Coursework

(this was done before shooting and everything but was handwritten )
Genre of my film - Romcom/Chickflick
Narrative in terms of todorov theory -
equalibrium - average teenage girls life , goes to school , has a decent group of friends
disturbance- because she is in love with a boy who has a girlfriend she tries to steal him away from his girlfriend , the girlfriend has a conflict with her  and the girl ends up really unhappy  and not allowed to speak to boy.
new equalibruim - boy breaks up with his girlfriend  and is really in love with the girl , they get together happy ending


setting and location - hastings old town and seafront because they look visually nice a give a good impression of a small british town where you wouldnt expect that much to go on.


characters
girl - Holly
boy- Robert
girlfriend- Amelia


props and costumes needed
- coats and jeans
- phone


camera booked for 26th of november

Todorov

Todorovs theory was set a basic structure for all narratives.  He said that all films start of with an equilibrium; a calm period where everything is balanced and steady. then has a disequilibrium; a disturbance  which is a period of unsettlement. Then after that  a narrative has to have a new equilibrium; a sense of restoration / new beginning and a state of peace for the protagonist. This is the simplest form of narrative and can be referred to as 'classic' or 'Hollywood'.

Levi strauss binary opposition

Strauss worked closely with Barthes in the 20th century  and came up with the binary opposition this is a theory that says all stories have conflict between two sides or or has ideological fighting. 

http://www.englishbiz.co.uk/popups/opposition.htm

Barthes 5 codes

The Hermeneutic code - this is something that is not fully explained and so becomes a mystery to the reader

The proairetic code -builds tension , this refers to an action  that gets the audience to try and guess what is going to happen next

 it works in a pair with the hermeneutic to develop a stories tension 

barthe describes it as... "...dependent on ... two sequential codes: the revelation of truth and the coordination of the actions represented: there is the same constraint in the gradual order of melody and in the equally gradual order of the narrative sequence."

The semantic code- this code refers to connotaton in a story that gives anotherl meaning over the basic  meaning of the word.

The symbolic code- similar to semantic code but at a wider level looking a the mise en scene

The cultural code-This code refers to anything that is founded on some kind of canonical works that cannot be challenged and is assumed to be a foundation for truth.

Vladimir Propp research

Vladimar Propp's theory is that every story has its 8 characters

   

CHARACTERS

1.The hero (seeks something)

2.The villain (opposes the hero)

3.The donor (helps the hero by providing a magic object)

4.The dispatcher (sends the hero on his way)

5.The false hero (falsely assuming the role of hero)

6.The helper (gives support to the hero)

7.The princess (the reward for the hero but also needs to be protected from the villain

8.her father

This does  fit  to many films  such as harry potter where harry is the hero , voldemort is

the villain , dumbledor is the donor , death eaters are the dispatchers,

ron/hermione are the false heros but are also the helpers and ginny is thep rincess

it can also fit with films like lord of the rings , sherlock holmes etc

however this theory doesnt fit all the time , in films such as happy go lucky where there is no 

really story line this theory doesnt fit.

thinking about what our opening credits will include

production companies-
mainstream- universal
- cloumbia pictures
- paramount
-fox
-lionsgate

alternative- greyscale
-storyland
-seal films
-olsperg spi

obviously our fiolm wouldnt be looked at by mainstream producers and disributers so would be produced either an independant company of a small company weho specialise in these sort of films.

 we're going to call our production company 'fly productions' and have designed the logo but not done it on the computer.
we're also going to add the actors name but instead of having 'starring' or 'with' it will be 'intorducing' then the actors name.

The shooting

We managed to get all of our shots done on the one day . Although the shooting schedule make it look as though   there wouldnt be enough for two minutes we did add extra shots as we went along of things that was thought were nice visually at the time. For the majority  it went very successfully with only one minor problem. when we where filming the sun rise  the memory card ran out so we had to go back and get another one , this was because we didnt think of memory cars when we where planning, it did not really effect our day and shooting much but was a big  inconvenience. We where also very lucky with the weather as it remained pretty consistent with means that the continuity shouldnt be too bad.

i will up load the shoots soon.

Shooting schedule

Rachel and i aim to get all of our filming done in one day  , wed 30th novemeber.

-shot of the sunrise from top of the east hill
-when its light  a panning shot of hastings  and seafront from the top of the east hill.
- At the stade shots of different funfair rides
-panning shot of sea and pier
- shots of the ice skating rink and christmas lights
-shots of hasting town
-ms of the boy walking through oldtown
-ls of him walking past amusments with girl in the amusments , she spots him walk past and goes to chase him as he carries on walkin gout of shot knocking into things to show her character as clumsy
-tracking shot of her running through old town and trying to get his attention 
-cu of him walking we see he has headphones in
-ls in front of her  running after him stll trying to get his attention
-shot of the from of him , he is to the right of the shot  we see her in the background on the left side of shot  he still hasnt noticed her  we see her get closer then walk straight into a lampost because she was preoccupied with getting his attention he carries on walking same shot camera moves to a close up of teh girl laying down unconcious

Research on chickflick / romcom openings - Angus thongs and perfect snogging

Angus thongs and perfect snogging- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx-Um3L2S3g
This is a British romcom/ chickflick. I chose to look at this particular film opening as it starts of along a seafront just like we want ares to . This film however opening with diologue rachel and myself didnt want any diolgue in ours  only a sountrack  but in this film the sound track doesnt come in till about a minute and a bit in. However their titles appear over the picture  just like we wanted  are to . this particualr film titles  start of with the title of the actual film then goes on to say the actors names and some of the technical crews names.
 and the producers last. The titles are te colour white , white is often used for innocence  so this maybe deliberate as it the film is about a innocent teenager. The choice of music is a very lightheartd song  so creates a very happy mood and it emphasis  the comical image of the girl running along a seafront in an olive costume creating a happy/funny mood.

