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.

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'.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. :)

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.