Location Photo Commentary

1st Picture: This is Southern Cemetery in Chorlton, We are going to use this cemetery for the start of the opening sequence. We will find a gravestone for Matt to stand by and place a photo next to. We chose this because mainly it is a graveyard that is close to us.

2nd Picture- This is chorlton park, it is close to the college which is conveniant, and we will need it in our opening scene when there is a flashback of our characters having fun together. We will have to film here on a bright day to use natural lighting to show the happy mood.

3rd Picture- This is a road that we may film in to show the girlfriend character disappearing, one of our ideas is to have a car drive infront of the girlfriend character and after it passes her she is gone. This is a very overused idea however we believe that it will have a powerful effect.

Location photos

The Silence of the Lambs opening sequence analysis

(apologies for the mirrored film)

This sequence begins with a strong connotation of a horror genre, this is because the situation is of a woman alone in a foggy, dark forest. The music is also tense, the lighting is dark, she is breathing heavily, worn out and continuity editing is quick. The fact that no other person is part of the mise-en-scene makes you believe that she is running away from someone unknown or that something bad will happen to her. However the suspense is then broken when a group of people along with a building come into the mise-en-scene

The woman character in this opening sequence is introduced well as it shows that she is not a typical female, the scene shows her to be active; exercising and taking part in an assault course and doing stereotypically male things to do. She breaks the female stereotype this way, making her character more interesting to the audience. Another way she breaks her female stereotype is once she arrives in the building and walks into the life filled with tall men, this is a juxtaposition as she is a small woman stood between men however the fact that she is working with a lot of men like them breaks her stereotype of being a female and taking part in female jobs.

This opening sequence sets the scene for the rest of the film. One reason how it does this is when "Behavioural Sciences" is shown on a wall (you won't be able to see it properly in the clip unfortunately), that symbolises that the case the main character will be part of will be an unusual one, and it will be a psychological problem, this engages the audience, and gives away what the film may be about. Also once she moves into the room for "Behavioural sciences" there are many gory pictures of skinned humans. These pictures signify that the film will be a horror film, there will be gore, and that the case involves humans going through a lot of pain.

Treatment of main task

Production Treatment For Main Task

• Matt Davies- Sound, Blogger
• Matt Jamieson- Main Actor, Manager
• Jess Graetzer- Camera Operator, Storyboard
• Dean Cooke- Director, Editor

The Opening Of A Short Film:

• Title- "Lily"
• Genre- Drama
• Duration- 2 minutes

Audience

This will be aimed at females aged between 15 and 24, along with some appeal to females aged 25-34, and some appeal to males between 15 and 24. That is the main target audience for our drama genre, and what our resume will be.

Resume

• Begins with man walking to a blurred gravestone in the shape of a cross, there is a voiceover in the background speaking in lyrics of the song "Wish" from the artist "paper route".
• Man holding flowers and photo, places photo down on gravestone and camera zooms into photo and we go into a past scene of the couple together, where we find out more about them and their relationship. (filmed somewhere close to cemetery)
• The scene with them both goes on for longer, however finishes with his past girlfriend abruptly disappearing, it suddenly then switches back to his life in the present. Showing to the audience that she is gone.
• It cuts to a black screen while the voiceover carries on for one more line "The memories of losing you, you're like a ghost"

Suggested Elements

• Performance- Man stands at the graveyard holding flowers and a photo, places the photo down, Man is then sitting on a bench in a park with his arm round her. She then disappears leaving him confused, disappointed and distraught.
• Costumes- Everyday clothing, when he is in the past; bright clothing and when he is in the present; dark clothing to shown negative emotion.
• Props- flowers, photos, maybe a newspaper, a car.
• Key locations- Graveyard, park, road (exact locations will be specified in a later post)
• Title/opening credits- "Starring Matt Jamieson, Jess Graetzer, Dean Cooke and Matt Davies"

Recording Days

• Filming: Tuesday 8th March, Thursday 10th March, Tuesday 15th March, Thursday 17th March, Tuesday 22nd March, Thursday 24th March.
• Post-Production: 29th March, 19th April, 21st April, 26th April, 28th April

The Shawshank Redemption opening sequence analysis

The opening scene of the drama "The Shawshank Redemption" starts with a clip of men talking between themselves, showing no suspense or action, however creating interest from the audience about these characters and what they are like, this is followed by a voice-over stating that one of the men was a conman. This develops the character some more and shows that the film is of a "drama" genre as it contains nothing but an introduction to one of the main characters, and characters are generally the main focus of films of a drama genre.

