1 - Costumes and Props - This frame shows one of the characters using the costume i gave him to wear in order for him to look like a monk. It also shows the torches and spades we used as props.
2 - Visual Effects - I used fire for the visual effects, as i thought it would look much better if i shot the scene in the dark using fire to add atmosphere and an element of mystery, as it doesn't really show anything in extreme detail.
3 - Typography - The text i used for the credits was a very boring, standard font. I decided to change this for the title of the film and enlarge it slightly, to make it stand out. i chose to use really boring text for the rest of the credits as it was more important to watch the film that to distract the audience with funky words.
4 - Transitions - I made a lot of the scenes fade in and out, while putting the credits in the space between shots. I decided to do this as beneath the music, there is a heartbeat sound that the movie originally faded in and out of to.
5 - Lighting - This film was made using natural light, and fire. I decided to use fire as it gave the film a more medieval feel, as that's the kind of thing they would have used back then, compared to nowadays.
6 - Settings - As the first half of my film was filmed hundreds of years ago, as the second part was set in the present day, people got very confused without the explanation. I figured putting something telling the viewer that the year had changed dramatically might be more helpful than hoping they would guess.
7 - Framing - Most of my shots are framed quite centrally, or both focal points are either side of the screen, like when the guy is digging at the start. This isn't exactly the most interesting way to film things but i think for the opening it works alright.
8 - Camera Movement - This shot has been zoomed in, and is taken just before it zooms out. I quite liked the close up, as the chest crashes to the ground just in front of the camera. I didn't use many camera movement, there are a few pan shots, but they didn't fit with the cuts between what was going on.
9 - Narrative - This shot shows them looking into the chest, after having found something interesting. This is quite a good shot, unfortunately i didn't get the close up of their expressions when they find it that i really wanted. But apart from that i think it's pretty good.
The characters in my film were clearly archaeologists it was the hat that gave it away. As you can see, Indiana Jones wears a vaguely similar hat, and everyone recognizes him as an archaeologist. the two images i have above are very similar, even if the position the characters are in, which really helps to show similarities.
This is a picture of all the things i used to create my film opening. You can see what is there, a camera, a tripod, and a laptop. Other than that i didn't really need anything else. Firstly, there is the camera. We recorded our films in HD (High Definition) and it saves onto the cameras built in hard drive. Unfortunately, the camera only had an hour or two battery life, so we didn't have as much time as i would have liked to do multiple takes and stuff.
There is also the tripod, which i used to ensure the camera stayed still whilst filming, even though on the uneven ground it was hard hard to keep the shots flat.
There are also some headphones, which i needed so i could hear how much audio was being recorded on the camera, and could therefore tell people to speak up or be quieter, depending on what shot i was filming.
Finally, there is the MacBook, which i used for everything else. I used blogger to keep track of all my planning and thoughts on the sequence, and also general work was all saved on the blog as evidence that i had been doing some work.
I used Final Cut to edit the entire film, so i put all the footage onto Final Cut, and cut the 6 and a half minutes of footage down to about 1 and a half minutes. This involved watching all the footage, and deciding which shots i wanted to keep, and which were no good - then removing the bad ones and putting the ones i wanted in the right order to the film made sense.
I then had to create some music for my film. For this i used garageband. This took quite a long time as i am not very good with garageband, i can't make music, but i think what i ended up with worked quite well.
Despite not being able to hear it very well, i also have a heartbeat sound effect during the first bit of the sequence, that seems too quiet under the music, but that took ages to find. Many of the sound effect websites i tried. Other websites tried to make me pay for the sound effect, so after trying to find one for about 30 minutes, i eventually gave up and decided not to bother. I tried one last link and it gave me the one i used, it wasn't what i wanted, but it was better than nothing.
We also use YouTube a lot to put all of our videos on, our films are generally tagged CMDiploma, and whatever else people decide to put on. We do this so people can watch the videos shoudl they want to, it also makes it easier to show other people our work by having it on the internet, instead of having to carry a tape, or a DVD around with us simply to show people our work.
From doing the continuity i was able to practise cutting footage and editing it into the right place so it flows better. In the continuity task, we showed this by having someone walk up to the door, and start to open it, then a close up of his hand opening the door from where it cut before. In my film, I was able to use this simply to change the camera angle slightly. We did the shot twice, from different angles and cut it at about the same point, and it flows very nicely.
Today we got some feedback from two film type people. They came into our lesson and gave us some feedback on our opening sequences. Jim looked at mine and here is what he said:
Could the music be looped through the part of the film in present day?
Different zooms and shots to make the film more abstract
The "500 Years Later" thing should be in the same font
Maybe change the present day footage so it is more abstract, maybe black and white? More contrast?
My film doesn't exactly represent social groups, though i suppose the closest i can do is the Medieval type knights and the monk at the beginning, and the archaeologists at the end.The first character you see is the monk. He is shown to be a monk by the loose fitting brown robe, with a long hood coverring his face. Stereotypical monks all walk around in long brown robes, with hoods shadowing their faces so i think the image looks quite good. Along with the torch creating some very effective shadows on him gives the impression that he is quite old, perhaps not physically but time time period, as people don't tend to use flaming torches nowadays.
The next set of people you see are the knights. It is harder to see who these are, because it is quite dark, and whilst running the torches didn't give as much light as i had hoped - But they are wearing old style clothes, long white shirts, or plain brown tops - similar to what knights would have worn, obviously lacking any sort of armour as that stuff is expensive.
When it shoots to present day, you are introduced to 3 characters. They appear to simply be people digging, but they are meant to be archaeolgists. As the only time you really see archaeologists is on Time Team, i watched it for a bit to see what they wore. Generally, it was relatively casual clothes, so i told my cast to turn up in casual clothes. Many of the guys on Time Team also wore hats, so i gave two of the cast special "archaeology hats" to emphasise their rold as archaeologists. The third member does not have a hat, as he is in charge and doesn't wear one. Much like Tony Robinson rarely seems to wear one while presenting Time Team. While perhaps not as good as Time Team, i think my films has some strong links to that show and other shows due to some of the phrases and characters in it. One of the characters uses the -phrase "I think we should take this back to the lab" which is responded with "yeah, we can run some tests on it". These lines are very typical of most crime dramas shown on TV, especially ones such as CSI or Bones where they're trying to catch someone.
