Diary Entry 14/02/11

During our 3rd and 4th re shoot we were kicked off the NCP and the Sovereign center. As we did not have permission to shoot we were told by the guards we had to leave, causing us not to be able to finish our shooting which led us to a 5th re shoot. This has caused problems like continuity errors such as positioning, lighting and appearance. the shooting also took a while due to many people in the background which also led to background noise which was not needed and led to more reshooting. Also our actors found it hard to work and perform certain tasks, e.g. not being able to fall over correctly on Que, and the fact that they were nervous acting in front of an audience.

Location Scouting: Dolphin Square

 Our last location we looked at was Dolphin Square, this location was quite good although due to it being outside there was lots of wind, ruining audio for the final film. Lighting was good, although it would all depend on the weather that day.

This shot would be good to use as we could show the daughter running up all of the flights of stairs. We could have a long shot while slowly zooming in.

The place was quite run down which is what we were aiming for but overall I think the other two locations would be better to use.

Diary Entry 26/01/11

Today we went out into town to take scouting shots for the location of our movie. We looked at four different locations around Weston-super-Mare town.
The first place we looked at was the National Car Parks (NCP), this placed looked really run down, but for our movie we wanted to have that look. After getting a number of shots we were told to leave by a secruity guard, and although we got all the shots we needed, this may be a problem for future filming.
The second place we went was the Sovereign Shopping Centre, this place was less run donw but still had a look that we could use. There were no problems with secruity but lighting could be a problem.
The final location was Dolphin Square, this place wasn't as big but had much better lighting than the previous two. But due to it being outside we might get a lot of noise distortion becuase of the wind.
While we were in town we also were able to get a number of props for the shooting. We were able to buy fake blood and a coat for the detective, and after looking at different hats we decided not to use one in the final production.

Location Scouting

Weston College

This was the first idea for our location of filming, we were able to find an outside staircase which looked good but there were a number of negative aspects, including no where to film the roof shots and the fact that you could see parts of unwanted Mise en scene in the back, like people in windows and cars in the back ground. This made us look for a place which was public but had fewer people around and looked more authentic.

Diary Entry 1. 15/12/10

Today we read through our blog to start with and edited in any little details that needed to be added, such as images. We also figured out what the strengths and weaknesses were in our similar media texts.

Similar Texts That Were Reviewed Highly

Now we will look at similar films that have had good reviews, so we could look at each of these and chose good points and take influences for our film.

Dirty Harry - During the opening cool music while showing Clint Eastwood inspect a murder scene could be a big influence, showing different angles and shoots which we could use in our final shoot.

Silence of the Lambs - Lots of shots in this film when people are talking to one another in a POV style, for one of the characters we do not want to show to the audience giving a mysterious look on the kidnapper.

Se7en - A good and quite unique feature of Se7en is the killer not being revealed until the climax of the film, usually the killer is revealed about 3/4 of the way through in most films. Also throughout the film the audience thinks they are going to find out who the killer is but they never do until he reveals himself.

Taken - An interesting thriller which relays on an vengeful father who is trying to rescue his rebellious daughter. We can take a lot from this film as it is about a kidnapping and a fathers struggle to get his daughter back.†

Our Films Soundtrack

We thought we should have a creepy soundtrack for our detectives entrance, then the music can pick up a bit when we see our damsel in distress running away from the kidnapper.
Some examples of this could be the into theme from 'Get Carter' or 'Dirty Harry'. Both of these themes start off creepy and give realism to the film. When the music crescendo's it kicks off the 'mood' and genre of the film. Both of these were crime thrillers, just like our film.

Art of the Title

If we are going to make an opening based around a thriller/crime genre it would be best to look at similar film openings, this opening is of Dirty Harry a 1971 crime thriller starting Clint Eastwood.

This is a good opening to link to as we decided to have a police officer looking at a crime on a roof, and in Dirty Harry its similar.
This sequence is slow paced and shows a man aiming a rifle at a woman in a swimming pool across two buildings. The music is very eerie, but goes well under the circumstances, as he them shoots the women. Then the scene changes to Inspector Harry Callahan walking up some stairs and inspecting the scene, he then notices the building where the shooter could possibly be, he then walks around that roof top of the other building (during this the camera tracks and pans around showing us all of San Francisco), all while this is happening the credits are being shown to us in simple yellow and black writing.
The music in this scene is very effective as it represents the two characters very well, the eerie music is playing while we see the shooter, and then the cool-calm music is playing when we see Clint Eastwood, whose character is cool and calm for most of the movie.
We could use this technique in our sequence, when showing the inspector we could play either calm music, heroic music, or empathising music, and a creepy dangerous score when showing the villain.

