Film Opening- Marking

Level 4 48–60 marks

There is evidence of excellence in the creative use of most of the following technical skills: 

• material appropriate for the target audience and task; 

• using titles appropriately according to institutional conventions; 

• using sound with images and editing appropriately for the task set; 

• shooting material appropriate to the task set;, including controlled use of the camera, attention to framing, variety of shot distance and close attention to mise-en-scene; 

• using editing so that meaning is apparent to the viewer and making selective and appropriate use of shot transitions and other effects

The material was consistent with a thriller rather than a horror. Twisted Pictures is a company associated with horror. You mentioned horror/thriller as your intended genre but this feels more like the crime drama end of the scale. A good crime drama though!

I thought the titles were appropriate and like the way you timed their arrival along with the music. It didn't matter that this wasn't consistent throughout. I thought it worked well.

The music was a good choice with the right amount of threat and menace. As with the titles, you timed some of your edits with the stresses in the music which worked well. I liked the occasional uses of diegetic sound- it's hard to tell but I believe you used it when the car drove past the camera early on and then increasingly towards the end. Shame you didn't end the music and the clip effectively-it seemed to fizzle out!

The material used was very good. You didn't try to do too much and I liked the camera angles you used throughout. The setting  worked well apart from the poles and I liked the barbed wire, smouldering pile and even the miserable looking dog which added to the sense of impending nastiness. The varied shots of the car and of Alfie at the end seemed very natural and took your audience on a journey. I wish you'd done more with the end. It was a good idea but it felt a bit rushed and you should have timed that final punch with a beat of the music and ended there with the title on black!

The meaning of the sequence was obvious and I thought your choices of shot and where to cut showed a really good feel for timing (until the very end!) I really liked it. I'm going to ask a few others to watch but provisionally: 51/60

Research and Planning- Marking

At this late stage, I am going to have to write brief notes on marking.

Good intro occasional lapses in English- 'we are also implementing some thriller into it...'
The Reservoir Dogs analysis is solid but it would have been nice to have more about impact on audience which would have informed their own product more- the choice of introducing characters as Mr Blonde etc implies that the characters are playing characters...
The mood boards were more a collection of still frames but the points made were valid and would potentially have informed their own production.
There are some very good points in the detailed analysis on The Warriors but there are occasions when potentially excellent points are missed- the narrow depth of field of the character in focus in front of the blurred fairground implies what? There are also occasions where it doesn't make sense- the last sentence for example!

The analysis of Se7en is fairly good in places (the section on Somerset and Mills demonstrates an understanding of how characters can be revealed quickly through mise en scene)

I'm a little unclear about what the film opening evaluation actually is??

The post on location demonstrated a link between choice and research undertaken earlier. I could not access the storyboard. The editing and filming diary offer little insight into how the film evolved and was adapted.

There is nothing here on audience research and marketing which is a real shame. The blog lacks diversity in terms of style of entries.

• There is proficient research into similar products but nothing on target audience
• There is minimal organisation of actors, locations, costumes or props
• There is minimal work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding
• There is a basic level of care in the presentation of the research and planning
• Time management may not be good
• There is minimal skill in the use of digital technology or ICT in the presentation. 
• There are minimal communication skills.
• There is minimal care in the presentation of the research and planning.

The analysis was of a reasonable standard but there is not enough of anything else- especially in terms of planning, Of the two candidates Will took more of a responsibility than Alfie.

Will  8/20

Alfie 7/20

Storyboard

Here is a link to our storyboard for our film opeing. This was our initial idea for our film opening, but we found out it would be difficult to get some of these shots to look effective, so we instead decided to make it much more simple and make it look effective at the sme time.

file:///N:/My%20Pictures/scan.pdf

Setting and Location

Once we decided on the genre we were doing for our film opening, after some research and textual analysis we found out an effective place to do our opening was somewhere isolated, and the easiest and convenient place for us was a wood/forested setting. It appealed to us because in the right conditions it can be made to be seen to have an isolated and creepy feel about the whole place. Another factor that made us film in that location because it was so easily accessible to us as well as being close by.

When at the location there were a few things that were in our favour that we decided to include in our film. There were things that we could film that happened to be there such as a fire, log piles, a dog and some barbed wire. We all filmed a section of these to include in our film and we feel that this enhanced our film opening greatly (considering we took inspiration from the opening of The Walking Dead)

We planned to go out filming in our location towards the evening, we typically arrived on the location at about 5:30, so there was enough light for us to work with when filming, as well as getting a slightly dusky effect. The trees in the woods also helped us create a better lighting for our horror theme.

Influences

Will and I were influenced by the hot TV series The Walking Dead, this is due to the quick cutaways during the opening sequence and also the lack of vibrant colours in the opening used in order to set the scene. Our opening is similar to The Walking Dead in the way that they are both about horror drama genres. This is the reason we chose the walking dead as one of the shows we have taken influence from. The dark tone help set the scene and mood for the viewers as these dark tones allow the users to focus more on what is taking place in the scene rather than what colours are being used. The quick cut aways allow extra information about the setting and scene to be shown to the viewers but without the lengthy process of showing the audience the clips for longer and also fitting them into the current scene. This is also effective as it allows the audience to feel more engaged as they are not are watching the constant driving in the scene.

Our other influence for the opening was from the movie drive, this is due to the fact that the film has a lot of shots where the main character is driving in his car. Will and I look at this and took into account how to take shots of a moving car in the most effective way. We discovered that low angle shots of the moving car while the camera is in a fixed location is the most effective way of keeping the audience engaged.

Marking Film Openings

Marking Film Openings

Clip: They're Coming	Level 1 (0-2) Incomplete/minimal creative/technical skills	Level 2   (3-5) Basic creative/technical skills	Level 3 (5-7) Proficient creative/technical skills	Level 4 (8-10) Excellent creative technical skills	Mark
Material appropriate to target audience				8	8
Titles conventional/appropriate		5			13
Sound/images and technical editing			7		20
Camera work/framing/variety of shot types/mise en scene			7		27
Editing for meaning/transitions effects			7		34
Overall feel		5			39
				Total:	39

Marking Film Openings

Clip:Rivalry	Level 1 (0-2) Incomplete/minimal creative/technical skills	Level 2   (3-5) Basic creative/technical skills	Level 3 (5-7) Proficient creative/technical skills	Level 4 (8-10) Excellent creative technical skills	Mark
Material appropriate to target audience			6		6
Titles conventional/appropriate			5		11
Sound/images and technical editing			7		18
Camera work/framing/variety of shot types/mise en scene			7		25
Editing for meaning/transitions effects			6		31
Overall feel			7		38
				Total:	38

Marking Film Openings

Clip:Captive	Level 1 (0-2) Incomplete/minimal creative/technical skills	Level 2   (3-5) Basic creative/technical skills	Level 3 (5-7) Proficient creative/technical skills	Level 4 (8-10) Excellent creative technical skills	Mark
Material appropriate to target audience				9	9
Titles conventional/appropriate				10	19
Sound/images and technical editing				8	27
Camera work/framing/variety of shot types/mise en scene				9	36
Editing for meaning/transitions effects				9	45
Overall feel				7	52
				Total:

Film Opening

Here is a YouTube link to the film opening that Alfie an I created.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZxHnQhgC8k