Final Film: Pipeline

http://youtu.be/oYmhYo8BXH8

Conclusion

We have posted our film and our questions and I think that in the end we have created a good film opening with plenty of enigmas. When we started we were making a film we were calling "Contaminated" and we got to wok on that quickly we got lots of interesting shots but the story was hard to follow and we discovered that a film with that name had been playing in cinemas when we were finishing off ours.We quickly changed the name and story and put together our film called pipeline.

Recce Photos for Possible Locations

This picture of the actual woods it could just be the wood or forest. It could be the path to the secret spy base or again a meeting point. This area would be great for an ambush or chasing scene as it could be repeated from a different angle to make the path look longer. This could also be in a different country such as Russia or even some secret island in the pacific or even a different planet if it was a sci-fi thriller. This is one of the most film locations in Wem.We could use this alongside the one above as if we are only going to use close ups on the one above it would mean that we could make our own geography of the places . Its quite possible another group may well use this area to shoot so the location above could be used when this one is unavailable. However this location is good for long shots and extreme long shots as well.





This picure near the woods looks like an abandoned run down quite area.It would be an exellent spot for secret meetings .However when using this position we would only be able to do mid shots and close ups  otherwise it may give the location away.It would be good for a crime scene and we could have a two shot of news reporters here.

This picture of Wem's main street is great . The street could be used as a large city's outskirts or as the acual city center itself. The moving traffic and people all act as props and extras making our film even better  This area is great for establishing shots. 

       

Continuity Exercise

In this exercise we filmed different types of shots and edited them together. The real reason behind doing all this was to try and spot various continuity errors, for example the scene where we see max shooting the agent with his coat (supposed to be a gun) and then in the following shot we see him wearing that coat. Obviously in the real film this wouldn't happen as we would have various props to use but it shows how important continuity. We used the town hall gallery which was quite good as a spy drop off cafe like what they use in most spy films. The cars and lorry's and people walking in the background of the town hall scene make it look as thought it is a busy city street and the people and vehicles are like extras and props . Also the filming of the backstreet seemed like a good secluded spy location for our filming i think that both of these locations could be used in final thriller film.We have got a mixture of different shots such as close ups , over the shoulder shots at the beginning which was very effective for the talking dialogue between characters.We have got some mid and long shots and also some pan during the part in the cafe . close ups would be particularly effective when the parcel was being handed over . 

Audience Research

Below is a video of two teenage boys (Jack Blacklaus and Will Wardle). We created this video in order to research what type of thrillers a younger audience would enjoy as they are our target audience, asking them questions as to what we should include in our film. Through this process we have taken some of the ideas given and have adopted them into our final film.

Treatment

This is the treatment for the new film we will be making.

The outline of the film.

Pipeline is a thriller set in an industrial city where an enemy spy infiltrates a government water control area hidden in a downtown cafe. The enemy spy drips a poison into one of the water supply centers the spy attempts to poison the other supply centers . Two british spies are sent out to eliminate the enemy spy network sand save the day from the water crisis.

Analysis of Thriller Openings

Reservoir Dogs -

http://www.artofthetitle.com/2008/04/17/reservoir-dogs/

From the opening of Reservoir Dogs we can tell that it is a 'gangster' film, we can tell this from large group of men in dark suits and sunglasses which has connotations of power and importance. They are looking serious and smoking cigars highlighting the gangster lifestyle, the narrator also suggests something about "The Partridge Family" which could either be the group in the sequence or a rival family.

We see the 'gang' walking towards some cars with close ups of each of the characters faces followed by the actors name in slow motion, they have an heir of confidence and swagger about themselves almost as if they where about to create mischief. Even though there is no use of weapons or violence in the opening, the characters seem very intimidating this creates a sense of enigma as to what they are doing and where they are going.

The titles in the opening are a smart, golden colour which adds to the gang culture and seriousness of the film, with gold having connotations of wealth which inturn has connotations of power.

Risk Assessment Form

A risk assessment form used to assess your activities and their implications for the safety of those who are helping both film and act in our Thriller opening. When conducting the risk assessment, we had to consider all the likely hazards, who may be harmed and also the property that may be damaged.

