Inspiration for Our Opening Titles

We wanted to do some research on current opining titles, to inspire ours. Originally we wanted the titles to appear either at the beginning or the end of our opening scene, but after some research we had a better idea.


Whilst looking at The Art of the Title we came accross the end credits for Sherlock Holmes. We really liked the effects of the sketchy looking clips and the way the footage went with the music playing over the top.

We also came accross some of the previous ideas for the end sequence which we liked as well. It linked to one of our original opening credits ideas of scanning across a floor plan for the cellar.

After seeing these we decided that we wanted effects to distinguish the flashbacks from the present day and motivated us to look for some music for our own opening.

When we began looking for music, we had to make sure it was royalty free, so we started by looking at royalty free music websites. We found a few piano pieces which sounded really good, but all disagreed on which we should ultimately use. Finally we decided on a piece of music we all thought would fit well with our opening. Although, we wanted it to sound a lot more sinister, so we added another piece of audio over the top, which sounds like low drones.


Piano piece:  CHILDHOOD MEMORIES OF WINTER piano solo MP3


Second audio layer: http://www.mediafire.com/?5zmpzm68ah38quf

Production Name and Logo

As we are just filming the final few shots we need, we decided to start thinking about a production name and logo to appear at the beginning of our film opening. As we began to think of ideas, we all decided that something to do with sight should be used, because of the theme of flashbacks in our opening. Looking at words relating to eyes, sight and dreams we found a variety of fairly 'catchy' names, but found it difficult to think of logos that would go with them.

One phrase we found was "Pipe Dream"

pipe dream

 

–noun

any fantastic notion, hope, or story

We all really liked this name, it was both unique and creative. I began to put some image ideas together in photoshop, taking the words literally: pipe and dream.

I started off by putting together the sky, pipe and smoke cloud. I then coloured and cut dream-like objects and thoughts into the cloud and began spelling out the production name through the middle of the cloud. The logo looked really good, but we found that it looked too happy to fit in with the genre of our film.

So, to make the logo a bit darker, I changed the background into a cloudy, rather than a sunny sky. I also made the clouds appear as if they were beginning to cover the pipe, but we just felt that the logo didn't work.

Instead, we went back to our original ideas of the eye and began to play around with some images and names. Whilst researching again we came up with "Foresight Productions" which sounded original and kept in with the theme of eyes. Looking for images we found a free stock image to begin working with.

We wanted to make the image look more sinister and interesting, so in photoshop I began to black out the area around the eye, so the focus would be of the eye itself. 

This looked quite bland, so we began playing around with ideas to make the image more interesting. I started to use photoshop brushes that resemble eyelashes to put some onto the eye. We wanted them to be a colour which stood out and contrasted against the black and felt that white looked the best.

We were all really pleased with the result of the image. Then, all we needed to do was decide on a style for the title. Alex had lots of interesting, extra fonts on her personal laptop, which we had a look through. Alex also made this sample of fonts over the logo.

Finally we found something which fitted excellently!

Our final production logo to appear at the beginning of our film opening.

Moodboard

This week we finished making moodboards, to help inspire our filming. I used a lot of dark pictures, some relating directly to the story.

Animatic

Our animatic is now finished. It's quite basic as we didn't want to spend too much time on drawing it when we need to do some other aspects of planning. Here it is!

Inspiration

This week we began our animatics. Using iMovie we put together each frame from the storyboard and edited in sound effects and transitions. It will be up on the blog soon, as it is not yet finished.


Whilst researching music for our opening we came accross a pretty surprising video by chance. We were shocked by the first few seconds, as it closely resembles our theme and ideas.


We really liked the colours that were used for the flashbacks; a kind of sepia effect. The music itself was also really inspiring, although only the first half. The second half was a bit too heavy, whereas the first half was quite eerie. It was also in German, so very relevent to our opening. The most interesting aspect was the father/daughter relationship.

Storyboard

Our finished storyboard. As you can see, we have decided on a title for our film.... Amstetten. We found that this title was the most suitable. We will also be using medium to exreme close-up shots. We cannot use long shots because it is filmed in a cellar, and we want to keep the illusion of cramped spaces. Animatics to come...

Planning and Storyboarding

This week we discussed our filming locations, choices of actors and what kind of sounds we need to incorporate into our opening.

Locations

All Cellar Scenes - including memories 5 and 6:

We decided to try shooting these scenes in my garage. This is because it is a large area and we can make the lighting really low key, to get the spookiness of the cellar. It also has a power supply, so we can plug the television, so we can play the newsflash.

