Practice : Preliminary Final Video

Preliminary Video

Practice : Mise-en-scene final video

Practice : Mise en scene 2 minute final ideas

2 minute opening to a feature film, focused on Mise-en-scene (finalised ideas)

Final Idea
The final idea we settled on was of two boys, who had been murdered, stalking and watching a man as he leaves his workplace.

It would start out with the man working on his computer for a few seconds, and then getting up to leave. Before he does leave however, he picks up a newspaper quickly and we see the headline: "BOYS BUTCHERED". He throws the newspaper in the bin, and then leaves the office.

It cuts to him walking down a path, presumably to his house. However, as he walks past some trees, two boys, blood covered and muddy handed are seen peering through the trees. They're ghosts; but this is shown to the audience by having the boys doing something fairly loud and active, and the man pays no attention. It then ends with the man walking through a gate, and the boys have somehow appeared right behind him.
- noah



Final Characters and Casting
Our film will feature only three characters: two ghost boys and a man.

Man
Not much will be learnt about the man during the two minute opening. Just from his appearance, the audience can guess his age. He will be returning from an office - suggested to be his workplace - and the audience knows that he's in an office based occupation but it won't be hinted as to what exactly he does. The man has no dialogue and his performance will be very plain so no personality traits are suggested. The man will be played by our group member's dad, who looks the role as he is an appropriate age. Moreover, he can help the other cast members feel comfortable acting around him as he is related to them.

Children

The two people we decided to cast in the project was our group member's cousins, as they were the only people who could fit the age boundaries who were also willing to perform the role. They were brothers, so they suited the image of brothers that we had in our head when conceiving the plot, therefore they look similar and the concept of twin brothers has a more eerie appeal, as opposed to the comedic look to two very contrasting looking characters. Not much is revealed about the children's characters. It is suggested that they are ghosts because the man doesn't notice them despite them performing such loud and blatant activities. Moreover, they have a quite sinister appeal to them because they're constantly watching the man, which appears quite intimidating because they don't break their stare. At the the same time as giving off a scary aura, they also show that they're playful and cheeky - just like normal boys their age would be. This is because in some shots they're seen playfully wrestling each other. Moreover, it shows their cheeky disposition because of how close they come to the man, which is quite daring as well. This may suggest what they were like as characters before they died, as it doesn't fit with the intimidating vibe they eject when they keep themselves hidden while staring at the man. I wanted the occasionally effect it creates when they play together to show that there still is past characterisations in them despite being ghosts. There's a portion of their natures they had when they were alive ebbing through.

Final Location

The final location we chose was the office my dad has in our house, it said office but it didn't specify what type of office and since we couldn't get hold of an office in the city centre we chose to use the office in my house, but we wont make it obvious or known that it is a home office as the scene after is him walking through ketts park, on the path that leads from the estate to the business estate on his way home so it would make no sense having him walk from his house to his house, and wouldn't be what we were looking to achieve.


Prop List
Not many props are used; one we had to make is a newspaper cover. I took that task on, by taking a logo from "The Daily Bugle" from the Spider-Man movies (I thought it'd be a cool Easter egg), and constructing some fake headlines around it, including "Is Dat Boi REALLY Waddup?" and "Touis Lomlinson leaves 'Wrong Direction'" I then added in some random words to make it seem like there was a story on the front. - Noah


Costume

The final costume for the male lead would be basic office wear clothing, as it looks professional and therefore more believable that he has just come from work. As for the children's costumes, they will have blood and muddy hands - this messy appearance would make it look like they had been victims of a crime, and therefore was appropriate. On the other hand, we still wanted to maintain the innocence as they were very young, this was shown through their general attire. Wearing casual children's clothes makes them look their age and therefore channel innocence. It also suits the shots in which they are playing because there is still a side of human left to them and we didn't want to make them entirely intimidating.

Final Lighting plans
Our final lighting plans to meet the specification, is we're going to film the part with artificial lighting when its dark outside to the artificial light shows up even more, or just simply film with the lights on and to film the second half with him walking home outside to fulfil the natural lighting aspect.

