My Idea for the opening.

As a group, we came to the agreement that we all will come up with our own idea's for the opening of our film then we are going to choose the best one or combine them together.

My idea is based on my own hobbies. I want the film to be football related; where the main character (a young teen) has his aspirations of becoming a pro. The inspiration behind my film is the film 'Goal'.

Camera Moves

Basic Camera Moves

As with camera framing, there are standard descriptions for the basic camera moves. These are the main ones:

Pan: The framing moves left & right, with no vertical movement.

Tilt: The framing moves up & down, with no horizontal movement.

Zoom: In & out, appearing as if the camera is moving closer to or further away from the subject. (There is a difference between zooming and moving the camera in and out, though. There'll be more about that in the intermediate tutorial.)
When a shot zooms in closer to the subject, it is said to be getting "tighter". As the shot zooms out, it is getting "looser".

Shot types

EWS (Extreme Wide Shot)
In the EWS, the view is so far from the subject that he isn't even visible. The point of this shot is to show the subject's surroundings. The EWS is often used as an establishing shot — the first shot of a new scene, designed to show the audience where the action is taking place.

VWS (Very Wide Shot)
The VWS is much closer to the subject. He is (just) visible here, but the emphasis is still on placing him in his environment. This also works as an establishing shot.

WS (Wide Shot)
In the WS, the subject takes up the full frame. In this case, the boy's feet are almost at the bottom of frame, and his head is almost at the top. Obviously the subject doesn't take up the whole width of the frame, since this is as close as we can get without losing any part of him. The small amount of room above and below the subject can be thought of as safety room — you don't want to be cutting the top of the head off. It would also look uncomfortable if the feet and head were exactly at the top and bottom of frame.

MS (MidShot)
The MS shows some part of the subject in more detail, whilst still showing enough for the audience to feel as if they were looking at the whole subject. In fact, this is an approximation of how you would see a person "in the flesh" if you were having a casual conversation. You wouldn't be paying any attention to their lower body, so that part of the picture is unnecessary.

MCU (Medium Close Up)
Half way between a MS and a CU. This shot shows the face more clearly, without getting uncomfortably close.

CU (Close Up)
In the CU, a certain feature or part of the subject takes up the whole frame. A close up of a person usually means a close up of their face.

ECU (Extreme Close Up)
The ECU gets right in and shows extreme detail. For people, the ECU is used to convey emotion.

CA (Cutaway)
A cutaway is a shot that's usually of something other than the current action. It could be a different subject (e.g. these children), a CU of a different part of the subject (e.g. a CU of the subject's hands), or just about anything else. The CA is used as a "buffer" between shots (to help the editing process), or to add interest/information.

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Planning final project: ideas

Our innitial ideas

Sub genre: Sport/crime

Main character: Josh

• Inspiring footballer who wants to turn pro
• Brought up in a tough neighbourhood
• Not like the rest of the boys in his neighbourhood.

locations:

• London
• Football pitch/courts

Our teen film is about a talented young footballer growing up who's dreams is to be a footballer, he gets a contract with a top football team however fortunes turn, as he and his team mates fight with another group of boys in which he picks up a career ending injury. The road to revival is tough as he believes his dreams to be a footballer is shattered.

style of tittles: Bold Arial


Actors: Hadi and Tyler + (Hadi football friends)


target audience: Male teenagers, sports fanatics


independent or mainstream: independent



style of soundtrack: hip hop, action

Final clip- sound effects task

Creative Commons

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation that makes an array of music available for the public to share, use and edit. They have various licences that enable the authors of the product to say which rights they own and which rights that they want to make available for the public, therefore giving both parties the opportunity to get what they want.

The Creative Commons website layout.

Firstly, you search the genre of music that you want to use. Under the search bar there are options that enable you to filter the type of media you want. These options are: use for commercial purposes and to modify, adapt and build upon. This gives the user a chance to chose exactly what they want to do once they acquire the file that they want. In addition to the, the website also provides you with the chance to chose the medium that you want to use in order to search, play and download your file.

