Editing on the final day!

Today has been a complete day of being in the mac room editing our short film for as long as we can and have managed to get all our shots and have made our short film, however, we are going to need to make it shorter as it is only supposed to last 5 minutes and at the moment it is 6 and a half!
I think we are going to stay after school tonight to finish editing our film, we need to add in our music and make our film fit the time that we are allowed. This should be possible as we can both stay as long as we need to.

we lied...:)

okay so before when we showed our final desings, we were lying. we managed to get some feedback on them and so things have been altered again, but we are much much happy with our changes. these should hopefully now be the final ones!

Comparisons

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final designs

here is a print screen of our final magazine poster and magazine film review :)

Finale

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magazine review research

i have been looking at some film magazine reviews online, particularly Total film magazine. i have picked up on some different designs used.
have a look and see what you think:

Review Research

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Filming... can it possibly be finished!?

Yesterday Laura and I were trying our hardest to find a boy to star in our film and after being let down three times we thought this would be hard, we found this was the case as Laura asked two of them and they both said they had other plans. After some thought, and trying to get hold of every boy i knew, someone said yes! :)

I spoke to him and arranged with him to meet me and Laura to do some filming in the morning, when he arrived we got all the shots we needed and a few extra because he was very cooperative which was such a relief as our short film needs to be finished by Friday and we are now on a very tight schedule to get it finished, our boy has also agreed that if we need him tomorrow he should be able to come in. :)

After finishing our filming we had planned to get a camera and import our filming onto the mac, this is where we struck another problem! there was another group using the mac we needed and the camera too, we then decided to get on with our preliminary task (the poster).

Whilst we were filming in the graveyard we also got some photos of the background we wanted for our poster and a photo of the boy to use for the silhouette, we needed more photos because the ones we had didn't achieve the golden spiral rule and we needed the silhouette to be the main focus of our poster, so when we found we couldn't start editing we decided to make our poster and finished it before the end of the day, this means we are now one down.. two to go! then our media is finished :/

Tomorrow... because we couldn't get any editing done today we have decided that we are going to edit our film and finish our magazine film review for the best part of tomorrow and if it comes to it we will have to stay after school to finish it as it needs to be done by friday.

designing poster and review

we have begun putting together our photos and experimenting on photoshop. please can you let us know what you think to the designs. one thing we must say is that we are going to try using a different photo of Amy on the reveiw so that we have a different photo from the poster.

stressful...

today we filmed all our 'house' shots, it was a looonnngg day but by the end of it i think we have finally corrected the errors. we were always sure in switiching all the lights on around my house to make sure that the lighting on our film was much better this time, we also made sure that the continuity error with our tap in the bathroom was corrected and also had my mum emptying out our fridge and getting rid of those beers and only showing a bare minimum of food in it ;)

after accidentally filming over the first lot of work we managed to get done before lunch, we then went back on ourselves and had to frustrantingly film the whole lot again for the THIRD time. i am now officially sick of hearing the ringing of my stupid alarm clock, and Amy has had that many costume changes that not even Lady Gaga in concert could compete with! (god i am so sad! look at what this project is doing to me! i am now making cheesy jokes on the blog! gahh!)

we shall now go on to shoot the final shots at school with our boy and also the graveyard finish with our boy. and then hopefully that will be a wrap! we shall neatly finish editing our whole film, design our poster and magazine review and have it all nice and ready for friday. (dear god i need a miracle!!)

photos for our poster and review

today me and Amy went out and took lots of photos that could be used in our poster and magazine film review

Photos

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poster designs

here is a slide of a few designs we drew up for ideas of a film poster. trying to follow some similarites as the 'Warp' films posters i researched and following the golden spiral rule for the composition.

Poster Ideas

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The Golden Spiral

Many here know about the " Rule of thirds " maybe the most well know principle of photographic composition.
Its principal use is to create aesthetically pleasing compositions, but you can add some energy and movement by applying the golden ratio.

the mathematical ratio is present in nature from flowers to animal, the golden ratio is a good start point to create great compositions, we can use the golden spiral to make such work.
when designing our own poster ideas we shall try to stick to this ratio, to ensure our poster is as aesthetically pleasing :)

Preliminary tasks

We have been drawing some mock ups of our film poster and our film review today, we have looked at many different posters and reviews to get some good ideas.
We have drawn lots of different mock ups so we have lots of different ideas to try out and can achieve the best for our project.
We will scan in these drawings and find out which looks the best, then get some pictures to make our poster and film review.

Editing

Editing today showed me a few more errors in our shots that we need to re-film.
I was editing the bathroom scenes and found a continuity error as the girl is brushing her teeth, as she goes to brush her teeth she turns the tap off and in the next shot the tap is back on so we will need to re-film one of the shots again to show she leaves the tap on rather than it just magically being on again.
I think we may need to film most of the house scenes again as we want our film to be perfect.

