Questionnaire Analysis

Questionnaire Analysis

When we made our questionnaires we had to display our results and I choose to create a biteable presentation which can be seen by on the video below.

As you can see in the analysis above the my Prelim task received an overall positive reception from the people who I showed it to. And the criticism I received was mainly referring to the acting and the music in the background. The acting in the Prelim was to test the people in my group to see who was the best at acting overall so when we do film our actual opening we knew who should be acting. And the music in the background was just a humorous placeholder as I needed some music to place into the background and I just had the file on my computer from another task so I made use of what I had. Also as this was the last thing added to the Prelim i didn't have as much time to edit it as the deadline was near so I had to make do with what I had.

Codes and Conventions

Codes and Conventions

My group have now finished the prelim task and we have been now told to research the codes and conventions of the film genre that we are final film is going to be part of. Our final film is going to be a chase scene and while these can be seen in a variety of different film genres it's most commonly found in the the Action film genre so that is where i'll be looking for codes and conventions.

The setting for a majority of action films is a large, busy city with many tall buildings. This is because when intense scenes are filmed in busy areas they are made more realistic by all of the people in area  reacting to their situation such as fleeing the area when fight scenes occur this makes the film look more realistic. Also while it can also include exotic locations (temples, ruins, etc) that is more commonly found in the action adventure sub genre. The setting of our final film is going to be the sixth form building as because of the buildings layout (stairs, elevators, corridors, etc) it heavily resembles a office building which are found in large cities. This means it we can film a chase scene in this location and it won't look out of place as the location will make audiences think that it has been filmed in a large city.

The music that is found in the action genre is used to create suspense and tension in certain scenes where the protagonist is being pushed to his/her limit such as being chased by the antagonists henchmen (main antagonist would make his followers do his bidding). This is so that the audience does not lose interest when watching the film as if the chase scene had no music in the background it would be very lack luster so sound is a key element to a chase scene. However the music those not always have to be used to create suspense it is also used to make scenes more intense and in some cases it will be the films themes song which is normally used in final confrontation against the films antagonist. This makes the viewers get hyped as we are about to see an epic fight.

Above is an example of music used to make film scenes much more intense from the film Star Wars The phantom menace (1999). The scene it is used in is the climatic fight at the end of the film where   Qui gon jinn and Obi wan Kenobi must fight the sith apprentice Darth Maul and this song starts even before the fight begins which slowly builds up the intensity until they start fighting.

The costume that the characters wear is a very broad as in an action film one character could be wear a shirt and jeans and look like a random civilian and then in another scene be wearing a shirt and tie and look like they have a very rich person. But when I think about chase scene costumes I mostly associate them with the chasers wearing black suits as it makes them look more ominous so they stand out among everyone else in the scene where as the person getting chased will be wearing clothes that fit with the setting around him (Wearing jeans in a city and work shirt and tie when working in a office) this way they blend in with everyone else which from the characters perspective makes them believe that they won't get noticed as they don't stand out.

The video above is from The Matrix (1999) where Neo must escape from the Agents. I show this video because it will help me to explain what I mean about costume. throughout the scene the Agents wear black suits which compared to everyone else's makes them stand out more. Now look at Neo's outfit a business suit while this sounds similar to the Agents outfits we can tell that they are different but compare that to all of his co workers clothes and they look almost identical but this only works in this scene as it's a office building so you expect to see people in suits whereas you'd wouldn't expect someone like Neo to wear in outside of his job. 

And one of the most common conventions of a Action films explosions. These are found in almost every action film including sub genres. They are found in scenes with lots of action in them such as a final battle or escaping a somewhere that is about to explode. This is such a popular convention that there is a theory (The Whammo theory) which states that every 10 minutes there should be a 'Whammo' or a explosion of some sort so that the audience is entertained throughout the film. However for are final film it may be difficult to add explosions to our chase scene as none of my group have any experience adding Special effects of that scale to a film.

