Synopsis/ Brief

Following on from the resent production meeting we have recently come up with a synopsis/brief for our film that we will be filming the opening sequence for. Here it is:

'Happy/feel good with comedy elements which tells a story about the hardship of working class life but also the good times, such as family/friends, valuing the little things and the music in the main character's life.'

Here is a questionnaire, take a look at it then fill it out and send it back to me with your answers to help us out with our opening title sequence, then come back and watch the clip of 'Little Miss Sunshine' that we think is a good examples of what we want to do, taking the idea of a depressing subjuect but showing happyness and laughter over powering it.
Questionnaire: http://www.scribd.com/doc/127811641/Questionnaire

                                              

Remember, send me your links to the answered questions so we can see what you thought!

Production Meeting

6th December 2012

Present: Sam, Ben, Lauren and Izzy.

Focus/Agenda: Work out a synopsis/brief.

Ideas:
Feel good/comedy type film that shows the everyday life of a young, unemployed character living near oxford.

The opening title sequence could be following the main character on their way to the city from their home to busk, which is what they do ever day of their life at the present time. Also, whilst this is happening, things will be happening around the character that show things about them. There could also be titles that appear on things around the character, such as walls, signs and maybe clouds.

Inspiration:

• 'Juno'   http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/juno/
  
• 'This Is England'/
   

• 'Shuan of the Dead'
Tasks:

• Everyone: Watch as much films as possible to be inspired by.
• Sam: Think of props to use within the scene.

If anyone has any thought or ideas for use to help us with our opening title sequence we would appreciate it very much! Watch the clips shown then comment about your opinions on the type of film we are planning to film and the common occurrences in this genre.

Product Research

Here is the music video to Breezeblocks by Alt-J. Have a watch then come back and read what I thought about it and what I noticed.

Alt J 'Breezeblocks':

The Video is all shown backwards, cousing many questions to be asked about what has happened to lead to this point as you have already seen what happens at the end, at the begining!

There is also a good use of colour in this video, the colour has been very toned down so they are all quite dark which reflects the overall mood of the video which is very doomy/gloomy. This darkening of the clolours makes me, as a view feel that there is a feeling of doom lingering over the whole video and that there is a sense of being stuck in this doom with no way of getting out. This is also helped by the video being played backwards.

There is also a sense of regret made by the backwards video. Its almost as if its what the man is thinking, what's going through his brain reminising what has gone wrong and what he coukd have done to have stopped the situation from getting to where it is.

I like this idea of showing a scene backwards and think it could be possible to use in our opening title sequence. This would mean people see what it is that the character does for money to start with then see what their life consists of through the journey they have taken, but seen backwards, finally bringing them to where they always start. This would help show the repetition of the character's life and help show the circle that their days consist off.

Product Research

Having seen and studied a few different films now, we decided to see how they all have used their titles, seeing if they have an effect on the sequence, and if so, then how they do this. Here are a few opening title sequences we looked at:

The Orphanage:

This used an odd, scary font to re-enforce the genre of the film, being horror, and had children's hands interacting with the titles to show that the film would have a lot to do with children which are the main element of the horror in the film.

Forest Gump:

The titles in this film used very simple, easy to read titles, making it seem quite formal but also they represent the main character, Forest Gump, who is rather simple minded and easy to read.

Catch Me If You Can:

'Catch Me If You Can' used their titles very well within opening title sequence by having the animations fit in with the titles as if they were part of the scene, sometimes being being buildings or planes.

From these examples, we decided that we wanted to take the idea of our titles fitting in with the scene, seeming they were naturally part of the world. We thought that we could try and put titles on signs and on newspapers and perhaps on tshirts people were wearing around the main character. This would help give the idea of things happening around the characters life every day on a daily bases but she is never distracted form her goal as she never notices them.

Organisation of Actors, Location, Costumes and Props

We finally chose our location of where to shoot our film.

