Location Scouting

Our media group looked around Dunton Green today to see if we could find any useable locations in our opening.

The owner of a cafe called Bojangles has told us that we are welcome to use his shop to film in if needed. The shop has a large front window which will be perfect for the shot of the two brothers in a trolley falling over whilst everyone in the shop stares at them. There is a calm atmosphere inside with music playing and the cosy space will contrast greatly to what will happen outside.
There is a very large Tesco close to the cafe which we could ask to borrow a trolley from to shoot our scene with and then return it.



Next we looked at a residential area which has a 'reserved parking for flats only' sign which we could subtly show at the start so that the audience subconciously know what the ending may be. There is a small park area in this block of houses where the parkour brother can jump over the slide as its not too high, and followed by the silent slide down of the younger brother. There are also many fences to choose from which the parkour brother can jump over but meanwhile the younger brother can simply walk through a gap or a gate in the fence. As well as we found two tall trees together with a slight gap that the brothers could jump through, however the older brother could do a flip or a roll coming out of the gap in the trees whilst the younger brother stumbles out with leaves in his hair. And obvious bonus to the residential area is that there are many roads that we can film long shots for the two brothers running side by side.




There was some railing, however it was not that slanted so may be hard to slide down and it is located next to a wine shop and a bath store which is not ideal. To extend our location scouting we will look around Tonbridge and further into Dunton Green to see if there are any other possibilities but it will be beneficial for everyone involved if we have one main area of shooting instead of having to drive to two different areas of Kent.

During the process of location scouting we made a short behind the scenes video

The Vision

Colour Pallete:
The colours we would like to use vary from darker tones that will be shown within the more intense scenes, and also lighter shades to be used when its day light to add a lighthearted aspect to it.
Specifically the black,and greys are mainly for the roads, pavements,and cars. And the de- saturated green and orange is for the tree colours to add a hint of autumnal/nature theme.
Moving onto the the blues and reds are for the actors mundane clothing, followed by the light pinks for inside scenes in the cafe etc. Little features such as the yellow stripe in the road, and there blushed cheeks are demonstrated through the colours below.



Sound Palette


9 Frames

Independent Task

Kingsman

The scene starts off with a fast drum beat and slowly fades into the centre of a cassette tape and zooms out the reveal a large boom-box and titles appear with the place and year to set the scene. Suddenly a helicopter comes up from the distance as the 2 men playing chess begin to run but are quickly shot down by two men hanging from the chopper. 30 seconds in and we can already get a sense for the action that this movie will contain.

The same shot continues as the camera follows the helicopter up and around passing through a cinematic sun glare to emphasise the present climate.

As the building in front of us gets shot down titles coming falling down with this, and blends in nicely with the firework explosion and matches the surroundings with gold/bronze glistening font.

The camera glides through the animated moving font and carries on moving towards the building as you can see smoke and the destruction happening before us.

Along with this you can here the non diegetic sound of the drums and guitar in the background mixed with various diegetic music such as the helicopter sound effects, explosions going off, gun shots and people shouting.

The clip then ends with the camera going into the window and seeing someone captured inside as you can hear 'we have secured alpha'. 

The whole scene works extremely well because of it being all one continuos shot, this is still a high paced film even with no short duration shots with jump cuts, this shows that with the use of animation and sound it can still make a great impact on what theme is being presented. I have not actually seen the whole film but it is a spy action comedy genre which we are also hoping to create, however little comedy is shown through the opening.

Hot Fuzz

This scene begins with the main character walking through a hallway shown through a mixture of a wide and long shot, all you can hear is his fast paced footsteps as it echos throughout the building. 

The sun coming through the window makes him into a silhouette but you can already tell due to key features such as his hat, and belt and the way he walks he is a serious policeman. As he comes closes to the camera he shows his card which is where the voiceover and sound effects begin. 

A high paced montage begins showing various close up shots of his feet and face. There are multiple match on action shots to transition him into different situations which works very well. The playful guitar joins the background music now to hint that maybe this isn't an as serious film as it first looked, as a trumpet also starts playing.

The pause between the advanced driving and advanced cycling is very effective as this montage begins to show some comedic aspects.

The knock on the door at the end flows very nicely with the beat of the music and the scene ends on a high note as although it shows a graphic image of him being wounded the mood is lighten through the fact that it is by 'Santa Claus'.

Hot Fuzz is a very good example of the theme we are trying to get across because the mix of serious scenarios mixed with some funny ones is exactly what we had planned to show through the older brother jumping and flipping over things followed by the little brother failing at the same things all shown through a montage type video with music similar to hot fuzz just with maybe some silent pauses to show the quite surroundings and then the peace being disturbed by the 2 brothers.

