Film Production (Storyboard PT 1)

Shot 1 - Close up of Alarm Clock as it Hits 7am and the alarm goes, planning to include as a sound effect, and the aim is to set scene and time and to wake character up. (Heres a very quick mockup I did of opening shot, gonna experiment with the idea of having the numbers Red)



Shot 2 - An overview of the character as he takes a cig in bed, with the idea of including beer cans/bottles in the bed to give the audience the idea of a character in depression. Below are a couple of quick shots obviously without the charctar included. I did them to give me an idea of where to postion the cam, One has the beer bottles in colour as an experiment but I have no intentions of including the bottles in colour on film as Im going for the red theme ie blood and danger.




Shot 3 - Pretty straight forward, just going to be a slow motion closeup of the character blowing smoke from his cig.I dont smoke so Ideally i'd like to purchase a Fake cig, but if needs be Ill purchase some for the shot.

Shot 4 - Going to be a shot from behind at The main charcter looking at the many articles he has collected about his GF suspecious death in which he belived was a conspiracy and This is the point which Indicates the main plot and informs the audience of why he is depressed, and creates sympothy towards him. Shown below is the shot im going before with the character stood infront looking at the articles. Im planning to have a couple of the articles text highlighted in red upon the black and white background, Of which I need to design a couple of templates on Photoshop to use with a dramatic headline.



Shot 5 - Im going for another closeup of the character focusing on his eyes and going for the effect of the Headline texts reflecting in his eyes and demonstarting his emotion within this shot, Im not sure at this point how to tackle this effect however I shall experiment to see what works.

Shot 6 - From the last shot of his eyes I Want it to a cut to a shot of the character in the bathroom staring at himself in the mirror focusing on the eyes again. This shot could be tricky for obvious reasons such as catching the camera in the reflection, shown below is the sort of shot im after whith the character staring at his reflection.

Film Production 0.3

I found this Tutorial on After effects which Allows Colour film to turned into Black and white with elements of colour still standing which is the effect i am going for with my film. So i am going to test this technique with some test footage to see how effective it will be, as im hoping if possible to avoid use of the green screen as i am filming at my accommodation.

Here is the tutorial http://library.creativecow.net/articles/kahlenberg_roland/coolsville.php

3 Text Summary

For my essay I did about the Political and Social impact Of Punk, These were 3 examples of infomation which helped me

Hacienda Museum (Manchester)
Contriversal Album Art Websites (eg http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/8093 )
Peoples Opinions and Statements

As part of a project I did a couple of years back I vistited the Hacienda in Manchester where they have loads of posters and displays about many ranging music genres, in Which they had a display of many examples of punk/punk art from the likes of Sex Pistols to The Clash, and I still have many examples of photos and research which I had kept onto from my visit inwhich I took influence from my notes.

Secondly regarding my research I did I looked upon many many sources of infomation ranging from a variety of books and websites similar to the ones I mentioned above which had many examples of contriversial and icon album art which varied from all types of genres, I enjoyed looking at some brilliant art and listening to there music and reading the lyrics into getting an understanding behind the art.

Finally I looked at a wide range of sources from notes I gathered to Internet upon peoples opinions on the impact of Punk, I enjoyed reading a wide range of sources both positive and negative, both having good reasons however im still a full believer in Punk having a positive impact.

Reading Film And Video

During this lesson we looked at different genres of films and how we recognise different films to a pacific genre? and in ways how some films accomidate a wide range of genres such as Films like Shaun Of The Dead for example including Horror/Romance/comedy into a film. Aproaches for wide topic ranging films such as the film I just suggested need to balance them selfs out for example if I took the Horror aspect and the Romance aspect of the film which are contrasting elements and one you would normally associate combining. However it needs to be balanced out carefully depending on the main genre of the film which in this case is Horror as too much romance would contridict the target market of the film if u advertise the film as a horror, of cause theres nothing to stop advertising as a horror romance.

I think in general It is easy to associate a film into a pacific genre as there plenty of evidence to share, Starting off with in some cases the actors for example if the film includes Jason Statham or Cristian Bale you can pretty much gurantee an action/thriller.Music is also a great key and is developed to coinside with the film for example in horror films u are delivered the music to suspense scenes, and in comedy/romance film your provided with in general more happy/upbeat music.Costumes/outfits give a great impact towards the time period and setting of the film which is self explanotry. Obviously the characters involved are the most important key and what the storyline includes but in general I think relating a movie to a genre is preety straight forward as we've been brougth up with a hole range of well known genres and films which we can easily relate to.