Practice : Mise-en-scene planning

2 minute opening to a feature film, focused on Mise-en-scene

What was the task?
Our task was to create the opening two minutes of a feature film using 5 elements of mise-en-scene given to us, we had to select 5 post it notes and on each was a feature of mise-en-scene that we had to include at some point in our film.

Mise-en-Scène translates from French as 'putting on stage', and when referring to cinema, applies to everything in front of the camera and their arrangement - this includes props, lighting, actors, costume, location and set design. The incorporation of mise-en-scène helps create realism for the audience, and makes the footage believable. The elements can give context, for example they can imply where the film is set and during which era through costume etc. They can signify clear distinctions between things such as characters.

 What elements of mise-en-scene were we given? 

Well, there are the 5 elements of mise-en-scene in general, which are Props, Location, Cast, Costume and Lighting. Oh, and from some sources, they say Décor as well, but we probably paired that up with Props. The elements we got were:

 - Props - Newspaper

 - Location - Office

 - Lighting - Artificial and Natural

 - Costume - Muddy Hands

 - Cast - Two 7-11 year old boys

 We found that most of them were easy to deal with, except the Cast, since we couldn't think of anyone immediately. Eventually we did find a pair (My cousins).


 Initial Plot Ideas
Looking at the elements of mise-en-scène, we came up with different genres in order to create a plot, as the genre will effect the mood of the film and therefore will need an appropriate plot to suit the mood. Our first interpretation of the mise-en-scene elements we received was to create a light-hearted film, perhaps a coming-of-age romance or a generic romantic comedy.

Romantic Comedy
An idea we thought of was using the boys as minor characters in order to bring two characters together. For example, an adult male character asked the two boys for help in order to get a girls attention, and the boys would conceive a mischievous plan in order to do this. As all the elements fitted hand in hand quite well, it would have been easy to justify why they were included. For example, the boys were playing in the park, being overseen by the male character. The boys gained muddy hands by playing around in the dirt, which is an insignificant part to the film opening but can show that the characters are adventurous. The man spots the girl on the bench on her phone - thus including the artificial light of the phone - and asks the boys to help get her attention. They find a newspaper and make paper airplanes to throw at the girl in order to get her attention and everything propels from there. The office could be included at the beginning and depict the man coming from work to meet the boys. We decided this plot wouldn't work because it's too much like a short film as opposed to an opening sequence.

Family film
Two boys are waiting in their mum's office for her to finish work. They're obviously bored and their mum is paying no attention to them. They find a newspaper on her desk and begin to make paper airplanes with it and throw it at their mum, but they stop when she scolds them. They constantly try to get her attention but she doesn't give it to them. They take their mum's potted plant and wipe the soil all over her office without her noticing. We didn't like this idea as it wasn't exciting enough to be engaging for the audience.

Another idea we came up with was two boys getting scolded in the principal's office for making a mess (hence the muddy hands). This idea wasn't in depth enough and we decided it wasn't very original or exciting.

Horror 
The last idea we came up with was a man being in an office on his computer (artificial light), he then packs up to go home. Before he leaves the office, he picks up a newspaper that reads 'Two Boys Murdered' and throws it in the bin. The man goes to leave the office and tension begins to build before it become overwhelming with suspense due to tense music. At this point a man is going down the elevator, and the music cuts out when the music cuts out, making it anticlimactic. The elevator doors open revealing an empty corridor. The man leaves the building and when he gets outside he sees a child crying. The other child is then joined by his twin, who has a twisted smile on his face. The man asks if they're alright, but then he looks behind them (what's behind them isn't revealed) and looks frightened before starting to run away. The opening finishes with the man being dragged off. This idea was a little too chaotic - too much happened in the two minutes. However, we based our final idea on this.

We made a development to the previous concept: instead of the man being dragged off at the end, the children are instead introduced in the office. When the man goes to do things in his office, i.e. putting something away in a cupboard etc. the audience is made jump by the boys who appear suddenly behind him. The man doesn't see them, but he is clearly paranoid and can sense their presence, thus making it obvious to the audience that they are ghosts. This idea was a little too short and vague, the footage wouldn't have lasted 2 minutes.

