible grades

www.artofthetitle.com - this is a website that has a collection of opening sequences; this will be helpful later on in the course when we have to create our own

www.guardian.co.uk - this is the online guardian newspaper which has a useful media section