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'

presenting our pitch went really well. As we spoke of our ideas, new ones were spurting in my head as i spoke and found new inspirations and ideas being created. we told the class of how we have looked into shane meadow's work and in particular 'this is England'. as i spoke about the film i realised that in actual fact the protagonist of our film was starting look very similar to Shaun, the protagonist of 'this is England'. Shaun is also suffering from the loss of his father and having to tackle day to day problems including bullying at school. the film is shown through shaun's eyes, which is a convention we want to use in our film having issues seen through our girl's eyes.
i shall continue to research further into some of shane meadows work as he had been a successful director and made several short films also.





the way in which in the film the loss of shaun's dad is portrayed through the photo is effective and something we have considered to use in our own film. we were asked whether we would have a flashback of how the dad dies but i think that this could be difficult to achieve without looking corny and would make us lose the feel of our film. showing small clips throughout of the girl looking at the photo and visiting the grave will be a better way of expressing her grief and letting the audience know that she is grieving for her father.

Pitch

We showed our pitch to the class and i feel that it went quite well because the powerpoint explained clearly our ideas, whilst reading it we expanded on what the slides said to get into more depth of our initial ides of our short film.

From showing and talking to the class about our ideas we gained afew more, we have decided to look closer at some more of shane meadows work because he has made short films as we are hoping to make them, also we have thought that we can base our main character on the main character in ' this is england' because this is the kind of character we were hoping to use.

We also have gained a better grasp on our idea because being put on the spot made us decide what we were doing and by explaining it to others it helped us understand it better ourselves.

semantic and cultural code

In todays lesson with Mr Smith we extended our knowledge of Narrative codes further. we watched the opening of the Royal Tenenbaums again. but this time to looking at how they use cultural and semantic codes to represent . We were asked to focus on one of the three children and pick out all of the things we could think of that would come under the two codes.


I decided to look at Chas.

• He is always seen wearing a suit, this could suggest that he is into business and shall go into business as a career. He shall become wealthy and money will matter.


• when situated with his siblings he is always central, he sits upright with his arms folded and always speaks with a high vocabulary and confidence in his tone. This shows that he is of high status in the family and shall go on to be in high power.


• his bedroom is set up like an office, with a computer, volumes of books and a money deposit safe. These all reflect an organised, work orientated character. Not the usual behaviour seen by a boy his age.


• he asks his mother for money, and already has the cheque written. This shows he's ahead of the game, but could it also present him as being spoilt?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Today we watched a film called The Royal Tenenbaums, the film has used the cultural and semantic codes to represent the characters, we have been asked to look closer at one of the characters and work out the semantic and cultural codes used to represent a particular character.


Richie is one of the main characters in the film, he wears quite sporty clothes and is a good tennis player, he has a brother and a sister who are both older than him, he sticks to his role and acts like the youngest too, there is a shot of him sat on his mothers knee drawing a picture whilst his brother is asking for money towards his business, by having a shot like this shows that he is quite needy of his mother.


After watching this film I have been inspired to add elements like this into our short film e.g. what the character is wearing are important to help the audience understand the character and the semantic codes that go with that character and keep the audience interested.

Narrative Codes

We have recently been learning about Roland Barthes, a semiologist who created the narrative codes. There Are five codes altogether:

1. Action Code- applies to any action that implies a further narrative action. e.g. character picks up a pint, he then drinks it.

2. Enigma Code- refers to any element in a story that is not explained and, therefore, exists as an enigma for the audience. e.g a murder in CSI

3. Semantic Code- any element in a text that suggests a particular, often additional meaning by way of connotation. e.g. if a character is wearing a suit, he may be seen as dull, boring, smart or a business man.

4. Cultural Code - tends to point to our shared knowledge about the way the world works.

5. Symbolic Code - when the audience are given the black and white, then fill in their own grey.



We then learnt about 'Binary Opposites' e.g. black and white, fat and thin, old and young. Levi Straus believed that the world was split into a series of 'binary opposites'. Essentially one thing can only be defined in relation to something it isn't. e.g. A hero is only a hero if there is a cowardly option.

Hi, yes that sounds like a good idea shall we meet up in our free today in the library to get it done? I have some ideas on the institution we could use because i have been watching some short films on channel four and they are quite similar to our idea. wb

Amy xx

Today we spoke to Mr Ford and ask him for advice on our film, as we lost a member of our group and so got a little worried about how much work we were going to have to accomplish. He assured us that as long as our preparation and planning was really up to date and organised, then the filming could be simple to tackle later on. We have set to work on really knuckling down and getting some great ideas together for our film. Mr ford reccommended we watch some short films on the internet, particularly ones made by channel four, he also told us about a short film called 'Laid Off'.

