Filming Schedule ☮ ☮ ☮

With there only being two main locations for our opening film sequence, we wanted to remain in continuity with the natural lighting and weather, so with this we wanted to try and get all of our filming completed in the same day as the location we were in, so in total we had two days of filming. Our costa shoot was quite quickly filmed as we only had one actress in focus for the scenes in this location, with it taking a total of 20 seconds in total of the full sequence. Following is the first days schedule:
Day 1
14:00- wide shot walking shot past Costa Coffee
14:15-long shot walking shot into Costa Coffee
14:25-extreme close up of hand on phone shot
14:30-medium shot sitting at table waiting for answer shot
14:40-closeup shot of leaving voicemail shot
14:55-high angle medium shot of hanging up phone.

The second day of filming took a much longer amount of time due to the shots taking up the majority of the sequence, the amount of times that we could mess up shot couldn’t be a lot at all as we wanted to film at a time when the weather would be murky and dull to show themes of threat and creepiness. There were difficulties getting some shots to line up with the murdering scene and with this being the most vital and powerful scene in concern we wanted to get it perfect so this took a longer amount of time. Following is the second days schedule:
Day 2
12:00-long shot walking up and across the bridge shot.
12:05-low angle shot of walking off the bridge and down grassy footpath
12:15-medium shot antagonist hiding behind tree preying upon dog walker
12:25-grabbing scene wide shot and close up shot
12:40- strangling scene for mouth and nose extreme close up
13:00-conversation between antagonists:multiple camera shot types
13:30-friend receiving text from protagonist

Our Production and Studio Company Titles ☮ ☮ ☮

 For our groups production and studio titles we wanted to show a professional and individual look in order to make it appear as though it is from a hollywood type picture. With this our first production credit we use is of the grand canyon, we thought this showed a substantial and powerful look that would show the image of these themes onto our film, we also used a black and white filter to show a raw effect, then blurred the image into colour. We decided to call our studio company “ Red Canyon Films”, we also used the colour red as both the canyon itself is a very red and brown mixed shade, but also red connotes fear and blood, which will link into the murder that takes place within our opening scene.

But also changing having a smaller image with the majority of the screen being dominated by black will show a sinister sort of mood. The transition of the image itself is very dark and slow, with the text fading in and out at a slow pace also, to show a more threatening mood through out. The text we used was also aimed to have a serious and formal mood attached with it, as we wanted it to be all bold and in capitals to show that it was an important title and to set the mood for our film that it would not be humorous but more dangerous and of its intended genre thriller.

Our production company “Vivid Productions” holds a tigers image whilst on its hind legs spraying water with its paws, we really liked this as it showed a still action shot, with both a majestic and dangerous animal which would connote our film, but also the action of the tiger could be seen as menacing as it seem to be growling and showing large malicious teeth that could be used a destructive weapon, this again links to our film of vicious and murderous themes. With the transitions we used on the image we wanted to show some link to the name of the production company and in so made one two versions of the image, one being blurred and less impacting and the other being very clear and “vivid”, which after the transition was made brings in our bold title of
“ VIVID PRODUCTIONS” , we chose again to have a serious theme to the font of the title, to which we had made bolder in order to make a more thriller theme to it and making it bolder made stand off the page more.

Kill Bill Vol.1 Opening Analysis ☮ ☮ ☮

With the Kill Bill movies being part of my favourite films (as both volumes enact one film) of all time, I really wanted to include it in someway in both my blog page and in my groups film. The major reason why I hold this film in such a good light is due to the main protagonist (the bride) being depicted as incapacitated during the opening scene, showing the bride crying and covered in what appears to be blood due to cuts and stains on her face and the menacing black and white filter casted on the screen, then transforming into a vigorous and purposeful killing machine on the rampage to seek out vengeance on who caused her brutal beating and intended killing shown in the opening scene. With this I wanted there to be a powerful female cast especially within the main protagonist and antagonist, this is why when our antagonist attempts to murder our protagonist we chose suffocation, as this is the type of death that the attacker would have to think about it can take multiple minutes to suffocate to death this would then outline a true evilness with her. Also after when our main protagonist is apparently killed through suffocation she is then shown ever so slightly moving to show a sense of hope that she may regain strength, and although our audience will never find out what our character is really like and why she was attempted to be killed, we want our audience to constantly think about it and come up with theories, as even though we have not filmed a full film we know what our full plot would be.

The scene opens to a black screen with a quote stating “Revenge is a dish best served cold”, Heavily insinuating a cold blooded act that has a consequence, making the audience feel slightly uneasy as theme of violence will come to mind immediately. As the credit roll on a black screen we hear the non-diegetic sound of a woman breathing heavily, making the audience believe that the woman we hear is in distress and possibly harmed, thus rolling on the theme of violence. The first image flashes onto screen in black and white edited filter showing a high angle closeup shot of a woman with blood, sweat and tears covering her face on the floor,defenceless she lies in a pool of blood, making her appear weak and pathetic. The now diegetic sound of her heavy breathing and crying show that she is grittily harmed, making the audience wonder why she is in this pain and if so who has done this to her.