Re-filming

Whilst editing our film today we found that a few of our shots didn't work out so we are going to re-film them.

The first thing we found was that in the scenes of the graveyard we had broken the 180 degree rule so the scene didnt have continuity and had to get rid of one of the scenes we wanted to include so we will have to get some more footage of the graveyard scenes to fill the gap.

The second problem we found was that we didnt have enough footage of the girl looking at the gravestone and the gravestone looking bake up at her and we are going to need more scenes like this if we want to create a connection between the girl and the grave, we will re-film this when we film the scenes with the boy at the graveyard.

Another part of our short film we need to re-film are the scenes as the girl is waking up in her bedroom, we need to do this because the lighting is not right and needs to be lighter and the mise en scene is not right in some shots either as it contains things in the shot that shouldn't be there, we shall therefore need to re-schedule a time for re-filming this soon at laura's house.

Also with the scenes at laura's house we have spotted that in the kitchen scenes there is a shadow that shouldn't be there as she is supposed to be home alone, another thing we need to change is the food in the fridge as there is too much food in there to show her mum is never there and things in the fridge that a mother or daughter shouldn't have in there if they live alone with no father figure, we will also re-film this when we film other things again at laura's house.

I noticed that the cereal box that we were using had three happy children on the front which i thought would ruin the illusion that our character is sad and lonely, however, we thought that this was just being to picky but after speaking to our teachers about it i feel we should use a differnt cereal box so it carries on the feeling of loneliness, from this mistake i have learnt that when we are filming next time to take more attention to details like this so we don't have to re-film again.

poster research

i thought it would be a good idea to research into some film poster's for Warp Films, i found that when looking at these few that the layouts are mostly non naturalistic, with the protagonist being the main focus of the poster, a feature i would like to experiment with on our own poster. there is also a repetition of star ratings for the film, which i think would be another key element we would try and input on our own work.

there has been a number of different edits to the photos on the poster, i think altering our images and adding effects on photoshop would look effective on our poster, maybe to make a black and white layout or saturise the photo like in the 'scummy man' poster(see above). having a more empty poster with no busy background, and a photo of the protagonist face on like the 'scummy man' poster and the 'Dog altogether' screen shot would be a good layout for our own poster.

however we do have some effective photos of the graveyard too which could also be good if we were thinking of using a background or setting shot for our poster.

next step is to experiment with these ideas, collecting photos of Amy face on and in an empty shot and then effective photos of the graveyard with and without amy in them. taking these photos and adding different effects to the photos to see what fits best.

:)

Film Title ideas

i decided to list a few title ideas i had for the film, to make it a little more interesting i used wordle :)

i particularly like the idea of:

behind closed doors

first impressions

alone

invisible

trapped

shot checklist

to make it easier to see the progress we are making and the shots that are left to do, i have created a camera shot check list

Shot Checklist

another let down...

we were suppose to get some more filming done today with our boy in the shots, preferably Day 1 of our story would be completed and we were going to get the final shots of the boy and girl at school, with the hinting of the connection between them.

unfortunately at last minute our boy pulled out and so we could not film. i am hoping he will be free soon, so that we can try and complete filming altogether by the end of next week

here is a filming schedule that we can hopefully stick to

Week Commencing

Tedious

whislt getting a lot of filming done last week, i really started to realise how tedious it can get. me and amy have been really trying to work hard in getting as many shots of things as we possibly can, even if they are not used in the final cut. the amount of shots is takes to show our girl getting from one room in her house to down the stairs into the kitchen is so many, but we really hope that our hard work will get noticed and all the different angle shots we used will make a difference to the quality of our film. we will try and put a few of the creative shot ideas we came up with on here to show you. :)

progress...

after having the flu for a week, all my motivation for filming had shrivelled away and i saw no hope for our film. our actors had repeatedly let us down and time is quickly running out. i really could not see our film going anywhere and so had a talk with Mr. Smith. we have overcome some obstacles and i feel alot happier now that Amy is going to be starring in our film.
on Thursday we were able to get all of the graveyard shots that have only Amy in them completed, giving us a starting and part of an ending to our film. we then both went round to mine on the Friday morning and got all shots of the girl at her home finished, filling in a large bulk of our film. all that's left to do now is all the shots which include our boy in them too, which we hope to have done by the end of this week.
we shall show our shots done so far in tomorrow's lesson, and try and get some feedback from our teachers :)

audience profiling

Audience Profiling

Filming again

On Friday we went to Laura's house to film the house scenes, we managed to get all the footage we needed and think it went quite well as we also got some extra footage just in case we need it when it comes to editing.
Today we are planning on filming the scenes in school with our boy character and hopefully getting them all done so then we only have to film the rest of the graveyard scenes with our boy character and can get on with editing and finishing our short film after this week.
Considering how many problems we have had i think that our short film is coming along quite well as long as we can get the filming finished this week.