The sound in this scene is very melancholy and slow. The audience will immediately react with a gloomy emotion, it tells the audience that the film will be a sad one. There is a sound bridge running over all the shots in the sequence, showing that there is a link between them all, and that link is the fact that all the scenes are showing the character "Andy" taken into prison, this could have a sad reaction from the audience, although the mis-en-scene of cheering and the prisoners excited juxtaposes with this emotion, this makes the audience confused as to what is happening in the sequence. The melancholy music is from Andy's point of view which is opposite to the emotions felt by the prisoners.

The voice-over sounds as if it is coming from the future, and he is speaking as if looking back on the events, for example the voice is coming from the character "Red" who in the scene has not yet met Andy, however he speaks of him as if he has met him before, e.g. with the "he'd been vice-president of a large portland bank", and all the voice-over in the past tense, this could be a technique we could use in our opening sequence.

The cinematography contains establishing shots of the area and the characters, for example, between seconds 0:50 and 1:30 it uses crane and aerial shots of the prison which the whole film is set in, and near to the beginning it uses mid close-ups of main characters, also after the aerial shots it contains close ups of Andy, while the voice-over speaks about him. This is a typical technique for the openings of movies which we could also use for our opening sequence.

Preliminary Task Analysis

We used our knowledge in camera angles throughout the film, matched cuts and the 180 degree rule were used for example. We made good use of the 180 degree rule in the ahot/reverse/shot at the end of the film during the conversation about obtaining a shoe. This worked well for the conversation as it didn't make the location of the speakers confusing to get used to.

Matched cuts were also used in the action of the extract's introduction. For example when Matt is walking down the stair, different shots were used to show this happening so the audience finds it more interesting than if there was only one shot showing it all. Also, while Matt walked through the corridors, matched cuts were used from different angles to show this. This was what we found good about the film that fit the specification.

There was one continuity error within the film inbetween two shots. This was when Matt walks from the stairs to the corridor, there was a shot of him walking towards the corridor followed by a shot of him skipping down it. We had to find a shot to show him switching between and walk and skip, so we fixed this problem by finding a shot of him just exiting the stairs and starting to skip down the corridor.

Another error that we also stumbled upon was when the music abruptly stopped at a point in the film, we corrected this by finding a fade effect to add to the music to help it run smoothly.

There were three additional errors that we will make sure we don't repeat in our main task, these were:

• In the second shot of the film, Matt's head was cut off from the mis-en-scene and we only managed to keep his upper body inside the frame. We could have managed to have his head in the shot, so it was a mistake.
• There were other students included in the background of a shot in the corridor which was not intended, next time we will make sure only intended actors are included in the mis-en-scene
• When we had a close up of a shoe, it was in an entirely different location, this was because we had forgotten to include this shot once we had finished filming, so we had to quickly film it before the lesson was over. Next time we will not let silly mistakes like that happen. However we could have done it for comedic effect.
  

Preliminary Task

Our Preliminary Task

The Specification for this task was to

• Include a number of shots showing a character walking down the stairs
• Include the exchange of a prop
• Include the exchange of speech
• Include shots of a character walking through a door

We also had to use the 180 degree rule along with matched shots.
In the video we stuck very tightly to the specification and made sure we had done everything asked for in the video.
Students involved in the making of the video:

• Matt Jamieson - Main actor throughout, Camera operator
  
• Matt Davies- Main camera operator, Editor, Sound
  
• Dean Cooke- Camera operator, Actor, Main Editor, Sound
  
• Jess Graetzer- Camera operator, Extra, Editor

During the editing we had a slight problem with syncing the sound to video as we converted all the clips as one file rather than a mixture of different small video clips. We managed to overcome this problem by manually layering the sound over the video as a way of "dubbing" the film