Initial Ideas

How we came up with Idea 1

Our first thoughts for this idea came from the Goldbergs, because the one episode about Adam's class playing dodgeball stood out to me as I found this very funny to watch and it had a good message behind it. From this we thought about making something along the lines of 'a day in the life of a nerdy kid' and so it might start off with him getting hit it the face by a ball then pausing and a voiceover saying 'you might be wondering how I got it' whilst the camera is zooming out to see this on TV and then quickly pans around and cuts into the opening scene of him going to school on the bus, and see him sitting alone, and so on throughout the day until it comes to a PE lesson.

We were then thinking, like in a football match, we could film all of the people in the classes faces and zoom in on the main character and suddenly he gets hit by a dodgeball in slow- motion whilst the titles appear written on the ball. That is all we came up with before we realized that this is also quite typical and there wasn't much flow to the story as we focused more on the shots we would make.

After this we then stayed along the idea of a nerdy kid and got inspiration from comedy based shows such as Chuck and Johnny English. From this we leant towards a more of an action comedy as this way there is less talking involved so we don't have to worry about actors.

As a group we finally came up with the idea of 2 brothers living in the same house, and it starts off by the little brother touching the older brothers laptop by accident (as he is a secret spy but the little brother doesn't know) and so suddenly the alarm sounds and both begin to run.

In this running sequence we wanted to show clearly the difference in abilities between the older brother being a parkour/spy person and the little brother being a clumsy nerd. And so below you will see and in depth flow map of our idea and how we will integrate the credits throughout our opening scene.

Having presented this to the class we received various feedback such as if we know anyone how can do parkour, which we don't, and what location this will be set in, to which we thought a residential area would work well as there are various obstacles, and how to make it less of a short film and more into an opening.
Our next thoughts of improvement were to ditch the intro at the house, and start straight into the running sequence so we came up with more ideas such using a cafe, a supermarket, a playground to again display the difference between the two characters.
However we are still unsure how to end because we could simply show them running desperately to get somewhere serious but instead finish with the going to a fish and chip shop or end with the little brother fainting and the older brother having to firemans carry him in slowmotion, but this is still undecided.


How we came up with Idea 2
This idea was thought about a long time ago when we still thinking about the typical thriller scene where someone is being chased. We thought that we could use a drone to act as a helicopter to show that she is being hunted with the use of helicopter sounds in the background. As well as that we were not going to show her face but show the back of head looking around in a very panicked motion so the viewers wonder what is happening. The ending will be quite basic as it is her getting caught and is followed by a white flash.
Below you can see and in depth flow map of our idea and how we will integrate the credits throughout. 

Mood Board

*Create an online mood board that outlines and clearly demonstrates your own individual and initial ideas about your film opening.*

The main genres that I would like to explore and their conventions are:
- Action
- Thriller

Action is a film genre in which the protagonist ends up in a series of challenges that typically include violence, close combat, physical feats and frantic chases. Some action movie examples are:

Die Hard starts off with typical long shots of New York City but then a sudden explosion happens. Diegetic sounds such as car crashes, windows breaking, sirens going off, and people screaming. As this explosion happens the non diegetic background music stops to create thrill and suspense. Die Hard is an action packed film where and ex cop tries to stop a threatening terroist from detonating another bomb. Typically the type of film matchs the type of font therefore the font used in the opening credits of Die Hard is very bold and striking to portray what is to come next in the film, a cinematic boom is also played the same time the text comes on to emphasise how serious the events are. 





Thriller is a broad genre of literature, film, television, haivng numerous subgenres. Thrillers are characterized and defined by the moods they elicit, giving viewers heightened feelings of suspense, excitement, surprise, anticipation and exiety. Some thriller movie examples are:

Psycho begins with a black screen and grey lines swipe across, within the lines are the opening credits, this animation is an old style where writing is done before any of the film starts.This greyscale colour scheme matchs the rest of the black and white film. The horizontal and vertical lines also transition well into the next clip of the skyline. Right from the start the sound begins with a fast paced high pitched violin and ends abrubtly when the picture starts. The music fades into a more calm and quiter sound track yet with an aeiry feel to it, text also swipes across the screen whilst the camera is panning round the city to let the audience know where it is, along with the day, date and time. Already we understand why the film is called psycho from the opening as the camera moves as if it is a telescope stalking someone with an exact record of where and when as it zooms into a window. 





Above I have explored some basic genres and analyzed a few opening scenes so I could see similiar conventions, below I am going to show some of my favourite specific styles that we could integrate throughout an opening regardless of the genre.


Specific Styles

Casey Neistat is a famous youtuber with over 5 million subscribers and a well known filmaker, with a HBO series. This is because of his signature style, in which he most commonly uses stop motion with his over head rig, timelapses, and homemade animation throughout his short films. We could use some of these ideas in our opening credits as the text may be scratched into something or something written the rubbed out in reverse. All of these quirky ideas keep the audience paying attention and actively looking for what type of writing will come up next.

A similar sort of style to this would be Napoleon Dynamites opening scene which we saw at BFI. The over head shooting style proves very effective with homemade props coming in very cheap. The different types of text also adds character and can be changed depending on what type of film it is to suit that specific genre.