The close up shot I believe is to really take in the pain and fear the unidentified woman expresses, but also to conceal her whereabouts and the possible people that surround her, making the film show hints of mystery and having to unravel the story of who, what,where, when and why, making the audience think and come up with their own theories within the first 20 seconds.The woman’s mise en scene shows her only from the neck upwards showing us little about her character and who she may be, but we see a bloodied and creased view hidden behind the now supposed bride’s blood stained hair, giving off the impression of a wedding, making the audience feel that the location therefore may be in a church, and if this was a wedding where is the groom is he dead?, and the guests are they also harmed?

Following this we cut to a straight low angled shot of who appears to be a man due to the style of boot and trouser, walking slowly towards the bride, the slow diegetic creaking of the floor boards as he walks, show a sinful and fiendish sense to the character, as anyone who would normally witness this scene of a grievously harmed woman would rush to their aid, but the slow paced walker is then questioned by the audience to have been the attacker in this heinous crime. As the man approaches the bride we see her face is filled with fear and anger, when the anonymous and suspicious gentleman reaches the bride we see his foot come into alignment with her shoulder, giving off the effect that he is towering over her, in a way to belittle and show power and dominance over her. This is when we hear the first line of dialogue in the picture “Do you find me sadistic?”, This then both confirms that this miscreant has enacted grievous bodily harm to the bride but also that he possible enjoys it due to his word “sadistic” making the audience dislike the antagonist even more.

Still yet to hear the bride speak, we see the the antagonists hand approach shot with a handkerchief in his hand revealing his name is Bill, Then making the audience reach the conclusion through the title of the film, the quote at the beginning of the film and the name displayed by the criminal as “Bill”, that this man is now a target for his crime against the bride but we are still yet to find out who will be evening this woman. Bill then tries to wipe the bride’s face, showing a sense of endearment that maybe he knows this woman previously from this date, but also shows a sign of cockiness and mocking to this action that he is the only hope she has to remain alive and to torture her on the fact on whether she will stay alive or not. As Bill continues to talk her mocks the bride that he “could fry an egg on her head right now, if I wanted to”, by telling the bride “if I wanted to” shows his feeling of complete control over the brides body and therefore life.

Due to Bill’s speech we can tell he has been a comrade of the bride as sorts due to Bill saying phrases such as “kiddo”, then also making the audience believe that he is considerably older than her, making thoughts of fatherly figures as this is the type of pet names a father would say to his child, although this could be a way of showing that the bride is a possession of his like a child to their father. Through Bill’s miss en scene we can argue he has wealth to his name due to the clunky jewellery and bracelets we can see on his hand, showing he could be an authoritative and powerful figure throughout the film, and due to us not seeing his face, that his crater could hold a charlie’s angels type of influence on him as the character charlie had, an authoritative figure with all control but never being seen, only heard. Leading to another assumption that Bill could possibly be the brides employer, but in a slightly different way than a normal job under these circumstances.

From when Bill had previously stated about the brides thoughts on him as a sadistic, Bill follows on from that statement to say “ I like to believe you’re aware enough even by now, that there is nothing sadistic in my actions”, showing that this isn’t the first time that Bill has performed an acute volatile acton to someone and with his saying “even by now” that the bride is aware of this and should believe he takes no pleasure in harming her. Though seconds later contradicts himself by saying “maybe towards those other jokers” showing he took pleasure in killing the others which could be a reference to people also there with her that he has killed, showing that perhaps Bill didn’t agree with this supposed wedding that was taking place, he then continues to say “but not you” to which he gently strokes his finger against her cheek, illustrating to the audience that there is perhaps feelings of a loving matter in a more sexual way rather than when there is in a friendship or a family sense. Thus showing that Bill is possibly in love with the bride and has taken on the style of if I can’t have you no one can.

As Bill stands upwards and as we hear Bill fumbling around, as his last utterance states as “ This is me at my most masochistic”, showing that Bill will take pleasure from his own pain of killing her, showing the audience that through his heartbreak of the bride attempting to marry someone other than him, his humiliation of the bride trying to go through with this marriage has caused him to possibly look foolish to others and will take on killing the bride to gain pleasure by inflicting grief onto himself by killing his love. In an attempt to change his mind the bride speaks her first line of dialogue of “ Bill it’s your baby”, to which she is quickly interrupted by the non-diegetic sound of gunshot that appears to have been fired by Bill at the brides head as we see blood splatter around her head and her eyes shut instantly, causing the audience to believe that the bride has been killed, almost instantly after the gunshot is heard we hear the non diegetic sound track being played of the song “Bang Bang(my baby shot me down)” by Nancy Sinatra, listening to the lyrics we hear that this fits perfectly into what just happened, and also confirms that they were in fact associated with each other in a relationship that would be deem more than friends.

