Conventions

Here are some conventions which make our films genre clear:

Setting

Our film opening will be set in Admirals park. We think this is a good location as it isn't usually busy so there won't be any interruptions whilst we're filming. It is also very spacious which would create an eerie atmosphere to help with the genre. I think the fact that we will be filming outside in a park will also convey the genre as it will be foggy and quite grey which relates to the schizophrenic mans dark thoughts.

Themes

There are a few themes in our film opening. Duality is one which we have considered due to our character having schizophrenia. This is where binary opposition is also relevant, we see two sides of Zabel (Max); the good side and the bad side. One of our themes also includes sanity, whether our chosen character is sane or if he is crazy due to his mental illness. There is also the question of reality. What is real and what isn't...

Icons

The main icon in our film is the medicine bottle filled with pills (Tic-Tac's) to treat the schizophrenic character. Another icon Is the coke can in which Zac's second personality mentions in a dark joke.

Narrative

We have planned out our script for the film opening which we will then follow throughout filming. Max came up with the dark jokes to match the genre.

Characters

Max will play Zabel and Zac (schizophrenic character) and Liv will play the random woman that sits on the bench with him.

Textual Analysis 

Timeline of shots and film titles

Film pitch feedback

                                  

                                    

When we showed our film pitch to the class we got a lot of comments based around how they thought the editing ideas were good and how they would work quite well, before we even showed the pitch we had already thought the editing sides of things would be the most popular. Some of the comments also included how our group had worked together to come up with the idea, which, in the long run would make our filming process etc a lot easier as we were all in on the idea. We also had a lot of feedback on the confused genre. After the presentation we discussed this as a group and decided to change parts of the opening/ the name to make the genre more obvious and to stop people getting confused about it. We were also advised to make the target audience more specific rather then just stating ‘adults’. As a group we decided to only use two locations rather than three and to reduce the dialogue to give us more time to focus on the effects and the title edits etc. This will hopefully make our film opening make more sense and also better quality.

Script

 

This is our script for our opening sequence. Olivia and Max came up with the script by looking at other scripts and tried to do ours in a similar way. When we come to filming then it is obviously subject to change but we are very happy with it. We know that it is quite dialogue heavy but we plan on re-dubbing most of the talking to make it sound as clear as possible.

Risk Assessment

 

This is our risk assessment for our film, Parallel. Most of the risks are minimal however it is important that we recognise risks that COULD happen so we know how to keep ourselves safe.

Synopsis Planning

What we will need:

• A bench in Admirals Park
• Bus stop. (Preferably not in use by other people) 
• Trees in the park
• Pavement beneath the bench
• Suit 
• Smart shoes and bag/briefcase
• Medicine bottle and new label 
• Tic Tacs  
• Coke and Diet Coke 

Characters:

Max will play both schizophrenic men on the bench as it will be a clone. Olivia will play an unfortunate woman who happens to engage eye contact with Zabel/ Zac (Max) on the bench in Admirals Park.

Costume:

We have decided to have Max in a suit so he looks like an average working man but when the film starts, the problems start to unfold and it becomes clear that he has schizophrenia.  

Location: 

Our film opening will be located in Admirals Park. We will use the bus stop opposite the park on Rainsford Road, depending on how much filming we can get done and if we stick to the shooting schedule. 

Audience: 

We have pitched our audience to be between the ages of 18-30 however not excluding any ages older than that. We didn't think anyone younger than 18 would enjoy or understand our film which is why we set the age to 18. The certificate is 12A.

Mise En Scene

Mise En Scene


- Settings & Props- Costume, Hair & Make Up
- Facial Expressions & Body Language
- Lighting & Colour
- Positioning of Characters

As our film sequence is all outdoors, this makes finding a location a lot easier. We plan to film in Admirals Park. We were thinking about other parks but we decided that this one was ideal as it is quite big and picturesque but also close to a bus stop which is another part of our setting.
Our costume is also quite simple as well as there is only one character on one day so we only require one costume. We decided that the man (Zac) should be wearing a smart suit, nearly immaculate as he is supposed to be boring and plain. Whereas Zabel, the other personality, will be wearing the same suit but messy to represent his evil character. The costume of the other woman will be smart/casual, perhaps she is on a lunch break.

Facial expressions will be important in our sequence as Zac is supposed to be angry/frustrated/embarrassed quite a lot. Facial expressions will also be important when Zac finally caves in and shouts at Zabel, after which the woman sitting next to him quite obviously thinks he is talking to himself.