Memory 1 - Little girl/shadow

This scene could really be shot in any setting, as long as we kept it with the theme (i.e. not looking too modern). We decided that it could be shot in my garden - although it could be difficult to get the lighting correct in order to create the shadow.

Memory 2 - Girl and Fritzl from back

We thought that Alex's lounge would be a good place to film for this scene. Alex only lives a minute's walk down the road from me, so it is easy for us to move locations without losing any time.

Memory 3 - Teenage Elisabeth

Again, the setting of this scene isn't essential, it's just an establishing scene, so the audience see Elisabeth as a teenager. We may film this in Georgie's garden, as she has a bench where Elisabeth can sit.

Memory 4 - Sleepover scene

This is another scene that will be filmed at Alex's house, in her bedroom. Mine and Georgie's bedrooms look too modern for this scene.

Cast

Fritzl

My dad volunteered to play the part of Fritzl. Seeing as we are shooting at my house and you don't see the character's face in our opening, we decided this was best. He also has a small amount of acting experience.

Young Elisabeth

Fritzl began abusing Elisabeth at the age of 11, So our young Elisabeth needs to be around this age.Alex has a family friend called Amber, who is 10 years old and willing to take part in our film opening.

Teenage/Adult Elisabeth

As I am taking Drama and Theatre Studies, I volunteered to play Elisabeth when she is older. I will play her both as a teenager and as an adult as she needs to look similar in both. We couldn't think of two actors who look similar.

Extras

We need some other teenage girls to be in the sleepover scene. We thought that Georgie, Alex and another friend could play these parts, if we set up the camera and recorded ourselves. If not, our friends may be willing the take part.

Sound

We need to look for or make our own:

Metal doors banging

Footsteps getting nearer

Baby crying - echo effect - because this is in Elisabeth's memories 

Girls laughing - echo effect

We also want to think about any music to add into the opening.

We also completed our storyboard this week. So as soon as they have been scanned I will post them. Next step, animatics!

Developing Our Idea

This week we spent our time trying to come up with more ideas to add to our opening scene. The biggest debate was whether to use our previously discussed 'cellar scene' before or after a second scene. One idea was to have the cellar scene first, fading to the title, then having another scene in the form of a flashback. This would set up the whole film as a flashback, as if Elisabeth is recalling her whole story. The second idea was that we would see the other scene first, then the cellar scene.


We finally decided that it would be much more effective if we used the cellar scene first. As we began to discuss flashbacks that we could use, we had a much better idea; to incorporate the flashbacks into the cellar scene. This would happen in a form of the audience seeing into Elisabeth's head and her thoughts. The concept is that when Elisabeth sees the appeal on the news for her to come forward as Kerstin's mother, her thoughts are jogged and she is reminded of her life through a number of flashbacks. We got the ideas of flashbacks from key events in Elisabeth's life.


This is the sequence of events we came up with:

• Black screen - production titles - noises of metal doors opening and shutting in distance - possibly music?

• Fade in cellar scene - low key lighting - only light from small television - news report directed at Elisabeth

• Camera zooms and spirals around Elizabeth - disorientating movement - signifies instability of mind - camera end up with extreme close up on her eye

• We see a flash of a memory - through white - each flashback is slightly fuzzy - like a distant memory - colour is faded

• Memory 1 A young girl is sitting on the floor - back against the wall - she cuddles a small comfort blanket - a large male shadow approaches - girl cringes back into wall
• Memory 2 The same girl is sitting on the floor - her back is to the camera - a man approaches her, stops next to her and strokes her hair - we can only see up to his waist - the girl reaches for her blanket that is lying on the floor next to her

• We flash back out of the first two memories - another shot of the eye - this shows that her memories are skipping forward to memories at a later time in her life - flash back into eye

• Memory 3 A teenage girl - pretty - around 17 years old - holding the same blanket the younger girl had - except this blanket is older and tattier
• Memory 4 The same teenage girl is at a sleepover party - additional teenage girls are wearing pyjamas - laughing - possibly looking at posters of male pop stars - meanwhile main teenage girl is withdrawn - legs drawn up under chin - camera catches a small view of the blanket - she is hiding it from the other girls

• Again, the camera flashes through white - back to the eye - further time has passed - flash back into eye for the last time

• Memory 5 Shot of a young woman's midriff - her stomach is swollen with a small baby bump - the blanket can be seen somewhere within shot
• Memory 6 A baby - crying - wrapped in the woman's blanket - is snatched away from her - as she grapples for the baby a small scrap of the blanket is torn away - she holds it in her hand - cries

• Last flash back to the young woman's eye - we hear another metal door opening and closing as earlier - but this time it is closer - this is what has brought her back to present day

• The camera pans down from Elisabeth's eye to one of her hands - she is holding a piece of material - old - dirty - the scrap of blanket she pulled away from the baby's swaddling

• Footsteps getting closer can be heard - Elisabeth stuffs the scrap of blanket into her pocket

• We return to the initial shot of her silhouette - the television report has moved onto other news - a man's arm reaches out of the darkness - switches off the television

• The screen goes black - title fades in from darkness

We are now going to start storyboarding our opening.

