Final Film Opening : Masked

 

 

• Strengths of our final piece: Both of the members of our group were very confident in editing and the editing, we believe, is one of our strongest aspects. We are also very proud of the simple titles, taking inspiration from similar films such as Scarface and Pulp Fiction with the simple text on a black background.
 
• Weaknesses of our final piece: Because we had to cut a lot of the footage out we still believe the storyline doesnt come across as clearly as we'd like but there didnt seem to be much trouble in understanding it from the screening so we have subsequesntly stopped wondering about this.We also think in the night scenes, due to the lack of good quality lighting, the quality wasnt very good, so if we ever film again we will try and do most of it in natural daylight to improve the quality

Group: Editing Progress Update

26/3/13

• Our editing of putting footage together is complete with our whole story being present in the video file.
• However, now we are refining clips to ensure that there is no tiny errors in the footage, for example in the last second of a shot in the garage there is a small wobble of the camera which we had to remove just by simply cutting the end of the shot away and deleting it.
• We are also incorporating our soundtrack now as the timeline is all in sequence, we are fading each of our two soundtracks in and out as we have one 'good' soundtrack and one 'mysterious' one.

Group: Feedback ideas

• After having our work reviewed a number of times we have been able to edit some of our action matches to ensure they cut on point at the time of action. We have had to do this a number of times for all of our action matches, however it has made a clear improvement to our work.
• On top of this there have been some shots that we have been told are not neccessary in our film, for example there was a shot which we had incorporated of the main character (Jake Nolan) getting dressed after waking up. But, this wasted time and was not an integral part of the build up of the story.
• Another piece of feedback we have received is the quality of some of our shots could be improved. For example in our final shot we used the zoom button on the camera to created a zoom out-to-establishin shot. But we were told this didn't look right using the zoom on the camera. So to rectify this we reshot the footage using a steady tracking shot.
• Our most important feedback and change to our work has been our ending. Originally we ended on a very depreciating anti-climax which doesnt leave any sort of a cliffhanger looming over the story. However we decided to change this to finish our story with a zoom out establishing shot showing the murderers lair with blood stained sheets to leave this final impression on the viewer.

Group: 22/03/13 Lesson Report

After showing our project to numerous people, we have taken their opinion into account and have decided to re-fil our ending this weekend.

We will make it clearer the woman at the end is the killers wife by calling him 'darling' and having the man hold her waist, creating more of an association with the two having a relationship.

We also need to film a shot we forgot where the killer leaves the house from the outside to action match with him leaving his bedroom door in work clothes.

Group: 21/03/13 Techniques We Used

This lesson we finished putting in all the filming we did in our re-shoot as well as some other bits we needed to film at the bedroom and bathroom location.

We also went through and found two fonts to use for our titles :

We are also currently experimenting with transitions and key frame techniques to make the titles appear in an interesting way.

Next lesson we will finish off putting the titles on and also try and work on the soundtrack, this is hard to do however as we need to know the exact timing of the ligh/dark changes to make the sound change between tones at the point of transition.

AW : Concept Development

We have changed our idea multiple times and have finally settled on an idea we beleive will be effective and is not to complicated to film.

We are keeping in the opening scene where the killer catches the victim and drags him away but then we will cut to black and have a tiled credit, then we will action match 2 shots together like we had planned on doing before, then put in another tiled credit and repeat this sequence until the final tracking out shot of the garage when the killers wife opens the garage and it is cleaned up.

Also after the showing of our rough cut we have decided that the title 'identity' doesn't really fit and we are currently in the process of finding a better title using the synonyms we came up with before

SH: Film Opening Research

                               

Black Swan (Aronofsky 2010)
Film Language
Mise-en-scéne-

• In the opening the costume used to convey meaning to the audience, shows firstly, a young female in a balet uniform dancing. This is something which usual would be protrayed as very innocent however, in the context of the film with the low key lighting which causes a shadow on one side of the dancers body and dust filled, empty room it becomes very unnerving and adds a very strong sense of mystery.
• The shots that follow this are of a similar feeling, their is a slightly old fashioned bedroom, an old, posh hall and an old and posh dining room. These are all slightly low key lit with shadows being cast from the characters' bodies. This adds further to the sense of mystery in the opening sequence.

