Filming Evaluation

 

29th November- We filmed at school using the green screen and microphones to create our news and radio report and it went realy well. The radio took us 3 takes to record and the news took us 20 minutes to film. We dont need to re-film any of this but we do need the news report to be put onto a dvd before we can film further at Jo's house. We got Zac to star in this so we were on a timescale as he had a bus to catch.

 

6th December- We began to film our zombie footage at Jo's house. We did Charlottes zombie makeup and filmed her throwing up, transforming into a zombie and her standing in windows. We also did basic shots around the house like turning on the coffee machine, turning off the radio, pouring cereal, getting milk, washing up and so on. We basically did foundation shots that we can cut alot and put in any order. It will probably take 1 or 2 to complete the filming and then maybe 3 if we decide we need anymore filming. 

Production Companies

 

Ramley studios is our own company and we created the logo on photoshop, this will come up with the opening titles

 

Film 4 is a real film comany that weve decided to pretend will be creating our film, weve chosen film 4 as they show quite niche and indie films which is fitting with our genre

The Target Audience for Our Film Opening

Age: 16+

Gender: Male and female (mostly male)

Social Class: Middle class

Social Group: Gamers, film fanatics

Employment: In part time work or above (or with parents who would pay for their ticket)

Ethnicity: Any ethnicity

Primary Audience: Teenagers who like the genre of horror/thriller.

Secondary Audience: Parents/young adults taking the teenagers to the cinema or watching it with them on the TV.

Demographic Class: Skilled working class to upper middle class (C2 to A)

Locations

 

 

Process of zombie make-up

 

Animatic

 

 

Genre Presentation

 

 

 

Feedback:

1) Give examples of conventions in terms of context

2) 'Suspense and tension' - How?

3) Add to location ti locations- should have a variety to keep it engaging

4) Characters need further development

 

Shot list:

 

          Low angle shots- when the cereal goes into the bowl the camera will be under the glass bowl so it looks like the camera is the bowl

          High angle shots- the camera is at the top of the stairs and shows me walking past the bottom

         Worm's eye view- the camera is on the floor and shows me walking about only capturing my feet

              Close ups- close up of the zombies face when its transforming from a human to a zombie

           Reaction shots- medium close up of my face when I hear about the epidemic on the news and on the radio

           'Reveal' shots- shows me washing up in the sink with nobody in the window, I walk to the fridge and come back and the zombie is stood in the window

           Medium shots- when I'm sat on the sofa watching the TV

       Medium long shots- me in the kitchen

        Establishing shots- shot of the house

          Tracking shots- me walking from the kitchen to the living room

            Long shots- me in the kitchen

      Medium close-ups- turning off of the radio and the coffee machine

Scripts:

 

Radio News Report:

Arctic Monkeys - Do I Wanna Know? is playing. Interrupted by crackling and low voice speaking.

"We interrupt this broadcast with breaking news of a global crisis. Zombie activity has been confirmed by the government. We urge you - "

More crackling is heard on the radio before Ellie turns it off.

Television News Report:

TV programme playing. It crackles out and swaps to the BBC news.

"We interrupt this broadcast with breaking news of a global crisis. Zombie activity has been confirmed by the government. We urge you to lock your doors and stay in your homes until further notice."

 

 

Casting and roles:

 

Average Teenage Girl - Played by Ellie Mirams

Zombie - Played by Charlotte Booth

Radio Presenter - Voiced by Ellie Mirams

TV Presenter - Played by Zac Meli

Camera - Jo Hailey

Editing - Ellie Mirams, Jo Hailey and Charlotte Booth

Opening Sequence Research

World war z

 

