Creating a poster

To create the poster, I used Microsoft Word because it is a program that I am familiar with and know how to use. I began by looking ta royalty free pictures that suited the effect I was going for and something that could represent the film as whole rather than reflecting just our opening sequence as this is how it would be if we created a whole film. I didn't use a picture from our piece as I didn't think any of them would be effective enough and also didn't bring the right message.
After choosing a picture for a background I then added the name in a similar font that we used for the titles in the opening sequence as I beleive this was more effective than using any other font as it had more correlation to the piece.
The smoke used to symbolise dreams in the opening sequence was also pictured as the hand was holding it as though it was mastering the dream/nightmare realm.
It took me a long time to find the perfect photo as I wanted it to mean something to the sequence.

BBFC Film certification

'The British Board of Film Classification is an independent, non-governmental body which has classified cinema films since it was set up in 1912 and videos/ DVDs since the Video Recordings Act was passed in 1984.'

click here for the BBFC website
Every film show in the cinema must have a certification from the BBFC.
In films they look for sex and nudity, taste and decency, bad language, and violence.
There are several certifications:
U- universal, suitable for all
PG- parental guidance
12 A- cinema release suitable for 12 years or older
12-video release suitable for 12 years or older
15-suitable only for 15 years or older
18- suitable only for adults

Examples: taste and decency
Borat- 15
Reason: not an 18 because even though it is offensive to Jews, Sascha Baron Cohen is a Jew himself and they thought that people would understand the irony.

We viewed the trailer of Wild Bill and rated it ourselves judging it by how much of each of the things the BBFC look for are in it. I rated the trailer as 12 but it was actually 12A.

Opening sequences

In an opening sequence it should give us an idea of:

• Genre
• Atmosphere
• Narrative (enigma)
• Setting
• Character

I watched three opening sequences to get a feel for the different conventions for each genre
The first one was Cape Fear and I focused on character. We get a sense of who might be a main character at 1:55 when a man's reflection is shown on rippling bloody water. The bloody water suggests that he is the bad guy or that he gets killed off. Towards the end of the sequence there is a short monologue by a woman she looks twenties early thirties in age. The short monologue suggests that it is her story being told.

The second opening sequence I looked at was Hell Boy 2: The Golden Army and we focused on genre.
I think that the genre is action adventure, this is because the music sounds like war music, there were giant pieces of swinging metal and fire which gave it an element danger.

The last opening sequence I looked at was Forest Gump and we focused on narrative. The music was whimsical but had an element of sadness to it. Throughout the sequence we follow a feather drifting in the wind as though searching for something and this foreshadows a long journey of searching. We meet the main character when the feather lands at his feet and he appears to care for it. The camera stops at his feet and slowly travels up his body to his face. The first thing we see is him wearing a muddy and worn pair of trainers which says that those shoes are important to him. He opens his case to put the feather in and we see the children's book Curious George this might suggest that the story has a happy ending but also that the main character is childlike.

I watched these sequences at: http://www.artofthetitle.com

The use of sound and why it is important

In today's lesson we were learning about sound and how it affects the viewers experience of what they are seeing. It is 80 percent of our experience when watching a film or clip.
Sound is used for different reason like a soundtrack to help the viewer interpret the mood of what they are watching.

There are two types of sound:
- Diegetic sound is within the text and can be things such as dialogue or sounds from something such as the buzzing of an alarm clock.
- Non-diegtic sound is added afterwards and is something that is not from within the text, such as a soundtrack. the characters within the text cannot hear non-diegetic sound.

Storyboard of Pixar's short film 'Geri's Game'

This short film is called 'Geri's Game' from Pixar Animation studios.

Pixar often create storyboards of their films before making them and also use them when they are pitching their ideas for a film to their colleagues. I found this interesting because even though it is an animation it still has 'camera shots' to help tell the story and because of the nature of the story camera shot and angle is very important in showing that he is playing a game of chess against himself. In one of the scenes there is shown to be hands from both sides in the shot to try and trick the audience into thinking there are now two people there, when in fact the shot at the end once again shows the old man sitting alone at the chess table. I remember watching this as a young child and being confused by this short film which shows that Pixar has indeed succeeded in what they were trying to do. Pixar created this short for testing their ability to portray humans and clothing.

Storyboarding a scene

Over the last two lessons we have been storyboarding a short clip from the film Insidious. It is the ending scene and is very dramatic and there are 14 different shots that we must try our best to recreate. When we completed the storyboard we filmed our own imitation of the scene. One thing that we learnt whilst we were storyboarding is that some templates are square which TV screens are not, so we had to draw added lines to make sure that we get the correct shot composition within the right kind of space. Below are our storyboards for the scene. We hand drew them so some of the lines are faint from being scanned but I did my best to alter the contrast and brightness to make it better.

here is our finished product

Semiotics

Semiotics is the study of signs. Within media it is important for the audience to be able to interpret the signs that are placed within a scene so that they can understand what is happening. Semiotics is split into denotation and connotation. Denotation is what you literally see when you look at something and connotation is what you can infer from looking at it (what it means).
In this picture (left) there is a denotation and a connotation.
Denotation: A woman with brown hair in a white ball gown.
Connotation: She is getting married. We can infer this from the colour of her ball gown which is white and symbolises purity.

Identifying and Analysing shots

In today's lesson we were learning about how to Identify different shots and why they have been used.

Me and my partner analysed a shot from my favourite film Mrs Doubtfire. We counted the number of shots used in the scene and counted 14.

The first shot is a medium shot and these are used quite often through the scene because the characters are all in close proximity. The first medium shot is used instead of a shot reverse-shot because the other man that is being spoken to is not important to the scene or the film. It briefly shows the face of the man Stu is talking to and then it changes to a shot of the kids playing in the pool. this shot ensures we know who he is talking about and shows us what the other man is seeing when he looks over.

In the next shot instead of a medium shot of both of the them it focuses on Stu's face as he is talking and we can also see Mrs Doubtfire's reaction to what he is saying in the background. There is then a close up of Mrs Doubtfires face as we see her/his reaction to what Stu is saying. We then see him/her pick up a lime and throw it, the shot quickly changes to the back of Stu's head just in time to see the lime hit him.