Location Ideas

Location Ideas

For this first shot i thought it would be good to have in the opening as you can see the protagonist running into the darkness where the killer would be giving us a sense of foreshadowing.

With this shot i would shoot it so you can see the protagonist from behind so we can see where he is going and how far he has to go.

If i was to use this location i would have a high angle shot to show that the protagonist is weak from running and everything else that has happened in the film.

Within this shot i would have the antagonist down the lighter end of the tunnel to create a backlight to hide his identity.

With this shot i would have the camera on the floor so you can only see the protagonist's feet running across the camera.

With this shot and the shot below i plan to have the protagonist running down here to confront the antagonist and stand in the darker end of the tunnel so it may be easier to see the face of the protagonist.

With these shots i plan to have the antagonist sitting on the swing at night in 2030 to show that this destruction has gone on for a long time.

 

We are asked to find locations for the film opening that would be appropriate for the idea. I had the idea for the film opening back in the summer so I went and took a few photos back then, but I also went out and took some last night. I have chosen these photos and locations because I feel that an interesting variety of shots and camera locations are available and will make the opening better.

Mind Map / Planning of Russian-Roulette

Planning of Russian-Roulette

Yesterday in class we were asked to create a mind map of our idea, and write about it under the following headings:

·         Genre: Action and Adventure, Horror, Thriller

·         The Plot: Treatment

·         Costumes and Props: Mask, Knife, Black Jacket for Killer

·         Sound Style: Contrast between lullaby to the rock chase music

·         Stylistic Influences: The Dark Knight; the Joker and how his identity is hidden by a 'mask'

·         Visual Style: Dark to start with, jumpy cuts

·         Key Locations: Underpass, Playground, Town?

·         Key Characters (Names and Types): Cyrus: Good looking, Quiet, Smart
                                                                        Lily: Blonde, Beautiful.

After writing about my idea under these headings I learnt and understood more of what I would like to do and the ideas I may want to include. It also gave me a very basic structure of what this film opening will be like and what it is about.

Treatment for Russian-Roulette

Russian-Roulette

Seven people get invited to play a game for “money: £1,000,000”. But soon find out that they’re playing for their lives in an abandoned town with a killer who’s on the loose. The film is a hybrid genre consisting of Action and Adventure, Thriller and Horror. Each one of the characters has a criminal history and if they win the game it gets wiped forever. If they survive the week in the abandoned town then they win. But one by one each day the characters mysteriously disappear and are found dead in many different ways until there are only the three main characters left. The three main characters within this film are Steve, 40 an ex security guard, Lily, 18 who’s still a student and Cyrus, 20 who fixes computers for a living. On the 5^th day the three remaining characters find death certificates in a pile, each one of them has a picture of every character that was there and the way they died, even their own. On the 7^th and last day only one character is left, Cyrus; and ends up having a confrontation with the killer at many points throughout the day, but eventually has a face off under an underpass at the edge of town.

Film Opening Sequence Analysis

Film Opening Sequence Analysis

I find that Batman: The Dark Knight title sequence is one of the most effective title sequences I’ve ever seen. It starts off with the company logos and the Batman logo is all in black and dark blue which suggests to us that this film is going to be a dark film before it has even started. We then get led into a wide angle establishing shot of just the tops of a few buildings and skyscrapers which doesn’t give much of what is happening away, therefore building suspense.

The camera then zooms in to focus on one of the buildings' windows where a man (identity unknown) smashes the window with a rappel gun, which is then fired onto the building below. It then cuts to a medium long shot of the back of a man holding a clown mask and a bag. We then zoom in on the clown mask, which could suggest some importance. I consider the director at this point has done this to give clues that this man is the main villain of the film - the Joker. It is then shortly cut to a scene of two men from the skyscraper sliding down the wire onto the building. This is a very effective shot as it starts off with a crane shot following them down the wire then quickly cuts to a medium close up from the front as they land. This gives us a sense of being with these characters as they go through this sequence.

I find this sequence very effective overall as it doesn’t give away the plot at all, but it draws you into the film making you want to find out more. It includes subtle hints of different characters and there is no speech which makes each scene more powerful as you are just concentrating on the little details within this scene.

Report on the Preliminary Exercise

Media Preliminary Exercise: The Job Interveiw

 

 

Daniel Faint, Jimmy Beaton, Shannon Pratt, Megan McMillan and I filmed in Mr O’Sullivan’s office on the 9^th of October 2012 for our first preliminary exercise. The equipment we used for filming and editing for this exercise was a Canon Legria camcorder plus Adobe Premiere editing software. With this exercise we were only practicing a few skills, these were:

·         Match on Action,

·         The Rule of Thirds,

·         Shot Reverse Shot,

·         Hollywood Editing

·         180⁰ Rule.

I feel that the task went very well as we got all the shots that we wanted, variating shots and angles, and I think that it had a really good outcome. But I think the parts that didn’t go so well were how limited we were around the room as there wasn’t enough space to put the camera and tripod at times, but we managed and was able to come up with a good 30 second piece of work.

Preliminary Task Final Cut

 



 

 

Evaluation of the Preliminary Exercise

 

I feel that this went really well overall, the shots that we used had a wide range of variety from close ups to long shots. I feel though that with the shots we could have re-done a few as we accidently stepped over the 180^o line at one point, but the clip that happened in wasn’t shown in our version of the task.

 

The sound that was used in this task was quite loud and clear so in the interview part of the clip we heard every word that was said. But at the beginning part of the clip there was a lot of noise going on so if something was said you wouldn’t have been able to hear it because of the noisy background.

 

The editing that was used for this piece was very good in my opinion as the cuts were at the right places and the match on action was exactly perfect. We also used a dip to black to show that time had passed and the interview had begun.

 

I think that my current level of production is at a high intermediate level as I know a lot about media, editing and camera work but I feel that there is more that I could learn to make myself better.