Preliminary Task

In our opening scene for the preliminary task we used a few techniques to make it as good as possible. The main and probably most noticeable one being when an object is passed between the two characters, in this case it is a I.D card. There is also a close up of the object which makes it seem important as there is a shot only concentrated on the card. The passing was created using a match on action shot which is an editing technique that shows an action happening in two or more shots. This type of shot helps to keep continuity in the scene as the same action is still happening but just from a different angle.

During the same part of the scene there is another technique used which is an eye line match and it shows the two character looking at each other through an over the shoulder shot, which showed Amy and then it followed by a close up of Ryan which indicates that that is where Amy was looking. This technique helps the audience understand everything in the scene.

Another technique we followed was the 180 degree rule which is probably the most well-known rule in the movie world as it is very important as it keeps the continuity and if it wasn't followed then it could cause confusion for the audience. The technique is when you can only stay on one side of the characters or 180 degrees so that it doesn't look as if the characters keep swapping sides. So in our opening scene the camera stayed on the right side of Ryan so that he was always on the left, whilst the two characters were talking.

We had to create a storyboard during our planning so that it would be easier to record as we would know what we are doing however our planning was not as detailed as it could have been and it caused our recording time to take a bit more than it would've if our planning had been more thorough. However even with this the recordings still went very smoothly I think that that is clear in the actual opening scene as we managed to get a wide range of different shots incorporated into it. Also during editing only one member did the majority of it as they were most experienced with the software used, however that did give the rest of the group a chance to learn how to use it and all about the different things you can do on it. But if we could do this task again then I would like to have been a bit more hands on when it came to the editing rather than mostly just learning from watching, also I would've liked to have made the storyboard more detailed.



Opening Scene Script (First Draft)

Time's Up script

FADE IN

INT. HARRIET'S HOUSE - HARRIET'S BEDROOM - EARLY MORNING

Harriet lays in her bed, she is waking up. She is wearing her pyjamas. She's sixteen. She shuffles around in bed a little and out of bed now and opens her eyes slightly and rubs them.

She sits up. She goes to get out of bed and puts her slippers on.

INT. HARRIET'S LANDING

Harriet walks to the bathroom and closes the door.

CUTS TO WHEN SHE IS READY AND DRESSED.

Harriet opens the door and walks out.

INT. HARRIET'S STAIRS

Harriet walks down the stairs, looks at herself in the mirror. She grabs her diary and walks out the door.

(CREDITS PLAY OVER THIS SCENE)

EXT. OUTSIDE CAFE

Harriet walks into the café. She looks nervous.

INT. INSIDE THE CAFE

Harriet buys a coffee from the waiter behind the till.

Harriet - Can I have a coffee please?

Waiter - Yeah, sure. What kind would you like?

Harriet - Just black please.

Waiter makes the coffee and hands it to Harriet

Waiter - There ya go

Harriet - Thanks.

Harriet walks to a spare table.


[V.O] - Harriet writing in her diary

Harriet - Today's the day. I can't believe how fast the time's gone. I can't even describe the nerves I'm feeling right now. What if I'm not what they expect? I really hope I'm right, I really hope she's a girl. This is all I've been thinking of for the past couple months. She's all I've thought about. This timer...it's felt like a slow-ticking bomb, ready to go off in my face...

Harriet looks around and looks back down again. The waiter walks over to Harriet.


Waiter - Can I get you anything else?

Harriet - Umm, no thank you.

Waiter looks at timer on Harriet's wrist.


Waiter - Ooooh, not long now. You excited?

Harriet - More nervous than anything really.

Waiter - You'll be fine. I was the same when my timer was close to finishing but it was all fine in the end. I'll leave you now dear. Good luck!

Waiter walks away. Harriet looks back down at her timer and sees it's only 10 seconds.


[V.O] - Harriet's thoughts


Oh my god, it's happening. Just breathe. Breathe


Harriet looks around the room nervously. She flicks her eyes to the door and sees a young girl wearing light coloured clothing and makeup on her face. Their eyes meet across the room. Harriet gasps.


