WELCOME MODERATOR

Welcome Moderator, I am Ellen Scott 1259 and I worked with Eliza Tracey 1296, Tamara Rudd 1258 and Harvey Gillett 1225. 

I hope you enjoy my blog, which contains my work on G321, the titles and openings of a frictional thriller film which I named '10 years'. My preliminary exercise follows immediately underneath. My evaluation questions are above.   

FINISHED PRODUCT

PRELIMINARY

My group and I created our preliminary. We used the Cannon 550D to film. We then upload the footage to iMac and used iMovie to edit it. 

TITLES: OPENING CREDITS

TITLES

OPENING CREDITS 
After researching the rules created by guild rules and other unions I realised that there are specific rules involving the order of the credits. Generally this is the order of the title sequence 

PRODUCTION COMPANY presents a NAME LASTNAME production a NAME LASTNAME film "TITLE" Lead Cast Supporting Cast Casting Director Music Composer Costume Designer Associate Producers Editor(s) Production Designer Director of Photography Executive Producer Producer Writer(s) Director 

If the writer and director are the same person, or the director was also a producer, hold his earlier credit and pair it with the more prestigious one (in this case "director"). so you would place "Written and Directed by" or "Produced and Directed by" or "Edited and Directed by" where the Director's credit goes. if your Dp was also your editor, you'd have "Editor and Director of Photography..." falling in the position where the DP credit goes. et cetera. 
CLOSING CREDITS Closing credits do not have any hard and fast rules that dictate how they need to be ordered. But there are conventions that have been established. If you intend to have no opening credits (something George Lucas left the DGA over) you basically put the Director, Writer and Producer credits first, then go down the line for the closing credits: 

Director Writer(s) Producer Executive Producer Lead Cast Supporting Cast Director of Photography Production Designer Editor(s) Associate Producers Costume Designer Music Composer Casting Director 
THE DISCLAIMER Here is a standard motion picture disclaimer... 
"PERSON'S NAME OR PRODUCTION COMPANY" is the author of this motion picture for the purpose of copyrght and other laws. 
This motion picture is protected pursuant to the provisions of the laws of the United States of America and other countries. Any unauthorized duplication, distribution and/or exhibition of this motion picture may result in civil liability and criminal prosecution. 
Characters and incidents portrayed and the names herein are fictitious, and any similarity to the name, character or history of any person is entirely coincidental and unintentional. 
No animals were harmed in the making of this film. 

PRODUCTION LOGO if you have an Animated Production Company Logo, place that at the very beginning, before your credits. it's the first thing we see. some studios/production companies will tag the logo on at the very end too. 
BREVITY Now, it's important to note that on a short film, many of the roles you see above were handled by one person. I've been to a few film festivals and there is nothing more likely to induce a collective groan, and lose a few fans in the process, than a tedious string of credits on a five minute film... especially if the same names keep popping up. and I'll tell you why. at festivals, shorts are programmed in blocks of 90 to 120 minutes. no one in the audience cares who did what. so waiting thru two minutes of white test scrolling against black is pretty miserable for everyone. it also does a disservice to your fellow filmmaker. shorts blocks thrive on momentum. I've seen people leave the theater over because of long credits. in particular, I sat through a 22 minute film followed by 6 minutes of very detailed credits. HALF the theater left before my film screened. half. 
The best advice I can give here is that if you were the writer, director, producer, cinematographer and editer... just go with the most important titles (in this case... "written and directed by...", dropping any credit for your editing or cinematography. Or maybe "a film by..." is enough. Didn't have a casting director and held scheduled the auditions yourself? skip it. And even if you had a crew of 20-30 people, move through those credits as quickly as possible. 