Laura,
I have written about how our filming is now going, do you want to write up times we have now decided to film because you did it quite well last time and then we have an official plan for filming written down.
Amy x

Filming has finally started

Yesterday we were really unsure about our film and were even considering changing our idea, however, we have decided to stick with it and try and get it done, also whilst having these thoughts we decided to do some practice shots around the school which we were not sure of how to film or if they would work but after doing them we now know how they will work in our film and are quite confident about filming them.

We have made some changes in our film, one of the changes is our main character, as we were let down many times by two different people we have just decided that it will be better if one of us was the main character and I have said that i will be her, the only problem with this is that i will not be able to film the scenes that i am acting in so i am going to film all the other scenes that i can and help laura set up the shots and give ideas to how they will be filmed. Also because I am now going to be the main character in our film we could use some of the practise shots of me in the school in our film if we need them.

Today we actually got some filming done, although we couldn't get our boy character available to film today we got most of the graveyard shots done and we got a few more shots than we may actually need but i think this is a good idea because then we will not need to go back to film any more and will have more shots to include when editing if we find we do actually need them.

Filming hazards

When we start filming we need to think of the hazards our settings may have which could endanger us, so i have thought of a few;

Graveyard scenes:

• One of us may trip over or slip on the ground, Likelihood: Medium
• Filming may offend or upset some people visiting the graveyard, Likelihood: medium/high
• Empty holes or uneven graves on the ground may trip us, Likelihood: Medium

School scenes:

• if we film at the end of school clening will be being done so floor may be wet and one of us may slip or fall, Likelihood: Low
• doors or gates may get locked and we may not be able to get out if we do not ask permissions to film, Likelihood: Low
• People in school may make filming difficult, Likelihood: medium/high

Home scenes:

• At home you are generally off guard so may not be expecting anything to go wrong so if it does it will be a shock, Likelihood: medium
• Knives in the kitchen, Likelihood: Medium
• slipping in the bathroom scenes, Likelihood: Low/ medium

Bus scenes:

• Some members of the public may not cooperate and make filming difficult or even get offended that we are filming, Likelihood: medium/high
• Their is a hazard that the bus may crash as we are filming, Likelihood: Low/medium

Now we know about these hazards we will have to be careful as we are filming and make sure we do our best to avoid these dangers.

Film poster

This is the picture i will use for the film poster. I am not sure what our film is going to be called for sure yet, i will just make a mock up of the poster for now untill we have a definate name for our film, i will then re-make the poster with our chosen name on it.
I have chosen this picture as i feel it represents our film quite well, the main plot of our film includes the setting of the graveyard, and this is where the twist in our film happens so it may be quite an iconic scene in our film which the audience will recognise, I also think that a picture of a graveyard is quite interesting because it will trigger different feelings for different people and some may be able to relate to this picture in some way.

Let down again

Today we were again supposed to get most of the filming done but unfortunately laura is ill and i cant even start filming because our actress cannot be filmed today!
I am therefore going to make a start on the other element of our short film task, the task i am going to make a start on is the film poster, although we were going to use a still from our film this is now not possible as we haven't been able to film yet, I am now going to use a picture of the graveyard we took last week for our ideas of settings.
Amy x

finally going to start filming!

i have been sat at home with the lurgie all weekend but that doesnt mean i havn't stopped working on our film :P
i have managed to get in contact with a boy who is willing to be in our film and so have communicated with our girl as well and been able to sort out a filming schedule which shall begin as of tomorrow

Monday 8.45-10.20 filming with Lauren and Jack
all of graveyard scenes- beginning and end of film

Tuesday 12.30-3.10 filming with Lauren
all footage of house in the morning

Wednesday 3.10-5.30 filming with Lauren
all footage of house in the evening

then leaving Thursday to begin editing


i shall then make up a schedule for next week in which we can get all of remaining shots finished.

Shots and ways of filming

Our film has got quite a strong story line now and we have decided what each scene is going to include, however, now we need to think about how each shot is going to be filmed and what shot types we are going to use, I have had a few ideas;

With the scenes including the school we should film the building as though it is towering above our character to give it a daunting look, because our character is not going to see the school as a good place because she has no friends.

I thought that because our main character is feeling lonely we should film with a slight angle to show that she is not happy, we will do this by having the camera looking down on her and making her seem insignificant. This angle on her could then change to looking straight on at her towards the end when she meets the boy, this will show things are looking up for her.

In the graveyard scene as she is walking towards the grave i felt that we could make this scene quite interesting by filming her at all different angles and when we come to editing it we could cut it so that she is walking then it jumps forward a bit then carries on walking and show it from a different angle, we could even pan around her as she is walking and show her walking past and then seeing her walk from the back and finally getting to the grave.

