Pinewood opening sequence

Contributions to the Production Process

Overall for the Childrens Film Project I have contributed as much as my media knowlege will go. I have:

• Offered idea's for filming and idea's for story line.
• Helped in the editing and idea's for editing of the final film.
• Helped choose location area's and idea's that we could film on the spot.
• Helped with development of the story line.
• Helped with research into film clasification for our film.

contributions to production process

so far i have contributed in planning and practical:

• coming up with story lines
• filming different camera angles.
• being an actor in the film sequence.
• editing the videos and making sure they look good and have continuity.

progress report

the process and production planning has been quite easy so far. straight away we though of a good place film which was the small forest in long. the only thing we struggled with was making a storyline that would fit well with the set and our genre. this did not take us too long and we were soon coming up with lots of storylines. we have not encountered any problems yet everything is going as we planned. after half term we are going to be concentrating on making titles and editing our work to the best we can. our main priorities is getting the words to fit on the trees. we are going to editing our video first then titles then music. this is because we need to see how long our music needs to be and where the words need to be placed.

Target Audience

Who is your target audience?
Our target audience will be the parents of the children who would want to go see the film as they are the ones who will be looking at the marketing before taking their children to see the film.


Who is your target market?
Our target market will be children (Aged 6-12) and both male and female as these will be the people mostly probably wanting to go see the film and this is the age range that the film will cater for. We want this to be the age of people coming to see the film as that is who we have aimed it for.

Would the film be just for children?

The film will mainly be aimed at children but it will also have to appeal to adults who will be taking their children to see the film. We have done this by making the film idea less of a childish film and made it a little more serious for the adult viewers. There will be no adult humour in the film as this would not be appropriate for the children who the film in mainly aimed at.

Marking Criteria Self-Assessment

-Holding a shot where a appropriate
We did this in our opening sequence by focusing on the branch that the character runs in to, we used a tripod to keep it steady
-Framing a shot including or excluding elements where appropriate
We did this at the very beginning of our sequence by only filming the characters feet to not give the dentity away
-Using a variety of shot distances where appropriate
When we showed the light through the leaves we used different distances from the leaves
-Shooting material appropriate to task
Our film is easily appropriate for a U/PG film
-Selecting mise en scene
We achieved this through storyboarding and research
-Editing so meaning is apparent to viewer
We have not started editing yet
-Using varied shot transitions and other effects selectively and appropriately
We have not got to this stage yet
-Using sound with images and editing
The only sound we have is diagetic sound made when filming for example footsteps and wind
-Using titles where appropriate
We have not got to this stage yet but have planned it so the title is shown clearly and is linked to the story

BBFC session

in one session  last week we were looking at BBFC which stands for british board of film certication, in this session we were looking at the certification for U and PG, the reason we were doing this was to know what the limits are for childrens films and what they are and are not allowed to contain. this will help me for future childrens film project because i will now know what i can put in my film which will be apprioate and what i can not put into my film. also in the session we made a spider diagram of the different subjects in certifications.

Back to the future story boarding

in media last week we took a look at the opening sequence to 'back to the future'. the reason we did this was because we were looking at how to do storyboards. we started off with just discussing what is in a storyboard like shot types, shot numbers and information of the shot. after this we watched the clip of back t the future and we had to study what was in the clip like sounds and shot types. the reason we did this was because we were going to draft out what we saw on screen and draw it onto a storyboard. we did this to test out our storyboard skills. this will help me in my coursework because i will know how to prepare and draw out a storyboard properly. and also be able to make storyboards correctly.

BBFC Lesson

We began by looking up the classification of the ratings U and PG on the bbfc website. http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/u/ .Then we watched clips from a selection of films with the rating of U and PG. We had to identify in groups whether they were PG or U. This helped us to make our children's film opening as it gave us the guidelines we had to stay within. Also the lesson helped us to know how films are classified and why. 

Back to the future storyboarding

In this lesson we watched the opening sequence of Back to the Future. We took notes about significant things in the opening. We then storyboarded the opening sequence showing the significant moments and objects in shot. We did this to help with our storyboarding for our children's film opening.

BBFC Lesson

In this lesson we looked at the clasification of UK shown films. We began by looking at the clasification for the U category on the BBFC's Website (http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/u/) and made a poster on this (shown in a previous post). We then discused with other groups the clasification for PG films and shared with the class (http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/pg/). This lesson helped up to know what films are clasified by and how each claification is decided. This will help us with our project as it means that we know what it appropriate for our film as it is aimed at children.

Back to the Future storyboard task

During one lesson we had the task of producing a storyboard for the opening sequence for the film 'Back to the Future'. We began by analysing the film by taking notes on key parts of the opening and then sharing them in our groups. We then decided on key parts and put them into a story board. This helped with our drawing of the storyboard for ou childrens film. We learnt that storyboarding is an essential part to the making of a film.

storyboards

We are going to film it in the order of the storyboard because that is the most efficient way. This is because none of the shots are similar in area so there isn't much point in filming them in an order other then in the order of the storyboard.

spider diagram

Planning/spider diagram

Narrative:
start with different shots of a forest and each shots fade in and out, then we have a pan shot of the forest ground but then quickly picks up somebody running. there are various shots of somebody running through a forest in panic, as if they are running a way from something or someone.

