I now have a very clear understanding of where we as a group shall be filming. Firstly Our beginning shall be at Lambeth Towers in Kennington on Kennington road. We chose this location as it is the residence of one of my group partners. His bedroom shall be where we start our film. When filming here we shall have to acknowledge the time of day, as we want natural sunlight to stream through the window to fulfil the Mise-en-scene. This is a picture of Lambeth Towers:
Furthermore Are next location will be Chelsea Academy school. This location is a more convenient one as we can film during school hours. Furthermore our school features Mise-en-scene that we desire. We want lifts and a board room, both are within our school. It is a fairly modern building so it gives the sense of a contemporary feel to our movie which is what we are looking for. Here is a picture:
Finally we are doing our finishing sequence at Lots Road Power Station. We have decided on this location as it a dereclict power station with a sinister feel about it.
Having composed a story board which shows the sequence of events that will feature in our opening sequence, we are now going to show it in an animated way which will enhance the audiences understanding of the purpose as to why we do it. Moreover it is a useful and detailed form of showing the sequence of events with sound and title sequences. This shows (without real footage) the rough duration and completed idea of our sequence.
Here are some examples of animatics that have already been used:
And this is an example of the actual video:
Here is our completed preliminary task. You can tell it incorporates all the specified technical aspects: Mise en scene, 180 degree rule, Match on action. We also included some dialogue. This 40 second piece took us 90 minutes to make. This showed us that in the production of the real thing time management will be a large factor to consider!
From this task me and I'm sure my team mates found that the amount of time we put into filming and what we gat back (in terms of length of film) is relatively out of proportion. We shall have to manage our time sensibly and make sure we anticipate the time we spend on producing this opening sequence.
Before coin this task I researched the technical aspects we had to include in great detail. Match on action I already knew, but in order to have a clear understanding of how personally to use it I had to do some research. I found that films such as Alain Resnais's surreal Muriel ou Le temps d'un retour, played with this technique. Moreover, 180 degree rule I also researched and found that it is a method that states that two characters (or other elements) in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. In addition it was been a common feature in films such as the Shining 'Bathroom scene' and English presenters Ant and DEc always use this when presenting with 'Ant' on the right and 'Dec' on the left. Lastly Shot reverse Shot i found to be the funnest one to film and edit. The definitions states:Shot reverse shot (or shot/countershot) is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character (often off-screen), and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. Since the characters are shown facing in opposite directions, the viewer assumes that they are looking at each other.
Furthermore I thought garage band was a useful bit of software to figure out, so i found this tutorial very helpful. It shall be a good aid as the non-diagetic features in our film will need music made from this software.
From completing these story boards I have found out the approximate duration of our film, with everything we wish to include in it. This has been useful for our time management. Also I now have a far clearer idea of the props we will need to use. Interestingly the props that we shall have to include will be ones that meet the conventions of a thriller genre. Such as; guns,fake blood, knifes...Moreover as a result of doing this story board I have found that we will want to change some of our scenes and some of our locations as they may take too long filming and eat into our 2.00 minute limit.
Within our Opening sequence we are going to have to encorporate a variety of techniqual aspects. Firstly Sound. We shall involve as little dialogue as possible as it is difficult with equiptment that does not cost alot to recieve it well. We have within our Media Studies department a special sound reciever which can aid the camera in picking up diagetic sound. Within the film industry top production companys such as universal studios or 20th century fox will invest millions into sound equiptment. Obviously we do not have these kind of resources, but it is possible to produce a quality film by other means, and by using what we have to its best ability.
Moreover another consideration will be the filming equiptment this has been one of the most ground breaking proliferations in hardware over last 50 years. We have HD cameras which can give great detail. It has 20 mega pixels. There quality can be seen in the prelimeration task have completed.
In addition the editing and title sequence of our film will need careful consideration.
The title sequence will just show are names and maybe the locations. We shall have to think carefully about the colour our titles are as we dont want them to significantly stand out against the feature.
Me and the other people in my group have produced a shot 3 second clip.
Within this clip we have encorporated:
-Match on action
-180 degree rule
-Shot reverse shot.
This was done to show that as a group we have a clear understanding of what these techniqual aspects are.
During this time we realised that making and editing films is a difficult task and we shall have to channel alot of time into the wotk of our final peice.
