Making the titles: research and production

I made this post on wallwisher to show what we basically did in the past three lessons, in order to decide how to make our titles.

Shot List

Se7en, mise-en-scene

This is a scene from Se7en. On this sheet, I wrote about the costumes of the characters and what they show about the characters and their relationship. I also wrote about camera angles, lighting and location. Suggesting that the two characters do not like each other but are pushed together because of their work (work that puts these men in great power). Doing this helped me think about how the costumes, props, lighting and location can have a strong impact on the impression the characters give to the audience.

The Third Man

This sheet shows still shots from 'The Third Man' and which part of mise-en-scene they show best. I also wrote what the lighting/costume/props/location/camera angle could represent.

Organising filming!

We plan to film on Wednesday the 31st during the half term holiday. We are going to start filming early on so we can get enough light for the 'bedroom scene'. We have told our actors to get to the location at around 10 am so we can get there make up done and costume on and start filming around 11. We have all our props, costumes and locations sorted so we can concentrate on lighting and filming difficulties (:

Decision change - Equipment

Yesterday, we decided we would be using my brothers camera instead of the school's. I thought this would be a good idea, as we had a struggle working with some of the school camera's functions and i know this other camera quite well. A bonus from this decision is that i know the camera is of a high quality, so we are hoping to get some equal, if not better, results from it. The camera we will be using is a Panasonic Lumix HD GH1, pictured below.

The camera pictured above, would have been the camera we used from the school - a Sony HD Handycam.

Locations Ideas

Location photo's

Possible location for outside of warehouse

Second possible location for outside of warehouse

Wooden doors of the second possible location for warehouse

Different views of 'table scene' location

Flooring

The light in the room

Obviously everything will be removed from the room to make
it a blank empty space to put the table.

Different views of the bedroom scene. All non-essential objects will be removed, like boxes, clothes, bed covers and sheets, mirrors and wall art.

 <Space to put television, to complete the apartment look we wanted for the bedroom scene.

Window to let in natural light to  > this will complete the 'waking up'  in the bright light in the morning, but we will also use artificial light to increase this effect.

< Dressing table to put essential props
on- mobile phone, drugs etc.

Storyboard for Thriller opening

This is the final storyboard for our thriller opening, apologies for the noticeably large lack of artistic talent. We hope it still gets the right ideas across.

The Third man-Shot analysis

Crave (2012) -Title sequence analyis

Crave (2012) — Art of the Title

This is really freaky. It is easy to guess what the movie is all about just by looking at these titles. It seems to represent the fact that people will be killed in horrible ways but it also seems to suggest that this can be fixed, as quite often, the toys will end up back in one piece. There are certainly connotations that the world is a dark, horrible place to be in. Some survive, some do not. The sequence shows a child's worst nightmare. At the end, the name of the film appears. The letters are are lights. The light up as if they have just been switched on which is very effective as it shows they are driven by something. It is interesting to note that the first shot is of a hole opening up, this makes us feel like we are seeing the film through  peephole. The soundtrack is a bit weird and there is no real sense of rhythm to it, this makes us feel uneasy.

Preliminary excersise

We are now in the process of completing our preliminary exercise. We will try out some of our camera, mise en scene, lighting, and editing ideas through this. The video will be no longer than a minuet and must show a door opening through two shots, followed by the person who opened the door sitting down opposite somebody.Dialogue must then be exchanged. There are a number of techniques that we must use: • Match on action-Shot of character starting action, and completing of action in next shot • Shot/reverse shot-editing pattern that cuts to the view in the opposite direction (often used for dialogue) • The 180 degree rule-keep camera on one side We must also make the film funny and use a wide variety of shots.

Survey results...

The survey has now been closed and here are the results!