As it is meant to be a film (if i made the rest) the general idea would be for cinema's to show it, though obviously not my one as it was done with a budget of £20 and is only 2 minutes long, but if it was a proper film then cinema's may show it. Alternatively, independant cinemas or other industries such as channel 4's 4Film may show the films to give filmmakers a chance.
The audience for my product is very varied. While probably not suitable for anyone under 15, there is something in it for people of all ages over that. There are lots of gunfights and car chases for the teenagers to 30 year olds. There is also the historical element which is very popular among older people - which Time Team made very popular by filming and broadcasting their work on TV so people are now interested in archaeology. Although people going to watch it for the historical element are going to have to gwet over the hour and a half and seemingly unnecessary violence that would be in the film, as it is an incredibly action packed fast paced film when it gets into it, and the historical element is not quite so obvious.
I attracted my audience by initially pitching it by combining two popular thigns, that were complete opposites. "Time Team meets Die Hard" Time Team being the historical archaeology show, which would bore most teenagers, which Die Hard being the action packed intense films that would bore most older people. By bore, i mean not interest. These two combines could either produce the most amazing or most dissapointing film, and for this reason most of the poeple i told it to were very keen to see the final piece and help me make it.
Making this product has really helped my learn about different technologies including different cameras, editing programmes and generally making things work. First thing i learnt was that Kirk's camera is very annoying to use with the school's Mac's. They don't like each other, so i guess in future i'll just use the schools stuff. I also found out how useful Final Cut is for editing and finishing the product and how to overcome problems such as the image not being light enough by editing levels and ensuring the sound all sync's up with the video so it doesn't look stupid.
I have definately learnt about editing and continuity due to the continuity task we did originaly so cutting and editing all runs as smoothly as possible and ensuring audio and video sync up.
Well this is my finished piece. I went into the lesson at lunch time, though didn't really do much until the lesson actually started. When the lesson did start, i deicded i would messa arounf putting credits and stuff on because that is one of the more annoying and dull tasks. Once i had finished with all the credits, i realised i had put half of them in the wrong order, so i then had to go through and reorder them all. I didn't really do much witht he music as given how little time i had left i figured it was probably a better idea to get what i could finished and see what was left.
When i had finally figured messing around with credits and names and things i set to work on music. I tried ots of different music to go with the latter part of the film, but none of htem seemed to fit - so i decided not to give it any music and just elave it how it is. I think it works quite well, as there is a fair amount of talking in the latter part, even if it does seem un-important.
If i had another lesson to work on my film, i would probably sort out the sound that i do have, as parts of it are out of place or seem to cut out halfway through - i'm not entirely sure why this is, but i didn't have time to figure it out on friday so i just let it slide. It's not that bad, people i've shown it to didn't really pay attention to it, but as i made it i find it a massive problem as i don't like things being wrong.
Other than a few sound problems, and a couple of other problems, overall i quite like my film opening and think it is quite good.
We watched all the rough cuts and got some feedback from each member of the class.
My feedback was mainly that the shots were held for far too long, and there were not many close ups, or shots from different angles.
My rough cut was basically 4 shots, all held for abour 30 seconds, which got incredibly boring. So i changed it and during the credits, the image faded in and out of close ups and different shots of what was going on, so there was close ups of the fire, then a med shot of the monk digging, then a long shot of the people running, and these were all interchanged until the monk ran off and got chased off screen. This pleased people as it included close ups and the shots were much shorter so it kept your attention on the film better. Unfortunately it didn't include many shots from different angles as we tried to get the fire shots done as quickly as possible so we didn't set the incredibly dry floor on fire again, so we got the necessary shots and moved on.
I then changed the second part so instead of having the annoying zooms in and out on my characters, i had it fade out so it simply faded back in to the zoomed in shot, then faded and zoomed out again. This was good as the inital zooms were quite sloppy and i think it looks better without them. This pleased Pete as he also didn't like the zooms, but did like the shots they zoomed in to. So instead of cutting the whole shot, i just used the bits we liked and made it look better.
Today was alright. We started off watching all of the sequnces so far, unfortunately the speaers had broken so we didn't have any sound. After a while, someone got some portable speakers out of the cupboard and plugged them in and they worked - yet for some reason they got unplugged after another of the videos so we went back to no sound. This was terrible as watching the sequences with no sound simply seemed pointless - especially when it came to Xander,Mike's and Mine, as ours are heavily based around sound. For some reason, after watching ours silently so they made no sense, they decided to plug the speakers in again so some of the others had sound. I got annoyed after a while of this so when it came to editing i was more than happy to listen through mine with sound again.
After we watched each clip we had to give feedback on a certain area and then give them to the person at the end - using this we were supposed to change our film in order to make it better. The basic idea of mine was that the start was simply a guy digging. Then it showed people chasing him. The guy walked over and suggested i mix it up a bit by cutting bits and swapping them around so it wasn't the sae shot for a minute, but different shots all put together. After i did this, i started to put some music on. Initially it faded in and out with the heartbeat, but after i put some music on your couldn;t really hear the heartbeat so it just seemed random. Then this guy suggested making it fade in and out with the music so i tried that a bit and it seemed to work.
Tomorrow i simply have to finish the music and touch up a few bits here and there - I am confident i will get it finished in time.
Today was marginally more successful that the previous. I started to edit all the footage and put it all in order, only to remember i had actually just put it backwards. But that made it much easier to edit and make right, in my opinion. After a while, i realised that i should probably be using headphones to make sure the sound all synced up and everything, so i plugged my headphones in and waited. I then realised i had no sound. Hoping it was only on Final Cut, i loaded the raw footage from the folder on the desktop and alas, i had no sound. I screamed at the machine some more, then told Nick. He suggested i should go ask Kirk if he still had his camera so i could get the files again, but we then decided it would be easier if we just put the files on his laptop (where we knew it worked) and then cut the audio.
