Our Two Minute Film Opening

Types of shots & Camera angles

Extreme Long Shot
This type of shot is usually used to set the scene of a film this can also be called an establishing shot. It can be taken from as much as quarter of a mile away. This shot is often used to give a general impression of the scene rather then a detailed view. This is normally used to show a place rather than a person.


 Long Shot
This is to show a life size image of the action it's normally taken from about 6ft. This shows the audience what action is happening from a normal height. It can be taken of a place but can also be taken showing a character from a full length so we can see the whole character. E.g. A person wearing a police outfit would automatically give off connotations of a police officer.
                                                      

Extreme Close up
This is just basically an extreme version of a close up. This often focus' on a subjects face or an object or car etc.. This often is used to dramatise the film and is a unnaturalistic shot, there is also no background shown in the frame of this shot.
       
                                                     Close up
This shot often shows little of the background and the background is even blurred sometimes to create focus on the main propose of the shot. This often concentrates on the face or some object that is key to the mes on scene in clip. This often is used to show a characters facial expressions to show the mes on scene of the clip.


Medium Shot
This normally shows the subject in the frame from the waist upward this is often used for dialogue clips to show the subject clearly. It is also used to concentrate on a subject head and shoulders to the characters emotions. 

Over The Shoulder Shot
This is taken over the shoulder of a character to show another character this is often used in the dialogue and is often used with the camera movement of shot reverse shot showing a the conversation of two characters. It is a good clear way to show the audience a conversation.
Camera Angles

Birds Eye View Shot
This is a unrealistic shot, this is a shot taken from directly above this gives a heavenly view of the clip when it is used.

High Angle
High angles have been taken from above the subject to make objects look smaller and less powerful. This makes the audience feel more powerful over the character in the clip.



Low Angle
This increases height and often gives characters or objects more power, this gives the viewer as sence of innocence and insecurity to the subject.

                                                     
 Canted Angle
This angle is taken on a obscure angle to give the sense of unease. It can also give a imbalance to the mes en scene in the clip, this is a popular angle in horror films.

Question 1

 In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

 To make our final media product substantial as an opening to a psychological thriller to our audience, we have used a range of different methods to show the correct conventions that are seen in real psychological thriller films. Not only have we used conventions in our media product that real psychological thriller films use, we have also researched into the thriller genre as a psychological thriller is a sub-genre to it.

Characters:

During our research into a few Psychological Thriller films, we noticed that the main antagonists were male. Because of this, we wanted to challenge the gender of the male antagonist and create a female antagonist to create a contrast. Male antagonists in thrillers/horrors are proved to be shown as powerful and threatening so because of this, we thought it would be challenging to put the conventions of a male antagonist into a female antagonist.

Throughout the second half of the scene of our film opening, we made it clear of who the main antagonist is due to making her the center of the shot which allows the audience to focus on her and nothing else. We stuck to the colour of clothing that most thrillers/horrors use for their antaonists in their films. We dressed our main antagonist in a black vest top, black jeans and black shoes and also painted their fingernails in red; both of these colours connote death, violence and danger which, in thrillers and horrosrs, usually associate with the antagonist of the film.

Also from our research, we noticed that children were often involved and were seen as the innocent characters. The film ‘Hide and Seek’ greatly shows this in the opening of the film with a young girl playing at the park with her mum. This particular scene inspired us for the opening of our film to include young children as it greatly emphasises the innocence and purity they hold which suggests to the audience that they are the protagonists in the film.

Lighting

Lighting is a very important feature when it comes to the horror/thriller genre. The right lighting sets the right mood and atmosphere to the scene. Because of this, we had to think very hard as to the type of lighting we were hoping to create. 

In the first scene of our film, we planned to film a ‘flashback’ outside at a childrens park. Lighting outside is always a risk as the weather may be cloudy which makes the atmosphere fairly dark and dull, or the weather may be sunny which makes the atmosphere bright and colourful. Luckily when it came to filming at the park, it was fairly sunny with only a fair bit of cloud in the sky. After researching into ‘Hide And Seek’, we noticed that the beginning of the film was a flashback and was very well lit with warm colours and bright lighting. We wanted our opening of our film to be a flashback which was well lit, bold and brightly coloured so we were lucky that the lighting outside was the perfect lighting to create what we wanted. The use of high-key lighting suggests to the audience that things are happy and calm which is what we wanted to create in the flashback.

