Our opening sequence

Evaluation Questions - Alex

Health and safety

During filming we all took health and safety very strongly before we started anything. Some of these included making sure there was no tripping hazards.
Some of the things that we did are as follows:

• Tripods - Every time we as a group went out to film in the public or in the school domain, we always, made sure that the tripod wasn't dangerous to anyone. By this I mean that we all made sure that the tripod wasn't able to be tripped over or hit anybody when being moved. 
•   When we were deciding where to film our scenes, we all decided to only go where we though it would be safe to film. This was vital because we didn't want to have any injuries caused on set or in filming. When we chose the locations based on safety, we made sure when we got their we stuck to protocol and made sure people could easily get round us if they needed to and that they would also not be put at harm by our filming equipment. This also included us.
• Slipping - When on set sometimes it was slippery. To stop this as a hazard and risk to our safety, we all made sure that everybody working on set would be wearing sensible footwear/shoes. This was taken in mind when we came to thinking about the mise-en-scene department of pre-production.

Work in progress 2 - Alex

As of now we have created our opening sequence and put it on this blog and YouTube at KLAJ Productions. This means that it is open to both the moderators and the public. This will allow us to get feedback from the public and others that watch it which will furthermore allow us to improve where we are able to.

When we are able to improve the opening sequence, we will look vastly and vigorously through the comment if there is any to see what the public have said they think we should improve. This will allow us to achieve a better grade at the end of the course but it will also extend our explanation and also understanding of the film industry.

Audience Feedback

Work in progress -Alex

In terms of our overall completion of this AS course we have at this stage completed the rough cut for our opening sequence of our film 'Information Error'. To go with this we have also been giving audience feedback and also self feedback on this rough cut of which is on this blog itself.
We have recently finished our full opening sequence included with titles and music to go with the feedback we were given.

Our next step this year is to get feedback and our OS marked and then we will all focus on the rest of the year including mocks and further assignments.

Rough Cut audience feedback

In all of these sheets the audience had 3 questions each to ask us about the opening sequence. Some of these included questions like:

Why does the hitman threaten someone in the underpass and who is this person ?

The simple answers to these asked questions are that the person who is being threatened by the hitman is a person that was involved with the hitman in the past.

As to why the hitman is threatening him. This is because as the hitman walks past him, the stranger goes on to threaten the hitman. We chose for this to happen because the hitman's mind is a very unstable one, he could snap at any moment.  

If we made this as a full film we would have to make sure that to ensure these questions not being asked again, we would give the stranger a bigger role and explain his character a bit more.

rough cut OS

Storyboard

Planning for storyboard

Kareem and Alex planning he storyboard. Taken by Luke.

audience interviews

What would you expect to happen in the film? 

Hacker should play with the hitman's mind as he tries to track him down.

What type of scenes and shots would you expect in the opening sequence?

Hacker should stay completely anonymous. There should be subtle ways to hide the hackers face. Also lots of close ups.

What costumes would you expect?

Hacker should wear fairly normal clothes and the hitman should have a trench coat and maybe sunglasses.

From these interviews we have learnt many things. One of these were what the audience members thought the acting style should be for both characters. We will now make sure that all characters will be acting in the way that the audience want them to. 

The other thing we got the audience's feedback on was the props they thought we needed. These included a gun and computer, with this we will make that we used both of these props in the OS.

Iconic sound effect that we will also be using in our OS

Video of planning for storyboard

Our props and their analysis

The different narratives theories

In film there are three different types of narrative theories, these are the Equilibrium theory, the Binary opposites theory and the Enigma code theory.
The three different theories were though of by three different men and these were Todorov (Equilibrium), Levi Strauss (Binary opposites) and Barthes (Enigma Code).

These three theories are very different to each other and this is because if we start with the Equilibrium theory, this is the idea of a universe where everything starts good, then goes bad and then back to good again.