Although lighting is quite hard when we have a limited amount of time to film, we are going to try our hardest to get it all in the day time when the camera quality will be the best. This is also because we are trying to represent everyday life.

The main focus of the sequence is Zac so he will be on camera the most. It should be clear that he is the protagonist as he is the first person to come on screen and the main focus on the first couple of minutes is him.

Institutions Task

Film Four

Film Four is a British film institution company that is owned and operated by Channel 4 Television Corporation and it has screened many films. It has also distributed many successful films such as Casino Royal, Slumdog Millionaire, Shaun of the Dead, The Double and Shallow Grave. These are the two films that have been inspiring us for our film opening.  Film 4 has a niche, mature audiences which we intend to aim our film at. The main reason we decided to use Film 4 as our distributor is because we have modeled our film around The Double and Shallow Grave which were both produced/ distributed by Film 4. This means that they have experience in similar films to ours which helps things like marketing.

 

 New Line Cinema
 Founded: 1967
New Line produced the Oscar Award-Winning The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Some others of its most popular films include The Mask, The Austin Powers titles, Hairspray, Rush Hour, Elf, Sex and the City and Wedding Crashers. Since 2008 (when it became a unit of Warner Bros) the company has seen the most successful period in its history.
Like Film 4, New Line Cinema aims its films at a more of a sophisticated audience. This is one of the reasons we want New Line Cinema to help produce and distribute our film. It can help us greatly in advertising to the right audience. Also because of its success it will help us advertise on a large scale.

Shot List

During our film sequence we want to include a variety of different shots to make it more interesting for the audience. Here is a rough idea of the types of shots we want to include, in order of how we want them to appear in the opening...

1. High panning shot of trees in Admirals Park
2. Wormseye shot of river
3. Extreme long shot of the park (play area)
4. Close up of the roundabout spinning on its own
5. Close up, wormseye shot of the mans leg
6. Pan upwards to reveal the man sitting on a bench
7. Mid-shot that tilts upwards to reveal both personalities sitting on the beach
8. Close up of mans mouth
9. Long shot of both men sitting on the bench
10. 180 degree shot during conversations
11. A variety of tracking shots including close ups and long shots whilst the man is walking to the bus stop
12. Long shot from across the street

Each shot will be accompanied with dialogue, music and titles.

Group Planning

These images show our group working together whilst planning the film. We were trying to figure out which shots would work best for each part of the opening.

Audience Research

This is our audience research. This shows various ages of people we think may be interested in our film and it also shows a child, who would not be interested in our film. We have given reasons as to why they wouldn't enjoy it.

Moodboard of similar films

Titles Task

 Titles task

The Conjuring

T1: Starts 00:17 lasts 4 seconds

T2: Starts 00:24 lasts 3 seconds

T3: Starts 00:28 lasts 4 seconds

T4: Starts 00:34 lasts 3 seconds

T5: Starts 00:37 lasts 4 seconds

T6: Starts 00:44 lasts 3 seconds

T7: Starts 00:48 lasts 4 seconds

T8: Starts 1:14 lasts 4 seconds

T9: Starts 1:18 lasts 5 seconds

T10: Starts 1:24 lasts 5 seconds

T11: Starts 1:29 lasts 5 seconds

T12: Starts 1:35 lasts 4 seconds

T13: Starts 1:39 lasts 4 seconds

T14: Starts 1:45 lasts 3 seconds

T15: Starts 1:49 lasts 4 seconds

T16: Starts 1:56 lasts 4 seconds

Pyscho (1998)



T1: Starts 00:06 lasts 6 seconds

T2: Starts 00:12 lasts 7 seconds

T3: Starts 00:21 lasts 3 seconds

T4: Starts 00:25 lasts 2 seconds

T5: Starts 00:29 lasts 2 seconds

T6: Starts 00:33 lasts 3 seconds

T7: Starts 00:39 lasts 6 seconds

T8: Starts 00:46 lasts 6 seconds

T9: Starts 00:52 lasts 3 seconds

T10: Starts 00:57 lasts 3 seconds

T11: Starts 1:02 lasts 3 seconds

T12: Starts 1:07 lasts 2 seconds

T13: Starts 1:12 lasts 2 seconds

T14: Starts 1:15 lasts 5 seconds

T15: Starts 1:22 lasts 3 seconds

T16: Starts 1:25 lasts 2 seconds

T17: Starts 1:31 lasts 4 seconds

T18: Starts 1:36 lasts 4 seconds

T19: Starts 1:41 lasts 7 seconds







Richard Morrisons interview

We watched an interview of Richard Morrison on Art Of The Title giving tips on film openings. We were then told to make a few notes on the advice he is giving throughout the interview...

