Thursday, January 24, 2013

Last Term's Film-Making Skills

We will include many skills that we learnt in the previous terms in order to maximise how professional our film opening looks, such as the ones mentioned below. This post was made in part for the purpose of aiding us in presenting a proposal to teachers and classmates to get feedback on our work so far. 

ANALYSIS SKILLS

During our research, we have been analysing and deconstructing clips and frame shots from our various influences so we can draw inspirations from them. For example, we have analysed an opening sequence and written down the order in which the titles appear. This can be found here. We are also going to use our technical experience with Adobe Premiere Pro that we have learnt in the last term, specifically in the 'Dexter' exercise. We also drew upon representation usually seen in TV dramas and applied in to our film opening.

NARRATIVE THEORY

When brainstorming potential plots we went by Todorov's narrative theory that a film can be structured first with an equilibrium, then with a disruption and eventually with a resolution. This helped us to finally get a plot established. You can find our full movie plot here and the specific style of our opening sequence here and here. We firstly tried to use the beginning, middle, end way of finding a plot, but this wasn't as effective in helping us think of a plot.

CONTINUITY TECHNIQUES

We will include a lot of shot variety, whilst keeping continuity in mind:

Match on action:
  • When our main character goes out through the door.
  • When our overdosee falls to the floor.
Shot reverse shot:
  • Various conversations at the party.
  • Panicked dialogue when the overdose takes place.
Here we will also be abiding by the 180 degree rule.

Other technologies we plan to use can be found here.

GENRE AND AUDIENCE

We also drew upon our learning of genre conventions, and what target audiences certain genres conform to. Information on our chosen target audience can be found here and information on genre can be found here. In short, we knew we wanted as big an audience appeal as possible, and believe we've found it with a black comedy centering around the lives of the 16-24 age group. As they can relate, they will most likely invest money into the film.

CODES

Our film opening features 3 of Roland Barthes' 5 codes.

Our opening sequence features an enigma code that we learned last term is crucial for engaging the audience. The fate of the overdosee is left ambiguous, raising the question of 'Did they die?' from the audience. Also the audience will wonder 'Why is the girl smiling?'

Our setting will also feature semiotic codes as the audience is given clues of the party but no characters actually say they are at a party. This will be done by showing parts of the party, such as the dancing, the smoke-filled room, the music and various couples kissing. The audience should put two and two together and realise that the characters are at a party.

We will rely heavily on the stereotypes of teenagers and present them in a largely negative way. This is in order to show a change at the end of the film, in which the teenagers change into better people in a dramatic ending involving the police. These are cultural codes related to teenagers - that they go out and party and include themselves in careless behavior.

INSTITUTIONS

As a British film, we knew that we would have a low budget, so had to use a localised location. This will have to be in Alice's house as we can have the most control here, with no unexpected weather problems or members of the public in the shots. It is also clean and easy to navigate a camera around, which was a problem with Ella's cellar. At the moment we have chosen our production company to be called 'X productions' and chosen 'Momentum Pictures' as the distributer. 'X Productions' would be an independent company connected to British indie films, therefore it is a good choice for our genre. More details on our institution can be found here.



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