We watched the film on Youtube.com and found some inspiration that we felt could be used in our own film, the whole feel of the film was rather depressing as it revolved around death, this is exactly the feel we want to accomplish in our film. :)

hey amy

we need to make sure our presentation for our film is ready to show in class, i have began doing a few slide but if we could me up in our free to finish it off that would be great :)
let me know asap so we can get sorted

laura
x x

Narrative Theory

today i learnt about the narrative theory. A narrative being the way in which a story is told in both fictional and non fictional media texts. there are only seven stories in the world.

Vladimir Propp is a russian critic and literary theorist who spent his life analysising stories. he analysed 100 russian fairytales in the 1920s, he also proposed that it was possible to classify the characters:

hero (seeks something)

Villian (opposes the hero)

donor (helps hero by providing hero)

dispatcher (sends the hero on his quest)

False hero (falsely assuming role of hero)

princess (rewards hero, needs protection from hero)

her father

we also learnt about Tzvetan Todorov, he was a bulgarian literacy theorist, he suggested that ,most narrative start with a state of equilibrium in which life is 'normal' and protagonists are happy. this state of happiness is interrupted by and outside force.

in the class we watched a disney pixar short film called 'Boundin', we then had the task of identifying which character in the film was the character outlined by vladimir.

we have now started to think of who in our own short film will fit the role of the Vladimir characters, but before we can do this properly we have been trying to think of a structure for our film.

we would like to use the idea of mixing up the narrative, having the conclusion shown at the beginnning and then the film leading up to this conclusion just like the film 'Pulp Fiction'.

we also discussed how would we show the protagonist is leading a lonely life, i was inspired by a shot in 'hollyoaks' which showed the girl dressed up glamorously and then when she turns to look in the mirror, in reality she looks a complete mess, we could interpret this shot in our own film showing the protagonist how she dreams of being but how she sees herself in reality.

99 problems

in todays lesson me and my group watch a series of music videos and clips from films, e.g. rushmore, Jay Z 99 problems, Battle Rouge and The Royal Tenebaums. from watching the variations in each film clip i was inpired in many ways e.g. the ba;ck and white used in the Jay Z video i found was effective in helping to portray the message given in the video and i found it was very similar in the ways we want our film to be shown

the different shots used and quick edits of The Royal Tenebaums kept the film, quick paced and allowed me and the rest of the audience to keep engaged in the action, i think that this needs to be reflected in our own film and with it having such a serious drama appeal, quick edits will be essential to ensure that the film does ot become boring and uniteresting.

the use of introduction and titles int The Royal Tenebaums was also effective and an unusual element, i founf, to use in film. it gave the film a more unnaturalistic approach awhich i believe could be something that we could explore with our own film. the titles allowed the characters to be introduced in a unique way.

Initial Ideas

in our group we have decided to do the short film task

we all agreed that this would be the best one for us to do as it is quite challenging and if done successfully, will be an impressive thing to show in an university interview. The task is very open and does not limit us with our ideas, but essentially we had to narrow down our ideas and come up with something specific.

our first ideas were to use animation and real life film mixed together, as inspired from the Daft Punk music video. we soon began to realise that this would have been too hard to achieve as we are limited with and equipment.

we then searched on the internet for 'Best short Films' and found a website that had award winnning short films, one in particular interested us most and inspired us for our new idea.

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/insideindies/shortsfest/player.html?chosen=bulletproof

this link shows the film we watched, it was called 'Bullet proof Vest' and it followed the lives of american twins living in a city where gun crime is at its highest. we liked the shots used, e.g. the camera looking out of a car window and streets passing by and the use of timelapse.we searched several different videos on youtube of examples and liked the idea of a city scene. after searching for images were inspired by this and would like to have a blur of people passing by our protagonist.

we also liked the idea of following somebody's life and reporting there misfortunes. it was directed by Samantha Mortan and portrayed a powerful drama from a childs eyes. samantha used her hometown to film in, which inspires me to use rundown middle class areas from local hometowns of my own.

after discussion, we have decided to make a film that follws a child who is neglected at home and at school and feels alone. we have said that we must be careful that we do not turn our film into a documentary and so will come up with a story in our film that will have a start, middle and ending.

as the discussions went on i remembered seeing a film on channel 4 called 'The Unloved', following the story of a child brought up in an unhappy life and having to be put into care.

some ideas we have thought up of shots are using a grey tint on the camera to show flashbacks, have people in the streets walking past her in fast motion. we will show her struggling in school with her work and having to handle abuse at home from her mum. we began to think of an ending, and started of thinking of something happy and uplifting...her finding help from an outsider however after further discussion we have thought of the idea of focusing on two portaginists both having troubnles in ther lives and shots switching between the tow throughout the film, leading up to the audience assuming that the protagonists will meet and help eachother, but in the unexpected they pass in the street and that is all. all our ideas have been written on a wisemap.