Film Distribution

I think that the film for the opening sequence we (group) are making should be a British independent film. So the film will be produced outside of a major film studio system. Also it will be produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies or / and maybe distributed by subsidiaries of major film studios.

The independent film will be made with a considerably low film budget compared to a major studio film. The film could have a limited release but we are hoping to have a major marketing campaign, which could lead to the film to have a wide release.

Because Independent films are often screened at local, national, or international film festivals  before distribution (theatrical and/or retail release for example Raindance Film Festival, BFI London Festival, Cannes and Sundance) we want to do that to the film and hopefully get more distributors for the film. So the independent film production could rival a mainstream film production if it gets the necessary funding and distribution.

We will be relaying on viral marketing a lot (thought the internet from things like social networking sites leading to word of mouth between friends, families and people) to advertise the film to audiences as well as newspapers posters, train posters, radio, trailer and small interviews. Also if money is available through funding we could look into tv adverts, billboards and tv promos and a premiere

Examples of well known British Independent films:

-This is England

-Slumdog Millionaire

-The Kings Speech

Examples of companies which help distribute / found / produce independents we could use of the groups film:

-Film4 Productions

-Lions Gate Films

-Summit Entertainment

-ThinkFilm

-Entertainment One

Film Location (Ideas)

In lesson Rebecca showed are group some pictures / names of locations that we could use for when filming are final piece. I decided to take photographs of which locations which are related to the ideas we (group) have for are final piece.

Here are some of the photographs of paths, buildings and status which we can use for location shots.

Here are names of locations of the photographs of fields (below) which we can go to film the parts when the girl is running through a field.

Overall I’m not to sure as a group we are going to film at the locations Rebecca has showed us but we will consider it because we are still as a group deciding what place around London we should film at, because we all live in different parts of London which are far apart from one another.

Foley Sound

Foley sound is sound which is added to a film during post production. Foley sound is the remaking of sound that was filmed but has been done again. The new Foley sound is put in sync to picture and real time (film and television). So the sound is reintroduced. This can be done for any sound for example props, touching of things, moving object, clothes, itching etc.

The sound is recreated using the same thing or different things that the sound needed needs to sounded like. So making Foley sound is about trail and error because coming up / making the sounds can be hard.

Foley sound can help emphasis scenes and dialogue can over all can make a footage seem better.

Unfortunately we (group) were unable to use Foley sound for are prelim because we ran out of time. But we are planning to use Foley sound in are final piece.

Here is the clip I watched from the teaching blog which made / helped me understand what Foley sound is.

Overall I think Foley sound is a good software to use for sound and I do believe that using this instead of sound from filming is better because when filming the sounds can not be picked up properly or clear and using Foley sound created by people / yourself you get what you want and I don’t think any sound will be missed out. I can’t wait to make my own Foley sound because I think its going to be good fun.

180 Degree Rule

The 180 degree rule is a guide to help while a person is filming 2 characters (or other elements). This rule applies a lot to the shot reverse shot.

During monologue of two people facing one another, the shot reverse shot should be filmed on one side of the actors. So an imaginary half circle / 130 degree on the side being filmed are all the places where the actors should be filmed with out breaking the rule. The 2 characters being filmed (or other elements) should stay on the side at all times that they started on so they have the same left/right relationship to each other.

If the camera goes pass the half circle on the side that the filming started on it will create footage of the 2 character on opposite side making it seem as if the characters just magic changed where he/she was. This is known as an arevesre angle, which unfortunately we did in are prelim but now I am fully aware of the rule and understand it I don’t think we (group) will be making that mistake while filming again.

Another example were the 180 degree rule applies to in filming is football. This because when football is being watched on tv the match is only filmed from one side of the pitch. The reason for this is because after half time the two teams switch sides and if the match was filmed from both sides of the pitch and watched on tv it will get confusing for the viewer because they will find it hard to know which end of the pitch the teams should be shooting in to score a goal.

Laptop

After my laptop being in repairs after 2 weeks, I am happy to say it is now fixed. So I can now catch up with all the blogging I have missed or haven’t done. 

