flashbacks/flashforwards

In out opening 2 minutes we have planned to include some flashbacks/flashforwards (as Its only 2 minutes into a film, the audience will not know, and will keep them engaged) Rory would of been having these and he doesnt know what they are trying to tell him, they are reocurring but he can never make out who or where? If we were doing the whole film we probs would them of as flashforwards, and the film would go to them later in the film when they are actually happening..

When writing for an audience, keep in mind they want you to show them what's going on. They're not fond of being told a story. Two great ways of illustrating the past and future events in your story are through flashbacks and flash forwards, respectively.

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FlashBacks
A good flashback example can be seen in the recent film Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Flashbacks throughout tell the audience of the kind of relationship they shared. There were good times and bad times, but perhaps most memorable of all is a flashback example involving Sarah and her old memories of Peter.

In less than a minute, the film communicates to its audience where Sarah's feelings for Peter are, even though outwardly she shows no signs of the reality. Thus, the flashback example is relevant and triggered by something in the present.
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Flash Forwards

In Stephen King's The Dead Zone (novel, film, TV series), the protagonist acquires the gift of predicting the future after a nearly fatal car crash. When he makes physical contact, he is able to flash forward and see a person's future.

The flash forward of a nuclear event becomes a plot point on which the rest of the character's path must travel.

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To Note...

Whether it's a flashback or a flash forward, the information that comes to light must be triggered in the present by something relevant...and the information either literary device provides must be essential to the audience's understanding of the story.

Possible filmimg locations

Merton Street Oxford.



It is an old cobbled road, with the right angles we can make it look it like a 'dodgy' back street. Which would be a good setting for the criminal genre... Hopefully it will be a quiet location with few factors what could effect continuity, like cars, people etc.

New College Lane...


The road with Oxfords symbolic 'Bridge of sighs' which we could also use in the film. The locations aren't meant to link together. the chase will go through several locations...

StoryBoard

This is the outline of our storyboard. It will only be when we get to the place of filming that we will know how reasoble these shots are and we will obviously be trying different shots at filming to see what will work best.

Idea Expanded

Wednesdays are good days, 1 lesson and thats General, means a whole school day for media!!

here are my notes I wrote..

- First scene. Girl screaming in darkness, Boy wakes up.
Idea how to do this... Darkness, but can just make out a girl but is not identified, the camera is going in to reveal the face, when suddenly there is bright white light, it only then when it comes into focus that, the audience realize that we're in a different room, and the light is coming from a window. (camera is looking up, and blinks as if eyes) The shot will then change to the boy (Rory) laying on the floor of a dirty place with just a blanket, he then jolts up...shaking and sweating, this dream has been reoccurring to him. He then lays back down and nods off again with the blinking black again...

- Second scene. A chase scence.
Idea to do this... Over the blackness we hear the sounds of running (panting and footsteps) it then leaves the blackness into the chase, Rory is being chased by 3 guys, several locations can be used. During the chase it can go to 'flash back' type shots, ( What Im struggling to explain to my group but... When you're asleep dreams are random and change regularly, sounds what happen while you're asleep can be something else in a dream.. for e.g when the radio goes off, in your dream sometimes it fits in with the dream like it could be music at a disco) We could use this in our film, like The sound of rain outside in a dream could represent someones head being held under water, people banging on the door to get at rory in a dream could be fighting to stop being tied up and getting peoples attention, a door shutting, in a dream could be the boot of a car being slammed shut. What Im suggesting is what the audiences thinks are flash backs are actually what will happen in the film. Like the dream of the girl Rory thinks its his mother who went missing when he was 5, but in fact it could be his girlfriend. but he doesnt know and nor does the audience until its revealed...
So the chase will use many different shots, quick durations to show urgency, makes it exciting.
The 2 mins could end with: Rory thinking he got away from the chasers but in fact when he looks back in front gets smacked and blacks out... title
or.. Him getting to a dead end, with an over the shoulder shot from the attackers...and leave the audience thinking what happens next...
or he could get away.. e.g finding a bike and cycling off into the distance with the chasers chasing the bike for a bit but then giving up and shouting even though hes long gone.

Media Idea

Possible film names: Time for action/ Action time
Break away
Ground Battle
equilibrium/expectations/Persistance/ ( Random word generator)
Conscience (ibby)
Withholding information (favorite)


Tag lines: To escape the trouble, you must be the trouble.
Does a new life mean the loss of an old life?
Is a life of crime ever left fully behind?

