Planning Preliminary Match Cut Exercise Including Storyboarding

In preparation for creating our match cut extract, we were asked to predict the shots of an opening scene of a film, the synopsis was this;

East London. 3pm. A man chain-smokes as he sits at his home PC. He copies confidential computer files and plans to a CD. He packages them and is seen posting them.

Using a grid of 20 rows, we had to create 20 shots we predicted would be in this extract considering external/internal place, shot type, action (tracking, pan, tilt etc.) and a brief description as to what is being exposed. Many of my shots were accurate such as, the close up of cigarette and mouth, mid shot of CD coming out of hardrive. All of these estimated shots help us to plan and think about what out preliminary match cut edit will appear like.

Before we began our storyboard, we were required to consider a match cut, shot reverse shot, and showing our 180 degree rule understanding. The synopsis of out extract was

a character opens a door, walks into a room, sits opposite another character and they share a few lines of dialogue

Our shot reverse shot would obviously be whilst the two characters conversate, using mid shots. As we predicted the shots for the first extract we did for our own, this was the planning. The storyboard consisted of close up shots of for e.g. handle and hand opening, feet walking towards the camera, this is a successful match cut.

Skills Audit: Livetype and Sound

Livetype
Every films holds credits at the beginning but mostly the end. Livetype is a software program developed to create animated title sequences for video projects. Livetype contents includes fonts, textures, objects, templates and effects. All attributes of each title or character can be changed and key framed, including the size, drop shadow, outline, extrusion, glow, opacity and tracking of the text. Livefont is one of the key features, being fonts with animated characters, you can choose one that suits the genre of your clip of intented soundtrack. These animated characters include styles such as handwriting, smoke writing, fire, and blinking LED characters. Various animation effects can be applied to type, either Live Fonts or normal system fonts. There are, for example, glows, scrolls, fades and zooms. The timing of the effects can be customized and new effects can be created from scratch using key framing. Any image or movie file can also be placed and edited on the canvas also, in this case it would be the opening scene of our created thrillers, this way the credits can accurately appear exactly when and where we desire them.

This annotation demonstrates Livetype features;


Sound
Sound is important in a film, it helps to create mood and amosphere suiting the genre and film intention such as suspense. It is also a vital key that we use our own soundtracks in our own thrillers as they may be copyrighted. Soundtrack Pro is a software where we can create this. It allowed me to experiment with a range of different sounds to create a piece that sounded thriller like, sound genres varied from jazz, orchestral, distorted, electrical, urban, drum and bass etc. I dragged my chosen sounds to the Soundtrack Pro timeline and increased or decrease their lengths according to how I wanted my piece to sound. By clicking the volume tab down i was able to increase and decrease the sound volume according to my movie clip in terms of timing i.e. when someone speaks volume down, when action volume up.

Events Diary Blog; News and Current Affairs (2)

Such thrillers consisting of situations such as honour killings are sadly real life events also, what may be seen as a psychological/crime thriller.
Honour Killing
A 16-year-old girl was buried alive by relatives in a gruesome Turkish honour killing - because she befriended boys.
Grim: The hole where Medine Memi was found buried alive in Turkey. Acting on a tip-off, police discovered Medine Memi's body in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-metre-deep hole in a chicken pen outside her house.A post mortem revealed that she had a significant amount of soil in her lungs and stomach, meaning that she was buried alive, forensic experts told the Anatolia agency.The girl was discovered in Kahta town, Adiyaman province, 40 days after she went missing.Medine's father and grandfather have been arrested and jailed pending trial over her killing, the agency said. The father is reported to have said in his testimony that the family was unhappy she had male friends. In honour killings, most prevalent in Turkey's mainly Kurdish South East, a so-called family council names a member to murder a female relative. A victim is targeted if she is considered to have sullied the family honour, usually by engaging in an extra-marital affair. The practice has seen rape victims or women who simply talked to strange men murdered.
SKY NEWS LINK; http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Turkey-Honour-Killing-Medine-Memi-16-Buried-Alive-By-Relatives-For-Having-Male-Friends/Article/201002115542711?f=rss

Events Diary Blog; News and Current Affairs (1)

Thriller film plots are often inspired by real life events, some films are about a historical event, for example Titanic, Schindler's List. Although these are not thriller genre films, many films tend to take a historical event, or any other current news affair real life event to make and create a situation based around (a) certain character(s). By doing this we feel empathetic towards the fictional character (however could be based on real life event/person), we are put in there shoes, in order to do this, the film has to use various camera angles and shot, sound effects, cast etc to contribute.

