Ones to Watch in 2014

I thought I would share 3 films that I'm excited about watching in 2014, and why :)

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Firstly is a film called Divergent. IMDb describes the plot as "a teenager with a special mind, who finds her life threatened when an authoritarian leader seeks to exterminate her kind in her effort to seize control of their divided society." Which may sound like every other teen film around at the moment e.g. The Hunger Games, and although similar I believe Divergent to be different. As a reader of the Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth, I was equally as excited and nervous about a film adaptation. I was worried that with like many film adaptations of books it would look cheesy and not how I imagined it, however looking at the recent trailers and with actors such as Kate Winslet, I think this film will be a real success.

Release Date UK - 4th April

Trailer-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sutgWjz10sM

 Secondly is X-Men: Days of Future Past

Directed by Bryan Singer, this is the sequel to 2011's X-Men First Class. The premise for the film is that the X-Men ensemble fights a war for the survival of the species across two time periods. The characters from the original X-Men film trilogy join forces with their younger selves from X-Men: First Class in a battle that must change the past – to save their future. With amazing actors such as Hugh Jackman and James McAvoy, I think this film will be a definite must-see.

                                                                 

 Release Date- 23rd May (US)

Trailer -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK2zYHWDZKo

 

Thirdly is The Fault in our Stars

 

Hazel and Gus are two teenagers who share an acerbic wit, a disdain for the conventional, and a love that sweeps them on a journey. Their relationship is all the more miraculous given that Hazel's other constant companion is an oxygen tank, Gus jokes about his prosthetic leg, and they met and fell in love at a cancer support group. Having read the book I am really looking forward to the film

 

Release Date - 20th June

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ItBvH5J6ss

 

Deep and Shallow Focus

Deep and Shallow Focus are part of the composition of a shot. They both are used to create different effects in a film.

Deep focus is where the whole image is in focus -

Here is a example taken from the film 500 Days of

Summer, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. Here all of the shot is in focus.

However Shallow focus is the opposite. One object or part of the shot will be in focus whilst the other is not. Typically its used to emphasise one part of the image over the other. Below again is an example from 500

Days of Summer. It shows Summer (Deschanel) in focus, whilst Tom (Gordon-Levitt) and the background are out of focus to emphasised Summer and her actions.

 

I wanted to look at deep and shallow focus because I was thinking about how we might be able to use them in our opening sequence, perhaps to emphasize important parts of the scene.

Todays Minutes

In our lesson today we made some critical decisions about our Main Task, before we start filming tomorrow. Some things we have decided to add in include :

1. A ticking clock. We had the idea of using a music box to provide the source of our sound, but before that we are thinking of adding a ticking clock sound, and with every other tick the shot changes to different locations in the room, preferably more creepy things, such as china dolls. After the music starts were going to make our movement more move and flowing so that it creates the sense that the monster is dancing to the music.  
2. We have decided what to film for the nightmare. We will have our actor (Katie) in a dark room alone with several whispers surrounding her.
3. We had a discussion about titles. In a previous blog I talked about the importance of titles and how they can add or detract from an opening sequence. Today we finalised what our titles would be and the order in which they appear.

Minutes from our previous meeting can be seen on Joel's blog - http://joelurner.blogspot.co.uk/

 

We looked at some other students AS Main Task Opening Sequences and noticed how titles were incorporated into theirs. A good example of how titles are used was in this opening sequence called Inner Evil-    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLsiGGF9DPc

I particularly liked how the titles faded in and out, as I felt it fitted well the genre of this piece -

 

I liked how they were simple so that they did not detract from the piece. For our scene we don't want to use white as the colour for our titles as we feel it would stand out too much against our dark setting.

Scenes to Inspire

 In class we were told to choose a clip that showed what we loved about film. For my clip I chose the film Now You See Me (2013) directed by Louis Leterrier. Below is the clip-

I chose this because it has what I love about film. Not only was this film visually spectacular, it also made me think. It made me question what was going. This is what I love about film: It's ability to make you capture your emotions. It's the same reason I like to read; the ability to take you on a journey, whether visual or in your mind. It can make you forget what's going on and just focus on the magic of film. 

In particular, with this scene, I like the on-screen tension with the actors. They really become their actors, which I find makes a film. It's the same with Heath Ledger and Christian Bale in The Dark Knight. Both actors bounce-off each other creating movie scenes that you will remember.  

 

Things that I can apply to our own opening sequence are very clean cuts and shot transitions. This makes the action run more smoothly and therefore is easier to watch.

Insidious clip

Here is our version of the Insidious clip. We tried to include every shot and movement in our clip, especially the movement at around 10 seconds. This camera movement was achieved by Katie on a wheely chair, zooming out whilst being pushed forward by Joel to create an unsettling effect. Another example of this camera movement is in Jaws, directed by Steven Spielberg.                                                                      

We had some difficulties whilst filming, especially to get all the different shot right. What we found we needed to improve was our storyboarding as we had to refer to the clip, whereas we should've been able to rely on our storyboards.   

                                                                    Thanks for reading :)

Practicing Camera Work

Quite a while ago we had a task to re-create a film clip, focusing of getting the right camera shots and movement. Our group decided to re-create the ending clip from Insidious. Here's the clip-

 

We created storyboards for this scene-

 In my next post I will upload our version of the clip :)

 



Editing

Editing is a crucial part of film language. It helps to structure the narrative and link scenes/events together. Editing also helps the film to follow a logical order or time span, however some films distort this, for example flashbacks.

The most common form of editing is a cut. This is where one camera shot moves instantly to another.
Examples of some cuts are-

• Eye-line Match- This is a part of continuity editing, where we see a character look in a particular direction then the next cut gives a shot of what they see.
•  Jump Cut- This is an unusual edit pattern. It is where a few frames have been removed from a continuous action giving a jerky, unnatural feel to the action. It can be seen in BBC Three's Being Human.
• Parallel editing- This is where you run two or more sequences of action that are happening at the same time and we cross cut between them.
• Cutaway- A cut away from the main action to a scene of related action somewhere else.

Transitions between scenes other than cuts include:

• Dissolve- Where the image appears gradually to break into particles, leaving the next shot to emerge from behind.
• Crossfade- Where the current shot fades out at the same rate as the next shot fades in. An example of this is in the BBC TV show Sherlock, shown below. This is perhaps used to show that time has passed, or they are now at a new location. 

•  Fade Out- The current shot fades- usually to black.

Superimposition is where two or more pieces of film are blended so that they appear at the same time. This can be achieved by blue or green screen techniques where an actor is filmed against a background of consistent blue or green.  This colour can then be digitally extracted and the film of the person layered onto another piece of film so the person appears against a different background.

Editing is also used to determine the duration of a shot. For example a short shot duration can convey action or emergency, whereas a longer shot duration can suggest intimacy or intensity within the narrative.

Split screen is where the frame is split into sections so that the audience can see events happening at the same time. A good example of this is the American TV series 24, seen to the right. Here we can see how the split screen technique is used to show the reactions of four different people at the same time.