Editing Our Opening

This week we were able to start to to edit our film opening. before we were even able to begin editing our group had another problem. Our laptop. this problem was that when we were uploading our film to pinnacle studios the frames kept dropping this meaning as we watched each take it was go in double time like it was in fast forward mode. we tried to re upload it but we then finally decided that after waisting this import time it was better to give up and switch laptops. we decided as we were desperatly running out of time we should split up. this worked by me and charlotte looking at the background music to go into the film opening and deciding what we should use. while Amy and Chloe re uploaded the film opening.
While they did this me and charlotte went onto a non copywrited website to choose the music we wanted to use for the film opening. we found 5 ones that we liked we then let amy and chloe listen to them and as a group finally decided that "Mystery Killer" fitted our film opening the most so we put it onto the memory stick to upload later. the good thing was that while we had done this amy and chloe had managed to upload the opening to pinnacle which came with yet another problem that our clips had all merged together it was still okay but it meant that to edit our film opening it just took a bit more time than planned. another thing, due to our laptop not working we lost the scenes from our first filming session, this meant that we had to use the only scenes from our second attempt at filming. we managed to film the shots in order so this helped us alot as we were able to put transitions in between the takes. one of the main editing parts we had to was to slow down the zoom on the clock. we did this by making the timing of this shot longer which made it slower. finally our editing had all paid off as we had managed to finish our film opening. but once again we had one final problem which came when we had changed our film into a M.peg our own logo we had created made it not work as a M.peg we had to then remove it for it to play.

Film Certificate And Target Audience

An important part of our film opening was choosing a film certificate and a target audience. As a group the four of us decided the certificate 15 was suitable. we choose this as we believed certifcate 12 would be too young and it would not be as intense and scary for a certificate 18 also that if we were to create the whole film, the story line and scenes would match up to a certificate 15 another main reason for choosing certificate 15 was from doing research by watching other certificate 15 movies these also show the similar conventions as ours we decided this would be suitable. For our target audience we decided it would suit teen aged girls to young women as our film opening has the stereotypical boy stalks girl relationship - the vitcim stalker relationship also.
The other main reason we choose this certificate and age bracket. this reason being the costumes our characters wore. these costumes show the age bracket because the fashion of the two characters. also because the characters also have the same age bracket of the certificate.

Re Filming...

We Refilmed our Film opening on Thursday 26th November, this time from learning from our mistakes it went a lot better then the last time. we were able to re shoot shots from different angles such as the first shot we see of our stalker. we changed it from an over the shoulder shot to a shot that goes up from the floor so we see the shot of his whole body, then over the shoulder to reveal the photos of Elizabeth that he is looking at. We still did not have any problems filming as we had learnt from our mistakes,if anything our filming was quicker and a lot easier from our experience. we managed to include extra shots that we could not include the first time around. I hope that we have everything we need for our editing.

Filming So Far

After our problems we began filming on Thursday 19th November and we managed to film everything we needed we included the shots that we needed and it did not take as much time that we thought it could of taken. We soon realised that we had a few problems when it came to the following mondays lesson that from rewinding our film during filming to see what we had recoreded so far. we saw that some of our film had been wiped away , these being some of our most important shots that we needed. Also from looking at what we had achieved we saw that some of our filming did not include all the camera angles and shots that we had hoped for these being extreme close ups, tilted camera shots for example . so we learnt that we should re film the whole film again so that we had the shots we have already and also the shots that would have been improved. Also from looking at our thriller film opening, we saw that it was not as thriller like as we hoped. it looked a bit more romantic. So we discussed it and decided that we needed to add the camera shots that we had missed out and we choose to add an extra part where the stalker (Edward) would look at the clock so that he can then look at elizabeth out of the window, this showing that he knows the exact time she was going home. As a group we also decided to change our lighting effects so that the photographs of elizabeth, were more light and you are able to see them clearer. we hope that our next filming session goes how we hoped.