Prelim Task Questionnarie

So I could get some audience feedback I created a questionnaire show I could find out what my classmates thought about the film below will be a version of the questionnaire

           1.   How well do you think the acting is in the clip?

Good                    Bad

           2.   If you choose bad how could we improve it?

           3.   How is the editing in the clip?

                Good      to fast       to slow    continuity error

           4. If selected continuity error where was this in the clip?

                                

           5.   How does the camerawork look throughout the clip?

                     Good                        to shaky      

      6. Overall do you believe that this was a good filming attempt?

        Yes                            No

            7.    How do you believe we could improve our film in the future?

       8.  What do you think about the music in the background?

             Too loud            Too Quiet

            9.    Should we include music similar to this in our final film?

       Yes                      No

      10. Anything you want to say about the film?

Prelim Task Evaluation

Prelim Task Evaluation

When we created our prelim tasks I was the director of my group which means that I was the person who was making sure that my group was performing their roles properly so that we were all producing efficient work. For example during filming I had to make sure that our cameraman was the filming the scenes in a specific way (tracking, shooting from certain angle, etc.). The briefing was to create a short clip which includes the editing and camera techniques that we had researched in the past. 

Overall I believe that we meet most of the briefing as we had a wide variety of different shots and editing techniques so that it didn’t the clip wasn’t boring. However, there were also times when we didn’t meet the briefing for example while we used loads of different techniques we still missed out a few that I believe we could have incorporated into our prelim.I think that we were very successful during the production of our clip as we followed a majority of the scripts and storyboards that we created so we always knew what we had to do. 

Also I was unsure of the difficulties we were going to have when using the film cameras as before this all of us had only used digital cameras but I was surprised how quickly are cameraman got the hang of using it which made filming go much quicker than we first anticipated. But there were things that my group was unsuccessful with the main thing were our teamwork skills. I say this because during our first day of filming there were times where we butted heads as we all believed that certain things could have been shot in a better way which lead to a few minor arguments however we eventually resolved all of these issues and filming continued. 

Also we had to re film certain scenes as we had a combination of digital camera footage and film camera footage which lead to noticeable quality drops during production but we managed to resolve it quickly.During our production I’ve learnt how to direct a small film group and multiple film techniques to make sure that our film is of high quality. I also learnt how to edit films using Final Cut Pro which includes cutting clips together, applying transitions (fade in/out) and adding background music to make clips more interesting. 

I will use what I’ve learnt to make sure to improve our main task such as new camera techniques to create more interesting shots and I’ll use my editing techniques to make the final film look professional.When looking at my groups time management I think that we could have done much better as to my knowledge we were one of the last groups to finish filming as we had to re shoot some scenes with the film cameras this meant that we had less time to edit than the rest of the groups. This was also concerning considering that my group had one of the shorter prelim clips just going over 30 seconds so we should have been one of the first to finish. So one my main goal for directing our final film will be managing our time so we can improve our film.

Prelim task script

Prelim script

As part of our preliminary task my group has to produce a different piece of research (location, props, costume). So for my group I'm making the script for our opening. It's important to note that characters don't have names yet so they will be named after their roles in this script. Also the script is prone to changes in the future. (character names are place holders and may change)

Roles 

John (Callum W)
Dave (Brandon T)
Jack J is an understudy
and i'll be filming the whole scene

FADE IN

COLLEGE - DAY

Another peaceful, day at the local college all the students are studying as the exams are just around the corner

FADES IN

COLLEGE - CLASSROOM - DAY

A man is walking down a corridor and into a classroom he then approaches another man at a table as students are working away 

DAVE, College friend of John's and takes same lessons as him

DAVE

Oh hey John, how are you doing?

JOHN, Another College student and a close friend of Dave's

JOHN

(sitting down)

Hi Dave, I'm doing well what about you?

DAVE
Me?, i'm fine, I've just been revising for the upcoming exams. 
Have you been revising?

JOHN
Well I haven't been able to hang out with anyone 
since their all revising so I haven't had anything else to do.

DAVE
What did you expect they've been acting like 
the exams are damn apocalypse.


JOHN 

If that's what they are thinking about the mocks 
I'll love to see their reactions to the real exams.

DAVE
(Laugh)
Haha Yeah... so class is almost over want head over to the shop?
JOHN 
Sure why not

John and Dave get out of their seats and walk out closing the door behind them

FADES TO BLACK

Preliminary task filming research

Prelim task filming research

As we will soon be doing our prelim task i'm going to research some important techniques used in the prelim task.

Match on action

Match on action is a commonly used technique. it's used by the editor to cuts one shot to another one view of the exact same shot so that the continuity doesn't break this can be used in many ways such as a man reaching for his weapon, a person entering a car and the most well known one someone opening a door and it cuts to the mans hand turning the door knob. this is used to create dramatic effect in the scene however this can change depending whats happening (picking up gun more dramatic than opening door). This can be seen in the example as the camera cuts from the man opening the door to the man walking through the door.

