Sweep shot - Practice

We thought of making a shot where the theif is trying to break into a house and we sweep around and one of the policemen is on the other side of the door. For this we wanted to have a single sweep, but couldn't go through the wall. We had a look at what effects could cover this and found the effect 'Side (towards left)'. Here is how it turned out - Link

Tom Adaway and Gareth Todd’s Questionnaire

This questionnaire was created to help identify what our target audience is and what appeals to them. Please take a moment to help us by completing our questionnaire.

1) What is your age?

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2) What is your gender?

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3) What is your favourite genre of film?

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4) Why is that your favourite genre?

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5) How often do you watch films?

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6) What do you like most in movies?  (I.e. car chase, dialogue, gore, etc.)

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7) How do you prefer to watch movies?  (I.e. TV, DVD, Cinema, etc.)

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8) What is your favourite movie?

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9) Why?

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10) What is your favourite scene from any movie?

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11) Why?

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12) What was the last movie you watched?

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13) What was the last movie you saw in the cinema?

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14) What did you like most about it?

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15) How many people do you watch films with?

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Thank you for your time.

Magazine front cover draft

As Gareth was at a sociology lecture on wednesday, We could not meet to discuss ideas for our project. Therefore I took the oppotunity to create a draft of the magazine front cover, as for this I did not need Gareths help.















This is the e-mail I sent to Gareth detailing what I had done, the reasons I had for colour schemes, and asking him for his opinion.

Personnel involved

My group consists solely of Myself and Gareth, and as some of our ideas for filming require at least 3 people we have asked others to help us in some way, be it acting, manning the camera, directing, or editing.

Fortunately, I have had much experience with editing techniques from our AS project last year, as I was in charge of cutting each scene at appropriate moments so our film was not too long.
Although I was not acting at any point in our main task, I was on screen in the preliminary task, so I do at least have some experience and will therefore be acting alongside Gareth, who was the main character in our main task last year.
I was also the cameraman throughout the whole of our main task last year, and I therefore know how to handle the camera and how to activate all of the cameras options (zoom, blur, etc,).

The main reason I decided to work with Gareth was the fact that we cooperated well last year, and we both put a lot of effort into making a successful, polished film. However, Gareth also brings numerous other benfits to our production, such as his vast knowledge of music. He listens to music often and is currently undergoing his music A level, which means he knows how make, tweak and upload music that will suit our trailer. This is fortunate as I know very little about making the music itself and it would require a lot more of an effort to produce something by myself that Gareth could produce without trouble.
Gareth also has a lot of experince working with computers, and did a lot of work last year whilst editing. This also means he can help to produce the ancillary tasks (Magazine cover and DVD cover) as he has spent a lot of time working with Adobe Acrobat and similar programs which would make our products look professional.

As we may require more people to help in our task, we haved asked Sam Britcher and Tom Male to help us in any way that may be required, to which they have agreed. They have accepted that they may either need to act, film, or direct particular scenes, and that they will be called upon at a time that has not yet been decided. Fortunately, both of their timetables are quite flexible, which is good news for us as we have yet decided on a filming schedule.

Storyboard that won't be used

I thought I would share the storyboard for the horror trailer that we decided we would NOT be doing, to show exactly how we were imagining the camera angles.

Ancillary Ideas

We have chosen to produce a film magazine front cover and a film poster for our ancillary tasks.

Magazine front cover research:
-Title, some have puns that match the film
-Huge picture takes up most of the room on the front cover (at least 2/3)
-Picture usually obscures part of the magazines name, to give the impression that the magazine is well known.
-Other 1/3 of space taken up by small pictures of other films reviewed in the magazine
-Plenty of very small writing that advertises what's in the magazine
-Lots of self compliments (world exclusive! read it here first!
-Large dominant feature
-Side articles
-First word in second word's first letter, e.g.

This example of a film cover incorperates most of research ideas we have come across, such as wording, picture size, font size, and side articles.

















Film Poster research:
-Film poster analysis - Overveiw, typography, pictures, foreground, background.
-text easy to read
-try to reflect the mood and tone of the film to attract the right audience
-Slogan? should be memorable and should convey the idea of the film (enticing)
-Keep relatively simple

New Ideas

Due to the fact that we have already created a short horror clip for our A2 coursework (Paranoia), after much consideration, we have decided to use a different genre this year, and we hope it will demonstrate our versitility. As we used a lot of our ideas for horror already, we decided that we were limited in what we could do in the same genre. Therefore we have been thinking of ideas for the comedy genre, specifically for a film we thought of called 'bad cop, bad cop'. (a play on the phrase good cop, bad cop). Here our some of our ideas:

