Early Consideration of Evaluation Questions

So now we've decided on our studio name and the genre of our film (Thriller). Now we need to consider a basic idea of what we could do in the evaluation questions. 

The evaluation question we are going to have to consider are:

1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups? 
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? 
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
5. How did you attract/address your audience? 
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? 
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? 

We have briefly discussed each of the questions as a group and decided on ways in which we can address each of these questions.

1. This is going to be challenged through the idea that rather than a rough male being the bad guy in the thriller, its going to be an innocent rich young girl rather than her being the victim.

2. It challenges the idea of social groups at the end. The main female is your traditional rich young lady and the male is this boy racer bully of a boyfriend. At the end this is challenged by switching the roles. 

3. We haven't got to worry about this at the moment as we shall decide this at the end when the film opening has been completed to decide what media institution is likely to distribute our film.

4. We haven't decided a specific audience for this film but right now we do know that is is going to be aimed more at young males. 

5. We will be attracting our audience through the content of the film as young males are probably more likely to enjoy thriller films that young female teenagers.

6.We will learn more about the technology that is needed to produce the films but we will be needing all the standard camera equipment along with the editing software for the film and sound.

7. We will hopefully have learnt a lot more technical shot types and be able to use advanced film techniques that will show improvement on our film opening.

Film Narrative

So we've done the research for the film titles, now a film idea might help us in creating our film. 

As a production team after deciding to do a thriller film, we needed a story line. It was quite difficult to decide as all the plots we came up with were either too cliche or not interesting and easy to follow. Some of the ideas include couples kidnapping their partners or murders but we felt 1) the murder was too violent 2) the story line wasn't that interesting as the one we eventually came up with.This is the plot of...The Black Widow.

A young couple on the brink of a break up, the boyfriend then pushes his girlfriend to the edge of madness. She does not however only take it out on him, but everyone that has done her wrong in her life; Innocence is ruined, thoughts are betrayed, as her world crumbles apart.

The female will be an innocent good girl who isn't your usual killer suspect however her boyfriend will be made to look like the kill from the start.

Pros of film 

• Will be set in the present day and so there won't be any difficulty in costume and setting.
• Only need two actors/actresses 
• Simple yet effective camera work 

Cons of film

• The identity of the true killer will need to be concealed

Research Of Film Title Design

History of Film Titles

Before all of the fancy styled titles that appear at the beginning of motion pictures nowadays, film titles used to be just a motionless piece of artwork originally called Title Art. Here is a good example of a simplistic film title from The wizard Of Oz. 




At the beginning of the 1930's, title art began to develop from just a company logo, main characters with the actors names and consisted of similar art work to all other films. early 30's saw higher quality designs and main title designers were hired and so main titles designing became more of an art than just something that is put at the beginning of a motion picture to introduce the film.

What is Typography?

This is the art and technique of arranging type in a style that the film is based upon. For example, if you were to create a western, the text would be in a traditional or similar text style for a western. Same for a Thriller film. The title text will be in the style of the film, dark and mysterious.



Here is an example of typography in the style
of a gang based thriller.

Opening Thriller Title Design Today

Now you find that title sequences are like miniature films themselves with their artistic take on the typography and the original ideas created. Here is an example of a thriller opening titles. These titles are for the film The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo:



Evaluation

There is much use of original typography. The text is in the style of all the patterns and curves on the tattoo in the film which is a significant part of the films story line.
Also the animation and the sequence of events occurring in the background follow the story line of the film and is cleverly created to fit the film and give the audience viewing the film a subtle insight into the films story line.
The music used is quite intense which again fits with the title of the film and the sequence going on in the background which adds to the tension and anticipation the film titles are creating for the audience.
This title opening is clever and does the film much justice though the way it hooks in the audience it is aimed through the choice of sequence, typography and the over all atmosphere it sets.


