Test Shoot

Today we filmed a test shoot based of our storyboard draft, this is basically to show the positions and angles in which we are planning on filming our title sequence in.

Cast List #1

We looked at the characteristics of people, whom we need for our opening title sequence, and here are the people, who are suitable for it: (DRAFT)

MOTHER: Clare (psychology teacher)

FATHER:  Simon (Drama Teacher)

DAUGHTER: Molly (AS student)

SON: Max Boast (AS student)

GUEST(boy): Harry Lawty ( A2 student)

GUEST(girl): Katie Huntley (AS student) 

Storyboards Draft #1

Due Date Titles

Kyle Cooper also made the titles for Due Date, I thought this was a great example of how sometimes the most basic titles can look great as well. He always has the titles come up on a sided and never in the center. This depends on what the camera shot is focused on. Here is an example:

Below is the full scene:

Narrative Action List

In this blog post, I will briefly describe what will happen in our opening title sequence:

    -The whole family of 4  and two guests are sitting around the table, having a dinner after their first day at school.

    -The audience will see then the close up of the father cutting the tomato, and this shot will be pretty long in order to emphasize that there is something odd

    -The audience will,also, see a close up of the father's lips chewing and then swallowing the tomato

    -We also will be able to see the reaction of the guests in the next shot (they look a bit worried and confused, contemplating if coming to a house of basically strangers was a good idea)

    -In order to show that the whole family are murderous  psychopaths, we included the mid-shot of the mother where she is pouring the wine, followed by the close up of her  drinking the wine. This creates an association with the blood.

    -The mother realises that the food is ready (we hear the “ding” sound in the kitchen), she stands and walks over to the kitchen to get it.

    -We see her taking the meat out of the oven (point of view shot from the oven)

    -She accidentally drops the piece of meat while pulling the plate out of the oven, however from her face and her movements, we can see that she doesn’t care and simply slides the meat back onto the plate with a casual look.

    -Once she is done making everything look perfect, she served the guests with a smile, like nothing happened.

    -The next shot will be the one of the guest saying: “Mmm, this tastes great!”

    -The sequence will finish with the close up of mother’s creepy(?) eyes/mouth and she says “I know!”

Iron Man 3 Title Sequence

Here is another title sequence by Kyle Cooper that I like a lot. The first half of the title sequence contain drawings of blueprints for the iron man suits which looks great and is completely relevant to the film as its based on the iron man suits. Same goes for the text font with it, looks like a chalk is being used to sketch out the suits. The second half of the title sequence contains what seems like mechanics with stats on them, possibly part of the plans for the iron man suit.

Here is the Iron Man 3 Title Sequence:

SE7EN Title Sequence

As mentioned on my last post SE7EN is one of Kyle Cooper's great title sequences. When watching this title sequence you can quickly tell that this movie is gonna be a horror/thriller, this is thanks to the music, the way in which the text seems to be glitching and flying across the screen and of course the glimpses of scary footage. Overall it is very well put together and there is nothing I'd personally change about it.

Below is the title sequence for SE7EN:

Completed Prelim

Here is my groups finished prelim task:

Kyle Cooper

Kyle Cooper is a motion picture designer from America, he has made many amazing title sequences. Such as the ones in Se7en, Braveheart, Iron Man, Iron Man 3 and many more. His work tends to be fast paced and have lots of effects.

Here is a demo reel of his work: 

He is also known for being the founder of two internationally known film companies, imaginary forces and prologue films. His work on Se7en is my favorite, its said to be one of the best title sequences made ever.  His great work has earned him five Emmy award nominations and one win for his work on the 81st annual academy awards.

Insane Family Ideas #2

We have a couple of ideas in mind to give of hints that the family being insane or simply strange.

one of them being that before serving the main course (beef/chicken/turkey) the mother drops it in the kitchen by mistake and then simply puts it back on the plate like nothing happened, the floor could be a little dirty as well. Then after one of the guests (aged: 14-17) makes a positive comment on it like ''This beef tastes great!'' and then there could be a close up shot of thew mother pulling of a evil smile.