SCREEN CUTS TO TITLE (TIME'S UP)

Analysis of BFI data

This table shows every genres number of releases, the percentage of all releases, cross box office (£million), the percentage of total box office and the performing title. The main conclusion we can get from the table is that the comedy genre was the most popular in terms of the number of releases in 2013 (in the UK and Republic of Ireland) with 153 but only produced 158.2 million. Whereas animation only released 33 that year and managed to make 246.6 million,  the top performing title being 'Despicable Me 2'. This shows that the animation genre is actually more popular even though less of the films were created.
This is also shown in the horror and thriller genre where 64 thrillers were made with a profit of 29.1 million and horror made 37 and 57.5 million was made, which shows how horror is more profitable.

The second table is showing each genres, number of releases in 2014, the avaerage number of sites at widest point of release (so at how many different places it was shown) and at the gross box office(£ million).  It also shows the total of all of these, with there being 698 movies released and a profit of 1,153.7 million. Concluding from the table the comedy genre had the most releases in 2013 with 153 and was shown in 102 different sites and made a profit of 158.2 million, however this table shows how the number of releases does not mean it will shown in the most places or that it will be the most profitable as, again, animation only released 33 movies that year and earned 246.6 million and was shown in 273 different places. However Sci-fi was the genre that was shown in the most places with 422 even though only 9 western movies were released that year with a profit of 87.4 million. 

 This table is representing the performance of each genre in 2013. The most successful money wise being animation with a total of 246.6 million  out the 1.153.7 million made that year and had 27,383 averaged box office per site  and a total of 9,004 sites, however animation did not have to highest numbers when it came to their average box office per site, that was the adventure genre which only beat them by just under 1.5 thousand although it only had 2,004 sites.

For thriller and horror it shows how horror did better even though it has less total sites than thriller, by 300

Table 4.4 represents UK films released in the UK and Republic of Ireland in 2013. It shows how each genre did in the number of releases it had, the percentage of the releases, the gross box office (£ million), the percentage of total box office and the performing title. It shows how action was the most popular genre of 2013 of UK films with Fast & Furious 6 being the most successful and earning 39% of the genres total of 64.1 million. The worst UK genre based film was Drama which only earned 1.3 million (only 0.5% of the total box office makings.)

Thriller and horror shows again how horror did better even though thriller released 10 more movies that year but only got 4.1 million compared to horrors 14.8 with the most popular horror movie being 'World War Z'.

Table 4.5 is showing the UK independent film genres released in the UK and Republic of Ireland and how well they did in the box office compared to how many releases they had in 2013. The table shows how documentary's was the biggest UK genre release with 31 films where as the adventure genre only had 1. However documentary's was not the best performing genre as comedy ended up earning the most money even with it only releasing 24 movies or even Biopic which had only 6 releases in 2013 and managed to earn almost 22 million, only 6.2 million under comedy which released 4 times the amount of movies.

With the thriller and horror genres we can see that horror had 6 releases and earnt 0.2 million whereas thiller released 14 and got a total of 2.1 million.

Figure 4.1 shows how many of each genre was released in three different categories, all films, UK films and UK independent films and how all these did when it comes the the proportion of box office. It shows how UK independent films got quite a big percentage of the box office with comedy films getting 28.1% of all UK independent films, where as only 14.8 of all UK films. An even bigger is shown with the Biopic genre where the independent films had 21.9% of all the independent films percentage of box office, however UK films only got 6.6% and all films had 3.5%.

Figure 4.2 is showing the proportion of releases by genres of three different categories, again, all films, UK films and independent UK films. So it shows how the adventure genre had very little releases in all of the categories with only 0.8% UK independent films being adventure. Whereas documentary is 25.2% of all documentary releases

Mr Judge Feedback

Medal: Well done Ella for completing the following tasks you have done so far.  Good work on Film noir and opening conventions etc concept and getting some tasks finished to a decent standard    

Mission: What we now need is to see is your evidence for designing and creating studio logo's and your understanding of the correct conventional title orders as studied in class. Some images are also required to enhance the look and design your blog. 

