Montage

We're going to use a montage of the protagonist's daily activities to give the audience an impression of who he is quickly and efficiently. We want to portray him as a standard teenage boy so that they can relate to him. Montages tend to use fast paced shots.

Schedule

We planned out a schedule to try keep us on track and organised.

Monday-Thursday

• Decide on our storyline: so far this has been our main problem. We've got a good start and an end but the middle is still to be decided, we are finding it hard to create a realistic middle that isn't too convoluted. 
• Where we are going to film: as the start of the project is going to be mainly a montage of our main character's day we decided to do it mostly at Harry Goode's house because he lives between me and Adam and his dad has a studio that will be very good for filming the torture scene
• What Props we are going to need: apart from the normal household items for the montage we had to find the right props for the torture scene, things like tools and the chair our main character is going to tied to are very important.
• Extra research into what techniques we can use, thing like how montages are normally displayed in films, they way they are editted and how long the clips are.

Friday

• Film the opening torture scene: this will take a while to get the lighting, props, make-up and the camera angle right.
• Experiment with props: seeing which kinda of chair looked like it would fit more in a torture scene and which tools would be behind the character hanging on the wall to give threatening feel.  

Saturday

• Review all of our progress so far: possibly looking at what we could improve on.
• Finish our filming 

Sunday 

• Research music: seeing if we can find a good tension building sound track for our opening scene. (Already done)

Soundtrack

I have been researching soundtracks, getting an idea for the music we could use in our opening.
I've listened through many OST's and the following I have liked enough to get several songs from iTunes:
Sunshine, American Beauty, Lost Highway, Requiem for a Dream, Inception, Taxi Driver, Pulp Fiction, The Social Network, Trainspotting and Misfits (TV series). The music used in films varies greatly. Some films have original scores specially made, often by orchestras (e.g. Sunshine, Inception, Lord of The Rings), electronic music is also used (Social Network, TRON legacy). Existing songs are also used in cinema (Lost Highway, Trainspotting). Soundtracks are used to evoke emotion from audience and emphasise situations in the film.

Notable film composers
*Clint Mansell
*Ennio Morricone
*Hanz Zimmer
*John Murphy
*Bernard Herrmann
*Thomas Newman
*Trent Reznor

Story Board and Plot Outline

  This is a section of the story board we wrote.

  The gist of the story is a man witnesses someone being tortured on a webcam chat website (e.g. chatroulette.com) and has to save them.

   The film will start with a shot of the protagonist tied to a chair himself having been tortured, with the camera slowly zooming out to reveal that this is actually on a webcam. Cut to black and title at the bottom of the screen stating its the day before, we hear an alarm. The black will fade away as if it is from the POV of someone waking up, he will turn the alarm off. We get a montage of his daily activities- eating breakfast, brushing teeth, cycling to school, a lesson etc. He comes home, goes on chatroulette and come across a person being tortured. He calls the police but they disregard it, they think that it is a hoax. He uses his skills with computers to find out where the victim is held and goes to save him.

Animatic

  We will use in and around Harry Goode's house for most of the filming. This is the road outside the house, we will use it as a scene for the montage of the protagonist's daily activities. He will be cycling down it, to school. It is a quiet road so we probably won't be interrupted too much while filming and there is a dark, wooded alley near by that could come in handy.





  This is a spare room we will use for the scene when the protagonist wakes up. There are several other room that we could use for that scene but this is a nice plain room that should do fine (after a few props to make it more appropriate for a teenager's room e.g. laptop and some clothes strewn over the place).

  This is Harry's dad's studio. We wanted a set that looks like a warehouse or some abandoned, dilapidated building for a torture scene. From the inside this studio work very well for that role.   

  As you can see, the inside of the studio could be quite eerie with the right lighting. We plan to have the victim tired to a chair, with a single source of light from above, in front of the tools- to the audience seeing a beaten person in front of a rack of tools could connote that he had been tortured, we wouldn't need to depict a graphic, gratuitous torture seen.

Preliminary Task: The Chase

  For our preliminary task our group created a chase scene for an opening to a film. Before filming we drew out a simple story bored to plan the premises of the story and plan the shots and position of the camera. We decided to use the underpass because it was close to school and the steep slope, graffiti and tunnel created a dramatic mise en scene.
  We took close up shots of just the legs of Harry and Adam running past, we tried to pile leaves in the way to make the running more dramatic. The close up of the two running accross doesnt reveal who they, drawing the audience in to learn more.
  Next we had a shot from the balcony of the underpass to film a tracking shot so that we see the two fully for the first time. Adam is bigger than Harry and the title is called The Chase so the audience may have guessed that Harry is in danger (we could have dressed more appropriately to emphasise this).  
  It Cuts to another tracking shot from the balcony from a different position. From here we see that they run into the tunnel, only one way to go for Harry.
  A cut to the two running through the tunnel (we considered doing this in slow motion for dramatic tension. You can see from our deleted scenes that we tried simply running slowly but that didnt work and we didn't know how to create a slow motion effect). It then cuts to me waiting around the corner. The audience knows that Harry cannot escape, this creates dramatic irony. I grab him and it cuts to a medium shot of us.                                         