9/11 is an obvious event which could create a situation for a character, it would create an excellent thriller, sub genre; drama, action, political, the list is endless. The September 11 attacks (often referred to as September 11th or 9/11) were a series of coordinated suicide attacks by al-Qaeda upon the United States on September 11, 2001. On that morning, 19 al-Qaeda members hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners. The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everyone on board and many others working in the buildings. Both buildings collapsed within two hours, destroying nearby buildings and damaging others.

Intro to Cameras & Health n Safety Tutorial

The introduction to using our video cameras exposed us to all the basic functions to working the machine. In this tutorial, we were shown basic things such as opening and closing the lens, switching the video camera on etc. However, we did also learn how to create focus on an object by twisting the rim around the lens. Inserting the battery without damaging the camera was vital to our knowledge as these are very expensive pieces of technology. Each person demonstrated things such as inserting the battery, memory card etc, however it was also important that we all knew how to place the video camera onto the tripod, as well as assembling the tripod successfully.

List of Thriller Sub-Genres

*Psychological Thriller
*Action Thrilller
*Conspiracy Thriller - The Bourne Identity was adapted into a movie starring Matt Damon which used many of the thriller conventions of the plot. Though its sequels, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, depart significantly from Robert Ludlum's storyline, the conspiracy-thriller genre is still well-preserved.
*Crime Thriller
*Political Thriller
*Futuristic Thriller
*Mystery/Drama Thriller - Phone Booth is a tight and taut suspense thriller. The screenplay does a terrific job of portraying the sniper as an unpredictable psychopath who seems to be enjoying himself tremendously.
*Sci Fi Thriller
*Forensic Thriller
*Religious Thriller
*Suspense Thriller - North By Northwest, a film I studied at GCSE Media, is well known for using suspense filled conventions, Hitchcocks famous tension building methods are shown using various camera shots and sound effects.

How is suspense built in Marathon man?

Marathon Man is a 1974 paranoid thriller novel by William Goldman. In 1976 it was made into a film of the same name starring Dustin Hoffman and directed by John Schlesinger. The film is highly praised and was very cleverly shot. The film builds suspense throughout and is very effective in doing so.

In one scene we are shown shot of Roy Scheider, Doc, on the phone fiddling with a chocolate box. The non diagetic music over this shot arouses suspicion within the audience. This scene then cuts to a midshot of him gettting out of a car which, not only looks professional and powerful, but is also black connating death. The low angle shot of Doc as he gets out of the car and his professional looking suit makes him look powerful and suggests he is of a high status.We are then shown a establishing shot of him leaving the car. The scene around him looks busy and impowering and as he approaches a busy street we are shown a close up of a odd looking man playing some sort of drum like instrument. The man is dressed again in black and his eyes are concealed by dark sunglasses again prehaps connotations of death. He is also surrounded with african looking masks they have connotations of worship and voodoo and build on the tense atomosphere.

The scene here is now much darker and there is a diagetic sound of the man playing his instrument along with the orginal music. From now on the camera is hand held giving the scene a edgy un-even look making the audience feel un-easy about the whole situation. This is a close up on the mans bag suggesting that what it contains is the reason for all this suspicious action. The camera then cuts back to the odd looking man only this time a buggy significantly passes him by in the shot. Like the bag before the camera follows the buggy suggesting theres something dodgey about it. There is now also a diagetic very high pitch squeak that prehaps reflects that the buggy is not often used and doesnt actually therefore have a real child in it.

Piano is now added to the daunting music making it louder and increasing the pace of the scene. The next shots are multiple shots of the bag and the buggy. The camera is shot at an angle which never reveals the buggy's pusher head or face which makes the audience want to know. Following this there are various cutaways of a man watching Doc and shots of reflection his reflecting as he walks down the street. This creates a sense that someone is watching him and that he is under some sort of surveillance.

