Evaluation 1

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Evaluation 2

Evaluation 4 Mind Map

This is the thought shower of names for our film
Film Names
As you can see we thought of many different names, and in the end we decided to call it Dot to Dot because the whole point in the film is the audience has to connect the dots to see what has happened.

The filming that we managed to get done on monday was brilliant in my opinion and went really well, even though we did have some disturbance at the church. I think the panning shot of emily walking into the church went really well, and i think using emily was a good decision as her height, being quite short, helped suggest that she was quite vunderable which worked really well. She does dramawhich gave us a bonus with her acting. We could have used more ideal clothes (lighter, clearer colours), however it still worked well in the end.
Adam's usual enthusiactic acting was brilliantly done, and we got some excellent shots of Adam leaving the church scene from a platform as emily cried, even though in adam's usual sense of humour, he decided to sing to will young on the way out, requiring another shot. despite this, the final shot was brilliant in my opinion, and the diejetic sound worked really well with adams footsteps and emily crying, other than that just scilence.
The over the shoulder shots we did with adam talking to emily and vice versa were at first quite hard to film, as Adam obcessivley moved forward throught the dialouge without warning. in the end we got the shots sorted however. I hope that these shots give us a slighty better enigma to the narrative, and if edited right, could have a real impact on the film. filming on friday however could be slightly more difficult because of the people out and about at the time of day.

this is our draft film, as you can see we have a lot to work on for we feel it's more like a trailer than a film opening. (look back at our feedback for more improvements)

Mr smith and Mr Ford completely slated us about the running we had in our film, so that's the first thing that we need to change. despite the fact that the film is more or less orientated around running, which is quite confusing. we now need to get some more shots as this would add more pace, as pointed out by miss Sutton from the library, who also hated our project so far. were not totally sure about how we can cut down on running, but with more shots we could cover for this. another point made was that the montage is quite unclear and seems slightly unrelated to the narrative, and being so fast they are hard to make out. the same shots are also used repeatedly in the montages over and over again, which doesn't really seem to work and in my opinion makes t look more like a trailer than an opening. another point made on the feedback sheet was that we need to be more careful with mise en scene, i.e. get rid of the clown. i think maybe we need to be slightly more careful about the running through the street, and then into the garden as the location seems slightly relaxed for this kind of narrative.

After looking across a few sites and playing around with garage band, i've found what i think is the most ideal site for our needs: freeplaymusic.com. the website allows me to search through music by using various keywords, or looking through menu's such as the genre of the music, and a particularly useful menu for our needs, "feeling" of the music. tracks are actually listed under the emotional effect they have on people and i am finding this really useful. so far, i have found these tracks which we don't think are right mainly because of the tempo or being to up beat:

"forever and ever" - to soft and not fast

"Songs without words 19 5"

Reece, i found this song:
Logan 5-Little Gothic Masterpiece  by  Logan5
I like beginning of it because it gives us the unknowingness of our character running, i thought it was good for the slow part of our song, thinking it would pick up pace i listened on and the speaking kind of ruins it for us. I think our music needs to start off quite slow then pick up pace.

Somber moments in life  by  Mr Sinister
I also quite liked this for the effect at the beginning but it doesn't really pick up pace and wouldn't fit the ending of our piece. BAD TIMES

http://www.mysoundfx.com/thematic-background-music/suspense-horror/creepy-hip-hop.html
I found this song, see what you think, it might be a bit hop hoppy but I think it could work

i also like the build up in this:
http://www.mysoundfx.com/thematic-background-music/suspense-horror/eastern-death.html
Yes, i know it's only 40 seconds long but i'm sure we could figure something out.

And lastly this one:
http://www.mysoundfx.com/thematic-background-music/suspense-horror/zombie-tension.html
although it might be a bit "district 9" if you get my drift, for some reason it reminds me of it? Also, it could be a bit off beat?

This is the audience profile for our film: frank, is a 19 year old boy, who likes to hang out with his mates often, and meet them at the pub for a few pints and a laugh. he enjoys a good film and likes to be out and about instead of at home. he likes a film which doesent require a high amount of thought to digest, but does make him think and has a few various twists, yet also keeps some action in it. Something that keeps him on the edge of his seat at all times is his idea of a great film - something that hits him all of a sudden and gives him the thrill of sudden realization of a hidden narrative really knocks his socks off.Audience Profiling

