Prezi:

This prezi, made my group member Charlie, shows some details about costume, sound, location and some props.

Costume Ideas - For Female Lead

The Order of Titles:

The usual title arrangements is as followed:

·      ‘Film....’ in association with...

·      ‘Company’ presents

·      A ‘director’ film.

·      Star

     Star
     Star 

·     

·      Technicians - Director of photography, production designer, costume, make up etc. (order of importance)

·      Executive producers, producers, director.

·      FILM TITLE

Of course this is all dependent on what kind of film it is. If it is a massive Hollywood blockbuster  there will be more of an extensive list of actors (in order of how famous they are - normally) this is to get those film fanatics on your side instantly. Whereas if it is a smaller independent film then the list of stars will undoubtedly be shorter and there is more likely to be more investors listed.

Our film, as it is set so specifically in Dorking, is going to be a small British independent film. Therefore we will probably only have about two or three actors names but have more 'investors' listed. Hopefully this will make our opening title sequence more authentic.

Cast List

Paul Wingfield as the character of Michael. We decided to go with Paul as our male lead because he is a clearly attractive man who fits the age and look of our young journalist. Paul is a technician at Hurtwood and not an actor, so we have to take into account that he is not going to be as experienced as our female lead when it comes to acting in front of the camera.

Lottie Stent as the character of Jennifer. We decided to choose Lottie as our female lead because she fits the mold of our blonde bombshell perfectly. She is a classically pretty blonde with features that we believe will work well on camera. We were able to get in contact with her as she was an ex-Hurtwood pupil. She is a working actress so she has experience in front of camera which is an added bonus. Lottie is in her early twenties, which is exactly the age that we needed.













Our extras will be Adam and Leah Grant. This is mostly due to the fact that they will be on location during the filming process as it Leah's office we are using and Adam will be supervising the shoot. It just seemed sensible to use people that are already there rather than busing more people over to simply say two lines and walk out. As the role is so simple there really doesn't need to be any acting or camera experience at all.

Character List

In this film opening we have two lead characters.

Male Lead:
Michael. A clearly attractive, young but successful journalist working at the local newspaper of Dorking. He is total neat freak which is shown in the organisation of his desk. He is in his mid-twenties and has a classic British look. He will most likely be wearing a tweed jacket and some thick rimmed glasses - almost Peter Parker like. He has an obsession with finding the perfect woman, which is why his aim is to make the perfect woman his self.

Female Lead:
Jennifer. A very beautiful classic blonde bombshell who works in the office with Michael. She is actually his assistant and works on a desk directly opposite him. She on the other hand is incredibly messy which once again is shown through her desk which is covered in trashy magazines. She also loves her Starbucks drinks, which is why on her desk are always numerous empty cups. She is Michael's latest obsession.

Extras:
A couple of extra office staff appear right at the beginning of the opening, they are leaving the office at the end of the day leaving Michael and Jennifer alone.

Shooting Schedule

Today we put together a (rough) shooting schedule for our shoot day in January. A lot of our timing will be dependent on the sunset time in January. We have had a look online at the sunset times in January, so we can get a rough estimate.

      Sunset times in January.

Production Meeting

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Production Meeting (with Matt)

Today we had a production meeting where Matt (Media tech) came into to talk about how we could turn our ideas into reality. He liked our idea and thinks that it has great potential. We have decided we now have the basis of our idea as we have done a first draft of the storyboard; we now need to get to some depth into our characters. Matt said, that to create a legitimate character you need to think about their backstory. For our lead male: does he prefer using a notepad or a laptop? Is he a messy person or really neat? For our female lead: what magazines does she read – are they on her desk? Does she doodle in her notepad? These things will make the character more realistic, the audience won’t register it directly but combined with personality of the characters it will factor in.

Thinking about titles:

As a group we are in the process of deciding what kind of font we would like for our titles. So far we have narrowed it down to two (very juxtaposing) ideas.

