Camera and Editing Training

In one of our first lessons we learnt how to use a camera, the technition taught us how to set up the camera stand and to use the acual camera, this really helped me and my group because as soona s we we're given the equiptment we knew how to use the camera straight away and this really helped us when filming becuase before being trained how to use these equiptment properly i didnt really know how to use the camera and stand properly.
We was then taught how to use the program 'Finalcut Express' this is the programme where you upload your clips and edit them. the first thing we editied was the plemiliary task we didnt really go indeep with the editing but we learn't how to shortening a clip so if the scene was about 10mintues long we could shorten it to about 4secounds which i found really good and less time wasting. When we started editing our film thats where we did alot of editing and i was really facinated by what we did because i never thought that i would be able to make a film like that. its amazing. we learn't how to slow things down, put music whilst a scene happening, making it look like a well produced film.

Mainstream/cut/alternative

We learnt about mainstream, cult and alternative films today.
Mainstream films are fimls like Avatar, that have a big grose and are films that will have room for a secound sequend e.g (part 2 or books toys ant etc).
A cult is a small group, it something that appeals to a small market. for example someone like Giggs, he will come under cult because before he was quite known us young people knew him but adults didnt, but now alot of people know hom but he still not mainstream. Most british films come across as cult apart from 'love actually' this film is classed as mainstream because of the well known britsh actors and it had american actors aswell and mostly the money. most cult fims do not get shown in every cinema depending on the film depends on the area the film will get shown in like 'Kidulthood' didnt get shown in all cinemas around london, it only gonna get shown in 'Urban areas' like tottenham, holloway , brixton.
An Alternative film is a film that spends alot of money but not as much money as mainstream.

We looked at few films and analysed what group they come under, the first film was Star wars battle of the heroes.
Its a Mainstream film, that attracts a mainstream audience, its made for americans as they have the money. Alot of money was spent making this film, it had a very big budget. its based on fantasy.
One of the highest selling films .

The next film was Cass.
Cass is about a black man who grew up in a white area, its british so its will come across as cult, so this film will only get released in urban areas it also comes across as a subversive film because its doing something againts the law.

Evil Dead was the last film we watched, which was a horror genre , we classed it bas half cult and half alternative and subversive, becuase it has a few comedic elements.
its notn a typical hollywood film where everyones happy colours are jolly and etc.

Filming our movie/Genre

Filming our movie has been very tough.We had a lot of times where we couldn't film properly because of unreliable people, but after a while we tried to do our best, but then it became more tiring and fustrating when the main charcters wouldn't turn so being reliable was something that was lacking in our group. We then ound out that our tape that we have been filming everything on got lost, this really made me and my team members angry, dimotivated and a sense of not being bothered, but because we needed to pass so we had to start from scratch. When it was time to start from scratch the main character was being very unreliable and making no intrested of being around so we had to kick her out and get new people. I asked a few of my friends if they could replace the main charcters and they said yes, doing this made us having to kind of change the way the story went, for example we had to make the boy heard but not seen.
The genre of our a film is drama/romance, ur group chose this because we thought itwould be a easier issue to deal with, and the storyline's we kept comming up with were mostly this genre.

But even though we went through that stress filming from start with everything being new made things better and gave us a clearer mind and made us enjoy filming even more, as before personally i felt quite depressed filming in my group because of how people will behave and the impression they would give.
we are now filming our last scene then will begin editing. we are being inspired by Larry McConey in some of our scene's, when he does the straight smooth pans with out having to have cuts.

Recky

A recky is a scene that you shoot somewhere else not where its actually ment to be, this saves money because you can use any venue that you may not need to pay for and do the scene plenty of times, so when you do the actually scene its perfect. In my group we did the scene where the girl 'porcia' tells her boyfriend 'Thomas' that she is pregnant over the phone, we did it in like a corridor white based background, it looked like a hospital. when we filmed the real scene we filned it in the toilet which was ment to represent the 'clinic toilet'. it didnt save us any money because we didnt need to pay for anything, butwe benifited from it as we knew how the real idea would turn out.

We first saw what a recky was when we watched 'Reservoir Dogs' directored and written by Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino is known to be a very famous director and this film showed a recky. they filmed the recky in a deasent toilet and tarantino was even in the scene, but when they shot the actual scene there were a few changes like Tarantino weren't in the scene and the toilet was much more different.

Intial Ideas

In our group we had a few ideas for our film, originally our film was going to be complete different from what we have now, the genre was going to be Drama/thriller, it was going to be about a guy who dates to girls at the same time ,makes them fall deep in love with him, he likes the both of them but dosen't want to let any of them go. One day when all the girls have to go to a girls camp there are two girls that find out that they are dating the same guy and from there seek revenge on him, our similar text to this was the film 'John Tucker must die'.