Soundtrack

Here is a link to a sound track that i have worked on by using the Garage Band software. This is what the Garage band software looks like , on the left we have got the instrument tracks being used which are a Rock kit , strings ,flute and a bass guitar. The drum kit was used to create low heartbeat sounds to create tension and movement in the piece, the strings were added to create the classic thriller sound track.
The flute was used on a test track at its normal pitch however it didn't sound right at all in the setting of the piece making it sound slightly medieval and not modern like the film that we are creating.I lowered the pitch of the flute to make it lower than what it could naturally sound ,creating a pedal drone beneath the strings also building tension and adding depth to the mood.






     http://soundcloud.com/alevelmediamax/film-song-media
 - Here is the link to listen to the soundtrack which i have added to a website called Sound-cloud so that i can put the music onto my blog.

Storyboard

Storyboard images are usually sketches that simply and clearly show a shot by shot view of the film, they are displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing the film. This cuts down setup time, the caption area shows dialogue text, shot durations camera angles and movements as well as prop and scenery notes. 

Animatic

This is the Animatic that our group has created for the planning of our final film. Animatics are animated storyboards. They are used for various purposes such as previewing scenes of live-action films before they are shot. You'll also find animatics in the pre-production stages of animation and in the video game industry.

Trombone Shot (Dolly Zoom)

Above is an example of the dolly zoom effect is an unsettling in-camera special effect that appears to undermine normal visual perception in film. The shot tracks forward and zooms out at the same same time in order to do this, mainly to show a sign of warning or distress from the charceter.World renowned director Alfred Hitchdock is said to of made the technique famous in his film Vertigo, it was used by Steven Spielberg in Jaws and ET.

Title Sequence

This is the title sequence that I have been working on for the past couple of days, it will be included in our thriller opening.

The font used was imported in from dafont.com a well known free font site, i used the website as i didn't feel as though any of the fonts from Final Cut Pro were as effective as some of the ones from here.

The main idea of the title sequence was too make it looks as though someone was writing out the letters it from a typewriter and so my first search consisted of looking at all the typewriting fonts that were available on the website. 

There were a few different ones to choose from and the search included the following fonts:

All of the fonts look pretty similar but I was drawn towards "Mom's Typewriter" as I felt as though it was the right density and therefore clear enough to be used in the film, I feel as though it looks very raw and edgy similar to that of our film itself.

Upon changing the name of our Film i had decided to change the font inwhich we would use for our opening titles, in order to fit in with the overall theme of our thriller. After reviewing many different shapes and looks of fonts, I had finally decided upon using one from a website called Fontspace which like Dafont offered a wide variety of different font styles. I had chosen one called Sketchpipes which for me looked the most effective as it was very much subject specific because of our film name being 'Pipeline'.

Foley Work

In todays lesson we learnt about foley work which is the reproduction of everyday sounds for use in filmmaking. For example here i've used a drinking glass and repeatedly hit it with a wooden spoon.

I then edited it in Final Cut Pro to make it sound like a church bell, I did this by lowering both the pitch and speed.I feel that the clip sounded very realistic and lifelike to that of a real bell and will definatley considor using Foley work in our own Thriller.

Final Film: Pipeline

Here is the final cut of our thriller film, now called 'Pipeline' after discovering that the film name 'Contaminated' was recently used for a big budget film.



Because of the change in name we had to add a few extra shots into film in order to fit in with the theme ie. adding the close up of the character poisoning the water pipes with an unknown toxin.

Evaluation Questions

Question 1: How does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Inspiration: We also took inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock and his film “Marnie” and also the 1995 thriller “Se7en”. In the opening of both films the audience don’t see the faces of the two separate characters in each sequence and therefore aren’t able to identify them, asking questions of who are they? What are they doing? Why are they doing it? etc this then builds up tension because of this enigma.