When our character is stood at the grave we could film as though the grave is a character, we could do a match-on-action shot so the camera looks at her from the grave and is looking at her then a shot from where she is stood and looking at the grave, I think this will be effective because it will show the connection between her and the grave.

On the bus scene we will have to film more footage of our character on the bus because then if we need to show a long time we can use the footage we already have rather than having to film more, also this footage may come in handy in case we need more and we dont have time to film or have more problems like we already have.

Settings and descriptions

Settings For Our Film Powerpoint

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pictures of settings

Pictures Of Settings

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Problems with filming again

As I wrote yesterday we were going to start our filming today, however, we were needing to film outside and the weather has not turned out the best for this to be successful, also we were planning on filming the whole of the opening sequence because then it would look better in our film when the starting and ending where the same, as the lighting and weather would all be the same, we can no longer do this because we need our boy character to be in these shots and we have recently found out that he cannot do it today, so we are going to find out a time when we can all film and get alot done because then our filming will run smoothly, also the corridor where we were going to film in school has had a smashed window so we cannot film there.
Apart from this we have planned which shots we need to film at one time and when we are now thinking of filming them so even though this let down has not been a help we are going to find a way around it.

Film review and poster

We next need to think about what else we needed to do to make our short film successful and after reading a bit on Mr. Ford's blog about the new film 2012 and how their marketing has lead people to believe that this film is representing real life, I thought that we needed some good marketing for our film to make people want to come and watch it .
As we originally decided we are going to do a film review about our short film to give the audience a better idea of our film and make them want to see it, however, we have changed our second idea from doing an interview about our film on radio to a film poster for our film, we feel that we could do this better because last year we both used photoshop to make a magazine and could again use these skills on photoshop to create a film poster using a still from our film to make our target audience want to come and watch our film.

Additions to Storyboard

• Graveyard shot- More close-ups


• Slower getting out of bed after alarm sounds in shots 11 + 12


• More shots of pictures of dad around her room


• After bedroom scene we need shots of her walking to the bathroom rather than just appearing there


• Close ups of post it notes


• In bathroom cupboard show 3 toothbrushes or a razor to show elements of her dads existence


• More hints of dad being dead e.g. pictures missing from the wall as she walks to kitchen


• Use a cracked mirror to show she is sad


• Quick paced shots of her getting cereal, bowl and spoon for breakfast


• Close ups of post its on fridge


• shot of girl sighing in shot 22 when she sees the milk is empty


• girl leaves bowl empty as she walks out the house to school


• before shot 28 show her waiting for the bus and not it just appearing, shots from behind and front and showing a dull day


• close ups of hands opening purse to get money and see a picture of her and dad then she shuts the purse.


• shot of her getting off the bus and walking into school


• hear the school bell and see her walking into her class


• after her class finishes bell rings again and show fast paced shots of her clearing away


• After boy walks past in shot 34 show them looking at eachother from far away as well as close ups


• in classroom close up of what she is reading and hear her reading


• on whiteboard behing teacher have written what she is feeling


• close up shots of her clearing things before knocking pen on the floor in shot 39


• after pen shot and them accidental touching close up of his eyes and then hers


• Instead of her just appearing at her house show a shot of the bus driving past her house and front of her house
• in her room a close up of her face up against the window like the shot of her on the bus
• close up of her hand knocking the photo off the side
• before she takes the photo out of the frame show the broken glass
• dont show her dad is dead on the calendar just put something like "dad 2pm"
• follow hands around and placing photo on pillow, camera stays stationary on photo on pillow as she gets up
• we need to show it is another day instead of her just appearing at school again e.g. getting into bed shutting curtains etc...
• shot of trees/house in the morning then her getting breakfast again, close up of post it on table showing her mum has left her again
• quick shots of bowl in sink, grabbing bag, shutting door
• pan of front of school in the morning
• before bell rings show close up of her at her desk looking distant
• shot of bell ringing and her picking up all her books and leaving for the door
• when buying the coffee in shot 62, have the camera coming up towards her (like the first shot in graveyard) then turns her head and boy is stood there and offers to pay for coffee
• change the note on her hand as she holds her hand out to not make it too obvious that her dad is dead and just write something like "dad 2pm"
• shots of empty school before she leaves and show her leaving through the gates
• shots of road, trees, cars with music
• shot of her walking to graveyard
• camera infront as she is walking towards the grave then switches to it following her and then switches again to the camera looking at her from where the grave is and she walks towards it and looks down.

