Feedback from production group meeting

 Today my production group and I had another meeting about developing out ideas. We talked about how we like the idea that we have at the moment, however it would only come to about one minute of footage and that on its own would not be that engaging. So we discussed what we could add before the operation to make it longer and more interesting. We thought about how we could show the whole process of the man taking the body into his attic, from the car pulling up and him taking the body bag out of the car all the way to the table. We thought this would be good for the tone we had originally thought about, and be better for using titles. 

Another idea we had was that the clone would still be alive at the beginning of the scene and we would show a fight between them. So the clone would have a gas mask/hoodie on so we couldn't see his face and they would be mirroring each others actions. Then the clone is killed. This would probably be better at engaging the audience from the beginning. However after discussing it we talked about how it wouldn't be the best for using titles in the way that we want to. It is also very different from the mood that we were trying to set - a very creepy and slow moving tone. However if we can develop this in order to make it fit more with our idea of titles and the tone that we imagined, we think it could still work very well

The other thing that we talked about is finding another way to portray that the clone is not a twin, as the labels are more telling the audience rather than showing them. So we need to think of a way of showing the audience. 

Workshop 2

 Today we had our second virtual workshop with Matt, he taught us about the 180 degree rule. This rule is also called 'Crossing the line'. It is a technique to help the audience know where everybody is and who is who. It is when an imaginary line is drawn between two subjects and then the camera can be places anywhere as long as it stays one side of that line. If you were to cross that line it would make the shot confusing and the audience may not know where the characters are, what they are looking at/talking to and who is who. 

This is a diagram that shows it.

This rule means that, if there are two people talking to each other, one is always shown on the right, and one always on the left. 

This is an example of what happens when the line is crossed, as you can see cams A,B and C all work well as they show the two people as staying in the same place facing the same way, and the cams do not cross the line. However cam D is very confusing as it crosses the line, therefore disorientating the audience as we are not sure where the character actually is.

These are my examples of how to use the 180 degrees rule correctly, with a wide shot, over the shoulder, and then a close up. 

Wide shot

I have put the pen where the 180 degree line would be drawn

                                     

Over the shoulder shot

Close up

Saul and Elaine Bass research task

Saul Bass was an American graphic designer and film maker. He was born in 1920 and died in 1996, his career laster for 40 years. He is very well known for his design of title sequences, film posters and corporate logos. He is very important  in the development of the opening title sequence of Hollywood films, and his work had had an influence on many filmmakers, which we can still see evidence in films, advertisement campaigns etc. today. He has worked with some highly influential Hollywood directors and is credited as 'Pictorial Consultant' for his input on the film 'Psycho'. He has designed a lot of well known company logos, including the Bell system logo in and AT&T's logo, both in 1983. In 1974 he designed the logo of United airlines, which became one of the most recognised airline logos. 

Saul became well known in the film industry after he made the title sequence for the film 'The man with the Golden arm'. The opening sequence focused on an animated arm, because the film was focused on a heroin addict so therefore it matched the subject of the film. 

In 1955, Elaine Makatura started working with Saul Bass in Los Angeles in his office. Elaine directed and produced the title sequences to Spartacus. Bass and Makatua then married in 1961 and worked for 30 years together on graphic design and film making. 

An Opening scene I have decided to look into further is 'The Anatomy of Murder (1957)' 

The opening sequence of this film has inspired many filmmakers, and still continues to. 

Saul Bass presented the film title in a literal way by showing each name of the members of the crew next to different body parts detached from the body. The sequence has a very simple look to it, using a grey background and black paper cut outs. The body parts get more detached from the body and separate as the scene goes on. It stats with the whole body and then it seems to get more deformed. This showing the title of the film very literally as is showing the anatomy of the body. The cut out of the body looks a bit like when police put tape on the floor when there is a dead body, so it is reinforcing the crime side of the film. The scene doesnt give too much away at all as it is just setting the mood and tone of the film without exposing the narrative. 

