Brief Film Treatment

We chose the genre thriller as we had a number of favourite films that were thriller which was what inspired us to do take on this challenge in the first place. Our main film which inspired us the most was the movie ‘Taken’, in this movie it shows a lot of human trafficking which we thought would be a good an interesting idea to add into our own movie. We also like the idea of the girl in taken being kidnapped and used as a sex slave, however we changed it up a little and made it so the girls in our movie were drugged. Making them collapse and hallucinate so that the men could take them and sell them for hundreds of pounds. We thought this would make the audience really tense and worried for the girls but not too scared that it could be classed as a horror.

We also took ideas from the movie ‘Trade’ which is very similar to taken but slightly different, we decided to combine the two and our own ideas to create a really serious and exciting film. This film also gives a message to others implying that you should never take things that strangers offer you as you do not know who they are and what they have done to the things they give you.

We chose the film title of ‘Surrender’ as we thought it really outlined and represented our film extremely well. We felt that making it one word gave more of an effect and would make the audience wonder, wanting to know more. In the film the girls have no choice but to surrender as they are unknowingly knocked out and taken by men.

In our film we decided to use really creepy and gloomy music to really emphasis what is going on and make the audience feel scared and worried for the girls.

Evaluation and reflection on using the programme premiere

I really enjoyed learning how to use this programme when i created my dancing bears and James Bond clips. I liked that i could take lots of different little clips and create one amazing big clip with a number of exciting and different effects incarcerated inside it. I also liked the fact that there are a variety of elements needed to use it. For example video, sound, effects, video transitions and sound transitions. It is quite a tricky thing to get the hang of first of all but after a bit of practice and experimenting with all the different effects and transitions you soon get the hang of it and are able to make quick and effective edits with your techniques.
I found it very rewarding playing, watching and listening to my creations and realizing making videos like this is not as hard as they look.

This is what premiere looks like and as you can see it look quite complicated with many different options to choose from.

Film Pitch

During the past week Jordan, Toby and I were given the task to create our own film pitch for a genre and target audience which we had randomly selected. Our genre was Family Drama with the target audience of Working class men. We realized that our genre and target audience was quite difficult and not the everyday combination. However this gave us the opportunity to really make our film original and exciting in which we have hoped to have done. Below is the slide share of our film pitch:

This is the presentation we used to advertise our film in class, we stood up in class and explained in detail what our film was about, the characters, where we got our ideas and what productions we will be using.

Whilst presenting our film pitch our fellow class mates marked us out of 10 and gave us feedback on what they thought of our film. We received the following feedback:
 

With this feedback we can now improve our faults and make sure we do not get these things wrong if we are to do it again. Having feedback really helps us with getting real peoples honest views on our film, although this is not our target audience it is still nice to know that they are interested in the film also.

Juno recreation

During the recreation of Juno my group and I worked really hard and well together to create the best scenes that we possibly could. I feel like our edit went really well however there are some flaws. During the process of capturing the footage i played Juno and my other team mates Alex, Jono and Spencer did the filming and directing. Although i feel that their directing was very good and well thought out, they did miss telling me a few details. For example at 0:50 seconds Juno drinks her orange juice while walking down the path, i failed to do so as i was not informed of this. To improve this for next time the team and i will need to thoroughly analyse every detail of the clip and although we wrote it down on the story board we failed to remember to put it in. Other than this our footage was very accurate and precise on the costume and locations which really helped our footage match the real footage.
Another aspect we failed to do well were the timings of the video, luckily i was able to use a slow motion effect on the scenes to prevent this being obvious and dragging it out to the precise timings of the real footage. For example the first scene of me walking was far too fast that even slowing it down was not enough, because of this i had to double up my footage and add another similar footage on the end of it. After that i used the find edges effect to create a more cartoon look so that it is similar to the cartoon look on the original footage, i found it quite hard to edit this effect and get it as similar as possible. However i found in the end it was very successful and my edit to the footage looked relatively like a cartoon.
Due to all these flaws i am now able to take this onto my next footage and make sure i am unable to make the same mistakes and if i do i now know how to improve it and make it more professional looking.

