Monday, 30 November 2015

Filming Location / EVIDENCE, Research







These are pictures of the filming location


We begun filming on the 30th Novermber 2015 at the home of the uncle of our partner - Marie. His home was not far from the college so it was very convenient for us to film there.





Wednesday, 25 November 2015

Non-deigetic sound -


Non-diegetic sound -

in our title sequence we are planning to include mosly diegetic sounds, however we may include an overlayed non-diegetic sound track.

using the site- bensounds.com which shares loyalty free music: i have been able to find a potential sound track to include in out title sequence: 






this sound track is deep and emotional without, giving off the feel of a thriller.
this would be a good sound track to include as it is emotional and soft, and helps show that our genre is a drama, and it centers around the sad events of a breaking marriage. 

Wednesday, 18 November 2015

The Pitch - 5 audience details


For our project will will be aiming our film opening towards older adults around the age of 40, but it will also appeal to a wide range of people over the age of 18 and onwards. our genre and movie plot is more of an adult situation  and so will attract a wide range of an adult audience.

Audience Profile:

our audience will most likely be member of the public who are over the age of 30, though it appeals to a wide range of ages, it is shown that a majority of those interested in the genre and the themes of broken marriage will older, and female though males will also be interested in the genre of drama, it is more likely we will have more female audience members.

i used youGov.com to find information on the audience i am looking into, this helped get information about a large group of people which i can then aim the title sequence towards.




to attract this target audience we will use other forms of media that they will be more likely to see, unlike teenagers who would use social media, older views are more likely to need in home advertisement and posters to attract them. as we are a some production company and making a small film, we will not have a large budget for advertisement so will use a majority of posters, on buses, in shops windows and in stores. this is more likely to get the attention of older viewers and let them know to go see the film.



Pitch 7 - Mise-En-Scene, Research




Powered by emaze

Costumes (additional) 

These are the clothes that our male character played by Leo will be wearing for the title sequence





Saturday, 14 November 2015

47. Blogging Healthcheck 2, Research

I have received Rebecca's feedback for my second progress report. I was pleased that I moved up a grade from C to B and encouraged to hear that she feels I have the potential to reach the A grade region.

I have made the requisite changes asked of me, much like I did the last time and will try to not miss any blog deadlines. Or have any missing tasks.



Wednesday, 11 November 2015

The Pitch - Sound design











Powered by emaze

Pitch Task 1 -4, Research

The name of our film is: Lost Love 

Brief outline of film

The film is based on a married couple who are facing troubling times. Coming off of the back of a big argument with his wife, the husband comes home hoping to resolve the matter. He comes home form work and realises that the door is open. He tentatively enters, drops his keys and walks into the living room. Suddenly he steps on a piece of broken glass. The glass is from a smashed wedding photo, the man begins to fear that his wife has run off with he kids. He sits down by the table and realises that his wife has left her wedding ring on table accompanied by a goodbye/ break-up note.

The way that we plan to film this is to start with a wide shot of the outside of the house, this is so that we can establish the place were the rest of the film will take place to the audience.A wide shot will capture the entirety of the  home which is what we want. We will then use match cuts which will include medium shot, close ups and panning shots.

Type of title sequence

We intend to use a narrative title sequence; a title sequence with moving images. We have chosen this because we think it'll help introduce our serious tone, if we were to use a title sequence with some animation as seen in films like Juno, it could give our audience the wrong idea that the tone of our movie is laid back when in fact it is a very dramatic and serious film.

A big influence for our title sequence is the title sequence in Raging Bull. It is very simple and does not give away too much but it introduces the tone perfectly, you know from the get-go that you (the audience) are in for a very dramatic and almost morose movie. They implement the same type of title sequence that we are going for. 

Another influence is A Few Good Men. It does similar to Raging Bull, it does not give away too much but introduces the tone and puts opening credit in front of moving images.






We intend to conform to traditional drama conventions as it will allow us to avoid any confusion with the audience. If we implement drama conventions hopefully our audience will catch on quickly and realise that they are in for a drama movie.

Choice of Genre

The genre we have chosen is Drama. We feel it suits the kind of film we are going for best. It could've been a thriller but we do not intend for it to have any twists or turns so drama is the best.

Two films we have taken inspiration from is again : A Few Good Men & Raging Bull


Institutional detail 

Our film will be an independent production. It has more chance of getting attention from a distribution company if it were an independent production.

Milkyway Pictures will distribute our film. A similar distribution company to ours is Vertigo Films. They distribute a lot of independent pictures as opposed to a company like 20th Century Fox who are mainly in the blockbuster movie business.  Vertigo Films have distributed critically acclaimed films such as The Outlaw and The Firm. With our film being small and independent we would have a good chance of being distributed by a company like Vertigo as opposed to Disney or 20th Century Fox.