Font Types And Logo

For the research part of our thriller opening we have been looking at different font for film titles and as a group we have been researching different ones, so each member of my group will have different initial ideas for the font, i like these as they resemble thriller film openings as each one fo them being unique. they also reminded us of thriller film titles so we believed these were a good choice.

This is the logo we had desgined for our made up production for our opening we called it dead tree productions and we hope our logo represents this.

Problems So Far

So far during our thriller opening, we have expirenced problems such as the first filming date we had arranged.
We had arranged to meet on Saturday 14th November to film our opening. so we booked the camera and tripod for this date. on the friday we picked up the camera and the tripod but there was some mix up with collecting the tape as we believed someone had already picked it up so no one in our group had the tape
So on the Saturday we tried to see if we could find anyone with a tape but we were unable to. so the next lesson we arranged that Thursday 19th November we are to start filming then on that date. though this mis hap we have had to become extra organised with who has what and what we need for filming.
Also due to problems we have had to switch actors and we are now using a boy from our class instead of the original so we are now able to go home thursday lunch and film from lucnh and our two media lessons. this will now help us get it done sooner then later as it is easier to contact and sort out future filming dates if needed.
From these problems we have now sorted out who is in control of the camera at all times and who is in control of the tape at all times. we have also gone over who is bringing which props to my house to film. hopefully it will be successful as we are able to learn from our mistakes.

Before Filming.

Here are 2 of the imagesd that are on the shrine of elizabeth. chloe who is Elizabeth will be zoomed into on the jump shots where as me and charlotte will be scribbled out and crossed through so you can not see us this adds to the stalker effect. which adds more atmosphere

Before we began filming our thriller opening we had to think about and sort out our costume ideas for our actors. We found images on the internet of how we want our actor to dress and the setting is dark and eary we decided that black or grey would be best for him to wear as it would fit in with the setting. chhloe the girl who plays elizabeth will be wearing typical teenage fashionable clothes in the film opening there are alsoimages of her on the shrine so the girls clothing are of clothes that chloe/elizabeth would would need to be the same fashion the whole way through the film.

Anamatic Story Board

Animatics

To help us with our film opening, we have used animatics to allow us to have a visual view of what our film opening should include. An animatic is a short story board drawn up and film using the right amount of time allowed on each scene so that we are able to make sure we do not go over the time limit in our real thing.

In my group we found this particulary easy, we were able to share the roles out evenly so everyone was able to draw some of the scenes. We then filmed this where we tried to use the angles we wanted to show in the real film piece allowng the times to be how we wanted them as well. We then had to upload these onto the computer for editing where we added in the film titles. We cut the scenes down and made sure the titles flowed nicely through the scenes and made sure our filming was two minutes or under. Which is was dead on 2 minutes.

After we had edited this we then created our own music piece to demonstrate how we would like it to be in the real thing. We were all very pleased with what we had created that we might use it in our final piece.
I think that this has helped a lot as now i am more aware of what our opening has to include and i feel it will help my group out more in the long run.

Kiss the girls

ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NREdDGhQSs


I have chosen the opening to kiss the girls i cannot find an opening to it on youtube but there is the trailer.
I chose Kiss The Girls as it has the same conventions as the film opening that my group are hoping to make. As does ours the credit flash breifly on the screen and we are shown images of the girls. It also has eary music which we would also like to have. Also the camera movements put you on edge, as it is always moving around. The room is also dark and adds mystery which we would also like to have. I think that this a good example of a film opening that shows simular film conventions.

Institutions

i have learnt that institutions are companies that own many different companies they set the rules for their companies where as a journalist would share the same set of values as its newspaper. I have also learnt that as the global pattern of ownerships change so does the concept of institution as the new owner may have different values to the past.

the worlds biggest comglomerate is Walt disney, Disney owns the most companies in the world the list is endless but some of them are Miramax films, The discovery Channel, ABC, ESPN, History channel touchstone pictures Disney interactive Studios, Hollywood Records Radio and also 25% of GMTV. As Disney is seen as a family show, it prefers not to let the audiences of some of its shows know they own it as people may not watch because of disneys family values. Also as Walt Disney stands for family values many of its products must reflect this.