The first idea is to have the font incredibly neat and tidy. It would be a classic computer generated font, like american typewriter for example. This fits in with his image of perfection and order which we shows on the outside.

Title Idea One (for example)

To completely contrast this, the next idea is a messy hand-written font. This would mimic the writing that he does in his secret notebooks. It could look really effective or it could just look out of character and context with the rest of the footage. 

(for example)

Script (in progress)

Extra 1: See you tomorrow mate!

Extra 2: Aright, have a good evening.

Jennifer (Lottie): Michael I’m off now. I’ve just arranged the case files you wanted and I’ll just leave them here. Oh and do you want me to get coffee for you tomorrow morning? Is there anything specific you want? (Sound of voice begins to blur out)

Michael (Paul): She’s quite a pretty girl. I’ve always thought she was pretty but nothing special. All the guys in the office are crazy about her, I don’t see it. Good body, nice hair, pretty eyes, cute smile…She’s not perfect though… and I want perfect. Pause. Those ears. I could use those.    



                                                                           -

At the moment we have drafted this VERY basic script. The words that we do eventually use will undoubtedly be different but we have this here as a starting block for us to use to begin with. The lines that Michael says at the moment are a bit vague and we will most likely tidy it up dependent on the footage we get.
Our script isn't very long because our opening title sequence consists of very little dialogue, most of which will be recorded in the studio after shooting. 

Props List:

This is our current props list. Some of these items will need to be collected by Al, others will be collected by ourselves.
The laptops we will use, will be our own. Magazines are already in my possession so we can recycle them.

First Draft of Storyboard

'Borrowing' ideas

I would love to use some sort of 'type-writer' font in the opening titles because this links with the whole idea and theme of journalism and writing. However, this is a modern day production and typewriters are no longer used, but the font style is.

I typed into google 'top 10 films on journalism' and I got some results. I then placed the names of these titles and had a look at their opening title sequences.

 'All The President's Men'

From 00:30-00:40 there is a fantastic use of a typewriting with synchronous sound. The effect of the punching sound mimics the sound of gunshots which could very well be used in a journalism/psychological thriller.












Next I had a look at the opening of 'American Psycho' and I just can't explain how perfect I think it is. Every shot and word that he says (in his head) tells us how introverted he is, and it's excellent!
My absolute favourite shot and piece of script is from the point 01:59-02:27. He peels off a facemask whilst talking about how no one knows the real him, and how what everyone else see's is all just a disguise. The impact of the physically removing a 'layer of skin' off his face while uttering these words is just so clever. Although we don't have a scene where we see our lead character talking about his daily routine, I can imagine that if we were to create a full length film, a scene like this would definitely be included. I love how they get across that he has such a strict routine, which can be seen as weird or just particular. This is the kind of sense that I would like our lead character to show when we see him sat at his desk.

Research

This lesson our task was to research similar films to our idea. As our thriller is psychological, I began by typing 'top psychological thrillers' into google and then had a look through the results.

I initially started looking at the 'Dexter' trailers as they have an excellent use of inner thoughts, and I loved the way that Dexter zones out and stares just right of the camera when his inner thoughts are being shown. I think using this in our film would work really well.

I then came across a film from 2002 called, 'May'. It is about a girl who is trying to create a friend. In this she talks about their body parts being nice. Totally coincidently, that is exactly what we want our lead male to be doing in his inner thoughts. The difference with 'May' is she tells the person that she likes their legs, for example. Whereas with ours, he will be keeping it all a secret. Left is the 'May' trailer, from 1:22-1:27 is a perfect example of a chracter lusting over body parts.

 

What is a Thriller?

A thriller is a very broad genre used in many films. The aim is to play with tension to stimulate the viewer's mood so they are constantly anticipating future events.They tend to be fast-paced, full of quick shots and are total adrenaline feeders.

This broad genre can be split up into sub-genres: Psychological thrillers, crime thrillers, mystery thrillers...
No matter what the sub-genre, they still aim to set up a major conflict that the protagonist must overcome.