Once he has left the shop, the non diagetic daunting music returns and the hand held camera speeds up as he follows a now hasty Doc. The scene then cuts to the once again squeaky buggy only this time the buggy is left by his pusher and the high angle shot zooms into the buggy to reveal a childs doll. At this point a non diagetic ticking clock sound is introduced over the shot connotating a bomb. The scene once again cuts back to Doc who is now returning back to his car. There is another cutway of a close up of the childs dolls face where her eyes open again suggesting the theme that someone is watching Doc. The scene cuts to Doc and the music cuts out as he is about to drive away. The scene cuts once to a low angle shot of a man we have seen before who seems to be watching Doc. This shot makes him looks powerful but also agressive and mean. Finally the shot cuts to the buggy once again and it blows up with a massive bang!

Technical audit of bait tutorial

In class we were shown how to use the bait editing 'final cut pro' programme to edit footage. We were given a varitey of shots to edit.

Here is some of the keys we used and what they do:

• i - this is used to cut the shot down to where you want it to start
• o - this is used to cut the shot down to where you want it to finish
• alt - when you click on a space between two cuts and hold the alt button down it gets rid of the space

To cut down rushes you simply use o and i. These cuts are then dragged down onto the timeline in the order you want to put them on. This makes match cuts easy to create and makes them effective. If the order of the cuts changes you can drag the original cut to create a gap in the timeline where you insert the new cut/s. If you have two clips and you want to put a cilp inbetween them you use the insert edit, yelloe, button by lining the yellom line on the timeline up in the place you want to insert it and then clicking the button. The razor blade tool found on the right side of the screen is used to cut cuts down. You can also drag music onto the shot from the computer however if using tracks from a mp3 you must change their format beforehand for better quality. There are many differnt edits you can apply to the shots including dissolve pressing command and T when the line is where we want it in the clip. After each time we use the programme we must save our work to our groups harddrive so not to loose our work!

Events diary blogg

In the current news one the most alarming stories is Paul and Rachel Chandler's. The couple have spent 100 days as captives of Somali pirates in extremely difficult conditions and are being badly treated. They are both being held in separate conditions, presumably to discourage any rescue attempt, with a poor amount of food, water and shelter. Although it could be seen as neglection the pirates are in business for money alone, so it would be in their interests to make sure their hostages survive. The process of negotiation is under way however it is a long and increasingly costly process, making the pirates more in control as it goes on.

Another shocking story is the 'random' gun massacre in Mexico. At least 15 gunmen drove up to the house in several cars late on Saturday or in the early hours of Sunday and firing guns indiscriminately killed 3 adults, 11 teeagers while some other 20 were injured.

In the middle East a woman detonated an explosives vest among a group of pilgrims making the journey to Karbala, 80km from Baghdad. Killing at least 41 people and injuring another 106 witnesses described seeing a fireball. Troops and police are on alert during the pilgrimage however the bomber had hidden the explosives under her abaya - a long, black over-garment.

How is suspense created in one of the scenes in Marathon man.

There are many suspenseful scenes, one of them is when Doc walks into a dark scene. The camera zooms in towards the tall, overpowering , concrete pillars. These make Doc look vulnerable and belittled as he walks into the shot suggesting to the audience that he is alien to his surroundings. The dark lighting has connotations of horror and immediately creates a foreboding atmosphere for the audience. His body language implies he is paranoid we gather this from his clasped hands and constant fidgeting this puts the audience on edge as the focus is on this character. The non diagetic music over the shot is dark, orchestral music adding to the tension and suspense of the scene. At the very end of this shot before it is cut the camera looks directly up at Doc, along with his now seemingly confident body language this is the point in the scene where Doc looks powerful. However this shot cuts and the music cuts out at which point their is a diagetic loud noise that makes him jump and lose all power. A point of view shot shows the audience a shadow in the distance meaning we cannot establish who it is. This shot emphasizes suspense as it puts the audience in Doc's shoes as a threatened individual.