Filming

We are going to start filming tomorrow after school, our actress is free so we are hoping to get a few shots done, some of the shots that we are planning to get are; All of the graveyard shots right to the end so that everything stays the same in the beginning and end, also the empty school as we will be filming after school and hopefully everyone will have gone. We will also try out some other shots if we have time.

bus shot

went to town the other day on the bus and so took a photo of the kind of shot we are looking for in our bus scene of the film. our protagonist will be leaning on the window looking at at what passes by :)

storyboard

okay so here is our storyboard, at the moment we are just going to go with what we have got and start filming, if we feel something needs cutting we'll cut it, or if somethings needs adding, we'll add it! :)
hope you like it!
laura and amy x x

Filming

Something has finally worked out and I have found someone who has said they will be in our film as the main boy character, he is free quite often so can work with us when we need him.
He also doesn't mind who he is in the film with which is a plus, unlike our previous main character who wanted to choose who she worked with which wasn't practical for us.

Solutions

Because our main character has dropped out of our film and we now have nowhere to film we need to find a solution and quite fast, so we have asked a few people we know and think we may have found someone to film but we just need to sort out some times when we can all be available to film, as with the problem of where to film I think I may have found somewhere where we can get to quite easily, however we just need to check this with our new main character. As with our footage being deleted we thought this may not be too much of a problem because it will not be in our film and atleast we now have an idea of final shots that we will use and how to film them.

Memento

In class we have started to watch a film called Memento to fit in with our study of post modernism. Watching this film will help us with our short film because it messes around with time, as we are planning to do in our short film.
In the film the main character has a memory problem following an accident, so to get the audience to see the story through his eyes the film starts at the end and as the film progresses time goes backwards and starts to show how he got to that point at the end, this is done by showing an end scene then showing the scene before that and so on, i think this is effective because just as the main character doesn't know how he got to that point neither do we, this will also keep the audience watching because they want to find out what has happened and what is going to happen.
This film will help us in our practical because we are also going to mess around with time slightly, although it wont be throughout our film it is what will create an interesting ending and keep our audience watching, also in the film it uses black and white to show a change in time and we may try this out in our film to see if this is effective.

Problems

We had planned out when we were going to film and who we were going to film with, however we were let down by our main character so this is a big problem, also because we were planning on using our main characters house to film in, so as well as having to find a new character to be in our film we are going to have to find new settings to film our film in. We had a few practice shots of what we wanted to include in our film but problems with one of the cameras led to our footage being deleted.

let down....

hi amy, just a quick messageto let you know about how filming is now going to have to be postponed, so much for those 3 or 4 frees that were perfect for our filming! think it might be a good idea to find someone else for our film now as they have totally messed us around and let us down big time!
speak to you soon
laura x x

Re-presentation

the process by which the media present the 'real world' (Rayner)

the selction process is:

• the decision over what is chosen to be represented and what is rejected.
• the choices made when organising the represetation.
• the options taken to focus the audience in a certain way

all of these things we are going to have most definately thought about with our representations of depressed lonely girl, suffering quietly.

Gatekeeping

a theorist called White (1961) spoke of the 'gatekeepers' - that is the people who are part of the decision making process in the construction of media texts.

in this case, WE (me and Amy) are the gatekeepers, as we are the ones making the decisions for our film, however in a bigger scale, the gatekeepers of us are our chosen institution who in effect make decisions also on what they wish our film to show.

Richard dyer - The matter of Images

Dyer said: 'how we are seen determines how we are treated, how we treat others is based on how we see them. how we see them, comes from representation.'

when showing the representation of our lonely and sad protagonist in the film, will then be inflicted on the audience. they will see this representation and then go on to treat others that fit our representation, the way they see them treated in our text.

filming

i have now found someone who has agreed to star in our film as the protagonist :)
this means we can finally crack on with starting the filming
we have managed to arrange some days in which we can all go an do some camera work and also available locations, such as the house - kitchen and bedroom, graveyard and school.

we shall have the storyboard up on the blog very soon!

post modern media

post modernists claim that in a media saturated world, where we are immersed in media 24/7 the distinction between reality and the media representation of it becomes blurs or even invisible to us.
we no longer have any sense of the difference between real tings and images of them, or real experiences and simulations of them.
media reality is the new reality.
in the modern period, artists experimented with the representation of reality.
in the post modern period, the idea of representation gets 'remixed', played around through pastiche, parody and inter textual references where the people that make the texts deliberately expose there nature as constructed texts and make no attempt to pretend they are realists.
value judgements are blurred. everything is down to taste. anything can be art, deserve an audience and culture 'eats itself'. there is no longer anything new to produce or distribute.
the distinction between ,media and reality has collapsed, and we now live in a 'reality' defined by image and representations.
images refer to each other and represent each other as reality rather than some 'pure' reality that exists before the image represents it.

