Monday 31 January 2011

Jelly baby Animatic

Anisa, Samir, Jade and Carlos are here :)
To be honest, we found it really hard. But together we managed to put something together in which you may find interesting and slightly humorous. We hardly had time therefore we rushed it. :(

Sunday 30 January 2011

Font: The Transporter



I loved the film transporter. It was absolutely thrilling. It made me jump at times but it was great fun to watch! I would say the font used on this film seems to be extremely bold and eye catching. Where it says ‘The Transporter’ we see flames coming out from the name and we could see slight pictures of the other main character in the film, the Chinese female. We also see the BMW 5 Series he drives in the name. These suggest that these things and people are the main elements of the film. I think the editor does this purposely in order for us to feel the action just by looking at its picture and make the audience feel as if there is more action to come our way. The orange color seems to give it a more exciting filling and the bold letters of the name of the film helps to make it seem a much more outstanding object from the picture and seem more ‘race’ type.I think this could be deliberately done pick its audience. This is because, it seems to be more to the male side of the audience as the writing looks bold and strong, something that a man would interpret to rather than a female! But nevertheless, me being a female, i loved it!

Title Sequence Analysis: Enemy of the State




The reason of why this opening sequence inspires me is because it seems really eye catching; something that grabs your attention really quickly. The various different movements of the camera; the panning, zoom up and tilting all seem to grab the audience’s attention and make it seem all really moving. I liked the font that was used. It seemed really unique and unusual, almost is if it was being written in a different language. The bird’s eye view and the different flashing lights that came onto the screen make it seem as if we are in the film. The fast paced music and the different tempos in which it played in, helps to show the main aspects of the film. For example when it showed us Washington Dc at 0:58seconds, there is a quick dramatic thud which could make the audience suggest that Washington Dc may create a great impact on this film. In the title sequence we see crucial information of people who were involved in the making of the film such as the Actors e.g Will Smith, Editor, D.O.P, Co-Executive Producer, Producer, Written by and many more. The film title is placed in the beginning of the film. The reason of why I really like this opening the most is because of the way it is unique and it looks as if it really action-packed, something that I would enjoy watching. The music helps to bring out the tension in the film and helps to make the film seem busy, but mostly because it grabbed my attention. It felt as if I was in the ‘zone’. It was great!

Interest of use of ‘Intertextuality’ in Films

Intertextuality is a visual reference between films. This could be seen as borrowing from one film to one another. This could be done by maybe recognised through certain camera angles, snippet of sound or the way something ids edited. I find this quite interesting to see how different films tend to borrow certain areas from one another. It almost builds a relationship between the films. 

Example 1: What Lies Beneath

We see that the lady is not about to move. This makes the lady seem to be very vulnerable and helpless. As usual, we then see the killer (man) taking advantage of the situation by laying her down onto the bath, waiting for her death. This is similar to ‘Psycho’ as both the murders in both films takes place in the bathroom and both women and the victim to the killing and the men is the murderer.

Example 2: The Stepfather

In this film, we see the man getting attacked in the bathroom which leads him stumbling backwards and falling into the bath whilst pulling down the shower curtain. This is reflected to the film ‘Psycho’ as well because they both have the same shot and angle of when us, the audience, see the hooks of the shower unhooking from the pole. This is a use of Intertextuality as well. 

Example 3: Succubus

In this student film, we see a young girl which goes to the boy’s locker room. She seems to smell the victims clothing before the climactic scene and seems to be sexually doing movements against the wall of the shower cubicle that the boy is in. Suddenly the girl stabs the boy continuously, not missing a beat. This relates to ‘Psycho’ as we see the killer killing the woman several times and does this continuously. They are both in a way, in the positioned in the same angle as we can see in both films, the victim being attacked and we can also see the stabbing taking place.


Saturday 29 January 2011

FONTS




Fonts can express feelings and give the audience a stereotypical view on what the film could be about. One font that really draws my attention is 'ROCKY',  the font demonstrates a very male gender. The font used in ROCKY is a Franklin Gothic Heavy, which is very bold , strong, heavy font in the same way the film is, its all about boxing and being tough and fighting.


In addition, the font is also very big, which signifies and creates the feeling to the audience that we should be expecting a very big character, participation in something big, are mind set is already telling us, big, tough, strong, hard, all these extreme words.

Friday 28 January 2011

Analysing Practice video THE NEWSPAPER



As part of learning the introduction to cameras, editing and sound, my group had to produce a video and integrate all the key elements we had learnt in class. Our key feature was a newspaper, we had to set a scene and produce a video on this theme, so not wanting to make it so cleshay i.e spy or a casual man reading the daily paper, we had the scene based in a toilet, producing funny comedy footage with all the main attributes learnt.