So what we ended up with was one MP3 file of all the sound to the movie. Once i had copied it across and synced it up with the actual footage, i though "Great finally i can start" but when i started cutting the footage, i forgot the audio was not cutting with it, so i had to undo it all and resync everything.What i ended up doing, was cutting all the audio where the movie clips began and ended so they were all split up into 30 odd files instead of one big one so i could move and delete them appropriately. This made it slightly harder, but also saved a lot of time i think. Once i started to put the files in the right order i got the hang of it again. While it's not as good as i'd like it to be, it's alright. Though there are a few errors and jumpy bits that i can't do anything about as i don't have enough footage - which is a mistake on my part i will admit.
Once i finished putting all the files together in an order i am content with, i realised it was incredibly boring. I really hope that this is because currently it has no music. If my sequence dsoesn't get better with music i will be incredibly disappointed. I suddenly had this idea that instead of the beggining simply having some guy digging, i should have a heartbeat sound and the image fading in and out accordingly. I quite like this idea, but i will wait for some feedback before deciding if i will keep it in or not. Another problem i have to deal with is the fact that the camera picked up a lot of wind, so the voice track is quite distorted, but i'll try and sort that out later. That's about as far as i have got today. I shall do some more tomorrow.
Today was awful. It was out first day of editing, and when i put the footage onto my laptop it didn't work. After screaming at the machine for a little while i deicded it was probably better to ask Nick for help than to try and figure it our myself, and so i did. He came over and was like "Umm, ask Rik, he'll know what to do". So i did. Then Rik came over and told me that it had been recorded in MPEG2 or something, which was nearer professional standard and our machines didn't have the programmes to work with them. So after he yelled at the computer for not letting him get on Gmail, he wandered off for a while. I was quite worried i was going to have to re-shoot, as that would have been a real problem - but luckily he came back with some program and installed some things that made it all work again. Then we realised i had copied the wrong footage onto my machine, so after that we copied the correct footage onto my machine and the lesson was over. That was all i got done for the first lesson.
The moment i thought i was most in charge of my filming, was when we were making the flaming torches. Whilst we were just filming the guys digging and finding the treasure chest, it was fun, but it was, like, anybody could have been doing it. There was nothing special about that scene. I could easily have shot that scene anywhere, and while it would have looked out of place in most environments, nobody would really have given us a second thought. When we got ready to do the torches, however, when we were trying to figure out the best way to coat them it was great. Once i decided to just throw it on the floor and pour it on, then tie it to the sticks, there was a sense of accomplishment. A lot of people i talked to didn't think i'd do it because it's kinda hard for a 17 year old to get bottles af parafin nowadays, or they figured i'd just do something easier, so it seemed like i had proved something. More to myself than anyone else but it was great. But the bit that made me feel best was when we lit them. As we only had 6 matches we were completely counting on at lighting quickly, and the minute it did i was overwhelmed with joy. I couldn't pull my eyes away from the massive flame it gave off, and when i managed i was just sat there thinking "Yeah.. None of the other guys have done this!". While everyone else in the group did their own thing, and the ideas all sound very good, i couldn't help thinking that mine, in my opinion, was the best. Which most people would say was obvious, as everyone thinks they're better than other people, but it's very rare for me to tihnk i have done something incredibly well, so i'm just hoping that i can edit it all together and make it work.
When i go to the next project, i will have to ensure i plan my time better. The footage i have is very good, but we had 3 hours to kill halfway through filming waiting for it to get dark. Fortunately we found things to do while we were waiting for this project (we planted some 20ft tall dead trees) but if i i am filing somewhere were there is nothign to do it will be much less fun trying to pass the time.
I would also spend more time planning costumes and props because, while the costumes i had worked very well, it was really a coincidence that i had them, and the cast are wearing trainers in the bit set in medieval times or whatever, which obviously if it's really obvious is a continuity error that i shouldn't have though of before.
I also need to put more thought into the music, as that will be the hardest part for me, i think. To get osme inspiration for the music, i decided to watch Bonekickers, which i thought was probably as close as i was going to get to a similar thing to my film. This might have been helpful, i can't decide. In the show they don't use that much music, which either suggests i don't have to, or was no help at all. I need to spend a lot of time making the music as i am not very good, and thus should probably have starteda while ago.
This section is about the characters you have seen in the film so far, i may talk a little about some characters you have yet to meet, i haven't decided yet.
This character is David Jones or "Maddox". He is not in the least bit interested in archaeology or history or anything. He joined the group simply because of his brute force and he likes to beat up bad guys and save the day. He is the leader fo the group, mainly because nobody dares challenge him. He basically hangs around with the group so he can tell them what to do and beat up anybody that gets in the way or threatens them.
He was raised in a town riddled with crime and corruption, yet excelled in nearly everything he did. He was a straight A student and had a really bright future, until one fateful day when his parents were murdered infront of him. He was saved because he heard a lot of noise and decided to hide in a cupboard and try to see what was going on. Unfortunately, this meant he saw his parents getting dismembered by the sword wiedling posse, an incedent that scarred him for the rest of his life. He started missing school, simply because he couldn't see the point anymore. This is when he started to take as many martial arts lessons as possible, so he could defend himself. Unfortunately, he didn't really like the whole punching and kicking scene and preferred to simply beat beat down with whatever he happened to find in the surroundings, be this a small rock or a TV. As he is so distrubingly violent, he is wanted by many countries all over the world, but as he is capturing bad guys and killing them, he is really doing the world a favour and nobody really wants to arrest him for it, so they find reasons to keep him out.
Unfortunately as he gets older, hid enemies don't but they do always think of more crazy and elaborate ways to try and stop him and his team of archaeologists from discovering anything. Maddox fights for revenge, not justice as many do. He doesn't care about catching the bad guy, just ensuring nobody hurts anyone wthat doesn't deserve it. The traumatic experience he faced as a child has had it's effect on Maddox, who is now quite mad.
The name "Maddox" was given to him after his therapist told the newspaper he was "As mad as an Ox". While this phrase doesn't really make sense, the media licked it up as soon as another case was racked with the headline "Mad Ox Kills Again" all over the news. The team simply stole the name from that.
This section is about the character George Fothering Smythe IV. - A.K.A Squinty.