Genre: The first indication that our film is a thriller is that of an over the shoulder shot where we see the stalker taking a picture and staring at the girl in the café, this sets up the first enigma as to why he is staring at the girl and also the fact that we cannot see who the character stalker her is. Other thrillers that have used this shot include “Silence of the Lambs” and also “Resevoir Dogs”

Continuety: Many box office films have staff who specialise in continuety and check through everything in the scene rigerously before everything is perfect as one blip could ruin not only this scene but the movie itself. continuety is an important thing upon creating a film to convince the viewer that they are viewing a contineous shot. Inorder to do this you have to considor many different factors such as the apprearence of the characters, the background and also the lighting for example have remain the same throughout each shot.

Intercutting: In our opening we have used a technique called intercutting which is common in the film industry and especially in thrillers, we got the idea for intercutting from the film “Se7en” which also uses it in it’s opening.

Font: The font title we have used in the film is incidentally called “pipeing” which is similar to that of our film title “Pipeline” we feel that this gives the film more of an identity. The choice of a solid black background also makes the white font standout more as it’s two contrasting colours, the colour has connotations of death and mystery which is also associated with fear and the unknown.

Production Logo: All flms have the production companys that they use at the start of the opening to the film this is a very convetional structure when making a movie, the most famous examples are that of “Universal”, “Warner Brothers” and “Dreamworks”. We decided too call ours MJWL Productions using the first letter of each of our names and combigning them together.

Question 2 How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

click link for powerpoint presentation:



https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/19HLZ4tSVDNEBYl8_vHgeML9K1c-umCesz1M70LZ_Prk/present?pli=1&ueb=true#slide=id.p

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

 Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

We have done this in many ways, we exampled this though Mise en scene. In our Mise en scene we thought about the clothes we wore, we wore clothes that would appeal to a young adult audience and I think that this helped establish the modern setting also appealing to the young adult audience. Also the setting in the town hall was useful as the town hall is quite a modern looking place and make it look like a fresh new up to date film making it more likely to be watched.

Though the Cinematography we used shots that were fast and choppy these helped keep a fast pace for a young and fast audience. We also used lots of suspense building shots. We also had a lot of quick editing making it look very snappy and adding to the suspense.

Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product

 

 

Dolly Zoom

In todays lesson we had learnt about the art of Dolly zooming or the trombone shot as it's also known, this shot is used to show a characters emotions of either shock or fear for example, i feel this shot would work perfectly in our film. The Dolly zoom is commonly used by world famous thriller director Alfred Hitchcock in the majority of his films. below I have given you an example of this shot

Storyboard

This is the final storyboard our group has drawn up, we will used this to create our film opening and to 
guide us through our filming, storyboards make filming so much easier as they give a level of 
structure when performing as the storyboard includes camera movements shots and transitions so we 
know what to do. Upon creating the storyboard we had experimented with many different ideas to 
come up with the best possible story line we could

Animatic Shots

These are pictures that will feature in our animatic taken as screen shots from our storyboard. I will then edit them on Final Cut and then they will be added to the animatic our group made (see above)

Title Sequence Feedback

Here I have interviewed a young Gareth Cobham on what he thinks about our title sequence, on this video he talks about what he finds successful about the sequence and also on what improvements could be made. 

Dummy filming

We acknowledged many problems upon creating the dummy scenes and now have an idea of what problems we will face when filming the real thing, the first thing we had noticed upon using the cameras was the traffic and also pedestrians coming through the street which deterred us from using the high street as a location for the film as our theme is post apocalyptic therefore no other people should be around us.

We also noticed that we mainly used long shots when filming bar the one of the puddle, when doing the real thing it would better to include some other types of shots such as close ups as after a while it becomes to repetitive using the same angle over and over again, i feel as though we could of done maybe an over the shoulder shot when Max and I meet for the first time. This could be quite effective.

As well as noticing faults when filming we also found some new shots that we never though of using in the first place, the main one being of a puddle in the street where I walk over it looking for survivors and then we see Max's reflection in the water with just his feet in the shot, we found this to be really eery and effective making the audience feel uneasy.

These two factors showed us how vital dummy filming is upon making a film highlighting both the faults and also positives that come out of it

Font for logo

I have found a font for us to use on our  logo from dafont.

http://www.dafont.com/cartographer.font

Our logo will be half a german flag and half of a british flag with film around it. We think that this wrting will make our logo more thriller like.