Shot/reverse shot

A shot reverse shot is a technique used in conversations. How it works is that the camera cuts from one person talking to another to show that characters who will then tell the other person something, after that the camera cuts back to the original person and shows their facial expressions. this is used to create tension in a dramatic situation as it's commonly used to shock the audience as the technique is normally used when information important to the plot is revealed. this is seen in the extract as the woman is talking to the man, who then reveals something to the woman  and we then see the woman's facial expression. These are seen in almost every film the for this because they are almost always used when two characters are having a conversation so you are likely to see many of them in a single film.

180 degree rule

the 180 degree rule is a important technique that is almost always used in a conversation. how it works is while two characters are having a conversation the camera is limited to a 180 degree angle this is that the characters are looking directly at each other and it also reveals their positioning and scene the characters are in while limiting our view to one side of conversation. However we still see the setting that they are in and we have a good idea of what the entire setting looks likes.

An example can be seen above of the limitation of the 180 degree rule. We can only see this side of scene however we can see the entire setting that the two characters are in and as this is for the entire clip the rule hasn't been broken so throughout the entire scene the man in blue will always be on the left and the man in black will be dressed in black. And if this is not the case the rule has been broken as it has shown more than half of the setting.

Film idea update

After talking to my group we have got a better idea of what are opening is going to be about. it's going to start with the character being chased (actor still unknown) who is on the roof of a building who's been sent to infiltrate the building for an reason unknown as we haven't figured that out yet. However two men enter the building in order to catch the infiltrator who now has to escape the building without being caught.
Now this is our first idea so there is a good chance that certain parts may be changed either to make filming easier or something happens such as not being able to film on the roof. We have also brain stormed some ideas which may or may not happen, First off the person being chased may have a ear piece with someone talking to them on the other side trying to guide them out the building, this next idea will most likely wont happen which is having the chase continue or the entire school grounds as when the man goes to escape the nearest exit is blocked off so he is chased around the building next to it. I say this will most likely not happen as we would firstly need to explain why the setting is in a school, we then would have to make sure there are few people around so that we can film without interruptions and we may need to get permission run around the whole site so in the end it's a lot of work just to get some extra footage. However one thing I haven't discussed with my group but may want to try to implement is having a stealth section in the opening were the person being chased has to sneak pass the men chasing him I think this would be a good idea as it will help make suspense and tension in my movie.

Camera Angles for chase scenes

Camera angles in the media

I have been researching many different types of camera shots that are commonly used in the action genre so that I can use them for my film opening and to make sure that I could find enough good images to use for my blog I went out and toke several photo's using certain camera shots and I also used a few existing photo's that were on google images so as some of the photo's I took were not good quality.

High angle shot

High angle shots are used to make the characters in the scene look weak and powerless as if something is looking down on them meaning that it has a higher status than them. this is commonly seen when the protagonist fights the antagonist as the antagonist will probably have a ultimate attack that they are hiding which could change the course of the fight. While high angle shots are used to make it the characters look week they can also be used ion chase scenes to create dramatic effect as if the person being chased is being watched from above normally by a helicopter in most action films which is why i'm going to try to implement this shot into my opening scene as I can make my scene more intense.

Low angle Shot

Low angle shots are the exact opposite of high angle shots in which they are used to make a character look more dominant and powerful as if someone is looking up to them. They are normally used when an important character is first revealed as they will commonly first be seen walking down some stairs as it suggest they are coming down to the characters level and when this happens the protagonist/antagonist will be looking up at the when they are coming down so we see that their P.O.V which is a low angle shot. However low angle shots are not used a lot in chase scenes so i'm not going to focus on adding one into the scene.

Close-up

One of the most common shots is the close-up. What this does is it shows the entire face of a certain character in a scene this shows the facial expressions of the character so we can tell how they are feeling at that moment in time these can be used to convey many different emotions such as sadness which is commonly used in scenes when one of characters friends are killed/injured, this could also be used to show anger  which can also involve the death of a friend, happiness can be conveyed after a battle has been won when the protagonist shows a sign of relief and the protagonist has prevailed and fear when the protagonist is being chased by something or being attacked by a monster or facing their worst fears. I plan on using close-ups to show fear in my scene as fear is normally conveyed in a close-up when a character is being chased.

