Preparation, Research & Planning- Shot

Before we start shooting the intro we thought we'd try to replicate the cheap look of a budget horror flick by using mostly wide shots to capture most of the 'ACTION', Rather than having separate shots e.g reverse, low/ high angle.

Due to the fact that I'm planning to shoot a low budget horror film on a very low budget (since we've only spent roughly twenty-five pounds to dress up almost 10 people) the effect does actually works. Roughly thirty seconds in we've planned to use a stereotypical zoom shot to highlight the 'creepy' atmosphere.

Since we had to shift the location it has been fairly difficult to plan the shots that would have taken place in the school premises, but now we are able to shoot at an abandoned housing estate which if anything has more possibility for interesting shots despite the opportunity, we are still planning to use mostly wide shots to really push the feel of a cheap zombie film.

Preperation, Research & Planning- Pitch

Myself and the two other students i my group all had different ideas. Witht this is was very difficult to choose what type of film we wanted to do, as all over our ideas were very different with all didnt types of genres. So we decided to pitch each others ideas. Talk about our own idea for 2 minutes each and all agree on one idea. The storyboards below show all out different ideas:

Preperation, Research & Planning- Preliminary Piece.

Ae we were put into our groups we got given a task to do, this was called the prelimiary piece. This was to makea short clip including a few actors having a little conversation in a room. We planned it all out on our storyboards and here is the final clip:

Preparation, Research & Planning- Sub Genre

So our main choices consisted of choosing what type of zombies to use.....slow shuffling idiots or terrifying sprinting zombies in order to decide I looked into a few zombie classics such as George A.Romero's "Dawn Of The Dead". As you can see the film is full of terrible but classic cliches which seem very possible to replicate in our film. Another simple but main reason that I choose horror was the multitude of shots that could be pulled off within the school premises. Again choosing a zombie film wasn't as simple as it may have seemed as we could have taken many different paths, even a comedy...

Preperation, Research & Planning- Genre

I researched different Genres with my group, we looked at a wide range of genres and then looked at what genres are mos popular at this moment in time.

We started off looking at action:
 Action is a high budget make of film, with loads of adrenalin rush and high energy. This often involves a good guy who's always fighting the bad guys. Such as Fast Five; which is a sequal of action films.

Another genre we looked at was horror:

  This includes the fear of the audience and the disgust and horror from the audience. Insidious, a film in which was filmed in 2010 & previewed at the Toronto International Film Festival is a horror film that hits these three points.

Romance, most films have an assecpt of romance in them, not always strong though. The ones with strong romance will have a happy ending and a popular good looking male actor in the film. These films are normally called a 'chick flick'. A film such as DearJohn whcih stars a good looking actor Channing Tatum.

Comedy; a genre that always gets the audience laughing, the main emphasis is humour. The exaggeration towards a situation, action or even realationship. The comedy genre has changed many of times, starting from the spoofs to now romantic comedy or action comedy. Like Hot Fuzz.

Cinematography

Literally "writing in movement depends to a large extent on Photography" "writing in light"

The photographic image

The point of view in which your looking in, the area in which you are looking in.

Different types of shots

Shot Reverse: Looking over the shoulder from person to person.

Cut: Moving from one hot to another. Changing day times.

Cross Cut: Two stories happening at the same time. Happening together.

Jump Cut: Small change in time. Looking at the time, then next thing jumping to a test.

Fade: Soemthing exteme happening then going into a fade. To fade or into the next scene.

Montage: When loads of things coming together and add up to make one thing.

Cutways and Inserts: A Close up of an object. Example, Two men talking, one man reaches into his back pocket... a close up of what he is doing, pulling out a gun.

Framing the Image

Extreme close-up (ECU): Showing detail to the object. (showing your eyes)

Big close-up (BCU): Showing a close-up to the object but not to show a lot of detail. (showing your face)

Close-Up(CU): Showing a close-up of the object, (The whole face)

Medium Close-up(MCU): Showing a close up of the shoulders & above.

Medium Shot(MS): Showing a shot of the body from the waist & above.

Medium Long Shot(MLS): A long shot of the body from the knee & above.

Long shot(LS): A shot of the body, everything in the shot.

Very Long Shot(VLS): A shot of the bosy, with everything in it & the surrounding area.

Two Shot( could be CU/MCU/MS): A shot of two faces in one shot.

'Over the shoulder shot': A shot from someone talking to each other, the shot is taken from over the shoudler.

Looking Room: Interviewee looks into space in the frame, towards the intervieweer.

Walking Room: Moving subject walks into a space.

High Angle Shot (looking down): Someone looking vunerable.

