This is a quick a quick Slideshare explaining Codes and Conventions for an Action/Adventure Opening Sequence which is important for Alex's and my Opening Sequence Main Task. It was important for us both to research this before we begin think about how we film our footage without knowing how the codes and conventions are portrayed in Action/Adventure films.
This here is a screenshot of my Moodboard which links to the Film Opening Sequence which me and Alex Muir are producing together for our Main Task. The various pictures in this Moodboard are also linked to the 20 word ideas Wordle which I had also produced looking at key words and themes which we could include in out 2 minute Opening Sequence. The Moodboard shows gunshots, fight scenes, interview scenes, parkour/chases and unidentified characters. We now also have an updated Idea as shown below which is explaining roughly our plot for our Opening Sequence. A blog post will be uploaded of Alex and I pitching our idea to the class whilst they also give us feedback about the Opening Sequence.
For my Main Task Opening Sequence, I am going to be working cooperatively with Alex Muir who I had previously worked with on our Preliminary Task Film. We have decided as a team what our genre of our film is going to be about, which is Action/Adventure. This genre to us is what we both feel most comfortable using as we both enjoy any film with an action or adventure story line, thus giving us both the opportunity to pitch better ideas for our story to our opening sequence. Increasingly we can enjoy filming and editing the scenes better if we select a genre which we both agree on. The above words scattered in a Wordle are all ideas we both generated for what we could possibly include in our opening sequence! Click HERE to view Alex Muir's blog
The opening sequence of "Stranger than Fiction" is an example of how diegetic and non-diegetic sounds are used in film. Throughout the entire opening sequence there is an author narrating over the sequence and giving the audience a detailed description of the day to day life of the main protagonist Harold Crick (Will Ferrell).
During the narration, the author (Emma Thompson) narrates to the audience the punctuality and organisation of Harold during his working week. The author shows this punctuality and organisation of Harold by listing the various tasks which Harold does during the working week.These include the figures of when he wakes up every morning for work, how many times Harold brushes his teeth everyday, the number of steps he takes to walk to the bus to go to work, the length of his coffee breaks and the time he goes to bed every night. Harold keeps track of these times everyday with his trusty wristwatch which is Harold's lifeline in making sure he stays organised and on time with everything everyday of the week.
The increased use of the non-diegetic sound used in this opening sequence is more significant than the diegetic sound, which gives connotations to the audience that Harold is not very sociable with others as he is only seen talking to his co-workers when the conversation is work related, or if he is being asked a question.
The only form of diegetic sound used in this opening sequence is the sounds of the rush hour, when people are either walking or driving to work in the city. Diegetic sound in this sequence appears to be everywhere surrounding Harold apart from coming from Harold's mouth for whenever he communicates with his co-workers.
On the 11th of November year 12 and 13 media students attended to a lighting workshop which was set-up by our two Media Teachers within school in our Drama Studio. In this workshop, they were introducing to us the different lighting techniques we could use in our Main Task which is worth 50% of our AS Media Studies overall mark! These here are a collection of photos I took during the workshop which show some of the equipment which we can use for our Main Task. The use of the low key lighting in the Drama Studio is really effective and really caught my eye and for Alex Muir as well who I will be working collaboratively with for this Main Task.
This here is a short presentation about the opening sequences compared between Skins and Shameless. This presentation is a follow up task from my research about the "Representation of Youths in the Media" post discussing about how youths in Skins and Shameless are portrayed.
Very little has involved the views of the young people themselves, "boys and girls who casually pick fights, have sex and keep the emergency services fully occupied." If this is the interpretation America has received from the British media, what are the views of young people?
76% of reporting of young people is negative.
Only 12% of crime is committed by young people.
39% of adults are unaware of the positive things young people do.
Nearly 750 young people completed an online poll for the British Youth Council (BYC)nd YouthNet - 80% believed unfair portrayal in the media led to strained relations with older generations.
