Question 7

Question 7

This is an example of James' title for his prelim task. His film had the genre of action which is similar to ours now, but you can see the font is very absurd for a film. Also, the font is not completely central. The title is also on a black background, which is boring and not imaginative.




Divided's title was completely central, along with a plain colouring, which fitted with the rest of our titles. It floated onto the screen, like it was in the waves instead of being steady, with a transition going out as well.

This is another clip from James prelim, focusing on the camerawork. This film used some zoom to focus on the penguin. Zoom looks unprofessional and is avoided.

In our film, we avoided using zoom. Instead we had a still camera with the actor moving closer to the camera. This looks more professional than using a zoom. It also creates some tension by being far away, as if it is mysterious.

This is a shot from Sarah and I's prelim task called Timeout. In this shot we have a very similar panning shot, moving along the wall before it opens up to the classroom. It's all done by freehand which makes the camera shaky as it moves.

In our real production, the pneulitmate shot is a pan around the woodlands. For this shot, we had a tripod set up with the camera on top. This created a steady shot which stayed level throughout. The shot was like it was from Christopher's point of view.




Also, the music we used in both prelim tasks weren't transitioned as well as in our final task. The final task had music fading in and out, and it built the tension well, working in tangent with the pace of the scene. In my prelim, we used real songs as a voiceover for the protagonists. However, they were not dubbed very well nor did they have transitions in or out. This doesn't create a very professional production.

Question 6

Question 6

Questions 4 and 5

Here is our Prezi on questions 4 and 5 in the evaluation.

Questions 2 and 3

Question 2


Question 3

Question 1

Question 1

These are 9 screenshots of our opening which we can find all the conventions of the an opening.

1. The first shot is the titles, which is similar to other thriller titles such as 'The Sixth Sense'. The font is different from the rest of the titles so the audience can clearly distinguish the difference. This is an uncommon theme in films because the font is normally the same, however as the film is very 'different' it would seem appropiate to do this. The positioning of the title was so it wasn't missed and the colour made it stand out from the background image. We put a powerful image of a dead girl underneath the title to contrast the white font, which usually represents peace and innocence.
2. This shot is the first shot of the film, which sets the scene immediately for this particular scene. The woodland is very typical of a thriller/horror, due to eerie nature and apparent darkness. The camera pans around to show how alone Christopher will be when we eventually cut to him. An empty shot is usually the case in most films to set the scene, so the film can develop accordingly.
3. Costumes and props were important to sticking the genre of thriller and horror. The costumes was really that of just a regular teenage boy, which we tried really hard to portray. The colours contrast the setting and the weather in the scene, with the bright blue jacket and jeans with green boots standing out against the brown woodland and grey weather. Portraying the main protagonist as an innocent boy was key in the first scene as he develops throughout the film to show he's not that ordinary. This keeps the audience interesting to see how the film develops.
4. The camerawork had a variety of shots including show panning shots and quick flashes. The shot you can see (middle left) is the pneultimate shot which is a panning shot of the woodland where Christopher is situated in his dream. This is one of many scenery shots but we also included quick flashes of other scenery and shots to mix in, creating diversity.
5. The titles had the same font throughout, which was just a generic font, with serif. This font looked professional and was in the colour white to represent innocence, as previously noted. A good, clear font was key to see all the main people involved with the film. All actors were named individually, which we saw as a key convention to our film. Jennifer Aniston is a star who always has to have her name on screen by itself, and we incorporated this into our film.
6. The opening scene of Divided will probably leave the viewer confused after seeing it, as it is very unclear what is happening. But this ultimately tells you what is going to occur in the rest of the film. The sense of confusion was something which we were desperate to get across as it is key in most thriller/horror films. It sets the film up nicely because we see the main protagonist and a dead body, which link together throughout the film.
7. Thriller and action were our main genres, which we portrayed clearly. The dark colours of woodland and the weather complimented eachother nicely, alongside the bright colours of Christopher's clothes. Tension is built slowly which is typical in a thriller before the end of a scene, before we then see Christopher wake up, which ends this tension.
8. We first see Christopher walking through a forest alone, instantly telling the audience he is different because he is unaccompanied. The overvoice of a doctor also introduces the character more, because that's the only voice we hear, suggesting Christopher is quiet. The audience then gathers the overvoice is talking about him. Although all of this, we kept the characters background very limited, like not naming where he lives or who he could live with etc.
9. In our production, we only used one special effect which was the flash from the 'Global Film Productions' logo into the start of the film. We kept special effects to a minimal because this would take away the realness of the situation and could potentially lose some seriousness. It isn't very typical of thrillers to use special effects, prehaps only non-diegetic sounds.

