Script for news montage

In our opening sequence we include some news footage of current affairs that are a montage of clips together with news recordings of voices. Instead of using voices from the internet, we decided to record our own voices as news presenters, therefore keeping the idea of the production being a British production in prospective. Unfortunately, after recording some of these voices and editing them in with the news footage, we came to realise it was less effective, and so resulted in cutting the voice overs. Below shows some of the sentences we tried using in our news footage.

the urban teen violence montage:

"A number of accounts predicting teenage violence is rising."

"the following reports some disturbing images."

"Boy was killed in gang violence."

"12% increase in teen violence in the UK."

"Boy aged 18 to be arrested for murder."

the bully montage:

"...after tormenting a girl until she killed herself." 

"countless school across Britain are increasingly reporting accounts of bullying."

"One 15 year old girl finds herself in serious trouble."

"16 year old girl bullied so much, that she committed suicide."

"17 year old boy in hospital for attempting to commit suicide."

the businessman montage:

"London's top sales institutions committed fraud."

"Vice President, Nigel Parker shares his views..."

"After their total net income plummeting over the last year."

"Stolen £3,000,000."

"Reported that he fled the country after committing serious offence to the government."

The Teenager montage:

"Teenagers across the UK are being reported as 'unworthy' and 'unpredictable'."
"Terrible behaviours from children at schools across the country."
"16 year old girl forcing parents to spend £20,000 per term for her to attend a private school."
"Parents call their child's behaviour unbearable."
"She explains that she is used to getting exactly what she wants."

EVALUATION QUESTIONS:7 Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I created a video using iMovie to show how we have progressed from our preliminary task to what we have achieved now!

EVALUATION QUESTIONS:3 What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

This video explains how I decided which media institution would be best to distribute our media product.

EVALUATION QUESTIONS:2 How does your media product represent particular social groups?

This Prezi enables the audience to understand how our group used costumes/actions etc. to represent the social groups seen in our opening sequence.

The 'teen bully' character's costume is very normal for a teenage girl. By wearing jeans, a simple top, and a cardigan, she does not stand out from the crowd which is important for the narrative of the opening sequence. Using her mobile phone as a prop to enable the audience to understand that her phone is an important aspect of her character.

The 'urban teen' is also wearing a costume to suit his particular character. he is wearing tracksuit bottoms and a baggy jumper to resemble his attitude toward appearance. He does not care what people think of him but want people to know he is comfortable in his surroundings, (hence the posture when sat on the step)

The businessman again is very commonly dressed for a corporate employee. He is wearing a suit. He would stand out from others in public for being quite formally dressed, however this resembles his position in society. It also resembles what he believes to be his position in society: superior.

The popular teen is mainly resembled through her actions. She walks with a tall gait which shows her to believe she is also superior to most in society. Her high heels amplify this concept.

EVALUATION QUESTIONS:4 Who would be the audience for you media product?

Audience profiling research 

After asking members of my family to complete a questionnaire, I found a lot of similar answers came from doing so.
A typical member of our audience could be either male or female. However, I would predominantly say male due to the male answers of these questionnaires saying that they would watch a Thriller at the cinema over any other genre of film.

Audience Profile:
Matt, aged 23. He has recently come out of university with a degree in engineering now looking for a job. He enjoys living life on the wild side currently taking a gap year in Australia. Whilst in Australia he finds thrills that will keep him awake and on his toes. He has been mountain climbing and bungy jumping numerous times. Matt enjoys watching Thriller films because it keeps the excitement that he looks for in his life alive. On a typical night he would have a beer with his friends before watching a good action thriller. Recently, after acquiring a new girlfriend, he has been more intrigued in her favourite type of a thriller, the conspiracy thrillers. Matt's girlfriend enjoys watching conspiracy thrillers because they keep you thinking and alive during the whole film. This is where we aimed for our film to be appealed. Matt is very popular with his friends and keeps up to date with all new news to keep him interested. He is very fit and goes to the gym often to keep his physical appearence spot on! He keeps his health on track with water and protein shakes every day after the gym, and always being complimented on his fashion sense. He believes thriller blockbusters are always worth watching.

Our entire audience would generally be excitement seekers always up for trying something new. Our movie is a thriller of artistic camera angles added texture to the 'typical thriller'. The film could interest a wide audience potential because it has the artistic camera angles that can appeal to audience members who may not be so interested in the thriller genre.

Screenplay

Representation of Bullying

As one of our characters in our opening sequence is A Teen Bully, We were asked to create a short movie outlying the representations of our characters within society. I decided to explore the representation and reality of bullying in our society as some background information of our Bully Character.