Aswell we were told to look at the film, Alfred Hithcocks The Birds, and look into Laura Mulveys theory of the glaze, to me this is once again rubbish from somone taking offence and basing all her facts to coinside with this film, to start with this is Alfred Hitchcocks film and world he has created, not reality and the female character is acting a role which has been provided, I dont think hitchcock is using woman as a sexual item, yes she is looks stunning but to me her fur coat demonstrates wealth and power, for one she is the only character we are shown within the clip from what I can remember so how are we supposed to compare and contrast betweent the men in the clip, having looked back all we are shown from the shots is a few emotions from her, I fail to see how that is showing woman as sexual items. Yes maybe around those times woman were looked in general as the inferior sex, however times have changed for the better, and Hollywood has been trying to move away.

Entering the Hyper-real, Planet Baudrillard

My view initially of the Hypereal was kind of like living another live virtually for example Second Live and World Of Warcraft come to mind, where u can play and meet people socialise and create a new identity and character of which u have less limits than reality and can explore more. Or even the idea of just using the internet for example shopping online where your performing human actions virtually.

But with reading what Baudrilland has said regarding hyper-reel I've been thinking does it go much deeper than that, he seems to suggest that Disneyland is a perfect example of a hyper reel, I can understand where he's come from as its like we've been taken out of our natural environment and placed in this world where 2D characters are represented in 3D and includes many themes and rides based around films and cartoons and bringing fiction to life. However for me I strongly disagree with these comments at the end of the day its a man/woman in costume which only the young and guliable believe to be real, dressed up and acting, and Disneyland was all man made in which we created and if it was not for us Disneyland would not exist so It was our concept that brought it to life, for me Disneyland is in theory a theme park with higly themed rides and characters which we created. To add Disneyland is not there to make the rest of America real, that is nonsense for reasons Ive already suggestes America was constructed by man and Disneyland was constructed by man. Shore its like entering a different environment but if u demolished it all end of the day it would be just land. Thats just my thought.

Dont Look Now! Truth, fiction and the art of storytelling.

In this session we were given ways in which u can tell and narrate a story, some methods are better used depending on the story you are telling, for example the film Sin City is set in one environment and includes several stroies which overlap with eachother for example the characters apear in others stories for brief moments, Such as in the film as most would be more familiar, they used the 1 scene at the bar inwhich all stories interacted with as u can see from the video below that the main individual characters are within that shot and each story within the film has a reference to that scene in the bar.



Other example is the style,of starting the film with the ending/Middle and from that point been delivered a wide range of flashbacks which have resulted in leading to that moment. This style by been delivered the ending may seem like a spoil, but by given the ending you are intrigued and drawn in to find out what caused this situated, however If you are given the reasoning early on it could become very boring and predictable. Films that perform this style well include The Blair Witch Project, Citizen Kane and Pulp Fiction to an effect.

One of the most popular ways into telling a story is to do a voice over the image/character to get a there view of the situation, and expresses his emotions through speech and informs the audience of his feelings and what he's actually thinking, These can be used effectivly however can ofen spoil a movie with sloppy dialogue used to describe situations and become irratating. One film that does a voice over well ive been told is The Days Of Heaven.

Another way is to tell the same story from different characters, which provides a different view,and ould give a second opinion on characters and give an unbiased view as your hearing the story from different sides. an example of this is in Saw as the two victims who have been captured tell there different stories on how they ended up in that situation.

Radical Typography

In this lesson we were on about punk/punk rock imagery we looked at how typography is used to evoke emotion or to help give off an image and how through use of cut and paste they got a DIY feel to there albums,posters and merchandise. Firstly Punk is very political and has great impact socially so the DIY aproach seems a very aproapiate method to chose as a majority of punk is about standing up against the negative impacts globally from Political to Poverty isues in the hope of improvement.

A classical example of this in use is Sex Pisols which incorporated this style to great effect as shown by two of there album covers below




2 examples of highly contriversial albums using this technique, the top example used cut outs of letters from the newspapers and used them to cover the queens eyes and mouth to indicate the form inwhich the band are not happy with current news and issuing a protest towards the government,It was not used as an direct insult towards the queen, but was idolised as demonstation towards high power. at the time this caused massive uproar and contriversy however since then the album has been names as one of the most iconic examples of album art.

Other great political punk albums which bacame idolised for there front cover include the Clash as shown below with "London Calling" which was a photo from one of there live shows, the photo was not planned but symbolises the anger and energy that punk was about, and the power for change.



Influenced from the likes of The Sex Pistols punk artwork then started to tackle many important issues ranging a wide arrange of topics from War to Poverty, heres a few that I found which really stand out.

Uncanny In Film

Fistly u could say that all films are uncanny as its somone acting and taking on the role of a character and story which is made up, and acting beyond how they would nactually react in reality, aquiring new personalitys and attributes within the role there acting.

Most commonly Horror movies are a prime example of The Uncanny, for example horror films including Zombies and such as there still human and have our same attributes such as walk,eat,see and still look like us but perform these actions in a completly different way yet they are supposedto be dead, not living. Dawn Of The Dead remake is a great example as it took the steriotype of Zombies as slow and brainless, and turned it around to create Fast slighly more intelligent Zombies briding the gap making Zombies even more human like despite the fact there not giving a better improved perspective of the uncanny.