The beef/chicken/turkey could also be very grand to make help the impression of this family wanting to seem very perfect. Here is an example:

Another one is very simple but could work really great, there will be a bottle of red wine on the table and in the middle of the meal the mother could ask someone to pass her the bottle and then she could poor it into her glass really slowly with a super close up of the wine poring in, then a slow motion shot of her drinking it and a there could be a strong focus on her swallowing it. Its slightly hard to explain in text what I'm trying to explain but a good example of a similar feel is in the title sequence for Dexter. In this title sequence Dexter does ordinary things but because of the way its filmed and edited it makes the audience feel like its very wrong.

Below is the title sequence for Dexter:

Insane Family

The idea my group and I are going for is of an insane family. A father, mother and two kids, in the title sequence we see the kids have to friends over for dinner to what comes across as a happy family but with little hints we will pass the message to the audience that they are trying to hide something.

One of the hints is that the parents will be overly nice and interested into the kids making them come across as fake.

We are planning on making the dinner table and general layout of the room to be very parallel, as seen on American beauty.

Below we see a picture of the establishing shot for the dinner scene in American Beauty.

As stated before the layout is very parallel, there are also candles that give of the impression of this being a important part of the day. Unlike most families which probably just put the food on the table and eat this looks like it time and effort to setup.   

Set Or Location

We have different suggestions where  we are going to shoot  our opening sequence. Each choice has it advantages and disadventages.

SET

Positives

-easy to make the dining room perfect (wallpapers, paintings on the wall, flowers, candles, etc.)        Shooting on set gives us more freedom in terms of want we want to put there.

-Doesn’t take time to get there as the studio is  on campus so we have more time to shoot

Negatives

 -Doesn’t look natural (no windows- no natural source of light)

-Hard to shoot from different angles (limited freedom of angles)

LOCATION

Positives

-Looks more realistic

-Don’t have to spend hours to build two different locations in the studio

 Negatives

-Some shots may be difficult to shoot due to the lack of space

-Have to use what we have, so can’t find exactly what we want

Character lists

 Here is the character list for our film project:

Family    Hair Color     Height             Age (Years)      

Mother:      Blond         Average/Tall         40-50          

Father:       Black          Average/Tall        40-50          

Son:           Black          Average             15-18          

Daughter:  Blond          Average               11-14          

Guests  

Boy:          Any             Average                15-18          

Girl:          Any             Average                11-14    
  

Props

Here is the list of props that we need for our opening sequence. As our thriller opening is focused on building up tension, rather than on action, the props list is quite long:
Food:

meat (steak), Cranberry juice, (to replace wine), empty  red wine bottle, fruits in a bowl, Vegetables(for salad), water for kids +2 guests

ketchup

Clothes: Suit for ‘Father’, dress for ‘Mother’, school uniform(business-style
clothes e.g. white shirt, black trousers, etc.) for ‘Daughter’ , ’Son ’ and two ‘Guests’.

Decorations: Candles, flowers, plates, forks, knives, spoons, wine glasses, glasses for water, basket/bowl for fruits, napkins, gold & tablecloth.

The Last Supper

The last supper is a thriller-cooking show made by a media studies student in Hurtwood House, in my understanding the sequence is about a mad cook that uses humans for meat.

What do you think the rest of the film might be about?

 I think the rest of the film is about this man that makes crazy dishes, maybe he even feeds his friends and they have no idea that its human meat.

What is your view on the casting? Have they chosen convincing actors? (not necessarily in terms of their acting but in terms of their suitability for the role/the right look etc.)

I think the casting is great, they got an adult to take the roll of the mad cook which I find is more likely then a kid, the girl being the victim also seems to work well. It would seem unrealistic if he had a really strong older looking man/woman as hostage.

Are the characters interesting?

The characters definitely seem interesting, a human eating cook isn't very common as far as I know, also the way that he is so enthusiastic about his cookery.

 

If there is dialogue, what do you think of it?

I think the dialogue is good overall, the mad cook sounds insane but I feel like the girl would have tried to call out for help and not just screamed like a kid.

What do you make of the camera work, editing, sound, how convincing is the mise en scene?

 The editing and sound was good, there is a nice establishing shot as the first shot to introduce the kitchen, the killer and a close up pan right after to introduce the vegetables. The camera work is good throughout the video, such as when he stabs the girl you see his face with the blood on it, which was smart so that they wouldn't have to get a fake body to stab.