Analysis: Fargo Opening Scene

  Coen Brothers' Fargo (1996) has a long opening scene. It starts with just a pale blue screen with credits and the occasional glimpse of the headlights of a car, an orchestra is playing mournful music. At 1:37 a heavy drum beat kicks in and the music loudens as if to make the audience stand to attention. We see a car come over the horizon towing another car. With the combination of this and the heroic music I assumed that someone had been helped out (possibly their car had got stuck in the snow or they had gotten into an accident and someone was towing them). The cars pass and the blank background is used for a plain backdrop for the title of the film. It then transitions back to following the cars (still in snowy conditions so the transition is very unobtrusive) and we see some road signs and posts so we know they are going towards civilisation. It cuts to a shot from behind the cars and we see that they have a long road ahead (literally and figuratively).
  Fades to black then suddenly cuts to a rather different scene. An establishing shot of a bar with broken neon lights (giving the impression that it is shoddy and shady). The cars drive in from the left, we can hear a chain rattling ominously. As the car drives into the bar's carpark the orchestra music fades completely and the bar's digetic music can be heard in the background. This subtly reinforces the feeling of change.
  Cuts to a full shot of the protaganist walking alone into a bar. The country music is fully audible now and we hear the iconic clack of  pool balls colliding (*note: I noticed that the protaganist stamps his feet (to get snow off) in time with the clack sort of making a beat. Don't know if it was done on purpose and if so for what reason). He is looking around and cuts to a POV shot of him looking at the group playing pool. His business clothes contrasts with the attire of the patrons of this bar, it seems that he is out of place. He finds the two men he was looking for and introduces himself timidly. These men look rather unsavoury- one is extremely pale, with greased back hair and the other seems barely concious and is smoking. There are several bottles of beers on the table. During the following conversation the camera cuts from an over the shoulder view of the three and a POV shot from one of the pair looking at the protagonist. There is immediately a small disagreement about the time they were supposed to meet. The protaganist is apparently an hour late, he claims Shep Proudfoot, the organiser made a mixup (he could lying to cover his lateness being his own fault). We learn that the car is meant for the pair in the bar, they introduce themselves and there is another small altercation which the pale man starts. But the protaganist talks his way out again (passing responsibility to Shep again). He tries to end the meeting but the pale man was he was expecting fourty thousand dollar as well as the car, but the protagonist once again passes responsibility to Shep. As he is explains what was meant to be the deal we see the beer bottles shake a little, this could indicate that he is getting nervous. The pale man is seem very controlling, maybe because he is nervous too. The first words from the other guy of the pair contain an expletive. This reinforces our impression that he is unsavoury. The protagonist tries to avoid explaining the details of the plan but can't weasel his way through this one and ends up just divulging the true reasons behind organising his wifes kidnapping, he's got money issues. Once we find the truth behind this meating we reaslise what a shoddy character this is, this juxtuposes with our initial impressions of him- originally, I thought that he was helping someone who had trouble with their car and his smart clothes and innocent accent reinforced this  initial assumption. But we learn that he is no more than a two bit weasel.

Analysis: Killer Inside Me Poster

Analysis: 127 Hours Trailer

  This is a trailer for Danny Boyle's upcoming film 127 Hours.

  The trailer starts with a collection of extreme long shots and vistas giving us a view of where this will be taking place, and only digetic sounds- the wind and the cry of an eagle iconic to deserts. A desert is indexical of remoteness, heat and inhospitably. We see the protagonist briefly, the camera follows him as he is cycling and doing tricks through the desert. We get the impression that he is a thrill seeker from this. Then it cuts to a montage of Danny Boyle's previous films so the audience can recognise the director (if they do not know him by name). It goes back to the protagonist, we see him crash and the music stops for a moment (the music stopping jolts the audience and makes us feel that this is serious). For a second I was worried that this was going to be the problem but he laughs it off, reinforcing our impression of his devil may care attitude. It occasionally cuts to a "handy-cam" point of view suggesting that this is real (it actually is based on a true story). It then cuts to a series of shots showing some of his previous exploits in cold/ snowy conditions. This juxtaposes/ contrasts (?) with the desert scene most of the film is set.

Keyword: Juxtaposition

Used for contrast- two opposing objects/ ideas/ sounds etc. Can be used for comparison.

Some good examples of juxtaposition-

Juxtaposition of new and old:
The clock, the modern skyscraper, and the old chapel
Old temple with oil refinery

Juxtaposition of beauty
The Big Bang Theory this one is especially good because it shows juxtaposition used in TV.
"Random Juxtaposition"