As the black screen was cut to immediately after gunfire we see the credits role again, as the credits come to a close an image then again appears with a black and white edit, of a figure, supposedly the bride, lying in front of a white back ground, as we only see her silhouette as she lie there motionless, appearing to be dead, giving the impression of the bride lying in a coffin in almost complete darkness, then fading to black, the audience are left to believe hat someone will come to avenge her death, but they would be wrong...

Film Inspiration: Psycho - Alfred Hitchcock ☮ ☮ ☮

After stealing $40,000 from her employer to run away with her boyfriend, Marion Crane, gets caught in a rainstorm when on her getaway and seeks refuge in the bates hotel, where she meets Norman Bates, a man who has a difficult relationship with his mother and shows an eeriness toward Marion which she is soon to pick up on.

The film "Psycho"(1960) had a major impact in our final film, it stood as an inspiration to our thriller as we wanted to show a viscous murder, but without actually showing it. We thought watching the murder scene in Psycho would definitely help us with it. We wanted our film to be as different and individual as possible, so we decided on having a suffocation murder, but to avoid having to raise our age certificate rating, we wanted to show our victims face in two parts in different shots.

We took Psycho's murder scene of two parts, the first was having the attacker seen but not identified lurking in the background in a slow and venomous way, so with Norman bates shadow seen moving slowly towards Marion show curtain we had our antagonist be seen also creeping onto our protagonist behind a tree wearing black and a mask to conceal their identity, plot wise we didn't take anything from psycho in the sense of character personality, our antagonist, unlike Norman Bates, is shown to be completely sane, but we don't reveal the cause of the murder early as we wanted it to be shown as a large source of mystery to the film and would have been revealed toward the very end of a full feature picture.

With the killing part of the scene in psycho we thought compared to pictures nowadays, Psycho didn't show complete authenticity within this crucial part of the scene. For example the knife when shown after Norman rapidly reaching to stab Marion it would show the knife hanging in front of her, So in this case we wanted to show a more realistic death but keep the same sort of feel to the scene in Psycho by not seeing our protagonists face completely covered by the plastic bag, so in different shots shows her upper part of her face in shot struggling for air then would cut to the bottom part of her face showing her mouth completely inhale the bag.

Like in Psycho we reveal our protagonist to be dead when we see her lying on the floor with her eyes wide open, We done this to install fear towards the audience, as we also wanted to have some horror themes in our film as we initially wanted to make a horror film but we didn't believe we were going to be scary enough to produce a successful film. We really liked the idea of the panning outward of the eye like in Psycho but we believe we would not have pulled off a steady shot whilst also keeping our actress from blinking or producing water running from her eye.

Targets for next Year: Crash Zoom ☮ ☮ ☮

With my decision to continue with media next year I have set myself the target when filming to use more interesting and fun shots that would portray an emotion without even having to have an experienced actor in shot. This I believe can be done using the crash zoom shot, to which expands in the width an the camera draws closer inwards. This type of shot shows a hit to the character or object in focus, whether it be that the character has suddenly though of the solving answer to a case or has forgotten something it shows a sense of concentration that suddenly hits the character. With an object it may be due to it being the thing that they need in order to achieve victory, or something that may be about to fall/lost.

The use of the crash shot that I like is that it can be used for many genres. It can be used for a comedic use and not have as much atmosphere with it, I believe this is because of the use of soundtrack, the less or more tense the soundtrack over the shot the more the audience can see the emotion portrayed in the scene. I could even use the shot in a romance film, as the use of the shot could be shown in a scene where the couple either notice each other across a crowed room, showing the love at first sight cliche, or when they realize they are in love with each other before running into each other's arms.

The crash shot that i have used in order to show the crash shot is within the movie clip of the film "Jaws"(1975), The use of the shot in this scene is to show the sudden acknowledgment of a shark attack in the sea, with an already weary character who is on the lookout for this situation. In the background we can see the landscape widening and coming more into focus, showing that the man has identifies the vivid blood in the ocean which is where we hear the non-diegetic sound of dark and fast paced music to show panic and fear not just with the man but also for the rest of the beach and the victim of the attack.

I believe that using a shot like this would expand my skills and make whatever film or scene that I film have more of a professional look to it, whether it be of a comedy or serious genre. In order to do this i would have to research tutorials into what equipment i would need to carry out this shot in the most successful and professional way.

The Alley Bloopers/Gag Reel ☮ ☮ ☮

Actress Interview: Antagonist 2- Rosemary ☮ ☮ ☮