Whereas the Binary opposites theory states that for every good thing there must be a bad thing. For example for every good guy there must always be a villain to counter act the film.

And finally, the Enigma Code. This theory might just be the most popular theory to be used in a film, this is because it states that in the film it is being used in, it must start off as the audience not understanding but finding out as the film goes on and fully understanding at the ending of the film.

Our opening sequence is going to be based around the Enigma code because we feel it would get us the best grade and work well with our ideas for the OS.

Font of titles analysis

When a thriller film is made they must all have different types of font in their film and the font in the film must more importantly match what the film is suggesting.
Here are some examples of fonts in different films.

 In Shutter Island, the opening credits are designed in a bold flashing font to try and generate a type of fear factor to the audience. The font is also in a bloody red colour, meaning the font may be relating to a feature in the film.

However in the opening titles of Se7en, the titles are designed to look very flashy and sketchy. This is because the font and writing in the opening sequence is never still which is also a lot of the time the same case in Shutter Island, this suggests that both films are going to have a twisted storyline and plot.

History of our film Genre

The Crime thriller film Genre is one of the most successful in the film industry. One of the most common reasons for this is that Thrillers generally keep the audience on the edge of their seats as plot builds towards a climax. Here are some other reasons why people watch thrillers.

1.) Tension which causes your heart to quicken and you become more alert.
2.) Being able to experience danger without actually being in danger. 3.) The unknown aspect of most thrillers is quite exciting. 4.) Often you feel a bond with the characters more. Than say you would a comedy movie.5.) Action, suspense, anxiety, drama all of these things are hard to turn away from.6.) Often (not always) they have complex story lines and can be challenging to follow, so as a viewer you are always guessing what is going to happen next.7.) Usually have clever endings that maybe you didn't see coming. If I don't figure out the ending of a movie before I am halfway thru especially right up to the end that's great and often times. Thrillers will have such endings. 8.) Often thrillers are about subject matters the average person would never experience so that is or can be exciting to watch.

Some examples of other Crime thrillers are, No Country for Old Men, The Usual Subjects and The Long Good Friday. 

Visit to Harry Potter World

 In This First photo from Harry Potter world we see Voldemort's snake about to pounce on the girl. This was used in the film alongside CGI to show the scene where this event happens. In the film series of Harry Potter, all props were built not created electronically, this added an extra bit of realism to the films as well as easier filming. Also in this photo you can see the table with the dolls sitting around it, the wigs on them are the ones that the actors would have used. This shows what the positioning would have been around the table.    

 This Photo shows Hogwarts Castle, this miniature castle was built after being modelled along with a lo of other props from the film from scratch. This piece in particular shows how much detail in terms of mise-en-scene the arts and editing departments of the film went to when creating the film. This is because they built a whole building out of stone instead of using CGI.

This final picture is of part of a working clock that was created for the film, this is yet another example of the non use of CGI for objects in the film. This was one of the biggest props in the studios and was designed in only a way that suited the film taking in mind the colours of the film and also the way it looks and sounds.

As well as these there are also some other photos that I took that show props for the film. These also clearly show the level of mise-en-scene.

Bullet Boy representation

In these first two shots from Spectre, the characters are planted just to the left of the middle of the shot. This has been done to allow some free movement to the cameramen. The shots are also coated with music and laud noises from the public, by this I mean that the shots are based in the day of the dead festival in Mexico so the characters are clearly hustling their way through busy talkative crowds. This would also back up why they are all wearing skull masks and clothing relative to death.

In this final shot from the film Spectre, the character James bond climbs towards a roof of a building, with this comes a stoppage in sound in the way that the crowds noises get more and more silent as he concentrates on his target and moves in. Now in this shot Bond is placed at the bottom of the shot to show that he is lying down to be able to take out the target (villain). What is also noticeable is that the air is a bit smokey this has been done to add a musky, dangerous feeling to the scene for the audience watching.

Prelim task evaluation