This member of the group is the more sciency person. His main area of focus is running tests and all that jazz, like they do on CSI when they're looking for DNA or fingerprints. While he has an interest in archaeology, he is also more interested in the sciency side of things so he can find out new and exiting information that could be valuable to the case. As the name suggests, he was raised by a very wealthy family Squinty is rarely violent, but should he deem in necessary or important that he gets his hands dirty and beats the hell outta some people he will. While not as angry as Maddox, nor as pacifistic as Matt, he is the sorta of middle-man, that will help when he has to ort thinks his friends are in danger. He, however prefers to use the weapons he was given naturally as uses his hands and feet more often than physical weapons.
This section is about one of the characters known simply as Matt. At the beggining of the film you know nothing about this character. You continue to know nothing until about halfway through the film. This is entirely intentional. It is meant to make the viewer come to their own conclusions about who he is working for and what they think about him with no knowledge of his, simply jedging by his actions and appearence. He never talks about his past, and the only thing anyone knows about him is that he tells people to call him Matt. He admits this is not his real name, but will not reveal what that actually is. He has no interest in archaeology or history, and is a pacifist, so it is unclear why he joined the group until you find out some more about him. He seems realtively normal whilst on digs, he talks freely and openly to the other characters but if anyone tries to bring up his past he simply ignores them for the rest if the dig.
Despite being the most mysterious character in the film, you are given the most insight into his personal life as the film progresses. After the dig, each of the characters goes home, and you are shown their daily routine very briefly. Cup of tea, watch the news, go to bed etc, whereas 'Matt's' night is different everyday. This means you are shown what he gets up to, not in any great detail as that would give away to much, but you are shown brief parts of his evenings to try and sway you opinions one way or the other. Despite being a pacifist and not caring about what he does, he is a vital member of the group for several reasons. I am not going to explain these as that would ruin the film, so you'll just have to watch the whole thing to find out.
The final character in the group is known as Skully, due to his love of archaeology. He was not featured in the opening scene, because of an injury he sustained during the last case. He was caught in a car while it span out of control after getting shot at and blown up and stuff. Unfortunately for him, he is the only one of the group with a worthwhile knowledge of preserving archaeological finds, and therefore when the team find the chest in the opening, they merely pick itup and throw it around as if it is worthless.
Raised in a small village away from the big suburban areas of the country, Laurence was born to a middle class family and discovered his love for archaeology when digging in his garden. He was trying to plant a tree, when accidentally hit a smooth round white stone. He tried to dig it out, and realised it was a skull. Any normal child would have screamed and been scarred for life, yet he was fascinated. He kept digging, carfeul not to break anything and eventually uncovered an entire human skeleton. He watched from his bedroom window as police swarmed the garden taking notes and photos, the whole time simply amazed at what was going on. From then on, he decided that is what he wanted to do - dig holes and find cool things that people would want to look at.
He met the rest of the team at a medieval dig, when they tried to get past the guards and see what was going on. These guards tried their best to stop this 'gang' getting in, and yet two unarmed people managed to knock out 30 armed guards, while one more simply stood and watched. While confused as to exactly how these men had done such a thing so quickly, he soon decided he would probably be better off with them, instead of trying to fight them, so they joined forces and started doing things. He has no problems fighting, but obviouly would prefer it if he didn't have to.
So we had a small cast and crew of about 6 people. 3 of these people were in the film, i filmed it and Kirk and his brother were there helping out. This was a good amount because more people would have got in the way and less people would have made it very hard to shoot the film properly. Having two people who were not in the film and weren't doing vital roles was quite useful as i could ask them to do things and help out in other ways that wouldn't necessarily be able to be done by me or the cast as we would be pre-occupied by filming.
We went out to film my sequence today, and it went amazingly well. Once we had picked up the cast and driven down to Kirk's house so we could walk to the set we started to film the second half of the film. We had to film the second part because it is set in the day, and the first part is set at night, so we decided to record it backwards.
It started out a little badly, because the cast weren't exactly sure what was going on, i had given them the idea and shown them the storyboards and whatnot, but it's a little different when you actually try to record it. So after we had recorded it all we went back and decided to record it again as now they knew what they had to do, they could do it better and more proffesionally. This would then look better when i come to edit the footage and wouldn't look so 'studenty', although i wasn't sure what archaeologists wore so i told them to turn up in casual clothing and gave them some archaeology hats to wear.
I spent a while looking for the mise-en-scene i would need for this scene to work, and while not perfect i managed to find costumes, a sword, and a tresaure chest. Luckily, i also managed to get hold of some cloth and some parafin so we could make the flaming torches, we found suitable sticks on the way to the set. Unfortunately nobody bought any string so i had to sacrifice some of my hairbands to help the cloth to the sticks, though it was totally worth it! Also, we only had 6 matches, and i had lost my lighter, nobody in the group smoked and we didn't have any spare matches, so we were counting on the parafin catching first time.
After we filmed the initial footage, we decided to do it from some different angles to make the film more interesting, unfortunately, we got most of the film done in the first few takes, so turning up at 2 was possibly not the best idea as we then had 3 hours kicking around until it got dark. We decided we should change some of the scenery around to kill some time. Unfortunately as we were in a forest there wasn't very much we could do to change it... Or was there? As we had so much time we decided we would put some extra trees in the film. As the beggining but was set hundreds of years ago they would probably have been cut down anyway as they were in the middle of the path. They also made it look much better when the soldiers ran towards the monk guy as they had to run around the trees instead of having a clear path. I think this looks much better than it would have done.. It also killed the time quite nicely as we had to dig holes about 2 foot deep so the trees wouldn't fall over.
When it got to about 6 o clock, it wasn't really dark, but dark enough for the camera to think it was and give the much desired effect i hope the torched would give. We weren't quite sure how to get the parafin onto the cloths we used as torches without setting ourselves on fire, so somebody decided to dip the rag into the bottle, but that didn't work. In the end i threw the cloth on the floor and pured some on that way, then tied it to the stick and lit it. Luckily the parafin lit with the second match, and we lit the other from that same torch, which was a good idea. The container said you should use dirt to put out the fire, should it get out of hand and we had been digging all afternoon, so we had plenty of dirt and were right next to a lake - so we decided it was safe enough. We set the first one alight, and it looked amazing. It gave a better effect than i could have hoped for - or at least i think it did - i won't know for sure until i can edit the footage but from the cameras perspective it looked amazing. We then proceeded to light another one for the soldiers to carry while they chase the man, this worked quite well but then fell apart as was tied on with an elastic band which melted. So we gave them another one and re-filmed it. It looked fantastic
We recreated our continuity task using the nice expensive cameras.