The result of me searching for hip hop on the Creative Commons website using the medium of SoundCloud.

I searched for hip hop in the Creative Commons browser while using SoundCloud as a medium. The results provided me with various hip hop titles ranging from instrumentals to mix tapes. The results that correspond with my search preferences from the Creative Commons website are available for download, whereas I am unable to download the others.

Sound task

Sound Task

In this task, we are going to watch a clip from the film 'Higher Learning'. After that, we are going to get the same clip without sound and add our own sounds based on what we see as appropriate for it. We will add our own foley sound to replace the originals to put our imprint on the production. The music that we use will reflect the characters' backgrounds, therefore giving the audience a glimpse of their characteristics. Our music will also be copyright free, as we are not planning on breaking the law or paying for the rights to use other copyrighted music. This would prevent us from being vulnerable to copyright claims by the rightful owners of the music.

Shot by shot remake (Director evaluation)

In this task we had to remake the opening of 'the breakfast club' we used a variety of props such as: toy cars, american style lockers and fake hair. Also we used a number of equipment such as: a camera, tripod and a flip cam. In terms of technology we used the apple mac's to edit the footage we filmed. We used a number of software such as: final cut pro, audio converter (convert the music (mp3) to aif) and clip grab to get the introduction of 'universe production'.

Pre production: I feel that our pre production was terrible, we were procrastinating for the first 25 minutes of filming because we didn't understand 100% what we had to do. i feel that this was a massive downfall in terms of time management as we wasted a lot of time. 

Production: After the confusion was settled we got down to business. We first filmed the introduction of the characters which in my opinion was the wrong idea because we should have filmed the different locations within the school first so that it flowed well. However half way through our filing we got more and more productive and starting filming a lot of scenes well. When we got to the end of our filming we noticed we were missing quite a lot of the locations within the school so we had to do a lot of dodgy last minute filming which is then reflected in our film due to a lot of soft camera shots which should have been a lot sharper.

Post production: Post production went very well at first because it was easy to set clips up in the right place and cut. However there was a fault with the mac we was using which caused all the clips to be jumbled along with the sounds of the clip which was a huge stumbling block in terms of time management. this was thankfully solved and we was able to convert our final video into mp4 to be suitable to go in our blog. 

Shot by shot remake

In this task we had to remake the opening of the film called 'The breakfast club'. We used a variety of props and equipment such as toy cars and fake hair.

Shot by shot remake interview

In this clip, our director reflects on the positives and negatives of making our shot by shot remake of The Breakfast Club's opening. He mentions both the difficulties that we encountered while doing this and how we plan to avoid these problems when we make our actual production.

Shot by shot remake - filming

Shot by shot remake - filming

Prior to filming our shot by shot remake of The Breakfast Club, we created a storyboard containing every frame of the original opening. We used it as a guideline for our remake and it ensured that we filmed the scenes in the correct order.

(insert pic of storyboard here)

After we made our storyboard, we collected the following props in order to aid our filming process: a toy car, a wig and headphones. We used the toy car to act as a replacement for the actual cars that were seen in the original opening. The wig was used to portray the female characters such as: the mothers and daughters. And we used the headphones to act as a steering wheel in the shots that involved characters that were in cars.

An example of a group member, Hadi, portraying a female character with the help of a wig.

We filmed the majority of this task in empty classes, where we could film without any distractions from other groups or passers by. We used a range of technical equipment including: a camera, tripod, and flip  camera whilst filming. We used the flip camera in order to record the voice over which occurred at the beginning of the film after the title sequence. And the camera and tripod were used to film the other scenes, including the still shot of the clock and the tilt whilst filming the locker.

Our cameraman, Raekwon, demonstrating how we shot scenes with the camera.

An example of one of the vacant rooms that we used to film in.