• Don't overcomplicate the idea to start off with. Keep it simple then build from it.
• "Simple is good"
• After storyboarding and written ideas, make a model so its more lifelike and more realistic. This will make you more engaged in your own idea.
• If you get an idea come into your head quickly, try to distract yourself as much as possible. An idea will subconsciously come into your head even when you're distracting yourself and develop into a bigger and more interesting idea. Once it has developed you should then write it onto a piece of paper and also include all the new ideas that come into your head whilst you're writing.
• Don't plan Mise en Scene before you have tested the idea and made sure it will be successful. Draw out your idea before you plan costumes and settings incase it is unsuccessful.
• Make ideas as a team. It will be more successful than if you were to think of an idea yourself.
• Before the idea is tested , be sure to test perspective of objects to make sure it will work.

Film Titles

There are a few films that could relate to our film and genre etc so I had a look at how they had presented their titles and production companies and partly just how the cover was laid out in general to see which ones looked good and which ones didn't.

The titles included...

Jacobs Ladder

This title is big and bold, the producers name and actors etc are bold and capitalised. The main title is a glowing blue colour with shadowed, lighter, ghostly text behind it. This has a kind of eerie feel to it. The title is positioned at the top of film cover, as it is at the top, it has created a main focus of the cover. The first thing to look at would be the title and from that people could get ideas of what the film could be about. All the actors presented on the cover are right at the top, above the film title and all bold an capitalised.

Black Swan

This title is at the bottom of the film cover. It is black, bold and capitalised. The names of the actors are above the title with their first names in lower case and their last names bold and in upper case. The black title is against a white background, this creates contrast which therefore makes the title stand out even more.

Mememto

Memento includes a series of polaroid images including the same picture in each one. The title is written in quite scruffy, childish writing. On the second polaroid there is a quote: "some memories are best forgotten". This line draws people in and makes then wonder what memory is trying to be forgotten and why its so bad. Each actors name is capitalised, however not bold. The title is Black, old and also capitalised to make it stand out.

The Butterfly Effect

The bluey-green colour on the front of this film makes the film look like a sci-fi. The actors names are in blocks around the cover to make a large rectangle. The title is red which almost makes it look like a detective kind of genre. The title starts off small and increases in size towards the middle of the text, then decreasing again towards the end. It also becomes bolder and larger towards the middle . This makes the title stand out. This is good when trying to catch peoples eyes.

Mr Brooks

The title for the film Mr Brooks is bold, white and capitalised. It is in the same position as the Black Swans title, the image has a man showing both sides of his personality by taking part of his face away, seeing what's really underneath. This would relate to our film as the man in our film is schizophrenic and therefore has a split personality. The actors names are positioned above the title, first names in lower case and last names capitalised.

Primal Fear

The letters on this cover are quite spaced out, this would make people pay more attention to the title as they would have to concentrate more to put the letters together to figure out the word, it could look quite confusing if the letters are spaced out. This film cover also has white writing against a dark background, this creates contrast and makes the title stand out more.

Production Diary

This is my production diary to keep up to date with what we have been doing since we were set the film task.

We were put into groups of who we would be making the films with. We were then given homework to produce individual film pitches of different genres in our group. I have been put in a group with Olivia Seymour, Max and Marcus. The genre i chose to make a film pitch on was romance.

November 10th i was out all day doing some art coursework however Olivia caught me up on what i missed. They had been deciding as a group on which film pitch was best and how it would work. They also thought of three positives about the film pitch and what would work well, and three negatives and how it would be hard to film/ act etc. They had chosen Max's idea which was about a schizophrenic man.

November 11th we presented our film pitch to the class and explained how it would work and why we thought it was a good idea. Everyone listened and then wrote feedback to give us on ways we could improve our film idea but however also things they thought we had thought of well.

November 12th, we were set tasks in class which we divided into groups, Olivia was looking at film openings and which ones we could use to inspire us. I was looking at film covers and titles. How the titles were presented, how the actors names were written. E.g bold, capitalised, lower case etc and also the colour schemes and which colours would create contrast to make the film titles stand out.

