Research and Planning - Institution research

Film, UK film council, is an ideal production company for our film as they're a basic low budget based insitution. They fund development, film production, short films, film export and distribution, cinemas, film education, culture and archives, festivals and audience support schemes. The UK Film Council is the Government-backed lead agency for film in the UK ensuring that the economic, cultural and educational aspects of film are effectively represented at home and abroad. First Feature Film Development Programme aims to identify and support emerging filmmakers: screenwriters, writer/directors and writer, director, producer teams who have not made a feature film or who have not yet had a feature film released theatrically or broadcast on UK television. Generally, awards of up to £25,000 will be offered to screenwriters/writer-directors to write and develop a feature film.

The UK Film Council (UKFC) was set up in 2000 by the Labour Government as a non-departmental public body to develop and promote the film industry in the UK. It is constituted as a private company limited by guarantee governed by a board of 15 directors and is funded through sources including the National Lottery.

It has 3 types of funding schemes. Development Funding, which has £12 million to invest over 3 years , with a £25000 maximum award. The New Cinema Fund supports emerging talent and established filmmakers working outside the mainstream, focusing on the most innovative writing and the most gifted directors. The fund has £15 million of Lottery money to invest over three years and funds eight to ten feature films each year.The Premiere Fund invests £8 million of Lottery funding per year into mainstream, commercially-driven films encouraging the involvement of British creative talent in a range of films that can attract audiences the world over.

Research and Planning - Film Treatment/ Over all story line

We plan to produce a bildungsroman/drama genre film, following the rite of passage of two very different lifestyles of the characters William and Jack. The film will be starting in their early adolescence viewing their individual storys through life. There are only going to be two main characters as this will enable the audience to become engrossed in their life, consequently empathising for them.

William is a privileged private school boy, brought up by a loving, wealthy family. However, Jack is an only child living in a bed sit with his drug abusing mother. For years Jack hasn't received any education as he is more focused on stealing and caring for his mum. The twist to the film is that both these boys are now in their mid-teens however are actually brothers both adopted by different families. William was 2 years of age at the time, Jack no more then a few weeks. Neither boy having a clue either one exist, not even knowing they are adopted. Their real parents had tragically died in a car accident leaving them with no other relatives. As the story goes on, Jack enters into different crimes in attempt to earn money in order for him and his mother to survive, eventually ending up in prison and his mother sadly passed away. However William was an intelligent popular boy living life to the full, partying as any other boy his age would. Tragically things took a turn for the worse for William as he begun to take drugs and was on a slippery down hill slope, so bad his family couldn't help him. However at the same time in prison jack got a degree in being a doctor. The film has a controversial ending as William the once upon a time 'intelligent popular school boy' dies in a hospital bed from a heroin overdose, as his long lost brother who was once nothing but a thieving youth, is sitting next door in the hospital canteen as a doctor.

Research and Planning - Inspiration

Although we aren't going to produce a black and white film, Sommers film revolves around two boys of a differnet kind of background, however have some vague connection it is also a low budget film similar to our own.

Research and Planning - Research and planning to do list

-film treatment
-story board openiing sequence
-photos of locations
-photos of costumes
-photos of actors
-mind map of scenes
-to do list
-questionair (facebook)
-google (G321 OCR blog)
-upload actual songs
-three play music
-photos of props
-video of storyboard (use of pictures)

Research and Planning - Seven - Opening Sequnce (credits)

Order of shots:

- Extreme close up of book turning

- Directed by

- Non-digetic screams

- Actors, editors, producers names

- Heartbeat rhythm to background music

- Repetition of shot of book, shadows and small blade throughout

Research and Planning - Scream - Opening sequence

The style of performance in the opening five minutes creates tension perfectly for this horror genre film. Drew Barrymore plays the first innocent, naive victim to psychotic anonymous killer. "What do you want" she screams. "To see what your insides look like" declared the maniac on the phone.

Casting back to the very beginning of the film, it starts with a plain black background, the font colour used for opening credits is red, resembling blood/ death. Meanwhile there is also non-digetic sound of screaming going on, helping to establish an uneasy setting for the viewer.

Order of shots in opening five minutes
- There are no beggining credtis other then the title of the film, kept fairly simple
-Close up of telephone
-Shows her on phone - Medium shot, hearing his creepy voice, she still sounds very relaxed
Popcorn shaking use of knifes in shot
-Establishing shot of her house from outside (panning up onto the house making it seem quite big and fairly calm. (Making man appear more creepy and unknown)
- Returns to shot of popcorn
-Aesynchranist sound of phone ringing whilst she makes pizza, he rings again very curious, she continues with conversation
- Again returns to popcorn (repetition)
- Women plays with knifes (point of view shot to create realism) also so you cant see everything going on (fear of the unknown)

Research and Planning - Time managment

For the next few weeks i will be able to mostly work independently therefore would like to make some good progress, i would like to achieve the following in the next three weeks.

-film treatment
-analys the openings of two films
-institustion research
-inspiration
-self assesment
-practice opening using adobe with practice opening creadits/ upload to yuotube.com/ upload to blog
-upload photos of location, analysis of them

Research and Planning - What i have learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

During the construction of this video I realised the importance of filming more shots then necessary as having a wider variety of footage to choose from will allow you to create the best continuity between possible. In attempt to achieve this, I played around with various editng tools and adding sound to the video on 'adobe' to help our video run smoothly when completed. This task has also helped David, Max and I gain an understanding of mise en scene. We tryed to incorperate all these factors into our production to give a sense of realism. Through experience i have also realised that the planning your work (story board) needs to be thoroughly thought out, as it helps if you have a strong structure to guide you when you work. Then you are able to make changes as you see fit later on. When filming conversation there a is rule of filming, 'the 180 degree rule' this means to stick to one side of the two people to ensure they don't look out of place.

We began the shot of him entering the room with an establishing shot as so far the longest shot used has been a mid shot, leaving a very mysterious setting. This is of a room with two people in, i learned it was important to set the scene as soon and as quickly as possible as you want to let the audience know excatly what is going on asquickly as possible, keeping the interested at the same time.

Then using the camera I learnt that if you use a bigger variety of shots and angles, we started off with a basic mid shot which panned round as the character went to the bottom of the stairs. The shot then cut to a birds eye view of the character, this also panned round as the character continued to walk up the stairs. The shot then cut to a mid shot with a high angle, this was to show that the character was still on a staircase. Then as the character passes the camera it then cuts to a low angle mid-shot. The camera is then used as a hand held movement following the character to the top of the stairs, to the doorway. Then cutting to the other side of the door as the character walks through, panning round to the right as the character walks past. We then used a mid shot from behind the character which films them walking down a hallway to a door eventually finishing as a long shot. We then used an extreme close up the characters hand on the door handle which showed that they were opening the door. We then used match on action as we film the door opening from the other side, the shot used on the other side of the door is a long shot, the camera then pans round as the character walks over to another character, here the conversation starts and the shots used are mainly over the shoulder and close ups.

The technologies used in the process when constructing this ‘Preliminary Task’ have been very useful and I have tried to use them to the best of my potential. Reflecting back to my storyboard when possible, I used this to keep me on track and guide me through the editing and filming process. Although next time when constructing another project I would definitely go in to much more detail when constructing my storyboard this would help us to recognise potential mistakes or errors before hand. I think also next time I should go into more detail when presenting characters within the film, this would then help the audience identify the persona of particular characters and construct a better understanding of the film. By incorporating a better understanding of ‘mise en scene’ next time I think I would much prefer to include props and a more detailed set and conversation.