Test video of titles

After noticing that there were a lot of jump cuts in are opening and there were nothing we could do to change it because some of are footages were short  we spoke to Rebecca and she gave us the idea to add in titles on a blank screen with fade in / fade out dissolves connecting it to the clips. We tried it and decided it was the best thing for us to do to improve our opening and o that there are no jump cuts.

So that meant we were going to have title on a blank screen even though we never planned it because we wanted a discrete title opening with title with the film, but after remembering that in the opening of Seven (which is a discrete title opening) it had both titles with the film and in a blank screen we decided to have both in are opening title as well.

Teacher Feedback

Rough Cut Deadline - next Thursday during our lesson (1st March)

Filming Day 1

  

my self and susan setting up props whilst disgusting  things we could add in , micheal was at the side setting up the tripod getting read for filming.

we decided to use an ipad instead of a picture  of susan on a piece of paper, to bring about a more modern theme type stalker.

we started filming at  9:50 in the media studio, it took us around 30 mins to set up props and get together a solid idea , after this we began filming. we finished filming at 3 , it was a long and challenging day , however we worked are hardest and were d 

Film Audiences #3

Film Certificate

Age is an important thing that has to be considered for target audience because if the film is targeted to children under 12 the film can not have things that consist of things that are not aloud for children under 12 for example swearing in the film where the film will be rated 15 and children under 12 will not be able to watch it so the target audience can not see the film.

The British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) have made ratings so that films have to have a rating certificate to the certain ages can watch certain film.

From research I have done on the internet I have found out:

 That the ratings applying to video as from 26 July 1985 were as follows:
U    Universal: suitable for all viewers;
Uc    Universal: particularly suitable for children;
PG Parental guidance: parents are advised that some scenes may be unsuitable for young children;
15    suitable only for viewers  aged 15 and over;
18    suitable only for viewers  aged 18 and over;
R18    may be sold only in licensed sex shops to persons aged 18 and over.
 And that most recent change was the addition of a further age band on 1 August 1989:
12A    suitable for cinema audiences aged 12 and over; children apparently under the age of 12 must be accompanied by an adult.
12    video may not be bought or rented by a child under 12; it is the responsibility of the accompanying adult whether a child under 12 views the video.

From the thrillers that I have looked at for inspiration for the thriller opening that Group 24 are making I think that the certificate rating lies between 12 & 18.

(reference: http://www.terramedia.co.uk/law/british_film_censorship.htm)

Film Audiences #2

Finding Out if the Target Audience Will Have a Poitive Reaction to the Film

To find out if a film has appealed to the films target audience, the film should first be showen to a small group of people who are the films target audience and then the target audience should fill out a questionnaire or be asked questions for example like if they like the film or not?, where improvements should be?, what things should be taken out or re edited?, if there were lines that could not be heared? to get important feedback so the film can be altered before release if needed to make sure the film can suit the target audience as much as possible this can be as simple of the title of the film being changed.

This is called Test Screening. 

Everything the target audience says should be conidered and heard because if the target audience doesn't like it the film my not be watched and the production company will lose money so the film will not do as well in the box office as the production / actors hoped leading to negative criticism.

An example of a film Test Screening with it target audience is a legal crime thriller 'The Pelican Breif' 1993 staring Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts. During the test screening the audience showed a negative recation to the onscreen kiss between the charcters of Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts. So in response of the negative reaction it led to the scene being cut before the final release of the film.

Planning - Title Sequence

Here is the order we are planning to put are title sequence in:

Because it is an low budget British Independent film title will come before the actors because none of the avtors will be big or we known, so the actors won't be well know by a majority of people (alos they won't be used as an marketing technique like people coming to watch the film because an actor who is good looking / well known is in it for example Justin Timberlake in the film Time).

Planning - Treatment

After we came up with the title of the film and had a brief idea of what the opening was going to be about we came up with the brief outline of the whole film. Later Susan went home and put everything together and typed up the treatment in school.

We looked at the typed up treatment as a group and then made some alterations.