During this sequence the credits appear in this order;


• Warner Bros, a Kinney Company
• Clint Eastwood
• In a Malpaso Company Production
• Dirty Harry
• Co-Starring Harry Guardino Reni Santoi
• Andy Robinson John Larch
• Featuring John Mitchum Lyn Edgington Mae Mercer Ruth Kobart Woodrow Parfrey
• Josef Sommer Maurice S. Argent William Paterson Jo De Winter James Nolan Graig G. Kelly
• And John Vernon as “The Mayor”
• Director of Photography Bruce Surtees
• Art Direction Dale Hennesy Film Editor Carl Pingitore Sound By William Randall Set Decorator Robert DeVestel
• Assistant to the Producer George Fargo Unit Production Manager Jim Henderling Dialogue Supervisor Scott Hale Make Up Supervisor Gordon Bau S.M.A Supervising Hair Stylist Jean Burt Reily C.H.S
• Assistant Director Robert Rubin Wardrobe Glenn Wright
• Filmed In Panavision Technicolor
• Music Lalo Schifrin
• Associate Producer Carl Pingitore
• Executive Producer Robert Daley
• Screenplay by Harry Julian Fink & R.M. Fink and Dean Riesner Story by Harry Julian Fink & R.M. Fink
• Produced and Directed by Don Siegel

As we have a much smaller production team, we will not use as many titles like this one, but we will include the main ones, like the comapany, production, film title, actors and actresses, writers, music, and the director.

Our Production Sequences

We decided in our title sequences to have one professional tittle sequence and a slick cool production sequence for our smaller production company.

 Our first ideas for our smaller production title sequence started off as having an angry animal appear. We though having an animal from the feline family, we thought the eyes would give a cool glare effect if we faded them in from black.  In the end we decided the simplest feline fiend, was the cat so we could use their small creepy eyes while including an angry meow, but when looking at the different sounds we could use from Soundtrack Pro, we found there were none, expect for a tiger roar, which fitted aptly. We looked at different names for this, pitching different ideas from, angry cat productions, feral cat productions, wild cat productions, but as the angry cat meow sound from Soundtrack Pro wasn't available we had to compromise and use the tiger roar, hence we picked angry tiger productions.
As we wanted a more professional look for the bigger film company, we wanted a smart business like word, some ideas included, professional films, industrial films, contemporary films, office blocks, but in the end we all chose and were happy with Imperial films. As we wanted a smart business like look, we wanted a picture of London buildings, then we thought of having Big Ben and the House of Parliament, as it is the most recognizable building in London. We decided a black and white drawing of the building would be more smart than a simple picture of the building. The sound we chose for this was a grandfather clock sounded like Big Ben.

Researching Film Openings

Opening to a Film

Film – 2001: A Space Odyssey

The opening to 2001: A Space Odyssey is generally seen as one of the most memorable and famous film openings of all time, and is seen as Stanley Kubrick’s Magnum Opus film. The film starts with a shot of a planet with the sun coming up from behind it, this lasts about a minute long, with the use of the famous orchestra score “Also sprach Zarathustra” by Richard Strauss. This is also where the credits of the film appear as well. It is good as it is all in one shot, and as the sun appears very slowly it builds lots of suspense, the music helps with as well.

The film then goes to a number of long shots of desert scenery (with the words “The Dawn of Man” appearing), showing the world without human life, complete nothingness. Then it cuts to a load of monkeys and pig-like animals sitting around and scavenging for food. While drinking at a waterhole, another group of monkeys appear and threaten and scare them, causing them to run away and the other group to take the waterhole. All of these shots either long shots or medium shots and another else really appears, also the editing it very simple as well. This may have been done to show the simplicity of the monkeys at this stage, the shots are long and drawn out, showing the slow process of their lives.

Later we see the monkeys in a retreated area sleeping. As they wake up the next morning they see a black Monolith (a solid rectangular structure) and they all are scared at first but then walk around it and begin to touch it. An eerie piece of music is playing during this scene, maybe to confuse us about the black object we are seeing, as us just like the monkeys we are confused about what it is or what it will do, and to gain more suspense from the audience.

There are some more scenery long shots then goes to one of the monkeys picking up some bones. It then slowly waves it back and forth and then starts to beat the ground with it, then finally smashes the other bones including the skull. During this sequence it cuts back and forth to one of the Pig-like creatures falling to the ground (this scene symbolizes the monkey first use of tools and weapons). This scene also contains the famous film score with shows us that this is a very big part and tells us this is the turning point from the monkeys, or The Dawn of Man, it might also contradict this phrase as technically it is the Dawn of Violence.

Straight after we see the monkeys eating the meat from the animals that had killed, already the monkey are evolving.

The next day the monkeys go back to the waterhole with the bone clubs. They go up to the leader of the other tribe and hit it round the head, and lots of monkeys with clubs then join in and kill the leader. The other tribe retreat. Realising victory one of the monkeys throws his bone into the air and as it is spinning around it then cuts to a spaceship that is four million years into the future. This is a match cut/graphic match which shows us how far humans have progressed over time.

I think this is one of the best openings as the whole film is about space travel with vast amounts of stunning technology, and it starts off with the very basics of life, and where humans evolved from. Overall the opening is paced is very slow, which is similar to the whole film, which could mean that life is very slow, but still vast amounts of things happen during it.

Ideas on the genre for our production

We decided right to the start that we wouldn't do a horror or a thriller film because we thought it was too cliche and it seemed everyone else was doing it. We thought that sci fi might be a possibility, but then realized that it would take way too much effort and money to buy props, set up settings and make it look vaguely realistic. We decided a western could be a good idea so long as we didn't stick to the typical status quo of gun toting cowboys and bring it up to date. For instance instead of two groups of men facing up to have a duel in some outcast mexican town we could have two rival gangs facing off down a suburban park or public place.
Other ideas were to have an art house / surreal look to the film, eg David Lynch. Or to have a mockumentary, based around somebodies lives. A third idea was to have Phycological Film Noir.