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