As well as that I would also like to incorporate the following filming techniques such as a drone shots, GoPro POV shots, or stedicam moving shots. These are often used in high intensity action based events which fit well into action and thriller films. In particular this idea comes from Devin Supertramp who is also a youtuber, he typically makes sports based adventure type videos to inspire people to get outside. This technique works well to create a cinematic sequence and provides various different shots to raise excitement for the viewer.


A favourite photography technique of mine is bokeh, this also works excellent in video. To do this you make the aperture as low as possible, ideally f/1.8 which creates a shallow depth of feel as you pull focus on the main object to blurs the background. Within film it helps the audience to focus greatly on what is actually in focus on screen and also gives of a deep and calm atmosphere.




My Overall Thoughts:

Even though I have analysed 2 films from an action and thriller genre I am still unsure about actually making something along these lines. I feel that this horror/thriller idea is very typical and although they are well made and get a high grade I am not so keen on very common ideas such as flashbacks, or someone running through a forest etc.

However if we leave out horror/thriller we are left with comedy, romcom, or social realism which most find challenging to make as comedy is very hard to get right because there are so many aspects that could go wrong such as getting good enough actors, or creating funny dialogue which is why lots of people are too scared to even attempt this genre.

Another possibility I am interested in is action/parkour/chase which I have researched above, along with this also comes many problems like who will actually do the acting with the parkour moves, how will we film a high speed chase, what locations will we use with good obstacles.

Although I have shown some of my concerns above about action and comedy I am still open to the idea because I think it is doable if we have the right idea, but creating the perfect idea seems quite unlikely at this point because it is hard to just think about the opening scenes without knowing what the rest of the film will entail.

Preliminary Task

What we did

What went well

What was challenging

First we decided on a simple story line being someone needing help with their homework and so asks another person to get their book from their locker. This was worked well as it included all the necessary shots such as shot reverse shot, match on action, obeying the 180 degree rule, and continuity editing.

After we had a clear outline of the video we started to draw each shot, using a paper frame which helped greatly to get an accurate visual representation of the shot needed. 

Once we had drawn the shots, we then filled in the bottom section with duration, interior/exterior, shot type, action, transition, and sound. To do this when their was speech we said each line out and timed it for an accurate duration.

When we started filming the first challenge was to find an empty and silent classroom to use as their were lessons going on around us which we did not want to disturb. Also filming the shots in a different order to the story board was hard as we had to keep the tripod in the same position for the person speaking twice. We finished within half an hour which was good and numerous of shots turned out very well such as the ariel shot and the match on action within the locker.

The editing process ran smoothly as we didn't need to re-film any clips, however once we watched it back we realised a few errors. Such as when the camera was inside the locker, Shana wasn't sitting in her seat causing a minor continuity error, also when it was my time to talk 
I looked up in 2 different shots so it almost looked repeated and the conversation didn't flow as well as it could of.

Next time to improve we could take time to notice any continuity errors as they are a very common mistake.

Overall it was smooth and the transitions between opening the locker and being inside the locker worked extremely well. 

Here is our final product

And below is my animatic

Analysing specific opening scenes within different films

Whilst watching 3 opening scenes from different films we noted the change in music and how this relates to what is shown on screen, e.g. when the volume increases so does the tension and we showed this through the height of the line labelling the specific features

Amelie:
The sound starts with a very fast and upbeat violin, with a small voice over. A short sudden car sound also interrupts the music which heightens the tension but then continues with peaceful piano music throughout this clip there is a yellow green colour scheme. Nearer the end of the scene short bursts of different sound effects occur such as finger clapping, dominoes falling over, wine glass, paper chains, string, coins. These enhanced diegetic sounds goes with the close up action shots to attract the audience to pay close attention to the things happening on screen. 






Halloween 1978:
All you can hear to begin with is very quiet cricket noises whislt the camera pans around the garden showing dark colours, along with mild talking and laughing from inside the house. When the light goes out in the window there is a sharp burst of screaching music which raises the levels of tension to make the audience question whats caused this. Next is the piano as the person behind the camera picks up a knife from the draw and slowly walks up the stairs as he watches the other man leave. This gradual increase puts the audience on edge as they are unaware of the events to follow. As Micheal picks up the mask you see a point of view shot through the eye holes of the boy hitting the girl, the screaming noises make you feel scared yet a sense of urgency wanting to help her. To finsh there is a match on action of the boy taking off the mask as his parents scream 'Micheal!' in dispear.





Trainspotting:
There is a quick start as two men are running away from some more men, there is a mixture of low angle shots of their feet and close ups of thier faces, fast paced drums accompany this sequence with a voiceover, but this is interuptted as he gets hit by a car but continues to laugh into the camera. Next is people playing football which includes green colours and lots of loud forceful shouts, as the singing starts in the background Renton gets hit in the face with a football and is graphic matched with him falling over because of abusing drugs. The scene ends with him stating 'who needs reasons when you've got heroin' which leaves the audience laughing.