Juno story board

1- Shot of a girl walking to the left of the left of the frame across some houses. Shot lasts or 14 seconds and is a L.S. Girl walks into frame from the right at 1 second in and the shot tracks to the left keeping her in center frame until the camera stops and she walks out of the frame at 14 seconds.

2- MCU shot of girl standing in front of houses then the camera zooms out to a LS of her drinking from a cartoon of orange juice the shot is from 15-17 seconds. It zooms out at 15 seconds.

3- Shot of the girls feet on the path. This shot is locked down and is a center shot from 17-19 seconds.

4- MCU shot of the girls legs walking in the left third of the frame. The shot tracks to the left as a van drives through the frame to the left at 20-24 seconds.

5- The shot from 24-29 seconds shows the girl walking towards the camera with houses to her left with the shot tracking backwards keeping her in the center of the frame. The shot then pans to the right and tilts upwards to show a street lamp from 30-33 seconds.

6- MCU of girls face and shoulders in the left third of frame tracking left away from the houses in the back of the frame. This shot lasts from 33-38 seconds.

7- From 38-42 seconds there is a shot of a girl holding the orange juice cartoon juice cartoon walking from the right side of the frame past a chair and a guitar to the left. The shot then tilts upwards with the girl in the left of the frame and is a MCU of her head and shoulders walking out the frame to the left. (43-48 seconds)

8- Shot of the girl walking down a path with cars to the left and a fence to the right. This is a LS from 48 - 55 seconds.

9- LS of the girl walking down the right hand side of the shop from 56-60 seconds.

10- LS of the girl in the center of frame walking past a music shop to the left side. At 63 seconds the shot changes and she walks out of the frame at 65 seconds.

11- Girl looks left and right before crossing the road and then crosses the road walking toward the left hand side of the camera at 72 seconds. LS.

Pete Fraser

Key features
- Genre
- Narrative (enigma)
- Character
- Atmosphere
-  Settings

In today's talk we focused on looking at film openings in preparations for when we create our own film opening. We looked at professional films first where we analysed the key features.
One of the film openings was 'Catch me if you can'

The opening scene consisted of a series of different cartoons which represented different jobs while a chase was going on between a man who seemed to look like a investigator and a man in whom kept changing appearances to get away. These credits clearly indicate the main characters without them even being in there. This is done when their names have appeared first and in big writing. For example Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio are the main characters of this film.

We then went on and analysed what genre we thought it was and why we thought it. I suggested it could be a drama or an action film. I said drama as all the characters look very sophisticated and acting all normal, however as the man is constantly running away from the other man it makes me wonder that it might actually be an action film.

The mystery of why it was only showing cartoons really draws you in as you wonder why it is not showing the actual people and just cartoons acting out these people. As the cartoons are expressionless it makes you wonder what kind of mood this film is, is the man running away bad or the one chasing him?

The music was also quite tense and mysterious making this look like a mystery film where the man is trying to solve all these problems just to find another man behind it all. They use this music so that you can feel the way they want you to feel about this opening. They want you to wonder, be curious and want to know more, leaving a lot of suspense.

The film opening showed a lot of enigma through how it left many unanswered questions, one being 'Why did the male character carry so much jobs?' and 'Why was that man following him?' because of these questions and mysterious it makes the audience want to know more.

The jobs consisted of:
- Pilot
- Air stewardess
- Bar Tender
- Doctor
- Taxi driver
- Nurse
- Secretary
- Business man
- Musician

In this opening you can identify the location that is America due to the many American actors and actresses. Also the yellow cab is also an American trade mark as yellow cabs are well known for only being in America.

Pete Fraser next got us to look at previous student film openings which they have produced for their exams. He then got us to discuss and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these clips.

The strengths consisted of:
- Good background music
- Clear genre
- Well made titles
- Some clear film shots

The weaknesses:
- Bad narrative / can't hear what the characters are saying as the wind over powers their voices
- Whole story line is portrayed in the opening scene, makes you think that it is just a short film
- Bad lighting
- Bad acting

To help is with ours he then told us the most common film openings that students tend to use:
- Saw
- Scream
- Se7en
- Lock, stock
- Waking Up
- Flashback or flash forward

Pete advised us not to use these ideas as the examiners will get bored of watching the same thing. He said that using more original ideas can give us the chance of scoring higher and better grades for our video.