Alfred Hitchcock was the man who really introduced thrillers as a genre that was accepted. One of his earliest thrillers was 'The Lodger' which was made in the 1920s.He did a few thrillers around this time, but it was only really after 1935 that he spent most of his effort into making his film thrillers.

Some examples of a pschological thriller are:

'Psycho' - Alfred Hitchcock. An incredibly famous film who's most celebrated scene is the shower scene in which we see a naked woman begin brutally stabbed. It is a psychological thriller because Norman Bates, the killer, is an incredibly strange and messed up man. It is in his craziness that he kills all his victims.

 'American Psycho' -Mary Harron (based on Brett Easton Ellis' novel)

This is a perfect example of a psychological thriller and is actually what my AS film is taking ideas from. It focusses on a succesfull wallstreet stereotypical yuppie. His mental state causes him to become blood-thirsty and turn into a serial killer. We see his instability a lot when he uses a voice over to show his inner thoughts.

Some examples of a crime thriller are:

'Silence of the Lambs' -Jonathan Demme. This could also come under the psychological thriller heading too as it is about a serial canabalistic thriller. What makes it a crime thriller is the FBI aspect of it and how he tries to solve this gruesome crime.

'Se7en' - David Fincher. This is about two homocide detectives that come together to get deeply involved in a case that deals with a serial killer who has cunningly planned out his murders to correspond with the seven deadly sins.

2nd Production Meeting

We had two additions to our group today, as Helena has decided to leave Hurtwood - unfortuneately for us. In her place we now have William S and Charlie F, which is great because I have worked with them before for the prelim task and we worked really well together and agreed on (almost) everything.
We began to think who we might possibly want to cast as our young journalist and our blonde woman. A very unlikely but top choice would be Tom Mison, because he visually fits the character perfectly - but realistically there is no way he would agree to do our film because he is a working actor and is clearly very busy.The second man we talked about to play the journalist was Paul (the media technician) because we think he is also quite fitting. We haven't asked either of them yet so it is possible that we will have neither of them.
In order to explain the idea to Will and Charlie we began a very rough storyboard and managed to get down about nine shots  (not all in order though). We feel we have quite a strong opening few shots that will really help push that slight background weirdness. Then we have a couple of shots for a little later on in sequence.
I think that our group is really working well, Willam and Charlie understandably haven't contributed to the idea as much as Alex and I but I think that once they are more familiar with the idea they will be contributing loads!

Pitching

We pitched our idea to Matt and Adam the media teachers. We went in strongly with the idea about the young journalist. We explained fully and gave great detail about the journalist character. Matt helped us realise that our opening sequence literally gave the whole story away, and it was more of a end scene. Matt thought that our character was a really strong one and we should focus on him more. Our idea focussed on the weird with a undertone of normal, we needed to make it so that we focussed on the normal and hinted the weird.
Together we decided that we would use internal voice as an overlay to hint the weird. Rather than showing the whole lab we would show the journalist on a date with an incredibly boring girl and he his thoughts are projected outloud about the inapropriate things that he is thinking (for example 'I would really love to shove you in my car boot') His thoughts would start normal and slowly getting weirder and weirder and more inapropriate. Right at the end of the sequence maybe we would show him walking into his lab.
I was really worried that our ideas where going to be totally thrashed and demolished, but actually they liked the basis of our idea and thought it was doable - which was the big thing!

First Production Meeting

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The first production meeting went well.  We started off by explaining our ideas to each other. As a group we decided that one of my ideas was something that was possible.  The idea is my hospital idea – but we expanded it even more. We drew what we would like the set to look like. When it comes to location, we have found out that Ewhurst has a basement in there house, which is a possibility for a site we can use to shoot on. Located hospital tools shouldn’t be too hard to find and costume will be easy, as I believe the costume department already has scrubs and lab coats.

