(James and Simon)
21.10.09
Main Task: Case Studies
Film Openings: Case Study of Firewall
We have researched different genres of films to help us decide what genre our main task is going to be on.
The first film was Firewall. It is a well made high budget thriller, starring Harrison Ford as a banker whose family is threatened when criminals try to rob the bank that he works for. As the title suggests they do this by using high class technology to hack in and steal the money electronically.
The first thought you get from the film is a sense of fear and there is a slightly creepy perspective as well. It starts with a camera following what looks like a family going onto a boat. It freezes on different shots and there is a sound effect of a photo being taken. This shows you that this family is being watched and photographed by someone which definitley adds a certain amount of tension into the opening. The camera is quite shaky and the picture is in black and white and this helps to give the impression that it is a point of view shot of the stalker. The camera keeps cutting back to the titles with the sound affect of computer typing in the background. This gives you an idea that the film has something to do with computers which is backed up by the title of the film. It then goes on to show the stalker following the family around through their day to day lives. Harrison Ford,the father, going to work and the mother and two children at home.
It then goes on to etablish the main characters of the film. It shows the family that are being watched getting ready for a normal week day. The children, a boy Andy and a girl Sarah, are arguing. You can tell that the girl finds her younger brother annoying as he is making alot of noise when she is trying to watch television. This is showed to be just the normal sort of thing for children of this age as the mother smiles and walks out the room. The scene cuts to the wife and husband, Jack, talking and you can tell that they have a great realationship as they joke and kiss and the Jack tells his wife that he dosen't deserve her. You also get a good idea of the realationship between Jack and his daughter Sarah. She calls him Jack instead of Dad but this shows that she is a rebellious teen who wants to grow up quickly.
The opening of the film is well made and keeps the audience intrested with tension and the quick introduction to the main characters. It is cleverly filmed with a great number of different shots and the titles were bold and clear with bright colours on a black background.
(James)
Film Openings: Case Study of The Italian Job
The Italian Job is the remake of the 1969 classic film starring Micheal Caine. The storyline revolves around a group of thieves being betrayed by one of their own when robbing a vast amount of gold in Venice. The leader is shot dead and the others vow to seek revenge for what has happened and steal back the gold.
The film starts off with modern music and establishing shots and mid shots along canals to show that it is set in Venice.The opening titles show a man looking over maps and he is obviously planning something. There is upbeat modern music which adds tension and makes you anticipate what is coming next.
The camera then cuts to a close up of a diamond necklace in a jewellery store which has just been bought. We are then introduced to the man who bought it. He makes a phone call to a young woman who turns out to be his daughter. He says that he is sending her something sparkly and her imediate reaction is to sit up straight and ask if it has a receipt. This hints very strongly that this man is a thief . It then cuts to the man meeting with another someone else to discuss if all the plans are ready and this indicates that they are about to pull off a heist.
The genre of this film is revealed straight away from the beginning and this leaves the viewer in no confusion about what they are watching. There are good uses of different shots to establish the locations and the different characters, and the music and editing makes the film glossy and well made.
(James)
We have researched different genres of films to help us decide what genre our main task is going to be on.
The first film was Firewall. It is a well made high budget thriller, starring Harrison Ford as a banker whose family is threatened when criminals try to rob the bank that he works for. As the title suggests they do this by using high class technology to hack in and steal the money electronically.
The first thought you get from the film is a sense of fear and there is a slightly creepy perspective as well. It starts with a camera following what looks like a family going onto a boat. It freezes on different shots and there is a sound effect of a photo being taken. This shows you that this family is being watched and photographed by someone which definitley adds a certain amount of tension into the opening. The camera is quite shaky and the picture is in black and white and this helps to give the impression that it is a point of view shot of the stalker. The camera keeps cutting back to the titles with the sound affect of computer typing in the background. This gives you an idea that the film has something to do with computers which is backed up by the title of the film. It then goes on to show the stalker following the family around through their day to day lives. Harrison Ford,the father, going to work and the mother and two children at home.
