"A storm destroys your neighbours shed and kills his six year old dog. Describe the colour of the sky right before the storm hit."
An ominous atmosphere filled the sky with darkness, its gloomy energy over powered every inch of light that was left. The boisterous sound of wind whirling around filled the town with fear, people tried with all their might to get away but didn't succeed. Roars of thunder came of the dingy sky, blasts of light came down from the sky as if the heavens were opening. Hailstones hit the ground like marbles falling from a box. The sky changed colours like an evil rainbow, from red to orange to black. Building were ripped through like they were paper. The sun was lost in an abundance of thick opaque clouds. This was a scene straight from an end of the world film. But the eye of the storm, only a few meters way was like an alternate universe. Desolate, abandoned and not a spot of rain in sight, the eye was the complete opposite to what was happening only meters away. The sky glowing like a light, but not the light you're used to.
INTRODUCTION
The Title of one of my favourite films is Inside out, the Directors on this film werePete Docter and Ronnie Del Carmen. the Institution behind the text was thatthe directors wanted to create a movie all about emotion. The movies original date of release in the UK was 24 July 2015 and the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) determined the film to be rated U, which means that it is suitable for all audiences and all ages to watch. It's running time is 95 mins which is just under average for a normal length film.
A brief summery of the narrative for this film would go as follows, Riley, who is a young girl, is uprooted from her life in the Midwest when her dad gets a job in San Francisco. She needs her emotions to guide her through her new school, new people, and new life. But, an accident involving Riley's happy memories changes her entire outlook. Joy and Sadness (Two of the main characters) need to find her good memories and return them to Headquarters before its too late.
The main characters in the film are Riley (The young girl who's different emotions are being shown) her parents, Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust. They all play key parts in the film by showing how Riley's emotions can be changed by their actions. The setting of the film is set inside the mind of the young girl Riley, who has just moved to san Francisco, the film shows all the emotions inside her mind as characters who control what mood she is in and how she is feeling. The plot of the movie is a perception of Riley's life after moving to San Francisco with her family, the plot shows how her emotions are always changing her view on the situation from a good outlook to a bad one. One of her emotions (Sadness) accidently damages one of her core memories, these are the memories that make Riley who she is. The emotions Joy and Sadness then go on a quest to try and save Riley's core memories before its too late.
I think that the main target audience for this film would be young children, as the creators of the film are Pixar, who are known for making mostly children's films. The film also is rated a U which most children's films are rated. The whole theme of the movie makes it feel like its meant for young people to watch because it doesn't contain any scary scenes or bad language.
In my personal opinion I think that this is an all round great film, the technical elements of the film such as storyline, script, characters, were all produced well. Also, the animation and the effort that goes into it is amazing. I like how they have made a film inside the mind of a person and done it in such a creative and fun way as this is something that I have never seen before. I feel like the story works well and has a clear start and clear heart-warming ending, I feel like the film flows well but does very slightly drag in the middle but makes up for it with thrilling scenes just after. Similar work from the Pixar group also has the same high quality feel to it.
Overall I this is a great film to watch weather its with your family or on your own you will enjoy it.
I would give this film a 9/10.
Worst Film - The Emoji Movie
INTRODUCTION
This is one of the worst films in my opinion, I don't think that there was ever a need for this film to be made. The title of this film is The Emoji Movie, its director was Tony Leondis, and the main meaning for the creation of the film was to show that in this day and age we are all becoming stuck inside of our phones and all become just one emotion, the film shows that there is more than just being one emotion. Its original date of release was 28th July 2017 (USA), and it was given a PG certification from the British board of film classification (BBFC). It's running time is 86 minutes.
A brief summary of the film would be as follows, The Emoji Movie unlocks the never-before-seen secret world inside your smartphone. Hidden within the messaging app is Textopolis, a bustling city where all your favorite emojis live, hoping to be selected by the phone's user. In this world, each emoji has only one facial expression - except for Gene, an exuberant emoji who was born without a filter and is bursting with multiple expressions. Determined to become "normal" like the other emojis, Gene enlists the help of his handy best friend Hi-5 and the notorious code breaker emoji Jailbreak. Together, they embark on an epic "app-venture" through the apps on the phone, each its own wild and fun world, to find the Code that will fix Gene. But when a greater danger threatens the phone, the fate of all emojis depends on these three unlikely friends who must save their world before it's deleted forever.
I think that the target demographic for this film is young children as it is something that all kids know about as they all use phones all the time now, the movie would feel very childish if an adult were to watch it.
This is our first team, (Me, Eden, Mitch), we will be working in this group while we work on our first production project filmmaking 101.
Our first project was to recreate a scene from a film, we choose to recreate the famous Forrest Gump scene where he says "life is like a box of chocolates", we decided as a team that Mitch will be acting as Forrest, this means that he will be saying the lines from the original script. Eden will be working the camera and trying to film to the scene as close to the original as possible. I will be helping with the camera as well as managing what is happening by being the director.
Firstly, we started with doing production paperwork which helps us when going out to film by telling us what shots we need to film at what time. We filled out a practical video production task sheet, this helped us to see what skills the team already had and how we could use these in our task to re-shoot this scene. It also made us decide what types of shots we were going to use to try and re-create the scene as close to the original as possible, for example, we decided to use close-up shots as these are what used in the film.
