Film pitch

Titles

In today's lesson we were asked to choose a film with interesting and exciting film titles in which we could analyse the timings. This will help us determine which order the titles run in and which person in the making of the film is to be considered as having the most important role. These below are the titles which contain the main actors and directors etc.

11 seconds

The first title starts with the production company and is on for a long time so that people can properly take in what production film they are watching.

13 seconds

The second is the other production that it is partnered with and as marvel is used for super hero films this one is on for a little bit longer.

4 seconds

This is the third and final production company and is not as big and as important as the others so this is why it is on for a shorter amount of time.

                                                           5 seconds
                                             It then shows the title of the film.

3 seconds

After that it then goes on to show the following actors and actresses involved in the movie.

3 seconds

3 seconds

3 seconds

3 seconds

After the names of the actors are shown it then goes on to present the creators of the film.

3 seconds

3 seconds

3 seconds

4 seconds

3 seconds

3 seconds

                                                           3 seconds

                                                            3 seconds

3 seconds

3 seconds

3 seconds

3 seconds

                                                               3 seconds

5 seconds

It then shows the director at the end as he is the most important person and the reason for why this                                                                 film has been made.

Sound

In today's lesson we learnt about the sound effects from Movies and TV programmes.
Here are the following sound techniques we learnt about:

1. Diegetic - anything that the actors can hear (e.g. radio, cars)

2. Non-diegetic - anything that the actors cannot hear (e.g. voice over)

3. Synchronous - matched with the visible source of the sound on the screen.

4. Asynchronous - not matched with the visible source of the sound on the screen.

5. Sound bridge - blending two scenes together by sound.

6. Ambient - the surrounding sounds that create the atmosphere and creates soundscape.

In the opening of Skyfall a lot of interesting and unique sounds are used throughout. It used Non-diegetic sound throughout as the music is of Adele singing and no sound effects to match the water and the falling, However it still creates an on edge effect immediately as soon as the action and sound is put together.

BFI notes

What makes a good film opening

Above are my notes from my previous lesson where we went through the ideal things needed in a film opening to make it a proper, professional and good opening. I am going to use this when analyse the following film openings that media students from a variety of schools have made.

Blitz

The film opening blitz was extremely good and unique. You could immediately see that lots of time and effort had gone into it and because of this it was a very successful piece. As soon as the opening begun it had already created a lot of enigma as you could see all the posters of the war and a random girl in a bed which made you wonder why. 

One thing it does not really indicate is a main character as when a person comes into view you can barely make out his face and is hard to realize what is going on. However this does create suspense and makes you drawn into it even more wondering what will happen next.

 I found that the genre horror was very clear as there was a lot of gloomy, spooky moments as well as having someone in a gas mask suddenly appear making everyone jump. 

I really enjoyed this film opening and would rate it a level 4. Although i would not give it full marks due to the fact as it got nearer to the end it began to turn into more of a trailer rather than a film opening as it started to reveal too much.

Captive 
I really enjoyed this film opening especially due to the extremely high quality in camera, editing and sound. I thought it was quite original with what they have done however i think the genre horror is getting used too much and nowadays it can be quite hard to make a unique never seen before clip.
 It created a lot of enigma at the beginning however i feel like it told the whole story in just 2 minutes and that there would not be much more else to see.
 Due to this i was not interested or wanted to watch anymore. It was also very similar to a film trailer and because of this i will rate it a low level 4 / high level 3 as i did enjoy it, thought it was well made but lacked in looking like a proper film opening and more like a trailer.


Roses Are Red
This film opening had a really unique way of producing the titles as it did edit them on via a computer, instead they wrote it / painted it on varies objects which made it very original and more interesting to watch.
 However i think they focused too much on making the titles then creating an enigma for the opening as it had no real story and nothing to drag me in and making me want to watch more. Despite this it was very well made with good editing and sound.
 Another query was that the opening film scene of someone waking up is very over used and can be very boring as everyone chooses to use it.
 Because of this i would rate it a level 3 as it was very good with its titles but had nothing to hook you into watching the rest of the film and was not so original with the footage of someone getting ready in the morning. The genre was also not clear as i could not identify what it was.

I chews you
I did not enjoy watching this film opening as i thought it was very dull and nothing was able to grip me into watching the rest or anymore of it.
The genre was not clear however my guess is horror, if so it was not done well as it was not scary enough and created no suspense.
However the camera and sound was done really well with no shaky camera or blurred sound effects.
 Due to this i will give them a level 2 as i thought also it was more like a trailer than an actual film opening. It made no sense.
The last thing is i liked how the title dropped in at the end, the special effects were done very well.


The disappearance
I really enjoyed this film opening as i thought it created a lot of suspense with the running and the man trying to get to the girl. However I think it told the whole story in the 2 minutes it was in.
 I felt as if there was nothing else to watch and that i did not even want to watch anymore anyway because of this.
The camera shots were very well planned out and there was a good variety of different shots throughout the opening.
Overall i would rate it a level 3 because it was very good but it was not like a proper film opening as it told the whole story in one.

The edge
I thought this one was extremely good and unique. Very different from most other film openings. I really liked the effects of the writing and constant action which created a lot enigma ans suspense wanting me to watch more.
However the only downside to this opening is that it went on far too much and started to get boring near to the end. I think they need to make it shorter and that is the only negative i have for this as i think everything else was really well made and edited.
 I would rate this a high level 4 because of this.

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.

High and low budget films

Spider-man 3 is a high budget film costs $258 
million to make, but they made $890,857,303
 from it, making it a very successful film.
 Spider-man is a extreme action film with a lot 
of exciting and new special effects.

Marvel studios is a very popular and well

 known production company as most 

superhero films are made from it. It has a 

mass market audience as there is no specific

 genre and age that should watch it.






Saw is a low budget film costs $1.2 million to 
make but ended up making $103,880,027 from it.
Saw consists of the following genres Horror, Thriller,
Slasher, Indie film, Crime film, Psychological thriller and Mystery.

The following productions are not the usual ones that
everyone has heard of, this is partly why the film was
not a major success unlike Spider-man 3 was. This is
 because the well known productions are normally better
 and have higher budget films. People usually like to go
to watch the names they are familiar with a know they
are good unlike the ones that they do not know, which
might not be good. However having Twisted Pictures
productions really highlights what type of film it is and
what to expect from it. When making a type of horror film
some people like to go to the productions which specialize
the type of genre they are looking for.
When coming to make your own movie you may play it safe and look for the well known productions which tend to do all genres but they may not be as good as the productions which specialize only in a specific genre.



High budget films usually consist of really intense and exciting realistic effects which always draws the audience to attention. They will also have well known actors and actresses for example Tom Cruise, Jennifer Aniston etc. The set is usually really good and the props are always high quality just like the camera quality is as well as the acting. However i can't say the same about low budget films as although the odd one maybe very good, often they are what you call 'spoofs' which is just a remake of an original film but making it funny and stupid. It is usually filmed with new and not known before actors and actresses. The acting can be poorer than a high budget film and the props are of a low quality and there is not much of a set.  The similarities of the two are each budgets can still make any type of genres and produce it into cinemas. The only different is the money spent on them.