Idea changes in response to feedback

 We discussed the feedback after our lesson and came up with a few solutions:

- To show that the corpse is not a clone we could show the name on the label and a badge on the doctor are the same name and the label says 'name.. version 7' or something similar as then we know he is making lots of them and that they are versions of himself. 

- The room could be an attic and the man has set up a room to make his clones so it is not very professional

- We still need to decide on the time period but we think it would be in modern time but the room looks older as it is not very clean and a bit derelict as he doesn't look after it very well.

- Instead of showing a heart close up we might stick to the plan of showing the body being cut open as this is more believable. 

Idea Pitch feedback

 After pitching our idea we received feedback from Mike and Matt. This is what they said:

- We need basic info (what time period, where are we etc) to establish the setting

- We need to think more about what we can film (what we put in front of the camera)

- Could be an abandoned dirty room/motel room

- The audience may think the corpse is a twin, so might not understand it is a clone

- It would be hard to use a heart as a prop and make it believable so either we shouldn't do a heart close up or just use the original idea of seeing the body being cut. 

Chosen Idea Pitch

 This is a powerpoint me and my production group made to pitch our chosen idea:

Workshop 1

Today we had a workshop on camera composition with Matt, from the production team. We learnt about rule of thirds, foreground lighting and lighting. I found it very interesting learning how to make the frame more interesting. I also do photography, which I think will be useful in the production of the opening scene as I can use some of the same techniques such as rule of thirds. 

Rule of thirds is when you place the focus point of the image on certain points in the frame in order to draw the attention to it and make it a lot more interesting. 

The rule of thirds is made up of four lines, and each point where the lines cross is a focus point. So it is a point of interest. Here is an example:

 The red dots are the points of interest, so when Matt's head is on the point of interest it makes the frame a lot more interesting and better composed. 

Another thing Matt talked about is matching the camera height to the subject. When looking around we tilt our head up and down, so this is natrually what we would do with a camera, however this does not make a very interesting shot so instead we should film from the height of the object. Like this:

He also talked about lighting, and how to make it more interesting, for example using foreground and background lighting, and different colours of lights to make it look more interesting. 

 I think that lighting will be a big part in our scene, as we plan to use it to set the atmosphere and tone. So I found this very helpful. 

We were then set a task to try using these rules using our phones. I did some not using the rule, and then using it, so I could compare the difference. Here are my outcomes:

Rule of thirds:

Camera height: 

I also experimented with different coloured lights:

I think that the coloured lights added a lot of atmosphere to the image and really changed the mood of it

Independent research into close ups

Research into close ups

We plan on making our opening title sequence mainly out of a montage of close ups, consisting of the people, objects and the room. Therefore I decided to research how to make close ups effective and eye catching. 

This is a video I found on 'The Art of the Close Up'.

I found this very useful as it tells us what to do in order for the character to come across in a certain way and how the audience reacts. 

One of the most interesting things I took away from this video was how important the eyes are in presenting the status and emotion of the character, for example when a character blinks a lot it could indicate them being nervous. So therefore to present a character as high status or powerful you would film a close up of them not blinking, you would also have them raise their eyebrows and widen their eyes to make them look more dominant

These are the aspects that were said to be important in filming close ups. So when doing closeups I think we could include repetition by having glitches, which show different parts of the room and repeat important aspects to draw attention to them. I think that a good way to show repetition is that it could keep cutting back to a close up of a clock ticking to show time running out etc.

Therefore Showing close ups of the person carrying out the autopsy and their eyes would communicate their emotions to the audience very well and show a lot of their intentions just from looking at their eyes. I think this will be very useful in thinking about the characters intentions and therefore planning out the rest of our scene. 

I think that the timing in our scene is very important, as the time we spend on each close up will create different atmospheres. For example if we have the close ups very long and drawn out it will create tension and leave the audience on edge. But if we have very short glitchy close ups, it will make it more unpredictable and scary as they do not know what will happen next. We could have some long close ups on certain things which would make the audience uncomfortable, for example cutting the skin or a needle.

