Music...

For our main music, we decided enlist the help of some A-Level music students. We told them what sort of music we wanted which was a fast, guitar, drum & bass piece for the beginning of the opening, and for the end, a sad but short piano piece. Once we heard the finished pieces, we knew they would definitely work with our shots. We faded the first piece of music out just before the three gunshots, it the goes silent, dialogue then starts, piano music fades in once dialogue ends, and fades out at the end, here are the two pieces of music: 

Guitar/Drum/Base Music...

This is the first piece we wanted. We liked the fact that it was fast, and that you could imagine it playing in a major action film. When we placed on top of the shots, we found that we had to make it slightly longer, but it did match with the shots on screen, and gave it that little boost. It really does create that mysterious impact, it causes the audience to ask themselves; Who is this person? Where is he going? & What's going to happen? It fits really well with our chosen genre which was Action/Thriller, and we are really pleased with the results.

Piano Music...

This is the second piece we wanted. When we first heard it, we thought it sounded okay, but after a few listens, we then thought maybe it didn't sound quite right. We thought that we should put it in the opening, and then see what it sounds and looks like. I think it sounds okay, it sort of matches the shots and what's going on, but it's a group decision and we will see whether or not we should keep it or change it. I have shown the first finished edit with the music to a family member, and they think it suits the scenes, they were happy with it, but we shall see. It's not happy, but it's not too depressing either.

Filming...

Now that our prep work is finished, and we now know how it's going to look, we have decided to start filming. For one of our scenes, we needed a kitchen setting, so what we did was we used our Common Room, but used to sink and cupboards, we kept them in shot, but not the rest of the room. We moved a table and two chairs in front of the cupboards, and thus creating a simple kitchen scene. The rest of the shots were easy to film, and did not require too much adjusting in the setting aspect. 

We have a few more shots to film, we need to work out how we are going to do it, seeing as we need a child to feature in the scene. We may have to ask the younger years, possibly a drama group. Apart from that shot, all the others have been quite easy to film. Now we need to think about the editing...

Final Evaluation Question - Preliminary Task

What areas will you need to improve when working on your main project?
I think one area I may need to improve is my analysis. I can edit quite well, I find filming pretty easy, and I work well within the group. So apart from these areas, the only thing that I can think of is my analysis and evaluation, and probably my research skills. These will be easy to improve on as I do both in the exam part of the course as well as within my blog. I will have to use the right terminology, be specific in  my research, and evaluate well.

Evaluation Questions - Preliminary Task...

How did your target audience react to your finished piece?
They were very happy with our finished piece. They liked our choice of shots for each scene, they thought that our sound effects, such as the bell chime were quite effective, they also liked our choice of transitions, the fades, and the cutting. Finally they all thought that our 180 degree rule was very effective, and done well within the final piece.

What ideas/skills will you take from this to your main project?
There are a few ideas and skills that we have decided to use in our final piece. We thought that making certain parts of our preliminary task black & white was very effective, and have decided to use that in our main film. We may stick to the same transitions used, such as the fades and the cutting, we don't want complicated transitions. We are also going to take the idea of showing the main character getting ready and incorporate it into our main project as we thought it went well with our chosen genre and idea for our opening.

Opening Titles Research...

For our final piece of research we had to look at opening titles, we looked at the font, colours used and whether or not they start before, after or during the opening. We each looked at films within our genre, these films are; 'The Batman Rises', 'Skyfall', 'Goodfellas' and 'The Expendables'.

The Dark Knight Rises:

Black & White

Dark

Metallic

Digital animation

Image manipulation

Red font

Sans Serif

Appear before action starts

Skyfall:

White font

Colourful background

Fades in, fades out

Medium size

Capital Letters

Appears after action has happened

Goodfellas:

Quick animation

Black & White

Sans Serif

Normal/medium size

Capital letters and lower case letters

Red title

Black background

Credits start after action

The Expendables:

War type font

White

Fades in, fades out

Small

In corner of screen 

credits are shown during action

Diegetic & Non-Diegetic Sound...