We are still also missing the opening of Seven analysis, the opening of a horror analysis and the evaluation of the preliminary task. Things tasks are an absolute must in order to get a good grade for coursework.

Please provide feedback, in the form of a new post, how and when you hope to achieve the tasks. 

Time's Up prouduction schedule

2nd December
Vicky and I will to start to plan everything for our opening scene, from the different shots to the music we will use. To help us with the codes and conventions of romance films we will look at other examples of this genre, also films that include the representations that we are going to include in the scene, sexuality and age.
Next we will consider the main characters and who is going to portray them,  Also we will need to decide on how we can create and enigma that matches our storyline, so the audience will want to keep on watching.


9th December
Vicky and I are planning on beginning the storyboarding of the opening scene, we will do this so that when we start recording the production of the scene will be a lot smoother and easier when we come to do it.
In the lesson we were taught on how to create opening credits so that we can use that when we need to do it for the actual thing.


18th December
This is the first day me and Vicky are hoping to record, we will borrow the equipment needed from the school. The filming will be at Amy's (Louise's) house as this is what we are using as Harriet's house, and also the café. We are hoping to get at least all of the shots of Harriet waking up and leaving the house to go to the café. Due to our planning of the storyboard we know the range of shots we will need to get, including a tracking shot, close-ups, POV and medium shots.
If we do not finish this we will have to organise another to finish, in case of people being unavailable etc.


8th January
This is when we hope to finish the recording of everything as we plan to do the final recording of Harriet's voiceovers as she is writing in the diary. After this we plan on being able to just edit it all.

Analysis of 'The Maltese Falcon' opening scene

This movie's opening scene manages to grab the audience's interest through the different techniques, codes and conventions of the film noir genre throughout it.

 

The first noticeable technique is probably how the movie starts with the opening credits where there is music playing during it which is non-diegetic, the music has an intense feel to it as it uses quite loud instruments such as violins and trumpets. The choice of these instruments helps to build an idea for the audience of the storyline of the movie as it is common for these types of instruments to be used in creating the intensity due to the fact that the instruments can sound so strong and confident, which could be representing the main characters personality towards his job. However the music is quite lively and the detective is known to be quite calm and collected.

 

Another technique used is the range of shots, the first main one would be the establishing shot which gives the audience an aerial view of San Francisco, this helps to give the audience an insight of where the story is set. We know it is San Francisco because it actually says this on the screen in text over the establishing shot and is multiple times during the scene. It may have been pointed out so blatantly because San Francisco is/was known to have a quite a high crime count so may foreshadowing the drama that will happen throughout the film, it has been used in many different film noirs and has become a stereotypical location for these films to set in. Also during these establishing shots the view is shown to be moving from right to left or zooming out in order to give the audience a better views of the city, as well it gives them an idea of how big the location that the film is set in is. During the scene there is a lady that is telling her distressing story to the detective, we get to see all of her emotions due to the close ups of the woman's face, it helps the audience to understand that she is in need of help. There is then a shot of a window that has writing on it, which reads 'Arthur and Spade', which we presume to be the companies name in which he is4being shot up right at the two characters, this time we are viewing it as a shadow which could be representing the mystery of the film because shadows sometimes cover up things that would otherwise have been seen. Another thing is that when we first see the writing on the window of the two names it is backwards so is harder to read but when we next see it as a shadow it is the correct way round, perhaps this could be trying to foreshadow how something may be distorted when you first view it but when you look around you can find the true meaning (the femme fatale).

 

Class is shown quite a bit throughout the opening scene which helps to give the audience a further understanding to how the characters may act and behave during the film (e.g. the upper class are known to be more snobby and uptight than the other classes) In this movie’s opening scene it shows a lady wearing a very expensive and posh looking dress with an eye catching hat with a fur shawl, this all suggest that she is in the upper class because during the years that this movie was set this was the best fashion out there and would have been very expensive and hard to get, the idea that she is of upper class is supported a little later on in the scene as she has to pay the men for their services and asks if what she has given the man is enough, which indicates that she is willing to pay more because she can. The men could've also been viewed as high class as well, again, due to the clothes they are wearing which is very neat looking suits with no creases, which gives the impression that they care a lot about their appearance. Similarly their hairstyles contribute to this because it is very neat and there's not a hair out of place which suggests their very well put together, perhaps this is because they have the money for it. The men were also seen smoking cigars which could indicate their class as they would've been expensive in the years the movie was set during.