Deciding on a Brief as a Group

We have now been put into groups! Our group is made up of Alex Griffin, Georgie Barker and myself! We are all really excited about starting the project and began to discuss which film brief we would most like to focus on. 

As a group we finally decided to focus on brief 4, as it seemed both interesting and challenging. Seeing as we needed to base our film opening on an event that has happened around or within the last two years, each of us began researching events. A really good way of doing this was looking at a timeline, which included many notable events over the past few years. There were many that were very important, but that we wouldn't be able to make a film about with the equipment we have. So we were limited to either smaller events or very loosely basing our film on them. Here are a few we all agreed were potential ideas:

• 2009 Swine Flu pandemic
• Haiti disaster
• Local murder/suicide case in Fordingbridge
• Northumbria Raoul Moat case
• Austrian Fritzl case

After a lot of discussion, we all wanted to look more into the Fritzl case. In April 2008, in a small town called Amstetten in Austria, it was discovered that a man had been keeping his daughter, Elisabeth, captive in a basement for 24 years, impregnating her 9 times and bringing up 3 of their 6 living children with his unsuspecting wife as their own.

At the time of discovery the world was completely shocked to learn of Elisabeth and her children's story, which is why we thought it would be a good event to base our film on. We wanted to make sure we knew as much as we could about the event, so began searching it in-depth. I found a documentary that we were all able to watch about Elisabeth's whole life, and how the events unfolded. Although it's such a horrible case to look at, we all found it really interesting and are enthusiastic about how we can use it as our film opening. As a starting point and for inspiration, we thought of a few very rough ideas for a name of our film opening:

• Beneath (shows the fact that Elisabeth was kept right under her family home, without being discovered for 24 years)
• The Unknown (No one knew about Elisabeth and her children, not even her own mother)
• Secure (signifies the large number of doors that Fritzl had to go through before entering Elisabeth's quarters)
• Hostage (obvious, but is already the name of a film)
• Lock and Key (signifies the family's captivity)
• 7 (Elisabeth had seven children fathered by Fritzl)
• Father (has two meanings, Fritzl was both Elizabeth's father and her childrens' father)
• Amstetten (The name of the town the family lived in)

Then we began to come up with ideas for openings and credits. We watched a few art house film openings to give us an idea of the kinds of shots used. Here are our very first initial ideas of shots and concepts:

1. Architect's drawings of the house Elisabeth was held captive in. The idea is that Josef Fritzl had to apply for planning permission for his cellar to be expanded. We thought about seeing a hand drawing a large plan of the cellar design whilst credits appear in various points on the paper.
2. A young girl playing in a garden alone, possibly with a toy such as a doll or teddy, with the intention that it would be a re-occuring object throughout the film. This opening could signify Elisabeth's lost childhood.
3. Lullaby song tune/spooky could be played during the credits at the beginning. This, again would signify childhood, but would also add a more sinister aspect the the beggining of the film, so the audience are aware from the start that the storyline is not a happy one.
4. Time lapse of some sort of scene, we haven't come up with an idea of what yet! We got this general idea from the opening scene of Elephant though, as we thought it was really effective.
5. Opening a safe as if it's a door, signifying the 5 reinforced concrete doors Elisabeth and her children were kept behind.
6. A man luring a young woman into a room by asking her help, this is supposedly how Fritzl was able to capture his daughter in the cellar.

All of our ideas need a lot more development and discussion before we can decide on one to storyboard. We will be working on this next lesson.

Film Opening - The Briefs

We have now been given a choice of briefs for our next task; a two minute opening to our own film. Once we have been put into our groups we need to choose one of them to focus on, following the codes and conventions of each genre. This is the choice:

Film Brief 1

A mainstream action film that will appeal to 15-25yr old males. Your film should appear to be based on a "fictional" comic book(Opening to Dark Knight, Kick Ass, Sin City etc)


Film Brief 2
A supernatural thriller that will appeal to female audiences. Your film should appear to be an international co-production
(Opening to The Others, Gothika, Shelter etc)


Film Brief 3
An independent movie featuring a young protagonist. Your film should appear to be financed through regional funding
(Opening to Fish Tank, This Is England etc)


Film Brief 4
An  art house feature to appeal to adult audiences. Your film should appear to be based on an actual event in the last 2 years.
(Opening to Elephant, Milk, Che etc)


When I first read all of the briefs, the first one that caught my eye was brief 2; the supernatural thriller. This is because I love watching films that fit that description. I then realised that most people often go for the thriller genre, so looked back over the other briefs. 


