Film Brainstorm

Mood board

Inspiration for my film idea

I have always had a passion for action films, The way they have the ability to remove you from the world you are living in and place you into the world of superheros and spies. There isn't a man or woman alive who doesn't wish that they had a super power of one form or another. Everything runs smoothly in an action film, if an actor has a problem they just work at it and eventually the problem gets resolved, This is never happens in real life, we as people are flawed to make stupid choices that we regret later into our lives and when we try to fix those problems, strands of unresolved tension are always left floating free. The world of film gives us hope that we will find the girl of our dreams or we will be praised for everything we have done, or even that we may get a super power and rise above everyone else. Life is rarely this miraculous.

Fight scene setting

When I first came up with the idear this is how I had imagined/remembered the setting that I wrote the script around, I wanted a nice secluded without being wiled frame so this was perfect.

 

I wanted to film on a summersday as it is bright and warm for the actors benefit and sunny picturers just look better than miserable cloudy films, but it worked well as it gave the film a healthy sense of gloom and doom.

The second part of my film will be shot on this bridge to contrast from the busy london setting that we started at, in the beginning.

 Tim Foster will begin the scene by running down the road from this side. We will have watched him running down from different angles as we see how scared he looks. We don't yet know what he is running away from.

He will fall down at the point where the bridge starts as if there was a tripwire. The camera will then cut back to show Sam Jones standing a little way away with a relaxed stance with his gun holstered.

 

We will then see Tim still furiously crawling to get away from Sam as he calmly walks into shot towering over Tim showing that he has power over him but I'm using a high angled shot to show that ultimately neither person has any real power.

 

 The fight will proceed until a sniper picks off Tim from the woods close by.

 

The camera will return to Sam and Tim  but slightly zoomed in to change the feeling and draw the audience into what is happening. Here Sam will drag Tim to the edge of the bridge and look over the side with Tim at his feet.

 

We will then cut to a wide shot showing the whole bridge With Sam and Tim slightly off centre showing their unimportance and give hopefully seeming more believable if the characters aren't in the centre of the bridge as the chances are unlikely. We will then see Tim bee pushed off the edge of the bridge and fall to the floor below.

 

We will then pull in close to see th body then go for a worm eye view handing controllof shot to Sam as we stare up at him from the bridge. He will then leave with the title falling over Tims face and allong the side of the bridge as an underline to emphasise the words.

Scene Ends

Research and Planning Targets

Your film, which needs to have been filmed by the end of term, needs to be planned thoroughly and every element needs to be written about and evidenced online. Your own research into film openings could be a lot more thorough and you need to do some more analysis using key terminology to explore mise en scene, camera, sound, editing and conventions of genre. Use the following links and upload and analyse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCTgUq6hzUk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOLgGA-Yqc8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xPYHygck6o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OYBEquZ_j0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLeix0ZYSCE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JfS90u-1g8 Your research and planning doesn't yet showcase the independence and detail of analysis you are capable of! Push yourself! These are the things that need to be done - use us to support you as much as possible and come to me any Tuesday or Thursday after school in S18. Research Genre Research Soundtrack research (non copyright music) Costume and location research – google earth and pictures you’ve taken. Actors and props photos and interviews Audience Research and Profiling (typical audience member and similar films) Uploaded YouTube videos of openings - analysed Opening titles analysed in detail – font researched Analysed Film Openings from from your genre in particular Institution research (Paramount etc) Certificate research Planning Own film idea brainstorm Own film treatment Relevant Online Tutorials and Comment Documenting of influences on production Shot lists Consideration of representation in your film and stereotyping – use theory from G325. Questionnaire (and feedback) Get some feedback on your initial ideas! Diary of filming/editing etc with photos and screen grabs Mood board Script Practice titles created and uploaded Storyboard – animatic.

Prelimenary Task

We were set the task of doing this right at the beginning and till now it has been stored in some dark corner of the hard drive.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjvP7OfMLr4

Children of Men Opening Scene

     The film starts out with a blacked out screen with what are obviously news reporter voices over the top. I like this effect as it shows tells the audience what is going on, without just putting facts up on the screen, I also like this as there is some sub knowledge that we aren’t given as we assume is general knowledge to everyone as it is the norm to the characters. We are left to work out that people have stopped having children but we aren’t just told this, we are however told that the world’s youngest person had died at the age of 18 years, 4 months, 20 days, 16 hours and 8 minutes.

     When we eventually get a picture we are shown the inside of a shop crammed with people watching the news story all with glum faces. We have almost every type of person in this one shot; whites, browns, blacks, Asians, a police man, a young couple, a business man even an old lady and her little dog. This shot also has a TV in the background at the other end of the shop allowing us to see what they are watching while we can also see the expressions. A man breaks through to the front of the café and buys a coffee, he is standing in the middle of shot and so we are of understanding that this is our main character.  A double decker red bus trundles past the big windows showing us that we are in London, this type of hinting in films I find particularly affective; if you’re not looking for it then you don’t register it.

     We follow Theo as he leaves the coffee shop and ventures out into the street, he turns left after the door but the camera goes right to give us a view Baby Diego face on the side of an electronic billboard. At this point we still don’t actually know the real reason as to why there aren’t any other people under the age of 18. Theo pauses just outside the coffee shop to put his cup down for a moment while he fishes out a bottle from his inside coat pocket. We see him to begin to pour something from the bottle into his coffee, but not for long as the camera then pans left so that Theo’s back is shielding our view of the bottle as he finishes pouring and we see his arms moving to screw the lid back on. I like this technique as we don’t actually know for sure what it was he poured into his drink, from the shape of the bottle we are led to believe that it was some form of whisky, this opens a whole array of new questions such as why is he drinking what does he want to forget? I like this kind of hinting as we don’t know everything but we can begin to make assumptions and guesses as to what is wrong with him, and later we find out.

     But our attention is quickly pulled away from Theo as the coffee shop that he was just in explodes in a ball of flames. Everyone standing near the shop falls to the floor and all the traffic stops, the sound of the explosion created a ringing as if we were really there. The camera then gets carried towards what is left of the shop and then as the smoke clears a girl emerges holding here severed left arm in her right arm. The screaming and ringing continues as the screen goes blank and the film title fills the screen.

     Over all I like this opening as it incorporates lots of small simple effects such as only using two shots for the whole of the opening with one of them being a cut away to see what’s on the TV but other than that, the scene is uninterrupted giving a sense of realism into the opening.