Diegetic sound is sound which is sound which comes from a source within the scene and can be heard by both audience and characters, for example T.V playing, dialogue between characters, phone ringing, footsteps etc. Non-Diegetic sound is sound which has no source within the scene, the audience can hear it, but the characters cannot. Diegetic & Non-Diegetic sound can be used in many ways, some of which are shown in these two clips;

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/283936/L-A-Confidential-Movie-Clip-Open-Hush-Hush.html#

This is the opening of LA Confidential. Diegetic sound is used in the end of the clip, as it starts off with non-diegetic sound, the voice over and the music. The effect of this is to introduce the film, the plot, the era etc. It then turns into Diegetic sound as we hear the type writer sounds, and we see who is talking. This is an effective technique as it allows the audience to be introduced to a key character straight off, and are introduced to other key characters within the film opening.

The second film opening is similar to that of LA Confidential in that it starts off as non - diegetic sound, for example the creepy music playing while the key character moves up the stairs towards the victim, and keeps playing until the victim wakes up. We then hear waves splashing just after the opening credits finish, we are then shown where the characters are, in this case the beach, we then see where the wave sounds came from and the sound becomes diegetic. The effect of this is to create not only tension, but suspense. We don't know where the characters are in the beginning, but the audience can tell, from the music that something bad is going to happen. We are also introduced to key characters, through not only dialogue but who we also saw on the screen.

Risk Assessment...

Three Lions Productions

Risk Assessment for the production of 'Loan Shark'

Measurement of Risk:

1. A scratch or a cut

2. An illness or injury that lasts up to three days

3. Broken bone

4. Amputation

5. Death

Risk Assessment:

Hazard	Those at Risk	Existing control measures	Evaluate the Risk	Improvement on control measures	Measurement of Risk
Low levels of light	The whole film           crew	Lampposts and classroom lights	The main risk here is the fact the someone might not see something and then trip over/bump into it	An improvement on the safety control measures would be for everyone to have a torch or that all filming is done during the day	The most that this risk could give someone is a level 3 injury as someone could trip over something.
The equipment being used	The whole film crew	All wires are out of the     way were no one can trip over them	The main risk here is that someone trips over the tripod	An improvement could be that everyone gets a briefing over the equipment being used and how to act around it	The measurement of risk would again be a level 3 as someone could fall over and fracture their arm on the equipment
The Cold	The whole film crew	Make sure everyone is kept warm	The main risk is that someone gets ill	Make sure everyone has their coats and is wearing something warm	The most extreme circumstance would be someone gets frost bite and has to have an amputation but, realistically the main risk is that someone gets a cold so a level 3.

Script...

This is the basic script for our film opening, we kept the dialogue short as we only have about 2 minutes.

Loan Shark

By

Three LionsProductions

Script

Characters:

Graham Trotter is Owen Grey

Sarah Adams is Sarah Grey

Owen: These figures don’t add up

Sarah: What do you mean, they don’t add up?

Owen: They say that we are £100 short and still owe quite abit of rent and that our bills aren’t getting paid.

(Sarah Panicking)

Sarah: Well then what we going to do about it?

Owen: We’regoing to have to take out another loan to pay the rent as the landlord saysthat he can’t wait anymore as he also has bills to pay.

(Sarah Shouts)

Sarah: No! Not another loan. The bank won’t allow it

(Owen desperatelysays)

Owen: But there’s no work in the country at the moment, soit looks like there’s no other choice

(Sarah says angrily)

Sarah: For Christ sake just sort it out or you're on your own.

(Sarah Storms outleaving Owen sitting there with his head in his hands)

Evaluation Questions - Preliminary Task...

3. How did your research into film openings and genres help you?
Research into film openings helped us realise how much goes into a 2 minute opening. It also helped us understand how different shots are used within different genres, for example within action films, there will generally be more camera movements such as panning & using a crane, in comparison to a romantic comedy, with has slightly more camera shots such as close ups to see the characters emotions. This helped us decide what genre we wanted focus on, and helped us picture what it would look like, and how we were going to plan and film it.

4. Who are your target audience and why?
We decided to do something within the genre of Action. Therefore we did research into the typical audience of action/thriller movies. We found that males where the typical gender which action/thriller movies appeal to, we also found that the age range was between 14 years to 24 years. We then decided to go with this as our basis for our target audience.

Evaluation Questions - Preliminary Task...

These are the first lot of questions for the evaluation of my preliminary task...


1. What did you find easy when working on your preliminary task?
I found editing to be the most easiest to do while working on my preliminary task, purely because you can edit most of the mistakes out, you can change things, undo what you removed or have added and it's just easier than filming the whole thing. Also, the whole can decide on what looks good so you know if you have done it right. Also, filming was pretty easy, however there were times where I may have accidentally forgotten to not laugh while filming and having my voice caught in certain clips!