Character: Young journalist, who is killing women and taking their body parts. He is also leading other journalists and the government in the wrong direction by slightly changing events and evidence on how they’ve gone missing. He uses his charming persona to lure these women in to house, he is also very attractive and youthful.

His reason: He is creating the perfect women for himself, as he believes no women he has ever been with was good enough for him. He feels they only fell for his looks not him. So he is cutting them up and using their body parts to create the woman who will love him conditionally, because she has to and because she isn’t alive to have a mind.

A Contemporary Frankenstein.

Rough sketch of what we picture the lab to be like.

Opening Title Ideas:

Some rough ideas that may or may not be possible to film, but they are ideas that can be molded to work with our time and facilities.

“Awake”

Black screen. Dodgy lights flicker on and we see a wide shot of a makeshift surgical room. In the middle of the room is a table covered with a sheet. The camera follows a man around the room (we only see his hands). He touches all the surgical instruments as he passes them. His nails are ugly and has mud and blood under them. Eerie music plays, a chiming like noise – as if the surgical instruments are clanging. The hands uncover the table, and a body is lying there. A woman in just her underwear, she is very pale and looks dead. We see the dirty hands put gloves on. The camera pans up the body of the girl. Starting at her toes all the way up to her face. Close up on face, music silences. A moment of still silence. Girl’s eyes open and she gasps, as if for air. Her eyes are bloodshot. Title flashes across the screen, “Awake”. Black.

“Pop Goes The Weasel”

Wide shot of a hooded man processing photos in a dark room. We can only see him from behind. He is humming “pop goes the weasel” to himself quietly. Cut to a male student, (tall, lean, glasses but good looking), walking with photography gear to dark room. Cut back to man processing, he hangs up his photos on pegs. Cut back to student walking, another student calls ‘Hey Weasel!’ – Weasel responds by waving and smiling. Cut to hooded man, taking of his latex gloves and then exiting room. Weasel enters dark room and turns lights on. Photos of weasel dead and bloody. Close up on Weasel’s face, pure shock and fear. Close up on a post-it notes stuck to a photo, it reads ‘pop goes the weasel’

“A childhood obsession”

Child is drawing a picture. Cut to old man drawing. Child is cutting things up and we see he has a scar on his right hand. Cut to an old man cutting things up, he has the same scar. This is because the child is a flashback of the old man. Cut to child cutting bits of yellow string to stick on his picture as hair. Cut to close up of old man’s hands cutting up real blonde hair. Cut to see child's bright blue eyes, quick cut to see old man’s eyes. Cut to see child finishing his picture and sticking it on the wall. Zoom out to reveal a wall full of pictures drawn by little boy – all of the same blonde girl. Cut to old man sticking his picture on the wall. Zoom out to reveal a wall full of images of a dead blonde girl and newspaper clippings in which the girl is pictured. Cut to child smiling. Cut to old man, he looks serious. Then after a while a slowly makes an evil smile.

“Run for your life”

Male athlete is running on track, he has earphones in. He has clearly been running for a long time as he is quite breathless. POV shot from behind him. It seems that someone is running behind him. He turns there is no one there. He continues to run at a faster pace now. Cut to POV shot closer to runner. He turns again, no one there. He runs increasingly faster. POV shot almost right behind runner. Runner turns and trips. POV shot comes and stands above runner looking down. Runner screams. Black.

Final Groups

Our groups for our main task have been chosen. This was done but shoving all the names into a hat and picked at random. Having said that, Adam did do some slight shuffling around and I was moved into the group that I am in now. The group I am in a group with Helena Burroughs and Alex Wadstein. We have never worked with each other before and I am only in one other class with Alex, so we don't know each other well. I think we will be able to work well together because we are clearly all into media studies and want to do well. I am interested to see how we work together.

Coursework Task defined

This is the actual coursework task defined by the exam board.

Video

Preliminary exercise: Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

Main task: the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.

All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source. Both preliminary and main tasks may be done individually or as a group. Maximum four members to a group.