This is the one using the normal camermas
This is the one using the HD cameras
Honestly, i can't see much difference when it's on YouTube, but hopefully you can see a difference when it is actually full quality on the laptops. There are a few, like, continuity errors such as my arm being up and down with no evidence of me moving it, but this was more to get used to the new cameras than anything so it doesn't really matter. obviously anything like that in my opening will be terrible and could ruin it.
Right. My films is going to be hard. This much i know. I need various things to make it work, many of which i don't have, but i shall make do with what i have.
Costume wise, i have a few suggestions, many of which it turns out i have had for years, and must have been massive when i had them because they are still a fair size now, i just need to find people to wear them.
You probably can't see this, but it is a brown top and white trousers.. I guess this may be the kind of thing peopl eused towear, and if not, that's what they wear in this film. I have no idea what the white square thing is, but i'm sure it goes with the outfit somehow.
This is some sort of long shirt... I have no idea if this is anything similar to what they would have worn but it is now.
Depsite just looking like a large brown sheet with a bit on the end, this is infact some sort of cloak with a nice hood. This is kind of thing i think a monk or someone would wear, again, probably not but who cares... Nobody cares about historical acuracy anymore so y'know... The person burying the rteasure at the beginning of the film could wear this
This is my brothers sword. He said i can use it, providing he is there, but i'm pretty sure he'll let me anyway. Many people seem concerned about me using a sword, but i am only going to use this one, and i'm pretty sure it's not sharp enough to do any real damage without intention.
This could be wielded by one of the people chasing him. I am still working on flaming torches, i can go but some parafin tomorrow..
-
Location-wise, Kirk says i can probably use some land near him, which simply means travelling to Babraham for filming, which although potentially annoying, not too bad. After looking at this piece of land, i realised it would probably be very good for filming, and isn't too hard to get to - although we later realised that if you are carrying lots of things it makes the walk seem much longer. But it was very good, it had holes in the floor already, which is great as we would have had to dig a really big hole in order to bury the chest we used, and was very out of the way so not many people bothered us apart from a few people walking their dogs. We got some very odd looks when they walked past.
If you look in the film, there are two trees that we planted right in the middle of this path :D
I need contact details of the people who are going to be in my film so i can get hold of them and find out where they are and stuff.
I also need basic archaeology type things, such as digging stuff and brushes. General things that archaeologists have when they are digging stuff up.
Minor Concerns:
The weather could pose a potential problem, not so much in the first bit, in fact if it raining that would probably look even better, but it is unusual for archaeologists to dig in the rain unless they know they have found something, and thus would look a little weird in my film. But if that's how it plays out..
I need to dig a hole to bury the chest in, though i really can't be bothered to dig a hole big enough.
Major Issues:
Realistic performance - To pull off this film, the acting has to be real. There is a shot were the guy look really scared and fearful for his life, and this isn't going to work unless the actor can pull off 'scared'. Again, while chasing them guy the people chasing him need to look angry, or at least purposeful. There is another less important part where they find the chest and need to look exited.
Flaming torches - An important factor, even though it doesn't seem it. to give the viewer the idea that this part of the sequence is set in the past, i want them running around with swords and flaming torches. The main problem with this is that simply setting fabric alight doesn't burn for nearly long enough, so i will need to cover it with something. In the movies they use pitch, i believe, but that is going to b quite hard to get hold for so i will have to do something else. For my photography project last year we poured some diesel on an action man and that burned very nicely, so i may have to cover the fabric with diesel before setting it alight, i will test this at the weekend.
Location - This is very important. if i don't have a suitable location(s) the film will not work. I need somewhere i can run around in the dark with swords and flaming torches, and not get yelled at. I have a location that i can dig a hole in the dark, but it is quite a long way away and difficult to get to, so as the fist part of the scene where the guy is digging only has one person in, i may use that location for that scene. As it is going to be dark, nobody will realize that the chasing has been filmed in a different location, or that when it is dug up i shall be somewhere else. I am still working on location.
I need costumes - As this sequence begins set in sometime in the past, i need costumes that emphasize that. If i have people running around in jeans and a shirt, people are not going to look at and go "Wow, this bit is set in the 14th century". I'm not sure what people wore back then but i'm sure i can figure something out.
Swords - At the minute, i have one sword. If my sequence sticks to my storybopard and animatic, i need more than this. Unfortunately, people don't seem to like me running around wielding swords and flailing them around like some sort of crazy ninja. To get past the lack of swords, Ash said i could borrow his, however i think an easier and probably more sensible idea would be to not physically show swords, or just use the one i have and pretend to have others but ensure they stay in the little holdy things people had on their belts back in the day. This way i just need a sword like looking handle, and something that i can make look like a sword holder. I can probably make these easy enough so may try and do this.
1 - Long shot of figure digging a hole, camera pans round and zooms in towards the figure. 2 - Medium shot of figure digging a hole, not close enough for extreme detail, but not too far away to see what he is doing. (Will be lit up with flaming torch giving cool shadows on his face) 3 - Production Company Logos - Long Road, Point Pedro etc. (Dog barks whilst this is on screen) 4 - Cuts to digger looking round, shocked. Seems scared/terrified. 5 - Camera pans round to show flickering lights in distance - digger stars to panic 6 - Cuts to close/medium shot of people running towards him with swords and flaming torches. 7 - Shows digger shoveling dirt back into hole and patting down soil as quickly as he can 8 - Medium shot of digger running away, towards the camera. 9 - Camera pans round as he does, a few seconds later, the people chasing him runs past, too.
UNTIL HERE IT IS DARK
10 - Fades to black - "X years later" in big white lettering.