Characters:
in the film there would be many characters, but for our opening sequence there will only be one character and that is a teenager who will be running through the forest.

Genre
The genre we have decided that fits best with our sequence is adventure, we chose this because our sequence is held in a forest and it is a bout a teenager travelling through a forest to find a way out but has an adventure on the way.

Themes
our theme is childhood imagination, it is mostly about a teenager who has forgotten his child hood and ends up being lost in a forest with strange creatures that he is scared of but then becomes his friends, the theme will be in a forest so there will be mainly green colours. it is an adventure so some parts of it will be fast paced shots.

Mise-on-scene
we will not need any props for our sequence, the costume for our teenager is a simple clothes such as jeans a hooded jumper and trainers. the lighting we will be using is just natural light as we want that natural effect. there is only one actor in our opening sequence and that person is ben who is also a group member, acting isn't really involved in our opening sequence, ben only has to run.

Camerawork
our camera shots are going to be quite fast paced to show an urgency or panic like feeling. we are really going to be experimenting with our camera angles an shot types. some of our shots may not work but we are going to try our best to make the best out of our situation.

Editing
our main editing subject will be putting the titles in the right place on our scenes, also with editing we need to make sure the shots are cut and put together to make a fast paced sequence but to also be clean and smooth.

Sound
we will be using natural sound through out the sequence but at some point we will have a track in the background it will probably be a fast track but we need to see what will fit with the sequence.

Special Effects
in our sequence we have special effect and that is the text on the trees. and then at the end of our sequence the shot ripples out with music

Children's Film Analysis

I chose the opening sequence to the Simpsons movie. The opening where there is a concert on the lake suggests that the films plot will be based around the pollution in the lake and the people of Springfield littering on the lake. This is shown by the bad bringing up the environment and then their boat gets dissolved by the lake. This happens while the people of Springfield throw rubbish at them. The opening sequence also gives clues to the main characters and their personalities by focusing on them in the shot of what they are doing. For example the highlight the character Miss Krabaple on someone's shoulders with a t-shirt saying 'he is not my boyfriend'. this shows she might be desperate ore single. The the clues for the main character Homer Simpson are given by having his voice stand in a quite room, making a fool of himself and too make it worse he was talking about Jesus outside the church. This gives us a clue that he will regularly do stuff like this which could be linked to the narrative. Comical conventions such as one of the band members being hit in the crotch by a rock shows that the film is a slapstick comedy. The mood is shown to be layed back in the town by all of the towns people are at the concert.

Ben Norris-Homework

This is our poster on the bbfc's certification of U films.

Childrens Film Analysis (Garfield The Movie)

The film begins with the camera pans down to the left to show a home, and at this point the title roles in. It then fades to a close up of photos of a cat and a man. The camera pans across many photos of the two together. Next the camera pans slowly past a man asleep in a bed and finally pans onto something asleep under a cover. You can hear snoring and then an alarm clock rings. The camera becomes a mid shot (cat wise) of the cat waking up and he repeats his quote ‘I hate Mondays’. The camera then tracks the cat climbing onto the main bed and up to the man’s chest. He then tracks back and up a chair, some books, a TV and a book shelf. It cuts to an over the shoulder shot of the cat looking at the man asleep in bed. It then cuts back to the cat just before he jumps. It then cuts to an extreme long shot of the cat jumping onto the man’s bed. This wakes up the man. This shot slides off and the new shot of the bath slides in. It then pans up from the bath to show a shower. It then cuts to the cat sat on a toilet then it zooms a little to show the cat flush the toilet. It cuts back to the shower curtain moving, implying the person behind is moving quickly. It cuts to a new scene of the kitchen and a close up of some corned beef. It then cuts again to cat food being opened, and cuts again to the food being scraped into a bowl labelled ‘Garfield’. Cut again to a microwave timer just stopping and the cuts again to the man’s hand removing the corned beef from the microwave. A match in action occurs as the microwave is closed it cuts to the man closing the microwave with Garfield next to him.

This opening gives the idea that it is a comedy film and it shows that the main characters are the man and the cat. The mood of the film would be a light one.

Storyboard back to the future.

Evaluation of Gwuaning

We were asked to make a short film using many different filming techniques. We used techniques like shot reverse shot, the 180 degree rule and match on action. Problems encountered included things like laughing during filming, positioning of the camera (not getting the right height) and distractions. This task will help with future filming projects such as our childrens film project by giving us the experience of using the camera and it gave us a wider range of techniques to use.

introduction!

Hello our names are Rufus Henderson, Ben Norris and Adam Stronge. we have a keen interest in media. This is our video called Gwuaning, we enjoyed making this small edit as we had to follow guidelines on what shots we should use e.g. 180 degree rule and match on action shot . we also enjoyed this task because it was our first time of preoperly filming a sequence.