Distribution of a film

How would distribution of an Independent British film differ from a Hollywood film?
The term distribution is the way in which something is shared out among a group of people.

An independent film is a professional film production resulting in a feature film that is produced mostly outside of the major film studio system. The words above highlight the techniques of distribution from an Independent British film.

Distribution of films is done through marketing. The words above highlight some techniques of advertising a film to a targeted audience by a Hollywood film.

Inspirational Photos

The collage above are all images of the things which me and my group will be including in our thriller opening. The images relate to the genre of our film - psychological thriller. 

Brainstorm and planning.

Here is a detailed brainstorm of our first initial ideas. We chose to film a discrete title sequence because it is a more visually artistic approach. As a group we have decided to base our opening on a psychological thriller and a subgenre of horror. The movies we have looked at for inspiration are The Shining, Black Swan and the Saw. 

Possible locations

Here is a few boards with pictures of different types of possible locations that we can use to film. It shows different environments such as bandstands, places with water, London streets, Lock-ups garages and alleyways etc..

Re-editing of Arlington Road

During one of our media lessons, we had to re-edit a film opening. As a group, we edited the opening of the film Arlington Road, this was done using Final cut Pro. Additionally, we added a title sequence in the conventional order. This task helped us to be creative and we learnt how to use Final cut Pro properly as the program will help us during our thriller project.

After editing the film opening, we include a title sequence. The screen grab above shows how how to add a title. In the large box we can write the title and choose the font and the size of the text.

This screen grab shows the title of the film opening - Arlington Road. The  several different clips are all different cuts and titles that will appear during the film opening.

This screen grab shows the timeline of Final Cut Pro. We have to drag the title s and the clips into the timeline according to the time we want the title or the clip to appear.

After, finishing editing we saved our work in the video drive.

Foley Sound

Foley sounds is the reproduction of everyday sounds for use in film making. The reproduced sounds can be anything e.g. footsteps or squeaky doors. Foley sounds help to create a sense of reality within a scene.

First Ideas

First ideas  

We discussed what our plot should be about. So we thought about what kind of sub genre we want which was action. So we thought about films that we could use for inspiration. Firstly our group thought maybe we could base our opening on a thriller and action/comedy as our sub genre. But this was

Analysis of work from other Centers and Previous Student work

Analysis of work from other centers and other previous work

Angel Dust

This clip is obviously a narrative title sequence. There is dialogue and the audience is revealed to the main character. From the narrative I think the plot is about some kind of cyber stalker and the title could also suggest a link with drugs. Nearly the whole clip of filming the girl there is low key lighting and we can see into the characters room. The editing is slow, dramatic and builds a lot of suspense.  

In addition the effects used to pull away from the website of the girl. Made the plot clearer to understand and also made the title sequence look more professional. Sound effects where also used such as the keyboard noise and the whole thing looked like a blogger and had a web cam theme to it, made it look a lot more modern.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg6sO9DivgE&feature=player_embedded  <<<<<<< click on the link to view the example

Different types of stuctures in a Film Opening.

There are three different types of structures in a film opening.

Discrete Title Sequence:

These are just some features a discrete tile sequence may have.

·         Doesn’t give away the genre, although some images may hint what it maybe about.

·         The sound used gives away the genre

·         Editing manipulation of time – fast/slow

·         Color filter is realer common in this style of title sequence. And especially in thriller genres.

·         Moving/hand hold camera

·         Overlapping images- opacity change and images layered.

In discrete title sequences you are rarely shown any of the characters or the location. Also u do not get a sense of the narrative. Only the genre is revealed.

Click on the link to view the example of a discrete title sequence: Se7en (1995)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEZK7mJoPLY

In this title sequence there are a lot of cuts. The editing is extremely past paced and they have used a lot of effects on their footage such as color fade. There are images overlapping another. You also have sharp sound effects overlapping and eerie soundtrack. This is what gives away the genre of the movie.

Narrative Opening:

·         The convention of a narrative title sequence is starting off with a black screen, with heavily edited titles.

·         Editing manipulation of time – fast/slow

·         Revealed to characters, location and obviously the narrative.


Click on the link to view the example of a narrative title sequence: Kill Bill Vol.1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUjGxphg7fg&feature=fvst 

In this clip you can clearly see that the titles are heavily edited and the audience is revealed to the narrative, there is a short clip of what is happening and then the titles start. This is obviously done to attract the audience’s attention.

Intertexuality

Intertexuality

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Introduction to Soundtrack Pro

Soundtrack Pro is an amazing program to edit sound in a video clip. We experimented 'soundtrack pro' by adding sound in our Prelim sequence this makes the sequence look more effective as it add sounds and makes the scene look more realistic. Additionally, sound engages the audience to watch the film.