If I were editing I would have re-recorded the screaming after he stabbed her as it seemed unrealistic. Another great shot was of the meat sizzling near the end and the final shot which was of the cook trying the meat.

Is it a studio or location shoot? How does this effect the final product?

It looks like a location shoot but since its indoors it could simply be a really big studio,  it has a great effect on the final product as it feels more like a cooking show follow along type scenario.  

If there is music, does it fit the piece? What mood does it create?

 There isn't any music, but I think that if there was a happy tone when hes not stabbing the girl it would add a little more to the mad man feel that I get from him. It could jump from happy to super sinister when the girl is in the shot.

What do you think of the film title they have chosen?

I think the font and the spacing on the title is great, it gives this scary feel as it fades in from a black screen.

Is it effective overall? Does it make you want to watch on?

Yup, its definitely effective. I'd like to watch on to see if anyone finds out what he used as ingredients in his food.

What type of film do you think it would be if made for real? Low or high budget? Independent or mainstream?

It could be a high or low budget film, depending on how the script is before and after these scenes. Again it being independent or mainstream is completely up to how the rest of the story is, but I think that it could be mainstream if it makes the madness and comedic side work well. 

Saul Bass

Saul Bass was an American born in New York City in 1920, known for making amazing title sequences for many famous films such as Vertigo, The Man with the Golden Arm, North by Northwest, Walk on the Wild Side and more. Saul's title sequences feel very modern for its time, the way he incorporates the images with the text. On the title sequence on vertigo we see a good example of this, such as when the text comes out of the eye and in general how he slows down the background footage as the text is done moving. His use of rotating shapes also looks great.

He was also very successful creating very well known logos such as the AT&T which was used for over 21 years, its still used today after having been redesigned slightly in 2005. He also made a logo for Frontier Airlines which was used for 8 years back in 1978 which looks incredibly modern for its time like most of his work.     

First Production Meeting

Today we had our first production meeting with my group. Firstly we talked about our favorite ideas in the group and then tried and agree on our favorite 2 ideas in the group. The first one is about the Psycho family which was Anna's idea and the second favorite was Jacky's about a man that found out he doesn't have much time to live and wants to have revenge on all the people he had fights with or disagreements with before. 
 

Thriller Groups

Today the class was divided into groups of four, it was completely chosen at random. I am in a group with Jacky Li,  Danel Azimova‎ and Anna.Martynyuk.

I only really know Jacky from this group so it will be nice to get to know the others. I am looking forward to working with them as they seemed to have interesting ideas.

Thriller Ideas

For media studies the class had to come up with some thriller title sequence ideas, I personally don't watch many thrillers which caused my ideas to not come across as scary as most in the class.

Idea #1:

Plot:

Guy that left school at 15 because he would prefer to skate and go out with his friends, has a part time job as a waiter as he saves up for his first car.

One day working he feels a strong pain in his chest and finds it hard to breath, ends up going to the hospital and finding out that he has a desise and the only way that he would be able to live more then 2 months would be with a new lung which would cost a very high amount that he can't afford (Possibly something like £15k)

He knows that he and his parents can't afford it and he doesn't know anyone that is donating their lungs.

His parents always wanted him to go to boarding school as they thought that it would "get back on track with life" they also told him how "you make the best friends in boarding school"

So he comes up with the insane idea of using the £3k he saved up for boarding school, just to gain enough of someone's confidence to come with him to "friends party" (without anyone knowing) which turns out to be a sketchy doctor that would kill his friend and transfer the lung to him.

Title Sequence (Ideas):

Establishing Shot Of His Room,

POV:Wakes up sweating, checks his phone and sees he only  has 2 weeks left..

Follow shot as he walks to the cafeteria analysing every possible victim

As the cook serves the egg on his place he asks, you ok?

Black Screen

Fade In " 6 Weeks Before..."