Casting ideas?
For our cast we were given the must have of two 'seven to eleven year old boys', so there was no getting out of having them as our main cast. It was extremely difficult to think of someone around that age who would be willing to perform in it.

Our first idea to play one of the boys was Wendys friend's 13 year old brother, who aspires to be an actor. Even though he doesn't fit the age of a 7-11 year old, he looks and sounds very young so therefore could act as a younger child. Wendy questioned him if he was willing to be in it, and at first he was very eager. That was until she informed him that it is a horror and involves fake blood. He then refused as he is rather squeamish. He would have been an inconvenient choice anyway, as he lives 30 minutes away from where we would have filmed.


My first idea was to use my brother and his friends since they were 12/13 only just outside the age bracket but when I spoke to them I realised they look much older than they are. Therefore they wouldn't fit the age bracket.
My second idea was that the only boys around that age or similar looking to that age were my cousins, they were a convenient casting choice as the boys live in wymondham and my aunty trusts me to look after them, I text my aunty Emma to see whether they were able and willing to act for us, this is what she said. So they seem like the best option as they are both free that day and willing.

The other character we need, the man working in an office hasn't been decided yet, the two options we had were my dad, because then my aunty might feel a little more comfortable with an adult there, especially if we were planning on filming in the city centre. I asked him in person and he said he was more than willing to help, however I felt a little guilty as I asked him to act in the last opening 2 minutes we created. However if he decides he feels uncomfortable, Wendy's boyfriend said he was more than happy to help also.



Location Ideas/ Research

Thinking of a location to film the office scenes in proved quite difficult, as we had no clue as to where we would obtain an office from. We had to choose where to film, more specifically, we had to choose an office. Megan almost immediately mentioned how her dad worked in an office, and how she could check if her dad would let us into and film in the office(s). However, we did have to come up with a backup location in case we couldn't film in the first office proposal. We came up with filming in one of the offices in school, most likely on one of the days during October half term when no-one will be working in the offices. Wendy also had an idea of having an elevator scene in the opening, and we considered using the elevators in the Riverside car park. Image result for riverside multi storey car park Norwich. But we thought that it could be awkward filming, since other people are going to want to use the elevator, so we did also consider using the stairwell near them. In fact, the lighting and conditions of the stairwell is fairly creepy looking, so it'll fit the genre well.


Prop Research Ideas
The prop we required for the film opening was a newspaper. There were many ways this could have been featured, for example one of the characters could have been briefly reading it and it would be an insignificant feature in the film. We decided to use this prop as a plot device by hinting to the audience as to who the two boys featured are at the end - the ghosts of the newspaper featured characters (Two Boys Murdered). This would therefore give a subtle hint to the audience, as well as actually play a role in the film as opposed to being a pointless feature. In order to create this custom newspaper, we decided to design a front page cover to the newspaper and then fold the front cover over a genuine newspaper to add depth and make it realistic as a newspaper.

Costume Research Ideas 
Both of our ideas so far have been horror or thriller based so we were going to have the boys dressed in their usual clothes, but with some fake blood, we were also given the must have of muddy hands so they will have to feature somehow on the boy, also the fact our setting is an office means the man who is getting scared will most likely be in a suit or work attire.


 Lighting Research Ideas 

The lighting we got was a mixture of artificial and natural light. This meant we have to use bulbs and the sun/moon. We decided that the artificial lighting could be done with the office, since it will obviously have the lights in the ceiling. With the natural light, we thought that just filming "outside the office" settings would be good, since it'll be outside and either the sun will be out or the moon might be bright enough to give a unique looking light source. However, there could be an opportunity for both at the same time; if we film later on in the day, there will probably be light from the moon and from the street lights.


Filming plan/schedule?
We checked with the actors and each other to come to the decision of filming on Monday 24th October, as this is the most convenient time. This is because some people have to travel to Wymondham via public transport, and the weekday public transport is much more flexible. Everybody was available this day. We're filming during the afternoon so we have plenty of time before it gets too dark to achieve non-grainy, visible footage. Moreover, filming in the morning was too early for the group members who had to travel, as they'd have to get up unnecessarily early.