We used a variety of camera angles, for example in the first scene we had an over the shoulder shot of the male entering the toilet, an edit was then followed of him inside the toilet then including a low camera shot, showing him as he sits down and takes of his trousers.

In addition, we also used point of view shot and over the shoulder shot mixed, to combine and create the feeling of the audience being part of the action and to view what he is viewing which in this case is the newspaper. We introduced close ups of the males facial expressions, showing the audience he is going through a hard time, producing comedy and laughter. unfortunately, we did not get as much time to integrate sound into the video however, we did get the opporunity to use the programme and learn more about its features for our feature videos.

Thursday 27 January 2011

Movie title sequence

Buried




Stylized titles shown before the film starts.
The titles give a sense of sinking, and being isolated and trapped. Making the use of so little.
Thrilling music building up suspense. Quite minimal.
Brings up the idea of death and never being found again.
I think this is especially effective because it doesn't give anything away and makes you think more and imagine whats going to happen. I especially like it because of the slow build up and mysterious music.

Wednesday 26 January 2011

Sub-Genre’s of ‘Thriller’:

There are many different types of Thriller movies:
·         Psychological Thriller
·         Disaster Thriller
·         Legal Thriller
·         Medical Thriller
·         Mystery Thriller
·         Crime Thriller
·         Disaster Thriller
·         Erotic Thriller
·         Supernatural Thriller
·         Conspiracy Thriller
I really enjoy watching Psychological thriller because I really enjoy watching films that are associated with the mind and how someone could be mentally disturbed. I found it really enjoyable to watch. I watched ‘One Hour Photo’ recently and I found it absolutely a pleasure to watch. I enjoyed watching how the main character is psychologically disturbed and why he is like that. In a way it’s kind of scary, however it is much more suspenseful knowing what things that he might do because of his mental state.

Monday 24 January 2011

Detailed analysis of thriller clip analysed in class. WHAT LIES BENEATH

What lies beneath starts of with a very dark background, blurred everywhere and a slow sound with water running. This immediantly suggests that this thriller is going to be about death. The darkness already shows that danger is coming its way, also because of the smokiness, this makes it seem as if someone is trapped in a place. However, we suddenly see her waking up from a bath, this tells us that maybe she is in danger therefore she drownded herself my accident. The water spashing,giving us a shock and the eyes poping out shows that this could be a foreshadow of her dying soon. Because many films have started of in a bathroom, it makes the audience think that someone could be in there with her. The sound of people talking shows that she could be feeling guilty therefore her consious in her making her affraid and shocked. As soon as she gets up from the bath,the sound stops and she is breathing very fast. Also the camera pan towards her creating tension of how serious this could be. She takes a deep breath, suggesting that she has survived, this tells us that she might have been followed, espicially by the camera going forward it makes it look more dramatic and exciting.

When she gets up, and the blowdryer turns of, it gives us an idea that someone is close enough to kill her. The hairdryer then gives her an electric shocks, by that, it is getting tense and makes the audience feel more worried and excited. The camera slowly moving around to the mirror, facing it to see her face suggest that someone is right next to her and about to pop up. Tension is created in many ways, by now the audience will think her life is about to end. A lot of digetic sound have been used such as the hairdryer and the water. There were also many different types of shots used in the film such as extreme close-up which was showing her eyes, medium shot which showed her drying her hair and also paning, which was slowly zooming in the bathroom towards her.

Overall i think this film had a lot of tension coming up and it gave the audience shock espically because of the camera angles and the non-digetic sounds at the begining.


List of thriller sub-genres - which inspires me at the moment and why.

A thriller is a genre of film and television that uses suspense,tension and excitement. Within a thriller there are sub-genres which includes elements of other genres such as Conspiracy thriller, crime, disaster,erotic, legal, medical, mystery, political, psychological, religious, supernatural and techno thrillers.

One of the thriller sub-genres that inspires me is Mystery thriller because it creates tension and gets the audience to think about what will happen. It makes the audience feel anxious and excited. Mystery thrillers are usually about solving a problem or finding out something suspicious. One mystery thriller that inspires me is Salt(2010). The move includes lots of death and misunderstanding towards each other. One of the main actors Angelina Jolie, is being accused of being a KGB sleeper agent, and goes on the run to try to clear her name. While Tom Cruise ,another main actor in the film, was initially secured for the lead, the script was ultimately rewritten for Jolie. I think this film creates a lot of tension and excitement therefore mystery thrillers are more interesting to me that other thrillers. 



Livetype and Sound





 Livetype and sound are key elements and principals of producing a well presented video.