Kyle Cooper

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 Kyle Cooper is a well-known title sequence designer. He has created some of the most interesting opening sequences in a lot of our well-known and loved films. He has been credited as the man who single handedly, made main title sequences a form of art. He is founder of two L.A based film design companies, Imaginary Forces and Prologue Films. They are both internationally recognized and are very influential in their field.

A piece of work that has been imitated and mimicked many a time, is his work on the ‘Se7en’ opening title sequence that was created in 1995. This piece of art changed the way we think and view title sequences today. The New York Magazine confidently named it “One of the most important design innovations of the 1990s” Cooper is particularly interested typography and how it can contribute to the plot,‘Se7en’ is a prime example of this. The sequence uses a handwritten style type; this is to mimic what the character in the title sequence is doing. The type seems to deteriorate and destruct itself; this could be to foreshadow future events within the film. This links to another favourite area that Cooper loves, movement. In every opening sequence, or in fact any work he has done, he revolves the type and titles around movement. The dynamic effect of this is what makes his work so great.

Microorganisms under magnification also particularly fascinate Kyle Cooper. He enjoys seeing something so small look so incredible, and so he aims to recreate these things for his title sequences. In ‘The Island of Moreau’ main titles, we can see this fascination in action. Using the knowledge I have on Cooper and how he thinks that an opening should reflect what is important within the storyline of the film, I can gather that some sort of scientific aspect is going to be portrayed in this film. The type used is reasonably standard to suggest a sense of formality, perhaps due to the scientific register. It then begins to get a bit manic, suggesting that there is more of a cryptic vibe about all the science that goes on in this film. Again, he uses constant movement to keep the opening sequence interesting and dynamic.

Another great title designer is Jamie Caliri, he is slightly different to Cooper as he has a major passion in stop-motion animation. He describes his design process as different to many other designers. He believes that the best way in which to create a sequence is to find the beats of the story and then fill in the gaps once you have decided on the definite poignant moments. In one of his most famous sequences, ‘United States of Tara’ we can see his love for stop motion being used. He believes that every little move made by these animated characters has a reason. For example, in the ‘United States of Tara’ opening a cockroach scuttles across the floor. Rather than stepping on it directly, she places a hankie over the bug, steps on the hankie and then vacuums it up. This suggests something about her character, she may like to order and perfection. You could go deeper to say that rather than facing a problem head on, she covers it up and then deals with it. All this is being said from a mere three to five seconds of film. Another incredibly famous piece of work by Jamie Caliri, is his animated end credit sequence for ‘Lemony Snickets – A Series of Unfortunate Events’. This sequence earned him a lot of respect and credit in the world of graphic artistry and animation.

The Finished Piece

Here is the finished piece of film.

Editing: Lesson One & Two

 Lesson one:

In this lesson we got to grips with the software we would be using, Final Cut Pro. It was quite a lot to take in, as there were loads on tabs and togs that we should click, and multiple that we definitely shouldn’t.

We checked in our work and began the editing process. To do this we had to find our groups work on the server and open it up. We then created a folder called “Rush Bin’, this is where we put all of our clips, including ones we were definitely not going to be using. From here we created a separate folder, called a “Log Bin”, this is where we copied the clips that we had filmed, that we would be using in our prelim. It was interesting to see how the clips we had shot looked on screen compared to how they looked in reality.

We had the storyboard next to us whilst editing so we could follow it exactly, or as closely as possible. Our group couldn’t follow it exactly due to a lot of errors with delivering lines, so it never fully matched the storyboard.

One thing that I think let our group down was our idea. It was a pretty rushed and not particularly thought out theme. What happened was, because the actors were wearing masks, we couldn’t see their mouths moving.  Which ultimately took away from the whole point of the activity. In some senses it made our editing process easier because we didn’t have to match up the words to the mouth, because there was no mouth on show.

We didn’t finish editing in this lesson, but we had more or less half of it completed.

