180 degree rule

 Todays media lesson was a workshop with Matt on the 180 degree rule. This is one of the rules in film making which should not be broken. This technique is used to make sure that the audience are aware of where everything and everybody is and know where all the action is happening in the scene. 

It is a hard concept to explain but here are some pictures I have taken to demonstrate the 180 degree rule- 

Over the shoulder shot- we know the bear is looking at the laptop

Wide shot

Close Up - we know the bear is still focusing on the laptop and that it is still there because his eyes are looking in that direction. 

In all the images above, the audience know that the relationship between the bear and the laptop remain the same and the audience are aware of the action happening. 

If the 180 degree rule is broken, it looks and feels wrong because audiences have been conditioned for years of how things should look. 

Research and planning 'Doll House'

Today my media group and I had a group meeting to discuss where our idea it was going to go because we got some feedback from our teachers and we needed to come up with some new ideas that weren't so "generic" 

We had an idea to group girls Dressed like dolls and have pictures of them with red crosses through to show that groups of girls had been captured before and there is a kidnapper.

Here is some feedback we received- 

 

"The crossing through pictures is a very overused 'trope',  Could there be something less overdone?"

"The idea of the girls already being kidnapped and at the start of their kidnapping journey, feeling like Act 1 of a film, rather than the opening scene we often see with the titles which Matt often described as Act 0.5."  

"Perhaps we could see a girl at the end of her kidnapping journey?"

From here we thought we discussed we would show a girl at the end of her kidnapping journey, and in todays lesson we talked about how we are going to do that. 

What we would like to happen is- 

• Have the close ups of the dolls house with the titles over the screen 
• Pan out of the dolls house and have a close up of a girls hand closing the doll house 
• Hear a creaking door and see footsteps of someone walking towards the girl 
• This mysterious person put a hand over their mouth and drag them out
• Leave it possibly with a letter on the floor or a blackout with the words on "you're next"
• ALSO POSSIBLY include some blood/ scary makeup- indicate shes been kidnapped and end of her journey....

 We also did some research into examples of films and TV programmes that have used doll houses ideas. This image below sparked our idea of zooming out of the dolls house and showing a little girl playing and closing it and then leading onto the rest... (explained above)

Saul & Elaine Bass

 In today's media lesson I carried out some research on Saul and Elaine Bass. I watched this video to gather some background information. 

Saul Bass was an American graphic designer and film maker, and is known for his design of opening sequences. He worked as a graphic designer on advert campaigns and then became an on set visual consultant where he began to work with famous people. He has worked with some of Hollywoods biggest film makers such as Alfred Hitchcock. One of his most famous pieces of work is the opening sequence he did of 'The Man with The Golden Arm' in 1955.  Saul Bass was working on symbols for 'The Man with the Golden Arm' when he quoted the  "Why not make it move" which is what he did. Title sequences evolved from an official presentation of legal and copyright information and the presentation of cast and crew. Its said that he saw an opportunity to create titles in a new way and "set the story up" for the rest of the film. 

He also did corporate logos which have become the most recognised of the era, such as the AT&T 'bell' logo. 

Elaine Bass was Saul Bass's wife who was also an American title designer and film maker. The pair worked together, although she has only began to get more recognition for her work over the past 10 years.

She had her own successful career before the pair met.  She co- directed and produced 'Spartacus' in 1960 and not long after this the pair were married. 

Their titles were said to be 'mini masterpieces'. They set the mood,  tone and texture for the rest of the film. 

A sequence they produced together is Grand Prix in 1996. 

It opens with grand music and whilst the titles are being shown there are zoom ins on different parts of the car whilst it is being put together.  The sound changes to loud car noises which gives the idea for the film that theres a transition from 'glory' to some sort of race as there is a sense of rush. 

It has been filmed in an economical way as there will be a shot of a zoom in on one thing and then it is multiplied to make it seem more hectic and that more is going on- the rush of things. This is used more than once to overwhelm the audience. 

A character we can assume is the protagonist as we are being shown his full face and we know he is the driver is introduced before more characters are introduced who are in a competition and we can assume they are competitors. This urges the audience to watch on because they can invest in their time in the competition and 'having a relationship' with the characters. 

Then, the small section where the sound effects of the heart beat is used could mirror the adrenaline rush of the race, which creates a mood and atmosphere for this film which is one of Bass's aims.  At the end of the sequence, the build up to the race is over as the cars are driving which we can assume leads to the beginning of the film. 

This title sequence creates a tone and the mood for the rest of the film as it is called the Grand Prix, and the sequence shows a motor car race so the audience can assume that the film will be about car racing or the competitors lives as motor car competitors. 

 

Diary entry 20th Jan

 Today my group and I met again on teams to further discuss our idea. 

We discussed about our idea and dolls houses, and we were deciding whether we should use the inside of an actual doll house or make a set of what you expect to see in a doll house. Some feedback we got was that if we used a set, it wouldn’t give a 'doll house feel' 

A group member sent the video above onto a group chat we have as a starting point to make our decision. 