Coursework : Stop Motion

Stop Motion Animation

This week in Media we walked into class and found pots of materials and play dough, we were asked to create a scene or setting with the materials on a paper plate. I paired up with Daisy to create this scene












We were then asked to create a stop motion video, stop motion animation is the art and craft of taking a series of images and then splicing them together in a series. Think of it as flipping through a picture book.

Many films such as Wallace and Gromit use stop motion animation. The films use detailed storyboarding, set and plasticine models, the films are shot one frame at a time, moving the models of the characters slightly to give the impression of movement in the final film. The stop motion animation in Wallace and Gromit may duplicate frames if there is little motion, and in action scenes sometimes multiple exposures per frame are used to produce a faux motion blur. One second of film requires 24 separate frames, a short half-hour film like A Close Shave takes a great deal of time to animate. During making these films an average of 30 frames are taken per day, this means that just over one second of film is photographed for each day of production. The feature-length The Curse of the Were-Rabbit took 15 months to make. click here to watch Wallace and Gromit.

Some musicians are also a big fan of using stop motion animation for their music videos, one of my favourite music videos using stop motion animation is James - Moving On his use of stop motion animation is very effective in the style of the video.

Using this technique Daisy and I took around 200 photos to create our stop motion video

After looking at stop motion videos I have discovered that if I want to incorporate it into my coursework I would have to start around now as a few seconds of film took around 30 mins to create. It would be a lot of time consuming work.

:)

Practice : Final 2 minute opening based on characters

Character based opening 2 minute video

Practice : Character based Opening 2 Minutes to a film

2 minute Opening to a film Preparation

Our Second AS media task was to create and develop a character and use this character in a 2 minute film opening set in a given location. We had to create a plot, cast, film and edit this 2 minute opening. Both characters in the group we were given had to meet at some point during the opening and to spend at least 20 seconds in the location we were given.

Creating my character
In our lesson we were given an A4 sheet with pictures of people from the internet, our task was to choose one image and create a character and a backstory for that character. Here is a picture of the images we were provided :

From these images I chose the girl in the top right:

After choosing my person I was then told to brain storm ideas for who my character was, what she did, her friends, her lifestyle. To basically craft an entire character from this one image, this is what I came up with...

Characters group members created
Tasmine created a character and brainstormed the same way I did however she chose a different image therefore creating a completely different character to me, she used this image:

Creating this mind map of her ideas to what her character could be like etc:

Characters
The characters Tasmine and I created were...

Ellie (female)
The way I created Ellie was I thought of issues I am facing at the moment and people I know, Ellie is a good girl gone bad. She was brought up in a middle class suburban area. Her mum and dad have good paying well respected jobs, she works hard at school to get the grades she needs to get into a prestigious university. Despite having an amazing life full of opportunities ahead of her. She appears to be in with the wrong crowd, she wants to fit in with her friends and to do that she goes to parties, gets drunk, does drugs and one night she gets into a car with some drunk friends and towards the end of the evening they hit someone in a car and he dies. They try to hide the body. Her life goes downhill and shes stuck with this group of manipulating people getting her to do things like drug deals threatening to call the police on them if she doesn't, which is where we meet Tasmines character

55 year old man
The character Tasmine created was a sleazy 55 year old homeless man who is dating a young super model, he does drug deals to get his money. He had a wife and a family but he's now divorced and very rich, he often cheats on his now girlfriend the same way he did his wife, he has two kids that he doesn't talk to. They have completely disowned him. He used to manage a top bank in London. he wants the best for his kids and secretly buys them gifts



Group Brainstorming

 In our groups, we were given a location in which our 2 minute opening had to be situated. We got 'farmyard' . We then had to come up with a scenario in which these characters would meet. It also had to be engaging.

We did a lot of planning for this, we mind mapped ideas, one of our ideas we mind mapped we eventually decided not to do because it would take up longer than 2 minutes and would be too hard to film in the end. The area was too difficult and we could not get someone to drive us there during the week as parents were working so we created a new story line with a location just outside Aidens house, We decided that he would be her dealer, or something of a more suspicious nature. Aiden joined us half way through our project as he moved classes and proved extremely helpful.

We came up with some other concepts such as her being another fling but we decided that was not in the character (Ellie's) nature. We also thought maybe we could film flashbacks from her hitting someone with a car but in the end we thought we would start the film half way through to engage the audience so they had to concentrate.