To contrast this, we wanted to film our next scene somewhere dark and isolated to show things are not as happy as they were and to show a sense of danger and a tense atmosphere. This is very common in psychological thrillers from what we researched online, for example the film ‘Se7en’ uses a lot of different lighting techniques but for many reasons, which creates a tense atmosphere.  We decided to film in one of our group members’ loft which is very dark with only little source of lighting. When watching the clips we recorded in the loft, the outcome was fairly grainy. To reduce this, we edited the lighting on Premiere which made the outcome look better than what it did.

Cinematography

When it came to camera work, we wanted to use a range of different types from extreme close-ups to long shots. One thing that we did notice that is common in most psychological thrillers is the use of Point Of View shots. This allows the audience to see things from the protagonist/antagonists view to help engage with the characters. An example of this is in the film ‘Hide and Seek’ when the girl is on the round-about. Because she is spinning on the round-about, it may foreshadow of how her life is going to be spinning out of control which is what we wanted to portray in our opening film. We did this in our opening film but on a seawsaw that spins around. Another Point Of View shot that we used in our opening film was in the second scene in the loft. There is one Point Of View shot of a light bulb which switches between being in focus and then to being out of focus, and the second Point Of View shot we used is when the protagonist is tied up in a chair and watches the antagonist slowly approach her, again, the shot is out of focus. Being out of focus suggests to the audience that the character that’s point of view we are seeing may have been hit in the head causing their vision to become blurred.

Another shot we noticed that is in a lot of thrillers/horros is the use of Close Ups. Close ups capture a characters facial expression whether its sad, angry or happy. We used close ups in the flashback of our film to emphasies the happiness of the characters’ faces.

Setting/Location

From researching many psychological thrillers, we noticed that the setting in the majority of the films appear to be set in a normal setting; somewhere where anyone would go in their normal life. This creates a sense of realism and highlights that any bad thing can happen in the normal places everyone goes to. Because we wanted to include young children in the beginning of our psychological thriller, we took the setting of other psychological thriller films into account and decided to film our footage in a normal and simple park. The park we chose looks like any other ordianry park you would come across which gives the audience a feel of comfort as they are familiar with this type of setting, and also because it is a setting where a lot of ‘fun’ happens.

Another thing that we noticed for the setting in other real psychological thriller films is that when the main event of the film happens, the setting is often in an isolated place. For example, a single house in the countryside near the woods or on a farm. This gives the audience a feel of being ‘cut off’ from the rest of the world, emphasising the sense of lonliness and isolation. This is something we wanted to create in our product so we decided to film our main event of the film in one of our group members’ loft. Again, a loft appears to be a normal and simple setting due to it being part of a house which is very familiar to the audience. Not only this, but we wanted to film in the loft because its usually the one place in a house where not many people dare go to due to it being dark and away from the rest of the house. A basement is a perfect example of this too, which is always involved in psychological thillers, for example, in ‘Hide and Seek’.

Question 3

Evaluation question 3- media AS from lizdom

Question 6

What have you learnt about the technologies?
This shows a little bit about importing clips from elements to premiere. We have learnt about technologies but I have learnt a lot since doing the full product. I feel I have full use of the editing suite now too whereas when doing my prelim I had little to no knowledge of the editing suite. As I have mentioned in my research we edited our video using the image editing tools to make the videos mes en scene different. At the begining it is the equilibrium and is all dream like with the vivid colours used and at the end it  is nearly black and white to show sadness and a contrast to the begining. Below is a tutorial on how to change the speed duration on premier.

Question 7

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from the prelim to the full product?

Looking back at my prelim task I feel like I have learnt a lot more about the media technology like the cameras and editing suite. I also feel I have improved my team work skills, my preliminary group was different to my final group but on the whole I worked well with both groups. The group I was in for my prelim was a group of four people and I feel this worked better than the group of three I was with for my final task because the work load was more spread out evenly. For my A2 project I think I will work in a group of four for that so the workload is more even. I feel like I have improved my overall media knowledge too I think I would be able to mange a small project on my own. The only thing I still need to improve is more advanced use of the editing suite but I have learnt a lot more about it since my prelim.