Heres the best clip I could find of the remake of Dawn Of The Dead, could'nt find an exact scene of uncanny so thought Id just post as good a trailor I could find



Most Recently I watched the brilliant film Shutter Island which is the perfect example of an Uncanny film, for those who have not seen it the basic plot of the film Is a detective goes to investigate an Island, and believes that they are experimenting on mental patiences and there playing the role of god, and trys to gather proof, however it turns out that he is a patient there that had been sent there for killin his wife, which he then believes there using it as a conspiracy to keep him on the island however turns out in the end he is insane and has been on the island for 2 years. This is a perfect example of uncanny as through that 1 character to the audience you could be persuaded to believe he is a sane person or an insane person.

Heres a trailor of the film, as its not realeased on DVD yet hard to find an exact scene on Youtube.

The Uncanny?

what does Uncanny mean, before looking into the word I had no idea whats so ever and only herd the word mentioned a few times. However for this task we were told to look into an extract of E.T.A Hoffmans "The Sandman" by Sigmund Freud which is also an answer to what Ernst Jentsch thought physiologically about the story.

Firstly The novel is situated around a boy called Nathaniel who Is told about the character "The Sandman" From this experience during his life he had alot of illneses and bad experiences emotionally, which all resulted from the attack on him as a child. He thought his father was getting attacked by man named Coppelius, ,which resulted in just 1 of his many illnesses. When attending University he falls in love with an automaton, Olympia, But after diagreements between both parties he becomes vastly ill again. He then decides it would be a better idea to marry Clara, which results in tragedy as one day while climbing a tower he starts seeing Coppelius again and Imagines Coppelius was Clara and results in him trying to push her off but sadly results in him falling to his death.

To me having looked more into the meaning of the Uncanny I can see how it could be described as Uncanny as the Nathaniel is believing in something supernatural yet we are not told of Nathaniels existince, yet we are lead to presume he is a human, maybe he's more alike to the sandman, or that he is obsessed and everything he loves he imagines is The sandman or that they are getting attacked, demonstarting the craziness he has.

Film Production 0.2

Ive decided upon a storyline for my film. Basically its going to the main characters 1 year anniversary after his Girlfriends death, Of which the character is still unsure as to how she died and believes upon a conspiracy she was murdered. He has suffered severe depression the last year and wont rest until the truth is found. To which I want to start of the 1 min clip by basically showing his emotion and his daily routine, to then later on he is delivered a book, which happens to be his girlfriends favorite book with the message on the book "happy 1 year anniversary" covered in blood. He then flicks through the book and discovers a family photo on page 13 with all there heads cut off. To which he heads of on the hunt.

Im planning on producing the clip in black and white, heavily influenced by Sin City, i am also planning to have certain aspects of the clip such as Blood and News article headlines colored in red. Im also planning to have a voice over through the film.





Not really what im aiming for within this project but im really interested in this video in which I found. I really love the style and imagination which is included and have come up with many ideas inwhich I could include in my version, However I was'nt sure whether this going for this form of media would pass the brief as only requires one shot so I decided to have an attempt at this form of media during the summer break.



Not sure if Im planning on using one during my film but would really like to do some of my own footage using a slow motion camera some time in the near future, we were given a tutorial on using a slow motion camera and using equipment such as a tracker in which to get more accurate footage which could be useful within the filming procedureand from what I saw it came up with some excellent footage, This is not the footage we collected as a group but heres an example of the kind of thing im talking about.Id love to experiment in one of my own projects at the idea of setting up with a band and using it for somone playing drums and guitar and so on. Think that could make an excellent side proect.



We allso had a lesson on using green screen which was a really interesting tutorial, Im not going to use it on my project I dont think well there may be small aspects of the film im planning such as the newspaper headlines however if I require I shall just use green paper which shall still work. We were also given tutorials on how to upload green screen footage for great effect on After effects and were given tutorials on tracking and stabalising the footage which could be really crucial towards a later date depending on the footage.

Film Production 0.1 (First Ideas)

For my 1 minuite film my My first ideas are I want to create a scene from a movie inwhich I have decided to base it on a kind of psychology horror, Im drawing towards the idea of interpreting the phobia towards the number 13, Im intending to base it on the main character who has a fear of the number, im undecided on his reasons as to why but im thinking of relating it to some tragic experience from the past which he keeps having flashbacks to. I want to create a really dark atmosphere and create suspense, I want to draw huge influence from, films such as Signs, The Shining and The Sikth Sense, that element of suspense which ima big fan of. Im intending not to use violence and gore but i plan to make it disturbing as possible. Im now going to come up with a few storylines and idea to narrow my ideas down.