Tuesday, 20 October 2009
Mean girls intro
There are a number of surprising elements in Mean Girls. We have all the usual teen movie clichés, like the big party while the parents are out, the competition, the prom; but Waters handles these scenes with a freshness that's lacking in something like Love Don't Cost a Thing, an atrocious film that was dishonest with its depiction of teen romance. Intelligence is also a strong point. Cady is a smart student, and the big game at the end is not a contest with cheerleaders, sports or dances, but with mathletes. Cady is enrolled in calculus, and she fakes a failing grade to get a guy to like her. This is a movie that respects intelligence and sees smart people as a fun-loving group. That's refreshing.
Overall, Waters makes a pointed examination of high school cliques and their potential for trouble. Finding acceptance in high school can be a tricky thing, and social pigeonholing can lead to wrongheaded decisions on who to hang out with. Cliques aren't a bad thing in general. Students with a common interest should be able to hang out with each other, but when one clique's own sense of superiority is so great that it causes hate discontent among other cliques, then resentment and hatred take over. Mean Girls isn't your typical high school comedy. The comedy is on the surface, but the real heart of the film lies underneath.
The strangers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnLRdAuzeP0
As a big hollywood movie the strangers include production values the use of cross cutting and voice overs makes it obvious that this movie is a horor movie. Also at the beging the film states that the movie is based on a true story which creates tension and as for the flickering on the screen makes you wonder what is going on. as for the first scene you hear a phone coversation which also leaves you thinking and questioning what is happening.
As a big hollywood movie the strangers include production values the use of cross cutting and voice overs makes it obvious that this movie is a horor movie. Also at the beging the film states that the movie is based on a true story which creates tension and as for the flickering on the screen makes you wonder what is going on. as for the first scene you hear a phone coversation which also leaves you thinking and questioning what is happening.
Wednesday, 14 October 2009
30 minute shoot task.
in todays lesson we was set a task which consisted of filming 10 frames which shows someone being watched, Also was given instructions to get into groups of three who you have never worked with before therefore i chose to work with matthew and thelma.
we started by discussing who's doing what i chose to draw up the story board whilst matthew set up the camera and thelma filled in the shooting schedule and also helped me with extra ideas story board. we decided to keep the story simple of a girl watching her friend smoking and who wasn't very impressed.our next step was filming.
what worked?
due to our previous task prelim im glad to say we've learn't from some of our mistakes such as making sure our story board is straight forward and used various shots which would be easy to shoot in such limited time but was still effective, also there seemed to be a more relaxed attitude toward the work and each individual seem alot more confident.
my personal objective of the task was to see my strengths and weaknesses, one strength was being able to be the organiser, actor and film certain scenes and also as an individual felt more comfortable in my working enviroment due to working in a class room and the followed by working out side as before we worked on a staircase which was akward and i feel the scenes filmed on the stair we rushed due to angle issues.
what didn't work so well?
The choice of setting didn't work so well because of various other groups clashed with our location which used up time for future prefences in my ipinion should be more creative with our setting ideas as we can use any area within the school.
Also when it came to editing i noticed that due to the clashing with the other groups a couple of our scenes within the sound was interrupted this can be fixed by sound ediing and also ties in with the idea of above choosing and different filming area.
we started by discussing who's doing what i chose to draw up the story board whilst matthew set up the camera and thelma filled in the shooting schedule and also helped me with extra ideas story board. we decided to keep the story simple of a girl watching her friend smoking and who wasn't very impressed.our next step was filming.
what worked?
due to our previous task prelim im glad to say we've learn't from some of our mistakes such as making sure our story board is straight forward and used various shots which would be easy to shoot in such limited time but was still effective, also there seemed to be a more relaxed attitude toward the work and each individual seem alot more confident.
my personal objective of the task was to see my strengths and weaknesses, one strength was being able to be the organiser, actor and film certain scenes and also as an individual felt more comfortable in my working enviroment due to working in a class room and the followed by working out side as before we worked on a staircase which was akward and i feel the scenes filmed on the stair we rushed due to angle issues.
what didn't work so well?
The choice of setting didn't work so well because of various other groups clashed with our location which used up time for future prefences in my ipinion should be more creative with our setting ideas as we can use any area within the school.
Also when it came to editing i noticed that due to the clashing with the other groups a couple of our scenes within the sound was interrupted this can be fixed by sound ediing and also ties in with the idea of above choosing and different filming area.
Sunday, 11 October 2009
Film Finance
film finance:
Age of Stupid was almost entirely financed by a crowd-sourced model via individuals and small groups of people including a hockey team and a women’s health center to the tune of £860,000. Additionally, and perhaps because of this, the film’s producers were able to create an astonishingly successful word of mouth campaign surrounding the US premiere – a live event shown in (many sold out) cinemas around the world featuring celebrities and a audience Q&A. Topped off with a clever website, alliances with various activist groups, and a strong presence on social networking sites, the film created a hyped up following way out of proportion to its relatively low budget.