Lesson two:

This is the lesson when we ran into some bigger problems. One thing, although drilled into our head a million times, didn’t factor in with us. Saving our work. After completing almost all of our sequence, Final Cut crashed. And with that we lost our days work. It was incredibly frustrating that because we had simply forgotten to click ‘command S’ we had completely lost all of our (what I thought was reasonably decent) editing. After dealing with the dilemma, we watched our piece back. Here we spotted a few issues. The first, a very stupid mistake – you could see the directors’ (me) and the camera operator’s reflection in the window. Very annoying, but easily done. The next was that we had some awkward pauses that we had to sort out. To do this we had to cut the sound separately, as we had the track of one clip which we had layered other action clips over the top. This was a bit fiddly but we managed to do it. We then finished our film. To be perfectly honest, I’ll be glad if I never have to see that piece of film again – it’s really not a very interesting or inspiring piece of film. Having said that, that was not the point of the exercise. The point was to practice our camera and continuity skills, not how interesting we could make a one-minute piece of film with a very limiting script. I wouldn’t say I’m one hundred percent happy with my product, but as a first try I think it’s reasonable.

Opening Titles: The Rocky Horror Picture Show

LINK HERE

Info:
Actors:
Tim Curry - as Dr Frank-N-Furter
Susan Sarandon - as Janet Weiss
Barry Bostick - as Brad Majors
Richard O'Brien -  as Riff Raff
Patricia Quinn - as Magenta
Little Nell - as Columbia
Jonathan Adams - as Dr Everett V.Scott
Peter Hinwood - Rocky Horror
(starring) Meatloaf - Eddie
(and) Charles Gray - The Criminologist

Original musical play, music + lyrics:
Richard O'Brien

Screenplay:
Jim Sharman
Richard O'Brien

Musical Direction + arrangements:
Richard Hartley

Director of Photography:
Peter Suschitzky

Film + Music Editor:
Graeme Clifford

Design:
Brian Thomson

Costume:
Sue Blaine

+ all credits that would normally be seen at the end of a film (make-up, hair etc)

Action
From this opening there is not a lot visually happening, other than the lips moving in time to the song. So therefore we don't see any characters physically shown. Having said this they do make a point of saying which actors plays which character.
In addition to this, they also add a little characteristic underneath each name - this allows the audience to get a slight insight into the characters without actually seeing them.

Characteristics:
Dr Frank-N-Furter - (A Scientist)
Janet Weiss - (A Heroine)
Brad Majors - (A Hero)
Riff Raff - (A Handyman)
Magenta - (A Domestic)
Columbia - (A Groupie)
Dr Everett V. Scott - (A Rival Scientist)
Rocky Horror - (A Creation)
Eddie - ( Ex Delivery Boy)
The Criminologist - (An Expert)

Opening Titles: Bridget Jones's Diary

LINK HERE

Info:
Actors:
Renée Zellweger
Colin Firth
(and) Hugh Grant
Jim Broadbent
Gemma Jones

The actors in bold are the most important, we know this because the font size was larger when their names were on the screen and their names lingered on screen for longer than the other two.

Casting by:
Michelle Guish

Line Producer:
Peter McAleese

Music Supervisor:
Nick Angel

Co-Producer:
Debra Hayward
Lisa Chasin

Original Score:
Patrick Doyle

Costume by:
Rachael Fleming

Production Design:
Gemma Jackson

Editor:
Martin Walsh

Director of Photography:
Stuart Dryburgh

Executive Producer:
Helen Fielding

Novel by:
Helen Fielding

Screenplay by:
Helen Fielding
Andrew Davis
Richard Curtis

Producers:
Tim Bevah
Eric Fellner
Jonathan Cavendish

Director:
Sharon Maguire

Action
We are introduced to the lead girl, who is clearly in a bad state. She is either depressed or upset about something we don't know yet. We can assume, seeing as it's a chick-flick, that it will have something to do with relationships.
There isn't much in the way of geographical hints in the opening, but the phone tone does speak with a British accent. Therefore we assume that the film is going to be British and be set in the UK somewhere (if we didn't know that beforehand).
She is clearly drinking quite a lot of alcohol, which could foreshadow her abuse of the substance throughout the film, or could be a recurring symbol used throughout.
The room is reasonably messy which could be due to her 'depression', this is a stereotypical atmosphere for someone going through something major. 