The purpose of this opening sequence is to set the scene for the audience and let us know a little bit about what to suspect in the film, introduce main characters and start telling us the story. The conventions of a zombie film will be met by there being some kind of apocalypse or epidemic killing a large number of people and then the film will show either how they defeat the zombies as a collective or someones individual story throughout the epidemic. The shots in this opening sequence are all abstract and look like a shattered glass with different parts of the shot in focus and some aren’t with different parts laying over eachother yet we are still able to see what is in the scene. The shots are made up of news footage of people at desks so a lot of medium shots and then shots of animals in the jungle and on the beach so long shots. There are a lot fo close ups on peoples activities to show what people are doing around the world such as people on trains etc and then they cut to different locations around the world to show this a film based all around the world- the zombies affect the whole world. The settings  range from a train station, the beach, a news studio to an African plain to symbolise the vast affect whatever the zombie issue in this film will be is a global issue. The lighting within the natural scenes is all naturalistic daylight weather which is quite neutral and then the shots in the studio would have the studio lighting so it looks a lot more hd and advanced than the scenes of the outdoors; this contrasts well and shows the two differences between the real world and the media world. There is nobody in this opening sequence that is focused on more than once or even specifically so nobody is introduced to us yet as a protagonist, everyone in it already is either a member of the public in a large crowd or a news reporter. The text is all in one font in the corner of the screen and is shown whilst there is activity in the sequence, at the end of the scene the black cutting around the edge of the scene zooms out to reveal the title of the film with activity still going on in the background, this again symbolises the world is to do with the film. The pace is all quick cuts and transitions although each one shows something for a few seconds, towards the end of the extract the shots get shorter and shorter as the pace picks up. The sound is a mixture between digetic and non digetic. The digetic is the birds flying and chirping, and the wild animals as they attack and eat things, also the news reporters room you would be able to hear it all aswell but because they mix it all into a sound collage so they show us one bit of sound and then cut to another scene and the sound is still playing over something it doesn’t match so the sound keeps building up and up as the shots get shorter for affect.

The opening sequence in Se7en represents the Crime Thriller drama well in a variety of ways. The purpose of the opening sequence is to grab the audience’s attention; this has been done by making us question what he’s doing with all this torture equipment. The convention of this sequence reinforces the genre with the torture weapons, the criminal records and the interesting books he’s reading from with diagrams in and the effects. The shots are all point of view shots and are never of anything but objects, this infers to us that we are the ones doing something and lets us in on a secret. The angles are all high angles the consistency of the cinematography focuses our attention on the props and not things such as the movement or people. The setting is all at one big white desk with dim lighting focusing on certain objects, the lighting leaves shadows which make it look eerie, this reinforces the genre again. The only character in the opening sequence isn’t revealed to us, we only see their hands; this leaves an element of mystery and foreboding and suggests that this is who the film is going to be about and their identity will not be revealed until the very end as the film unravels. The text in this film is an interesting font, black and flickers. The flickering of the text looks like a broken lamp which reinforces the genre. The pace of this is fairly quick, not noticeably fast but it does help to build suspense and keep the audience interested in the props within the opening scene. The transitions are quick and the sound is all non-diegetic. We can’t hear anything that the person within the scene is doing all we can hear is creepy techno music and then occasionally a strange sound effect like a screech or a bang. This fits the Barthes theory of the enigma code and portrays a mystery.

http://abbietoyntonmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/animatic-storyboard.html this is my anamatic

http://abbietoyntonmedia.blogspot.co.uk/ this is my preliminary task

Equipment:

We used a video camera (make unknown) to capture the footage and used a tripod to keep the camera still whilst filming; we then uploaded it, converted it to mp4 and edited it on Adobe Premiere.

Skills:

We used quite a lot of skills whilst filming and editing. When filming we made sure we framed the shots to a specific camera shot (e.g- medium closeup from breast pocket up), also using the rule of thirds, the 180° rule and match on action to ensure continuity. When editing we put music over the top and at points had to change the volume of it so you could hear people speaking which was very fiddly. We also spent a lot of time editing so the continuity and flow of our work was spot on.

Positives and Negatives:

The positives of our task are that this was our second time filming so we had already learnt from our mistakes, our previous work wasn’t long enough so we made sure we had filmed lots of extra shots that could be put in if needed. Our speech was a lot longer and the build up and cross cutting to the conversation was very good I think. We also used music and writing to put over our text which nobody else did so I think we went the extra mile with improving our work. The negatives were that even though we did spend a while trying to get our music perfect it still didn’t go completely well and there’s one shot where its louder than Anais talking which didn’t work well.


Shots and techniques:

We used quite a lot of shots in this to see how many we could use. We used a long shot with me walking into the distance, then we cut away from it back to the conversation and then back to me walking but in a different place to show time had passed. We used a lot of over the shoulder shots during the conversations but mixed them with closeup reaction shots. The shots we used when I walk from one side of the door to the other were cut well to establish continuity.