Four Walls

This is a draft for the logo of my movie intro. I decided on a title for the film and a basic idea of the logo, pretty basic, the logo inside a box to suggest being boxed in and seeing as the title is a different way of describing a room it kind of makes metaphorical sense. Even though this a rough draft only made in 5 minutes on Photoshop I really like how it turned out, I'll leave my brain to come up with something awesome in the subconscious for a day or two, but I'll have another go at making something good.


The main thing I wanted to do with the film is for the majority of it to be set in an interrogation room, the story unfolding in spoken form from the characters, no flashbacks just everything described by the characters. The story's main protagonist is a detective called Jonathan Spencer, a detective in his late 30s currently working on a case about a serial killer who they have little idea about. Spencer is asked to interrogate another serial killer, Jason Ward, who has just been arrested after being caught in the act of killing his latest victim. Even though Ward has killed around 5 victims and suspected of at least 6 more, he is only in his early twenties. There is very little else known about Ward by the police and has been brought in to be interrogated to help find out more about him. Spencer has been asked by one of his colleagues to interrogate Ward about his murders.


Spencer finds out through interviewing Ward that Ward thinks he has killed at least 15 people. Spencer also finds out that Ward marks each victim by cutting the right index finger ligament on the right hand just in the fold of the wrist, Ward says that when the bodies are found, they will easy to identify as who killed them.


I haven't worked out the rest of the film, but I'll get there eventually.

Movie Titling

We've been having training from an After Effects specialist for a few lessons now, and we're gradually getting towards a final movie ident that we're going to use in our final coursework. I've gone through a few different ideas and I've come up with a look of the font;

I think that the title is pretty cool, that's the only thing I can really say about it, as most indy film company names don't really have any kind of joke or relation to anything, they're just there. The only thing that I can say about how [Curiousity] relates to the style that it's in is that there is no reason why it is a bit distorted by the fibre filter and why the square brackets are around, which to be honest I don't know why they are there.


This was one of my first ideas that I had, but it seemed a bit weird and too childish, so I came up with another idea and let it blend into something that I thought would be a good name;

Preliminary Task

It wasn't exactly hard for us to come up with an idea for someone walking into a room, saying a few lines and then exiting. The four of us, Jake, Evie, Bill and Me all got into a group. My first idea was gangsters, which eventually turned into British gangsters who deal sanwiches at low prices of 10p and who are in a loving relationship. I'm not sure if we were going for comedy or not, but either way it turned out like that. Our project turned out as being comedy from the outset. It's set in a music department cupboard because that is all that we could find. When we got in their we could only fit two people in along with the places for the different aspects of the camera angle. Unfortunately we had to leave someone outside, which was Evie, although it was a short task so it was only for about 10 or so minutes.


Evie didn't seem too concerned about the sounds coming from inside the cupboard. And how we'd got to the final storyline inside the cupboard. We made most of the detail of the gangsters inside the cupboard, our original idea was just to have some gangsters who deal sandwiches. It was eventually extended to cover a loving relationship, cramped conditions, awkward snatching of drugs and money and a small conversation about what was in the sandwich.


Instead of telling about how weird it is, you might aswell watch it;

P.S. It's in black and white cos we're cool.

Timing Title Sequences

Title sequences can be used in different ways, some films use them to create an emotion towards a character or what the film will be, others to introduce the characters and other films just to tell the audience who has made this film.

I've chosen two title sequences and have time lined them.

Moon - 

0:00-1:05 - Story introduction

1:05-1:18 - Production companies

1:25-1:30 - Main character actor

1:35-1:42 - Movie title

1:54         - Story location

1:57-2:24 - Rest of cast

3:00-5:25 - Casting, Make-up, costume, Conceptual design, Production design, VFX, Post  Production, Cinematography, Music, Editing, Line Producer, Executive Producers, Co-producers, Story, Writing, Producers, Director.

