Shot list

On the 11th of December, our group had a discussion and went into more depth of our opening sequence. We discussed different scenes and the shots we will use.

These are the shots we would like to inclue in scene 1:

Long shot of house zooming in
Dutch angle of house
Low angle of house
Shot of looking through tree
Shot of house from the road
Pan of house
Shot of house showing door partly open

Scene 2:

Master shot of girls in distance
High angle of girls from tree
Low angle of girls legs
Over the shoulder shot of girls walking up path
Close up of girls hands pushing door open
Close up of girls feet walking

Scene 3:

Long Shot of corridor
Close up of girls hand opening door
Shot of house of girls entering
Pan of rooms
Close up of feet going up steps
Medium long shot of them looking in room
Extreme Close up of fingers on piano keys
Long shot of room
Long shot of looking down house
Shots of lighting different candles

Scene 4:

Ends with candle blown out.


Discussing the shots in the scences has made us more clear on our idea. Our next step is to organises shooting dates.

Time schedule

In order to keep our opening sequence organised and ensure it is completed on time, we will be using a time schedule.

This is the time schedule we will be using:

On the meeting we had on the 4th December, we agreed on a date for filming scence 2 and we arranged for this to be on Friday 19th December after school. We aim to go when the lighting is dark so that we build up the atmosphere to make it appear more scary.

Ideas of horror opening sequences

We decided our opening sequence would be a horror.

To give us ideas of a horror opening sequence we looked at the Original halloween 1978 opening.

Here is a preview of the opening:

This clip gave us a good idea of an eerie opening. We mainly like the idea that the house was seen as underthreat as they made it look scary through the use of light and camera shots and movement. I specifically like the way the camera moved around the house, showing the threat people are under.

Horror openinig scences usually have dramamtic music, and we believe we will use an eerie sound track to emphasise and give the audience an impression of what our opening sequence will be.

First group meeting

On the 4th December our group had our first meeting discussing our task.

We discussed the location of a opening sequence and our cast.

We came to a conclusion we are basing our filming in upper heyford in a house. In the discussion we thought about the different camera shots and how we would use the house.

We chose this house because it can easily look eerie and build up and effect or scariness.

We looked up the house on google maps, here are a few shots we are planning on using:

We also discussed that our cast will be myself, amber and danielle. 

Our pitch

This is our pitch we did in class to explain to he audience about how we plan to present our opening clip.

We have feedback from our class to help us expand on our ideas. Someone suggested we turn our camera like somebody else is viewing the couple sat down. This gives the audience the impression that somebody is being watched.

We now need to discuss how we will include our titles in our scene.

This is our powerpoint we used in our pitch to help explain our idea:

Main task

Brief of the main task:

"Film the opening sequence of a new fiction film, including titles and soundtrack to last approximately two minutes."

One important part I should consider in the brief is new fiction. This is when we will have to make our video up. We will need to decide as a group what fiction and the type of genre. We will need to understand different genres as they have different openings to them.

For example, the conjuring and P.S I love you have very different openings due to their different genres.


The conjuring, this is a scary movie

However, P.s i love you is a romantic genre

I also need to consider the titles for my video. I need to understand that the director always comes last and I need to know that the titles include the type of film and the principle characters in it. I also need to work out how long and how big the titles would be.

A soundtrack also has to be included in the opening, however we can not use copy write music. Sound could include diegetic and non diegetic as well as backing tracks, voiceovers, dialogue etc. The soundtrack has to link to the genre of the music. For example, if the genre is scary it is slow, quiet music.

I also need to manage my time. It can only be two minutes long but the video takes a long time to edit and produce so the best way to manage my time would be this time management sheet:

This is an example of an opening sequence :

This is an opening sequence of the conjuring. It implies to us that it is a scary film because of the quiet, tense music. The pictures of families could also suggest to us that the film is based on a true story.

Perliminary Task

Brief:

"Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse and the 180 degree rule."

I have highlighted the parts I think are most important for me to know in this task.

To plan our video and filming, we made a story board to help us:

This story board helps us organise how we will be filming and what shots we shall be using. It helps us to plan so we are prepared to film and we have a plan to follow. The storyboard includes a sketched picture of the shot we will take, the camera shot/angle and the duration of the short clip.

We used different camera shots and angles in our short film, these are screen shots from our film of the examples of angles we used:

 In the brief we were asked to use a 180 degree rule, this is when you have the camera angle at no more than 180 degrees. We have shown this in our video when the two characters were having a conversation.

We also involved the shot reverse shot. This is when you film the character then take a shot of what they are looking at. An example of this is when one character is filmed looking through the door, and then we take a shot of the room and person they were looking at. This is important in a film as it gives the audience a perspective of  what the character was looking at and it engages the audience more and could be seen as more dramatic.

 









The last technique we were asked to involve in our video was the match on action. This  is when         there is lots of shots to make it flow. In our video we showed match on action when the character       was walking towards the door and then opened it. Match on action is very important in a film so         that it flows and does not confuse the audience.

        

This is our completed video:

We edited this video on Movie Plus. We had many little clips of the actors at different times and we cropped these clips to form a sequence to make it flow and look like a clip thats expressing the story of someone walking into a room through a door and having a conversarion with somebody else.