Project Log | PLANNING | 25/09/13

Planning
Today we discussed our points in finer detail. We discussed the opening scenes for our thriller film. We discussed more of our options and we decided to have a possible opening scene be silent. Our idea was to have cut away shots of the scenes listed below.

We have decided to have a shot of the hand and to possibly have my eye widen as the drug affects me. I was slightly inspired by a scene in The Amazing Spiderman movie where his senses are heightened and he notices things like a fly on the window. I wanted to recreate this partial hysteria. I drew for the end to have a me collapse and as the screen goes dark, a scream would be heard.

We looked up how to change eye-colour because we did have pans for me to reappear as somebody else but we decided it was too confusing, here is the tutorial that I found which shows you how to do it.

PLANNING | CHALLENGING STEREOTYPES | 24/09/13

Date: Tuesday 24th September 2013

PLANNING: CHALLENGING STEREOTYPES

Today we re-thought an aspect for our narrative because we realized after discussion that we would be positioning Chinese medicine as suspect we were reinforcing negative stereotypes. As a group, we were not comfortable with this idea. We would like to challenge stereotype by shifting the negative slant towards either the consumer of the medicine or the middle-man (distributor). We wanted to make clear that the distributor was to blame so we decided to portray the Chinese person as an unwilling participant by using looks of worry and uneasiness.

PRODUCTION LOG | RESEARCH | BRAINSTORMING IDEAS | 19/09/13

We looked into mysteries that have yet to be solved, but we decided that we weren't going to use a big mystery. We then looked at the newspaper and found a report of teenagers who have died because of DNP which is a drug which is a slimming drug. We decided that this was a good idea and decided to look more into it next lesson.

We brainstormed ideas after watching  movie and although we did not have a solid idea, we had decided that we did not want to to do the genres comedy or horror. We decided that we wanted to do a thriller.

Research | Film Openings | 17-09-13

Today in class, we started on research for our film opening project which is to be done for this year. We watched two film openings, Made in Dagenham (dir. Nigel Cole 2010) and The English Patient (dir. Anthony Minghella 1996). From these two openings, we discussed the ideas that we got from them. In the English Patient, a person was painting a picture or writing. This gave us the idea of important documents being signed, something that would reveal a big secret or would feature in a spy/thriller movie. 

Production Log | RESEARCH: The Art of the Title | 11/09/13

RESEARCH: The Art of the Title

www.artofthetitle.com

Pacific Rim (Guillermo del Toro 2013)

·        Pacific Rim uses Very dark colours to emphasise seriousness of the movie and the dark situation that the characters are in. It is shown to be very technological through the pictures of mechanical arms and robotic faces. It is masculine in the way that it shows CGI robots in a freeze frame fighting. This is not typically feminine which points to this movie being aimed at men. The shots are sharp and metallic and the changeover between shots are quick and sharp.

The Day after Tomorrow (Roland Emerrich 2004)

·   Opens with a very long track shot over the Antarctic. The shot is long to create the feeling of a remote location. The shots made me wonder whether the immense ice shelves were CGI. It looked very real. The title credits all appeared to be reflected in the water. The colours used in the opening are dark blue and white to build to the dramatic atmosphere. The music was dramatic and it created a feeling of majesty and awe.  All the information is up front before it goes to live footage When it changed from the opening credits of the tracking shot to the live action it showed a flag and the location where the place isIt moves from the dramatic shot to the live action.

Spooks (2002 Various Directors)

I watched the opening of a TV show Spooks. Its genre was spy and crime. From the start we can see what has happened in the previous episode. The voice overs tells us about “Sugar horse”, a spy placed in the enemy camp. This immediately takes the audience interest. It cuts quickly around the giving the viewer the impression that it is a very busy world. It is filled with suspense as the man listens to his classical music, silently crying knowing that he has made a mistake. The classical music is chilling and builds the tension of the scene.Troops burst through his window and everything goes black. The audience can only assume that Sugar Horse has been discovered and this man is to blame. The mystery of Sugar Horse and the importance of him is designed to intrigue the audience and pique their interest, it creates suspense and enigma.

PLANNING | THE BRIEF | 24/09/13

Planning: The Brief

I am working in a group of three, the other members of group are Erzebet Nemeth and Sabrina Yu. We have chosen Brief video. The opening sequence from a new film, including titles, in any genre or mix of genres such as comedy or thriller, together with a storyboard. Maximum length three minutes.

We decided we would not do the genres comedy or horror as they would be difficult to make realistically and would be difficult to do well. We wanted it look good and wanted to achieve a grade which would reflect our efforts.