Coursework with Rachel

Genre - Romcom / Chick Flick
Title - That should be me
Synopsis -   The story of a girls life as a average teenager and how she's fallen for someone whos already been taken.
Narrative- About half way through the film Holly would have some form of fight with Amelia resulting in Robert seeing how horrible Amelia is and ending with Holly and Robert being together.
Location - Hastings Seafront
Audience- Teenage
Music- ?
Costume - Light brown parker , dark jeans  and boots (everyday sort of clothes) -holly
Jeans and leather jacket with boots -Robert
Dress and jacket- Amelia
Characters - Holly ,16 year old girl ,medium height dark brown hair.  Robert 17 year old boymedium height short brown hair. Amelia ,Boys girlfriend(stereotype  popular girl)blonde, thin tall.
Opening titles- Producer - Film4 funded  by national lottery
' Rachel Howe and Natasha Kingscote Presents '

opening scenes - shots of  hastings town and seafront. A few shots of the main male character walking through the town . Then a few shots of both of them. the end of our opening is of the main character Holly walking into a lamp post  with the title of the film coming up above her.

There wont be any dialogue within our opening as it is setting the scene  so we dont have any form of script for it.

Preliminary task

For the preliminary task i worked with Rachel , Jonny and jonno. We worked pretty well as a team and because we got on well together and understood eachothers ideas  we where able to get the work done quickly and reasonably well , considering it was our first time doing  this. The camera we used was a flip camera  , we didnt use a tripod with it because we felt handheld shots would be more intimate and feel more like reality to the audience. The only challange really struggled with was the continuity of the different shots but when we realised that we wernt sticking to the 180 degree rule it made it much easier to get the cintinuity right :)

Submarine

Director -David Ayoade

Writer - Richard Ayoade (screenplay) Joe dunthorne (novel)

Starring - Craig Roberts , Sally Hawkins and Paddy Considine

Taglines:A comedy that doesn't let principles stand in the way of progress.

Box Office

Opening Weekend:£244,476 (UK) (20 March 2011) (60 Screens)

Gross:$466,702 (USA) (14 August 2011)

Submarine is a british film  in the opening of the film it the credits show that it is a film 4 film and funded by the national lottery funds.It is also a optimum film. The genre of the film is black comedy but also can be catagorised  as a romcom. The atmosphere created in the begining  is a very dark , they create this in the opening by using many shots of the setting at sunsetwhich makes it also feel quite eery and with the nice ssoft sounding music in the backgroud it contrasts with the images and makes teh atmosphere feel even more dark and eery . It  is also created by making the film looke reasonably homemade in some shots e.g using  handheld camera shots this also make it more realistic.Also the use of handheld shots and close up makes it feel intimate.The atmosphere as the film goes on turns comical as they use happier music and make the main character Oliver a very stereotyped teenager . This gives the impression that the films audience is the for people of the same age as the main character 15/16 because they can relate to it.
Mise en scene-
The use of Jordanna wearing a red duffle coat  could be a symbol of a danger or passion or it could relate to little red riding hood which is a story about temptation.however the use of the duffle coat on Jordanna and Oliver could aslo be a symbol of innocence as there quite child like which gives the impression of protection , which the audience can relate to.

Preliminary work plan

For our preliminary task we planned what the scene and dialogue is going to be.

Dialogue
man1- "ill be there in a bit"
man2-"Ive got something to ask you"
man1-"course mate ask me anything"
man2-" well basically..."
waitress-" can i get you anything?"
man1-"ill just have a coffee"
man2-"im good"
man2-"as i was saying, you know im getting married in july. well i want you to be my best man"
man1-"course i will"

Set in a cafe .

Preliminary shots

Our preliminary shots were fairly successful we kept tried to not make the mistakes that we made during the experimental work. however we did change and add a few different shows and didnt stick to using a tripod as it was awkward to get the right angle/height that we wanted. We mananaged to stick to the 180 degree rule and tried to keep the same level but sometimes that went off a little. We experiemted using a panning shot having our person walking outside and the camera looking through the window This worked nicely however because the window was too high for the tripod we did it as a handheld shot so that getting the level the same was a little bit tricky and took us a fair few tries .

For our prelim we used pnning shot , CU , MS , LS

experimental footage

From our experimental footage we learnt that if we dont stick to the 180 degree rule the continuity doesnt match up we found this out when we were practising shooting the same scene from several positions. Also we made lots of silly mistakes such as accidently cutting out half of someones face  because the proximity of the actors was wrong. Also not keeping the camera steady was one of the main problems we had when no using a tripod. Another mistake we kept making was that we didnt keep the camera level the same  which also messed up the  continuity of the footage expecially when doing moving shots. Also we learnt that when planning a shot its best to story board the shots so you are more prepared when starting to film and you know exactly what it is you are going to do.  When shooting the dialogue we tried various shots  , close up , over the sholder  , mid shot etc  and we found that some were more successful than other and look much more effective .

i am unable to upload the videos