For my second deconstruction, I decided to do another old film, again to see the different ways things were begun in different types of thrillers. Again, I hadn't watched this film.
Directed by Rob Reiner. It won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as Annie Wilkes.
In the first few seconds the screen is black, apart from the reddish orange titles, then the screen goes back to just black and it is silent for a second or two and then the sound of a typewriter comes in, for three seconds before the image of the typewriter appears, this is successful use of a bridge. The hands that are typing are out of focus of the camera and the object of a match and cigarette infront are in focus. Then suddenly it's a jump cut when the 'ting' of the typewriter reaching the end of the page is used well as the camera shot is a long shot of a wine glass, empty. Still with the blurry character in the background, typing. This on screen for a couple of seconds and then changes to a wine bottle in an ice bucket, mid shot, doesn't show the top of the wine bottle. The camera then jumps to the typewriter itself and you read the sentence that reads 'without it, what else was there. ?' The character, revealed to be a man then takes the sheet of paper away and looks at it reading. He then hears a beep, ignores it the first time, and then the second time, puts the paper of the table and writes in pencil 'The End'. He puts the piece of paper on the stack of paper and aligns them up turns them over to the front to read 'Untitled' by 'Paul Sheldon'. The shot then moves on to a brown bag in which he slips the story in and then pops the cork off the champagne, pours a glass and picks up his cigarette, looks at it and then puts it in his mouth, picks the match up and lights the cigarette, and takes a long drag.
In this opening it definitely leaves you thinking about what could happen next.
I used the YouTube Clip of Misery (1990) Stephen King (Part 1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cgqu2W3Ore4
Sunday, 8 January 2012
Film Deconstruction: Cape Fear
After deciding to base our film opening idea on psychological thrillers, I thought that if I deconstructed a relatively old film opening then I could see how some of the clichés used began and came about in the beginning.
Directed by Martin Scorsese, you know that it's going to be a very good film, as he is known for his modern crime and violent films which gain great success and is very well praised for being 'one of the most significant and influential American film makers of all time'.
Having never watched this film, I thought it would be good to do to see how the first two minutes would grab my attention and make me want to watch more and leave me thinking as to how the story would unfold in front me, and for me to wonder what would happen later on.
The establishing shot of the film is what seems to be a lake, with the rippling water flowing along across the scene, it seems to be early morning, or late evening; it has the titles appearing across during the first minutes. The music playing is instrumented by violins and is quite calm but stereotypical of a thriller, making you think something bad will happen soon; when the film reaches thirty eight seconds the music changes, in the same style and piece to a scarier tune, with pace picking up and tension building, on the screen appears a reflection of a very large bird, bird of prey perhaps, the bird looks almost evil and capable of hurting you as it's strong wings fly through the sky. The image of the bird is very brief, and is on screen for a few seconds.
When the clip reaches one minute the mise-en-scene of the lake fades away to a black version of the lake, still flowing and the music continues to rise to a crescendo and the on the screen a single eye shows up, possibly a male, as regard to no make up. You see the eye move into different places within the sky, with the eye itself looking around. The eye closes and disappears and the lake continues to flow across the scene with the continuation of the titles. During the next twenty seconds, various images of parts of the body, including teeth, fade in and out. Next appears the whole face of a man with a beard, portraying fear into the audience, only briefly and then fades back out. The water keeps changing shape and the focust in the water, as if the moon is shining is emphasized when the different images of the face fade out, it seems as if now the time of day has changed to night. Then again, another whole face appears, perhaps a different one as it is still slightly blurred, covering the identity which could play a significant part in the rest of the film; it then fades back into the lake.
This opening made me think about the type of music we could use to create the type of suspension we need, interesting ways that we could show the titles, and interesting use of fades with different images relevant to the rest of our film.
The film, Cape Fear received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor (Robert DeNiro) and Best Supporting Actress (Juliette Lewis), and was nominated for The Golden Bear, and nominated in 100 movie quotes, 'Come out, come out, wherever you are'. The Simpsons also used the film as a parody in an episode as 'Cape Feare'.
I used the YouTube Clip of Cape Fear - Part One. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66m1KIHl1tA
Directed by Martin Scorsese, you know that it's going to be a very good film, as he is known for his modern crime and violent films which gain great success and is very well praised for being 'one of the most significant and influential American film makers of all time'.
Having never watched this film, I thought it would be good to do to see how the first two minutes would grab my attention and make me want to watch more and leave me thinking as to how the story would unfold in front me, and for me to wonder what would happen later on.
The establishing shot of the film is what seems to be a lake, with the rippling water flowing along across the scene, it seems to be early morning, or late evening; it has the titles appearing across during the first minutes. The music playing is instrumented by violins and is quite calm but stereotypical of a thriller, making you think something bad will happen soon; when the film reaches thirty eight seconds the music changes, in the same style and piece to a scarier tune, with pace picking up and tension building, on the screen appears a reflection of a very large bird, bird of prey perhaps, the bird looks almost evil and capable of hurting you as it's strong wings fly through the sky. The image of the bird is very brief, and is on screen for a few seconds.
