The Final Film

Here is our final film. Enjoy! :)

Contributions- Max Mazur

We all contributed to the Film in many ways. Without any one of us, I think the Film would have turned out very differently. I feel I personally have contributed to the group in the following ways:

• I suggested to use the forest as the location
• I did a lot of the filming, mainly due to the fact that my character featured in the film a lot less that the others' did
• As I mentioned before, I acted on the film as the target of the others' trap
• I thought of the framing for the final shot, which differed from the storyboard as we felt it would look better
• Probably the most important contribution I made was in the editing process, as I had used Final Cut and GarageBand before

Children's Film- Max Mazur

A Children's Film is a film aimed for children as it's main audience. As a result, they are almost always rated U or PG by the BBFC. Children's films are mainly in the fantasy or drama genre, but almost all have elements of comedy in them. Children's films almost always include a "hero" or "good" character, usually accompanied by a sidekick or two, and a villain or "bad" character. In the end, the good always triumphs, with the bad character seeing the error of their ways, being sent away, or in rare cases dying. Some notable examples of Children's film include the Pixar films, the early Harry Potter films (the later ones are normally rated 12A by the BBFC), the Shrek films and most of the Disney animated films (Snow White, Cinderella etc.). 

Storyboard

Here is the Storyboard for our Film Opening.

Written up "Back to the Future" storyboard

Clocks are ticking on the wall, this could perhaps suggest that the owner of this house is very interested in the time, the subject of the film is to do with time, or, as could be suggested later, the owner of the house is an inventor.

The latter could be suggested by the makeshift radio, dog food can-opener, coffee machine & robotic arm, which follows the clock scene. This sequence of scenes instils a happy sense of creativity & practicality in the viewer, often making them wonder what happened next and whether anymore wacky inventions come from the owner of the house.

We then meet a teenaged boy with a skateboard letting himself in using a key from under the door mat, to which he repeats “Doc?... Doc?!” this gives us an indication that the owner of the house is a doctor and is known well by the boy. After seeing the dog food slopped in the dog bowl and reacting negatively, his skateboard slides along the floor, colliding with the missing plutonium that was mentioned in the new report on the television. This gives us the first sinister bit of the film; however, this keeps the viewer interested and wanting more information.

Intended Target Audience for our film

For our film, we were aiming for children as our target market, so for this, we tried to make our film as easy to understand as possible, and to have as much childish humour as we could. (slapstick)

However, our target audience was aimed at the children too, because we would then rely on the children to use their persuasive habits to make the parents pay to take the children to the cinema.

We believe the film would mostly be for children, including theme & general setting of the film. The age of the children this film is aimed as would most probably be between 6-13 years of age, all of which will need Parental Guidance (PG). The gender of the children does not matter, as we have no preference; there are no particular scenes where being male or female is of any relevence.

Title Sequence Analysis- Max Mazur

Tim Burton's Corpse Bride

The opening sequence of The Corpse Bride focuses mainly on a Butterfly, flying around a village, showing characters and secenery. What is most noticable is that the Butterfly is the only thing in colour, everything else is black and white. The titles are placed over the picture and follow this pattern as well, being white in colour. These titles mainly focus on the Actors/Actresses providing their voices for the film, as well as the usual "Warner Bros Pictures Presents" at the start. The font itself is striking, mainly due to the spiky spirals on some letters. The spiral is a reccuring image in the film, with tops of towers, grass and even beards being spiral shapes. The spiral is also an image in The Nightmare Before Christmas, one of Burton's other films. For our titles, we plan to find a font similar in style, as we are making a horror/comedy film opening. We will possibly use white, but may use a colour that stands out more, for example red and our titles will include an imaginary production company name, our names and the name of the Film.

Movie opening- Max Mazur

Monster House - PG

   Monster House is a 2006 film directed by Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg. It is about a house which comes to life and eats people and is surprisingly scary for a PG film
   It's opening sequence involves a small girl on a tricycle getting stuck on the lawn of the house and the angry old man who owns it storming out, scaring her away and breaking her trike. This is unusual for a PG opening, as PG films normally have a positive shot after a scary or sad moment.
    The film is a horror/comedy, the genre we are using for our film, so we can use elements of it for our film. One thing which struck me was the manner in which the man emerges from the house: the door slowly opens and his face melts in from the shadows. I thought this was a really good way of making the audience instantly dislike him. We could possibly use something like this for our film.

Film Details

Camerawork
We will be using a variety of different shots in order to make our film as interesting as we can. If all the shots were of a similar framing, the film would get boring after a while. We will be using:

• Extreme Long shots
• Long Shots
• Close ups
• Medium long shots
• Medium close ups
• Over the shoulder shots
• and various different angles

Sound

We will be using little dialogue, mainly using the sounds of the forest. We will be making our own music on Garageband to feature in the background of the action. 