The next I looked into was brief 1, surprisingly it really appealed to me! I really liked the idea of bringing a graphic novel character to life, although it did sound really challenging.


The only one that didn't appeal to me was brief 3, although I'm not sure why. I think it's because it didn't seem like much of a challenge because it was such a broad area.


Finally, I looked at brief 4. I must admit that I had to do a lot of research into the genre because I wasn't at all familiar with it. I managed to watch 'Elephant', the film that is based on the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. I especially looked at the editing and types of shots they used.


So overall, my favourite films briefs are brief 1 and brief 2. Although, this may change when we have all been put into our groups.

Production

We began filming each shot of our story board. To begin we needed to film in various corridors in the school. This posed a problem as - even though we were filming during lessons - there was still a large number of people walking through the halls coming into shot and making a lot of noise. This problem was unavoidable, so it just meant that we had to take a few shots and just hope that no one would need to walk through!

Most of the shots were filmed using a tripod. This eliminated the classic shakes of a hand-held camera. It also allowed us to tilt the camera and turn it smoothly and at a constant speed. This was great for our tracking shots.

To film the conversation shots we needed to find a room which wasn't in use. We eventually found an empty class room - though as we began filming the bell rang and outside the window it all became very busy with younger pupils. We had to wait for a few minutes for it to quieten down outside in order to film the conversation.

We constantly referred to our storyboards to make sure our shots were correct and that we were using the right camera movements. Of course the storyboards were not 100% accurate as they were not drawn from actual sets so we had to change each set slightly from the storyboard depiction.

I think we did really well to shoot what we needed to in such a short amount of time. We tried to film at least two different takes of each shots so that when it came to editing we could choose the better of the two depending on not only the visual but also the audio of the clip. As we filmed the whole thing in one session we didn't have many problems with clothing continuity but we had to make sure that our hair was in the same position in each shot etc.

We worked well as a team, although we all found it quite confusing as we were not as well prepared as we could have been because of the changes we had to make to our plot and storyboards. This meant that we were not as efficient about the shooting of the film as we were in a rush.

Script

Alex walks to locker, opens it, then receiving a text message, he takes the phone out of his pocket, read the message and puts it back into his pocket. He then walks through a door and down a corridor to meet Alice.

Arrives at door, looks through then opens it and walks into the room, where Alice is waiting.

Alex: …you wanted to talk?

Alice: Well…It’s just that

Alex: Well…

Alice: Shall we see 'Back to the Future' or 'Buried' tonight?

Alex: I don’t care… 'Back to the Future'?

Alice: 'Buried' it is!

Changes to Preliminary Task

We began to film the first few shots for our preliminary task and we were were all happy with our roles within the group and comfortable using the equipment. The next time we came to film one of our group (the main character) was away. We were stuck becuase we needed two males as the main parts and we only had one. We also couldn't use someone from outside our group as they were all otherwise engaged.

Eventually - as we were on a tight schedule - as a group we decided to change our Preliminary Task to something we could film more easily and with the actors we had. This meant that our new plot was a lot more basic. This was a shame as we were all happy with our plot and shots.

We put together a storyboard and a basic script, but a lot was improvised during the actual filming.

We also decided that the new characters would be played by Alex, as the boyfriend and myself as the girlfriend. 

Preliminary Task Pre-Production

For our Preliminary Excercise we were asked to film and edit a short film showing examples of shot types and techniques. These were:

• Shot/reverse shot
• 180˚
  rule
• Match on action

The first thing we had to do was come up with a basic story line. In a group we put forward ideas for a short story before writing a script and drawing up a storyboard.

We came up with the idea that a character gets a text from his 'lady friend' asking him to meet her for the first time. He excitedly goes to find her, is pointed in the right direction by a few people and looks throught the door of a room. She is looking out of the window and has her back to him. He enters and she begins to turn around but the camera cuts to a close-up of his face before we can see 'her'. We see his reaction as they exchange a few lines but then she introduces herself as "Sammy" the woman he has been texting. He runs out of the room. Then a pan shot from "Sammy's" feet to her face shows that she is, in fact, a he! We see her drop a rose she was holding and match on action shows it dropping to the floor.

We thought this story line was really original and interesting - as it a had a comedy twist on it.

We came up with a simple script and I was given the task of drawing the storyboard, which I was confident with becasue I have done a lot of art in the past.