Recently, we have been looking at a website called Art of the Title. On this website, there are a range of different opening sequences available for our viewing. By looking at these sequences, we can gain inspiration for our own task as well as an idea of how to structure the sequence.
After taking a look at a variety of open sequences, I picked out some favourites of mine.
The theme of fantasy contrasted with adventure, action and drama that is portrayed
From this research, I have gained more of an idea about how the titles will be presented on the screen, as well as thinking more about the treatment of our opening sequence.
Some questions that were raised by the class were:
Why did you choose that setting?
Where will you actually film it?
Will your film sequence include that one character?
What has happened to the woman in the film?
We are going to film it at the common in our local village. We have chosen this setting because it offers a sense of isolation which is the main theme we want to include in our film sequence. Furthermore, based on our mood board, the common is a location which matches up to our aspirations of the setting of our sequence. Our sequence will only include the female protagonist because we want to foreshadow, if we were making the whole film, that the main focus would be on her as the story is about a series of unwelcoming events that occur as part of her split personality. The woman has ended up with a split personality. The split personality causes her to take part in multiple crimes, however she is unaware of her alternate-self and as a result, feels isolated and confused by what is happening to her. The story follows her through how she became a person with a split personality and how she will deal with her physiological illness.
We are now beginning to think about our main task.
This is the brief we have been given:
Film the opening
sequence of a new fiction film, including titles and soundtrack to last approximately
two minutes.
From this brief, it is clear we need to choose a genre and
create a story to fit with the opening sequence of a film. I and my classmate
Daisy will be doing research of opening sequences to gain an idea of how much
we include in a two minute opening and how much of the story we give away.
Furthermore, we need to extend our knowledge and research a variety of
different genres in order to decide what genre would be the best to incorporate
into our task.
In addition, we need to think about the sound production of
our task. Due to the fact we didn’t focus that much on sound in our preliminary
task, for our main task, we need to ensure we use a variety of sounds and find
a reliable source to get music without copyright.
I understand we are not creating a whole film; we are
creating a short opening sequence. However, we still need to brainstorm an
overall idea of what the film is about to ensure the opening sequence makes
sense. We need to decide the props, location, characters and when we are going
t film it.
Conversely, in order to create an opening sequence of great
quality, before we begin brainstorming we need to carry out research. Our
research will be based on:
Genres
Sound
Existing Opening Sequences
By researching these three main topics, we will be extending
our knowledge on opening sequences and how to use sound at appropriate times to
ensure the task is effective. We will also gain a perspective on what genre we
think is the most effective when creating an opening sequence, as well as learning
how we can leave the audience wanting to continue to watch the film.
Our first research task will be focusing on different
opening sequences and how they are being portrayed to the audience.
This is our final product of our preliminary task. We have edited down the clips and ensured the story flows as well as we wanted it to. While we are pleased with how the editing went, we know that we can improve on the sound editing. For example, in the first few clips, we could have continued the background sound of classes throughout the whole time she was walking through the corridor to make the editing more smooth running. We wanted to also put a sound effect over the audio when there is a close up on the female character, from the male character's perspective to create a comical effect, however sound production is the are we will focus more on in future tasks.
In our most recent lessons, we have been planning and filming our preliminary task. Our preliminary task was to film a character walking to a room, into the room and then walking across the room to sit down and exchange dialogue with another character. On this setting we then got into groups and brainstormed a story to link with the task.
I worked with Daisy Stone, Natalie Carter and Jak Bower. Myself and Daisy brainstormed an idea of a romantic/comedy story where the male character fancies the female character and they exchange an awkward dialogue whilst they wait for their classmates to turn up.
Following our decided plot, we made a story board of how the scenes were going to be positioned and what camera shots we would use to create the task in the most effective way possible.
Our shots were:
Walking down the corridor (Medium Long shot)
Walking past the window (Medium shot)
Walking through the door (Reverse shot)
Coming through the door (Reverse shot)
Walking across the room (Medium shot)
Shot of the character's face (Close-up)
Slow motion shot of Female character (Medium shot)
Shot of the Male character's face (Close up)
Two characters sat down (Medium shot)
Two characters exchanging dialogue (Reverse shot)
Shot of male character tapping the pen (Close up)
Focusing on the pen (Extreme close up)
Female character gazing around the room (Close up)
Both characters in silence (Medium shot)
View of the characters in the room (Long shot)
Wider view of the whole setting (Establishing shot)
Furthermore, we organised the camera angles, here are some of the angles we used:
Medium Long shot - Eye Level angle
Medium shot - Eye Level angle
Close up- Low angle
Medium shot- Low angle
Close up- Eye level
Close up- High angle
Extreme close up- high angle
Close up- low angle
Long shot - High angle
Establishing shot - Birds eye angle
To go along with the decided angles and shots, we produced a story board to represent our visions.