It then goes on to etablish the main characters of the film. It shows the family that are being watched getting ready for a normal week day. The children, a boy Andy and a girl Sarah, are arguing. You can tell that the girl finds her younger brother annoying as he is making alot of noise when she is trying to watch television. This is showed to be just the normal sort of thing for children of this age as the mother smiles and walks out the room. The scene cuts to the wife and husband, Jack, talking and you can tell that they have a great realationship as they joke and kiss and the Jack tells his wife that he dosen't deserve her. You also get a good idea of the realationship between Jack and his daughter Sarah. She calls him Jack instead of Dad but this shows that she is a rebellious teen who wants to grow up quickly.
The opening of the film is well made and keeps the audience intrested with tension and the quick introduction to the main characters. It is cleverly filmed with a great number of different shots and the titles were bold and clear with bright colours on a black background.
(James)
Film Openings: Case Study of The Italian Job
The Italian Job is the remake of the 1969 classic film starring Micheal Caine. The storyline revolves around a group of thieves being betrayed by one of their own when robbing a vast amount of gold in Venice. The leader is shot dead and the others vow to seek revenge for what has happened and steal back the gold.
The film starts off with modern music and establishing shots and mid shots along canals to show that it is set in Venice.The opening titles show a man looking over maps and he is obviously planning something. There is upbeat modern music which adds tension and makes you anticipate what is coming next.
The camera then cuts to a close up of a diamond necklace in a jewellery store which has just been bought. We are then introduced to the man who bought it. He makes a phone call to a young woman who turns out to be his daughter. He says that he is sending her something sparkly and her imediate reaction is to sit up straight and ask if it has a receipt. This hints very strongly that this man is a thief . It then cuts to the man meeting with another someone else to discuss if all the plans are ready and this indicates that they are about to pull off a heist.
The genre of this film is revealed straight away from the beginning and this leaves the viewer in no confusion about what they are watching. There are good uses of different shots to establish the locations and the different characters, and the music and editing makes the film glossy and well made.
(James)
Main Task: Introduction
The task is to make the opening two minutes of a fiction film. We chose the genres action and crime. The task has to be handed in at the end of spring term. In our film there will be 3 characters. The viewer sees them talking on the telephone. They are going to leave the country on the next day, they talk about flights. The plane will bring them to Saudi Arabia, they have got "an operation" there.
(Simon)
(Simon)
12.10.09
Preliminary Task: Evaluation
I came into the group late and i arrived on the day we started filming so i took no part in planning the preliminary task. This was my first time of making a film and it was a very interesting first experience for me. I quickly learned there is much more to filming than just pressing record and pointing the camera at someone.
During the filming for our preliminary task we used match on action, continuity filming, shot/reaction/shot and exchanging dialogues. To show match on action we filmed the actor walking into a building and then sitting down at a desk. To do this we had to have the camera at different positions and different angles. We used a variety of shots to like a tracking shot, mid shot and extreme close up so we could demonstrate our skills with using a camera. We also used shot/reaction/ shot to show the exchange of dialogue between the two actors.
We did make quite a few mistakes during filming. What i found out later when we edited was that you can do alot about it and its too late to go back and make it better. There were a few shots were someone filming got in the way of another camera. This was due to poor organisation before we pressed record. Firstly the one scene where i noticed a big problem is when actor 1 wakes up actor 2. We used shot/reation/shot to film the characters talking. To do this we used two cameras to film the seperate actors speaking, so we could edit it in later. The main problem is the lighting in the room. In one shot the light was very bright and it was easy to see the actor but in the other shot the second actor is harder to see due to the room being in darkness. The continuity in this scene was quite poor because it made it looked like we were filming on different days. Secondly listening back to it the audio could of been better. In certain scenes we can the same sound on top of each other and at one point you can hear one of the persons filming say something to one of the actors. This was due again to poor organisation during before recording and this is something we need to improve on.