Opening Titles: The Notebook

LINK HERE

Info:
Actors:
Ryan Gosling
Rachel McAdams
James Garner
Gena Rowlands
James Marsden
Kevin Connolly
David Thornton
Jamie Anne Brown
Heather Wahlquist
(with) Sam Shepard
(and) Joan Allen

Actors in bold hold more importance. The first four come before the actual title 'The Notebook'. The bottom two have the additional (with, and) before their names, this shows that they are well known.

Casting by:
Matthew Barry C.S.A
Nancy Green-Keyes C.S.A

Costume Design:
Karyn Wagner

Music Composed by:
Aaron Zigman

Edited by:
Alan Heim A.C.E

Production Design:
Sarah Knowles

Director of Photography:
Robert Fraisse AFC

Executive Producer:
Toby Emmerich
Avram Butch Kaplan

Based on novel by:
Nicholas Sparks

Screenplay by:
Jeremy Leven

Adaption by:
Jan Sardi

Action
It is set by the water and this lakes hold enough importance to having the whole opening title sequence based on around it.
There is a man rowing, he could possibly be an important character in this film. We don't see his face so we don't know who he is yet.
It is clearly set in the countryside in the USA, but we are not clear on the time period in which it is set.
There is a large white house that is shown multiple times throughout the sequence, this could show that this white house holds some importance.
There is an old lady who we see a close up of, we are unsure to who she is at the time of the sequence but we can tell she is of importance or she wouldnt be shown in so much detail right at the beginning.

Sound Lesson

In this lesson we aimed to focus all our analysis on sound. The lesson beforehand we had been focusing on the sound in Kill Bill, but we took it further in this lesson. We were played a clip from the movie ‘Saving Private Ryan’, but we weren’t shown the picture.

This is the clip we listened to:

We were asked to note down what we think we could hear, this is what I noted down (it was actually quite wrong, in the end):

-Waves

-Ferry

-Shipwreck

-Ship hitting rocks

-Whistles

-Arrows shooting

-Guns

-Chains

-Tom Hanks

Everyone instantly recognized Tom Hanks’ voice, which then lead us to work out what movie it was from. The other sounds and effects were similar but not exact. We still managed to get the gist of the scene and what was happening without seeing the picture. 

This lead us onto the topic that SOUND IS POWERFUL. It engages a distinct sense, your hearing. It enables synchronization of senses. It can direct attention within an image, for example: there is a woman sitting in a chair and the door behind her creeks as it opens. Our attention is drawn to that door at the back. Sound can clarify or contradict events, or can sometimes leave them ambiguous. Sound can also create expectations. For example: the door is creaking open. As an audience member we expect something scary to happen. Having said that it can also cheat or redirect expectations. Using the door example: it creeks open and a cat runs through. This is most likely not what the audience is thinking was going to happen. We also learned that silence hold great value in film. Thinking back to the scene from Kill Bill, silence was written into the script and it made the experience that much more tense.

Language learned:

Diegetic: Music/Sound happening in the sequence. The character can hear these noises.

Non-Diegetic: ONLY the audience can hear. (e.g. music added during the editing process)

Lesson on Semiotics

In this lesson we learned some basic terminology that will be used throughout our media studies life. This list consists of:

Signifier: An object or colour that conveys something. (For example: a red rose)

Signified: This is what the object or colour conveys. (For example: a red rose conveys love)

Denotation: What we see. (For example: a kitchen knife)

Connotation: What we associate it with. (For example: a kitchen knife means someone is going to die)

Due to all the films and tv shows we have watched over the years we have created an understanding that a kitchen knife means death, when in actuality a kitchen knife should be something that is used in the kitchen, to cook.  