I personally thought using a doll house would be good but if we wanted real characters it would be hard to incorporate the two. An idea we had was to record the doll house and have the opening titles over close ups of rooms. We have another discussion on Friday where we will further develop our ideas. 

This is another picture a group member sent in as inspiration.

Diary Entry 21st- workshop

 Todays media lesson was a pre recorded video about shot composition. 

The first shot composition talked about was rule of thirds. This is where the screen is split into three horizontally and vertically. It is more about where the lines meet rather than the boxes themselves. Where the lines meet is where point of interests go. Eg- Matts head in the left hand corner of the shot. 

A mistake people usually make is placing the point of interest in the middle of the screen like Matt has done here. 

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When adjusted and placing the point of interest on one of the focus points, the shot becomes more dynamic. 

The next thing talked about was Camera Height. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                             When looking down at something, peoples first initial thing to do is point the camera down like this. The way to make the shot more exciting, is moving the camera down to the same height as the subject. 

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The shot is now more interesting and visually unusual. The shot above also includes another technique which is depth- The little character is in the foreground of the screen and Matt is in the background. 

This shot is now more interesting because depth has been added- Matt is further away from the background, and a new background has been changed, rather than the white wall from before. He is also using rule of thirds as his head is at a focus point, again making the shot more interesting. 

The final thing talked about was lighting.

Matt used his TV as a light box. He paused it on a bright light and is using it as a soft light, and is using the back window to get more light in. A staircase is also a great place to get good shots. 

Research into dolls & filming

 In preparation for our opening sequences, I researched into dolls and costumes in order to make our characters convincing. I also did research on opening title sequences for ideas of the structure of our sequence.

FILMING IDEAS 

A product I think that could be similar to what we are trying to achieve is a previous year group whos opening sequence is 'Copse Hill'. Although the content of our sequences are completely different, there are some elements in it that we could incorporate or get some inspiration from for our sequence. 

A section that I particularly liked in this opening sequence and something I feel would fit into our scene quite well is how much attention and detail they give the props, yet keep it simplistic. The reason I feel this fits so well is because we had the idea to keep our sequence minimalistic yet detailed, and have a big focus on the props. I also like the way there is a blurry focus on the shots at first before the clear image. 

We want our sequence to have short, quick close ups of different elements you would find in a dolls house, for example a china tea cup. This is similar to Copse Hill as they also have close ups and lots of cuts to different props. Also, the reason I like the close ups is because it clearly shows they have some importance and set up the scene for the rest of the movie. 

Another thing that I found appealing from this sequence was the calm, mellow music that played over the top. I liked the atmosphere created for the sequence and felt that our group should spend some time researching a song that will fit our sequence. I did some brief research and thought that we should have a song from the 1940s as I feel that it would set the scene, and have a few in mind. 

Lastly, our group have not yet talked about the animation of titles, but I liked the way the titles appeared on the screen as they looked crisp and sharp, giving the sequence a clean feel. I thought they looked simplistic but effective and it gave some inspiration on always having a clear space in our shots for where the titles can go. Although this may be difficult, it is something my group have not yet discussed and we can take into account.  

COSTUME IDEAS 

for our characters to look like dolls, I envisioned the girls wearing long blue dressed with a pink or ribbon around the waist as well as in the hair. I also think they should wear white long socks and their hair in bunches. 

To make them even more doll like, another member of my group is doing independent research into makeup to see how we could make our cast look the part. 

I think the colour blue for the dresses is the perfect colour to use as it symbolises innocence, imagination and intuition which goes well with our scene because we are giving very little away to the audience and want them to be imaginative and creative. I think it also goes well as dolls are seen as young and innocent. 

Diary Entry Monday 18th

 Today our group had a teams call with Matt to present our idea. We had a 20 minute time slot to do this and in this time we got feedback. 

We talked about how we came up with the idea, and I said how I wanted characters to all be in union and how Tatum and Nosa liked the idea of dolls so we combined the idea and developed from there...

When we presented our idea, some of the feedback we got back was that it was too much. We had come up with an idea for a tv show or a full movie and when we were asked where the film would go after the two minute sequence we found it hard to finish the idea. 

Our sequence was like an episode of "twilight zone"

"A very visual and detailed idea"

We were including too much information and giving too much away too soon- the audience wouldn't feel the need to watch much more, and wouldn't feel the need to stick around for the rest of the film.

It would also be difficult to cast someone as the grandma character- but we had already assumed this and had come up with back up plans. 

The whole sequence fit into the 'action' categories for a whole film so we would need to make some changes.

Some suggestions we got was maybe stick to the same 'base' of the idea, but leave things out as we were giving too much away. Possibly just have a few shots of going through the windows, and just glimpses of things. Also leaving questions unanswered. 

Our group will now have a few discussions and will discuss in tomorrow lives teams session with Becky. 