And here's another good film title that shows intricate work on the design of the title to suit the film style: 


So this film title design really uses the theme of the film to produce this opening. The typography of the film is designed and used to show the technology side of this film and how digital some of the scenes are. Also the style matches that slim style in which a spider web is so like the previous one it matches the context of the film. Also the colour of the text this white almost silver style reflects this idea of a spiders web which again is related to the film theme.
The background of the film fits in well with the film theme as its all about spider man hence the spiders in the background. But the way these titles have been created so that it looks like the titles and the names are tangled in the web they are spinning is a good way to hook in the audience. 
The music used is quite modern but still sticking with this superhero theme and gives the audience the image of spider man swinging through the city. The idea that the swooping and swishing is spider man adds to the context of the film as well as setting the atmosphere for the audience. 


If you wish to see more examples of good opening sequences, here is a good website that was useful to look at when analysing the conventions of a typical thriller film's opening title design.

http://www.artofthetitle.com/titles/

Production Name



After much discussion Great Wyrley High School Presents....

Reflection Studios

(Robbie, Lucy and Charlotte)

This will be the production team and the name for creating the opening sequence of a THRILLER!

Why Reflection Studios?

We didn't want to go with the traditional 'lets take the letters from each persons name and make a word' as 1) its cliché and 2) if we did it with our names RLC wouldn't make sense!
We wanted something that we could play with and make a good ident with. We were playing round with different words to see way they sounded like. Eventually we got to Reflective Studios. But it didn't have a ring to it so then automatically Reflection Studios. We also worked out that it so happened to have all of our initials in it and so as you will see in the plans in a later post that we plan to incorporate that into our film.
The name Reflection represents us as as a production team we bounce ideas off each other. When one person says something another has an advancement on that idea. This process is a little like the idea of reflection where by say a light reflects off a mirror. Our ideas are the light bouncing ideas off each other hence the name Reflection. Our design reflects our name and values too through the river and the reflecting of the name. 

Here is a design idea as to what our studio Ident is going to look like.

So look out for Reflection Studios final thriller opening!

UK Film Distribution

All Films need a distributor to allow their film to be released. The distributor determines how a film is distributed, the format is is released in (blue-ray, cinema, DVD, online streaming). This often depends on how successful they feel the film is going to be, whether it will be big enough to hit the big screen or better of being put on a DVD in January.

Here is a like to a video that shows the process of publishing a film to ensure that it is globally accessible. It also highlights the key processes of a film distribution and how it generally works in the world of film.

Here are Two films from the Thriller Genre. The previous post showed the evaluation of The Black Swan opening and what made it a thriller. The second film Inception also follows the thriller qualities but in a different style. As you can see both of these films have been distributed by well known distributors 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. 

This is part of the reason why they are such big mainstream films because of their distributors as well as the content quality and faith these distributors have in these films.

Evaluation of Thriller Opening Sequences

Here is a video of my evaluation of some famous thriller films. I chose to take a look at:

• The Black Swan
• Rear Window

Rear Window Analysis-

So here is the first of the evaluations. There is the opening sequence as well as an audio of my commentary about the opening.

The Black Swan Analysis- 

And here is the evaluation of the opening to the Black Swan which differs a lot to the opening of Rear Window.




So now we have an idea of how the film genre we have chosen usually opens and the sort of thing included in it, we need to start thinking of our production team and the story line of the opening to our film.

22 Stories

We may now have our film genre but we still have to decide on what the story is going to be about. It is said there are 22 different types of story you could have. No matter what wonderfully innovative idea you come up with it will fall under one of these 22 stories. So if its about a cat that finds himself trapped in a dungeon and has to be rescued by a seagull but there's no way in, even though its strange it will still come under one of these story types.

Next up is some more research on the film title openings to see what the conventions are of different film genre titles.

Choosing a Film Genre

So before even making a start on our film openings, it would be helpful for us to actually decide what genre of film its going to be. After doing some individual research on film genres and our idea of the PROS and CONS of each genre, we collaborated and this is the presentation created by us all..

AS Genre Construction Pros & Cons

SO as you can see we came to the idea that the best film opening to create will the least cons and the most effective and makes way for A LOT of creativity is a THRILLER! 

