Opening Sequence Titles

Titles at the start of a film make it very clear to the audience that they are watching the opening sequence. Films vary the titles they use some choosing to break up each shot with a title on a black screen whilst others use to have the titles fade in and out over the shot. We have chosen to go for the latter in our title sequence. Here is a list of the titles we potentially plan to inlcude:

• Production Companies
• In Association with...
• Screenplay adapted by
• Director/Producer
• Actors
• Music
• Casting
• Film Title

Adding these titles would give our current rough cut the feel of an opening sequence.

Mike

xxx

(and jennifer)

more inspiration (sort of)

Still browsing through the Robert Smyth School media website and found a video about a boy on cocaine, seeing as we have this in our thriller tohught id check it out and basically its very different to why we included drug taking in our thriller- to create a more weird atmosphere, and to isolate the viewers from the protagonist, but also to anchor his state of mind. Whereas in this video it was entitled joy and it shows the people on cocaine having fun and despite the fact that they are alone they dont seem isolated and unpredictable as in ours.

Seeing as i cant upload the video this is just the link to the video:

http://www.rssmediastudies.co.uk/video/06as01.wmv

Here is also a link to the website and a couple of the short videos:

http://www.rssmediastudies.co.uk/main/prowork6a/

Jake x

INSPIRATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was browsing the Robert Smyth School media website looking at video productions and chanced upon i relly good video with intense attention to detail that we have decided to emphasise in our thriller. And also, the ending made me laugh

Jake x

party scene

We shot the party scene after school yesterday in a house. I think the shots were ok. we are capturing them now and overall they look good except perhaps a couple of hitches. the room we were in was very bright and this may look wierd considering it is supposed to be a party, we have put it in black and white however, and i think when we start chaning contrast and coulouirs etc. it will be ok.

I think a shot which works well is the one were the guy looks up from the table. it is good because we see that he is in a busy atmosphere with people around him which anchors the fact that it is a party.

we will not be able to propperly see if anything needs to be re shot until we have incoorporated the shots into our rough cut, but at the moment they look fine.

nathann
x

Capturing our extra shots and Re-Takes.

on a larger computer screen shots tend to look different so it is important to make sure we quality control when we are capturing.



Overall the quality seems good and we have a lot of useable shots.



some of the extreme close ups look a little strange but i dont think there was anything we didnt have useable footage of, we could definately use at least most of our shots.



thanks

nathan

xxxxxx

Extra shots evaluation

Despite hazardous weather conditions this weekend we still got all of our reshoot shots and extra shots done. It rained too much on saturday so we just filmed sunday when it stopped raining 5pm-7pm and planned in starbucks again 4-5.


Extra Shots

CU on cigarette and lips- Seemed a bit too sexual, won't be used for shot by itself, maybe part of a continuous sequence on as a very quick shot.

CU on eyes/top half of face- Possibly used with above shot, useful for wider range of technical shots.

CU on rubbing legs- Again, good for wider use of technical shots.

Shots from different sides and angles- Good, will definately use.

General notes from fridays lesson

In our lesson periods 4+5 on Friday we fully assembled our final rough cut put to temporary music. However, we did decide on several changes, mainly more CUs and ECUs to exaggerate our protagonist’s actions and to give a wider range of technical shots but also what shots to re-shoot and slight editing changes.

Extra shots

When the camera is facing him from the front of the bench we decided on several variety shots in order to break up the MCUs and MLSs:

-CU on lips and cigarette
-Possible CU on eyes
-CU on hands rubbing legs (possibly not needed as we have the tilt but will shoot anyway)
-A shot from the right hand side to see half of his face (experiment with left and right)

We also talked about a shot of him then getting up off the bench after we have already seen him walking to link the two together as if cross-cutting but in different time frames and seeing him walk up to the path we have seen him walking on.

When our protagonist is walking towards to murder scene we want to exaggerate his ‘mash-up’ state similarly with exaggeration to detail using more CUs and technical shots:

-Handheld shaky POV
-CU/ECU of shoes as he stumbles or falls (several shots in quick succession but as one sequence)

Re-shoot shots

-HA tilt from behind (cigarette dropped more clearly, possibly mike leaning back more?)
-Cigarette dropping from behind ^^^ continuity
-Cigarette picked up from front ^^^ continuity
-Pan across, mike walking in and out of frame, care with shadows
-Mike falling over after witnessing murder (both shots- without breaking 180 degree rule and so having Rachel just in shot)
-Mike cutting up cocaine with bank card camera on table from his left hand side
-Mike snorting cocaine camera on table slightly behind him so that cocaine is just out of shot
-Mike leaning back in chair after taking cocaine closer on his face than before (CU)
-Mike MLS walking towards camera
-Mike MCU reverse track ^^^ shot in between so slight change in distance doesn’t look weird, and make sure same walking speed.
-OTS witnessing murder (costume issues)

Editing issues

-Exaggerate fades, maybe used with slow motion and much longer than previous.
-Experiment with non-additive dissolve rather than additive dissolve
-Use colour wheel for black and white with emphasis on midtones rather than standard black and white effect.

cool x

Re shoot weekend

because our shooting weekend went so fantastically we don't have any footage that we didn't film. however upon watching some of our shots it appears we have to re shoot a couple of things.

we need to re-shoot the 'party' scene. This will take a couple of minutes but we need to make sure we do it well.