Depending on our ownership there may be slight obligations we would have to meet in our title sequence. the distribution company indent would probably come first, and if we were to have any actors starring who carried around a certain amount of prestige their names would come before others.


48. Editing Evidence, Research



Start of editing our clips recorded on Monday 30th November.

This clip is evidence of the start of out editing. In this clip alongside the narration you can see us starting to put clips in chronological order so they flow nicely and correctly. More evidence will be posted as we go along and edit more of our sequence.

Blogging healthcheck 2 (47)


I got a B, great improvement from health check 1.
i've now pt my post in chronological order. I have also added my missing blog posts that i didn't have before.
Also, i edited our blog template to make it suit our film theme.

46. Filming Evidence, Research



We shot everything we needed in this one day, but at the time of writing I do not know whether it will be sufficient enough to edit. We may return here another lesson to add/ perfect extra shots. However we will review the footage before we return to the location to reshoot so that we know which scenes and shots we need to refilm, to avoid making the same mistakes or not getting shots we're missing.

Here we show the location, at this point in the video we had finished filming and were packing away to leave the location. We showed the living room of the home we filmed in because that is where majority of our film takes place, we thought it would be good to show the location without actual acting going on inside of it, instead of pictures and the actual film showing the room; it wouldn't give the same effect.

45. WIX WEBSITE!, Research

http://group18media.wix.com/digital-media

Wix Site

(Site made and created by Rochelle Cassell)

A picture of our Wix Website 

44. Final Schedule, Research

Added

Edited


43. Filming Run Through, Research





Running through staging and what happens in our opening scene.

narrated by Rochelle, Acted by Leo

42. Pitch Evaluation, Research

There are 3 main point from our pitch feedback we are going to focus on more.
  • Clearer information on what the props are for
We finalised our props and decided to only use a note(wife saying goodbye), a ring(she left with the note) and a broken frame of their marriage picture t sow their relationship broke down. 
  • More variety in shots
In filming we used a lot of different shots, more than what we planned on our shot list.
  • Pictures of the location 


41. Pitch Reflection, Research

We presented our pitch to our class and most importantly our teacher. We informed them on the general plot for our film, the way we intend to shoot it and additional details. We used a combination of both Microsoft Powerpoint and Prezi to present our pitch. We chose Powerpoint because it suited us best, it was quick, easy and well presentable. The reason that we also used prezi is because group member Rochelle had a few slides of storyboards that could not be put onto PowerPoint so we decided that it would be best that she presented her section through Prezi because it was too valuable to lose.

We feel the pitch was successful enough, we conveyed our ideas across and showed some of the clips and opening sequences of some of the films that inspired us such as Raging Bull & A few Good Men.

Feedback




This is a video of afater we had finished our presentation and were receiving feedback.

We received feedback from both our teacher and fellow students. To sum it up the positives were:

  • That our opening sequence was realistic, smart and achievable 
  • Well planned and though out establishing shots
  • In depth detail
  • Well presented presentation 
  • Institutional detail 
  • Outline of the film 
  • Use of examples/ inspirations 
  • Good preparation
  • Good research

We also received some constructive criticism

  • Clearer information on what the props are for
  • More detail on setting 
  • Better connection
  • Clearer information on non-diegetic sound
  • More variety in shots
  • Pictures of the location 
We intend to take all of this information on board, both the good and the bad to make the best possible film that we can make. 

Pitch Presentation

Here is the powerpoint we presented to the class. We presented it on Microsoft PowerPoint originally but we could not embed that onto the blog so we 'emazified it'. Marie and I's slides are here while Rochelle opted to present hers via Prezi which can be seen on her Pitch task 9-12/ blogpost 40
There are inaccuracies on this presentation such as the narrative and the distribution company which will be rectified in later blogposts.

Pitch tasks 9-12 and blogpost 40

39. Final storyboards, Research



These are the final images for our storyboard

Casting (38)

As leo is the only guy in the group, it was the best decision for him to play the main and only role of the husband coming home to a empty home. There are no extras. no auditions were needed.

38. Evidence of Casting Auditions

Due to my being the only male in the group I was the only candidate for the male role/lead in our film. Luckily for me this meant that I didn't have to audition for anything. We decided as a group that it was best to not include the wife in this scene so that intrigue and mystery could be built.

The only on-screen member of the group
A ring will also feature 

37. Production Schedule, Research



This are the days we plan to film and edit.