WOODSTOCK
Woodstock is a small historic town local to us, near Oxford. We felt that it was urban enough for what we wanted but not to rural that it felt to disconnected with the city feel. Here are a few images to show you what its like:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/137411176/woodstock-pictures

Take a look at these images and see if you think it is a good location for shooting.

Product Research

In 'Dark Shadows', a 2012 American horror comedy film, uses a scene where you don't see the characters face until the end of the scene. You do, however, see glimpses of the character but never the face, so that you are never truly sure of who, or what, is in the scene. Unfortunately I cannot find the clip of this scene but if anyone can then i would be very appreciative if you could tell me where to find it!
In our opening title sequence sequence we want to a scene like the one in 'Dark Shadows'. We will start with a scene where we don't fully see the character's face until she stands up and reveals here appearance to the audience. This will get the audience wanting to see who it is and will create a sense of mystery to

                                                                

Movie trailer:

Behind the scenes of 'Dark Shadows'

Reviews on 'Dark Shadows' http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/reviews/article-2142675/Dark-Shadows-movie-review-Johnny-Depp-colour-batty-vampire-tale.html    http://www.totalfilm.com/reviews/cinema/dark-shadows

Production Meeting

15th February 2012

Present: Sam, Lauren, Izzy and Ben

Focus/Agenda: Film Planning

Ideas:

Interior of Lauren's house. In the kitchen, bedroom and stairs on the way out the door. Here are a few pictures to show what we are thinking off:


Bedroom


Kitchen: Except the characters face isn't revealed in our scene.


Leaving the house: our scene will have the character walking down the stairs then leaving the house, having picked up the guitar.

Look out for a preview of our filming soon!

Product Research

The Tree Of Life
I watched 'The Tree of Life', an American drama film with experimental elements, written and directed by Terrence Malick. I was very interested in the way it was filmed with the experimental elements. I noticed that there is no real order to the shots used, it is almost like a bunch of home movie clips stuck together. Yet, it still had a fluency to it. I thought this was a very clever way to film this movie because it really showed the life of the characters as if it was them who had filmed it, giving the feeling of actually being there. Then, at certain points in the film the shots change to clips of what I think was the universe and space mixed in with clips of nature such as blood vessels. However, I was unsure exactly whether they were definitely space or if they were natural things on earth. These changes in the film made me question the meaning of life and where it originated from, whereas the 'home movie' bits of the film made me think of the good and bad things of life and also that there is a definite reason for life and that every thing has a reason, so the two different parts are a contrast to each other and almost contradict each other.

I would love to take inspiration from this film and use the same idea of adding clips of things relevant to the context of what is going on in the scene, being small clips of the character possibly playing guitar (as that is what we want to show as her main love in her life), these clips would only last for about a second though, and would seem like they were done by someone as a home video or possibly the character filming themselves as if for a Youtube video.

Info on 'The Tree of Life': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tree_of_Life_(film)

Director and Writer, Terrence Malick: http://movies.nytimes.com/person/100893/Terrence-Malick

Interview with Terrence Malick: http://www.lavideofilmmaker.com/filmmakers/terrence-malick-interview-rome-film-festival.html

'The Tree of Life' was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Cinematography.


                                                     
                                                             Terrence Malick

Production Meeting

5th February 2013

Present: Sam, Ben, Lauren and Izzy

Focus/Agenda: Plan Filming

Ideas:

• Cowley Road, Oxford
• Cobble Road, Oxford
• Near the OCVC in Oxford

Here are some links that show these locations, look at them then come back and see what we plan to do there:

 Cowley Road: http://www.scribd.com/doc/130202953/Cowley-Road-Pictures

Cobble Road: http://www.scribd.com/doc/130204257/Cobble-Road-Pictures

Near OCVC: http://www.scribd.com/doc/130216142/Near-OCVC

Filming:
We hope to film the scene where the main character is walking along the streets of town, on their way to the centre of town to busk. This scene will consist of a couple of shots types, mostly being medium shots / medium long shots of the character walking along the streets of the possible said locations.
Here are some examples of shots we wish to make:


Medium Shot


Medium Long Shot

Look out for a post coming soon with these shots!

