15th of December

As a class we watched the well known thriller Gone Girl, i think this was good for my group and i as we focused on the opening which although was very different to our it did show us how to intrigue an audience which i think will help us in the future while filming and editing our opening scene. Over The last few weeks i have watched a variety of different Thriller films as it is one of my favourite film genres. It has shown me a selection of ways that an opening scene in a film can really encourage its audience to carry on watching as the sound effects and initial story line can have a big impact on the audience. I think that the opening is one of the most important parts in a film since that is when a film needs to first grabs its audience attention.

Suspense scene 3 from sixth sense

Scene 3:

Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy/Poison

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEug8JqvXFU&list=PLFtKvbT8Wnl-leRLy8Yc55_juP1rCJcno

In this scene you start off with a close up of the girl (that had passed away) father opening the box, that he was given by Cole, to find a video tape. Theres then a jump shot to a static Tv screen to show the video playing. You immediately see a puppet show come on, from there you have a shot reverse shot showing both the Video and the father they have done this because they are showing the fathers reaction to the video as he has a mix of emotions as the video continues. To begin with the video is sweet and innocent making him smile at the Tv screen. But there is a sudden change of emotion as the girl the video puts her toys away as she can here her mothers footsteps. 

  The video progresses and behind the girls father people have gathered to watch the video with him. This scene builds suspense as you don't know whats going to happen in the video and how people will react. When the mother enters the room the girl is preventing to be asleep, the whole reason for the video is to show that the mother killed her by putting poison in her food. The raw emotion on the man's face as he watches his daughter eat the thing that is killing her. The scene is set in the house the live in, you can tell from the obscene amount of flowers and dark clothes that this is a funeral. However the mother stands out as she is wearing all red and black, which is very suggestive colour as it can be seen as a sexual colour to wear as a women but also it could suggest death or evil as it is the colour of blood. you have a jump-shot of the man standing in the door entrance looking at his wife in complete disbelief and also betrayal as she killed there little girl intentionally. You also have the people in the back standing as witnesses. They use a mid-shot to show the mother turning around as she is like 'a deer caught in headlights' that they found out not knowing what to do which is where the scene cut. In this scene they also use pan camera angles to get a view of the room.

Suspense scene 2 from Sixth Sense

Scene 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUYKSWQmkrg

I see dead people...

In this scene you see that most of the time the camera is faced towards cole (the child) as it is to show his vulnerability in sharing his secret with the child psychologist. In this scene they use a match on match shot to show Dr. Crowe (the psychologist) walking through the door. After a while Cole finally opens up to Dr.Crowe. They use a extreme close up shot of Cole as he says "I see dead people" showing how he's on the brink of tears. From here there is shot reverse shot between the two characters to show there reactions and how they are feeling about the situation especially Dr. Crowe as it is a lot to take in and it is hard to get your head around something you can't see yourself. This leads on to the questions Dr. Crowe asks as what Cole see's could potentially be nightmares or in this case something more. 

Cole: I see dead people.                                                                                                                                 Malcolm: In your dreams? [Cole shakes his head no] While you're awake? [Cole nods] Dead people like, in graves? In coffins?                                                                                                                                          Cole: Walking around like regular people. They don't see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don't know they're dead.                                                                                                                  Malcolm: How often do you see them?                                                                                                        Cole: All the time

This scene is set in a hospital room that Cole was placed in after his panic attack at the party in the previous scene, they have used dim lighting which gives the affect of a superstitious situation as it also gives the scene more affect throughout this conversation. This is because the dim lighting adds to events in the scene making it a little scary and also builds the anticipation as you have a long pause before Cole tells Dr. Crowe his secret. The close up of Cole is almost tilted so it is slightly downward, this makes him look fragile especially in the situation Cole is in. Before the scene ends you see Dr. crowe express a series of different emotions as he seems almost in disbelief and isn't sure what to think about the situation. 

Suspense scene 1 from 'Sixth Sense'

            Scene 1:

            Car scene

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLyYYHqVTsE

The car scene near the end of the movie causes suspense as in this two person / mid-shot you can see that the child is scared to tell his mum something or in this case that he can see dead people. And the mother is trying to see out the window to see if she can catch a glimpse of the lady who died in the accident her son told her about.