Film Opening.

A good film opening mainly has one purpose and that is to establish the visual style of the film and also introducing the viewer to some if not the main character or characters in a film. it should also introduce a location, this will also show the viewer the key parts of information the viewer needs. Another key feature to get across is part of the plot to the story by doing this in the beginning it is a sure way of getting the viewer more interested in the film. an opening has to also show the genre and the theme of the film.

The opening scene in "13 going on 30" was released in 2004, it is a chick flick, about a un happy un popular 13 year old who wishes to be 30. to skip her teenage years. as she believes being 30 means she is going to be happier and lifes better.

the film starts with non digetic music which is happy upbeat music that shows this is a happy and not horror film, there hare no images of anyone in the scene to start with but a blue sky with clouds appear, the film titles and names of the stars such as Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo appear in pink writing with glitter over them , this then shows the viewer that this film appeals to girls more then boys.

The blue sky then fades to a background of a school photoshoot and of a young girl being pushed into her shoot, showing she is pushed around. she is having her school photo taken. this is a mid shot. The young girls clothing is not a style we see in today so from this you are able to see that this scene is from a long while ago which therefore represents the time period that the scene is set in. as the first shot of the girl is a mid shot and just of her you are able to see that she is the main character in the film.

The first spoken dialoge in this opening scene is of the photographer getting her name wrong and ignoring her when she corrects him. from this you are able to see she is not happy as he gets her name incorrect again showing she is ignored. her photo is then taken. at this time there is a snapshot freeze frame and the title of the film is introduced.

this short opening to the film allows the viewer to see part of how the girl is feeling and therefore why she wishes she was 30. from this you are able to have the main character introduced, part of the location this being the school which shows she is un happy as she is pushed around.

Preliminary Task

For our preliminary task we had to create a short film consisting of a character opening a door and goes into the room for a short conversation with another character. having a match on action shot, short reverse shot and would also have to follow the 180 degree rule.

we began our task by creating a story board showing each shot and the speech that is spoken also what shot that will be used. on our story board we decided that our short film would consist of amy being a bully and storming into the toilets and asking me the victom for the money i owed her.

we shot the film with out any problems as we found it easy to shoot. we had to film our shot reverse shot twice to get each characters perspective of the shot as if their eyes were the camera. doing this we had to make sure we didn't move so it would look continous. another thing we had to look for was that we followed the 180 degree rule by having the same right-left relationship with each other.

once we had finished we had to upload our film to the computer we then had problems with this because our laptop would not find our film when we connected it. this took up a lot of our time as we had to check each component to see what was wrong. in the end once we had found out it was the laptop. we then switched laptops then our work was uploaded. we then watched it and looked to see what needed to be edited.

we began by cutting sections to make our scenes shorter therefore to flow more continously. by cutting our scenes we had match on action shot at the end when amy walked out of the toilets, we cut out and edited our shot reverse shot scenes to create our shot reverse shot which also flowed continuously. we also managed to follow the 180 degree rule.

we had two problems with our editing one being that we had a shot of me looking in the mirror as amy walks in you can see that i turn my head to her. but then it quickly changes to me facing in a different direction, a continuety error. to try and solve this we added a faded transition to make the change less obvious. but we know for next time not to make the mistake.

our second mistake was that we had a shot of me crying in the toilet with no sound. then a shot of me crying in the toilet with amy shouting. this did not flow continuously. as i had moved into a different position. we then had to change this by zooming into the image so you would not be able to tell. after editing we then had to record our directors commentary and add onto the film. we had to do this by cutting parts of the commentary and inserting into the parts that are relevent.

through doing the preliminary task i now know what i will have to do for my coursework, this has allowed me to realise what tools and programmes i will have to use and also how i have been able to practise using them. through our mistakes i am also now more aware of what mistakes i cant make in my coursework.