IS NOW DAY
11 - Close up of spade of something 12 - Camera pans up to show a group of people digging. 13 - General look around, tools and boxes of labeled stuff suggests archaeologists. 14 - One of the archaeologists hits something hard - loud clunk noise 15 - Everyone rushes over to him as he gets a brush and starts brushing away loose dirt. 16 - Shot from below the soil, looking up at people brushing loose soil from above it. 17 - Shot above soil again, looking at archaeologists pulling stuff out of the hole 18 - Open container
THIS BIT MAY NOT BE IN FINAL VERSION
19 - Remove a piece of parchment like material 20 - Close up of letter 21 - Well old, hard to read, one of the archaeologists vaguely translates it - basically says what they have found and why it was hidden. 22 - Put letter in bag and put in tray
THIS IS IN FINAL VERSION
23 - Everyone leans forwards to see what is in chest 24 - Camera pans from looking up on the floor, around the container and goes to show you what has been hidden. 25 - Cuts before you are shown - This entices the viewer to watch and see what has been found
After we created our mood boards, we started to create a list of everything that had to be in our sequence. This was sort of like a time line of what was going to happen. Once we had created this we started to work on creating an A3 sheet of paper with 9 key frames on, like the website artofthetitle do. These frames are supposed to give a basic idea of what happens in the sequence very quickly.
As you can see in the first frame, the sequence starts of with a guy digging a hole. The next shot is just the various production company logo's and usual jazz films have at the start. While these logos are playing you will hear a dog barking, and the image will very quickly cut back to the guy digging looking scared. Frame 4 shows a group of people running towards him with flaming torches and swords. This could potentially be hard as i don't know how i will keep the flaming torches alight for long enough. Shot 5 is of the man very quickly burying whatever he has and running off into the night. The screen fades to black and the words "X years later" (i haven't decided how many yet) come up in white lettering. Screen 7 shows a group of people you learn to be archaeologists digging holes when someone hits something hard. Screen 8 is a shot from under the soil, looking up at the people brushing dirt away from the thing. Shot 9 is back above ground watching them pull the thing out of the ground.
Next we did a few potential stills form our mood boards.
My first one is a close up of a pick axe digging a hole. I probably wont use a pick axe, but i didn't have a picture of a spade digging a hole and that was as close as i could get. It also shows the initial part of the guy digging. The second frame is of the people running towards him with swords, however it doesn't really look like they're running anywhere. The last frame is 3 more people digging a hole, to show the archaeologists digging later on and finding whatever was buried.
This is the moodboard for my film opening. Many of the pictures may seem completely irrelevant, and many unhelpful but as my tagline fort the film is "Time Team meets Die Hard" it seemed like an idea to have pictures of archaeologists and digging and stuff, topped off with some clips from the Die Hard movies to remind people it isn't just going to be 2 hours of digging. Some of the images show drawings and stills from movies simply because they are an idea as to wha the film could be. It is hard to capture the modd o th film as it is completely varied. Bits of the film are really dark and slightly creepy, then there are other bits which are filled with completely over-the-top gunfights, car chases and explosions. This is the main reason the images are completely varied - the film is as well. If i had been planning to do a film that was about archaeology, the images would be more heavily based on archaeology and digging etc. Similarly, if i was simply doing another action film, the images would be more heavily based on guns, cars and fighting. One of the images is some sort of crazy monster, it has been hand-drawn, i think, and i added this because i though it looked cool. If i was making the entire film, there is a chance i would include sort sort of mystical beast, which this image reminds me of, but i have neither the time, nor the budget to do that.
We created this animation using a program called Moviestorm. We started off, knowing very little about the program, and had to create a short film using it. It started out quite hard as, even though tips and help is given, very few people decided to use it and we just went straight on and started to create. the first problem we had was that textures just appeared black, no matter what settings we changed or turned on/off, nothing would happen. Then Matt turned around and showed us how to fix it and we were off. After a little while of messing around, we decided to create a very short version of Terminator. Obviously we were quite heavily restricted to what we could do, but i was very surprised about the amount the program could do, and the amount of options you had for various things. One of the main problems we encountered was, as you will notice if you watch, the mouths didn't move. We tried as hard as we could but we couldn't get the lips to sync with the words. This, we decided, was quite a trivial problem, and not worth wasting our time over so we went on and finished our film without moving.
Another problem most people had, was that when you get a certain amount of props/people in your film, the computer starts to slow down, this is far worse if you have another program such as media player/iTunes playing in the background, so the program uses a large amount of your computers power. From this i concluded that the program is very good, providing you make a short film or don't use much stuff in it. It also probably isn't worth using any other programs on your computer because it will be too slow. other than that, it's alright.
Long ago, a lone man risked his life to steal something from a secret society. This man was chased and tortured but the lost artifacts were never recovered. Hundreds of years later a team of crime fighting archaeologists stumbled upon it and became part of the greatest secret in history. Unfortunately, there is a spy amongst them and the secret society are still willing to blow up anyone who steps in their way or threatens to expose them. Sure to be filled with car chases, explosions and more over the top fight scenes than you've ever seen, this film is very vaguely based on the comic by Laurence Tureaud.
Tagline:
Think Time Team meets Die Hard
Working Title:
Die Team - This IS going to change, but until i think of a better one i am just playing on the titles. As the tag line for the film is currently Time Team meets Die Hard i just played with the words and created Die Team.
Eye catching intriguing imagery Institutional detail (production company, distributors etc) Makes you want to watch rest of film Good relevant soundtrack Don't give away too much story Build up tension Title of film itself General credits
I made these logos with after effects, i am going to use the first one as my actual company, as i believe it would be easier to use as a physical logo, using the shield instead of just having a rectangle with some coloured squares. The second i like, though I may not use the actual logo with the shapes and whatnot, but i will probably use the name as i think it's awesome.