Reservoir Dogs - http://www.artofthetitle.com/2008/04/17/reservoir-dogs/

0:22         - A film by
0:37-1:14 - Main character cast
1:20-1:27 - Movie title
1:33-1:39 - Rest of cast
1:41-2:22 - Casting, Music, Costume, Editing, Production Designer, Cinematography, Co-Producer, Executive Producers, Producing, 

Camera Angles, Movement & Shots

Camera Angles
Different camera angles can evoke different views in the audience. There are two different extremes of angles; high and low.

High Angle- The camera high up looking down on something which creates a vulnerable or weak sense towards the subject. At increasingly high angles the subject loses it's sense of height which makes it look even smaller.

Low Angle- The camera looking high up at something, making the subject seem a lot bigger than it really is, it can also make the subject look as if it is the same height as a background object.

Camera Movements
Pan - Pivot at a horizontal angle. Normally used to set the scene or reveal something.
Tilt - Panning, but at a vertical angle.
Track - Camera following a subject, normally on a dolly tracking system.

Camera Shots

 Extreme Wide Shot - Establishing shot.

Very Wide Shot - Object is still not fully visible, but takes the focus of the frame.

Wide Shot - Subject takes up full focus of the frame.

Mid Shot - Bottom of the frame is just above the waist, leaving a small gap above the head to the top of the frame.

Close Up - Normally focusing on the face, allowing a small gap below the chin, and just cutting off the top of the head.

Extreme Close Up - Focus on one object or part of the face.

Thriller

No, not Michael Jackson. The thriller genre is something that can be any genre of movie along with thriller technique throughout it. The most common is action thriller, with the likes of No Country For Old Men, The Hurt Locker and Pitch Black. These films are all thrillers, but all classed as different hybrid genres all together.

No Country For Old Men is a crime/thriller, The Hurt Locker is mainly a war/drama/thriller and Pitch Black is a sci-fi/thriller. All these films display techniques of thriller, but the settings of all of them create a hybrid genre.

No Country For Old Men is a story about discovery, a man the remnants of a drug dealer shoot out in the southern states of america, he finds that one goon has managed to escape with a briefcase of money, but died shortly after he has escaped. The man takes the briefcase and hides it under his house, then starts being chased by a hitman, who is willing to kill anyone who needs to be killed to get to the money.

The film has a plot that drives a lot of the suspense, with there being little to know about the story other than what is given in the first twenty minutes. The hitman, played by Javier Badrem, holds most of the tension in the story, with there not being much known about him, this holds a lot of curiosity in the audience and therefore not knowing what he is capable of. The introduction of his character shows him killing an innocent man for his car, this will make the audience feel very frightened of him. Where as the man who has the briefcase, played by Josh Brolin, has more information given about him, making him have a greater emotional connection with the audience, the difference in the feelings of the audience to the two main characters creates the suspense. No Country For Old Men really sets a standard for thrillers, as there is very little dialogue, lots of silence and a lot of tense moments that kept my heart racing.

The Hurt Locker still shows a lot of scenes with suspense, the main reason why it is such a successful thriller is that it is set as a film that happens. About bomb technicians in Iraq, it is a very relative film, that creates its tension through scenes that the audience can believe could or maybe have happened.

There isn't that great of a connection between the audience and the characters but, because they are soldiers, the audience immediately feels respect towards them, as they have been fighting to protect their country and other countries. Later on in the film, there becomes a very big emotional connection to the characters, with the introduction of the main character's family and a very meaningful scene between the main character, James, and his fellow troop, Sanborn. This final conversation between them summons all the emotion that the introduction of the film is missing. There is a gradual increasing feeling towards the characters as they go through their daily lives in Iraq, with them losing people and encountering different obstacles that they have to overcome together, but sometimes not at all, with there being a lot of friction between James and Sanborn.

Pitch Black is a sci-fi thriller that gets it's thrills from an alien being that lives on a planet, where a ship has just crash landed. From the outset, the crew come across things that evoke curiousity in the audience, from when they first view the planet surface, it has two suns. Creating a constant light on the surface.