When the clip reaches one minute the mise-en-scene of the lake fades away to a black version of the lake, still flowing and the music continues to rise to a crescendo and the on the screen a single eye shows up, possibly a male, as regard to no make up. You see the eye move into different places within the sky, with the eye itself looking around. The eye closes and disappears and the lake continues to flow across the scene with the continuation of the titles. During the next twenty seconds, various images of parts of the body, including teeth, fade in and out. Next appears the whole face of a man with a beard, portraying fear into the audience, only briefly and then fades back out. The water keeps changing shape and the focust in the water, as if the moon is shining is emphasized when the different images of the face fade out, it seems as if now the time of day has changed to night. Then again, another whole face appears, perhaps a different one as it is still slightly blurred, covering the identity which could play a significant part in the rest of the film; it then fades back into the lake.
This opening made me think about the type of music we could use to create the type of suspension we need, interesting ways that we could show the titles, and interesting use of fades with different images relevant to the rest of our film.
The film, Cape Fear received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor (Robert DeNiro) and Best Supporting Actress (Juliette Lewis), and was nominated for The Golden Bear, and nominated in 100 movie quotes, 'Come out, come out, wherever you are'. The Simpsons also used the film as a parody in an episode as 'Cape Feare'.
I used the YouTube Clip of Cape Fear - Part One. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66m1KIHl1tA
Tuesday, 3 January 2012
Friday, 9 December 2011
Thursday, 1 December 2011
Preliminary Task Evaluation
After many changes to the ideas for the Preliminary Task, with themes that included Scott Pilgrim against the World and Mr Bean, we came up with the idea of an action based film, with sort of an MI5 twist. We then decided that we would add humour to the piece and therefore add in Perry the Platypus from Phineas and Ferb on Disney Channel. We first decided what we would look like, and be portrayed as in the piece and started planning the story board. We came to the conclusion that we would all wear black to get into the mind set of secret agents, and focused more on the action in the film. Hazel and Jessi were going to be less able to do all the stunts and tricks whereas I am the professional, and could perform all perfectly. Hazel and Jessi were also new recruits and in training. After them turning up late they were to be on a mission to find Agent P (Perry the Platypus) which was found out to be in the same room the entire time. The final clip is called a ‘Platypus Tale’.
We decided to make the idea challenging on purpose so that we could experiment with the different camera shots and play with the editing and sound to try and get to grips with this process to make our lives easier with the main task and make that look as professional as possible.
The shots we used were long shots, wide shots, close ups, and mid shots; these helped to show the characters and the meanings, get the best view and create match on action. We added in zoom to make the film more effective, but we learned to not use this in the main task because it looked manufactured, unprofessional and broke the continuity. We also used a master shot of someone doing a cartwheel as our establishing shot.
Another thing that broke our continuity was the changing of location, because in the first location the lighting was not bright enough we had to change so that the camera would pick up all the expressions of the characters faces. However something that didn’t break the continuity was that the whole group wore black to keep in costume with a typical spy, which helped us to keep this motion.
We learnt that if we made the clip longer in the timeline it would make the clip go in slow motion. This was used with Perry the Platypus. We used text too so that when we needed to put the opening titles in our main task it would be easier and quicker.
We used our mise-en-scene very well and everything that needed to be in the frame was and any unnecessary things were not, although when we replayed what we had filmed we realised that we had not used a tripod and therefore our filming was slightly shaky, however when we film our main task we have decided to use a tripod to make our filming as perfect as can be, however this has been a learning point because we all got to use the camera ourselves and filmed well.
One of the cons of our preliminary task was the sound that we had not planned, i.e. background noise which happened when we press record, so in our main we would find a more suitable place to film with no distractions. We also added non diegetic sound into the clip in the editing process, this was very successful.
The brief clearly stated that the skills we must have used were:
Shot/reverse shot, match on action and 180 degree angle. However, whilst editing we realised that we had deleted some of our footage and to make sure that the storyline made sense we had to delete the clip which we had used the shot/reverse shot for, therefore the audience do not believe that there are people having a conversation because it was not believable enough. We were not pleased with our 180-degree angle, as it looked unprofessional. All in all, we need to make sure that when filming the main task, we abide by the brief and not adjust it to our liking. However, on the other hand, we used match on action really well, and due to that, the viewer cannot notice some of the edits.
This preliminary task created a kind of spoof with the seriousness of MI5 but the comedy moment with Perry the Platypus. This task has helped my grow and ready to improve for the main task.
Genre for Main Task
We have decided to do PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER because we feel that we can be as imaginative as we want. We also think that we can make the first 2 minutes and opening titles very creative. With editing, we can make the 2 minutes look very proffesional and quite haunting.
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