Final mise-en-scene (36)

Leo's clothing 

Location (Maries aunts house)



Final title credits (35)

35. & 36

I will not be doing blog task 35, 36 or 40 , Rochelle will be doing that on behalf of the group as it is part of her individual pitch task which she was assigned.

Her blog task 35, 36 and 40 will be be a part of our collaborative pitch presentation.

Slides from our presentation


34. Draw a Rough Storyboard and Shot-list, Research

Marie and myself (Leo) drew up a number of storyboards based off of Rochelle's shot list.






These pictures of storyboards chart our progression in ideas for our final piece.


Tuesday, 10 November 2015

33. Brand Your Blog, Research

Rochelle branded our blog and changed the background theme to a marriage based one. This works for us because our film is centred around a marriage couple



Monday, 9 November 2015

Brand blog (33)

To brand our blog, I uploaded a picture of the word marriage and its teared apart in the middle. This is the whole idea of our sequence of a broken down marriage hence my choice in picture. I also changed the colours to more dull and not bright colours to reflect the idea of a more upsetting period in life. Using bright colours would not go with our theme as it is not a particularly happy sequence.
picture used.

Wednesday, 4 November 2015

Our own distribution company (32)

Distribution company name; Milkyway Pictures



- Our film appeals to people who are into drama. It can also appeal to married couples or people looking to get married. The mystery and the fact the audience finds the clues before the main character make sit interesting.

-We will use social media to promote. Twitter would be or main one so we can get people involved with hashtags. Facebook and Instagram will also be used to get across our pictures and trailers and special and behind the scenes clips.

- We will do a winter release as this is a small film, releasing it at any other time will have a lot of competition. Winter also ties into the tone and atmosphere of the film.

-The film will be available in Dvd, Blue ray and On Demand.

-We will not ave any cross media links or synergous links due to the fact that we are not a big budgeted movie so these will be useful. Aldo, the synopsis of our film doesn't need to have products are brands based around it as the film is on a broken marriage which has no necessary links to any products.

Our Site I made; http://group18media.wix.com/digital-media

32. Distribution Research, Research

Our movie has the genre of drama, for the research we chose to look at movies similar to ours in genre to see which companies produce and distribute such films.

The first movie we have looked at is south paw, this is an action drama, of a professional boxer who is fighting to get the custody of his daughter and get his life back on track after his life dramatically falls apart.



Produced by:

WanDa Pictures, Riche Productions, Escape Artists, Fuqua Films

Distributed by:
The Weinstein Company


Marketing tools:


this film also has movie posters produced such as the poster shown above, dramatic movie posters such as this draw in and inform the general public of the existence of this film. they may have also have shown trailers on tv, this brings the movie into the home, they may also include out of home advertisement such as bus posters.

this film had many connections used as advertisement for this film, people who have a large fan following such as Eminem and 50 cent, took part in acting and creating the sound track for this movie. the input of such well known people creates an audience for the movie and in turn brings fans in to watch the movies. they will communicate with their fans, telling them of their imput on this film, over social media such as twitter and Facebook.

Type of Release 

Southpaw had a wide release, it was released in most popular cinemas and was released in most cinemas over the globe.

Format Availability 

Southpaw is to be released on DVD/Blu- Ray disc and On Demand on the 27th October 2015, three months after it's worldwide cinematic release.

Box Office

Southpaw had an opening weekend of $16.7mn, ultimately it grossed a little over $90million,

Synergous

Southpaw has a synergous link with its soundtrack. Eminem produced it on his record label shady records.




Would they distribute ours?
Weinstein distributed the film and they are likely to distribute ours. Firstly, they are one of the largest mini-major film studios and our film is not exactly major which makes them perfect to distribute our film. secondly, they distribute African American films which our film can be classified as. 




Gone Girl 




Gone girl is an american physiological thriller, involving a missing wife and a husband being accused of her murder. this is a film similar to ours as it has a plot line revolving around a failing marriage and a sudden disappearance.

Produced by:
  • Regency Enterprises and TSG Entertainment

Distributed by: 
20th Century Fox

for this movie it was originally a well know book with many readers and a large following of the author, this fan base, created a audience for the film. as well as the posters as seen above been displayed along with the increased sales of the book. this film would have been easily advertised outside of the home, as well as inside the home with television adverts, 



Type of Release
Although Gone Girl was released in many cinemas worldwide, it was first screened at the 52nd New York Film Festival. It was later released in cinemas worldwide.

Format Availability 

Gone Girl was released on the 13th January 2015 on Blu Ray & DVD, also On Demand

Box office and DVD Sales 

Gone Girl opened to an opening weekend of $13.1mn in the USA, and ultimately made over $300mn worldwide gross.