After completing the task i have learnt that you can never have too much footage. It is easy to edit if you have a lot too work with and you can cut out the parts that are not very good, however if you do not do much filming then you dont have a lot to work with and when it comes to the editing you have a much harder job to do.
(James)
During the filming for our preliminary task we used match on action, continuity filming, shot/reaction/shot and exchanging dialogues. To show match on action we filmed the actor walking into a building and then sitting down at a desk. To do this we had to have the camera at different positions and different angles. We used a variety of shots to like a tracking shot, mid shot and extreme close up so we could demonstrate our skills with using a camera. We also used shot/reaction/ shot to show the exchange of dialogue between the two actors.
We did make quite a few mistakes during filming. What i found out later when we edited was that you can do alot about it and its too late to go back and make it better. There were a few shots were someone filming got in the way of another camera. This was due to poor organisation before we pressed record. Firstly the one scene where i noticed a big problem is when actor 1 wakes up actor 2. We used shot/reation/shot to film the characters talking. To do this we used two cameras to film the seperate actors speaking, so we could edit it in later. The main problem is the lighting in the room. In one shot the light was very bright and it was easy to see the actor but in the other shot the second actor is harder to see due to the room being in darkness. The continuity in this scene was quite poor because it made it looked like we were filming on different days. Secondly listening back to it the audio could of been better. In certain scenes we can the same sound on top of each other and at one point you can hear one of the persons filming say something to one of the actors. This was due again to poor organisation during before recording and this is something we need to improve on.
After completing the task i have learnt that you can never have too much footage. It is easy to edit if you have a lot too work with and you can cut out the parts that are not very good, however if you do not do much filming then you dont have a lot to work with and when it comes to the editing you have a much harder job to do.
(James)
Preliminary Task: Evaluation
The preliminary task was our first filming exercise we did this year. It was a new experience and we had a lot of fun, although it was hard work as well. We got to know that making a film is not just pressing the record button; it needs a lot of accurate planning.
It’s difficult to find a start for your planning. If you know what you want to do, what the film is about, then it goes a bit faster. But looking for a good topic is really hard. After finding the topic of our dialog, we chose actors and built all the other things (Mise-en-scene, cinematography, etc.) around it.
During producing our video we made a lot of mistakes. The problem of mistakes during producing a film is that you often just realize that you made a mistake during the very last step of the filmmaking, the editing. If you forgot to take a shot, if someone is wearing the wrong costume, if the light is not good, you see your sequences just before the editing. And filming something a second time costs a lot of time. We had the problem that character 1 is not always wearing his glasses correctly. The plan was that he is wearing them when he enters and leaves the room, but sometimes he just forgot to take them of. The second mistake we made was a trickier one. I am talking about the close up shot on character 1 while he is sighing. The problem was that we put the close up in the editing just on the line above the line of the other shot in the timeline. That means we have ha two audio lines as well, which means we had two sighs at the same time, but they were slightly different. We weren’t just able to delete one of the lines, because then the sound would have been asynchronised. We had to figure a way out that we can have two audio lines; we had to mute one of them during a really short period of time.
For our main task we have learned that every shot needs to have some seconds just before the scene and after it has finished. If you have a long time before something happens, you can cut some frames out. But if you don’t have enough frames, you can’t just add them. In addition to that we will plan our main task more carefully, that we don’t have any of the “sunglass problems”, because we won’t have time to film our sequences again.
(Simon)
It’s difficult to find a start for your planning. If you know what you want to do, what the film is about, then it goes a bit faster. But looking for a good topic is really hard. After finding the topic of our dialog, we chose actors and built all the other things (Mise-en-scene, cinematography, etc.) around it.