Here are some of the notes we made in class as a group:

Location
We decided to film in a farm in watton outside one of our group mates village. We did this because it was convenient and exactly what we were looking for.


Casting
Casting the roles proved rather difficult, as we had to find actors who were free on the evening we needed them and who were actually willing to act for us. On top of that we had to find people who looked similar to the images of the people we based our characters on. We had to find a female actress, fairly young with blonde hair and fair skin. Luckily one of my friends who goes to the same 6th form as me fit the required description, she was willing to act for us so that was one of our characters cast in the early stages of this project. This is the actress chosen:

I chose her because she is an incredibly talented actress for her age and takes drama at school and keen to be part of the production, she fit the wide eyed and scared criteria I needed for my character.

The man was the hardest to cast as we actually had to find a middle aged man who was willing to film as part of our production, who was free in the evening and didn't mind acting with someone younger than him. Again luckily my dad volunteered to help us, he didn't fit the description but he was an excellent and helpful choice, it saved me having to do actor hunting across Wymondham and surrounding areas.

Props

Props we might need include :

- A brown parcel ( being handed from the man to the girl ) probably around medium size, easy to stuff in the bag

- A necklace ( something for her to fiddle with so we can tell she is anxious )

- A bag or small rucksack

Plot

We have finally decided on a definite plot line for our opening, for a few weeks we had been playing with different ideas but today we have decided on one.

The start of our opening is our female character walking down a long wooded path, a tunnel of trees. She looks bedraggled, messy hair, very anxious. She is playing with a necklace and looks very uneasy, she has a rucksack on. She reaches the end of the path and turns into the farm, she looks around, we don't know what or who she is searching for until a man, dressed in mismatching clothes walks out with a parcel in hand. He hands her the parcel and she shakes his hand. Then she stuffs the parcel into her rucksack and as she is walking away someone walks round the corner and catches them in the 'deal'.

Filming schedule

We are filming after school on Thursday 22nd of September, we're getting the bus afterschool to the location near Aiden's house and hopefully completing all the filming on one day, if not we can go back on Saturday as everyone is free.

Practice : Prelimary Exercise

Hello again,

Last Friday our group (Me, Jack and Tasmine) completed our Preliminary exercise. This was a continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and siting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. Within this task we had to demonstrate a match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

What is the 180 degree rule?
The 180 degree rule is a shot based against a wall or in such a frame that you cant film a 360 degree angle around the characters. Imagine you’re looking the a scene from the side. You can see the whole scene, in context of  our task you couldn't see past the divider. You need to imagine a line between the two characters. This is called the axis of action. Then we need to keep the camera on one side of that line. If you break the rule you have ‘crossed the line‘. This is called the 180 degree rule because the camera can’t move more than 180 degrees (half a circle) around the characters.

What is match-on-action?
Match on action shots are when the camera follows a character directly or when a character is moving. Action is continuous despite the cut in shots.

What is shot/reverse shot?
Shot reverse shot is when you shoot first in one direction, then in the other direction.
The shots work together because the camera is still (just) on the same side of the characters as it was in the long shot. When the shots are edited together, we understand that they are looking at each other, because they are looking in the same direction as they were in Shot 1.

How did it go?
I thought ours went okay, we had a relatable and easy scripted plot. We wrote about something we all know which was joining a new 6th form and the stresses that come with that. We casted two of our friends who had free periods at the same time as our lesson so they didn't miss out on their lessons. For our location we chose the café as a friendly meeting point between the two characters. The equipment such as camera, SD card and tripod were easy enough to use and didn't cause any problems. Jack was the camera guy and Tasmine and I helped align shots. I edited using premier pro as I knew how to use the program.

Setting up the blog went smooth as well since I already had a Gmail account so it was a simple set up.

What would you change/do better if you had the chance to do the task again?
If I had the chance to do the task again I wouldn't use the café as my set up since we couldn't hear the actors and was a lot of background noise, customers were also an issue as some shots had some customers in and others didn't. I would also have cast a different female acting as she was not very loud or into the part.

Talk soon
Megan