Editing

We will use Final Cut to edit our film. We will use transitions such as fades in order to create a slightly creepy feeling for the film, but combine this with the comical action in order to create irony.

Special Effects

We are not using special effects as we don't feel it is necessary as we are trying to make the film look as real as possible as it is set in the real world. 

Mise-en-Scene

At the start, we will focus heavily on the forest in order to establish the location. The location will be the main device we use to create an eerie atmosphere. 

Props

We are using bin-bags, string and "scream mask"s, all used to create the traps. These are the only props we will use.

Costume

We will be wearing ordinary clothes, as we are setting the film as if it is on a regular day.

Color/Lighting

The film will have a dull colour scheme, as it will be lit by natural light and the colours will be dark as we are filming in a shady area.

Film Opening Analysis Homework

Princess Mononoke - PG

   Princess Mononoke is a 1997 film directed by Hayao Miyazaki. The film is a Fantasy or Adventure, but has a meaning that is hidden to the seven-year-old viewers, but is very prominent to the older audience. The film is essentially an “environmental protection” film, and although it sounds cliché, the film puts across its message in a thoughtful way.

   The film opens with a shot of mountains, covered in mist. A narrator then has a short monologue, which talks about “Ancient times” and “Spirits of the Gods”, which immediately tells the viewer that the film is a Fantasy, set in the past. Whilst the narrator is talking, the camera tilts downwards now showing a forest scene. These opening shots establish the themes of “the natural environment”. The monologue, combined with the slow, haunting music and the slow, deliberate camera movements establish the dark mood of the film.

   Towards the end of this monologue, as the camera comes to rest just above the forest floor and the narrator mentions “Demons”, we see a shadowy creature moving in the distance and knocking over a large tree. This is foreshadowing the destruction of the forest at the conclusion. Just before the title screen appears, we see the leg of the demon, covered in strange purple worm-like creatures, and as the leg passes, it kills the grass where it stood. This again is foreshadowing of the destruction of the forest. This audience suspects that the narrative of the film will have something to do with this demon, but apart from the foreshadowing, that’s all the audience gets in regards to clues about the rest of the film.

   This is what the opening sequence does so successfully. It gives almost no concrete facts about the rest of the film, keeping the audience watching, wondering what is going to happen next.

These are photographs of our brainstorm and a diagram of our "trap" idea. This shows what our basic plot will be and how we will create our traps.

Preliminary Task (Video)

This is the film we created for our Preliminary Task. We feel it went reasonably well and it helped us learn to use the equipment and editing software.

Lesson Overviews

 6/10/11- Classification

  This lesson, we looked at the features of the two possible classifications for our film: U and PG. After comparing the features, we watched clips from four children's films (Up, Watership Down, Home Alone and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone) and tried to guess which of the two classifications each film was rated. Most of them were simple to guess, the exception being Watership Down, which was rated U, which was surprising for the amount of violence in it. 

Watership Down - rated a U!

   Classifications are given by the British Board  of Film Classification (BBFC), whose website we visited to establish the features of U and PG. We were assigned U, and our findings are featured on a separate post. This is the link to the U classification page and this is the PG section.

   It is important for film makers to have a target market when they make a film. Target market is the group of people whom the film is aimed at (in our case, children and families). It is important for film makers to follow the classification requirements carefully in order to create a film that will be rated appropriately for their target market.

   After considering both options, we have decided to create a film that is classed PG. We have decided this as it gives us more freedom about what we include in it. If we had chosen U, we would be much more limited in our choices, and we would like to open our options as much as possible.    

10/10/11- Storyboarding

   This lesson, we storyboarded the opening scene from Back to the Future (Storyboard posted earlier). Tom and I created a diagram of the entire room featured and drew arrows to show how each section of our storyboard related to the location in the room.

   In commercial film-making, storyboards are used for very much the same purpose, meaning the company will minimise shooting time, therefore decreasing the production cost significantly. Creating a storyboard before the final product will also enable film makers to edit their ideas at a much earlier stage: it's a lot easier to re-draw a couple of images than re-film an entire scene if the director feels the framing should be different.

   It is important to create a storyboard for our children's film, as it will give us an idea about what exactly we will film, and how many shots we will need, therefore decreasing time spent filming and give us more time to edit and make the film look professional. It will also help us visualise how the finished film will look.

Classification

Storyboards

Storyboard Lesson. The first is by James and Edgar, and the second is by Tom and Max.