Treatment

The title of our film is counterplay this means revenge. This also links to the opening 2 minutes of our film with the flashbacks of the to children playing it is also about childhood hatred.
The plot of our film is the main character Eva has been neglected by her mother all her life and her sister is in favor. Eva ends up murdering her sister because she can't handle the torment of her sister anymore. The film shows the struggle she has faced and the motive behind killing her sister Rosie. The film is shown form the accounts of Eva and her motives behind the murder of her sister. At the end of the film the audience find out that the whole film was based on a detective and her sidekick trying to solve the case. Our film challenges the conventions of a stereotypes as we used two female lead role and a female detective we thought this was important because people want to see new conventions in films being released and not the same ones all the time.

Themes Of Psychological Thriller

Psychological thrillers have become very popular over the past few years, all in various different media platforms. Despite different storyline and different representations general themes of the genre have appeared of representation, general trends have appeared. These themes include:

• Reality
• Perception
• Mind
• Existence/Purpose
• Identity
• Death

In psychological thrillers the character normally has mental health problems because of something that has happened in the past or just due to a mental health problem. The main character normally has a center around death they may be threatened with death, be forced to deal with death or fake their own deaths. There is may sub genres within a physiological thriller it can often be linked to crime drama e.g. Dexter.

Continuity

The continuity is very important in filming this means the characters costume, props etc must stay the same through out filming otherwise the film you are making becomes not believable and also confusing for the audience. When filming we are going to make sure on the days we have planned we will use the same costumes and props to make sure the continuity is perfect. As shown below this would be called a continuity error.

The Rule Of Thirds

The rule of thirds is a guideline which applies to the process of filming or taking photographs. The guideline proposes that an image should be divided into nine equal parts by two horizontal and three vertical lines, that are equally spaced. We use this technique to make the photograph have points of tension, energy and interest by making the photograph align with these nine boxes.
We will use this in our film making to make our film look professional by having the grid up on the camera when filming. This will not only make our filming look more interesting but also will make the picture look more even.

180 Degree Rule

                When making our film we must remember the 180 degree rule it's a basic guideline for the on screen spacial relationship between two characters or objects within a scene. Their is an imaginary line called the axis this makes sure the camera is on one side of the axis for every shot in the scene, otherwise when watching the clip back it will appear to be the wrong way around like the two characters have swapped places.
So when filming our opening two minutes we must remember the 180 degree rule is obeyed. The camera passing over the axis is called jumping the lineor line.

Titles

This lesson we have been thinking about the titles we are going to use on our opening two minute clip. We are going to use a simple font and the colour white to not distract the audience as they are watching our film. I have researched some of the titles the film The Lovely Bones has used and we are going use similar titles to theirs.

• The titles used to show the actors names will be over a moving image so the film is still carrying on while the titles are on screen as shown above.

• Then the title of our film will be shown on its own on a plain black backing to show make the audience focused on the title of our film. As shown below.

Questions 2, 4 & 5

Shot List

Story Board

Filming Schedule - 9th Feburary 2014

Shooting Schedule

How we are going to apply our research

We are going to include the brightness of the lovely bones the way it is edited makes it stand out and makes the film more interesting. When we edit our films clips we will use the colour scale and saturation to make the colour more vivid like the film. We can also make the flashbacks we are putting in our opening two minutes look even more vivid so they almost look dreamlike to show they are a flashback.

Flims we have researched

The Lovely Bones

A 14-year-old girl in suburban 1970's Pennsylvania is murdered by her neighbour. She tells the story from the place between Heaven and Earth, showing the lives of the people around her and how they have changed all while attempting to get someone to find her lost body.

Director:

 Peter Jackson

Writers:

 Fran Walsh (screenplay), Philippa Boyens (screenplay).

Stars:

 Rachel Weisz, Mark Wahlberg, Saoirse Ronan.

Hide And Seek

After the sudden  suicide of his wife, David Callaway takes his traumatised daughter, Emily, away to to start their life again in a new home. Emily fails to settle in well, with David becoming concerned as Emily identifies with Charlie and imaginary friend. Someone who David has never met before, but who likes to play Hide and Seek.

Director:

 John Polson

Writer:

 Ari Schlossberg

Stars:

 Robert De Niro, Dakota Fanning, Famke Janssen.

We studied these two films for our research because we thought they had good story lines and also fitted out genre; physiological thriller. I also really like the colour used on the lovely bones because it was really vivid and bright so I would like to use this when we film the first part of our two minute opening of our flashback of the two little girls in the park. To show equilibrium and then the next part will be darker and less vivid colour to show contrast to the first part. I also think it would be good then we edit the first bit edit more of the colour red into it to show slight danger.