Genre: Action | Crime | Romance
Rory Slein had a bad start to life as a child he was largely neglected and forced to look after himself. His father a persistent jail occupier and now in the second year of a 9 year charge for the manslaughter of a local supermarket security guard. While his mother has never been seen since Rory was 5 years old, going between foster homes, life hasn’t been easy.
Rory now 17 years old, unemployed and living in an abandoned flat, involved with the wrong type of people now has a reason to try and change his life around; Rory has fallen in love with Gemma Sharpe a part time shop assistant. Rory realises that the only way he can keep Gemma and to keep her safe is to get away from the trouble, but those who he wants to leave behind aren’t so keen on the idea of him changing and just gets him in even more trouble, threatening lives in the process… can he get away? Can he change his life around? What Will Happen to Rory and Gemma? Will the people he once hurt help him?
Side story: Rory trying to locate the whereabouts of his mother, Will he discover the constant screaming he hears in his head? Is it the sound of his mother? Will he find her?!

The group is having several hiccups, with disowning ideas which we originally thought were good, today in the double lesson, The 3 of us were in disagreement probably more to the fact that we werent getting each others ideas... So we all did our own story board for our idea...
My idea was we see torch lights in the wood, first coming towards the camera, then we see the main character, we see them clearly looking for something, and it goes back and fourth between an Interrogation in a room, where it shows it links with voice overs like.. "I'm not telling you anything!" over the shot of them looking and "Where is it?". I was thinking that it was MI5 looking for something and this person was withholding it from them, which would be the story line throughout the film, them trying to find it, with side stories aswell, like relationships, but clearly we don't need to show that in the 2 minutes..

Below I have uploaded a quick video I did to demonstrate my idea as much as I could with just me being the camera man and the actor.. It would be alot shorter, I only tried to edit the light transition, with more time and better filming I could do a lot better but its just an idea.

Torch


The video basically shows the light coming towards the camera, we then see me, a bit of mucking about with the light, then I tried to go into the light of the torch and out through the light in my room on to a computer, It doesnt quite work but it could with more work and filming.

RESEARCH! Own video Practice

Wall kick Jump

Sorry I didnt edit this dowm, perhaps should of.. but um this was really just testing movement of character rather than the camera shot itself.

Cycle Cam


We wanted to test how easy and effectively it would be to record action whilst cycling... We did this by Patrick holding the Mobile phone (Camera) in one hand while directing the bike with one hand. There was no pedaling just a roll down a slight hill we found from this that it did produce a fairly good, few shakes shot, but this was on smooth ground, probably on not so smooth ground shake would of been significantly shakier. But Overall a good shot and if possible to use, would be good.

Jumping down over Obstacles





Ok these 2 videos, again were more the movement of the character we wanted to see, we could use this technique with clever shot and editing to make it look like someone jumping big distances and high walls, making it more exciting...
Jumping up over Obstacles

Final film IDEA.

Ok literally in the last few minutes. The group have come up with a good solid idea. With the use of facebook, we managed to expand on an initial idea. Ok basically our dilemma before is what could cause a chase sequence. Basically I will just sum it up..

Guy thrown in boot of car, car boot closed.
Driving somwhere (whether we show this)
Car stops
one of the gang open the boot thinking that the guy is still tied up
Guy in boot knocks this person out the way, gang member falls on the floor and shouts to get the attention of the others, seeing the guy escaping causing a chase... possibly through woods.

Only thing we havent decided is how our 2 mins will end, maybe with it somehow going to a black out, whether he escaopes or gets caught again is to be decided... also a synopsis of the whole film is needed.


We were ahead of the class now were not so much, we must get ahead again :) so competitive.

Chase scenes and more specfic research.

Hostage 2005

Director: Florent Emilio Siri
Release Date:11 March 2005 (UK)
Genre: Action | Crime | Drama | Thriller
Plot:A failed police negotiator turned small town cop, must save the lives of a family held hostage, which draws him into a much more dangerous situation.

Ok on friday I saw this on film4, what caught my attention straight away was its creativity in the opening titles. It uses red and black graphics going around the location of the first scene, having names of actors and other 'important' people on buildings, cars etc. It is not clear at the beginning it has anything to do with the first scene, until it flows into the film effortlessly and then goes to show that the graphics were showing the scene. The scene also sets up the main character for the rest of the storyline. But I'm mainly talking about the titles as we could implement this into our own films.

Casino Royale


Ok this is completely impossible for us to do, but this is just an example of how the camera shots and editing is done. They had lots of cameras recording the same action at the same time, we will not have that so will have to like in our prelim do shots over and over again from different angles. The shot durations are quick and change rapidly thus showing urgency, continuity and pace, all what we can develop into our own film.

