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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