Die Driet Welle

in mr smith's lesson we learnt about the Third Wave collective Identity

we were given class rules:
1. sit one seat apart
2. must stand up to ask or answer questions
3. stand up whenever a member of staff enters the room
4. answer or ask a question in 3 words
5. before speaking you must always say 'Mr Smith'

we were told that from now on we were no longer unique, we were all the same and there was to be no individuality within the class.

Areas of colective identity

gender
sexuality
religion
nationality
age
class
ethnicity
disability
celebrity

a collective identity is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest, or work together on a specific project to achieve a common objective.

after doing this lesson, we then found out that Mr Smith had simply done an experiment on us and had not really gone crazy in thinking the class had to be one. he had done a much more simper version of an experiment held in America.
The Third Wave was an experiment to demonstrate the appeal of fascism undertaken by history teacher Ron Jones with sophomore high school students attending his Contemporary History class as part of a study of Nazi Germany.The experiment took place at Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, California, during the first week of April 1967.
Jones, unable to explain to his students how the German populace could claim ignorance of the extermination of the Jewish people, decided to show them instead. Jones started a movement called "The Third Wave" and convinced his students that the movement is to eliminate democracy. The fact that democracy emphasizes individuality was considered as a drawback of democracy, and Jones emphasized this main point of the movement in its motto: "Strength through discipline, strength through community, strength through action, strength through pride".
The experiment took on a life of its own, with students from all over the school joining in: on the third day the class expanded from initial 30 students to 43 attendees. All of the students showed drastic improvement in their academic skills and tremendous motivation. All of the students were issued a member card and each of them received a special assignment (like designing a Third Wave Banner, stopping non-members from entering the class, etc). Jones instructed the students on how to initiate new members, and by the end of the day the movement had over 200 participants. Jones was surprised that some of the students started reporting to him when other members of the movement failed to abide by the rules.
On Thursday, the fourth day of the experiment, Jones decided to terminate the movement because it was slipping out of his control. The students became increasingly involved in the project and their discipline and loyalty to the project was astounding. He announced to the participants that this movement is only a part of a nationwide movement and that on the next day a presidential candidate of the movement would publicly announce existence of the movement. Jones ordered students to attend a noon rally on Friday to witness the announcement.

it was quite scary to think how easy it had been for Mr Smith to change the class in the space of just one lesson the way he did and to make us follow the rules. and just like the kids in America, could we have become a group of crazed facists by the end of the week?

we then watched a film that had been created on the basis of the experiment.











at the moment i dont really see what collective identity is going to be in our film, as we only focus on individuals.

Settings

I have had a few thoughts about the settings of our film.

We have a shot in or storyboard where the girl is in her room and she is looking out of the window whilst she is feeling alone, i thought we could use the view from my bedroom window for this because the view is quite plain looking over fields and i think this would work because it gives the feeling that she has no one around her or to turn to. Also if we needed to use a bedroom to use for the girls room we could use my bedroom because the colours may suit the feeling and it is quite a wide room so we would have room to film in it.

At the beginning of our film the girl is in a graveyard, we will film this in lutterworth because it is easy for all of us to get to and is a nice setting because we also want trees in this shot and there are a few here.

Also in our storyboard there is a shot of the girl on her way to school on a bus, we were not sure how to do this but we spoke to Mr Smith and he gave us the idea of using one of the school buses because we could film it just before the end of school when no one is on it, this would work better than using a service bus because we may need to film it a few times and would have to pay every time.

A few of the shots are filmed when the girl is at school, this will be easy to film because we can just film this in school and find an empty classroom to film in.

If we were going to film any of our shots outside i thought we could use the park where i live because it is quite quite and slightly run down, i think this would be good because it is not like a stereotypical park and would emphasise that our character is lonely.

We have had a few problems because we have had a few ideas of things we want in our film, e.g. a bathroom cabinet with a mirror, we are not sure how we are going to film this because none of us have the type of cabinet we want but we only need it shortly so maybe we could ask someone else, if not we could just change it to a bedroom cabinet with a mirror and use one of ours.

I will now take some pictures of the settings and see if they will look good in our film.

music

finally managed to embed my music onto blogger :)
i have been looking for some slow piano tunes that could be used in our film and found three possibles ones from competch.com that are not under copyright and so could be used :)

Cryptic Sorrow - Kevin MacLeod

Wounded - Kevin MacLeod

Sovereign - Kevin MacLeod

Another idea...

As i was writing out the character profiles i thought of another reason why the boy could be following the girl by adding another twist.

We have said that at first we are going to make the boy look as thought he is up to no good by following the girl to the grave yard and make him look a bit eerie on the way the camera angles follow her as thought creeping up on her and looking through the eyes of the boy, then as the film progresses we were going to have the boy in the background of the shots of the girl and have him looking at her, when she drops her pen on the floor he will then go over and help her, this then will make it seem asthough he fancies the girl.