Choosing Genre of Film for Courswork

As individuals, we each went home and examined at least 10 films, focusing on the pros and cons of the suitability for our coursework.

Here's my Genre choice sheet and what I found out when researching the different film genres:

As a class we then created a flip presentation, dividing up the genres and the pros and cons we found about each genre (this will hopefully be posted at a later date) 

As a class we came to the conclusion that the film genre best suited for our coursework would be...

THRILLER!

We discussed the pros of creating a thriller film which are:

• Low cost film
• doesn't fully rely on the quality of acting
• Can film it virtually anywhere
• Costumes and props aren't difficult to film 
• Not too much violence or inappropriate language/behavior.

There wasn't really any cons to creating other than that maybe there isn't enough time to convey the type of film it is within the two minute opening we have to create. By other than that, we decided that this was the genre that would be the best to do for our two minute movie opening.

Advanced Camera Technique 2- Crane Shot

How is a Crane Shot Produced?

The crane shot allows you to capture shots high, how and move left and right. A crane shot is mostly used for establishing shots but can be used for other shot types too. The equipment used for a crane shot is:

• A crane 

• A Monitor

• Someone to operate the crane

Our Example of a Crane Shot

Here is a short clip of our first go at a crane shot, its a lot more difficult that people think as you have to have steady hands to keep the action smooth and make sure that whatever you are capturing in this shot stays in focus.

As you can see the camera is a little shaky but for a fist go at using the crane it was a good attempt. The camera is always keeping the person walking in shot and it doesn't move too quick so that the viewer feels sick as it is too fast and it isn't going so slow that the person goes out of shot. Our example shows clearly the effect this shot has when going from a low point to a high point which puts the size and mass into perspective. 

Here is an example of a crane shot being used in the film Narnia.

The crane shot at 0:26 is a smooth shot going from low to high. This is a successful crane shot as it achieves its purpose of showing the size and mass of the army in this scene. By going from low to high, it puts into perspective the size of this army and also there as a sort of establishing shot to show the audience the setting which sets the scene for the person viewing this clip.

There are a number of crane shots in this clip including the one at 1:05 which again does the same thing, putting into perspective the size of the army as well as the battlefield.

Advanced Camera Technique 1- Manual Focus

What is Manual Focusing?

Manual focusing is where you adjust the camera so that a specific item or person is clear or you can do the opposite and make them blurred and not so clear to see. When filming it is useful to use manual focus if you wish to control the clearness of something without relying on the camera to focus on whatever is wants. This is done on most cameras by rotating the lens wheel on the front of the camera.

What are the benefits of Manual Focus?

Manual focus allows the person using the camera to be in control of what is in focus and what is out of focus. In some films, manual focus is needed to portray and capture certain shots to get across important people or objects that are key to your story line. 

Below are two different types of focus terms that will be useful if you wish to focus or blur out certain parts during shots in a filming:

Soft Focus

Where the image is in focus but the edges of the object are slightly blurred, as though they are blurring into the out of focus

background.

Sharp Focus

The image outline is in full focus

and is sharply detailed. It means that the image in the foreground of this image stands out against the background more than if it is soft focused. This is all down to the pull focus.

What is Depth of Field?

This is the distance between the nearest object in focus to the camera and the furthest object in focus. 

The two types of focus we have been looking at are:

• Shallow Depth of Field    
• Large Depth of Field

Focus Pull

Focus pull is where the camera is taken from one depth to another in just one shot. If the camera focus has a shallow depth of field where the background is not in focus but the foreground is during the shot the camera focus switches so the foreground is out of focus but the background is in focus. A common example of a focus pull is in a movie where someone is being followed and you wish to show the victim or person being followed in focus to start with, then focus pull so that the stalker is in focus instead. 

Here is an example we created when testing out how focus pull works.

Now here is a clip from the latest James Bond film Skyfall. This clip shows focus pull being used when Daniel Craig (James Bond) holds up the gun. The focus pull switches between the actor being in focus then the gun. This happens at 0.49 seconds so watch out for it.