Here is Group 24's Treatment:

Brief Outline of the Whole Film Noir Démon

The outline of the film is about a girl who has supernatural powers who is slightly insane living her life as a schoolgirl (it is unknown how she has the supernatural powers in the film). She only has 1 close friends from school who knows about her supernatural powers and hides the supernatural powers from other people, class mates and her adoptive family (she is unsure if the rest of her family has supernatural powers or not so she doesn’t want to tell them she has supernatural powers to find out they don’t resulting to her being kicked out of the family and hunted by the government and used for special experiments). Her real family was killed in a fire when she was young it is unknown how the fire started.

A demon, who is a human who thinks that it is possessed by a demon who wears a black cloak with symbols on it (it is unknown to the viewer what the persons gender is because the face is covered). The demon sees the girl practicing her powers when with her friend who knows about it and sets out to capture her. The person in the black cloak believes he is a demon - the offspring of the devil. He sets out to capture the girl with supernatural powers because it thinks that if it sacrifices the girl to the devil and drinks her blood it will then gain her powers.

Brief Outline of the Opening to Noir Démon

The opening starts with the viewer seeing the demon in a dim/dark room sitting still on a chair with a long black hooded cloak with white symbols covering the whole body apart from hands because it will be tied up but will be wearing black gloves. A small light can be seen switching on and off in the room. There will be a lot of fast cuts done from the shots used from different camera angles. The screen then becomes blurry / fizzy and the demon can be seen from different parts of the room sitting and standing in different parts of the room using fast cuts while what has just been seen rewinds in the background. (We will be using layered shots and fitters for this on Final Cut Pro). We are thinking of using static sounds during this part. Flashing numbers and symbols will appear at the button of the screen (around about the bottom 3rd third of the screen and the title will also appear at this part). The demon is then shot looking directly into the camera with an extreme close up and then it cuts to a girl running from something in a tunnel. Different cuts are shown of the girl running from different camera angles (we will be filming by using a hand help camera). The girl then disappears as she is running in the corridor in the dark so she fades away. The static sound then comes back again so it is heard and then fast cuts of the demon in the cloak standing in these locations: grave yard, park, church & tunnel / underpass with different camera angles and a lot of layered sound. Then it will cut to the demon raising its head so the face can been seen by the viewer but the face is not revealed. The ending of the opening will be of the demons head being raised up, a close shot up.

Some parts of the filming will be slowed down and speeded up because we are doing a discrete title opening.

Planning #3.2 (Costume & Props)

We have also decided to have symbols drawn on the black cloak to add the the intense scary atmosphere.

Here are some of the symbols we are deciding to draw on the cloak:

These symbols represent things that link to genre and subgenre of the film such as the symbol of death and the symbol of the devil because the person who is the demon thinks they are the offspring of the devil and that the demon whats to kill the girl.

So we think the symbols on the cloak is a good idea and it kinds of represents what the demon is.

Production Schedule

As a group we decided that the dates we were doing to film were:

 Thursday 9th Febuary 2012 at City & Islington 6th Form College in room 333, The Actors were going to be Susan and Myles (hand), The costume and props needed and used were :- a black curtain, a black single bed sheet, black candles, black glove, an ipad 2, a knife and a map, The equipment which was used was a tripod and a camcorder. The time we filmed was from 9:00am to 12:15pm.
Monday13th February 2012 at the locations shown at the blog previously {Planning #2 (Location)} at Whichmore, The costume was normally everyday clothing (same thing Susan was wearing on Thursday) and no props we needed, During lunch on Thursday after filming the group went to see Marissa to see how big the lights were to see if we were able to carry them around with us while filming. The lights weren't to big so Michael took 1 home with 2 batteries and Susan took home the camcorder, tripod, flip camera and still camera home because we took out / booked the equipment out till Tuesday 14th 10:00am. We filmed at 6:00 to 8:00 on Monday and returned the equipment on Tuesday morning.

Noir Demon Basic Animatic

This is our Animatic created by Michael using the group ideas and putting it into a video. There is also a slight difference to our animatic from others, i included sound to give a sense of what types of music we wanted to be used in our thriller, such as tv static and suspense music.