Filming Locations

Photographs of the filming locations.

Here are some photographs that we took of the locations we will be using to film our opening sequence. It'll take place around Torquay seafront.

The first photo shows a shelter in which the teen bully will be introduced. It differs from the busy High Street so gives more of a variety to our opening sequences making it more interesting to watch. Here are able to see she is no different in superiority to anybody else. She will be on her phone smiling at the mean texts that she is sending. We will show an eye line match of her looking at her phone to see what she texts to somebody else.

 

The Costa shop here is where the businessman will be introduced by walking out of this shop in Palm Court on Torquay seafront. This gives away nothing of his status, not revealing where he works or what he does for a living. His costume gives a hint to the audience of the type of person he may be. By walking out of a very popular shop, we see he is no different in taste to most other people. Hopefully during filming, the outside of this shop will be really busy. We also want to film from the centre of the road on the central platform so that during the filming of Christopher as the businessman, we see cars driving through the shot to add to the business and action of the piece.

This is part of the promenade on the other side of the road opposite Costa Coffee in which we will use for extra shots. The scenery can be manipulated to produce very artistic shots and so hopefully we will use this to our advantage to make our opening sequence more intriguing. I believe that by using artistic shots, our media product will be able to appeal to a wider target audience. Having the sea in the background of the shots will be different and intriguing to most other thriller movies.

Here is the bottom of the Torquay High Street, where the urban teenager will be introduced. He will be first seen sat on the stairs. By sitting on the stairs, the teen is being justified as a stereotypical 'bad boy'. His appearance and position on these stairs will validate his position in society.

Here is Torquay Pier where the main antagonist girl will be introduced. Again the scenery can produce artistic shots and so we will use the linear perspective of the pier to intrigue the audience. By introducing the main antagonist in a undeniably open space, she again blends in with the environment. Only her actions are what really gives away who she is.

Pre-production planning

Pre-production planning

We began exploring and planning the following titles so that we gained a better knowledge about how are opening sequence is to finally be planned out.

 

Actors:

Main girl: Connie Meek

Businessman: Christopher Gladding

Stuck up girl: Lydia Murray

Urban teenager: George Scott

Bully Girl: Sophie Mathieson

(minor) Man that Businessman bumps into: Jake Williams

Locations:

For introducing main girl: Torquay Pier

Businessman: Walks out of Costa, Palm court Torquay

Stuck up girl: Torquay High Street

Urban Teenager: Stairway outside Green Ginger, Torquay high street

Bully Girl: White Shelter, Torre abbey Torquay

Lift: Torquay High street lift in Car Parks

Costumes:

Main girl: Normal, she is required to blend in with the majority and so will be wearing jeans and most definitely a jumper.

Businessman: Business suit (shirt, tie, trousers, blazer)           

Stuck up girl: Smart casual. Her costume needs to be fairly normal but strong enough for the audience to recognise she thinks highly of herself through the way she chooses to show her appearance. (blazer, smart boots)

Urban Teenager: Tracksuit. This is in order to show his contrasting way of life in opposition to the rest of the characters. He needs to show the impression to the audience that he doesn't care for his appearance in similarity to the fact that he doesn't really care for the rest of society and the people around him.

Bully girl: Normal teenager (Jeans). She will also blend in with her environment. With 21st  century teens increasingly becoming more aware of the effect of bullying, this character needs to be related to these types of people.

Props:

Main girl: not needed

Businessman: Brief case and costa coffee cup

Stuck up girl: Chewing gum

Urban Teenage: Cap to wear 

Bully girl: Mobile Phone

Storyboard

Pitch

Dolly Zoom Practice

Lesson on 12th Feb 2015. The Dolly Zoom
At the beginning of the lesson we began storyboarding and deciding our favourite shots in our storyboard that we would eventually use in our real opening sequence.
One shot we wanted to use was a dolly zoom at a moment of realisation for our protagonist in the real thing. We hadn't actually had any practise of a dolly zoom so we decided to practise this technique, which involves zooming the focus of the camera out as the camera is being rolled forward and vice versa. We wanted to see if this technique would be possible and achievable to use in our real opening sequence. 
We all took turns using the camera to zoom with as we got pulled on a wheely chair by another person in our group. Our results were very successful in the end! We have put together a short videoclip to show the results of todays work.
The Dolly Zoom was introduced in a Jaws movie and since has been used a numerous movies to convey a moment of empathy and excitement of the protagonist. In my view, I think a dolly zoom is effective to show a character just before a moment of action that they are seen in. This will hopefully be the case in our opening sequence as the protagonist is seen through a dolly zoom as a moment of realisation just after she looks at the date on her phone.