Tony Jaa Ong-Bak


Basically this chase scene is so bad that its funny. The only thing to note is that when one of the characters does a spectacular move it shows it from different angles, although this isn't continuity, it works well with the sound.

Point Break


Ok this has very good elements what we could implement, again quick camera shots, lots of variety going between each character but also having both in the scene. We could realistically do shots like these.

If we want to have free running in our film. there are several groups in oxford who we could email (through youtube) and ask if they would help us out.

Planning For final task.

The group have been trying to come up with an idea for the final task for quite a while, but we are struggling to come up with a solid idea what will look good. The first 2 minutes of a film need to be exciting to keep the audience engaged. We have an initial idea of a chase scene, which I did last year but never evaluated. Maybe with the use of free runners. But the problem we are facing is how the chase could start without making it look basically ridiculous (thank you thesaurus.com) Also with a chase scene we may have problems with continuity, e.g random people walking, then change camera and there gone.
Another idea is an escape. But we have nothing concrete yet. But we want to do clever titles instead of just being placed there. I was going to do more research in this post, which would be more specific to our current ideas, but then I shall do it in another post.

Prelim task Evaluation draft

When deciding our genre for our prelim we researched films, I started looking for films we could research using www.imdb.com What I found when using the top 250 films voted by the users, is that the most popular filmed all had the genres of Crime | Drama, this told me that this was the most popular genre. This couldn't go unnoticed and the group decided this genre could be done fairly effectively. Many of the crime | Drama film opening 2 minutes started with a gloomy, dark atmosphere e.g. the 'shawshank redemption’ where it is night time and the character in the car is kept mysterious for the 2 minutes giving the audience the question of what’s going he doing? Whys he there? Etc. From this research we could put these concepts into our own film fairly simply but effectively.
We did research around Oxford on where we could do our own filming, we were looking for like a back street, hidden, gloomy, worn down place, although we could have done this with effects, although it wouldn’t look as professional and effective. We were then given an opportunity to use an abandoned shop. We weren’t aware when giving the opportunity of its interior but we knew that it would still be helpful for us to film to avoid the problems of like change in weather, random people walking by which could cause lack of continuity between shots. It was only when checking out the shop that we realised it was perfect for our genre, wooden floors, hanging wires, deteriorating walls and creaking doors. Which from the idea from other media products, we believed the location was conventional for our type of genre.
We had decided to dress me (walker) up in a suit to make it look like a business type meeting, but we didn’t want to make me look like an official businessman one who works in banks, offices etc but to show that what he’s doing is behind the scenes and not completely legal whereas for Piyal we wanted him to be slightly more casual but also with a serious look to fit in with the genre.
In our media throughout we wanted to keep mystery, we felt this would be engaging and make the audience want to carry on watching to see what’s happening. We started the mystery by not revealing the guy in a suit for a while and just see what he’s wearing, the brief case and hear the footsteps of him, and we then carried on the mystery with the enigma of 'what’s in the brief case? The fact that it’s in a gloomy dull environment suggests to the audience that it’s something dodgy.
In our prelim task our characters we tried to represent criminal’s social groups we did this from what we understand from other media products what have achieved this it may not be accurate in real life but in terms of how the media portrays it, is what we tried to achieve. We tried to portray our characters as dodgy looking, hidden away from society and of few words. How we interpret the black market operates.
The group did research on our age group to find out what they liked in a film which we could implicate in to our film. We decided that our target audience is people who we can relate to as we will have similar views and opinions. We chose quite a large age range from 16 - 40 which young to middle adults, as this age range is the most significant contributor to IMDB. To attract this audience we wanted to create mystery and gloom which according to our research and the IMDB website was what the top 250 films had in them. On the basis of our prelim it’s hard to give it a target audience as not much happens, and no synopsis for a whole film.
Available to us was a handheld camera, a tripod and editing software, the very minimal needed to make a film. We found the camera which used mini DV tapes needs to be used with caution as it easily can record over previously recorded scenes, so if watching stuff just recorded, we had to be careful to make sure we had played until empty film, this is also relevant to fast forwarding and rewinding as it wasn’t easy to find specific parts of the film and had to be estimated. We also found when filming in a quiet location and playing back the film that white noise was produced within the scenes. Finally the camera battery on hand held cameras is very limited, 3hours maximum, and had to recharge. We found the Tripod to be useful for still shots, but juddery when panning and largely used steady hands for the majority of our shots. The editing software we used for editing the film was Imovie, this was new to the whole group but a little bit of trial and error we managed to do it all in around 2 hours, although it was basic skills. When editing we really noticed the change in lighting in the middle of the 'shot reverse shot' where it was fairly light to quite dark this was because of the time charging of the camera time. We were hoping to edit this to make it lighter but we found it didn’t work effectively so left it dark. We researched this to find out how we could deal with this issue next time and its all in the filming, using lighting and umbrellas to direct light effectively.
The institution which is mostly likely to distribute our preliminary task is 'Film4', which is part of channel 4 which has its only film production company, film4 productions. It is quoted on their website "The Company develops and co-finances film productions and is known for working with the most innovative talent in the UK, whether new or established." This would fit our criteria they also fund Projects, which we would need.
The aim of the task was to complete 3 objectives, going through a door, walking across a room and having a conversation. I believe we achieved this. We made it have more of a storyline than just the objectives, e.g. walking to the door, having a brief case. We used good variations on camera angles rather than the same over and over. The continuity of the shots was very precise and footsteps were timed and worked together but the shots also kept mystery to the audience. My only negatives of the film was the lighting change and the shot reverse shot sequence which had few shots, even though it was one of the criteria’s of the task.