About Spanner Films
London-based Spanner Films have produced three cinema-released documentaries - The Age of Stupid (2008), McLibel (2005) and Drowned Out (2003) - which have together been seen by 55 million people worldwide. They also pioneered the "crowd-funding" finance model, which allows filmmakers to raise reasonable-size budgets whilst retaining ownership of their films and the "Indie Screenings" distribution system, which allows anyone to screen independent films.
http://www.indiescreenings.net/
Age of Stupid was almost entirely financed by a crowd-sourced model via individuals and small groups of people including a hockey team and a women’s health center to the tune of £860,000. Additionally, and perhaps because of this, the film’s producers were able to create an astonishingly successful word of mouth campaign surrounding the US premiere – a live event shown in (many sold out) cinemas around the world featuring celebrities and a audience Q&A. Topped off with a clever website, alliances with various activist groups, and a strong presence on social networking sites, the film created a hyped up following way out of proportion to its relatively low budget.
About Spanner Films
London-based Spanner Films have produced three cinema-released documentaries - The Age of Stupid (2008), McLibel (2005) and Drowned Out (2003) - which have together been seen by 55 million people worldwide. They also pioneered the "crowd-funding" finance model, which allows filmmakers to raise reasonable-size budgets whilst retaining ownership of their films and the "Indie Screenings" distribution system, which allows anyone to screen independent films.
http://www.indiescreenings.net/
Tuesday, 6 October 2009
Prelim evaluation
Prelim evaluation
In the prelim task, Rebecca and I got given a task of shooting a two minute sequence film and in this we were assigned two cast; Yasmin and Edward and also to use film terminology and independent filming for example continuity, shot reverse shot and the 180 degree rule. We started off by story boarding our simple idea of a boyfriend who upsets the girlfriend and eventually break up. Rebecca and decided to organise a time for us to meet up over the weekend to finish our storyboard whilst exchanging each others mobile phone numbers this helped due to when Saturday came we face no problems with meeting because we had great communication skills.
On Monday we were given a shooting schedule which would help us to include continuity which was equally very important to the filming so that when it came to editing the film would flow, also we had a continuity sheet which enabled us to keep our good and bad shots organised. After contemplating about whether the shooting schedule would be helpful we decide to keep each shot in order as we automatically organised our storyboard without noticing. Rebecca and I decided to situate our location recce within the corridor and the stairs, as we explained our story to Yasmin and Edward we also gave them a script which was straight forward, we could have improved this by adding directions and frame positioning this would have saved a lot of time between Rebecca and I and our cast and also given them more time for rehearsal so this would have saved even more time due to where we had to corporate time between two groups as Yasmin and Edward filmed before us which ran into our time which we wasn’t prepared for and felt rushed.As a group overall we worked well together because each individual was dedicated, one of our weaknesses was that we needed more rehersal time, this would have saved alot of time and instead of concertrating on the script and shots we could have made the shooting schedule alot more detailed.
For the shooting of the prelim task we used a XH A1 camera to shoot our prelim task which we were taught how to use in previous lessons this included adjusting the tripod to the right height, then secure the camera onto the tripod and also adjust the spirit level this made the camera accurate and straight.then inserted the battery and tape then eventually switched the camera on.the prelim task has developed my production skills in many ways an example of this would be we had to be aware of our cast positioning and still include continuity additionally we kept the same props i also relised as an individual that oraganisational skills were just as important and technical skills which i hope to use a equal balance of each in my next film task, the prelim task also included independent filming being able to express our creativity within our work which was practical, for example we used a pan in one shot when yasmin walks through the door and edward follows behind, this was hard due to using a stair case and keeping both charathers within the frame, we over came this problem by using levels and using zoom to capture the close up shots this also helped capture the characters facial expressions which was very important when using shot reverse shot.
i think our short film appeals to people who watch soap operas and as for age would appeal to any viewer that is aware or interested of conflict within relationships. An example of this would be when edward sits down on the stairs with his hands on his head this creates tension for the audience and gives the feeling of failure which draws our scene to a close, this could be compared to eastenders such as it will never end and towards the end something always interesting happens which is called a cliff hanger.the short film would come under the romantic genre as it involves a couple.
Editing
In class we were shown how to use the new editing programme, Firstly we started off by plugging our camera into the computer using a usb cable the inserting the tape we used to film our prelim task. Then we plugged in the lacie drive which is basically a large memory card, the next step was to load the editing programme and go to file then scrool down to capture, this is where we was able to record each scene so that we would no longer need to plug in the camera which makes it easier for future editing also made editing easier due to being able to add headings to each scene which organised our work. After recording the next step was to playback all the scenes and see which ones included continuity and also included the shots we initially involed.
