Our Vision

For part of our research, we have created

1. A colour palette
2. A sound palette 
3. 9 key shots frame

Our colour palette that we created:

Our chosen colour palette creates a vision that allows us to stick with the look and feel of our opening title sequence. These colours suggest a dark and mysterious theme, as that is what we want our viewers to experience when watching. Our genre is a psychological thriller and we felt that these colours best fit this genre. 

Our first two colours on the palette are red and blue as we will have police car sirens in our sequence. The next colour is to show the darkness in the barn where the girl is abducted. Next, the grey and brown show the colours of the long axe that the girl will be dragging along the floor and breaking the door down with.

The two shades of brown shows the wood in the barn. The next colour shows the dirt and marks that will be on the girl, and also the colour of the bucket that we will use to show credits on. The green colour illustrates the trees in the forest that will be outside when the girl escapes from the barn. The dark grey shows more darkness that will occur throughout in the barn and outside.

The white and yellow colours show the bright light that the girl will see when she finally breaks the barn door and escapes. The skin colour shows the pale, washed out colour of the girls face. The black shows the darkness in the location that she is abducted and is a contrast to the white and yellow. Finally, the pale pink colour illustrates certain cuts and bruises on the girl and her lips.

Our sound palette that we created:
Our sound palette shows examples of a woman heavily breathing, helicopter sounds for our drone shot, police sirens and water dripping. These are the type of sounds that you will hear in our opening title sequence as they all create suspense and may make the audience feel uneasy. 

Our frame of 9 key shots:
Our 9 key shots are the shots that we thought were most memorable and gave the best impression of the storyline to our opening title sequence.

independent study

Independent Study

For my independent study i was assigned the task of studying 3 films/ programs related to our personal idea. these were, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Martyrs and The Missing, which was helpful as i was watching it every week when it was on

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

This film is based on the psychological thriller novel written by Swedish author Stieg Larsson, what i like about what i saw in the trailer in particular is the colour tones, it really utilizes the use of crisp colours to present a clean environment, for example the screenshots placed below.

What i think i will take from watching this film is how effective a well thought out colour pallet is, the pallet used in this film is very dark and grey, creating a suspicious tense mood, this is excellent as it helps build interest from the audience, this is something we should look to emulate when creating our film opening.

Martyrs

Martyrs is a 2008 French-Canadian drama horror film written and directed by Pascal Laugier. For this film i only watched the trailer and even from that i was inspired by lots of things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7Qx2dT-lUw

In the trailer a part i specifically like is the shot where we follow girl walk into a house and we see blood spewed all over the wall, i like this because it would not be a difficult thing to emulate but it is very successful in creating a horror effect, this shot is roughly 43 seconds into the trailer.

The Missing

Thankfully i have been an avid viewer of the missing since the first episode. My favourite thing about the show is how clever it is in showing different periods of time through the Mise-en-scene, for example when the story line is set in 2014 there is snow on the ground, little sunlight and no greenery, whereas when the story line is at present day the sunlight is strong, characters are wearing clothes that suggest it is hot outside, no snow etc. also one of the main characters has different lengths of hair between the 2 periods of time.

These screenshots should help to show this.

Winter

Summer

BFI trip

17th November

17th November

Today we spent a lesson presenting our ideas to the class. To present my idea i used my previous post on my blog, the Prezi. The class gave feedback on what they thought was good about the idea and what they thought could be done to improve the idea. The reoccurring concept regarding my idea was that some sound was needed, someone suggested some dialogue was necessary however i feel this isn't the case because dialogue wouldn't enhance the suspense of the scene. Something that i think could work quite well for sound would be to enhance the noise created by the character walking, by making the footsteps louder the audience will detect the eerie nature of the scene.

Another thing someone mentioned would be to create a continuous shot of the man walking, emphasising the follow effect even more. This is something i had planned on doing however if the entire thing is 1 continuous shot we would be disregarding the fact that it is essential to use a range of shots to get higher marks, and baring in mind the opening can be a maximum of 2 minutes long we don't have that much time to use as many shot types as we can. But, what i would try to do is create a continuous effect by creating perfect match on action shots of the feet walking. This would make it seem following the character very realistic.

opening scene idea

view my opening scene idea by clicking  HERE

Moodboard

Moodboard

https://prezi.com/802lwz7yoi-m/edit/#0_0091823 < My moodboard can be viewed here

Preliminary task

Preliminary task

We decided to keep our preliminary task very basic as it did not have to be complicated at all, just as long as it showed we understood basic filming principles such as the 180 rule and having no continuity errors. We were also asked to create a story board which shows a snapshot of each of our scenes so we know what we have to do when it comes to filming. the groups we worked in for this preliminary task will be the same group we will work in when it comes to making our film opening, therefore this task will give us a good idea of each others strengths and weaknesses and will prepare us for working with each other later.





Story boards

story boarding is an essential part of film making, it gives the director and acting crew a clear picture of what the shot will look like and can help to spot any continuity errors before they have been made.

story board page 1

In the first box of our story board we can see Grace walking up the stairs, originally we felt this clip would only need to be 6 seconds long, however after playing around with the shot we realized it would have to be longer if we were to get an accurate match on action as it was important that Grace's feet were in the same position between the first and second shot, I feel this particular match on action shot was something we did very well.

The second shot was very basic, it simply showed Grace reaching the top of the stairs, turning right and walking past the camera. This shot, combined with the first shot shows our editing skills as we managed to get a very successful match-on-action as Grace was walking up the stairs

The third shot again was very simple, it showed only the lower part of Grace's leg and her feet walking past the camera, we used this shot as it shows we can recognize the effectiveness of a close up shot. we cut a second off the end of this second to allow for correct match-on-action with the following shot.

The fourth shot depicts grace walking towards the door and pushing it open which becomes part of a match-on-action shot with shot 5  which shows Grace from the other side of the door. this was a difficult pair of shots to get right as it required precise editing to show the door at the same point on the swing otherwise it would have been very obvious and would have not looked very good. shot 5 also shows Grace walking over to a table and sitting opposite myself, setting up for a conversation and ultimately a shot-reverse-shot.

Shot 6 shows me facing the camera with the back of Grace's head shot still in the shot, this shows a clear eye line, creating a realistic effect to the shot, the shot is quite lengthy to include the dialogue. The original script for the dialogue was edited on the spot during filming, we kept it this way as it seemed less forced and was more natural which is better for the film.

story board page 2

 The seventh shot is shot from behind my head but focuses on Grace's face as she is replying to my conversation opener, originally the shot was supposed to last for 8 seconds however we cut 1 second as it was unnecessary and made the clip look awkward and fake. The seventh shot is also where the only continuity error of our film occurs, there is a slight difference between the story board and the final clip in that i am holding a pencil whilst talking to grace, however the position of the pencil and the way i am holding the pencil changes between shots, we realized this mistake after the video had been published however it is something to learn from and i am sure we will be less likely to make that mistake in the future.

the final shot is very similar to shot 6 and the pen has returned to the original position, I am undecided on whether i like my acting in this shot, i can't tell if the way i notice the time and leave looks forced or not, in the real film opening we will make sure the acting is as good as it can be to create a professional feel to our film.





Here is our preliminary task video

Opening scene graphs

One of the early pieces of work we did in Media was creating a graph depicting the intensity and key moments of A films opening scenes we analysed the opening scene for Amelie. on the graph there were 2 lines, one for sound which rises when the sound intensity increases. the second line was for visual intensity, which similarly to the sound lone, roses when what is on the screen is more exciting to the viewer. 

As you