Here's the other twist i thought of, The girl has a photo of her dad with her all the time but it is torn half and it looks asthough someone has been ripped off the other side next to her dad, towards the end of the film i then thought we could end with the twist that the girl is in the grave yard again and she is holding the picture and the boy holds his half of the picture next to hers and the find out that they are brother and sister. almost like the twist in 'Parent trap'.

Character profile: Boy

This character is going to be our secondary character in our short film. He is going to be in the background most of the time but he is still going to be an important role in our film, this is because he is going to help the girl through her tough time even though its not made obvious to her or the audience till the very end.

The boy at the beginning of the film is going to seem like he is stalking her and as the film goes on it seems more and more like he is. He is always in going to be in the background and we may make his facial expressions seem as though he is a bit strange by the way he looks at her and by making her look nice so we can incorporate in the male gaze, however, as we have mentioned before there will be a twist to his role in our short film and we will see why he has been following her.

Character profile: Main girl

The main character in our film is a girl who is going to portrayed as the stereotype of lonely, this is because she has lost her dad and her mother is never there for her and is basically 'just a post-it note', by making the mother like this the girl would feel more lonely because her father was always there for her and now she seems to have nobody.

The girl as we know is lonely, to show this she will always be seen on her own in the shots and have a sad expression on her face whils not having the best time because nothing good really ever happns to her.

However, we seem to break her being the stereotype of lonely because all the way through the film there seems to be a boy of her age following her or watching her, this is where we will use aspects of the male gaze because she must be attractive to the boy to make him keep following her or watching her, this seems quite eerie at first but towards the end there will be a twist to his role in our short film.

The girl through out the film will be thinking as will the audience that she is lonely and has nobody but in the end she finds out that she mite not be as lonely as she thought.

shuffle....

whilst writing my last few posts, i have had been listening to my ipod on shuffle. a song by 'The Fray' came up called 'Never Say Never', i really quite liked listening to the track and the feel of the song was very similar to the feelings i want the songs in our film to portray. i think this was because the use of the piano throughout with the rather slow tempo was effective. i have been looking at several pieces of music similar to this , which i hope to share with you soon, and I'm really finding that the piano is becoming an effective instrument to portray the sad feel of our film. 'The Fray' certainly uses piano frequently in its music and so this little stumble upon this track in my shuffle has turned out being quite inspirational and so i shall continue to look for some sympathising piano tracks. however i do not want to use any music that has words, but it was not the words i was focusing on in 'The Fray' track but the use of the piano.

further thoughts...

after thinking further into this idea of the mother, whilst watching the film 'Matilda' with my younger sister, i came to realise that the mother character in that was a lot like i saw our mother character being like, but just not ever being shown in the film. a certain point in the film made me think this, when everyone leaves the small child, Matilda, alone for the whole day in the house. before the mum leaves she gives the girl some instructions on how to get herself some dinner and then leaves her to fend for herself. obviously the point being tried to make in 'Matilda' was the fact that the girl was much to young to fend for herself and this isn't what we are trying to show in our film. however the same principles are there about the mother not being there for her daughter and this is what we are trying to show in our film. Matilda is also shown with having no friends and being on her own just like our protagonist and one of the reasons for her loneliness is her mother's neglect.

character profile: mother

i have begun to think in more depth about the characters of our film. i have particularly been thinking about the mother, and how we are going to never show a person but show messages and requests left by the mother for our female protagonist to find. in effect her mother is simply post it notes. this shall emphasise greatly on the protagonists loneliness, and really bring to home how close she was with her father. her father being the one she spoke to about her problems and the one she made most contact with.

from the amount of messages left, it shall show that she is very rarely around for her daughter and so wrapped up in her own world and thinking that communicating this way is better than nothing but in actual fact it is a lot worse. half of the time we show the girl not paying attention to these messages, showing that she doesn't really listen to them.

her mum will be shown as thinking that she is looking out for her daughter but the fact that she is never seen in the film and purely represented by a post it note will show that in actual fact she is never there. the mother could be seen as a binary opposite to the father, if the audience are told in some way that the father was always there for his daughter and the one spoke to her about everything.

Laura,
Next lesson shall we get a tape and film a few shots like timelapse and match on action, we could use this to get a better idea of how to do the shots and to see if they would look good in our film and then we could add the shots we will use in our storyboard.
wb.
Amy x

The male gaze

Laura Mulvey (1975), "Visual pleasure + narrative cinema". Laura Mulvey believes that 'The male gaze' means that the audience of a film have to view the characters through the perspective of a heterosexual male.

The male gaze for femenists is:

How men look at women, How women look at themselves and How women look at other women.

The Male Gaze:

The camera lingers on the curves of the female body and the events which occur to the woman in the film are presented mainly in the way the man would react to these events or want the woman to react.