Titles- Catch Me if You Can

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/catch-me-if-you-can/

I really love this title sequence! I think the animations are really good and a clever way of showing the titles while including entertainment for the audience. I love the way it reveals parts of the narrative in the little animated title sequence. Obviously we wouldn't be able to use this kind of title sequence for our thriller because we simply do not have the time to make an animation like this and will not have time in a two minutes of footage, as this type of title sequence takes up a lot of time. It would be wiser for us to incorporate our titles into our actually set up instead of trying to squeeze it in before our opening sequence.

Titles- Along Came a Spider

http://www.watchthetitles.com/articles/00113-Along_Came_a_Spider

This is the title sequence for 'Along Came a Spider'. Most titles for thriller films are shown during the set up, but 'Along Came a Spider' choose to show there titles differently. They drop the letters down on a spiders web, a very clever twist on ordinary titles while keeping in tune with the name of the film 'Along Came a Spider'. They also use the titles as a way to start off their opening sequence, by incorporating a voice over that follows into the opening sequence, it shortens the set up and also makes the transition smoother.

I really like this technique but I think it may not be a suitable technique for our Thriller opening because it would be hard to do and may not suit our type of film. I also think it would be hard to come up with a clear link between film and title sequence.

Survey

I have just created a survey to find out what people want from thriller films. Please answer honestly!

Classification of people

To conduct effective audience research, it is a good idea to know what classification people fall under. This post explains the different classification systems and how they suggest people should be classed.

The Nielsen Media Research National readership survey from December 2003 states that people fit into the following classes. The pie chart shows the proportion of each class.

Whilst some groups have more than others, there are not huge differences between them.

The other classification system defines people by their aspirations.

• Mainstreamers
• Aspirers/social climbers
• Succeeders
• Reformers
• Individuals

To give an idea of what each group means, we put Simpsons characters into categories respectively. The picture of this can be found here.

Knowing classifications of the audience means that we can conduct surveys in a very effective way. For instance, if we were to interview somebody like Homer, we would find that he is not willing to pay much to go and see a thriller film. He would also want a very simple plot. On the other hand, if we were to interview Ned Flanders, putting aside the fact that he would find thrillers offensive, he would want a complicated maze of adventure that requires a lot of thinking about. He would also be willing to pay more than others and would possibly go to the cinema as a pose to buying the film. 

To conclude, when conducting surveys, we will be sure to use the classification groups to mold our questions and to help us analyse our answers. This means we can make our film most appealing to our target audience.

Update... 11/10/2012

Today we talked mainly about who would star as the main male character. We used various social media platforms to put the word out that we were looking for somebody whilst discussing who we knew that would fit the role. So far, we know of two people who might be interested.

We have also set a location for one of our scenes, pictures will follow shortly.

Classification of People!

Today in class, we looked at the different 'types of people' to help with our audience research. Nielsen Media Research developed eight groups that most people will fit into. These groups are based income, media consumption, life style and age :

• Liberal Sophisticates
• The Young Hopefuls
• The Affluent Acquirers
• Struggling Young Families
• The Comfortable Full Nesters
• The Settled Seniors
• The Lonely and Dissatisfied
• Next Generation

However there are different ways of grouping people. These groups are based on personal aspirations:

• Mainstreamers
• Aspirers/Social Climbers
• Succeeders
• Reformers
• Individuals

Knowing the ways in which people can be grouped can be helpful when doing research into our audience for the thriller opening. By knowing which groups our target audience falls into, can help us identify what kind of sub-genre, props, plots or characters they would want to see in the opening. For example, Liberal Sophisticates may enjoy a psychological thriller more than The Young Hopefuls.

We intend to use the grouping of people system to help us with our surveys and questionnaires. We will make our surveys more specific for the group of people we believe are most likely to enjoy our sub-genre of thriller

Simpsons characters-Type of people

A possible location...

I have taken some photos of the stage in the auditorium. Whilst it would look unprofessional if we used the stage alone, we think that some clever camera angles, lighting and perhaps the use of green screen would make it look very effective.

This would look unprofessional alone, the tabs (curtains)
will be used just to make the background black.

Lighting will come in very useful.

The floor would be effective as it does not necessarily
look like a stage.