Extreme close-up

Like the close-up shot an extreme close-up is used to show the facial expressions of a certain character however a extreme close-up is used to show a specific part of the characters face most commonly the eyes as it's much easier to tell how a character is feeling through their eyes than any other part of their body. They can also be used to show specific emotions in a character but it's much easier to convey sadness as it's easier to show tears if camera is closed in on their eyes. However an extreme close-up is much harder to use in a chase sequence as the camera needs to close in much more than a close-up which can be difficult as during chase sequences all of the characters are constantly moving about so I don't plan on using them in my opening scene. 

P.O.V shot

a P.O.V shot is when we see through the eyes of one of the characters in the scene this is used so we can see what they are seeing and we can then figure out how they are feeling at that moment in time. P.O.V shots are not always used they can be very difficult to pull off as it is only commonly used in certain genres of films such as horror films for example Cloverfield which is filmed with nothing but P.O.V shots. Also,there are many times when a P.O.V shot can be used in other genres such action when they are used when someone is driving a car, during a conversation, in a chase scene and many more which is why I may attempt put it into our film however it won't be my top priority.

Over the shoulder shot

An over the shoulder shot is used during a conversation so that we see over the shoulder of one of the characters and the face of the character they are talking to. This is used to show the feelings of the character whose face can be seen this is because the character whose face we can't see has/will most likely tell her something that will shock her so it's showing face while he's talking so we can see her reaction as soon as he tells her something. These can be done in almost any type of film genre as every film has a conversation scene in them so you'll most likely see a over the should shot in every film you see.

Medium shot

A medium shot is used to show the top half of the person in the clip they are commonly used when a small group of characters are talking to each other but are also used when someone is delivering information such as a news reporter, they can also be used to show part of the background and the facial expressions of the character in the clip.

Long shot

Long shots are used for similar reasons to medium shots but they show the entire character from top to bottom. these are commonly used if the director wants to show the the actor running as it shows their legs moving which convey how determined the protagonist is to outrun someone or catch someone, which is why i'll try to use it in my blog.

Extreme Long shot

A extreme long shot is used to show off the entire scene it is used a lot in large scale fight scenes such as the final fight at the end of the first avengers film. however it can also be used in chase sequences to create suspense such as a person jumping from building to building while being chased so a extreme long shot is used to show the building, the person being chased and the person chasing the other person so I will try to implement it into my film.

Panning shot

A panning shot is to track someone without using any editing the footage this used in chase scenes as it will normally make it look like a blur as if they were moving very fast which creates the effect that the person being chased and is determined not be caught so they use a panning shot to make it look like they are moving very fast because of this i'll try to use it in my film.

After researching different camera shots I believe that I can incorporate most of these camera shots into my opening as they can all be used to create suspense and tension which are some of the key features that are found in chase sequences. 

Introduction

Introduction

After discussing with my Me, Brandon, Callum and Jack we have decided create a opening of an action thriller film our plan is to create a chase seen were one of us (the most athletic one) is being chased by rest of us this was mainly my idea but when I told every one my idea they all agreed with me. At this moment I think the school will be the best place to film as there are many corridors in the school which will make the chase seen look much better. As we are doing a action film I will be researching many different chase scenes in films that have both inside and outside sequences. Just under this paragraph is a mood board that I have created with loads of conventions of a action films including chase scenes.

As you can see from the mood board the main themes of the chase scenes involves anything that can create tension, suspense and excitement fits the action genre and these thing can be also seen in chase sequences as they are supposed to create suspense as you wonder what is going to happen the protagonist. In terms of editing chase sequences contain loads of jump cuts so it doesn't break the tension in the scene. Now with camerawork many different types of camera shots are used to show the chase from different angles such as P.O.V angle to show it from the eyes of the person being chased or the low angle shots when someone jumps over something and the camera is directly under them which creates the illusion that they are jumping over a very deep hole, cliff, etc
Another thing that can be seen from my mood board is that some chase sequences include basic parkour (free running) which is jumping other obstacles that are in a persons way while running instead of slowing down and running around it however I don't think any one in my group, including me, will be able to do it as none of us have ever done parkour before so it's not are biggest priority to include parkour in our opening.