Organisation of Actors, Locations, Costumes and Props

We have a clear idea of who we want to act as our character. We want a teenage boy or girl that is of a indie/hypster style, very British and who looks like they could fit into the music scene easily.

We have a few possible ideas who could be our actor:

1. Lauren Carpenter.
   
   
2. Ben Pilston
   
   
3. Jacob Chambers
   

These three people all have experience in the music scene so would be completely at home acting within this role. Also, Jacob Chambers has had a lot of experience acting already, having done GCSE Drama and is currently doing AS Drama. 

However, we would like to do something that everyone else doesn't usually do so, from the knowledge gathered through our research, we have decided to go with Lauren as we noticed that most of the main characters are males and by using a female as the main character we would go against the normal trend of our genre.

Our character will be a busker:

 

So will normally have a guitar with them. This will mean finding a guitar as a prop that we will be able to frequently use. Fortunately I have a guitar that we will use through out the shooting of our film and it will be the main prop of the movie. Here is an image of the guitar:  

Product Research

Here are a couple of clips of fight scenes from different films, watch them then have a look at what I said about there quality.

Fight Scene 1: Star Treck



• There is no special effects, making it look very unrealistic.
• There is no character development, leaving the viewer confused why they are fighting and how they are related to each other.
• There is no change in the music, so there is no development of the action emphasised by the music.
• There has been nothing done to the colour of the scene, leaving the scene looking very boring and without any mood or reflection of what is happening.

Fight Scene 2: Book of Eli

• There is character development within this fight scene. We see how the character reacts to the situation he has found himself, finding things out about him that is important to his life and survival.
• The editing of the scene starts to speed up as the action then begins to increase, reflecting what is happening. However, once it gets into the actual fight there isn't really any editing as the action happens in just one shot.
•  There is also no music when the actual fighting happens in the scene, there is just sound effects complimenting the action. This helps the viewer to concentrate on what is happening and also adds to the realism of the situation, being what actually would be heard in the fight.
• Colour in the scene, and through out the whole film, has been toned down. This creates a certain feel and reflects the mood of the character, Eli.

From this I want to take the idea of having a lot happening in just the one shot, like in 'Book of Eli' revealing what the character is like and what he has kept hidden.

Product Research

Straw Dogs:

                                    

Straw Dogs is a very interesting film. The original, made in 1971 as a psychological thriller and directed by Sam Peckinpah. It is most well known for violent concluding sequences and complicated rape scenes which caused some controversy.

This is very interesting as we now see many scenes observed in 'Straw Dogs' in modern films nowadays which show violence and rap but there is no controversy any more and these scenes are normally accepted with viewers. This shows a massive change in what is accepted in films now compared  to in the past, as we accept, nowadays, to see much more violence and scenes of an unpleasant nature, something that would never have been accepted or allowed in the past.

Bellow is a clip from 'Straw Dogs' showing a scene violence talked about, watch the clip then leave a comment about how bad you think it is and if you think it is anything on the violence seen in modern films.

First Storyboard

Here is a link to a first idea story board of a couple of scenes from our opening title sequence, tell us what you think of it.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/135853062/DOC270313-27032013114748

Organisation of Actors, Location, Costumes and Props

We want our character to seem as if they have it quite hard in life. We did a lot of though on the best ways of  showing this and came up with the idea that she should smoke, smoking being a way that people calm themselves and relieve stress.

                                          

Examples:

This will help to give the audience an idea of how stable the characters life is and what kind of person she is without giving away to much.

Target Audience Research

To find out what age people we will be doing some research into our target audience.

Connected are some clips of films that we want our film to be like, watch them then answer the questionnaire about target audience that is also connected so we can have an idea of who to make our film for.

Clips:

This Is England

Snatch

Lock, Stock and Two Smocking Barrels

Scott Pilgrim vs the World

And here is the questionnaire: http://www.scribd.com/doc/137392228/Target-Audience-Questionnaire

Please answer the questions asked so that we can have a good idea of what is expected in our film.