During producing our video we made a lot of mistakes. The problem of mistakes during producing a film is that you often just realize that you made a mistake during the very last step of the filmmaking, the editing. If you forgot to take a shot, if someone is wearing the wrong costume, if the light is not good, you see your sequences just before the editing. And filming something a second time costs a lot of time. We had the problem that character 1 is not always wearing his glasses correctly. The plan was that he is wearing them when he enters and leaves the room, but sometimes he just forgot to take them of. The second mistake we made was a trickier one. I am talking about the close up shot on character 1 while he is sighing. The problem was that we put the close up in the editing just on the line above the line of the other shot in the timeline. That means we have ha two audio lines as well, which means we had two sighs at the same time, but they were slightly different. We weren’t just able to delete one of the lines, because then the sound would have been asynchronised. We had to figure a way out that we can have two audio lines; we had to mute one of them during a really short period of time.
For our main task we have learned that every shot needs to have some seconds just before the scene and after it has finished. If you have a long time before something happens, you can cut some frames out. But if you don’t have enough frames, you can’t just add them. In addition to that we will plan our main task more carefully, that we don’t have any of the “sunglass problems”, because we won’t have time to film our sequences again.
(Simon)
Preliminary Task: Evaluation
At a micro, technical level, how well did you film the tasks required – match on action, continuity filming, shot/reaction/shot and exchanging dialogue?
During the filming of our preliminary task we effectively filmed all of the shots required to create match on action, shot/reaction shot, exchanging dialogue and to demonstrate continuity filming. The filming used to create match on action required us to film many different shots of character one approaching the class room block from outside, going through the door and walking along the corridors towards the classroom. We used both cameras to take various close up shots, mid shots, and tracking shots so that we could edit them together to effectively show character one approaching the classroom using match on action.
To create shot/reaction shot during our film we had to film both actors at separate times saying the dialogue so that it could be edited to appear as a conversation between the two characters. We used both cameras to film shots from different angles and then used various pieces of film to create the conversation.
The short film we created runs quite smoothly and all of the mise en scene is the same throughout the film to demonstrate good continuity. Although, because some of the camerawork is filmed from different angles, the lighting in some shots appears different to others which unfortunately makes the audience aware of the editing in these parts. It is hard to avoid this happening without proper lighting of the scene and editing.
How many mistakes did you make, and what have you learnt about filming?
We made many mistakes while we were doing our filming mainly because of organisation. We were later than other groups to start filming as Simon was away on STV during the planning and James was late to join our group. As we had to be quick with our filming to get all of the shots required in one lesson, we would just begin filming without thinking of the position of the characters and of other members of the group. This meant that we ended up with a lot of footage which was from a bad angle or where other members of the group accidently appeared in the shot.
One scene where we kept making mistakes is the scene where character one gets up to leave. We wanted this acted a certain way so that he put his glasses on first before getting up to leave. We filmed this shot many times and repeatedly did it incorrectly although eventually we got it right and the final shot which we used was done correctly.
I have learnt a lot about filming through this task especially about where the cameras need to be positioned to create the scene how we want it to be. I also learnt that a tripod should be used as often as possible to film as it keeps the camera steady creating a smoother shot.
If you had to do this task again, what would you do differently?
If given this task again, I would definitely make sure that all members of the group were present for the lessons and the organisation was completed earlier. This would mean that our group would have more time to organise filming and to complete the editing of our film and the posts required on this blog.
I also think that over the lesson, our group filmed far more shots than we require which made editing quite tedious as we had to go through every shot that had been filmed to find the ones which we were able to use. If doing this task again, I would make sure that each shot was filmed correctly so that we weren’t left with an excessive amount of film that we couldn’t use.
Describe how you edited the footage, and any problems you encountered.
We edited the footage together to show each of the things that were required to include in our preliminary task: match on action, shot reaction shot, exchanging dialogue and continuity. Creating match on action required us to edit together the many different shots that we had filmed so that character one was shown walking all the way to the classroom. Shot reaction shot and the exchanging of dialogue required us to edit together each piece of the conversation that happens between character one and character two so that it flowed smoothly.
