The importance of location

Depending on the genre and type of film i think that location is very important as using the wrong location can either make the film look as if the storyline does not fit the location or it could make the film seem likea soap opera these are a few errors that can be made when discussing location and film.

Being lucky enough tobe a student from London i am able to travel around London and get shot of its wondeful views and buildings this is a major advantage as these veiws makeperfect establishing shots.

While watching films

throughout the Christmas holidays i watched a few films such as "Hitch"(2005) "Daddy daycare"(2003) and "Like mike"(2002) these films are all considered to be family films according to http://www.imdb.com/ while watching the film i took note to the opening sequecnce and realised that Hitch started with Will  Smiths character (Alex Hitchins) walking down a hall way it continously cuts to happy couples as Alex Hitchins voices it over, adding to the voice over there is also happy music which can be heard in the background the music adds to the happy couple giving the viewer an ideaq this is a happy film which is what the director probably wanted as this film is considered to be a romcom.

The begining of Daddy day care starts with Khamani Griffin's character (Ben Hinton) is walking around his house in just a t shirt and underwear as he has just woken up, there is casual calming music in the background which stops when he closes the bathroom door where they add in digetic sound of Ben's urine hitting the toilet water. There is a lot of mise-en-scene in this opening sequence as Ben is only 6 years old there is toys all around the house indicating he enjoys playing with them and then not packing them away which becomes obvious to the viewer as the film goes on. not much shots are used during this opening sequence mainly just a long shot from different angles.

Like Mike opens with Shad "Bow wow" Moss' character (Calvin Cambridge) playing basketball along with his friends a more up beat song is used as they are running around you can also hear the sound of the children talking to each other instructing the person with the ball to pass it. when the bully approaches the music stops and a sound is made each footstep he takes this builds suspense and educated me further on the importance of sound

Title: The Beginning of the end
Genre: Psychological thriller
Time Period: Contemporary
Location: London, England
Budget: N/A
Target Market/Demographic focus: Male/Female aged 18-30

The Importance of sound

During another lesson my class and i watched the opening sequence to the film "Rain Man" (Barry Levison 1988) but whilst watching the opening sequence our teacher played different music and muted the clip which gave us different ideas about what the genre of the fim was. The teacher played three different sounds which gave the feel of ; Comedy, Fantasy and a romance when in fact the film is actually a drama.

After listening to the three different pieces of music which involved no foley we listened to the actual music which gave us the idea it was a drama before we knew the actual genre of the film.

This gave me an insight to how important sound is when making an opening sequence because you do not want the audience to believe you are making a comedy when you are actually making a psychological thriller. This also made me want to use foley more then i had originally planned to as it sets the scene and makes the surroundings come alive

New Cameras!

Today we was informed that the college had received new recording equippment, this would be alot of help as we could enhance the quality of our opening sequence that  we are going to create. We will need to get a camera as soon as possible so we can start filming as it may  be a trial and error process

futher location scouting

Map

pitching

Today my class and I went to the AS film studies class to pitch our film to them using a presentation  that Marcus and myself had created explaining the name of the film, the reason behind the name , location, propsa, story and editing.

After the presentation we recieved feedback which i will touch on in a later post

Audience feedback

From the audience feedback i have decided to reconsider the editing for example not putting the  final section of the opening sequence in double speed. I have decided to use quick editing and fast cuts instead of double speed because there is a chance it would look comical.

However i will not be changing the location as i beleieve it is perfect for the story yet to be told.

moodboard 2

Moodboard Three

Screenplay

The Beginning of the End

The Begining Of The End

The Beginning of the End

while watching films

Today i watched a fim as my college is off for a week for half term, the film  i watched was entitled grave encounters which i thought was a terrible movie but the opening sequence was rather interesting as it was different from any7 other film i have watched it involved the director sitting down and talking about the fillming of this movie then it lead straight to the point of the fliming process he ended on this kept me interested as it was something i had never seen befpre but sadly i lost interest as the film went on.

test shots

Today i visted the location of where my group and i will film and we took test shots with my camera to see what angles we would use and where we could put the police tape this was pretty helpful as we could eliminate some ideas we did not need to use.

working progress of pitch

PitchMy group and i have begun working on our pitch and i will upload as we go along this is our initial ideas there is a possibility we may change it all together but this is our first ideas.

last years process

Last year whilst studying AS media, we had made many mistakes regarding audience. The first mistake we made was our survey we sent it out individually instead of using a site such as http://www.surveymonkey.com/. This was a major setback as less people would take our survey due to it not being mutiple choice and they also had to write/type, this year we only went for multiple choice questions which meant the survey could be completed with just clicking a mouse. My colleagues also suggested that we do more then five questions but less then ten so we decided to go with 8 questions which is enough to give us the information required without having to much questions for the participants to answer.

Our feedback from last year was poor, this was due to us printing out the survey and having participants write their answers down this gave us less feedback and careless answers. Now that we are using the website "surveyMonkey"we can put the survey on our personal profiles of social networking sites such as (Facebook,Twitter,Blogger and bebo) this gives us a wider audience.

As my group has decides to do a crime thriller The teaser trailer will have to indicate that a crime has been comitted or something along those lines.Whilst searching on the internet i came across novelty police tape for sale which is an exact replica of the real thing so before we begin to film we shall order some of create the atmosphere of a crime scene.

Location Scouting

On the way home from a night out on the weekend i noticed this church tremendously lit up. i decided to take photos of this church because even though it was lit up the surroundings were still dark this is a striking image and creates a sinister atmosphere. as we are also doing a crime detective teaser trailer i think this building could be very useful.

Then getting closer to home i approached Wandsworth common which is normally not a great place to film but in the evening it creates a mysterious atmosphere due to the lighting and the dack sourroundings

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Browsing the internet

Whilst looking on the internet i came across a site that sells novelty police tape this could be a a key prop if my group decides to do a crime thriller.

Touch of evil Opening sequence

the first shot in the scene is a close up of th ebomb device there, the scene begins to progress and as it does it moves on to a crane shot Following this close up which seems to follow the action in the scene, the movement of the camera and the angles give the sense of suspense.

the fact they use a close up shot of the bomb to open the scene give the effect something tragic and action filled is about to take place, the use of the tracking shot only justifies this as it follow the assassin planting the bomb in the boot of the car.this leaves the audience wondering why he planted the bomb in the car and who he is attempting to kill

Batman The Dark Knight Opening Sequence

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Questionnaire

Click here to take survey  <<<CLICK CLICK CLICK  (This is not spam)

First media lesson

In our First AS media lesson of the new academic year, we were given our task which was to make a Opening sequence lasting two minutes along with a directors chair interview and a DVD commentary and track our progress on our blogs.As easy as it may sound, this is a long process as we have to do audience research to then come up with an idea a pitch moodboards and plenty other actions. So on this blog you may see links to questionnaires feel free to take them as they will help me to make the best opening sequence for both me and you. we also watched a few opening sequences and analysed them as a class this gave us an idea of what opening sequences should look like.But the most help we had was watching old AS students opening sequences and picking gout what we thought went well and what we would have done differently

Welcome

Welcome to my blog. This blog has been created for my As media on this blog i have post such as; questionnaires, surveys,mood boards,opening sequences(uploaded from youtube),my directors chair interview and dvd commentary along with my very own opening sequence. I will also have posts explaining what i have done in my media lessons and if i believe i have accomplished something within the lesson. i will also post about how i feel my coursework is going or if there is any setbacks which could lead to slower production of our opening sequence.