In our film because our main character is a female i think we may have to look at the male gaze to keep the male audience interested because the film is aimed mainly to women and this could make our film not as successful, i feel that because our character is 17 we could incorporate the thought of the male gaze by having a girl who is pretty to look at but not having it to obvious because this may ruin our film and not stick to the story line.

Stereotypes.

Stereotypes as we learnt in the lesson are important to a film because it helpes people be able to relate to the characters in the film and understand the film and different groups of people in the film easier.

Tessa Perkins in 1997 said that stereotypes contain a number of assumptions that can be challenged, using different assumptions: They are not always false e.g.- Cowboys do wear cowboy hats or in terms of our film, young girls tend to be emotional. They are not always negative e.g.- Lonely girls do not always commit suicide.Not always about minority or less powerful groups e.g.- Our girl is unfortunate in what happens to her but she is upper class.They can be said about your own group e.g.- another girl thinks our girl is lonely and maybe depressive.

Problems with a stereotype can be that they over look an individual, place people in groups or people are often exaggerated in their stereotypes which create caricatures.

In our film we are going to use a stereotype of a young lonely girl. I feel that the stereotype of someone who is lonely is that they are quite depressive and keep themselves to themselves, in our film we are going to make our girl fit the stereotype so that the audience can see that she is lonely but we will not make her into a caricature becasue we think this could ruin our film by making it seem too depressive. Our character may break the stereotype slightly because she doesnt keep herself hidden, however, she will be a quiet person.

time lapse

okay so to create a time lapse, technically you are suppose to use a series of still shots and create the film, but me and Amy want to try and cheat this and just film and then speed up the footage. we have experimented with this and you shall be seeing it shortly on the blog but for now i found some sand sculpting time lapse on YouTube which is using the same technique that we want to use. see what you think :)

our pitch

Our Short Film Pitch 1

View more presentations from lauraandamy.

Inspiration from a music video

I watched the music video to Beyonce's song 'Broken hearted girl', i thought the song would be the kind of song we would use in our short film because it is about a girl who goes through a tough time in love and life, as the video shows, the music uses a slow beat and a piano in the background which also sets the sad mood of the video whic we are thinking of using in our short film.

The video is set on a beach which would be a nice setting for our short film because it uses waves of the sea to represent sadness and the waves could be her tears, however, we cant get to a beach to film it so we will use other places which are relaxing and maybe rain to represent tears and how the girl is feeling and how she feels alone in our short film.

The video is also filmed mainly in black and white but the symbolic things in the video are in colour to show they are important and stand out. I also like how the different shots fade in and out of eachother to create a slow sad feeling.

A particular part of the music video where beyonce is putting pettles back on a rose i really liked because it is quite symbolic to how she is feeling, i thought that it represented her getting her happiness back or something to do with love because it was a rose. and it gives the audience time to think and again and they could make their own ideas up about what this shows. I also liked this because of the way this scene is filmed.

This is England

Last night i watched 'This is England' on Film Four, and as i watched it i jotted down some ideas that i felt would work great in our own short film. Near the beginning of the film Shaun's mum reminds him of how his dad has gone now, the line being "dad's gone" this was then followed by the start of a slow piano tune that played for a series of time and made me empathise greatly with Shaun, i felt that the music was a big influence on this.

secondly whilst the piano music was played, shots of trees in the sun and different buildings were shown, with noone else in the shots. i felt that this was setting the scene of the film and also the piano gave the sense of loneliness, the different surroundings were reflecting Shaun's feelings.

Thirdly, the slow piano music, Fuori Dal Mundo, was signature to the film, and in several parts was reoccuring. i feel that this will be a good thing to do in our film as it will bring back the sad feeling to the film and connect all the shots, giving the film a nice smooth flow.



there is also an effective use of a photograph os Shaun's father who died in the faulklands war, this photo is looked at by shaun through the film several times, this is showing that shaun is sad about the death and shows his loneliness, and in the film actual words about his fathers death are not used frequently and so this photo helps the audience work out for themselves.

i managed to find a short trailer of the channel four film i watched 'the unloved', i spoke about it in an earlier post and now i have watched the trailer again i noticed that the camers work used is very naturalistic and gives it that feel of being seen through the child's eyes. the camera shots in this other clip are very invasive but she does not once look at the camera. the camera is seen as being hand held...a technique used frequently in the battle scene of 'saving private ryan' and something that in GCSE english i had to study quite religously. the effect of this 'hand held camera' really allows the audience to be in with the film and looks as if we a looking through a character's eyes.

unfortunately i could not embed the clip but if you follow this link you can see the invasove shots of 'the unloved' - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyLbGIieA-E


here is a clip of the hand held camera footage in 'saving private ryan'