The problems we faced with editing?
rebecca and i found the editing programme straight forward and easy to use althrough we struggled to invole continuity but still include naturalism we overcame this by shortening our scenes this mage the shots not look so practiced and obvious that the cast were being directed. Another problem we faced was that everytime we had edited a scene and drag onto the time line one scene would over write another, We also overcame this by spacing each scene out and pressing the shift button on our keyboard. Due to this being rebecca and my first time editing i think we did a good job and manage to complete our independent film with success with a few minor delays.
as for engaging our audience our intial thoughts was to think what would we like to watch which is short and simple but still interesting so we refered to an everyday life dilemma which would hopefully relate to alot of our viewers.
In the prelim task, Rebecca and I got given a task of shooting a two minute sequence film and in this we were assigned two cast; Yasmin and Edward and also to use film terminology and independent filming for example continuity, shot reverse shot and the 180 degree rule. We started off by story boarding our simple idea of a boyfriend who upsets the girlfriend and eventually break up. Rebecca and decided to organise a time for us to meet up over the weekend to finish our storyboard whilst exchanging each others mobile phone numbers this helped due to when Saturday came we face no problems with meeting because we had great communication skills.
On Monday we were given a shooting schedule which would help us to include continuity which was equally very important to the filming so that when it came to editing the film would flow, also we had a continuity sheet which enabled us to keep our good and bad shots organised. After contemplating about whether the shooting schedule would be helpful we decide to keep each shot in order as we automatically organised our storyboard without noticing. Rebecca and I decided to situate our location recce within the corridor and the stairs, as we explained our story to Yasmin and Edward we also gave them a script which was straight forward, we could have improved this by adding directions and frame positioning this would have saved a lot of time between Rebecca and I and our cast and also given them more time for rehearsal so this would have saved even more time due to where we had to corporate time between two groups as Yasmin and Edward filmed before us which ran into our time which we wasn’t prepared for and felt rushed.As a group overall we worked well together because each individual was dedicated, one of our weaknesses was that we needed more rehersal time, this would have saved alot of time and instead of concertrating on the script and shots we could have made the shooting schedule alot more detailed.
For the shooting of the prelim task we used a XH A1 camera to shoot our prelim task which we were taught how to use in previous lessons this included adjusting the tripod to the right height, then secure the camera onto the tripod and also adjust the spirit level this made the camera accurate and straight.then inserted the battery and tape then eventually switched the camera on.the prelim task has developed my production skills in many ways an example of this would be we had to be aware of our cast positioning and still include continuity additionally we kept the same props i also relised as an individual that oraganisational skills were just as important and technical skills which i hope to use a equal balance of each in my next film task, the prelim task also included independent filming being able to express our creativity within our work which was practical, for example we used a pan in one shot when yasmin walks through the door and edward follows behind, this was hard due to using a stair case and keeping both charathers within the frame, we over came this problem by using levels and using zoom to capture the close up shots this also helped capture the characters facial expressions which was very important when using shot reverse shot.
i think our short film appeals to people who watch soap operas and as for age would appeal to any viewer that is aware or interested of conflict within relationships. An example of this would be when edward sits down on the stairs with his hands on his head this creates tension for the audience and gives the feeling of failure which draws our scene to a close, this could be compared to eastenders such as it will never end and towards the end something always interesting happens which is called a cliff hanger.the short film would come under the romantic genre as it involves a couple.
Editing
In class we were shown how to use the new editing programme, Firstly we started off by plugging our camera into the computer using a usb cable the inserting the tape we used to film our prelim task. Then we plugged in the lacie drive which is basically a large memory card, the next step was to load the editing programme and go to file then scrool down to capture, this is where we was able to record each scene so that we would no longer need to plug in the camera which makes it easier for future editing also made editing easier due to being able to add headings to each scene which organised our work. After recording the next step was to playback all the scenes and see which ones included continuity and also included the shots we initially involed.
The problems we faced with editing?
rebecca and i found the editing programme straight forward and easy to use althrough we struggled to invole continuity but still include naturalism we overcame this by shortening our scenes this mage the shots not look so practiced and obvious that the cast were being directed. Another problem we faced was that everytime we had edited a scene and drag onto the time line one scene would over write another, We also overcame this by spacing each scene out and pressing the shift button on our keyboard. Due to this being rebecca and my first time editing i think we did a good job and manage to complete our independent film with success with a few minor delays.
as for engaging our audience our intial thoughts was to think what would we like to watch which is short and simple but still interesting so we refered to an everyday life dilemma which would hopefully relate to alot of our viewers.
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