I think that we can use a lot of the ideas of close ups stated in this video in our ideas and it will help us with inspiration.

Feedback from our chosen Idea

Feedback from our chosen Idea

Our chosen idea is my idea 2, about the post mortem room. 

Out back up is Amandas idea about video calls/someone being deployed.

Today we spoke to Matt, who helps us with the production of our opening scenes, we told him our chosen idea and back up idea. 

He said he liked the fact that our ideas were very different and contrasted a lot, and they were different genres. He talked to us about the different ways we could show the post mortem room, and the time period we wanted to do it in. For example a really modern hospital-type room, or an old room which looks like the man is performing the autopsy in his garage or something. We talked about how the time period and setting would have a big influence on the narrative and the plot, and the things we show in the opening scene. We said that we had originally had the idea of the setting being quite dark and old fashioned, but hasn't thought yet about whether it was something he was doing on his own (maybe illegally) or if he was doing it as a job and he was meant to be doing it. 

The examples that he gave us were, he could be doing an autopsy of the body of someone dead and we film the autopsy of him investigating how they died. We would research into how they are done, for example have a microphone where he records what he sees. 

However he said this may be a bit gruesome and hard to do, so we though we could do something like he was retrieving something from the body, like a hard drive, as the body is a clone so could be recording something?

We will discuss these ideas of the narrative, but i think we have already decided on the room. Which we want to look something like an abandoned autopsy room, like this: 

We also want to have an old fashioned style to it so having close ups of posters like this would help set that theme up:

Feedback from my ideas

Idea 1

My group said they really liked how detailed my idea was and that I had a clear idea about it, and it was clear how I imagined each scene to happen. 

However they said that they thought it was a bit too complicated, which I agree with and it was my most complicated idea. We only have one day to film our opening scenes and I didn't really take this into consideration when planning my first idea as it had 3 different parts to it, which would take a lot of time to set up and film. 

Therefore I could try and change it by maybe having just two different settings/scenes which we switch back and forth between each other.

The idea of having a criminal line up may not be convenient at the moment due to Covid-19 so I would have to think of another way of portraying that with social distancing.

My group said that they liked the tens
ion created in the opening scene, and that presenting the abuse of power was a good idea. However there was a bit too much information for an opening scene

Overall I think my group liked the concept of my idea and the story behind it, and thought it is possible to carry the story forward. But we agreed it would be too complicated to film in one day and therefore would need to be adapted to fit the timescale we have.

I think I could develop this idea by making it a lot simpler and cutting it down quite a bit so i have less information and less scenes. I plan to pitch my second idea in a few days as this is one I am more confident about. 

Idea 2

My group preferred this idea as it was very clear and easy to understand, whereas my idea one was not simple and quite confusing.

My group said that it would be a lot easier to film and simpler. It is also a lot better to do with Covid restrictions as we would only need 1/2 people acting. 

I was told that my powerpoint was not as detailed as the last one and that it would be good to have some more clear ideas of what the close ups would be of as i only mentioned a few, for example, the Dr taking blood samples.

They really liked the tension created
in it and thought that the twist at the end was very good. We also agreed that it would be a good scene to do creative and effective titles, and therefore we have decided to use it as our main idea. 

Overall I think this idea was quite successful and my group liked it and think we have a lot to work with when using it as our main idea. 

My production Group

I am in a production group with Amanda Otieno and Wendy Li

We have made a group chat on snapchat so we can easily talk to each other

We also made a group on facetime so we can virtually meet and talk about our project

We plan to facetime once a week or more to talk about our ideas

Third Idea for Opening title Sequence

 This is my Third idea for my opening title sequence

Second idea for opening title sequence

This is my second idea for my opening title sequence

First Idea for Opening title sequece

 

This is my first idea for my opening title sequence