The Soundtrack makes it easy to craft perfect dialogue tracks. Use the Multitake Editor to record and find the best takes, and tap into a variety of innovative tools to match tone and level across your entire project, the software provides different genres such as, drums, electronic, groove and many more, making the project  seem/feel more pro and more realistic.


The class weir also shown a presentation on livetype, which demonstrated the reason why its important and how it is used. Livetype creates animated tittle sequences for video projects in a variety of sizes styles and colours. 

Introduction to editing: SKILLS



Following the lesson on Camera skills, the class weir then introduced to an editing program which enabled students to upload their footage and edit their work to produce a well presented  video. Final cut pro is a software application developed by macro media Inc.  The software allows you to to edit natively in almost any format across the full spectrum of tape and file based media.  We weir able to edit scenes to give the footage more reality, cut features that weir no longer needed, and organise the whole video so it played smoothly with everything in place. I find the programme as a way of giving  more organisation to the footage for a more perfect view.

NEWSPAPER PRACTICE VIDEO

Sunday 23 January 2011

3 Examples of Suspenseful Moments in ‘The Stepfather’

1.
One of the examples would be when the old lady gets attacked. I think this is done quite cleverly as the different hints of the old ladies death was gradually being built up by the false plateau that was present. We see the old lady closing the door and when she turns around, the cat jumps out and strikes the audience. With this, it helps to get the audience engaged into the film as this would question the audience on when they believe the murder would actually take place. However, tensions rises as the music seems to sound much more heavily and seems to sound fast paced.
Then finally when the old lady bends over for the last time to reach out to the cat, we get an over the shoulder from the lady on to the mirror where we witness David standing behind her ready for the KILL.
I found this moment extremely suspenseful because I could tell myself that the lady was going to die. Only thing was how? Where? We knew that the old lady was going to be the victim as we could have a lot of point of view shots from the murderer. We knew she was being watched... Only question was, when will she know?


2.
                Another would be when the ex-husband got hit by David. The reason of why I really enjoyed this scene was because, the ex-husband had kept repeatedly, call for David. In addition, with every call, there was a POV shot from the ex-husbands view of the different places he was looking at for David. There were slight panning present in order to show the direction of the way his eyes were moving constantly. This gave me a sense of anticipation, because as I was watching this, I could not wait any longer. I was on the edge of my seat as I wanted to know when the climax would kick in.
                Probably around the 4th call, we see David in a CU shot. This was quite shocking as the shot was closely focused on his face. Therefore it would immediately strike the audience as there was nothing on the screen but David’s face.
                In a sense, I found this was quite predictable. There are films which had this sort of scene therefore it was something that you knew that was coming. Rather than something you weren’t expecting.

3.
                The last suspenseful that I found quite suspenseful, would be when the lady in the red coat was closing up her house to go on holiday. We see her locking up everything. Now, it was pretty easy to tell that she was going to die because it was too obvious to be honest.
                One point that really caught my attention and what I thought was quite unique was that before this scene had started, we see David in his house looking at the monitor (last shot). We see a strike of lightening in David’s last shot, but then the lightening carries on to the next scene which is when we go to the victim’s house. This caught my attention as the lightening help to bring those two scenes together and helped to show that these two scenes were somehow going to correspond with each other.
We see a lady, in a big, all by herself. The weather seems to be really rainy and thunder is present. This definitely foreshadows that there was something that would struck on to us, the audience. Her coat was Red, which could suggest death.
                Then just as she is about to leave, we hear a thud. This was quite predictable in my point of view. I thought that this was quite traditional of the victim just about to leave, but then gets distracted so then they have to enter the ‘danger’ zone once again. The LS of the lady trying to get the umbrella out of the pool, shows that the lady is struggling to get it out as it is. The fact that David comes along suddenly and drowns her doesn’t seem to be quite surprising at all.

Friday 21 January 2011

Font analysis


Fonts, or different sorts of typeface can add a great deal of atmosphere to a film, especially in the poster or the opening sequence.



There are literally thousands of different fonts to choose from and they are basically divided into two subtypes, serif and sans-serif.  Serifs are details on the end of some of the strokes.  Letters that don't have these are called sans-serif.


It is generally thought that serif  text is easier to read and that sans serif is better for headlines.  Fonts can have really interesting names like, Trebuchet, Helvetica or Baskerville.





















In this James Bond film, geometric fonts like Neutroface have roots in the early 20th Century and the architectural lettering styles of that period.  Geometric fonts like this have a sense of efficiency and modernity about them which is universally appealing.

