After our teams call we had a group facetime call to decide where to go next. 

Friday 15th Diary entry

 Getting ready to pitch ideas--

Today my group and I made a presentation to show to Matt on Monday 

Wednesday 13th Diary Entry- Feedback

 On Wednesdays lesson I presented my idea about the vaccine to the class on Teams. 

Some of the feedback I got was- 

• "How would I show that my patient is or isn't unwell?"

If this idea was to be used, I would have a sick patient lying down in a hospital bed. 

• "How would I show that this character hasn't been kidnapped?"

My ideas was to leave a lot of questions unanswered to the audience, such as who is the man texting and why is he doing this, what is this person getting a vaccine for, why is she unwell...

• "Would the scene start off straight away with the vaccine being injected or would there be a backstory?"

I wanted the scene to have a lot of build up and the speed pick up as it got closer to the girl being vaccinated, the pace of the sequence speeds up and so does the music. There wouldn’t so much be a back story but more the build up to the vaccine entering the body. 

From the start of the the sequence I would make it clear that the girl is going to get a vaccine by showing close ups of bottles like this- 

and rubber gloves, medical wear, goggles....

Wednesday 13th Diary Entry- group discussion

 

Today I got together with my team to talk about a group idea. Before we left for the holidays, we had already discussed a few ideas that we wanted to use. Our strongest idea that we have that we all agree on is a 'come to life doll house'

The idea consists of an old woman playing with a doll house and opening it up with the dolls coming to life.

We wanted to have a haunted location, a room/ house that looks symmetrical, it looks old and has elements such as flowery wall paper, china, a rocking chair... 

We wanted the old lady to be spy like as she is spying on her dolls- (real people), controlling them. 

We talked about conspiracy and how the girls could have stockholm syndrome- they like their kidnapper- look happy around a tea party table. 

The idea overall would ideally have an establishing shot of a dolls house, then when opened up everything "come to life" 

We want to track the dolls getting ready and going downstairs to a tea party. 

We also would have a 1940s song playing over this. 

As a group, we also each individually came up with back up plans incase this one didn't work. 

My idea was 'the vaccine' which I presented to the class yesterday. This consists of a build up to a person getting a vaccine (I have wrote another blog on this is more detail) 

My group liked my idea and added some suggestions if we were to use that idea. 

Amys idea was to have a girl who was being stalked. Here are some bulleted points of her idea- 

- This idea would show a room that has a board in I with lots of pictures if a girl on it and her private information. This would include her school, where she lives and her family members.

- He is stalking her, there could possibly be a scene where the girl is completely oblivious to the fact that a man is stalking her. This scene could have the girl walking back from school and the man is following her and she blind to the fact that he is stalking her.

- This would be possible as only two people would be needed to do the acting in the scene. We could also use the studio to create the board with the personal information on it.

- There would be eerie music behind the scene, it would include a ticking sound to make the audience feel uneasy. It could either be violin or piano music

We also discussed that we could work with this one. 

As a group, we would want to use our original idea which we are presenting to Luke and Matt on Monday, but we also have back up options. 

My Individual Idea for an opening sequence

 One of the ideas I came up with for the opening sequence is "the injection" 

With everything going on in the world right now with the virus and the vaccine, I had the idea to use a location in school (possibly old med centre, not sure if its still in use) or somewhere where a few medical beds could be set up and have a build up of a vaccine a being injected into someone. 

I want to include point of view shots from the people having a vaccine, but also maybe cut to a person waiting in a different location waiting looking at their watch to add a sense that someone is waiting for this vaccine to enter the patient’s  body. This actor would be impatient and act suspicious to add enigma codes. 

I had the idea that someone could be out to kill these people but was unsure on how I would show that in 2 minutes and with the lack of dialogue as I would want my opening sequence to have close to no dialogue or none at all. 

As the sequence goes on, the music would pick up the pace and so would the actors. I also envisioned a glass bottle smashing and dropping in slow motion to include at some point to add to the tension of the opening sequence but was still unsure of where that could be added and can discuss this with my group if we decide to use this idea and develop from there.

I had a vision to make the last shot of a patient opening their eyes and 'seeing the world differently' or being in a different location, or leaving the patient once the vaccine entered the body with complete cut off of music and a blackout with silence as the title appears.

Monday 11th Diary Entry

Online lessons started today and in media we discussed our plans for this half term. 

Under normal circumstances we would be in lessons planning and preparing to shoot our opening sequences, which we will still be able to do as social media and platforms such as teams have made it easy to communicate with people. 

My group created a group chat over the holidays where we will discuss future ideas and can communicate easily.

We are hoping to be back in after half term so we can shoot our ideas but everyone is still unsure of what is going to happen and all waiting to see...

For now, we have to plan our ideas as if we are going back but have to keep in mind we will only be able to shoot on campus and have a limited number of cast members.

Over the holidays I came up with some ideas for the sequence which I will be presenting to the class on Wednesdays lesson via teams.