Pitch PowerPoint

Movie Pitch - JMCK from MissMoore866

Preliminary Evaluation

Preliminary

Preliminary Behind the Scenes

Preliminary Planning and Storyboard

Initial Planning

Final Preliminary Storyboards

Modern Thriller Analysis: The Others

The Others Analysis

Preliminary Analysis

Filming Practice, Smashmouth

We had our first chance at filming practice at the beginning of October and were given the task to practise using two camera techniques including shot-reverse-shot and match on action. 

Various examples of match on action are seen mainly when the characters are running around the building and out towards the cars. The first match on action is at 0:12 seconds, and again at 0:19 seconds. This continues throughout the video. A shot-reverse-shot is found between 1:09 seconds and 1:14 seconds where the camera continuously switches between the two characters.

When editing the footage, we came across the song 'All-star' by Smash mouth and found that it particularly complimented the footage. We made sure that the climaxes such as running and large reactions were played with the chorus of the song. At 0:42, you can see that the character begins to run, the chorus starts.

At 1:40, the video begins playing in slow motion which exaggerates the fact that this character has made the wrong decision of going to the wrong car.

Again at 1:58, the camera has a slightly red effect and is played in slow motion as the character falls to the floor (using an eyeliner match by putting the audience in the place of what the character may be experiencing). By using a red tint, the video is conveying that the character may have had blood shot eyes and felt dizzy after being punched.

We faded the music at the end of the video because the video was distracting to end in the middle of the song and so to allow the video to freely and easily end without distraction.

Continuity Editing

Camera Shots and Continuity Editing

180 degree rule

The 180 degree rule mainly to establish/maintain the screen direction of the actors or action within a scene. This makes scenes easier to follow because the angles used by the camera follow a specific guideline that prevents the audience from getting confused.

The line of action is used in the 180 degree rule as a space to show where the camera is able to move.

During the 180 degree rule, the viewers are usually given an establishing shot to give basic geography of the scene and secondly determines the screen direction of the actors.

If the camera does not go over the line of action, then it has successfully completed the 180 degree rule.

Here is an example of how the 180 degree rule is used.

Shot reverse shot

shot reverse shot is a technique where one character is seen looking at another character, this second character is then show looking "back" at the first character. Since the characters are shown facing in opposite directions, the audience automatically assumes they are looking at each other.

Shot reverse shots are usually set up with three camera angles. One of both of the characters, one of an over the shoulder shot of character 1, and the same of character 2.

By constantly switching from one character to the other, we are creating a shot reverse shot. It is important to realise that a characters reaction is just as important as the speech, which is why shot reverse shots are used. An example is below,

Match on Action
Match on action is used to allow a scene to continually flow. It is known as a change in perception of the camera without disrupting the scene to enhance the audience's understanding.
This example from youtube of match on action shows at 0.24 seconds where the camera changes shots to see more closely at the dominant character of the scene lighting a match. The camera doesn't disrupt the scene because the subtle change of perception allow the scene to follow on through. 

Title Sequence Analysis-Grease

Title Sequence Analysis-Grease

The opening title was displayed like this at the very beginning of the opening sequence.

All of the main characters like Danny, Sandy, Rizzo and Kenickie were displayed like this.

The minor characters like the T-birds and the Pink ladies were displayed on billboards and as we followed the cars down the street throughout the opening sequence, all of the billboards that we passed had different names on them for the jobs that these people did on the movie.

 

With the order of the titles, I learned that the main characters are always displayed first. This allows for the audience to see who is starring so that they get a better interpretation of the movie before it has begun. The visuals in opening sequence really help the audience to understand the personality traits of all the characters. For example, Kineckie is introduced inside a car, which lets the audience know that he enjoys cars and can be a big tomboy. This is also the case for the T-birds who are introduced wearing black leather jackets! The song "grease" that is played during the opening sequence is bouncy, catchy and very likeable. This allows the audience to presume what type of movie is about to begin. By editing the credits onto billboards (like the above photo) provides an idea of the timeframe that the movie is set, this is because Grease was set in the 1950's and so many advertisements were done using billboards.

Marnie Analysis

Marnie Youtube Analysis Of Robbery Scene

Coraline-Opening title

Coraline-Opening Title 

Coraline is an animation/fantasy/mystery based on a girl who finds a world that is a strangely idealised version of her frustrating home that she lives in, however this supposed 'better' fantasy world contains dark secrets.

