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

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.

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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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'.

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.

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.

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

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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.