   This shot also shows the child's fear of how his mother will react to the new information. As he doesn't know if she will accept it or not. The feeling of her unknown reaction is suspense as you don't know what is going to happen or how much he is going to or is prepared to tell her. In this scene they have used shot reverse shot to emphasise the two protagonists emotions and facial features to see how they react will giving/receiving the information of the child being able to see ghost but after the mother got over the shock, he started to talk about how his grandmother apologises and was always proud of his mother which then emphasises how much the information means to both of them.
  In this next shot they have used from the car scene is a close up of the mother showing her trying to control her emotions so that she can answer the question. This causes suspense as well because you don't know what her reply  will be or what her reaction is to what she is being asked.
In this scene they have mainly used a panning movement and slight high angle shots to show the vulnerability of both characters. The composition of scene has been set out as a traffic jam because of an accident. From what the boy is wearing it almost gives off that feeling that he has been touched by something spiritual. But also when the film was made the way women were presented and how the car presented is only slightly different but when you see that she is wearing quite a bright red top/jumper it generally stands out as quite a sexual colour which also adds to the fact that she's a young slim women who looks after herself.
  Also in the first image where the mother is looking out the window his eyes aren't focused directly on her but just slightly past her head which suggests that there's something beside her out side her window that only he can see.

Evaluation of our preliminary task

Evaluation

In our preliminary task we decided to do a short scene of an office argument which had to include a match on match shot, a shot reverse shot and a 180 degree shot. In our task everyone had a go at acting and using the camera, we followed and included all the requirements that were needed for the task in our filming. When we first started the task we had a recorded discussion that we could make notes on and turn into story boards as there were a few things that changed from the discussion when we made our final decision on what shots were going to use and how we ended our scene. On our first day of filming we had managed to film just over half of our footage throughout the lesson however the next day when we went back to the footage we took, it hadn't saved so we had to re-do all of our filming and then add on the ending. We started off with an establishing shot of the building but when taking the shot we found we had to change the setting on the camera to take the shot again as we had problems with how bright the sun was and saturation. At our second attempt of filming we managed to get it done quickly as we avoided to much discussion between shots and got straight into the filming. Once we had finished filming we went onto editing, unfortunately Paige wasn't here as she was ill, therefore Hannah, Jasmine and Myself finished the scene by editing it and correcting any wrongs that were in the filming and cutting out any unnecessary footage as some frames we filmed twice so we could tweak the angle of the shot. When editing we had also decided that we were going to get rid of the frame that we had drawn in our story boards of taking a shot that focuses on the fallen pieces of paper as we found it didn't fit and was unnecessary in our scene. We had originally filmed over two and half minutes of footage but after editing and shortening some of the clips we had removed almost half and was left with one minute twenty seconds of filming left which completed our scene.

I was the last to have the camera in the group and filmed the ending of our scene. After Jasmine had filmed the shot of me leaving causing Paige to drop the papers she was holding, the camera was then passed on to me. I filmed the shot reverse shot between Hannah and Jasmine as they continued arguing which I think went quite well however the angle of the camera was slightly off and the shot reverse shot could have been shorter as i thought they were too long when filming the conversation between both characters. I think would have flowed better and would have been more realistic. Also the shots reverse shot were all over the shoulder shots to try and make the person who's putting there point across almost look taller as the argument became more heated. However, after this the shot i took of took the pan two person shot of Hannah's phone going off and Jasmine sitting down, i think that this shot wasn't too bad as it focused on hannah more as i had turned the camera further in her direction. Although i definitely think the ending frame could have been improved a lot as the scene was too long and i could have taken the shot from further away making it look better as a 3 person shot but if i were to change it i would keep it as a mid-shot. I think overall the frames that i had filmed weren't too bad but could still use a lot of improvement to make them look more professional and change the camera angle to a tilt when taking the shot reverse shot to get a better perspective of the argument.

In our preliminary task one of the requirements was to have 3 specific shots included which were: shot reverse shot, 180 degree shot and match on match. We made sure that in our scene we used these shots in it, however we also used many other shots such as: over the shoulder shots, and 2 people shots. We had originally wanted to do a fews long shots but because of the size of the office that was available we weren't able to to do that so most of our shots are mid-shots, we also used an establishing shot in the beginning to set the scene and a 3 person shot to end it. I do think our preliminary task worked but there is a lot we need to improve, for example we could have changed some of the camera shots that we used in our preliminary task too get a better affect and we could have used natural lighting instead of using the lighting from inside the office to set the scene a bit better, also because we used natural lighting in our establishing shot.

In our preliminary task we changed a few of the scenes and also got rid of the frame where we took a shot of the papers that Paige had dropped. In the few changes we did make it was mainly based on the camera shots e.g the long shots we had to change to mid shots because of the size of the room we were filming in. 

