Thursday 24 March 2011

Ideas

We started to brainstorm ideas, coming up with a theme and then elborating on it. Originally we thought of creating a zombie movie which focused on thoughts and feeelings of a lone protangonist. However we did not think this style of film would be easy enough to film and also contain all the information we needed in a 2 minute section. We started to watch some openings to get a better idea of what we were trying to achieve and also understand the limitations of an opening a bit more. We had to keep in mind the type of equiptment we would be using will be basic and so this limited the type of shot we could produce, the type of costumes we could use which all would affect the whole stlye and structure of a film opening. 

We studied films such as:
- Enemy at the gates
- Che
- Saving private ryan
- Black hawk down   


We eventually came to the descison that we would create an opening for war film based around the Red Army. We thought this would be a good idea, due to the simplistic nature in which we could film the shots and also potray feelings and emotions even with lack of dialogue. The inspiration came from the fact that all of members in the group are also history students and all very interested in Russian history. However we still had to decide what period of russian history and what events to base the film on. We started to plan how we were going to shoot our opening, and also get an idea of what the opening should be about. We brainstormed many ideas, all to do with Russia however we began to relise the real limitations we faced while thinking of an idea. We decided to keep it as simple as possible because of the obvious limitations like setting, cast and props.

Shot ideas
- We liked the over the shoulder shot at the begining of this clip from luther, i would hope to replicate a similar over the shoulder shot in my film.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=senfpLIvboE
- We decided we wanted to have a suit up scene, in which the main protagonist is getting ready in his tent, to go out. We studied many different suit up scenes from films such as Hot Fuzz to Commando.




- We want an establishing shot from a hill overlooking a forest.
 - We want to include some Point of veiw shots for the dialog.
 - We want to try an include a siluette of the comisar.

Monday 14 March 2011

AS Film Opening; Red october

We have been put into groups (Me, Dan C and Alex B) and we have been set the task of creating a 2 minute film opening. The brief we decided to do was film brief 3 which is "An independent movie featuring a young protagonist the film should appear to be financed through regional funding". Once we had decided the brief we began to discuss what the film opening should be about and how we should come about filming it easily and efficently.

Ideas

We started to brainstorm ideas, coming up with a theme and then elborating on it. Originally we thought of creating a zombie movie which focused on thoughts and feeelings of a lone protangonist. However we did not think this style of film would be easy enough to film and also contain all the information we needed in a 2 minute section. We started to watch some openings to get a better idea of what we were trying to achieve and also understand the limitations of an opening a bit more. We had to keep in mind the type of equiptment we would be using will be basic and so this limited the type of shot we could produce, the type of costumes we could use which all would affect the whole stlye and structure of a film opening. 

We studied films such as:
- Enemy at the gates
- Che
- Saving private ryan
- Black hawk down   


We eventually came to the descison that we would create an opening for war film based around the Red Army. We thought this would be a good idea, due to the simplistic nature in which we could film the shots and also potray feelings and emotions even with lack of dialogue. The inspiration came from the fact that all of members in the group are also history students and all very interested in Russian history. However we still had to decide what period of russian history and what events to base the film on. We started to plan how we were going to shoot our opening, and also get an idea of what the opening should be about. We brainstormed many ideas, all to do with Russia however we began to relise the real limitations we faced while thinking of an idea. We decided to keep it as simple as possible because of the obvious limitations like setting, cast and props.

Shot ideas
- We liked the over the shoulder shot at the begining of this clip from luther, i would hope to replicate a similar over the shoulder shot in my film.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=senfpLIvboE
- We decided we wanted to have a suit up scene, in which the main protagonist is getting ready in his tent, to go out. We studied many different suit up scenes from films such as Hot Fuzz to Commando.
 - We want an establishing shot from a hill overlooking a forest.
 - We want to include some Point of veiw shots for the dialog.
 - We want to try an include a siluette of the comisar.
Plot

We thought we would start witha suit up scene in a tent , with a a russian commisar getting ready for his day, he then will walk out of the tent with the camera following behind him with an over the shoulder shot. He then finds himself presented with dead bodies, there will be nararted dialog over the top of the shot. Once the dialog is over the camera will pan up towards the sky and the title of the film will appear on the screen.

Cast

- The main charater is a russian commisar.
- There will an extra with a line or two to help develop the plot.
- In the background we hope to have many extras, some will be soilders and others mabey peasents. These extras will be doing various things like standing around talking, smoking and crying.

Sound

We need to find sounds like;

- Leather boot straps being tied.
- Sounds of crying
- Sounds
- The sound of gunshots in the distance or shells falling.

The two pieces of music that we plan to use are;


Production name and logo







Story boards + Anamatics

We made a start on our story boards, and we further changed our ideas. We decided that we would add credits between shots during the suit up scene, the font of the credits will resemble a type writter to add effect and create a more professional feel. These credits allow the suit up scene to run smootly and not to appear to jumpy between cuts, and this will allow us to run the credits without obstructing any of the shots.




Credits

We plan to do our credits almost as if they are being written by a type writer on the screen, the inspiration for using this idea came from previous films and tv shows with the same effect.

For example;             RED OCTOBER

However the letters we hope will come on screen indivually as if they are being written.

Filming

For our filming we wanted a day in which the weather was very dull, and slightly rainy. This was to help set the mood of our film and also keep with the likely weather conditions within Russia. However we could not get all the extras to be available for the suitable weather conditions, so we had to just film when we could. As we started filming we were faced with some obstacles that we had to overcome. We eventually ended up having to the main block of the filming on a sunny day, which was not orginally intended but it was the only time it was possible. However once we had got the main proportion of the filming complete and started to piece some shots together in the editing phase, we found we were missing some crucial linking shots. This meant we had to go out and film again,but we could not get the same actors and we could not get the
same weather conditions. We were forced to film what we could on the day, the shots we filmed were a shot of the main character lighting up a cigarette and walking on, this allowed the the shots of the charcter walking to flow into one another.

We were also faced with issues of props, we had very limited props in comparison to what we would of wanted. However we could not get hold of them, this forced us to come up with new ideas for shots, for example,orignally we  wanted a shot of a tent in which the chacter was in but we could not get a tent that would look right for our film, so instead we had to use plain bed sheets to imply that there was a tent present.


Editing

Editing proved to be difficult because of techincal problems with the computers. We orignally were using a Mac to edit our film, however the mac kept on freezing and we lost lots of already edited work due to this, we eventually had to transfer what we had of our work onto a standard PC. Whilst editing we ended up changing round shots because we found by simply changing the order of some shots, a whole new feel could be potrayed.
Alex bryant, who is in our group had experience using Flash and so he was ableto create the titles and the final shotin which the sky turns red. He did this very well and the titles especially turned out better than we imagine at the stat of the project.