The crew find a human outpost a few miles away from their wrecked ship, but the outpost is wrecked and looks like it hasn't been used for a number of decades. They venture into one of the homes, which is completely deserted, but what is immediately focused on is a planetarium that shows that both suns will be setting for a month within the next day. They quickly find that some there is are aliens living in tunnels underneath the planet, and when both suns go down, the aliens will come out of the tunnels and devour any living thing on the surface. What is added to the start the tension is that there were convicts on board the ship. All of them died, but one, who has escaped onto the planet and starts to spy on the other survivors. The tension of Pitch Black is held in the curiousity and fear around the convict, and more so about the alien race as the film goes on.

The films show different ways of creating tension, but it mostly done by convening curiosity about something on screen, this can be done visually; by not showing the audience something, or in not stating what something is capable of, or by putting the characters in a situation that could be real, but still has many other possible outcomes.

The Fargo DVD Cover

The cover of a DVD seemed to be something normal to me, but then Media Studies happened. We recently looked at the cover of The Coen Brothers' film; Fargo.

So yeah, we looked at in depth, and in my view; it's better to judge a DVD by it's cover than a book. The way everything is laid out for a start can tell you roughly what genre it is; the way that the focus of the shot is on is on the two characters on the right of the shot, and appear quite small compared to the rest of the surroundings shows that it may be mystery/crime related. The colour of the title, near to blood red, shows that death or murder might be involved, or the word Fargo is something important to the story.

The font on the cover shows that it is a thriller. Just to make sure the reader of the cover knows what genre it is. The two characters in shot will most likely be important characters to the story, if the reader doesn't recognise that the woman is Frances McDormand. The tag line beside the characters states; 

A lot can happen in the middle of nowhere

This shows that it is likely to be set somewhere where not much happens, which is a classic feature of a horror or thriller film. Both of the characters are police officers, which might mean that it will be a big film in the setting, in that it will be the main focus of the story or have something building up to it.

So far we've watched half of Fargo, and so far I have quite enjoyed it. It hasn't really been classifiable under one genre yet, but it has mainly been a drama with a bit of comedy thrown in. It is definitely building up to some major plot change, and so far we haven't seen anything to do with the cover, but it is possible that it will lead up to something to the jist of that.

Really looking forward to finding out what happens in the end.

First Post!

Hey, hows it going? Good. I'm good thank you. Well basically this my blog for my Media Studies AS course, which I'm using as a way to display things I've done, different things I've tried, evaluations and things we've done in classes. Seeing as this my first post I better include something useful, so I'm gonna talk about the stuff that I've learnt about in the first couple weeks of Media Studies;

- What Mise en Scene is, and how it is used in film. Mise en Scene is, in a nut shell, what is displayed on screen. It can cover anything from; the lighting to make up. This can be used to display what the character is feeling and what status the character has in the story, say if the lighting was quite dark and didn't show much of the subject, the audience would know that they were meant to be interested in this character. It also covers the most basic of things, like the costume, if the character was wearing a police uniform, it would most likely mean that he was a police officer.

- How different shots can be used to get different advantages out of the scenery and landscape, and other shots can be used to get a better emotional effect on the audience by the subject. An extreme close up shot can be used to get a greater connection from the character to the audience. A long shot can be used to set the scene and let the audience know where the scene is taking place.

- Who Lester Burnham is. He is a character in American Beauty, played by Kevin Spacey. We studied how the opening two minutes can be used to introduce what the story will be about, for Lester Burnham, throughout the first four minutes of American Beauty, he is visually trapped to the audience. The first time the audience see him he is in darkness lying on his bed, the next shot he is having some 'alone time' in his shower, but he is still boxed in. This shows that he is 'trapped' in his own life.

- How to deconstruct a shot. We were set the task of taking eight frames that would tell the introduction of a story. We then wrote down what each frame was showing and what it was implying.

- How dividing the shot into thirds helps to draw attention to certain areas or how it can be used to make the shot look tidier. We watched a short video about how this technique is used in many films, dividing the shot vertically and horizontally into thirds. This creates a box in the centre of the frame, it is commonly used to put the subject's eye or the centre of their face on one of the top two corners of the box.