Away for the Holiday :)

I will be away for the festive period so i will not be blogging from the 28/12/10 till the 03/01/11

Looking for Music

As we now know what our thriller film is about we are looking for music to feature in our film. We must use sites which allow us access to unsigned, non copyright music and be absolutely sure they give us 100% permission to use the music.
We are using a website called mobygratis.com to find this music as it is a site full of unsigned music. The site is dedicated to projects like mine where people can use the music for free, on their projects and have the permission of the artists as the music is unsigned.

Mise En Scene: Positioning of Characters & Objects

Positioning of Characters & Objects

Film makers can use positioning within a frame in a variety of ways:

• if the character or object is in the foreground of a image we know as a audience that we should attach some sort of significance/ importance to this character/object, and vise versa 
• A moving body/object placed against a stationary background will immediately draw our attention as it would in real life. 
• Characters/objects positioned evely within a frame will give a balance feel to the shot. if they are all at one end of the frame, it would create an inbalance for the eye by making the shot feel heavy on one side. This can be used to make the audience feel settles or unsettled , thus involving them in the action.
• The positioning of characters can indicate relationships. If two people were very close to each other, huggin, we would asume they are friends, possibly lovers,

        if they are on either side of the frame then we would assume they are very distant with each other.

Mise En Scene: Lighting & Colour

Lighting


Like i have spoke about before, lighting can be used to give a particular scene a realistic, or dramatic look.
It can be used in a variety of ways, including

• to highlight important characters or objects within the frame by drawing attention towards them with a bright light source (often in chiaroscuro) 
• to make a character look mysterious by shading sections of the face/ body
• to reflect a characters confused state of mind suggested by altering bright and dark light quickly, in a strobe effect

Colour

As discussed in a earlier entry, colour carries a very significant importance and influence to a mood or feeling a character needs to portray. The way which we associate certain colours with certain feelings, we associate certain colours with certain genres particularly with reference to film posters and publicity materials which rely on the public quickly being able to identify with a film even from a distance. 

Mise En Scene: Facial Expression & Body Language

Facial Expressions

In cinema the camera can be at a range of distances to portray the actor in a extreme close up, or as a dot in the distance through the use of a long shot.

This range of possible distances means that different emphasis's will be placed on facial expressions and body language to accurately convey the correct type of shot.

If someone was happy they would be smiling

If they were sad they would be frowning or crying

Depending on what the film maker wants to portray will effect the facial expression of the character.

Body Language

The way in which we hold and move our bodies also indicates how we feel and think. Not everyone portray the same body language but things which we will normally recognise are things such as curling up into a ball to protect ourselves.

Some films call for realistic types of behavior, although films from the music genre will contain types of behaviour that wouldn't usually happen in real life, for instance when the characters burst into a song.

Mise En Scene: Setting & Props

Setting

The setting of a film is more important and significant than the setting of a theatre and is ALMOST ALWAYS more detailed. In the initial stages of making a film the objective would be to find a location which already exists. This location will then be altered to reflect exactly what the filmmaker is trying to portray. A setting can be used for much more than simply telling us where something is happening. It can be used to manipulate the audience into building certain expectations.

In these different genre's our expectatons of mise en scene change, along with what we should take away form the shot.

 For example if we saw a image of a hill side...

... we would begin to think the setting is quite, peacefull, very agricultural. 

If we saw a image of a crowded city on the other hand, our interpretations change.

We would think of lots of people, a busy , lively setting.

Props


Props is the term given to objects that are present in the setting which lay a part in the action, instead of being a background object. This would be a gun for example in someone's hand.

Mise En Scene: Costume Hair & Make - up

The costume, hair and make up of a character plays a huge part in the mise en scene as it can be used in such a variety of ways to indicate to us a characters personality, social stats and job.
We can tell if the character is in the present day or past,

Their culture,

a clue as to the part the character plays in a film,

We can clearly see this person is a police officer via her costume.

and also the genre of the film.

With the use of this cape, w can assume that this film is of a thriller/horror genre.