Camera-

• The first shot is an establishing/long shot showing the dancer in the middle of the empty room. It is used to add context to the action and convey the mystery of the scene. If it were just a close up of the dancer it would not allow any mystery to be felt.
• There is then an extreme close up of the dancers feet perfoming intricut steps. This portrays a slight feel of attention to detail and precision about the dancing as it seems to be very neat. This doesn't seem to ass to the mystery of the sequence, however it does enhance the character, making her seem more on the side of the viewer as they are straight away positioned with her performing this tricky sequence.

Sound-

• The non-diegetic sound certainly adds to the sense of mystery, it is a piece of orchestral music using mostly strings and piano. It matches the ballet theme very well so it is very subtle to the audience. However, it is a high pitched piece of music and is a very slow tempo.

Dialogue and non verbal language-

• The first example of diegetic sound we here is the female narrator, talking about the ballet dancer. However the end of this speech is what conveys the shocking part of the story to the audience, "...She kills herself". This line is said with a pause so it creates suspense. Also the non diegetic sound seems to fade away to be less prominent, again making that particular line more prominent.
• After this the narrator seems to be speaking as the main character telling the story to the audience. But there is a kind of montage of a different group of voices all talking over the music so that what they're saying is portrayed to be very important to the audience.

Media Audiences
Target audience-

• The target audience for the film is, as the film is certificated at 15, 15+ but more specifically it is targeted at 15-29 year olds. The main character and other essential characters in the film are all female, this makes the primary audience to the film 15-29 females. This is also influenced by the setting or the story being revolving around ballet.
• The graph shows the average rating of the film (according to IMDB) dropping after the age of 29. However it is not considered slolely a female film as males gave very high ratings also due to the thriller nature of the film.

Readings-

• Being a male teenager, I am inside the parameters of the target audience as it includes both males and females. The film is a psychological thriller so it is very popular with many teenagers who are often targeted for thriller/horror films. Male teenagers are likely to follow the general readings of the film and are most lilkely to follow the subjective view as opposed to the older range of the audience who are likely to follow a more objective view.
• By being obvjective viewers in this case, many adults are more likely to be drawn into the storyline of the film rather than the psychological aspect of the film.

Institutional Context
Stars- Stars included were:

• Natalie Portman- Who has been in previously well known films such as: 'V for Vendetta' and 'The Other Boleyn'. 'V for Vendetta' also being a thriller movie with a similar target audience.
• Winoner Ryder- Who has appeared in 'Edward Scissorhands' a well known film with a wide fan base, this will help to attract an audience to watch 'Black Swan'.
• Mila Kunis- Who is a very famous actor and is thought to have helped bring in a wider male fan base.

 

Studio production- The film was produced by Fox Searchlight studios, so was an industrial released film
Marketing- Black Swan included all the usual marketing strategies- Tv ads, bus adverts, and online adverts. But it was well known for its well designed striking posters which created some 'buz' about the film. (example on right)

Group: Editing Update

• Currently we are in the process of editing our footage, the difficulties we are facing our getting tied down in the discrete details of editing to early on in the process. For example a lot of time can be easily wasted on prefecting titles and transitions rather than timing the cuts between one action shot and another action shot.
• Also we are finding timing and matching the actions together can be time consuming. As we have to decided to include more action match shots since doing our first section of filming we have to first ensure that the camera work will allow a smooth transition between actions, but we then have to ensure that we cute both actions so that they meet about half way through to creat a smooth transition.

Group: Progress Update

• At this point in time we have filmed a large majority of our footage in our main location. We completed around three quarters of our storyboard clips.
• This leaves us with about 10 shots left to film in our two remaining locations, we will have completed this within 1-2 weeks.

• Currently at this stage we are editing the footage we have recorded.
• We are also planning for our final shots to be filmed, for instance we have been thinking of props and costumes that we will need.

• Going forward we still have to finish the finer details for our remaining shots, this will include us planning props and costumes, as well as organising days and times to shoot and co ordinating this with our cast.
• Also we have  to spend some time editing our sound track as it will include different types of music.

SH: Location Reccie

•  One of our shoots includes some filming in a bedroom, the pictures below are some of the shots that we are going to use.
• During the day we like the amount of natural light that gets into the bedroom as one half of the shoot is going to be in the morning when our main character wakes up.
• We also like how the plain white sheets and plain walls do not draw the viewers eyes from the action in the scene.
• One thing we will need to be aware of, however, is that the artificial light creates reflection and slight yellow affect.