Location and Recce Shots

Location and Recce Shots

For our film, we had to choose relevant locations to shoot in order to get the best shots. Our film was a thriller and therefore mainly set in a woodland. We also had shots at two separate houses and a school field.

This is the woodland which we filmed a majority of our opening sequence in. It is called the Galleywood Common and is roughly 2 miles from our school. James and I walked from our school to the location first to check it was suitable and took this photo to show the group. After consulting the group, we decided this was a suitable location to film. The picture shown above is the exact location of when Chris first walks through the woods, right at the start of the sequence. It was an overcast and cold day, which added well to the mystery of why Chris was in the woods.





This is the route we had to take to Galleywood Common

 

 

This is James' room where we filmed Chris waking up from his dream, the final shot we see. We chose this place to film because it was easy to access because James is in our group and close to the school. The window on the far side (left side in the film) gave suitable lighting along with a lamp just below the window.

 

 This is the bathtub in which we filmed the shot of the anonymous girl dead in a lake. We got leaves from outside and added them to create the lake effect. The camera panned from right to left along the bath to show the whole body. This was in Sarah's house.

 

Divided Survey

Please complete our survey:

Watch the film opening here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySBdEtLOqd4

And then click one of the following links to participate in our survey powered by Survey Monkey

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JX2CD7C

Divided Poster

Poster

This is our poster to help aid with advertisement for our film Divided.

FInal Cut of Divided

Divided Final Edit


This is the final edit of our film opening 'Divided'.

Peer Feedback

Feedback
Peer Evaluation

In our peer assessment, we averaged 46 out of 60; which is inside a level 3 at the top end. We then reviewed the comments and noted the most reoccurring ones.

Key points:

· Looks too much like a trailer

· Take out or change the voiceover

· Take out the interview

· Too fast at points

· Lighting in the bed is too dark

· More of Megan in the lake

How were these fixed?

· We took out some of the alter egos to make the sequence look more like an opening scene, focusing more on the main character

· The voiceover has been removed to create more enigma codes about what is wrong with the main protagonist

· Interview was removed and replaced with scenery shots instead

· We ignored this because we believed the pace was acceptable with the confused nature of the scene

· This was removed and then re-filmed with more lighting, in exactly the same concept

· We added a few extra snippets of the lake shot towards the end of the scene

Timeline

Divided Timeline

T1) 0:00- 0:17 Summit Entertainment

T2) 0:18-0:21Global Studio Productions

 







T3) 0:22-0:26 James Clifford

T4) 0:27-0:32 Sarah Maerz

 

 

T5) 0:33-0:38 Hariet Carter

 

T6) 0:39-0:42 Dominic Punt

 

T7)0:43-0:47 Megan Laner-Hoskins

 

 

 

T8) 0:48-0:52 Divided

 









T9) 0:53-0:57 Screenplay from Benjamin Tin

T10) 0:58-1:00 Casting Gina Brookes

 

T11) 1:05-1:07 Music by Ben Clarkson

T12) 1:08-1:11 Costume desiner Emma Ley

 

T13) 1:12-1:15 Editor Patrick Greene

 

 T14) 1:16:1:20 Produced by Stepen Leadwater

T15) 1:42-1:48 Directed by Bill Mertz

Character Profiles

Here is a light-hearted intake into our characters introduced in the opening scene.

First cut of Divided

Divided first edit

Here is our first edit of Divided

Font of Titles

Font Research
During the process of making our opening sequence we decided to change the title from 'Troubled Diversity' to 'Divided'
As we changed the title we have now an opportunity to actually split the title 'Divided' and make it really effective, to give us our extra chance to get full marks with our opening scene.

On Adobe Premier we have been trying to experiment with the idea of actually splitting the word 'Divided'

An example of this would be the title of prison break, as it is divided in the middle and gives the same effect that we want to our opening scene. The idea that something isn't quite right with Chris' life.

Production Diary

Running Commentary

Lesson 1: In our first lesson together, we decided our film, which was Sarah’s pitch. James and Dom then added our own input into the idea, and we updated Sarah’s prezi accordingly. We assigned our roles too; we tried to make them to our own personal strengths.

Lesson 2: Watched other peoples film pitch and then pitched our own. Took feedback from the other groups and noted it down.

Lesson 3: Started work on the storyboard and finding relevant places to shoot.

Lesson 4: James and Sarah continued work on the storyboard, thinking of more shots to film. Dom started on the music selection.

Lesson 5: Continued work on storyboard.

Lesson 6: With Sarah absent, James and Dom began piecing together the storyboard, trying to put it in order.

Lesson 7: With the storyboard completed, we took pictures of the storyboard and decided how to present it.

Lesson 8: We decided that Dom would talk about the storyboard on a green screen and put it over the top of the pictures. We filmed it in the classroom and uploaded it onto Adobe Premiere.