Continuity was the hardest thing for us to show as many of the shots had character one either sitting down or standing up at the wrong time or wearing his glasses when he hadn’t been in the previous shot. This was the main problem we had during editing – trying to keep the continuity going throughout the film. This required us to not use many of the shots as they were different in some way to the previous shot which would be noticeable for an audience watching our film.
(Gabi)
During the filming of our preliminary task we effectively filmed all of the shots required to create match on action, shot/reaction shot, exchanging dialogue and to demonstrate continuity filming. The filming used to create match on action required us to film many different shots of character one approaching the class room block from outside, going through the door and walking along the corridors towards the classroom. We used both cameras to take various close up shots, mid shots, and tracking shots so that we could edit them together to effectively show character one approaching the classroom using match on action.
To create shot/reaction shot during our film we had to film both actors at separate times saying the dialogue so that it could be edited to appear as a conversation between the two characters. We used both cameras to film shots from different angles and then used various pieces of film to create the conversation.
The short film we created runs quite smoothly and all of the mise en scene is the same throughout the film to demonstrate good continuity. Although, because some of the camerawork is filmed from different angles, the lighting in some shots appears different to others which unfortunately makes the audience aware of the editing in these parts. It is hard to avoid this happening without proper lighting of the scene and editing.
How many mistakes did you make, and what have you learnt about filming?
We made many mistakes while we were doing our filming mainly because of organisation. We were later than other groups to start filming as Simon was away on STV during the planning and James was late to join our group. As we had to be quick with our filming to get all of the shots required in one lesson, we would just begin filming without thinking of the position of the characters and of other members of the group. This meant that we ended up with a lot of footage which was from a bad angle or where other members of the group accidently appeared in the shot.
One scene where we kept making mistakes is the scene where character one gets up to leave. We wanted this acted a certain way so that he put his glasses on first before getting up to leave. We filmed this shot many times and repeatedly did it incorrectly although eventually we got it right and the final shot which we used was done correctly.
I have learnt a lot about filming through this task especially about where the cameras need to be positioned to create the scene how we want it to be. I also learnt that a tripod should be used as often as possible to film as it keeps the camera steady creating a smoother shot.
If you had to do this task again, what would you do differently?
If given this task again, I would definitely make sure that all members of the group were present for the lessons and the organisation was completed earlier. This would mean that our group would have more time to organise filming and to complete the editing of our film and the posts required on this blog.
I also think that over the lesson, our group filmed far more shots than we require which made editing quite tedious as we had to go through every shot that had been filmed to find the ones which we were able to use. If doing this task again, I would make sure that each shot was filmed correctly so that we weren’t left with an excessive amount of film that we couldn’t use.
Describe how you edited the footage, and any problems you encountered.
We edited the footage together to show each of the things that were required to include in our preliminary task: match on action, shot reaction shot, exchanging dialogue and continuity. Creating match on action required us to edit together the many different shots that we had filmed so that character one was shown walking all the way to the classroom. Shot reaction shot and the exchanging of dialogue required us to edit together each piece of the conversation that happens between character one and character two so that it flowed smoothly.
Continuity was the hardest thing for us to show as many of the shots had character one either sitting down or standing up at the wrong time or wearing his glasses when he hadn’t been in the previous shot. This was the main problem we had during editing – trying to keep the continuity going throughout the film. This required us to not use many of the shots as they were different in some way to the previous shot which would be noticeable for an audience watching our film.
(Gabi)
5.10.09
Preliminary Task: Filming
On Thursday the 1st of October, our group completed all of the filming required for our preliminary task. We filmed many shots so that we can edit them to demonstrate that we have an understanding of match on action, shot/reaction shot and continuity. We used a range of different shots for example; a mid shot, tracking shot, close-up and a high angle shot. The filming was very successful and each of us got a chance to use the cameras with and without a tripod to test our skills.
(James)
(James)
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