Mr & Mrs Smith Scene Analysis

Prelim Task - The Filming

We were split into to groups to film our prelim task, my group consisted of myself, Charlie, Seb and William. I was the director, Charlie was cinematographer and Seb and William were actors. We used about forty-five minutes to film our task in its entirety. We had to follow a specific storyboard and follow the shots and lines exactly. The storyboard looked like this:

For our set we used the editing suite and had the large plasma and a computer screensaver as background props. The idea was that Darth Vader walks into the room and puts a light saber in front of a storm trooper. The light saber was our lead object that gave the film its context. The costume emphasized the context.

We shot the whole scene in wide; this enabled us to cover about four frames and also aided our continuity. This prevented any stop-start editing.  We tried to move the camera as little as possible; this was for a few reasons. The first was to make it easier for Charlie, so she didn’t have to lug the tripod and camera around the set. The second reason was to aid continuity, had we moved the camera every time we needed a new shot the likeliness that the continuity would be smooth is low.   

We then filmed an over the shoulder shot, this is a device used by filmmakers to let the audience feel like they’re in the scene and closer with the characters.  From the same camera position we filmed the close up, this was to capture the emotion of the character. We then swapped over to the second character for an over the shoulder, and then again from here we took a close up shot. 

Other close ups we took we of our object (the light saber) being placed on the table, this was to add detail to the film. We had to do this carefully for continuity purposes. We also did a low angle close up looking up Darth Vader’s cape. To do this we took the camera of the tripod and Charlie lay on the floor and angled the camera up whilst Darth swished his cape over it. 

The experience of shooting this scene was quite a frustrating one. This prepared me a little for what filming my main task would be like. I now know that if I want to direct I have to be strong and not feel bad for ordering actors around the set. Obviously, there are limits but you do need to be determined to get things done, especially with a time frame.

Kill Bill - Sound Analysis

The film I will be analyzing the sound of is Kill Bill Vol 2, the scene where Beatrix is buried alive.  

At this point we can hear hammering. The hammering is much louder than it would be in reality, but this is so that as an audience member it is the sound we are primarily listening to. The non-diegetic sound is a piece of western style music. The long notes create a sense of calmness which juxtaposes with the hammering and the heavy breathing going on in this scene. It creates a slight discomfort for the audience with the contrasting sounds.

At this moment, the hammering slows down which suggests that it is nearly finished. There is one final hammer and then the screen goes black, this tells us that the coffin has been properly sealed. The final hammer is extra loud and has a certain weight about it which suggests that the man using the hammer puts a lot of effort into the final blow.

After the final blow, the screen goes black. At this point we can hear a few things. The music that plays throughout the whole thing continues.  Beatrix's breaths are heavy and deep. Having a plain black screen makes the audience focus on her breaths. The heaviness of them suggest that she is having a hard time getting oxygen, which is expected if you were trapped in a coffin alive. Then over the top of her breaths, you can hear shoveling. It is much louder than her breaths, which create the idea that her breaths are insignificant. The shoveling sounds are muffled, this is because it’s what she is hearing from inside the coffin. The crunching noise suggests that the shovel has a pointed edge and is heavy as it ploughs through the mud.

The sound of the mud then being dropped on top of the coffin is strong and identifiable yet muffled. The fact that it’s strong implies that there is a lot of it being shoveled on and that it’s quite thick and dense. The muffled sounds suggest that the wood of the coffin is quite thick hence the thud of the mud is muted slightly. Also, it is what Beatrix would here, this makes the audience feel that they are in the coffin with her.

At this point, the shoveling is still going on but she tries to scream. Her screams are so quite in comparison to the shoveling sounds, to signify that no one can hear her outside of the coffin. Her screams are full of distress and frustration, not sadness. This suggests she is more angry about the situation than she is sad.