Real Steel

I went to the cinema today and saw the new movie Real Steel starring Hugh Jackman and directed by Shawn Levy. During the opening scene which was some establishing shots of what seem to be an empty american highway, it showed me how the secluded setting reflected the loneliness of the main character. I will definitely incorporate this in my opening scene with our mysterious guy. The rest of the film was also really good and I enjoyed the effective use of the different camera angles to create the atmosphere in different scenes.

EBC productions-Preliminary task.

location scouting

Today our group has decided to go out early and location scout around london to try and find out where the best places are. to film our opening scene , specifically we are going around london eye , waterloo and embankment. We set out to find out where the most crowed places are so we can use that to show that the mysterious man is a main character by following him and we also set to find secluded places to give a nice contrast.

Inspiration for my opening scene

Yesterday I watched the movie 4,3,2,1 directed by Noel Clarke and Mark Davis which showed me why it’s a great idea to make the setting for my opening in central London simply because it looks great on camera , I also really liked the idea of the cut scenes between one character and another. Our group is defiantly going to incorporate this because it gives the scene a smooth flow to it and it keeps the audience asking questions whilst they try and fit the pieces to the puzzle. I also enjoyed how the storyline linked together at the end and how the screenplay was well put together which made the plot believable and the dialogue less cliché then most films that try to embrace the youth culture of London. I also observed how for this type of film to succeed , it really depended on the actors performance and how they delivered their characters personalities which would sometimes set the mood and atmosphere of a scene so I will really take this into consideration when making my storyline. Overall I really enjoyed this movie and it showed me how you can keep the audience guessing with the use of different camera angles.

Draft screenplay

Today our group has started to make the draft of the screenplay and I think we are starting to get the grasp of what it should consist of, now we are just discussing whether or not there should be a lot of dialogue because we think that we shouldn't reveal a lot about the characters (through the dialogue) so they still have a mysterious element to them however if we did add a lot of dialogue then it will give the characters more personality so we are just deciding on that. 

Jaws- Opening

This famous scene from jaws has showed me how you can use music really effectively if you want to convey some type of emotion (like fear which was shown in this scene) or if you want to create the atmosphere that would fit the scene purposely. This has therefore shown me how my group should defiantly incorporate the idea of using music to send a message to the audience about the characters mood and the scenes atmosphere.
This scene has also showed me how you can use lighting affect the atmosphere, for example in this scene when we see the character under some sort of danger the lighting gets darker which makes the atmosphere tense , so in our group we will also try to incorporate the use of lighting.

Our Survey

This is the survey that we produced in our group and here is the link  http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/VVSV65J

Our new opening scene idea

So our new idea is a thriller opening scene where Elliot , Jamie and Pablo will be filmed leaving their houses and on their bus journeys to central london where they meet and start walking , when suddenly a mysterious man starts running beside them and drops a bag. Pablo wants to open the bag but Elliot is concerned with what might be in it so they start arguing about opening the bag until jamie opens up the bag.

Why we changed our opening scene idea

During the last few classes that I've had , it has started to make less and less sense to me that making a horror opening scene would work , this is also due to the fact that by doing a horror opening sequence we won't be able to take full advantage of shooting around london which is quite a privilege and the quality of the camera wouldn't look good in the dark .

chariots on fire , opening scene

This film opens up with an establishing shot of a church in London which is accompanied by a V.O until up to 28 seconds when the scene changes with a wide shot inside a church where we can see the character speaking to a group of people , at 41 seconds we then get a middle shot of the character speaking which then transcends into a POV shot where we can see the people that the character was speaking to in the church. This scene then at 58 seconds starts to dissolve and we can hear the first song from the soundtrack, we then see a few of the characters feet then the camera slowly starts travelling upwards to give a close up of a few of the characters faces while they are jogging on a beach with focus expressions on their faces which suggest that the characters are deteremined. 2 minutes and 8 seconds in we get an extreme long shot which shows us that the scene is set on a beach , the credits are then shown and the soundtrack continues until the end of the opening scene.

Manhattan - Woody Allen (opening scene_English)

The film starts with a montage of images of Manhattan in black and white ; a few seconds in we then hear the first song from the film's soundtrack (Rhapsody in blue). 27 secounds in we hear the director Woody Allen doing his V.O in which he appears to be describing what Manhattan symbolises to a character, while the V.O is taking place there are some establishing shots of manhattan (in the crowded streets) to show where the film was set and how busy it was. 2 minutes in and the V.O comes to a stop but the soundtrack continues along with some more establishing shots until opening scene ends.

The Preliminary task

Last week with my group we filmed our shots for the preliminary task of continuity, it went reasonably well and we are happy with what we filmed, last week we also started editing our material and hopefully that will be finished by this week.