The first video i am going to analyse is the original Batman movie with Adam West (1966). The opening credits are incredibly simple as it is mainly just the various characters of the film funning past the camera being followed by searchlights. Although a big difference with these credits is that right at the beggining the searchlight finds some messages that appear to be written on the walls to all the fans and viewers thanking them, and general messages from the producers of the film. These messages are shown using a plain white light, to make the messages easier for the viewer to read. Next pops up the original Batman logo and the music. The logo moves across the screen where it fades out to show someone running along a dimly lit "green" alleyway. Next, Batman appears from the left side of the screen, lit up by a light blue light. The camera then pans along to show Robin coming out from the right side of the screen lit up by a yellow light. Where appropriate the character name comes up above the actors naem, for example when Batman walks on it says "Batman... Adam West". If the person being mentioned does not have a charcter, they are simply just the words saying what they have done and their names. For the next minute and a half the various different characters of the film appear on screen lit up by different colour searchlights. I am unsure wether the colour of the light relects on the character or not, but i think it has some relativity. For example, in this film, the Joker wears green and is lit up by a green light. The names of all the people starring in the show and the producers etc all appear in simple white letters on top of the film, and fade away to let the next set come up. It is very hard to tell how many shots this scene has as between every shot it fades to black and isn't clear if the camera has moved, or if they just turned the lights off in order for the next character to be introduced.
In contrast to this, the new Batman film, the Dark Knight has no credits at all at the start of the film. It goes straight into the opening scene where you see a bunch of clowns, you are supposed to assume they are working with the Joker (most people will have either seen a Batman movie or at least vaguely know the characters, so as assumption like this is easy to make). This goes to show that as the Batman franchise has grown and the movies become bigger and bigger the need to waste time and money telling people who is in the film has become less and less important. This is one of the few films that has no credits at the start of films other than the production company logo's. They are able to do this because when new Batman films are planned to be released, the amount of Media hype they get and they amount of attention the fans give to the cast lists means that most people who are interested in the film knows exactly who is playing who before the film has even been released.
On the other hand, some films from different parts of the world, such as Dragon Tiger Gate based on the Hong Kong Manua (comic book) Oriental Heroes. This films starts with a couple of characters sitting around they appear to be small children. You hear them talking, although it's in Chinese or something so i found one with subtitles, but basically they are talking about why you learn martial arts. Then some text comes up naming the production company, theres isn't an apparent logo, simply the name in Chinese, then underneath in English. The music then gets much faster and more intense as you get thrown into some big, very impressive fight scenes, which i assume gives you a general idea of the movie. Then it shows some text and various different images for the different people, there's a bolt of lightning for one person, a scorpion for someone else etc.
As this opening sequence is very intense, there are many quick cuts between scenes. Even though the opening scene is only 2:45 there are about 131 different shots or angles in that time. That is a new show or different angle every 1.12214 seconds. As some of the shots at the start are much longer, many of the shots in the middle are split seconds, literally blink and you miss them shots. I watched the clip several times and still couldn't count them all exactly.
I really love how "Th1ng" created the sweeney todd opening sequence. After the Dreamorks and Warner Bros logos have come and gone, it takes you to an animated, stormy, Victorian style London. The slow, yet eerily intense organ music gives the film a suitable start as it instantly suggests what kind of film it is going to be. While the scrren appears to be panning across London, it is raining. If you look carefully, you can occasionally see drops of blood falling in the rain. It is not frequent, it is just the occasional drop, which i think is amazing because it just goes to show the detail they went into to give the occasional person who is paying hilariously close attention to small details such as that something to think about.
It then succesfully sets the scene by showing you the house in which the majority of the film is set, and a drop of blood flowing down the arm of a chair. The camera then follows this line of blood as it shows the ineer workings of the chair and is finally drained into the sewers. It then shows you the machine they use to turn the people they've killed into mincemeat, which then drops another droplet of blood down into the sewers. This time, however the sewer zooms out and spins round until it simply shows a blood red spiral on the floor, an image which is quickly engulfed by flames as the next part of the credits take over. The intense flames then zom out slightly to show that they are in fact cooking pies, again, with a pool of blood ready to drip over the side and continue the story. The oven door then shuts and you follow the drainage bit as the blood flows into the sewer. It then follows the sewer as it takes the blood red water and deposits it into a larger body of water, assumed to be a river.
What i love about this opening sequence is that it is entirely animated, but unlike most titles tells you basically what the film is about. You could only watch the titles sequence and understand that film is about a guy in a house who puts people on chairs and kills them, he them turns them into pies. This, for the most part os true, there is slightly more to the storyline than that, and if you watched the film you would understand most of it, why he is doing it, how he is doing it etc. The other thing i like is that you aren't shown a single character. It tells you the basic storyline, but reveals nothing else about the film. You aren't shown any characters, any locations apart from a building somewhere in a city somewhere. If you only wanted to get the basic jist of the film, you could watch the titles and leave, but that wouldn't give away nearly enough information to satisfy most people, and makes you watch the film to find out what the titles are about.
The comapny who made this sequence, "Th1ng" have also produced many adverts, music videos and film openings for various people. Many of these videos, especially the adverts appear to be animations or stop-motions. I think this is good because while it is easier in a sense that you don't have to hire actors and film during certain times, i think creating good looking adverts using stop motion is very difficult, and subsequently very rewarding if it works.
This opening sequence is fantastic due to its simplicity. It is simple the Batman logo, that appears to be carved into stone or something. Basically all it does is start off in an extreme close up and rotate the image while zooming out until it ends with the entire logo filling th screen. There are very few actual credits, and strangely, as there are so few, none of the cast are mentioned, which is strange as the main actor(s) are usually names quite early on in the sequence.
I like this advert because it's quite childish. Not in a sense that it is in anyway immature, but in a sense that the backing song would appear to be sung by small children and the letters at the end, are the same as the sticky magnetic letters you stick on the fridge when you are small. I'm not entirely sure what these are for, but i'm sure they come in handy occasionally. I think the advert is very cleverly done, and the fact that it will appeal to younger audiences as well as older ones is very good because it is easier to buy things for children if they want it, too. As this advert will appeal to young children, with the happy song and the beans on toast man etc they are more likely to eat it than if it was just an advert of a guy standing there going "This stuff is better for you. Buy it." It is very cleverly tailored towards all age ranges that are likely to use the product.
Popular and humorous idea Plot slightly vague at the minute Interesting idea, obscure mix suggestion (Time Team and Die Hard) Interesting idea for film Could be good if done well.