 

In film noirs they are the stereotypical characters that are used a lot in all of the movies and in 'The Maltese Falcon' those stereotypical characters have been indicated straight away to which character play which role in the movie. First off there is the 'Damsel in Distress' who may turn out to be the femme fatale who will hurt out main character in whatever ways possible in order to get what she wants, this is known as the spider and the fly storyline which is a very stereotypical narrative for film noirs. The femme fatale will trick the main character by acting all sweet and innocent to begin with (which we observe in the opening scene) in order to get the males to fall for her so it will be easier to manipulate them and acting like she needs to be saved may help her do this as the men will feel masculine if they help the damsel to feel safe. In the scene the lady also did not make much eye contact with the detective perhaps as to seem as if she felt a bit intimidated by him because of the power he had in the position of work he has. This is can be supported with the way the women is speaking, she is talking rather fast as if she wants to finish as soon as possible, and again this may be down to nerves or intimidation. Furthermore when the second man, Miles, enters the office we can see the woman shuffling nervously in her chair, again, suggesting that the men have some kind of dominance over her. The men in the opening scene seem to contrast the upper-class lady's feelings as she was very nervous with very rigid body language whereas the detectives postures couldn't be anymore more relaxed or slouched, this could be due to the stereotypical male characters which are always calm and collected with very little emotions because they need to stay strong for their work. They are leaning all across their desks and as well as leaning back in the chair whilst the lady is the complete opposite. A female secretary was introduced early on in the scene and was called 'sweetheart' and 'darling' which shows how woman were portrayed in movies in those years, only in the movie for sexual reasons. The private detective also repeats what he says to his secretary, which suggests that he thinks of her as a bit thick and wouldn't understand him the first time.

Model of Genre Development - Metz Theory

Christian Metz explored the development of Genre film in his book 'Language and Cinema' (1974) and came up with his own theory that genres pass through four phases of development.

1) The experimental - The Cabinet of Dr Calgari (1919)

2) The classic - Dracula (1931)

3) The parody - Scary Movie (1998)
4) The deconstruction - The Blair Witch Project (1998)


The Experimental Phase
This is the first phase of Christian Metz's theory, it suggests that the first few years of a genre are just an experimental stage where the movies are played around with trying to find out which story lines will attract the audiences, which codes and conventions work in the genre that they trying to create. This whole process is what helped to shape how the genre came to be.


The Classic Phase
The second section to Metz's theory, it is when the genre has really been defined and the codes and conventions have been set and will be followed by other movie makers so that their film goes into that specific genre
The third section to Metz's theory is the parody stage, this became popular during the 90's and it gave the usually tense scenes of the horror genres a more comedic side. It mocks the stereotypical codes and conventions of the genre, such as when the main character goes to look at what the loud noise was.
The final phases of Metz's theory is called the deconstruction and it consists of copying the main codes and conventions of the genre but modernising them.

Stereotypical Representation of Thriller/Horror

The Thriller and Horror genres have very similar stereotypical representations that have been carried on for many years, the most well known ones for gender and ethnicity are:


Cultural Bias - All over Hollywood the leading character has always been a white male character with the side-kick or the minor roles being played by a black, ethic and minority actors, however this very old tradition has started to be broken over the years with actors of other races as appose to just white have started to play the lead. Specifically in the horror and thriller role it has always been known to have a white male protagonist as the main role.


Gender Bias - In the thriller genre females have always played the 'damsel in distress' roles and the main hero male character will be the one to save her. Or if not that then she will be the femme fatale who's role is to seduce the main male character in order to get him to help her gets what she wants. The female characters are never the main characters who saves the day.