We have other individual shots that didnt work so well which we will discover as we become more intimate with out material.

the party scene is indoors but if we need to do any out door shots ive checked on the weather.

Generally it was:

11°C
Mostly Cloudy
Wind: W at 26 km/h
Humidity: 76%

There will also be a spot of rain, occasionally more heavy during the evenings,

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

we will need to take warm clothes.

nathan
xxx

Killer Swans!

One problem we did not anticipate on our shoot was KILLER SWANS!!!!
Unfortunately they seemed to think we were there to attack their babies, so they stood guard throughout our filming and terrified one of our actors. We filmed a short terrifying sequence of these heartless killers and will try and put it up on the blog soon.

Mike
x

Lighting

After the complete disaster that was our test shoot weekend, (i'm joking, on the whole it went very well) we realised that our shots looked very dark. The vast majority of our shots are filmed outside at night, where ther is very little light. We tried to overcome this problem by taking another light on shoot with us this weekend. After looking back at the footage, we believe taking another light with us was very helpful and made our shots look much better.

Mike
x

Possible Problems

Before our shooting weekends, we drew up a list of possible things that could go wrong for us as a group. We did this so we could anticipate possible problems so they would not occur. Here is the list of thingsb that could go wrong for us.

1. Weather
2. Planning correctly and sufficiently (shot lists & logs)
3. Take still photos of us on shoot
4. Not sharing the boring jobs
5. making sure equipment return paperwork is correct
6. Not listening to eachother
7. Our actors getting bored and cold
8. Poor lighting
9. Poor Sound
10. Continuity errors
11. Actors late or absent
12. Being Rude or Abrupt
13. Making it Personal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mike
x

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Opening Sequence

For me this film was a sort of inspiration for our idea. In the opening scene the characters are established well as druggies and I believe there are many interesting techniques used in this film that i believe we could try and adapt to our own project. I really like the narrated voice-over throughout the film, as Johnny Depp's hallucinations are explained to us although we do not always see them ourselves.

There is a lot of eerieness created by the weird characters that I belive could also work well in a thriller, since it could create a lot of enigma and suspense around our main character.

I really like the very last shot of this clip. It is a Close-up of Johnny Depp's face and it actually looks quite scary because his character is on so many drugs. Therefore I think with darker lighting and possibly some sinister music, this could really work well in the Thriller genre.

Mike
x

Potential Actors

Before we started shooting, we decided to take photos of our potential actors so we could see how they look in front of the camera. They include (in order) Louis Dresner - possible Murderer/main protagonist, Nick Malster - possible Murderer, Michael Rodgers - possible main protagonist and Rachel Smethers - Possible Victim.

LOUIS:


NICK:

MIKE:






RACHEL:




Mike and Nathan
x

Shooting Weekend 1st - 2nd December

Our filming this weekend went much better than our test shoot weekend. We met up 3 hours early to plan our shot log and make sure we were really ready for the shoot. The shot log made filming much easier as we knew exactly what shots we were taking for each little part of our sequence. This meant our filming was more structured and organised. We made sure we rotated who did sound, lighting and filming. We did all of our shots apart from two which we can do easily during the week which means that we just have to focus on our re-shoots on the weekend. This also means that we are able to start editing and produce a rough cut of our shots. Everyone in the group made effort over the weekend and there werent any problems with communication or lack of effort.
Overall the shooting weekend was very successful.

Jennifer

xxx

Shot Log

1. Long shot from behind of man on bench
   
2. CU of character’s head and shoulder (from behind)
   
3. HA, tilt from behind to front showing character drop cigarette
   
4. Low level shot from underneath bench to see man pick up cigarette ( try from both sides, front and back.
   
5. MCU of character’ face with cigarette as if character just picked up the dropped cigarette
   
6. Back track, from characters face to seeing his whole body
   
7. Long shot of character looking agitated, rubbing hands on legs etc.
   
8. CU of character “cutting up”
   
9. (Same as shot 7)
   
10. CU of character sniffing (camera behind character so sound is the main focus)
    
11. MLS of character walking
    
12. CU of characters face when walking
    
13. MCU reaction shot of character after sniffing
    
14. Low level shot of character walking into shot (1st half)
    
15. Low level shot of character’s feet, sitting on the bench
    
16. Low level shot of character walking out of shot (2nd half)
    
17. Low level shot of character’s feet, sitting on the bench with pan up and smoke blown down
    
18. ELS from behind, walking on path to murder scene
    
19. MLS from bank side
    
20. OTS of character walking toward murder scene, female character walks into shot
    
21. VHA of character walking past female character
    
22. Handheld from behind showing female character grabbed then a struggle as she is thrown on the floor to the right of the shot
    
23. Low level shot as female character falls on the floor
    
24. Handheld, HA, OTS straddle
    
25. POV strangle
    
26. Low angle, “over” murder at character witnessing the murder
    
27. OTS, character killing female character and looking up towards the camera
    
28. Character collapses on floor
    
29. Low level, MCU as character falls into shot on the floor
    
30. Tilt, Bend, Zoom out of character to female character

Not all of these shots worked and we will re-shoot them this following weekend. Some worked better than others and look really good, we also added in a couple of shots as we went along. Doing a shot log before filming made it much easier to film our shots and meant that we prevented a lot of time wasting.

Jennifer

xxx

Shooting Weekend Pics

These are just some shots we took on our main shooting weekend.