A group of archaeologists stumble upon a chest buried hundreds of years ago that people will kill to protect. Some secrets are best left undiscovered. Think Time Team meets Die Hard.
I like the first brief, as i think it sounds best. Action movies basically only need action and a very vague storyline, to patch the action scenes together. Basing it on a comic book could seem tricky, but realistically comic books are relatively simple. When i think of comic book i think of superhero (spiderman, watchmen, X-Men etc) which suggests that a film based on a comic should involve some dude with special powers, but Batman is considered a superhero and he's just some rich guy who appears to be incredibly strong. This means that all you need for an action movie based on a comic is some guy that manages to do things and not die. Now if you're making up a comic, this could be easy. You just need to think of various situations your character could be found in, and how he would escape in the coolest way possible, preferably with lots of gunfights, car chases and explosions (because that's what makes good filmsm, especially when aimed at 16 - 25 year old males).
I have yet to think of a suitable storyline, but i know exactly how i want to do the opening credit sequence, think like the superbad opening sequence:
While that film is a comedy and they have the main characters silhouetted and dancing around the opening, i would like to have the main character with a similar style, but as this is an action movie there would be fights and stuff instead of dancing to give the film a sense of what it's about before it even starts. This would be relatively easy using a plain wall or greenscreen and after effects.
I found some very short overviews of some action films which i think could be useful in helping me to decide what i want to pitch.
The Transporter: This film is about a man (Statham) whose job is to deliver packages without asking any questions. Complications arise when he breaks those rules.
Casino Royale: In his first mission, James Bond must stop Le Chiffre, a banker to the world's terrorist organizations, from winning a high-stakes poker tournament at Casino Royale in Montenegro.
However these are only action films, here's some i found that a related to films based on comics or graphic novels.
Spiderman: When bitten by a genetically modified spider, a nerdy, shy, and awkward high school student gains spider-like abilities that he eventually must use to fight evil as a superhero after tragedy befalls his family
X - Men: Two mutants come to a private academy for mutants whose resident superhero team must oppose a powerful mutant terrorist organization
Watchmen: When an ex-superhero is murdered, a vigilante named Rorshach begins an investigation into the murder, which begins to lead to a much more terrifying conclusion
Superman: An alien orphan is sent from his dying planet to Earth, where he grows up to become his adoptive home's first and greatest super-hero.
From these plot outlines, it seems most films based on comics contain superheroes of some kind, or people pretending to be superheroes (think Batman or Iron Man)
Blade: A half-vampire, half-mortal man becomes a protector of the mortal race, while slaying evil vampires
Iron Man: When wealthy industrialist Tony Stark is forced to build an armored suit after a life-threatening incident, he ultimately decides to use its technology to fight against evil.
I have decided to change my opening credits idea. It seemed like a good idea before i had an idea for my film opening, but now i believe it would be innapropriate and out of place. Instead i shall simply put text over the top of my footage naming the appropriate people.
I foun this video on YouTube, along with hundreds of other that come up when you type in "A Level Media". What i find particularly interesting about this video is theuse of music and sound effects. At the start, when the text appears on the screen, all you hear is a single, slow heartbeat. This suggests fear or panic and the viewer should be scared, or at least, worried. What i love about the next scene, is it's simplicity. All it is is a close up of a door and a guy walking through it. He is wearing plain black clothes and carrying a book. I instantly thought it was a priest. This is a very clever shot as it is counting on the mise-en-scene, such as the door, the clothes and the book to suggets who the person is, or is pretending to be.
You then see the man walking up the isles in a church, i was right, he is a priest. The music here is very effective, there is some gentle violins or something initially and then a choir starts, but fades in and out very quickly. You then see the priest holding and admiring some jewelery. It then cuts to show the Columbia logo, which i'm not sure the should have out on, but still with the violins and the choir. It then flashes to a view through some tree branches, and a crash of thunder.
The music is getting gradually louder, and suddenly you are shown the roof of a house. The camera then looks down to see a person walking past. There is a very loud breath in the background, but at the same time on top of everything, as if from behind the camera, as if the viewer is looking out of the persons eyes. This happenes 2 or 3 times as the camera follows the girl, gradually getting closer and closer, all the time the music building up. Until it gets to it's fastest moment so far, and with a crash you see a man leap at the girl and start to drag her away, kicking and screaming. It then goes to a quick cutaway of the priest wandering up and down the aisle of the church, in the dark. This could suggests he is not the good "man of God" all priests are made out to be.
It then cuts and shows you a shot of two legs hanging out of a tree. Then there are a series of shots showing different things including fire, and several crosses and finally landing on Jesus on the cross. This screen then cuts black and a bell sounds as the title of the film "Genesis" appears on the screen. The bell sounds again when the actors name appears, "Liam Neeson". This is trying to tell the audience that he is the main character in this film, when he isn't and they shouldn't have put this in. It then sounds again ever time some new text comes up on screen giving quotes from big newspapers such as the Daily Mail, which, i guess you can do i'm not sure.
I really like the whole dark, religious atmosphere as it seems like a good film simply because of the suspense the trailer had, it was dark and fast paced and intense. The religious aspect of the trailer is merely another twist that loops into the story to enthrall and attract the viewers into watching the actual film when it comes out. They have, however, given quite a good phrase for the date, playing on the religious theme. Instead of simply putting the date they used the phrase "redemption begins". This i find interesting because redemption is instantly recognised as religious. People go to church to redeem themselves of past sins or something, so to suggest redemption begins when this new horror film comes out is another interesting use of language to attract readers.
Unfortunately, they didn't really think it through. They put a website on the end of the trailer, http://www.genesis.com/, which is infact a website for internet security, not a film. They also used a real production company claiming it was being made by them, and have suggested Liam Neeson (Star Wars, Taken, Batman) was gong to be starring in their film, which isn't true. Apart from that though, i think the trailer is fantastic.
1 - Costumes and Props - This frame shows one of the characters using the costume i gave him to wear in order for him to look like a monk. It also shows the torches and spades we used as props.
When i go to the next project, i will have to ensure i plan my time better. The footage i have is very good, but we had 3 hours to kill halfway through filming waiting for it to get dark. Fortunately we found things to do while we were waiting for this project (we 