Make Up

Make up in the early days of cinema was fundamental to highlight certain facial features as the black and white film stock couldn't register detail very well.

Mise En Scene: Intro

Mise En scene is the french term meaning, ' what is in the frame '. Mise En Scene has five elements;-

1. Settings & props
2. Costume, hair & make-up
3. Facial Expressions & Body Language
4. Lighting & Colour
5. Positioning of characters & objects within a frame

These elements are used to analyse shots and indicate the audience of the genre of the film. In these different genre's our expectatons of mise en scene change, along with what we should take away form the shot.

My Montage

This is my montage of our thirller idea.

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Productivity Meeting - Our Thriller Movie

On Friday me and my fellow comrades sat down together and discussed what our thriller film will be about.   We discussed possible, ideas and we tried developing some of the idea's we came up with on one of my earlier posts. We were split between all the idea's, so we tried to pick specific aspects from the majority of the initial ideas.

In doing so we created our final idea for the thriller film.

The film is about a hit man who has been assigned to particular target but refuses to carry out the mission. The hit man does find a target, but is it the right person?

The film is build upon mystery and suspense, which are essential according from my audience research.

The first shots are of hands, tried up frantically struggling. The shot is close up lighting above to show the mystery characters vulnerability.

From this we switch to a mid shot from behind the tired up person, with the hit man holding the gun to their head, the shot is out of focus so we do not see the target. The camera then switches to a low angle point of view shot from the person tied up.

From this shot we can graphic match to the next scene which is a flashback , in black and white, to meeting between the hit man  and a women, who a contractor. The women slides a photo across the table, and thought-out this scene, all in fact, will have the same music playing. The camera begins to zoom into the photo to the point of a extreme close up of the photo. The camera begins to zoom out, whilst returning to colour to represent its back to the present.

The hit man pics up the photo of the ground and starts frantically waving it, this will be captured using a high angle mid shot. The camera suddenly switches to a close up of the hit man who is furious. The camera then fades to black and white, and suddenly we are in another flashback. The camera begins to zoom out to a mid shot showing both the hit man and the contractor. She is putting cases, we assumed filled with money onto the table to convince the hit man to do the job but he begins to shake his head.

As he does so we are brought back to the present time were the hit man is shaking his head, shouting. This is captured by the camera going lower to the ground to make a low angle mid shot to show his power and authority. The camera switches to the gun in the man's hand. he is shacking it, this then changes to black and white with the women shacking the gun, as if this action triggers him to think of this meeting again.

The last scenes consist of the camera zooming into the eyes of the women in black and white. The camera slowly begins to zoom out while doing so, previous images begin to flash for  few seconds, this being of the frantic hands and frantic legs, all returning to the eyes. At this point the camera begins to return to return to colour. The camera keeps zooming out from the eyes reveal that instead of the target in the photo being tied up, its the contractor.

Audience Research: Survey Monkey Results

THE RESULTS ARE IN!

From the results of my survey our target audience are 16-19 year olds, the majority being female. The majority of people according to my research watch thrillers with their friends so we will not try and appeal to a 'family' audience. The overwhelming response to what makes people want to watch thrillers and what they believe a thriller should be build on is SUSPENSE. We will use this to our advantage and ensure that our film will be constructed to maximise the suspense. Surprisingly according to my results, thriller fans like to be scared while watching the film. This can easily be used to our advantage and to make sure we appeal to our target audience we shall make the thriller scary and extremely surprising. We will do this when possible.

Previous Students

In class today we were shown videos of previous entries by past students. We watched the films and discussed what was good and what we must make sure we shouldnt do. We analysed the film looking at

• what the idea was?
• the quality of the cinematography
• the sound used
• the performance of the actors

From watching the films a lot of the students struggled with their continuity editing. Along with this we noticed that the sound accompanying the film was vital as it gave different interpretations and made the film great, or sluggish. Although the performance of the actors doesn't have to be at the highest quality, the better it was the more believable the film was to believe. It made it easier for the audience to 'accept' the film.