Close up of his alarm:

Long shot of alarm: Alarm goes of and his hand hits the top of it

He Sits up and then his mind races forwards to where he was working at could barely breath, then skips to the doctor telling him the bad news

Idea #2:

Plot:

Guy/Girl goes to boarding school to take a levels and his parents pressuered him into getting academic classes (Further Maths, History, Business &  English) when she really wants to take artistic classes (Photography, Media Studies, Drama & Art)

He ends up changing his classes to the artys ones without his parents knowing, ends up having to lie more and more about how he's classes are going,

⋅he got beat in the past trying to explain to his parents that he wants to do something more artistic and wasn't into academic classes

⋅has constant nightmares of his parents visiting his school and finding out and sending him to the army

⋅Parents are both really well known for either scientific discoverys or mathematical

⋅because of his constant loss of sleep he starts failling in his classes

Title sequence (Ideas):

Estabalosinhg shot: of parents fighting and screaming at him at the dinner table

Follow shot: he runs to his room and locks the door

Establishing shot: of him on his bed

Close up: of his face into his pillow

Close up of the door handle: They are hitting it hard after three hard hits it blasts open and he wakes up in a car arriving at his new boarding school

parents are debating if he should take History or economics, he stays silent

Pan shot: of him getting out of the car and walking into the boarding house carelessly

Fade to Black

(The following idea wasn't thought out as much as I found it less interesting then the first two ideas.)

Idea #3:

Something to do with a middle aged man finding out his girlfriend left him many years ago because she was pregnant but didn't want to raise the baby with him.

Title sequence(Ideas):

POV:Man is driving up to the school.

Establishing Shot Of the school parking:he parks the car and stares at a window

Close up: of his face against the window looking up

Camera looks at one particular window from inside the car.

After several seconds of waitting he opens a bag in the back of the car and takes out a knife then hides it in his pocket.

Follow shot: of him walking in and past the receptionist as she asks "hello, where are you going?" (he takes no notice and walks up the stairs) "visiting hours are only  on weekends"

As he gets close to the room he takes the knife out of his pocket and puts it up his sleeve.


Idea #4:

 I haven't developed this idea very much, but it is basically a man that has been kidnapped and is trying to escape from a van. His hands are tied and theres a bag cros the van with a knife in it.
It would be a sequence of a man trying to pull the bag closer and closer to himself without the driver realizing.

Prelim Task

Here is our completed prelim task:

Kyle Cooper - Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Kyle cooper was the executive producer on this project, showing of his amazing graphic design skills through this title sequence. He did a good job setting the genre and mood for the film. 

It only takes a couple of seconds to realize that this is a murder mystery genre film. The entire sequence has cartoons that give of this film noire feel. The entire sequence only uses three colors, black, white and orange. Even the blood is orange, but its still easy to tell apart from the rest. The title of the film already gives of the impression of this film containing romance, action and crime. The kiss kiss obviously indicates the romance side and bang bang most likely wants to come across as gun shots. This giving of the impression of this film being about action and crime. The impression of this film being action is given of by the pace of the title sequence, most of the time the camera is moving quickly displaying things such as a man jumping over a fence and a woman being pushed of a building. Kyle Cooper also choose not to show any faces in the title sequence, this causing more mystery towards who is the killer and who is getting killed. Very smart tactic by him as this causes the audience to want to watch more to figure out more about the story. 

Thrillers What Are They?

Well the Oxford Dictionaries defines it as "A novel, play, or film with an exciting plot, typically involving crime or espionage" and I agree.  A thriller can contain many things, horror, action even a comedy. I believe that they are all like sub genres. Inception is a great example of a thriller with lots of action, we can tell this straight away from the trailer:

One of the more recent thrillers that I've watched that has a similar combination of genres (thriller and action) is Lucy. This film only got a 6.5/10 on IMDB but I found it to be a great film, very exciting and thrilling. There were some slower parts to the film which didn't have that much action but it was still building tension which is what I'd expect from this film, a good balance of tension and action. Here is the trailer for Lucy. 

The Riot Club is a good example of a thriller with less action, but still very thrilling (mostly towards the end). Which can also make a great film, I personally prefer a thriller with more action. 

Actual Coursework Task Defined

Video

Preliminary exercise: Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

Main task: the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.

All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source. Both preliminary and main tasks may be done individually or as a group. Maximum four members to a group.

Preliminary Shoot

To prepare us to make our thriller we had to create a preliminary sequence. In this sequence there is a short conversation between two people, we were given a storyboard and a script.

This is the storyboard that we used, it has some interesting shots. Such as the first shot which is a wide shot, this is also an establishing shot as it establishes that the two charters are in a room. the next shot is a over the shoulder shot showing what the male is seeing. We also had mid and close up shots. We also took extra footage of super close ups and point of view shots just in case in the stage of editing we might prefer them. We used a close up over the woman's phone to show pictures of her and her husband.