We then downloaded the script from the film off the internet and printed it out so we could highlight the sections we needed and what actors we were going to make say them. We also annotated on the script to show what types of shots we needed to film at each section of the script. This helped us when filmed to know what type of shot was going to be used at each part of the script.
Our production shot list also gives a summary of what shots we used and a description of what is happening in the shot, we also used this when shooting to help us keep on track of what shot we needed to film next and what we needed in it.
The scene breakdown sheet we used was very helping in showing us as a team and others what we needed for the scene for example, what props we needed such as the box of chocolates for this scene and what equipment we may need to use to get the shot such as the fig rig which is what we used to make the shot stable as Eden was using the camera handheld rather than on something like a tripod so that we could get the smooth zoom that we wanted.
We then headed out as a team with our actors from a different team who were helping, we used a nearby bench next to a river close to college as our location to re-create the scene, we choose this location as we needed a bench for our actors to use as there was one in the original scene. The photo to the right shows our team working on the forrest gump re-shoot.
This is the final product that we ended up with after editing the shots.
Movement in filmmaking -
We were asked to describe movement in filmmaking for one of our filmmaking 101 tasks.
When we were creating our horror film we had a good idea of a way we could use movement in our shoot. This was the 360 degree spin shot that we used in the beginning of the horror.
When experimenting with the cameras and equipment we figured out a creative movement shoot that we would include in our film. We used the fig-rig and turned it around like a steering wheel to create a 360 degree spin which turns into a close up shot of Laura dressed as a clown.
180° Degree Rule -
The 180-degree rule is a basic rule of filmmaking, it is a guideline on where the camera can go and where the characters can be on screen. Filmmakers must imagine that there is an invisible line that the camera must not cross other the 180-degree rule will be broken.
The camera must stay within the 180 degrees at all times.
We made a short video to show that we understand the 180-degree rule in filmmaking. -
Editing Basics -
In today's session, we went through and learnt the basics of editing using Adobe Premiere Pro software, we learnt the basics such as how to import footage from the cameras that we filmed on, to the computer and how hard drives to how to cut the clips together on the timeline to make it into a short film. We also learnt how to add effects to our clips such as a dip to black effect that makes the clip fade to a black screen. Learning all this was very useful as we are going to be editing a lot of footage throughout our time at college with this software so learning how to use it now will help us be confident in using it in the future to edit our films.
Film Noir -
Our next task was to film a short film from a list of genres, these genres included thriller, horror, western, film noir, comedy, and romance. We decided as a team that we would go ahead and film the film noir and horror films as we had good ideas on how to create a short film to fit the two genres.
The first thing we did as a team was we sat down and planned out what we were going to film for this genre,
we wanted this film to be in black and white and to have an aged look as this would make it fit into the film noir category.
As film noir does not have any dialog we did not have to sit and plan any, we instead planned out what shots we wanted to do and what we wanted in them, for example, shot 4 was an over the shoulder shot.
Planning all of our shots like this made it easy when we went out to film as we knew exactly what we wanted to shoot and how we were going to shoot it. Pictured on the left is out planning sheet we used to plan our shots.
We then went ahead and filmed the shot sequence as a team with the help of Conrad (a member of another team), he helped by acting in our film noir film. Mitch was acting in this film and Eden was working the camera and using equipment such as a tripod and fig-rig to get both still and smooth handheld shots. Like the Forrest Gump re-shoot I again took on the role of being director and also helping Eden with the camera.
Below is the finished product of our film noir film.
Horror -
Our third filmmaking 101 shoot was a horror that we called The Killer Queen, it's a basic horror story of a person who is being followed by a killer clown and end ends up gets killed at the end by the clown.
On this shoot we had decided to form a new group, the new group included the original members from the first two shoots, ( Me, Eden and Mitch) but now had two additional members these were Laura and Anya. The member's roles of this shoot were:-
Me - Director & Editor
Laura - Actor (Killer Clown)
Eden - Camera Work (Cinematographer)
Anya - Photographer & Editor
Mitch - Actor (Person being followed by clown)
As this was a horror film we thought that horror make-up would be a great thing to have on our actress Laura, as we needed her to be a clown we got one of the make-up students at college to do a scary killer clown makeup look on her. This makes the film more of a horror feeling and the audience can feel like they are actually watching a horror. Below is the finished makeup look -
Again we sat down as a team, now with our new members, to plan what we wanted to shoot and what types of shots we were going to do. As you can see on the planning sheet to the left we planned out our shots and described what was going to be in them so that we could use this when filming to know what shots we have filmed and what is supposed to be in them and also to tell which ones were left to film.
We then went out to film our planned horror film, we used the fig-rig as we knew most of the shots were going to be handheld and we wanted them to be smooth so using the fig-rig was a good way to try and get smooth shots.
Here is us filming the first few of our horror film shots...
Below is the finished product of our horror film shoot -
Cinema should make you forget that you are sitting in a theatre - Roman Polanski
My names Matthew and I've always had the idea of working in the Film & TV industry as it's been something that I have loved and been interested in from a young age. From my time here at college I hope to achieve high grades and gain experience that will help when in the real world. My previous studies of digital media production should help me in making the projects that I need to make while at college.
If I were to make any genre of film it would probably be a thriller/drama because these are two of my most favourite genres personally.
I've always loved creating videos and photos even from a young age, I used to pick up the camera at any chance I got to take photos and make funny videos with my friends. This passion has now progressed into working in the film & TV industry.