starting with the characters who are chasing our main character, i am looking for the ideal code of dress. my image of these dark, mysterious, shady people would be a long black coat kind of look, to create an element of ghostly aura. Hard to explain exactly what I'm talking about, but i think it would be great to really capture that kind of character as hard as it would be. i think this kind of black and almost "invisible" kind of colour and formless clothes would give an untouchable feeling to the characters, make m seem like they have no history and don't communicate, they just hunt their target. It could also make them seem very intimidating and powerful. i looked at the matrix for inspiration for this, but didn't find what i was looking for. I then looked at Blade, a film my younger brother seems to obssess over. i remember watching one of them with him, and despite the film being appalling, i think the outfit blade wears might be what I'm looking for, despite the fact that the target audience for our film will be severely different, i would like to take the same kind of character for the enemy and put him into a different narrative. He looks extremely intimidating, and the image just gives a "don't mess about with me" kind of impression, an almost indestructible kind of target, and that would show what our protagonist is really up against. The outfit makes his shoulders look much more broad and adds to the intimidating effect he has. The quite original looking sun glasses make him look slightly mysterious and almost adds some sort of robot element to his persona. However, the practicality of getting our hands on a costume like this would be difficult, let alone getting hold of 2-3 of them, and therefore, we may need to improvise for this. i have a leather jacket we could use and i am sure we can get hold of some black trousers and sunglasses. the only problem is the part underneath the jacket. it would be nice to use something like that to make them stand out on the chest pads he wears are really distinct, which is something i relay like.

i have consulted alex on her thoughts about basing our chasing characters on Blade's outfit, and she agrees with what i have said. the only problem now is getting hold of the clothes in time for our Tuesday filming session, which could be a challenge.

Next is to find the main characters look. i have been looking at things i could take inspiration from various media i have seen in the past. i have looked at films with characters i think would give the correct effect. one thing in particular has stood out to me quite significantly. the inspiration actually came from a PlayStation 3 game i recently played, with a character who appears quite "roughed up", and quite desperate, quite clearly out of his depth but determined and still fighting on. The game i took this from is the Uncharted series, and a character named Nathan drake. my brother brought me the game for Christmas. the characters name is Nathan. i like the looked up look he has about him. The picture is some concept art of the character in the game. i would love to try and capture his characteristics in our character despite how hard this will be. think we could do this by giving our character torn up clothes, maybe some fake blood. a plain tee shirt with some dirt on it would work, because it would make him look like he had been surviving without luxuries of fresh clothes, washing etc. like he is on the very edge of his ability to avoid his families killers, whoever they are.

this a shot of an alley way that i discussed using with Alex for a running scene

this is a car park area i really liked that we could experiment with running around and jumping about

this is the same car park, i liked the skip because me and my friends used to climb on it when we were younger, so we could do something similar if were careful not to make it look bad


boarded up house

i am writing a character profile for an idea of a main character. there are some aspects of the chacater that me and alexx have come to make definite, however there are some variable concepts and values about the character that are still to be made definite. i would like to in someway capture the essence of a young character who is out of his depth, but has the determination to fight and always seems to servive by the skin of his teeth. an example of this that i like despite the very different narrative is the character of Harry Potter. Not in his bodily traits or the way he talks or looks, but the way that he seems to be out of his depth but have some form of fighting chance really creates character in my opinion.

Me and Reece took some test shots today for we had the idea of focussing in and out of an object. This is taken from the Billy Talent - Surrender video (the first 8 seconds).
We decided to use the manual focus on the camera, after a few attempts of trying to focus on a pen we managed to get the style how we wanted.


We worked out that in order to focus in on the background then focus back onto the object we would have to keep the camera still and zoom in on the item, this makes the focus change more obvious.

This is our storyboard (reads left to right :))

i like the action in this scene and the determination of James bond is something i would like to try and capture in our character, in a scenario that seems without hope, for him to be continuing to try creates a really great quality for me

By next monday's lesson!:

1. Make script for our film.
2. Take location shots. (See http://alexreecelcascw.blogspot.com/2010/01/location.html)
3. Make a storyboard.
4. Create animatic of storyboard.
5. Make the pitch better.
6. Character Profile
7. Update research so it's good.
8. Maybe research other things e.g. costumes or fonts.
9. audience profile

After considering our feedback from our pitch we have decided to try and appeal to a wider audience.
The class said they thought our Sherlock Holmes style appealed more towards the older generation thus making it boring, they also suggested a younger character and to get a clearer idea on flashbacks. We have decided to change our narrative as follows:

A boy has lost his father. He is 18ish and is searching frantically throughout his old abandoned house. As he sees something he gets a flashback to earlier in his life with his father (before he died). He then carries on searching throughout the house, goes upstairs and finds a body with a tattoo on it. He gets out an old piece of paper, compares markings and the door burst open. The boy picks up a knife. Blackout/

For the name of our film we were thinking conspiracy.
This is going to be a working title in case we find something more fitting later on :)

since the project is now going to be based on a mystery drama, i want to do some research into the kind of charectors which might show up in these kinds of films, particularly the detective. typically a detective wears a long, brown jacket and a hat, maybe glasses. They are varying heights and dont usually appear as muscular aggressive people but more intelligent and iterlectually talented. i havent discussed with alex yet but tommorow i can share these ideas with her. i personally would like the detective to be a steryotypical cartoon styled detective, carrying the traits i earlier mentioned. here are a few pictures i found which more or less represent the kind of look i would like for the detective. like i said, these are yet to be discussed with alex and shee may want a more realistic kind of character.

Old house. Orphan. Flashbacks. Memento meets Da Vinci Code. Mystery.