Opening scene Idea:
- spooky music as guy breaks into house. See door being broken open, creeps along a corridor but can hear football on tv from another room. Camera notices a cerificate on the wall that says 'Fully certified trainee policeman'.Goes to investigate the sound and as he opens the door knocks over something and makes a loud noise. Theif freezes and stares at the cop who just keeps watching football. Theif starts waving his arms about and cop still doesn't look up. Theif moves arms in front of TV and cop just moves head so he can see better. Guy takes stuff and then fades to later when almost everything has been taken. Theif says 'thanks mate' and cop waves without really paying attention.
- fades to black, next scene
- Same theif runs into 2nd cop, stare off happens (zoom in on eyes), and the cop just picks up the handbag and hands it back to the theif, saying 'Watch where you're running, son'.
-These scenes should introduce these characters as two bad cops.
- Fade to black
- While chasing after a criminal, the police officers run towards a car. but instead of getting in it, they run past to children's scooters painted in police colours. One of them puts a helmet with a siren on, and they ride off.
- Chief scene, chief says to the two cops ' Have you seen this man?' and gives them a picture of thief in balaclava, the same thief both of the cops have seen. Cops think for a while, and say 'nope never seen him'. Cheif says 'this guys a master thief, you'll have to go in disguise'. As he finishes his sentence, cuts to cops lowering newspapers with drawn on moustaches. They nod at eachother and raise their newspapers.
-Final scene, one cop says 'He jumped the fence!', they both take a run up and try to scramble up the fence, and fall to the ground exhausted. Camera pans out to reveal an open gate just around the corner.
-Final scene idea 2, robber slides across car, cops attempt it and fail miserably.
-Final scene idea 3, cops try to get in car but can't find keys. They see a cat that has the keys on a magnetic collar, and try to chase it.

We are currently in the process of arranging actors and dates for filming which will suit everybody.

Technical issues

Me and Gaz thought of some temporary solutions to some of our technical issues.

- Rain scene- watering cans, hose, wait for weather
- Windy- fans, weather
- clothes- evil guy, black hoody, face shielded from view, possibly due to dim lighting
- Us, regular clothes, in later clip ripped clothes to give the impression that an
attack has taken place

Also thought of doing a security camera type shot which fits in with the horror theme and identifies the location.

Initial thoughts for trailer

Some very basic ideas for our horror trailer, which we will elaborate on later.

- Horror
- Point of view: running
- Examples: Saw, Shaun of the dead, Cloverfield
- Banging on Window
- Beggining: Guy sleeps, Door opens slightly, fade to black, at the end door opens fully
- Quick cutting
- Guy rings friend, starts talking, then mate screams and phone cuts off, someone else picks up phone, says "I've been watching you" and hangs up.
- Puts down phone, peeks round door, guy at window has gone
- from this point, show different parts of the film because the story is now established.
- pan shot round character, fast forward
- At end, mistake each other for enemies and go for each other
- Two perspectives?
- Camera may not pick up voice on phone when on loudspeaker
- Shot of guy looking scared as he hears chainsaw (Chainsaw sound effect)
- Guy in rain desperately tries to fit key in a lock
- Easter Eggs
- Phone call conversation:
"Hey Gaz, did you see anyone walk past you?"
"No, why?"
"I've just seen someone at my window..."
(thud) - "Gaz? Gaz?"
"You're next!" (Hang up tone)

Initial ideas and research

When me and my partner Gareth decided to make a film trailer we already had some ideas for a horror film, and we also already had previous experience of making short horror films with our production last year of Paranoia, where we produced the first two minutes of a horror film. This of course set us up perfectly for a horror trailer.
Therefore, we started reasearching horror trailers from youtube, so we could learn/relearn the basic ideas of developing a horror trailer and how film producers try to entice you to watch the full film.

The first film trailer that I came across was 'Scary Mary Poppins', which although is not a trailer for an actual film, still gave us great insight about how a trailer can be very different from the actual film it is showcasing. Scary Mary Poppins uses existing footage of Mary Poppins, but through the combination of sound and editing makes it seem as though the film is a horror. Anyone who has seen Mary Poppins will know that it is actually a family friendly film, so it prooves how important editing techniques are and how they can effect the feel of the trailer.
Although the trailer's footage was initially shot by a large production company for a mass audience, the editing for this trailer was done by a small group of enthusiasts. This realistically shows us what could achieve in our editing if we made a similar effort to what this small company did.

Next Gareth showed me a trailer he found for Saw. We really liked how in the first 30 seconds of the trailer you see flashes like a from a camera. We saw how this sort of simulated lightning and raised the viewers tension. We also liked how the 'low rumble' sound that ended in an evil high pitched laugh added a sense of mystery to the trailer.
From this point onwards there were fades to black after displaying various characters, also adding a sense of mystery to each of these characters. By only seeing glimpses of these people it makes the viewer think of the possible storyline combinations, which is good as the more you think about how a film might end the more you would want to go and see it. We decided from this to use fade to black and flashes in our trailer.
This trailer also showed us that it is good not to give too much of the story away, so the viewer wants to see how it ends. This was good information to us as it meant that we did not have to think the whole film through, i.e. how it all links together, as we can partly let the viewers come up with their own ideas.

Media Brief

For my A2 Media Studies Project Brief I have decided to undertake the second option, a promotion package for a new film. The brief is as follows:

A promotion package for a new film, to include a teaser trailer, together with two of the following three options:

• A website hompage for the film
• A film magazine front cover, featuring the film
• A poster for the film

Me and my partner Gareth Todd have chosen to create the last two options, the film magazine front cover and the poster, and of course the required teaser trailer.