2. What was the most difficult part when you were working on your preliminary task?
I don't know what was the most difficult part while working on my preliminary task. I guess storyboarding and planning was the most difficult as we didn't know what to base our practice task on. Filming was a little difficult as we had to find areas where there wasn't much 'traffic' like teachers or students walking past. But other than that, it seemed quite easy to make.

Filming Schedule...

This is the finalised shooting schedule for our film, we have managed to organise the filming within three weeks including half term.  We have also done the risk assessment, and are now getting ready to start filming.

Main Storyboard...

Once we got all of our main ideas sorted, we then went onto storyboarding our film opening. We did this using post it notes, this was so that if we didn't like where a certain shot was, or if we wanted to add or remove a shot we could easily. We then glued them down once we were happy with the final choice of shots...

Shot 1:

Wide shot of town.

Shot 2:

Wide shot & Pan.

Shot 3:

Pan & wide shot of main character's room.

Shot 4:

Close up & tilt of main character getting ready. (Starts with feet)

 Shot 5:
 Close up & tilt. (Moves up to belt)

Shot 6:
Close up & tilt. (Shows gun in belt)

Shot 7:
Close up & tilt. (Jacket being put on)

Shot 8:
Close up & tracking shot of feet walking down the stairs.

Shot 9:
Medium shot from behind. (Opens door, walks out)

Shot 10:
Master shot. (Main character meets loan sharks) Location also shown.

Shot 11:
Big close up of the gun as he is about to shoot, low angle.

Shot 12:
Sound of gun being shot, flash back.

Shot 13:
Arm is raised with gun in hand. Over the shoulder shot.

Shot 14:
Gun shot & flash back, happy memory, two shot. (Main Character & Wife laughing)

Shot 15:
Another flashback, big close up of hands held, couple walk away from camera, tilts upwards to show back of their heads.




shot 16:
Wide shot of house. ('6 months ago')

 Shot 17:
Dialogue, two shot, cut's between them.

Shot 18:
Over the shoulder shot of wife and kid(s) walking out the door.

Shot 19:
Main character looking out of window, high angle and over the shoulder shot.

Main Film Project - Test Shots...

After storyboarding our main film opening, we decided to do some test shots, to see how the locations we chose in the school would look. 

These are some of the better test shots we took, we chose some of the main scenes that we thought would be suitable for the shots we chose within the school. I tried to use different camera movements to see what would look best, for example panning, tracking etc. I also used different types of shots, for example close up, extreme close, wide shots etc.

Target Audience & Genre...

The final part of the research was to look at what genre appeals to what type of audience. We looked at gender & age. This was to give us an idea as to what audience may be interested in our film/film opening and this is what we found:

Action - 
Gender: men/boys
Age: late teens/young adult - (14-17), (18-24)

Comedy -
Gender: Women (58%) Men (42%)
Age: Strong appeal to those under 25

Thriller -
Gender: Men (48%) Women (52%)
Age: Strong appeal to those under 25

Romance - 
Gender: Typically a female demographic, (71%)
Age: Strong appeal to those under 25

Family Movies -
Gender: Mainly female, Women (60%) Men (40%)
Age: Strong appeal to children, and those under 40

Horror -
Gender: Both, Women (53%) Men (47%)
Age: Strong appeal to those under 25

Regional Funding...

The second term we researched was Regional Funding. This is basically local funding which increases tourism, and helps poorer towns which aren't that well known, become known. Examples of films which have been funded by regional funding are:

• Promethious 
• Goal
• Harry Potter
• James Bond
• Hot Fuzz

There are also two examples of regional funding organisations for each country which is part of the UK, these are;

• Screen West Midlands
• Wales Screen Commission
• Northern Ireland Screen
• Scottish Screen

International Co - Production...

For our main film opening we had to do some research into four areas, my group chose to research two areas; International Co-Production & Regional Funding. Firstly is International Co-Production...

International Co-Production is where two or more production companies from different countries work together to produce a film. Films that have been co - produced are:

• Johnny English
• Sherlock Holmes
• Harry Potter
• Inception

Canal + and an Italian film production company also worked on the film Gladiator. In total there have been 355 co-production films in the last 7 years.