November 13th, i was looking at film openings and where the production company and logo etc came up and the timings for each production company. This will help us when we come to make our film.

 November 14th we were looking at film openings again but off of the website www.artofthetitle.com it is a website purely just dedicated to film titles. We had to watch three film openings and write down when any writing, whether it was production company or actors etc appeared and the timings for each one. We also had to screen grab the opening when each of the above came up and put them in a post onto the blog.

November 17th we were reviewing our lap charts and seeing what parts of the blog we needed to catch up on. We then got into our groups and split each job up so we each had around 2/3 things to do each.

November 18th Olivia and Max started planning the script and thinking about possible name choices (Zac and Zabel). I was working on audience research and researching different ages which would enjoy our film. Marcus worked on institutions and we also started the storyboard this lesson. Olivia and Max finalised the films name. Parallel.

November 19th Olivia and Max continued to write the script and plan the story board. I also continued with the audience research and Marcus worked individually on some more research.

November 21st we all worked individually keeping our blogs up to date.

November 24th the group had a meeting in today's media lesson and we also filmed part of what we had planned on our storyboard. Olivia made a shooting schedule and completed the risk assessment.

November 25th we all worked on our blogs individually to make sure everything was up to date. 

November 26th was another lesson where we did individual planning and finished any outstanding pieces of work to do with the filming.

November 29th, our group left school at 1.30 and went to Admirals Park (filming location) and filmed most of the shots we needed. We were quite lucky as the weather was quite nice and made filming a lot quicker.

December 1st we left school early to film again. We got all our shots filmed. The weather was quite good again although it was very cold so we began to rush. We changed the last shot of the bus stop to outside my house. It still had the same effect we just thought it would be easier to shoot and the outcome was actually quite good.

December 2nd today Max started editing our footage and began practising the cloning shots however the footage took a while to upload to the programme we were using so we didn't get much done.

December 3rd Olivia began trying to make a film poster and i was looking other films titles which were a similar genre to ours. I made notes on each title considering the size of the text, whether it was bold or not etc.

December 5th this was the deadline for our first draft. Myself and Marcus continued to look at different film titles and how they were presented and Olivia and Max began evaluating our film opening after uploading it to YouTube.

December 8th after handing in our first draft we started to make improvements including titles and cutting out shots that were either wobbly or just weren't really relevant.

December 9th i researched similar film genres to ours to see how they presented their production companies etc and also updated my blog. Liv continued to edit the titles. 

December 10th today we chose to focus on finding music that would match the genre of our film. We found this very hard as we listened to lots of different tracks and we didn't think any of them went well with our film opening. 

December 11th we began putting improved titles and music in with our film to make it look more complete.

December 12th the final draft for our opening sequence was completed.

Group Film Pitch

This is our group film pitch

Individual Film Pitch

This is my individual film pitch. the genre i chose was romance as it was different to everyone else's pitch in my group.

Student opening

ROSES ARE RED




I thought that the different use of materials to show who was involved for the making of the film worked really well and linked in with the genre of the film. However i also thought it was quite boring as it didnt really have a point. The beginning of the opening with the credits all worked well but the second half came across as quite random as it suddenly mentions something about being used whereas in the beginning, nothing was mentioned about boys or being used. The genre seemed a bit confused and not thought through well enough as it was difficult to identify the genre. If they used different music i think it would have been more successful as i found the music quite annoying which made me want to stop watching it whereas it should have the opposite effect.

GEMINI



The sound is very poor quality and it didnt make much sense as the most important part of the opening took place in the first few seconds. This meant it was very difficult to understand as it all happened so quick. However the locations used were very varied and interesting which improved the opening in general. To improve this opening they should have better sound quality. This would make it easier to understand what is going on. They also should think about moving the most important part of the opening to later on so it can be interpreted in the right way rather than confusing people.

MOTHER AND I



When watching this opening I didn't really understand the story line until it had finished. It all happened fast with no explanation through actions. There was also no introduction of the characters so when the little boy and his 'mum' were sitting together, their relation wasn't very clear. However the use of the props they used were good. For example the monopoly board. It was present in both scenes, the scene with the boy as a child and also the scene with the grown man watching TV. I didn't actually understand the part where he was brushing the woman's hair until I had watched the opening about three times. To improve this I think more time should have been spent thinking through the story line and also the sound needed to be clearer to hear the vital line which would help watchers understand it.