This screen grab shows the variety of sound effects included in Soundtrack Pro. We are able to chose several different sound effects to add in our sequence for example: a baby crying or someone breathing, this adds a realistic effect. In our prelim film, we chose the sound of  "footsteps" to portray the character walking.

After choosing the sound you want, you simply grab the sound effect into the big grey box - the green highlighted box are the sound clips chosen. The bars on the bottom left can be used to change the volume of the sound. Also, the sound clips overlap each other, this is very creative as we'll hear different sounds at one time.

The 180 Degree Rule.

Recently I was introduced to the importance of the 180 degree rule when filming, and learnt the concept of it. It basically means that when filming from two different sides, E.G. a shot-reverse-shot of a conversation between two people, it is imperative that you film from the right side of each person or the left side of each person. If this rule isn't followed then it will appear that the two characters have switched places, therefore conflicting with continuity.

Arlington road screen grab annotations



For the editing of Arlington road, we used Final Cut Pro, this programme gives us a great advantage in making the title sequence for arlington road very professional looking and great to watch.
Here, we see the overview of Final Cut Pro, we had very little trouble using the programme and everthing wavery easily accessible.

the timeline was very helpful because we were able to see where we had placed certain texts, or edits such a 'fade' and were able t move, crop, delete things if necessary very easily, which saved us a lot of time.

At the end, we re-watched the whole thing and made a few changes, then we saved it to our video drive for our group so that we are then able t upload the title sequence to Blogger.

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Arlington Road: Editing Screengrabs

During the editing process of Arlington Road, we took a few screen grabs of some of the decisions we made.

In this screen grab, it shows the basic layout of the Final Cut Pro software and the timeline in which the clips and text is on.

This screen grab shows an example of the project being saved and named on to our video drive.

This is a screen grab of just the timeline, showing the clips and the text. From this you can see how each clip is adjacent to the other and the order in which they have been placed. The text is there to act as credits and will appear alongside the clip. 

In this one, we have shown the title of the sequence, 'Arlington Road', which we put at the end of the clips. However, we realised that the title should never be at the end as it appears as a trailer, so we will put it after the names.

Arlington Road Task

For this task our group had to combine a series of short clips and create our own title sequence as a way of practicing editing techniques.

Before changes 

After changes: FINAL

In order to do this, we used Final Cut Pro, for a professional final look. We also had to consider the conventional structure of thriller openings. We used a narrative opening style which reveals character and location through the use of filming. This unveils part of the plot engaging the audience. 

Introduction to Soundtrack Pro

Soundtrack Pro is one of the software's that we will be using to create the sound for our opening sequences. We got an introduction to the software, by using it for our prelims, and learnt the basic essentials to the programme.





At the bottom right of the screen, there is a tool that allows access to a variety of sound effects. It can provide almost every sound effect of every sub-category which will be beneficial for our title sequence. I found this software very interesting and useful.

Arlington Road: Re-editing Task

In order to create a successful opening sequence, its important that we familiarise ourselves with the editing equipment (final cut pro), and have a great understanding of how to use it. Taking this into consideration, we had to re-edit the opening sequence of Arlington Road, choosing which scenes we wanted to use and where we wanted to use them.
This allowed us to get creative and show off what we have learnt up to this point. It was entirely up to us to make every decision on it. It helped to develop our judgement of what we think works and doesn't work and allowed time for trial and error.
I thought that this exercise was beneficial because not only did I get a chance to edit a sequence from my own perspective, but i learnt new techniques which I can apply to my own work.

One of the techniques that I learnt was reducing the opacity of a clip, so that it will overlap with another. This is an extremely clever effect that I will definitely be using in my opening sequence.

I also learnt how to add text to the clip. This of course will be essential when creating my credits, so was a very important technique to learn. It is also very simple.

FDA Yearbook: Cinema Research

1)     How many suspense films were released in 2010?

      35 suspense films were released.

2)     In total, how much did these suspense films take, gross, to the nearest million?
£42,441,123 (42 million)

3)     Which genre of film had the highest gross in 2010?
Action-adventure: £265,784,158 

4)     What was the most popular family genre in 2010?
Animation

5)     Write a short paragraph of about 200 words about how the figures for ‘suspense’ genre films compare with other film genres in 2010.
The 'suspense' genre films grossed £42million to the nearest million, in 2010, whereas the action/adventure genre grossed a staggering £266 to the nearest million! This is a huge difference and shows that in 2010, the adventure/action family concept was a lot more popular then suspense. This could be due to the small target audience that the suspense genre has in comparison with other genres. 