This here is our Final Film for me and Alex's Preliminary Task. It has taken us a lot of hard work to make this short film however we have done extremely well in my opinion making our first proper film using more advanced softwares and packages. In my post about my "Storyboard" for this Preliminary Task, I was explaining about how different the final outcome might be for our final film, and this to many extents is very true. Me and Alex had a rough idea about what our short film was going to be about, which was a representation of two flatmates who are rapidly in dept and are struggling to come up with a solution to the problem (which for some reason means we end up going to Nandos!). We also had a rough idea of how we were going to film the scenes too. However comparing our Storyboards to our finished film we both could clearly see that there had been many changes made for the finished film both of which were planned but also accidental. When filming our footage, we were using a Canon 650D DSLR to record the footage whilst also having a RODE VideoMic Pro to improve sound quality, as well as a Tripod for extra support. It had taken us several attempts to get the right camera angles and shots as well as following some of the basic rules of filming such as the 180 degree rule. Our deleted scenes footage will be shown towards the bottom of this post! Once we had recorded our footage, both me and Alex would take it in turns to edit our film together in different sections using Adobe Premiere Pro on the Apple Macs at school. Sometimes one of us would work on just the sound effects and volume whilst the other would work on editing the footage and vice versa. We were both very uneasy with Premiere at first however we soon both got the hang of it
A Screenshot of our Progress on Adobe Premiere Pro
There are many positives which we can both make of this film, however there are also some major flaws with it as well. Throughout the filming we were obviously using only one camera, so we could not be filming all of our footage at once, we had to do it in stages. We had to therefore be careful as to how we would position ourselves every time we would start a new sequence. A mistake can be seen when I am resting my arm against my head as in two different shots within the same sequence, I am using both my left and then my right rather than only using my left.
Head rested on Left Arm
Then the Right
Then back to the Left
This had therefore made the sequence look a bit obvious for the jumpy editing we had to do. This is a major flaw to this film however and it is not very obvious unless you pay close attention.
The best parts of creating this film was the actual filming itself as we both loved experimenting with different Camera angles and shots whilst shooting, although we both also loved the editing part as there a lot of interesting effects which we were able to make using Premiere. Like with any film however, the worst parts are always the beginning as we were both struggling at first as to what our film could be about. Also the long periods of rendering can become a nightmare after a while!
Overall this was a really fun and interesting first attempt of short film and me and Alex are both extremely excited to be starting our Main Task which will be more improved with better footage, effects, audio, and of course the story itself.
This here is a Storyboard which I have created for me and Alex Muir's 2 minute Preliminary Task. We both created our own individual Storyboards so that we could get some practise in creating one, before we start to make one for our Main Task later on. You can view Alex's Storyboard HERE. Within the Storyboard, I divided up the panels to show each of scenes in different sections. From the way the sketches are presented, they are very rough. So when we start filming and editing our 2 minute film we will probably end up making a lot of changes to our final film compared to our Storyboard ideas. The rough drawings are mainly created to show the layout of the room which we are going to be filming in as well as the camera angles and shots which we are going to follow according to our Storyboard.
The shot reverse shot is a typical continuity editing technique used in the majority of film productions. This shot is typically used when two characters are interacting and looking at each other. The shot reverse shot often follows the 180 degree-rule to retain continuity as well as avoiding confusion for the audience when watching the characters interact with each other in the space which they are in.
The shot reverse shot is a film technique which me and Alex Muir will be using when filming our preliminary task!
The 180 degree rule is another basic continuity film technique used in the film industry to show the on-screen spatial relationship between a character and another character or object within a scene. The rule suggests that any filming should take place on one side of the objects/characters and that the cameras should never cross or intersect the axis. The axis is drawn between two objects/characters to give the cameras a guideline when filming to prevent them from crossing the axis. If the rule is broken and the cameras have crossed the axis, then this will cause confusion for the audience about the spacial awareness of the scene which can difficult to fix once the rule has already been broken. There are however many ways however to cross the axis without causing confusion for the audience such as doing a follow shot around the characters to help the audience to understand the spatial awareness.
This is also another film technique which me and Alex Muir will use when we start to film our Preliminary Task!