RESEARCH! First 2 minutes of films

District B13


Director:Pierre Morel
Release Date:7 July 2006 (UK)
Genre:Action | Crime | Sci-Fi
Plot:Set in the ghettos of Paris in 2010, an undercover cop and ex-thug try to infiltrate a gang in order to defuse a neutron bomb.

I found this film by searching chase scene, after doing a chase sequence last year, I wanted to find how we could of improved on our film. Although something like this would be very hard for our group to do, It gives a good example of camera shots and durations for a fast paced scene which we could implement (quick fast shots)There is also a slight green tint, which enhances the sense of crime. Quick panning showing urgency. The music a continuous fast paced beat, adding to the effect, obviously classical music wouldn't suit the scene.

Se7en


Director: David Fincher
Release Date: 5 January 1996 (UK)
Genre: Crime | Drama | Mystery | Thriller
Plot: Police drama about two cops, one new and one about to retire, after a serial killer using the seven deadly sins as his MO

The opening 2 minutes in the film is just a montage of quick shots, with is the images of various things , what clearly this character is doing for the titles of the 'important' people to do with the film. although never seeing this film I would guess that this is going to be one of the main characters, the darkness represents to me criminal activity, along with what is my first impression of a scrap book, possibly a scrap book of his crimes which in turns could set up the rest of the film. The names of people are not just 'placed' on but flash and 'fidget' about.

The Shawshank Redemption


Director: Frank Darabont
Release Date: 17 February 1995 (UK)
Genre: Crime | Drama
Plot:Two imprisoned men bond over a number of years, finding solace and eventual redemption through acts of common decency.

The establishing shot is of a house, we hear what the audience to think at first is nondiagetic music, or slow singing, It only comes apparent that it is diagetic music of car radio, using the same camera shot it moves back on to the car and then turns on the driver this shot remains untill a close up of the mans hand on the glove department, to where he takes a suspicious looking bag out this is when a slow 'mystery' nondiagetic music is added to the radio, giving the bag a tension, whats in the bag? when we see its a gun, the audience realise that this is going to be a crime film, the nondiagetic sound carries on to the next scene which shows that the man in court is to do with the man in the car in someway, maybe it is the man, or it is the victim. Again as apparent in the above crime films lighting at the start is dim and gloomy.

Godfather 1


Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Release date: 24 March 1972 (USA)
Genre: Crime | Drama | Thriller
Plot: The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son.

Music with titles ( production company etc) fit with film- Italian. Voice heard before picture, darkness - crime. Appears to be talking to the camera it is only then apparent a few mins in that its a conversation between 2 people- slow zoom out to show this.

The Hurtlocker


Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Release Date: 28 August 2009 (UK)
Genre: Action | Drama | Thriller | War
Plot: Iraq. Forced to play a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse in the chaos of war, an elite Army bomb squad unit must come together in a city where everyone is a potential enemy and every object could be a deadly bomb.

Prelim task video.

Here is our Preliminary video. It may not be the final one depending on if we decide music is needed in places..



Our main aim for this task was to give the basic outline of the task, a story to go with it. We wanted to keep mystery in the beginning and we managed to keep the 'man in the suit' anonymous for 35 seconds,it is only then when we can clearly see the identity.