First Ideas

This diagram explains my first ideas for our opening sequence. These are just some of the things my group and I stumbled across and thought could potentially be our narrative. We have not finalised the decision on whether we will use these ideas, and are still going to discuss and develop other ideas.

Inspiring elements of film: holiday task

The action thriller 'Wanted', with Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman and James McAvoy, definitely shows inspiring elements of film. It's jam-packed with action and uses a variety of techniques to convey the narrative.

In the 'Grocery store shoot-out', there are many effective techniques used.

The camera tracks from behind the food shelves and introduces us to the main character. It gives the impression that somebody is watching/spying on him as it is shot from a long distance. This corresponds with the narrative as we later learn that there is someone watching him.







(By this point, the main character (blue) has noticed the man watching him) The main character has been framed on the left hand side so we can see what he sees. The man watching him is in the center of the screen. This shot helps to distinguish who is important in the scene. A focus pull is used to show the main characters reaction to the person watching him. This scene is slowed down aswell as the sound. The sound of the mans footsteps is loud. We can hear the sound of a heartbeat in the background too which highlights his anxiety in this situation. The combination of the heartbeat, footsteps and slowed-down grocery store music, creates a type of soundscape that builds tension.

The scene slows down which highlights the action. They even show the bullet racing through the shelf. As the action slows down, the sound gets louder and speeds up and helps create a climax to the high point of action. The characters also help to add to the thrilling action with there strong facial expressions and body language.

Student Opening

The following video is a film opening produced by a previous AS student. The name of the film is Angel Dust; by viewing the first 2 minutes of the film the narrative opening style quickly grabs the audience's attention by informing us that its linked with 'online stalker.'

Angel Dust

Editing: 

The editing is quite creative. They use lots of slow and fast paced shots of the webpage. The credits and dialogues were animated - fading in and out in different places on the screen to move the audiences eyes around the whole screen. The effects and the font used helps establish a 'creepy' atmosphere and highlights the idea of the character getting 'stalked' also, the pace of the editing helps to create suspense.

Camera:

The camerawork is portrayed in a webcam style. Several medium shots have been used. The camera tracks the webpage to inform the audience that the action all happens in the computer world - this brings in the idea of 'online stalker' 

Mise-en-scene:

The props used are very well linked to the idea of the film opening. The use of keyboards and a computer gives the sense of online stalking building up. Also, it creates suspense for the audience as its quite creepy to use these props. The use of dark lowkey light has mostly been used to enhance the theme of mystery and suspense.

Sound:

The sound is really effective. The narrative style opening engages the audience in the film. The voice tone of the girl is very suspicious and feels as if she is up to something. Slow non-diegetic music has been played throughout the film opening which contributes to the suspense and the creepy atmosphere. The artificial sound of the keyboard is played at an average volume to inform the audience that the storyline is linked to the webpage.

First ideas

Evaluation of Prelim film

As a group, we thought that our overall approach towards the task was excellent in terms of time management and organisational skills, as we managed to complete the filming and editing within the given time frame.

Also, we were quite creative when it came to devising and essentially developing the brief that we were given to work with. We managed to think of a narrative to go behind it which created context and made it easier for us to film, as we had some direction.

I also think we used our media knowledge on the 180 degree rule well, as we managed to include a shot-reverse-shot WITHOUT breaking it. There was also a good use of match cuts, as requested.



Although there was some things that went well with our prelim, there were also many things that we could have improved. For example, the title of the prelim, appears twice in the timeline, due to a genuine mistake, so if we were to redo this, then we would make sure we check it through for mistakes a couple of times before we upload it.

Final prelim cut

This is our final edit for our preliminary film. We have done this using Final Cut Pro.

Foley Sound

Foley sound is when you manually create the sounds to substitute and to synchronize with visual footage. For example, a film of footsteps may be recreated by recording the sound of shoes on a particular surface. This will then be added in after, to look like natural sound.

Editing of prelim - using soundtrack pro

The screen grabs below, shows the process of editing of our prelim task. Our brief was to film the following sequence, making sure to use at least one match cut, an example of shot reverse shot and showing your understanding of the 180 degree rule. 

Our task was to shoot a character opens a door, walks into a room, sits down opposite another character and they share a few lines of dialogue. 

Here we are including foley and sound effects into our edited clip by using Soundtrack Pro. 

Here we are including sound effects of a door opening by using the same program.

Here we are saving our prelim film as it is important to save your work regularly.

Here we are saving our work on the video drive.

Here we are adding our foley sound to make out prelim video look better - sound is an important element.

Here we are editing our prelim video by making final touches e.g. fades. This is done by using Final cut Pro.

Here we are editing credits to make our video look professional. This is done using Final cut Pro and it is done to inform the audience about the characters in the film.