Whilst filming, we encountered various problems. One of the main ones is the fact that we ran out of time, which resulted in us having to rush the latter scenes of our opening. This happened primarily because we had to figure out ways in which to solve the problem of us having only 3 members; so we had to work around the problems that arose from it. An example of this is when we filmed the scene of 'the brain'. There are 3 characters that were involved in the scene - the brain, his mother and his little sister. Because of this we had to set the camera and then start recording prior to getting into our correct positions and acting.

Evaluation of my progress so far

My progress so far has been steady, most of my work is up to date and i have got feedback from my teachers. I know the areas i need to improve on

shot by shot remake task (1)

The task for this activity is to watch the beginning of the film 'The breakfast Club' and to attempt a remake of it. the aim is to make it as accurate as possible in terms of shot types, character personalities, etc. in order to emulate a film with such little amounts of props, we are going to have to think of a different way to represent the characters as the film did. For e.g. the beginning of the film was based mainly in about three or four cars; as we are unable to get hold of this, we are going to have to come up with a different way to show characters in the same way. this could be done by possible changing the transport method or maybe even use toy cars.

The location of the scene is outside the high school where four out five characters have arrived in a car. they have conversations with their parents before heading inside the school. the conversations as well as  the characters actions allow the audience to get a feel of their personalities.

Meet the protagonists of the opening scene. 

"The criminal"

This is Judd Nelson; known as 'the criminal' in this film. The audience's first encounter with this character showed them the kind of personality he has. He arrived at the school having walked recklessly across the road where he almost got run over and not a single expression on his face showed us that he cared.

"The basketcase"

This is Ally Sheedy; known as 'the Basketcase'. Although we don't hear anything from her, the audience gets an understanding of her background. As she exits the family car from the back seat, she attempts to say goodbye but her parent drove off without a word. This shows that she is not cared about and is possibly the reason she acts so miserable all the time as we could see from her dark clothing and her facial expression.

"The Athlete"

This is Emilio Estevez; known as 'the athlete'. We quickly see why he might have that name as he turns up to the high school in a truck driven by his dad; a typical way in which sporty/jockey like character would turn up. Also the fact that his dad dropped him off is also typical as it is the dad who be dropping his sporty son off at school.

"The Princess'"

This is Molly Ringwald; known as 'the princess'. She is given that name as she turns up in BMW car not wanting to be at the school. her dad promises to take her shopping if she goes. this shows that she is spoilt.

"The Brain"

This is Paul Gleason; known as 'the brain'. he turns up in a car driven by his mum who is clearly strict as she demanded that he goes in and does some sort of studying. 

Travelling And Arriving Blog Task

In this task we had to create a storyboard on how our character could get to school, we chose our character to take the bus where he experiences bullying with his friend. We chose our character to take bus because his family doesn't really care about him so he is vulnerable as he doesn't have anyone to protect him as his only friend is just like him so are easy targets to the bully. He is a 'geek' and doesn't really care about his appearance  and is one of the main reasons why he gets critisied by his bullies.  

The explanation of the order of titles

The explanation of the order of titles

The opening titles that occur in films are mostly formatted in a conventional order, an example of this is: studio icon, production company icon, distributor icon, producer, director, actors, sound, etc. Like most titles, the highest contributors in terms of money invested are mentioned first, this is the case because the film couldn't have been made without their input. These important titles are often given the most time on screen to emphasise their significance.

                                                   

In these two examples, the name of the main actor comes directly before the title of the film, which highlights their significance.


Contrary to the other titles, the distributor and production company(s) are given time to showcase the respective icon of their companies prior to the rest of the titles. For example, 20th Century Fox has a distinctive icon which plays at the beginning of the productions that they distributed or produced. In addition to this, these important companies are mentioned again before the other titles in the main title sequence, which further reinforces their significant role in the film. 

20th Century Fox' s logo.

The stars of the film are among one of the last titles to appear in conventional opening sequences. This partly because they take money, rather than contribute it. However, it could also help to establish the opening of the film, as the audience may be familiar with their character's when the film begins. The stars may be the reason why the consumer watches the film, so if the star is a significant actor, their name may appear to be larger than other ones and it may be shown for longer.

Order Of Titles- Embedded Timetoast.