From watching these past students work i have gained valuable information as to what to make sure my thriller includes, and what it shouldn't. This being

• making sure their is a high level of continuity editing
• the performance of the actors is to a high standard
• the sound accompanying the film MUST be parallel

Audience Research: Survey Monkey

To collect vital independent thriller research i have constructed a survey to be published on my facebook account. This survey consists of 10 questions covering all the vital points i need to know about when producing my thriller film.



This is my constructing my survey



This is the link on my facebook account that i have asked colleague's to complete

And this is the link to my survey
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FNRMCMX

I will publish my findings once a sufficient  number of responses have been collected.

Our Initial Thriller Idea's

To me and my fellow companions had a brain storm of what our thriller film could be biased around. This is what we came up with.

Thriller Opening : Shadow Of a Doubt

Today we looked at the opening sequence in the 1943 film, Shadow Of A Doubt. This film is produced by Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense.

Storyline

Charlotte 'Charlie' Newton is bored with her quiet life at home with her parents and her younger sister. She wishes something exciting wold happen and knows exactly what they need: a visit from her sophisticated and much traveled uncle Charlie Oakley, her mother's younger brother. Imagine her delight when, out of the blue, they receive a telegram from uncle Charlie announcing that he is coming to visit them for awhile. Charlie Oakley creates quite a stir and charms the ladies club as well as the bank president where his brother-in-law works. Young Charlie begins to notice some odd behavior on his part, such as cutting out a story in the local paper about a man who marries and then murders rich widows. When two strangers appear asking questions about him, she begins to imagine the worse about her dearly beloved uncle Charlie.

Music

In the opening sequence a piece of music called the Mary widow, composed by Lehar. This music has great significance later in the film as the truth about uncle charlies actions begin to come to light.

Analysing the Opening Sequence

Using mise en scene, a lot can be established from the opening sequence. When looking at the settings and props used, the setting appears to be in a poor district, possibly the slums. We get this impression from the burnt out cars, tramps by the lake, and the children playing on the street in poor clothes. Yet by contrast when we meet Uncle Charlie, there is money scattered on the floor, which indicates this money means nothing to the man. By looking at the hair,make up and costume of the character, it is in vast contrast to the place he is living in. This is because Uncle Charlie is wearing a very expensive suit, with his hair slick back. This doesnt fit in with the setting as Uncle Charlie appears very wealthy, with the money just scattered across the floor, and by him wearing this very expensive suit, it adds to the feeling that he doesnt belong in the city. He appears to belong to a higher social class such as that seen in the opening credits of the film. The colour of the suit also gives us a insight into the personality of this character as it is very dark, which can suggest he has a sinister side to him.
By observing the facial expressions and body language of the character, we first see Uncle Charlie laying on the bed, in his crisp suit with a cigar in his mouth. As the sequence develops he shows hardly any emotion on his face, thus giving the impression he is a heartless man and not much effects him.
The lighting used is low key lighting, creating a contrast between light and dark which can be used to interprit that this character is a dark character as he is constantly covered in darkness with his suit and the very little amount of light on him. This enables us to give Uncle charlie the title of the Antagonist ion this film. In contrast when we first meet charlie she is covered in light, giving us the impression she is a good person, making us believe she can be given the title of the protagonist in this film.
By looking at the posisition of Uncle Charlie and Charlie, when we are first introduced to them, they appear in the same position as each other. This indicates to us that the two have some sort of link, and that their paths are bound to cross. This technique is called mirroring as they appear to be 'cut from the same cloth' yet they are so different personality wise, in the from that one is obviously more evil and sinister than the other.

Film Language : Parallel and Contrapuntal Sound

When the sound we hear should usually go hand in hand with the image on screen. This is known on Parallel sound. For example if we were to watch a horror film and we are about to witness a murder, you would accompany some dark, fast tempo music with the action.

When we hear sound that we woudnlt associate with the events on screen we would call this contrapuntal sound. For examlpe if we were to be watching children playing on the beach we wouldnt usually where the fast pacing music to accompany it as the two styles do not go together.