We didn't continue with this storyline because of lack of things, like we didnt have a boy to play the male charater and we knew that after a while it will be difficult trying to make a film like this. This also resulted to us not having a boy in our actual film.

Film analysis (Hard candy and Traning day)

In class we watch two films and we had to analyse them the first film we analysed was 'Hard candy.

This film was directed by Patrick wilson, Ellen Page and Sandra Oh, the film rating is an 18.

When the film started it had music playing in the background whilst the first scene started, t

he music was quite flowly but had a tense beat which made it sound like something was going to happen very soon. we know there was two charcter from the beginning because they were talking on the msn chat they had colours and images to represent them, the girl had the colour red and the man had the colour blue, by seeing the images on the msn pictures we knew what the man does for a living

, he had a camera as his picture so we knew that he was a photographer

and his name was 'Lensman' which could do with the camera lens or maybe he wore glasses. there was several camera shots as soon as the film began, the first camera shot was a mid shot which showed us the audience everything, there was then a zoom which built intensity to the scene.

we knew the man was in control already because of the questions he was asking the girl and what he was saying to her for example when he said 'we'll finally hook up baby' and she says 'Im not a baby' and he replies 'I'll have to see for myself'.

Props

The next scene opens up with an establishing shot, this shows us where the charcters are, where the scene is being set.

It then shows a plastic fork, the plastic fork symbolizes she in a shop as she using there equipment, if it was at home we would know as the fork would be metal, she then eats a chocolate cake, the chocolate cak

e symbolizes something sexual and when she says 'Umm' that is a very sexual sound that she has just done.

The girl is wearing a red hoodie this red hoodie shows alot of things for example 'Little red riding hood' and the colour itself represents romance, passion,love and lust but it can also represent danger and blood. the man is wearing black which could represent negativeness and sinister

When the man and the girl meet all the shots are at eye level because he see's her as the same level as her its almost like a fair game, the background of the set is blurry as the film makers want the audience to concentrate of the two main characters and not anything else. the director films the, in seperate shots because thy haven't broke the barrier yet, he is wearing glasses and that is the barrier between his world and hers. the man then makes a joke and then it makes the two in the same shot, the camera shakes when its on the girl, this shows a sense of vunrability. the young girl and the man met in a coffee shop , the majority of young people do not go to the coffee shop on a regular basis only adults go to coffee shops to meet with people, this shows that the girl wanted to look older also she told him she reads 'Zadie smiths' books which showed she was matu

re. When the girl talks she has like like a white light shining on her face this give a

n impression of her being angelic and innocent.

Training Day

The film training day is directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by David Ayer, the genre is Crime, drama and thriller, this film stars Danzel Washington who acts as a dodgie policeman he works with a man known as 'Jake', denzel brings him to a house where its full of a portugese looking family which ook dodgie, in this scene there was lots of girls, then in the kitchen were three men, Denzel leaves jake there and goes, things get tense and time goes by the men then tell him that its a fix, denzel a dodgie cop and he purposly ditched jake, jake trys to do a runner and the men want to attack him when thia it come then alot of shots are seen, we can see he looks betrayed and scared, were seeing things that he's not seeing, this makes us know something is about to happen, the shots get closer whch makes us know it's getting tense. when the three men beat up the guy and throw him in the bath tub its a low angle shot which show that the men are in control, they turn on the tap and its ruunning in real fast pace this indicates that real time is runnging out, the bath curtains have to colours onse side is blue and the other side is white, the blue one means 'Cold' and metalic and the 'White' shows Angelic and good choice, so its like two consciences one good and one bad. The uncle phones his neice and when they show her in her room it's a high angle shot of his neice when she's lying to him, then as soon as she says the truth the camera rotates and comes closer to her.

peliminary Task

In our peliminary task we was asked to film a person opening the door, walking across the room and sitting down opposite the other character. In my group we filmed someone walking through the door and standing facing the opposite character, they exchanged several words and one of the characters slapped the other and it ended there.
what went well was that we filmed the person coming throught he door, we also got a good shot of the 180 degree rule when the characters were standing talking to eachother and the slap shot.
what didnt go so well was some shots took ages to film and went wrong which caused us to do alot of editing, we took quite long on many of the facial expressing shots and the acting was quite poor which made us take really long.
When doing this peliminary task i personaly was trained to use a camera and learn't how to do most of the camera shots such as the 180 degree rule especially and how not to break this rule, as a whole we learn't how to use a camera better than how we knew it and the things you can do with the camera.
We learn't how to edit our peliminary in final cut express the editing programme which made it easier for us because we got to choose bits we wanted in the scene, so if the scene was like 5mins long we got to cut and selcet the part we wanted which could be like 3secounds which was interesting we just use the In and out button to select what bit we wanted, this was a good advantage for us because we learn't things that i didnt know before and how editing can really change a film and make it better than it is.