Notes to make:
The editing of the stairs slightly makes the staircase looks longer than it is, maybe too long for the whole film, although it does use a good lot of extremely good camera shots (and there were many more variations but wouldn't of worked)and very precise editing, making the shots work well together.

Walking through the door, uses one of our favorite shots, the walking in of the door, following then an OTS of the boy sitting at the 'table' which to us seemed a professional piece of camera skills.

Walking in room: We were getting the idea when filming that we were using alot of quick medium shots and decided we needed a wide shot, to set the scene, to give the audience an idea of where this action was taking place.

shot reverse shot: this was one of the main outlines was to have a conversation, we only did 3 shots for this, I personally thought we could of done more, although the shots what went with it, which were clearly part of the same sequence, may of made up for this. In this shot we wanted to keep the brief case in shot, we also decided to keep the hands in shot to show 'nerves'

Opening the brief case - when editing we noticed that when opening the brief case, the lighting had significantly darkened since the last shot, we didnt notice this at the time of filming. This was due to the battery running out of battery before the last few shots and by the time we had finished the lighting from the window had reduced, this will need to be remembered for next time. We cleverly managed to use the brief case opening as a way to end the film and to add titles. It still kept mystery to the audience as the contents of the case isn't revealed, keeping the enigma going.

Boy in suit (me) You may of been thinking, " oh dear he didn't tuck himself in properly" but we had decided that we didnt want me to look like a formal smart businessman, but something isn't right and that 'illegal' activity like 'business in the back alleys'

A very successful few days of media.

Prelim Task Editing.

In Tuesdays 1 hour lesson, the group and I started editing our clips, we started by getting rid of the clips we were defiantly not going to keep, this is when it hit me why I ached so much after the filming, I must of went up the stairs 10's of times, not including practising, not on film and going back down them to do it all over again. Our editing was very basic, with just trimming and moving clips so didnt find any problems. Today (Wednesday) the group used our morning free to finish editing, the time was used to put the clips in right order and to fine tune the timings, this had to be done well, as the footsteps had to work with each other, and to make the change in shots more smoother. We also added our favorite bits, the out takes at the end to make the titles (names) more interesting. We finally finished editing which probably took just under 2 hours, this is when we came to our main problem it wouldn't seem to let us export the file to an external harddrive, we did finally manage this but only on to a memory stick, we may have to figure how to do it properly for next time.v

Our film currently doesnt have music as we cant figure out what will suit it, or if it even needs any.. we may look into this for tomorrows lesson.

I also took some time this evening to make some extra titles for the beginning of the film, like 'pixar' or 'dreamworks' to make it look slightly more proffesional, I did this on adobe after effects with help from tutorials from videocopilot.net.

Prelim task filming.

Today Monday 1st March pur group, started and we believe to of finished all the shots needed for the prelim. It was a very long day and took longer than we expected, from 2pm (ish) to 6pm. We did all the filming in the empty shop we had permission to use. We tried to keep as much to the story board as we could but as we filmed in a different location to where we had created our storyboard, we had both more and less chance to do a complete shot, For example there was a hole in 2nd floor what looked over the turn in the stair case, we didnt have this on the storyboard but only being there gave us the idea we could use that. Although the task states we do the 3 things, we wanted to bulk it out a bit, give it a bit more of a story, with a good mise-en-scene.

Improvements needed for final task:

As the camera ran out of battery half way through although fully charged the night before, we were lucky enough to be in a suitable location to connect the wire up (although the sockets didnt actually work in the shop so just went and charge it up in a local shop for a bit, we need to take into consideration this might not be so convenient in our final piece, so we'll have to bare this in mind.

Script: We had roughly gone through what could be said, but hadnt really got a final decision until when we came to film it and even then with the battery on the low we rushed the conversation part with the shot reverse shot sequence and only had very few lines, if we are going to have a conversation in our final we may need to improve on that. We also spent alot of time on the extra bits like walking up stairs, we maybe should of filmed the priority bits first.

Lighting: We started filming at 2pm, on a bright sunny day and ended filming with lamp posts starting to light up. Luckily as we were inside and had managed for the majority of it to keep the natural light from the windows out of the shot. We had aimed to make it gloomy, and mysterious and from watching it on the camera screen we seemed to of managed that. But again we have to take into mind we might not have the luxury of avoiding several days of filming, where lighting and weather is different which could potentially ruining scenes.

Music: Before and even now we havent decided on music, we're hoping the final edit will help inspire us to find the right music or even if we need it. In the filming we largely used the sound of diagetic sound, mainly being the footsteps, and the sound of doors.