The Swiss sans serif font Helvetica was chosen for the Trainspotting poster because of its similarity to that used on a train timetable. It's also used a lot on chemical packaging, which was suitable given the drug references in the film.  Helvetica is associated with modernism and minimalism. It's clean, simple and ordered.











Both of these posters use different styles of font effectively to convey different moods for their audiences. When creating the titles for our thriller opening we will have to carefully choose an appropriate font as something as seemingly insignificant as using the wrong kind of font could ruin the whole scene and mood that we'd be trying to create.




Introduction to Cameras: skills

Introduction to Cameras: skills




The class weir firstly introduced to a presentation on the principals and key elements on how to use a camera, attributes such as learning how to insert the battery, memory card, how to use the tripod, how and when to use auto focus (AF) which is a term that interpret ates the camera focus by itself and also manual focus (MF) which means you, yourself doing the focusing.

In adition, we also learnt carefully and in more depth, how to put the camera into the tripod ans secure it giving the footage a more stabled view. We weir then demonstrated how to bring and use all the camera terminology we have been working on into practise,  for example how to capture a medium shot, close up, extreme close up, long shot,  and other key shots such as pan (side to side camera movement) tilt (up and down camera movement) zoom (in and out camera movement - for example closer and more distant) and white balance ( adjusting the colours until the look natural and consistent) all helping develop and produce excellent footage and also provide a wide understanding of  how to use a camera and the different type of camera movements.

Wednesday 19 January 2011

Analysis of ‘What Lies Beneath’


‘What Lies Beneath’ seems to have a sense of a supernatural sense to it.
The clip which I had watched was an opening of the film. However, from the opening I could catch some of the techniques that are used in order to make the film look like a thriller.
An example of this was by the use of edit used in the opening. An example of this would be when the name of the film had appeared onto the screen, it had the effect of water with it. This could be done in order to give the audience a sense of an insight of what the film would be about. Suddenly, we see the lady’s face appear onto the screen. This would be quite a shock for us as the face is closely zoomed in therefore it would be focused on her face. In my point of view, the fact that her face was under water, could possibly be ‘foreshadowing her death’.
Like most movies, there are soundtracks in the beginning of their film. The soundtrack that plays seems to sound quite eerie, almost if we know that there is danger lurking around. It is a sort of warning to the audience, to tell us that there may be something that is going to occur soon. The constant notes being played make the mood seem that there is more tension and that it is approaching to the main climatic part.
It’s quite dramatic, in my point of view, of how quickly the camera changes it’s distant of recording the important person on the scene which is the lady. The camera starts off with an extreme close up on her face however drastically changes to a long shot. We see the camera also zooming up to her and coming closer. The reason of why I believe this might have been done is possibly to foreshadow her death and because the camera is coming closer, gives a sense that danger is gradually coming closer to her. Also because she is the only person in the shot shows that she could be the main target as she seems to be quite tiny in the shot as there are bigger objects surrounding her. In a sense makes her seem quite vulnerable.
I believe the opening clip of ‘What Lies Beneath’ highlights some of the parts of the film however you have to visualise the clip in depth to grasp the idea.

Wednesday 12 January 2011

Definition of suspense:

Suspense is a state of uncertainty, it is used to create tension in a film. This might be done by the music, actions and sound. It is to make the audience feel worried and wonder what will happen next.

Sunday 9 January 2011

What is 'Suspense' in Thriller Movies?

Suspense is the feeling of anxiousness and anticipation whilst watching a situation. It could be a sense of excitement and also be nerve wrecking. The best way a film does this is by building up the tension towards the plot, as if to get the audience at the ‘edge of their seats’.

Wednesday 5 January 2011

Analysing of 'The Shining'

This scene is viewed in a format that immediately draws the audience attention and provides a feeling of suspense and anxiety, a sense described as a cliff hanging; this term is used due to the scene always keeping the audience guessing what's going to happen round the corner as the child turns. The tension in this scene gradually evokes at each turn the child makes, the audience get the feeling something bad is going to occur because of the use of sound, it begins at a slow tense soundtrack, creating this image that at any second something will appear out of nowhere and shock the audience, however, as the camera begins to view an over the shoulder shot of the child looking at the door, the soundtrack begins to play at a more faster pace creating more tension, more anxiety to the audience.

The tension builds as the audience view a long shot of the child and door, the sound increases even more as the child walks towards the handle of the door, at this moment we are kept guessing and thoughts/images, questions rapidly commence creating in our minds of a big shock, 'whos behind the door?'. The audience are then introduced to see a shot reverse shot of the child and the evil twin girls, the girls are only shown for a split second however, what showes they are evil is the expression on the little boys face seen through a close up view and the sound that runs the whole way through, the difference is; the pace on the sound, gradually increasing creating tension each time.