Finished preliminary task

Editing

  After we collected all of our footage as it managed to save properly this time we edited our preliminary task. To begin with we had over 2 and a half minutes worth of filming, and we managed to take it down to 1 minute 20. We deleted all of the footage that had any included mistakes or footage that we couldn't used and had re-filmed. After getting rid of all of the extra footage we went back and shortened a lot of the left over filming as at the beginning or end of some of the shots there was large gaps of silence or were slightly too long so we cropped it to if flowed better. We also got rid of the frame that was in our storyboards where we were gonna get a shot of the papers Paige had dropped before filming her picking them up.

Week 3

   
  This week our group started filming our preliminary task, on monday we had filmed half of our video but unfortunately our footage had been lost so we had to redo our filming and managed to complete all of the filming we needed.
   
  Whilst filming our preliminary task we all got the change to use the camera and film part of task. This gave us all a taste of what it will be like to film our actual AS task next year. Hannah was the first to use the camera and she filmed our establishing shot of the building to start off the video. Once we had set up the office we were using for the task the camera was given to paige as Hannah, Jasmine and I would all be in the scene. Paige filmed the match on match shot of me walking through the door into the office before changing the direction of the camera and facing it towards Jasmine and Hannah in a pan shot of the beginning of the argument, and an over the shoulder looking at me as Hannah asks for my opinion on the argument.

   After putting my hands up Jasmine then used the camera to film me walking out of the door pushing past Paige, as she walks through the door, effectively making her to drop the papers in her hands. Jasmine filmed a close up of the papers before showing Paige picking them up in a tilt. The camera was then passed on to me to finish the filming as i filmed the shot reverse shot of the argument and a wide/three person shot of paige laying the papers on the desk as Hannah and Jasmine came up with a solution to their problem which was where we ended our filming.

   Personally after seeing what we had filmed their was a lot that needed improving. Such as the length of the video as it was too long and their were a lot of shots that wed missed out that we could have used. But all in all i think the filming went very well especially for our first task, we worked well as a group allowing everyone to have a say and have some input into our preliminary task.
   Next lesson we will be going through all of our footage and editing out all of the irrelevant footage. We will also we going through it to check if we need to add any frames or re-film some of the footage that may have been left out.

Started filming

Week 2

This week we changed our week into notes as we had discussed it our preliminary discussion and turned those notes into storyboards. As a group we decided to change the ending from finishing the argument by someone leaving the room, to the co workers in the short video working things out after a phone call. We have now completed our story boards in full and we are ready to start filming next week. By having our storyboards we can see the clear structure we are going to follow to make it more straight forward when filming. We changed the ending to our preliminary task as we thought that it would make the video flow better and add a little humour to the end.

My Storyboards

Recorded discussion of our preliminary task

file:///Users/Student/Downloads/Media.m4a

This is the link to our discussion.

Notes For the Preliminary Task

Notes:

Story line:

                   This will be set at a workplace showing an argument between two co workers in an office. They are arguing about a work related problem that they both feel strongly about, soon after the discussion started it begins to get heated and turns into an argument. another one of there co workers walks into the room and get caught up in the argument so refuses to take sides so leaves pushing past the secretary making her drop all of her documents after she's picked them up, she walks into the office and tries to defuse the argument before it goes too far. One of the co workers still in the room has more valid points throughout the argument as the other can see she is not going to win the argument as her co worker has more authority that herself. So through anger walks out of the room slamming the door behind her. This is where the scene will finish.

Props:
Laptops, office equipment, chairs, tables and 'important' documents

Characters:
Eleanor- observer that walks into the room during the argument but walks back out so they cannot involve her in the their argument
Hannah and jasmine- are the two co workers arguing.
Paige- secretary that tries to defuse the argument before it goes too far.

My Group

My Group

The people i chose as my group members are: Hannah Bess, Jasmine Reagon-Welch and Paige Anderson. I chose these people because I know them fairly well so I can relate to them not just for the subject but from a personal level, we are all very hard working so I can guarantee that the jobs will be spread evenly.

Why I chose A level Media?

Why I chose A level media?

I chose A level media because I took the course in GCSE where in the other courses I chose I hadn't, also because I loved the freedom I had in the course as I could be as creative as I wanted. There are many reasons why I personally chose media one being the fact i wanted to understand more the media specifically music as it is something that i am very passionate about although i am also passionate about being able to use and cameras to show creative side. I also liked that fact that media included coursework which i find easier than i do exams as i can be more lenient and more creative with my work.