Lesson 9: Sarah worked on Adobe Premiere putting the speech over the pictures of the storyboard. James and Dom worked on the shooting schedule.

Lesson 10: Sarah finished off editing on Adobe Premiere and ended up finishing the storyboard, whilst James and Dom finished off the shooting schedule and also completed the Risk Assessment.

Lesson 11: We all went to Galleywood to James’ house, Sarah’s house and Galleywood Common to film the opening scene of.

Lesson 12: This was the lesson where we all uploaded all our video clips to Adobe Premiere and Dom started to piece it all together whilst James and Sarah worked on the green screen, to add another piece into the opening scene.

Lesson 13: Dom and Sarah carried on editing whilst James updated the production diary and looked at title font styles

Lesson 14: Dom carried on editing and then we all went around the school looking for the best venue for taking the picture for the poser.

Lesson 15: We had a group discussion and found out that the Title ‘Troubled Diversity’ was too complicated so after debating , we came up with ‘Divided’.

Lesson 16: with Dom (the main editor) absent James updated the production diary, whilst Sarah started to work on the Title ‘Divided’. Then we both started to work on the poster.

Lesson 17: We decided as a group that the idea of mental illness wasn't clear enough so we made a voice over of a doctor diagnosing Chris with Schizophrenia.

Lesson 18: James and Sarah filmed shots of Dom and Alex to see if we could put him into the scene acting as some fillers. Dom then went away to look for some music when James filmed shots of Sarah and Alex.

Lesson 19: All the class watched all the other classes productions and marked them all.

Lesson 20: We got our evaluations and feedback back from the other classes and with Sarah absent James and Dom went through them and decided what to change and keep.

Lesson 21: James took the camera back to his house and re-filmed the part of the opening scene where he woke up. Whilst Dom and Sarah worked on Adobe Premier.

Lesson 22: As a group we chose the best clip from James' filming the previous day. Then Dom worked on fitting that clip into our opening scene. James and Sarah both went away to find the best location for the poster.

Lesson 23: Sarah went away and re filmed her dad saying the voice over to our film, so Dom added it into the final cut, whilst James and Sarah proceeded on the poster.

Lesson 24: This was the lesson where Dom finally finished the editing and then James and Sarah both watched it and gave the final feedback just to tweak the sound.

Lesson 25: All of us took different rolls in updating our blogs, making sure everything was up to date.

Lesson 26: Sarah worked on the questionnaire, whilst Dom worked the recci shots and James filmed students and teachers asking them questions on Divided

Lesson 27:James continued interviewing teachers and students on their thoughts of Divided. Whilst Sarah and Dom worked on creating an online survey with www.surveymonkey.com.

Lesson 28: James uploaded all the interviews onto the computer and Dom started to edit it all together.

Our Prelim Task

Whats In The Woods?

Here is our Prelim Task, where I worked with Lara and Emma. This was a process which showed off some negative, but constructive information that we could then learn from and improve for our final production.

Risk Assessment

Our Risk Assessment
Here is our risk assessment sheet that we filled in before going out to Galleywood common and filming as this was the area that has the most risk attached with the destination as there were lakes and uneven ground.

Our Inspirations

Inspirations

After deciding that we would make Troubled Diversity we had to think of some inspirations of what our opening sequence could be based on. After a group conversation Dom came up with the inspiration of the Homeland opening scene. We then previewed the film and decided that it was perfect for our opening scene, as we have Chris asleep with his unconscious thoughts,in his dream.

To see the Homeland opening sequence click on this link as seen below:
http://video.vulture.com/video/Opening-Credits-Homeland

Shooting Schedule and Prop List

Divided Shooting Schedule

Here is our shooting schedule that we are planning to follow resulting in our filming flowing as smooth as it possibly can. 

Day 1:

Location: Galleywood Common: morning to mid-afternoon (10am-2pm) – Shot numbers 3, 4, 5, 6, 12, 16, 17. Actors needed = Sarah, Dom, James. Props = Hoodie, and rope.

Sarah’s house afternoon (3pm-5pm) - Shot numbers, 14, 15. Actors needed = Megan. Props needed = Leaves, bath, make-up.

James’ house evening (6pm-7pm) - Shot numbers 1, 2, 7, 10, 13, 18, 21. Actors needed = James. Props needed = Bed.

Day 2:

Location: Galleywood Common: mid-morning to afternoon (12pm-2pm) - Shot numbers 8,9,11. Actors needed = Hattie. Props = Rose basket.

 

 

Added Props

• Rope
• Leaves
• Bath
• Axe
• Rose Petals

 

Troubled Diversity-Storyboard

Troubled Diversity-Storyboard


Here is our storyboard for Troubled Diversity with Dom Punt talking us through it all.