Heterosexual Bias - Also having a homosexual/lesbian main character is very rare in any genre, only recently has any kind of homosexual/lesbian relationship been introduced in movies to be a side story let alone the main couple. This may be because in thriller/horror the main character is usually one to have a lot of power or in an important job so them being openly gay may make them seem less manly.


Examples of all three of these together is Dracula, a white male who bites the necks of women  (most commonly) and in some instances can control people, so shows that he has a lot of power.

MR JUDGE FEEDBACK

This is in addition to the previous feedback which hasn't been attended to:

1.   TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF THE OPENING OF SE7EN WITH IMAGES AND VIDEO EMBED FOR SE7EN

2.   CHRISTIAN METZ MODELS OF GENRE DEVELOPMENT – HORROR (12D ONLY) + IMAGES

3.   FILM NOIR & HISTORY OF GENRE (HSR) + IMAGES/VIDEO EMBEDS

4.   STEREORTYPICAL REPRESENTATIONS OF THRILLER/HORROR GENRES/CHARACTERS

5.   TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF OPENING OF A HORROR FILM – WOMEN IN BLACK/SCREAM etc.

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Analysis of the Spectre trailer

The trailer for 007 Spectre movie had a lot of different techniques used within it to create its attention-grabbing and suspenseful atmosphere.

An example of one of the techniques is the many different shot types. The trailer opens with an establishing shot to set the scene (Mexico City) they have used this particular shot in the scene the people in it can be seen celebrating ‘The Day of the Dead’, which, with just the name of the day, could be interpreted as foreshadowing all the action and death to come in the movie.

The next gripping part of the trailer is when we have a two shot of a man wearing a mask, accompanied by a lady, this quickly transitions into a fast pasted fade out which then reveals the next shot to be a close up of just the masked man. This draws our attention to the man making it clear that he will have some sort of importance to the film. The mask he is wearing is of a skull which could be viewed as, again, foreshadowing his role in the movie (e.g. murderer). However not knowing exactly who he is behind that mask creates mystery and more tension. Additional uncertainty is added due to the non-diegetic sound added in, the noises are very loud compared to the music and speech already in the trailer which could be in an attempt to convey that the character will have a big impact in the film. Also the noise is very fast paced and snappy, just like the transitions.

Pyrotechnics are next used in the trailer to create the feeling of action and danger. This specific one was of a building being blown up by Bond. This technique could’ve been used to grab a certain type of audience to watch the film, boys, as they are stereotypically more attracted to dangerous and action packed films.

There is a subjective point of view shot used when Bond is talking to a lady. A diegetic sound of the Bond theme is being played at this moment which could be showing that she will be one of the Bond girls in the movie, as it this is a reoccurring theme in the Bond films.

Another part to draw in a certain audience could be the car scene where two characters seem to be having a race in their cars with the diegetic sounds of the engines, so again could be interpreted as trying to draw in the male viewers as that is what they are commonly known to like. To help add the action of the race the cars are being tracked horizontally by the cameras to show more of the race and perhaps to make it seem as if the audience were actually there watching race instead of just keeping the camera in one set position, it gives the feel as if somebody were turning their head to watch it.

There is an extreme close up of a ring with a symbol on it, this certain shot is emphasising the importance of the symbol because of how close it is. This creates uncertainty and tension for the audience because they know that ring must have some importance but not what that is.

There is a part of the trailer where the has just been a fight section and then the non-diegetic music suddenly stops, this creates tension for the audience because the scene has also just faded out, leaving a blank screen this may leave the viewers thinking the trailer has finished for just a second, leaving them wanting more.

There is a handheld shot of a wall that has names on, the one that stands out it James Bonds’ which is in a red, this could be representing blood and all the death that will come in the movie. The handheld shot may have been used in a subjective point of view to show Bonds’ nerves as the camera shakes a little because he was seen in the shot before looking at the writing.

There is a part of dialogue used to create tension which was the rhetorical question ‘What took you so long?’ this makes it seem as if the person asking the question has planned for Bond to be there and that Bond is now in trouble because he has fallen into their plan and is now trapped and the audience will be wanting to know how Bond got into that situation.