Low Angle Shot (looking up): Someone looking powerful.

Tilted Frame: A shot which is taken tilted.

Digital Technology

Digital technology has affected the way films are produced because the film is advanced. You can now come to high definiton. Your able to watch films now in 3D, the picture affect makes the film look spectacular & migical.

• New digital camera's technology rivals traditional film for quality. Example; Sony HDW-F900 camcoders using a high-definition format called HD-CAM.
• Digital viedo much cheaper than film.
• Virtually no processing neccessary before the editing stage.
• Tapes can be re-used many times -unlike film.
• By Hollywook standards digital viedo costs virtually nothing.

The Flexibility; many films already edited digitally. However, film has to be converted to digital format -edited- converted back to film. Although image is degraded  & it's costly and time consuming.

With digital it can be replayed immediattly -doesn't need to be processed like film.  Example: On Attack od the Clones -Shot in the morning & edited in the afternoon. This cuts production time & costs.

Reading Lights.

"Light is everything. It expresses idelogy, emotion, colour, depth, style. I can efface, marrate, describe. With the right lighting, the ugliest face, the most idiotic expression can radiate with beauty or intelligence"

-Frederico Fellini.

Light is very important. Light can be used to express the emotion and ideology of the character. When the lighting is low in a movie its make the scene look depressing and everyone upset.

Different lights & lighting

The set provision: what you need on set t produce an effect.

Kino light: 4 bank or 2 bank. >> Represent dat light or powerful light. (Beam of a car) Each light is 1.5 meters long.

Calm light: The light can be open or closed.

Three way combo: three separate lights.

1. first light shows a bit of shadow >showing from the left (side light)
2. second light shows another faint shadow >showing from the right (side light)
3. third light shows a clear view of an object with detail & takes the other shadows away, but the object is still in main object of the study. (back light)

Spot light: a single narrow/ round light. Used to highlight a certain feature in a far wider space.

Daylight: but is important to make sure it is over cast otherwise the image is 'HOT'.

second week of blogging.

Understanding how a film is promoted? How distribution target a specific audience?

Marketing; The action or business of promoting or selling products. Selling the product to a company.

Campaign; An organized course of action to achieve a goal. The campaign can cost most then the film it's self.

Return; To yield or make a profit. Yours PROFIT, made by all the work that has been done.


To help a Hollywood film to be promoted and put out into the world, a lot of different techniques are needed. A few ways in which a Hollywood films is promoted around the world is over the Internet. A lot of people today are on the internet a lot, and use it to access social networking sites such as Facebook or Myspace & to access your emails & to watch video clips on-line on Youtube. Films are easy to be promoted by the internet as a link can be posted everywhere & anywhere over the internet and on different internet sites. Another way a Hollwood film is promoted is something called the "teaser" this is the promoting of a film on the Transport & Buildings. A big Hollywood film called Transformers was a massive hit & this was promoted all over the world and made a lot of money from the film, because of all the promotion that took place! One of the ways the promotion was big, was in fact that a Transform billboard was put over the huge Luxor in Las Vagus in Nevada.




Promoting an independent film is completely different to promoting a Hollywood film as the film budget and the promotion budget is lower for the independent film. The promotion that takes place for independent films are e-mails that get sent round; such as the film Shifty sent a viral e-mail around to various opinion formers in the media. The e-mail appeared to be from an official community organisation that had identified the recipient as a possible drug dealer. This was very effective. The link for the official website was also posted with this e-mail. On the official website you were able to watch the trailer of the film & enter yourself into competitions to win the chance to a day at a recording studio and Shifty goodies. Posters were also put up around the London Transport, on underground walls & bus stops. These posters were bright yellow with black bold writing, this was so that when people walked past them, they would be dragged into them because of the brightness.

First Lesson

First lesson of media, we learnt the simple stuff. Just learning about the the modules that we will be doing this year & how much each part of the module is worth.
We started off learning to understand the production chain, which is:

• the pitch
• development
• principal photography
• post-production
• sales agent
• distribution
• marketing
• exhibition

We also starting off learning "how do we define British film?" 

• The Stars
• The Director
• The Producer
• The Crew
• The Post-Production (SFX/ Editing/ Sound mixing etc) 
• & The Finance

After we learnt the above, we were told about the importance of the research and evaluation for our media coursewrok we will be doing within this year. For the coursework of making our film, we will have to research the elements of the genre of film in which we have chose to do, such as horror, romance, etc. The influences of the directors and stars that filmed in films that have already been made. To follow their, way in which they all work together and combined each persons personality to work together well & make the film effective. 

We have to come up with many idea's so we can work them together & work around with different techniques.