Planning #6 (Basic Story Board)

Here is our Story Board for noir demon we created, it consists of guidlines and steps to creating our thriller. We will have our story board on set with us whilst we are filming to remind us of any key filming techniques and ideas.

The storyboard is very basic because it dosent show all the types of shots we are going to use (this will be shown in the animatic) but it shows the main ideas and also the title sequence order (which will be posted later) and an idea of were we will be planning to put the titles in the sequence done on Final Cut Pro. 

We will also make an Animatic.

Planning #5 (Target Audience)

We have decided to target our target sequence at 15 to 26 year olds as we feel that people of this age will most enjoy it, we feel that it may be a bit scary and misleading for under 15 year olds and think that 15 is the right age to start from, this is ideally because our thriller opening contains violence.  The reason why we feel 25 should be maximum age our thriller opening is targeted at is because we think the themes displayed in our thriller appeals to the younger generation.

Prezi (The Pitch)

We have started our Prezi (The Pitch) about our thriller Noir Demon, this is our first time using the prezi website as we all individually discovered that we generally use Microsoft Word or Powerpoint to pitch ideas. The reason for using Prezi was because it looked interesting to use and more appealing as opposed to basic softwares.

Planning # thoughts on feed back for presentation film opening.

So we have presented are presentation last lesson and we got some positive feed back from our teachers. Me and Micheal thought we would update and announce we plan to make a few changes due to the feed back we got , we think these changes could potentially  get us full marks on filming. Tony and Marissa both said there appears to be a lot happening in that one small sequence and could be a bit to much for our viewers to take in one go.
 We are going to change the story line slightly to ensure that our viewers get the plot and can follow what is happening because 1 of are criticism was that they couldn't understand what was actually happening , therefore we will make the slightest change to make sure that our film opening is enjoyable and not frustrating for our viewers because they don't understand whats happening. However , none of changes will affect our recording time or change any of the plans that we have made as a group, and further more we will contact both  susan and joebeda to make sure there okay with the changes, and if we all agree then we will go through with it and make the changes; I'm sure they will co-operate and will support us on the changes we have thought of, we will discuss this with them on Thursdays lesson (09/02/2012).

Planning #4 (Title)

After a brief group discussion we came up with a title for our thriller, but before this conclusion, we explored a range of ideas such as pronounciations and languages as we wanted to have a name different and unique from others. After careful consideration and debating amongst the groupwe decided to name our thriller "NOIR DEMON" 

The term "noir" is french for black and relates to the colour of the cloak of the demon we are going to convey and also to the nature of the thriller.

Planning #3 (Costume & Props)

For possible costumes we have decided that the most significant item will be a black cloak worn by the demon played by (Susan Fagbohun), we drew inspiration from films such as Scream, Scary Movie and The Woman In Black. By this, viewers will be able to intertextualise because a cloaked figure straight away means danger in thriller films.

Here are images of the villains/killers from other films that are cloaked

Also, as none of us are planning to harm ourselves in the making of this film there will also be fake blood just incase it is needed. We are also going to have a knife on set because we have decided that the hooded figure thinks he needs to drink the supernatural teenage girls blood in order to supposedly gain her powers. So the ideal weapon for the demon is a knife.

There was also discussion of the use of black gloves, they will be worn by either the demon or the girl.

We are also thinking of using thick rope to tie up the girl once she has been caught by the demon.

Planning #2 (Locations)

We have discussed the types of locations we can shoot at and that would go quite well with what we have planned for our thriller so far. We have also established that the hooded figure in our thriller who is going to be played by (Susan Fagbohun) is going to be some sort of individual who has deranged themselves to be a demon who is after a teenager with supernatural powers, we are planning to use a number of locations such as a grave yard because it can be used to create a sinister mood and is also creepy because it sets an uneasy and unsettling mood. Here is a photo of a the potential Grave yard we are thinking of using :-

                         we are planning to film here when its dark to establish the nature of our thriller.
We also wanna film in a field space because it will enable us to explore and be creative with shots and angles, the field also happens to be next to the grave yard so it will be an ideal location for us. We also have the whole space to our disposal. We also visited the field :-

We also wanted there to be a chase in our thriller opening and thought that this could take place in an underpass and therefor visited 2 potetial underpasses/walkway :-

all the above locations are based around the area of edmonton :-

We also plan to use room 333 at City and Islington Sixth Form College to film the first half of the film opening. This is because will be able to use light in the room already and the tables.