Using the camera and editing skills we learnt in a recent lesson, we filmed and edited short video clips.
Our task was to film certain clips that could be edited together in order to create a continuity shot, the scene had to include two people walking from opposite directions and meeting in the middle. Daisy and I brainstormed a scene of two people meeting each other in a school environment.
Here is what we filmed:
Due to this being our first film and editing task, we have areas such as landscape shots, dialogue, stabilising of the camera and continuity to improve on, however this is our first attempt at a scene involving two characters meeting at a certain point.
Following what we had learnt in the lesson, we decided to further our task and attempt to film a variety of continuity shots from different angles.
Here is an example of one of the short clips we filmed:
Similarly, we need to develop our filming skills for example, filming in landscape instead of portrait. However, this was our example of different shots edited together to create a continuity shot.
This particular editing task has helped me understand how a variety of shots can be edited together to create the illusion of a continuity shot. I now have a greater understanding of filming and editing, as well as knowing the different areas I need to improve on.
Following the knowledge we gained about a variety of camera shots and how to edit, myself and Daisy decided to create a movie trailer using imovie on an an apple device.We brainstormed the story and filmed it in our local woods.
In this weeks lesson, we watched and analysed an interrogation scene from L.A. Confidential.
From this scene, we analysed the different shots and cuts to discuss how they are effective.
For example,
In the first 20 seconds of this clip, it is evident that their is a continuous shot while the two policeman walk down the hallway before entering the office. This particular shot is effective because it portrays a sense of a build-up to the main action of the scene.
Furthermore, the continuous shot also has great significance to the scene and how it effects the audience. The use of the continuous shot forces the audience to follow the cop's narrative. Therefore, this is effective because it gives the audience a sense of being on the cop's side, even though they interrogated the male protagonist in this scene, the audience would be in favor of the cops due to the continuous shot at the beginning of the clip.
Many different shots are used in this scene to emphasise emotion and reactions of a character. For example, the dolly shot ensures full emotions of the character are portrayed to the audience through a change in depth of field. In addition, as well as to show emotion, the shots are also used to manipulate the audience.
Along with learning how shots are used for effect, we also gained knowledge about the cutting of the scene. For example, there were four main cuts that we noticed of which included the bathroom scene, along with the reaction of the protagonist as well as the shot of the protagonist being thrown out the window, followed by his reaction.
These specific cuts are made to ensure the different camera shots can be used to portray and express the story of the film in the best way possible.
Recently, we looked more in to the history of editing and how different styles of editing and shots came to be. To gain more knowledge on this topic, we watched a video on the Birth of Cinema and Continuity Editing by Filmmaker IQ on YouTube.
Primitive Cinema
The first film screening was in the basement of a grand cafe in Paris on December 28, 1895 by the Lumiere brothers, of workers leaving the Lumiere factory, Among the audience of the first ever screening, was a professional magician, George Melies. Melies became inspired by this screening and as a result, bought an Animatograph to then reverse the mechanics to create his own camera. Whilst shooting a bus emerging from a tunnel in Paris 1896, Melies' camera broke in the middle of a take. When the camera began working again, the bus has been replaced by a hearse and when editing, Melies realised the faulty in the camera had invented a Jump Cut, where the bus appeared to turn into a Hearse.
Melies also discovered:
Fade in and Fade out
Overlapping dissolves
Stop Motion Photography
Using these shots, he merged them all together to create a narrative story instead of a mundane single shot. However, he had a reoccurring problem throughout all his movies- they were all shot from the same angle as he failed to move the camera during shooting.
Birth of the Edit
Edwin S. Porter, a director and camera man, used his unique insight into film to take footage from 'Life of an American Fireman' and combine it with stage scenes to create a fictional narrative. However, there was still the problem of a Tableau mentality and there were many Temporal Overlaps among Porter's film productions.
D.W. Griffith (Lawrence Griffith) stepped in to resolve this problem. He managed to create a film where a medium shot, smoothly changed to a full shot of two characters in an emotional dialogue to engage the audience in the story. This became known as a continuity shot.
Continuity shot - Cutting style that maintains a sense of continuous space and time
Along with the Continuity shot, came the 180 degree rule. The 180 degree rule means to keep the camera on one side of the Axis of action to avoid continuity problems of cutting.
Griffith also discovered inter-cutting.
Inter-cutting shot - Cutting between shots in different scenes in a parallel action
Inter-cutting was haled as a masterpiece and the long, medium and close up shot became known as the classic Hollywood continuity shot.