At the opening of the title sequence, the credits appear on a red/brown canvas. The writing is supposedly meant to look as if it had been stitched onto the canvas which links in with the  main features of the movie in different ways. This is the first sign of what the movie may entail and key features that appear throughout.

The string instruments that are played at the beginning of the sequences suggest childlike fantasy and slightly puzzling atmosphere. I think this because each note is played slightly different and so the music bounces, creating an unsettling feeling.

The credits that show at first are to show who helped produce the movie.

Again, When the title is shown at 20 seconds into the sequence. It is clearly shown as being stitched onto the canvas, The 'O' in Coraline is replaced with buttons which links in with key features to the movie. soon after the word 'Coraline' is shown, voices of little children begin singing with the soundtrack. This again enforces the childlike fantasy to the movie.

After the movie titles, the credits begin to show names of the voices that are featured. Again the music is still unsettling beats with some 'oo's and 'aah's subtly found. When the animation begins to show, everything that is done in this flows very clearly and nicely. for example, the puppet flows through the window very slowly and controlled, and when cutting the puppet open, the scissors are easily flowing through the material. This suggest smoothness and being able to watch with ease.

Also at the beginning of the scene, we are seeing everything through the eyes of the character that is cutting and changing the puppet. The lead animators credits then show. They are in lower case letters which suggests ease.

The same features are seen through the rest of the opening sequence. These features being the music like that of a nursery rhyme contrasting with the quite dark and slightly sinister narrative of a puppet being cut up and changed into a doll to look like the main character Coraline. The ease and subtlety of the movements within this scene add relaxation. As opposed to being quite rough and sharp with the puppet, the character changing the puppet is very carefully moving. However the scene as a whole could be perceived as slightly disturbing as we do not know who is recreating the puppet or why they are doing it. This allows the audience to be more intrigued to watching the rest of the film, preparing them for what is to come.

As you can see, the end shot is very similar to the first shot with cleverly and nicely finished the title sequence.

Thriller Conventions

Thriller Conventions

The aim for a thriller genre is to create suspense, tension and excitement of the audience. The general thriller can be paced at a steady speed with fast peaks or a breakneck speed. Suspense is a crucial element to creating a well made thriller. It keeps the audience intrigued and "at the edge of their seats". On this blog I will explore closely common plots, character archetypes and examples of sub-genres of a thriller.

Sub-genres

Conspiracy thrillers- In these types of thrillers you would usually find a loved hero in a sticky situation. As the movie/drama progresses, unveiled villains will appear and the situation will be solved. Example: The Bourne Ultimatum with Matt Damon

Crime thrillers- crime thrillers more often than not focus on the criminal activities of the villains and their activities leading up to a crime being done. They are known to emphasise action over psychological contexts. Example: Inside Man

Disaster thrillers- These focus on a journey of a group of people/ person and their fight for survival against natural disasters (such like the movie 2012). It could also include the wrong doing of a human activity causing mankind to be driven to the brink of extinction

Mystery thrillers- These thrillers are based more over on the psychological aspects of ones mind and how the protagonists decode mysteries within their lives. Audiences are usually ones to help unsolved the mysteries. Example: Flight Plan with Jodie Foster

Supernatural thrillers- also linked with horror movies, supernatural thrillers focus on beings of spirit or ghosts that interfere with the life of the protagonist and their journey to unsolving what happens to them. An example of this thriller is "The Others" starring Nicole Kidman.

Character Archetypes and Narrative conventions

a common occurrence in thrillers is a liked character being taken hostage and the protagonists job to find and save them. This is the case in the thriller "Taken" starring Liam Neeson.

Dark light and nighttime is also evident in a lot of thrillers. Like "The Purge", The characters are fleeing around a city during the middle of the night to save themselves from danger.

An even more common plot is the journey to allow good to triumph over evil! this evil could be natural disasters or human caused. eventually the protagonist(s) finds a way to triumph and to eventually have a happy ending that leaves the audience questioning yet praising the outcome. 

more examples:

-protagonist faces death

-the forces of an antagonists may seem initially cleverer than that of the protagonist

-a quest or journey for the protagonist

-a mystery to be solved

-all actions made by characters are usually realistic and believable

-the desire for justice and morality to individuals

- an interesting aspect is the small presence of innocence and optimism in what seems like a corrupt world the allow the audience to believe there is a way out!

-each character is dragged into a dangerous conflict that could result in death.