Planning #1

As a group we sat down and had a discussion about our thriller and brainstormed ideas down, we tried to incorporate different ideas together to piece together a treatment. First of all, we tried to decide on what sub genre our thriller would be; the three main sub genres that we all agreed to decide from were horror, action and crime, we even thought of having more than one sub genre. Furthermore, thanks to our wonderful media department we were in possession of an ipad 2 and therefore explored different potential sounds on youtube easily at the same time, which was very handy. We listended to a range of eerie, dramatic and suspensful soundtracks and sound effects, some of which are recognisable from known films such as The Grudge, Haloween, The Exorcist and more. If we decide to recreate such sounds for our thriller, viewers will also be able to intertextualise. In addition, our sounds are going to be layered and we are also going to use foley sounds because we think it will enhance viewers sense of whats going on, for example if we wanted to convey tension to viewers, it would not be possible if we used the background sound from the actually filming because the atmosphere is most likely to be noisy or disturbed by such things as plane and car noises, however we might keep some atmospheric/background sounds if there is some significance to it. Moreover we started to build a treatment, we liked the idea of a hooded figure that viewers aren't able to identify due to the camera not point blankly showing all features of the character, we also wanted there to be an un-ordinary teenage girl involved some how. We were also thinking of adding a minor sense of the supernatural such as doors opening on their own or candles lighting up by themselves. In terms of editing, we wanted our thriller to be fast paced because everyone one in the group enjoyed fast paced thrillers because we find it more enjoyable than slow paced which we feel are boring. There were some talk of time manipulation which we would have used editing to convey but we are unsure at this moment in time. Furthermore, we are thinking of experimenting with camera angles to try and convey a creepy atmosphere.

The Interview - PRELIM

Filming Prelim

Prelim storyboard

planning the prelim

What Kind of Media Institute Might Distribute My Film And Why?

tbc

Distribution of a film

                                     Here is a video i made about Film Distribution

Possible Locations

 Possible locations for our thriller could include interesting and intrigueing streets of London, parks at night, garages and alleyways places with intersting grafitti, grave yard and so on. Below are some boards with pictures of some locations i looked at.

Foley Sound

Foley sounds is are recreated sounds for movies. For example, if the sound of an actor's footsteps were not recorded well or disrupted by a noise from the surroundings such as a plane, a Foley  sound  effect would replace the actually sound from the set. In fact, except for dialogue and music, almost all the sounds you hear in Hollywood films is Foley sound.

Foley artists work in a Foley studio, a room with many props, a viewing screen and recording equipment. The artist watches the film and creates the sound in real time. In most cases several different tracks are recorded, for example, a "move track", which includes the sounds of general movement, footsteps, clothes rustling, crockery clinking, paper folding, doors opening and slamming, punches hitting, glass breaking, etc.

Foley artists use a variety of props to create sounds. Some are the same as the actual sound source, for example, footsteps are created by the artist putting on the right type of shoes and walking on the appropriate surface (Foley studios include different surfaces such as wood, asphalt, etc). Other sounds use more inventive methods, for example, punches can be made by hitting a taped-up phone book or a roasted chicken. - LOL

Film Genre and the Cinema in 2010

                                                   Above are pages 30 and 31 from the FDA year book

Every year, statistics on cinema-going are assembled and made available for the general public. I had a look at the statistics for year-end December 2010 which are the most recent, there were some interesting fact that i found out. Based on what i had seen, i answered the following questions

1)     How many suspense films were released in 2010?

                                                   38 

2)     In total, how much did these suspense films take, gross, to the nearest million?

                                                    48 million

3)     Which genre of film had the highest gross in 2010?

                                                     Action             

4)     What was the most popular family genre in 2010?

                                                  Animation           

5)     Write a short paragraph of about 200 words about how the figures for ‘suspense’ genre films compare with other film genres in 2010.

(To be typed soon)