Synergous 

The soundtrack was produced by columbia records. Columbia Records is an American recording label, under the ownership of Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group. Furthermore, when the blue rays where purchased a 36 page book was given with it.  


Would they distribute ours?


20th Century Fox are not likely to produce our film. Firstly because they are  distributor of the six major American film studios and our film is not major so they wouldn't distribute it. Secondly, the genres they normally distribute are not our genre (drama). They are known for comedies and animations mainly.

31. Final Ideas, Research

Our genre is going to be drama.

The plot for our movie will centre around the dramatic sudden end of a couples marriage, which involves the wife leaving while the husband is at work, with their children. We felt that a drama was best for this because, through research, we saw that dramas can implement romantic tragedies and heightened emotions which are definitely things we want to feed into the core our movie.

For the opening of our movie, we have decided that the husband, who will be played by Leo, will walk through the door of his home and immediately know that something is wrong. The home will be trashed and he will be in shock. The couple are coming off the back of some real marital problems, he calls her name and gets  no reply and finds her wedding ring and note on the table. He drops his keys and notices that family pictures are smashed. His stress is revealed through his body language.

If the film were to be produced as a whole film, we would the main body of the film be, the husband finding the wife and kids, now living with their mentally ill mother who is becoming increasingly unstable without her medication, and follow his struggles to get custody of his kids off of his mentally ill and dangerous wife. the ending of the film will conclude with the husband gaining custody of the kids and the wife is sent to get proper treatment for her mental disorders

After Feedback 

After feedback from our teacher, we have decided to keep the house intact, instead of having it completely trashed, but still have photo frames and wedding photo be broken and scattered across the floor.
Having the house intact prevents the audience from thinking that the home was burgled, by strangers and stops any confusion related to how the mess was caused. we intend on showing this by introducing the mess with a close up shot of the husbands foot as he accidentally steps on the glass of the broken photo frames and having the torn images of their happy family in the shot under the glass.
this lets the audience know what's happened before he does, so they can start piecing together the story and wait to see his reaction to the news, of which will be distress and anger as he finds the ring on the table.
this introduces the absence of the wife and kids with more of an impact, than if we were to have the home be wrecked.

Tuesday, 3 November 2015

30, Planning Homework, Research



Film Plot

Our film will center around a broken marriage, the husband will come home but his wife will not be there. Her marriage ring will be on the table and there will be wedding photos smashed on the floor.

Props

Wedding Ring(s), A  Briefcase, Photos, Photo, Frame, Table

Location

All we need is a a room. We are still debating as to whether we will use our college media room (or a room in college) or using Marie's aunty's home which is very near to us.

Costume

Costume is not a concern for us 

Monday, 2 November 2015

Additional Work: Sound Design, Research

Sound design is an often overlooked aspect of film making but in fact it is a very important part of a film and deserves more attention.

Directors are usually credited with the success or failure of a movie, an important part of the director successfully achieving his goals with the movie is working closely with the sound designer. The sound designer will add sound to the movie in post-production and help the director realise any moments of tension or suspense or things of that nature.

Sound designers approach their job in many ways. The sound designers on the Robert Redford picture, 'All Is Lost',  say that they approached the sound design musically. They created the sounds from scratch, most people are under the misconception that sound design is recorded, but it is in fact made. The 'All Is Lost' sound designers likened the choosing of sound by sound designers to the process a casting director would go through to cast a character. They argue that is sound is utilised successfully that the character becomes a character in and of itself. The sound designers also feel that sound can create a movement.

'Psycho' is a very famous movie, where there are stab scenes. Quite famously, the sound designers stabbed watermelons to create the stab sound effects.


Sunday, 1 November 2015

Half term planning (location) (30)

This is the main location, living room of a house.

Half term planning work (30) Brief

Broken down marriage title sequence
 

FILM IDEA;
 
A man and a woman marriage has broken down. The man comes home to a smashed up home and his wife is gone with the ring spinning on the table and their wedding picture smashed and ripped.
 
KEY PROPS;
A wedding ring and a smashed wedding photo are the key elements in the title sequence to show the broken down marriage with a kind of mystery twist.
 
 
 
LOCATIONS;
Ideally a real house with real furniture and realistic props but due to unavailability we may need to turn a college room into a living room area to portray the home environment.
 
 
SETTING;
We can also include scenes in the kitchen or outside in their car park.
 
COSTUME;
Costume is not entirely important for our scene. Our man can simply wear anything but probably a suit or something that may show his occupation or social class.
 
 
LIGHTING;
Lighting should be kept natural as it is a naturalistic piece. Light will come from windows and outside mainly. Extra lighting can be added if its a dark day.