Following this, he also discovered:
Establishing shot
Revers shots
Matching Eye Lines
Cutting on Action
Griffith then progressed to releasing his own independent film in 1914, 'The Birth of a Nation'. This film was cinema's most expensive film to make, and was the world's most famous Blockbuster. It contained a combination of all of Griffith's editing and cinematic techniques. However, the film was condemned as racist, of which Griffith took personally. The criticism taken personally provoked Griffith to release 'The Rise and Fall of Free Speech in America' where he defended himself and claimed the film was intolerance.
To further defend himself, Griffith later released a film called 'Intolerance' which although did not go down well, was the apparent key to a new theory of editing called montage.
Lawrence Griffith invented the conventions of editing that established the continuity style of editing.
Filmmakers constantly took inspiration from each other's ideas to eventually create a consistent way of editing to ensure every production had a sense of continuity, of which is still used today.
Recently, we learnt about editing and how the editing is used to create effect.
Editing is a crucial part of film language. It structures the narrative, links scenes or events together and ensures the film follows in a logical order.
We discovered that there are many different types of edit and we specifically took a look at the types of cut that can be used:
Cut
- Change scene
- Compress time
-Vary point of view
- Montage, build up of an image or idea
We learnt that there is always a reason for a cut.
Matched Cut
- Continuity of direction
- Completed action
- A similar centre of attention in the frame
- A change of angle ( at least 30 degrees)
A few more cuts consisted of:
Jump Cut
Cutting Rate
Cutting Rhythm
Cutaway -A reaction shot
Buffer/insert
In addition, we also looked at the variety of transitions that can be used:
Fade/dissolve
Super impositions
Wipe
Inset
Split screen
Stock shot
- The less abrupt transitions are achieved with a fade, dissolve or wipe.
Following this, we watched a clip from a film that involved a car chase. We analysed the tempo and rate of the scene, as well as looking at the camera shots. For example, the tempo of this particular car chase was really fast before the rate fell down on a long shot, to then pick up again on a close-up shot. The shots were constantly swapping from close-ups to long Shots and back again. This is to ensure the audience are clear of what is going on. The long shots give the audience an opportunity to look at the surroundings and get an understanding of the story rather than gaining a full understanding of the emotions of the character without having any knowledge of what is happening in the scene.
From my own research, I found a clip from 'Skyfall' that portrays the variety of shots, transitions and tempo that we were discussing in the lesson.
In this clip from 'Skyfall' different paces of tempo are used throughout. For example, when the motorbike chase is being shown, the tempo and sound is upbeat and fast, however when the action scene transitions into a scene at the office, the tempo slows down and the sound becomes quieter to give the audience an opportunity to gain an understanding of what is going on.
This movie clip portrays clear evidence of how sounds, editing and different camera shots can be used together in order to create such powerful scenes for the audience to connect with.
Following this lesson, we have gained knowledge about how editing can link everything together to ensure the best aspects and qualities of each story are portrayed in an effective way.
A variety of different shots, taken by Daisy and I, to reinforce types of camera shots used in film, and to gain a full understanding of how they are used for effect.
In our most recent lesson, we learnt about camera shots and how different shots portray emotions or empowerment of the character.
For example, an extreme close up shot would be used to engage the audience in the emotions of the character by focusing on the facial expression, mainly used in intense scenes.
In addition, other shots, for example, a high angle shot, can be used to portray the character in a vulnerable way. A high angle shot means it is shot at an angle which is looking down on the character, to highlight their vulnerability and to enhance a possible sense of danger, most commonly used in horror films. In contrast, a low angle shot, looking up to a certain character, can be used to portray a sense of empowerment and to create an idea that the character is above everyone else and in control.
During this lesson, we watched and analysed a clip from Superman. We focused on all the different camera shots used in this particular clip, and analysed the reasons behind why they were used in the scene.
The camera shots we noticed in this clip were:
Close-Up (CU)
High angle (HA)
Low angle (LA)
Extreme close-up (ECU)
Big close-up (BCU)
Eye Level (EL)
Long shot (LS)
The variety of camera shots used in this clip ensured the characters were portrayed in a way the audience could understand their position. For example, the low angle was used for the villain when he shot at the policemen because he had the advantage, however it was then used again when Superman arrived to suggest he now had the power over the villain.
Many different camera shots are used to portray such powerful scenes. In some cases, like the eye level shot, for example when the villain was at eye level with the camera and aiming the gun, the audience are made to feel vulnerable and scared as it looks like he is aiming towards the audience.
Not only are the camera shots used to portray the emotions of the characters or the settings, but they are used to engage the audience in the scene and ensure they are feeling the full emotions of the story.
During our first practical lesson in AS Media Studies, we set up our own blogs. We were briefed on the course and given these web-links to relevant websites that contain a variety of updated information about all the different aspects of Media and topics that coincide with our AS course.
www.youtube.co.uk - Youtube is another useful website than can be used for downloading videos to ensure we have a variety of different evidence included in our posts, as well as varying the type of media we use.