In the end we agreed that the story was about two people dating but the female was married to another man, and the guy she is dating is trying to convince her to tell her husband about them. We also used a super close up on the woman's face before her boyfriend leaves to show how sad she is and to build up tension. 

Account Of Prelim Editing

On Tuesday the class went to the editing room, where we sorted and edited a sequence of footage. We were using Adobe Premier Pro, which I am pretty familiar with as I've been using it for the past two years with other adobe programs such as adobe after effects and adobe Photoshop.
On the left of this screen shot we can see our out takes that have been named in order of what comes first and what is happening in the take/shot, we also put in abbreviations this such as CU for close up or MS for mid shot. They are also organised into folders. The First one being the rushes which contains all the raw footage, We made this folder so we can always check back if we delete any footage by mistake or if just anything of that nature happens. The second folder we created contains the shots that we decided to use, we choose these shots because they had the best fitting camera angles and acting, this folder was named log bin. Once we had all this done we went over all the shots in our log bin and cut the extra footage to make it feel fluid and then moved them into the timeline. When cutting the footage we used the short cuts I and O (I for mark in and O for mark out). In the top of the timeline we see that each audio clip/take is represented by two rectangles. The lighter blue ones represent the actual footage and the darker blue ones below the center represent the audio recorded with the footage. In the middle we see a preview of the footage we are choosing from the folder and on the right there is a live feed from the timeline.

Sexy Beast - Opening Sequence Analysis

In this title sequence we see the first five minutes of Sexy Beast, and in this sequence alone we already discover a lot about what seems like one of the main characters. This being Gary Dave, played by Ray Winstone. The mise en scene shows the audience that Gary is a rich and mean guy in his 50s. 

From the second shot we can already tell a lot about Gary, this overhead shot shows him laying down on a beach chair taking in the sun, his tan shows that he has been doing this for a while. We also see alcohol, cigarettes and skin lotion on the right. All of these give of the impression that this man doesn't have any worries, possibly he could be on holiday.  

From only the opening sequence it is hard to tell if the genre is a comedy, drama, action or crime. Seeing the way he narrowly misses the massive boulder, then he barely reacts to seeing it in the pool and then the water hitting him makes this seem like more of a comedy/action film. The fact that he seems incredibly rich and that this boulder barely bothered him also drives the audience to think that he might have been a gangster of some sort in the past so this didn't scare him compared to what he has encountered in the past. This leading me to think this film could also be in the genre of crime.  

Overall this sequence leads me to think that this film is about a retired gangster or successful business men that somehow gets called back into the game. Whatever this might be. I liked the camera work, many overhead shots of him and the pool. 

Below is the opening credits sequence:

The Shining - Opening Sequence Analysis

This opening sequence doesn't indicate much of what is going on, or what the story is going to be about. It consists of a helicopter shots that then turn into birds-eye view shot of a car and then follows it for the rest of the sequence as it drives on a road in the mountains. It is still intriguing, it makes the audience want to find out where that car is going or if it has anything or anyone important in it. From the trailer we can tell that its a horror, but in this title sequence not really. It still has a strange and disturbing effect on its viewers with the use of music and the shot being so long, it also feels distorted. Such as when the credits come from the bottom to the screen to the top, with the camera moving forwards it doesn't feel right. 

The music feels like it could have easily been used in a dark house type horror film but instead its used in some beautiful nature scenery, this also gives of a strange vibe to the sequence. The shots of the car also give of a mood of this car being a lone and so if anything were to happen to it no one would know. The opening sequence is only three minutes but it feels like this car has been traveling for a long time, implying that it is probably very far from any city/civilization. To add to this the house they arrive at has no other houses or shops near it.

Overall I like this title sequence as I find sometimes it can work better with a film to not reveal much at the start so that the audience is intrigued to find out more.

 

Introduction

Hello, I'm Victor and this is my new blog. So I'm taking media as part of my a levels as I am extremely passionate about film, I'm hoping to become a director. I'm also taking French, Business, and Film.

I was born in Miami and lived there for 6 years and then moved to Rio De Janeiro, Geneva and now Dorking. The main reason I came to Hurtwood was because of the amazing film studio and equipment that we have access to with the media studies class.