CONSTRUCTION AND FILMING: WHAT HAVE I LEARNT

Killing scene- when filming this scene due to the area we were using we has to work at speed as the rooms was needed for a teachers meeting this placed pressure on us. Despite of this we managed to work quickly and used the natural light to our full advantage as it shone of the hair of the girl and created a reflection of the girls face on the surface of the piano this added extra effect. 
News scene- In order to create a realistic set for our news/forensic scientist scene  I ordered police tape, forensic suits, face masks and foot covers. This made it look realistic and believable and it will help the audience relate the more realistic that it looks. When filming this sense all went well and we managed to do it in only one shot, it was only until we began to edit that we realised that the wild sound of the wind had drowned out the sound of our news reported speaking.
Van scene- this scene involved lots of preparation before even beginning to film as the set has to look realistic and lived in. I used a old OS map and news articles to decorate the set. We then did various shots of the van, one full pan and other close up shots. 
Morning/ Kitchen scene- before filming this scene as a group we discussed it would be much more realistic if we used a real lived in kitchen rather than creating one at school. Furthermore, we lit the house with bright filming lights as we were using a laptop screen meaning the lighting behind had to be extremely bright for the laptop screen to be visible. During this scene we used many different shot types, for example, low angle shot when Winter is picking up her post and  over the shoulder shot when she is looking through her post. Winter is dressed in short night wear to make the girl relatable and vulnerable as she is showing skin. 

FILMING: CREATING THE SET

In order to create a reilistic set for our news/forensic scientist scene  I ordered police tape, forensic suits, face masks and foot covers. This made it look realistic and believable and it will help the audience relate the more realistic that it looks. 

ATTRACTING AND ADDRESSING AUDIENCES

I created a website for our film to address our audience and create buzz before the release. This is a digital form of distribution. Now our fans can feel fully involved in the production of the film. 

DISTRIBUTION: MAKING MY TWITTER PAGE

I made a Twitter page to generate advance interest from our target audience and to elicit feedback back from others to help us develop our film. We invited  audiences to comment on 10 Years (our movie). Twitter is good for making the followers feel important. Thanks to web 2.0 technology, the web is now interactive and consumers are often producers.

On my Twitter feed I like to update it with photos of the characters and of the film sets and of the progress of the film.

FILMING:PREZI

I have created a Prezi to display the steps my group and I took when filming one of our scenes. 


Click Here to view my Prezi 

NEW TECHNOLOGIES:I PHONE 5S

I have used my I phone 5s to take photos and videos that I can then easily upload to my laptop. Also I have used apps on my phone, for example Fipagram and snapchat.

NOTE MAKING

FILMING: PICMONKEY OF FILM SET

I explored a new website Picmonkey to create a collage of photographs to display the film set that my group and I created on Friday when we were shooting main scenes of our opening. This shows the props that we created in action. 

PLANNING: FLIPAGRAM OF DESIGNING PROPS

I took responsibility in our group to create props for one of the scenes in our film opening that we were filming this week. 
Firstly I made a map of the local area of where our film is set, I did this by cutting a OS map and then using old string and photos of the young girl that is being stalked in our film. These are going to be the mise-en-scene of the van that the stalker is living in. 

I used Flipagram to present this information. 

STORY BOARDS

NEW TECHNOLOGY

My group and I have a WhatsApp group so we can remind each other when we are filming, what we need to bring and to share picture that we have taken of our set or during filming. 

NEW TECHNOLOGYS

I have created a twitter account purely for the use of helping me had a wider variety of information form the media industry that I can read and I can also post about things that I do in my day to day life that are related to media. 

NEW TECHNOLOGIES

I have used face time on my mac laptop and my  IPhone to communicate with my fellow group members when we need to discuss elements about our film opening. It has been very useful as it means we can have everything prepared and organised before we come in to film.

EDITING

Today my group and I used Movie Maker and edited the clips of film that we had already filmed. We stated my cropping the clips to the length we wanted. Next we explored the different sound effects. We later realised that it is difficult to completly edit our clips has we have not yet filmed the next scene. 

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS IMPROVEMENTS

After completing a practice textual analysis of TV drama exam my teacher marked and reviewed it, here are the ways in witch I can improve to achieve a grade A.

• ·   Although the exam is under strict time conditions make sure to check spelling and punctuation.
• ·   Name technical code for example Mise-en-scene
• ·   Start with an overview of the extract and state what type of representation is being shown.
• ·   Remember to refer to editing.
• ·   Make sure to describe every scene and everything that is going on not just what you can visually.
• ·   Develop examples fully and pay attention to detail.

AUDIENCE RESEARCH: EXIT POLES DATA

I have used the BFI website to research films that are similar genre to the film opening I am creating. I then looked at the data and created a Pictochart to display the research. 

Click Here to view my Pictochart.