this is my story board for what the opening 2 minutes of my film will include. It includes 20 shots on the plan but will obviously include more as I am using stop motion. I feel that even though my shots are not exact because of this, it will help me greatly when filming. I am considering calling my film 'Another Day' however I am unsure of this yet which is why the title has only been penciled in. After creating this story board, I now feel more confident about making my film and think I will have alot of fun making it. Throughout the shots, you can see how the girl is going about her normal routine. Involving stop motion will make this much more exciting that could it could sound if it were just a normal film. I feel that because this is in my house I will also enjoy it more knowing that I am aware of everything around me. For sound on my film, I am contemplating having music or having noise and making it more of a childs film. I was thinking about both and having music being lowered as a noise happenend. I think that I will choose to have just sounds in this film as it will make it appear more comical perhaps and I think it will go better with the mood and nature of the film.

Casting shot

This is Lex. I will be using her as the main character in my film as she fits the role that I was to portray well in my film. In this photo it shows that she is a bubbly, happy person which is just the same as the character in the film.

Location shots

At the end of my opening sequence this part of the house will be used. It is the part where the character goes and sits on the stairs and the shoes move over towards her. I think i may need to change the lighting in this area as well as i am not sure how it will come across in a film. I think that this place is ideal as it has outside lighting from the street and also is an area which is easy to use and use several different angles.

I feel that my bathroom is the best place for lighting in my house. The natural lighting allows the character to stand by the window and be well lit without the need to use artificial lighting. I will be shooting from this angle and possibly closer up if i include the over the shoulder shot into the mirror that i am considering.

This is the location that will be used when the character is moving from the bedroom to the bathroom. I have chosen to shoot from this angle, as it is a wide angle and you can see the transit from room to room.

The film will begin in this room. As the camera picks up on the outside lighting i need to find a way in which the lighting can be read and picked up from the inside to avoid the darkness in the room. These are the curtains that are going to open by themselves.

I have chosen my location to be my house. This is ideal for what I am going to be filming and it is also very easy. I can keep all my equipment at home and safe and know where it all is. It is also very easy to be sure that I will not be disturbed in my house as everyone in it will know what is happening. I will need to use artifiial lighting in many of the rooms as they appear quiet dark on cameras. I have a reflector and some flashes which i may be able to use to increase the light in the film and make it look like a much warmer and lighter environment.

DSLR stop motion

This is my first attempt of a stop motion film on my DSLR camera. It is made up of 18 frames with a 12 fps rate. I used istopmotion to create this as I am considering creating my whole film on a DSLR. I found this process quiet easy however I feel it will be time consuming. I am next going to experiment with using a video recorder to see how this compares to the process and simplicity of this method. After creating this small clip, I am now feeling alot more hopeful that my film will come out the way I have hoped. If anything I may try and make the frames slower so that the items move around slower however this is undecided yet.

Desicions

I am currently in the process of creating my story board and writing my screen play. After writing out a shot by shot list, I think that I will need to have around 21 shots to complete the opening two minutes of my film.
I am also trying to decide whether I will use 'iStopMotion' or 'iMovie' to create the stop motion part of my film. I will soon upload some experiements I have tried using a DSLR camera and the use of 'iStopMotion' and I will also try with a video camera and connect the clips together on 'iMovie' and see which works the best with the rest of the film, gives the best look and is the easiest to use.

Target audience and synopsis

The target audience for my film is between the age range of 7 - 15. It is however a light hearted, easy to watch film that makes it possible for all the family to watch including younger children and parents as well as teenagers. I would rate this film as a PG for the reason that it might not be a film that would be understood so much by children that were not accompanied by an adult. There is also a fast pace at the beggining of the film which may mean that younger children might not be able to keep up. I feel that this film would be suitable for both genders of its target age range however I am unsure whether it would be viewed by teenage boys as the story line is one that may be percieved as quiet childish to them. I would say that my film would not be suitable for anyone that is into serious films such as horror films and serial dramas. I would like my film to be mainstream in local cinemas and think that this would be possible with advertising showing the light heartedness of the film. I feel that it would do well as there are lots of families that go to cinemas. I feel that the best time to release my film would be during a school holiday where many parents are with there children and children and teenagers have the time off school to go to the cinema.

My film centres around the idea of stop motion. It is going to begin with a daily rountine of somebody getting ready, out of bed, into the bathroom and getting dressed etc. The curtains will open by themselves and while getting dressed the clothes will slide off the floor. This will be the part that I am filming.

The rest of the film will lead to showing the persons magical powers letting them down when one day they discover they no longer have them. Towards the end of the fillm, the person regains their powers when they find them under the bed in a big sparkle.

Influences

I have researched into films to find out which type of film I would like to make the opening two minutes of. I have researched Matilda (1996) by Danny Devito as my main influence. In this film we see that Matilda, a little girl that is not cared for, starts school and discovers that she has magical powers. When she discovers that she has these powers, she uses them the best she can to gain revenge on her family and her headteacher at school. The scene in which Matilda uses her powers at home where we see playing cards flying around and the cereal bowl spoon lifting up by itself is the part that has inspired me the most as I am hoping to create stop motion in my film.

I have also looked at films such as 'Chicken Run' (2000), 'Wallace and Gromit' (2005) and 'The Nightmare before Christmas' (1993) as these films are stop motion but in different ways. These use puppets or clay figures but in general they portray the message that each thing that is moving in these films is unusual. In 'Chicken Run' we know that chickens move about but in the film they are given characteristics and personalities which we are not used to. This is the same in 'Nightmare before Christmas' where we see skeletons moving about and talking.

Chicken Run is an animation. Researching further into the film, I have found out that the chickens wear scarves to hide the joint between the head and the body. The scarves hide the seam that join the 'body' of the chicken which are made up of articulated steel frames coated in silicon rubber while the heads are plastersine. I think that the smooth movements in this film are very good and make it seem possible forthe animals to be real. I am however creating a more jerky movement in my film where it will be obvious that it is stop motion and things do not move as they should.

The Wallace and Gromit films are shot using stop motion. After detailed storyboarding, and set and plasticine model construction, the film is shot one frame at a time, moving the models of the characters slightly between to give the impression of movement in the final film. In common with other animation techniques, the stop motion animation in Wallace and Gromit may duplicate frames if there is little motion, and in action scenes sometimes multiple exposures per frame are used to produce a faux motion blur. Because a second of film constitutes 24 separate frames, even a short half-hour film like A Close Shave takes a great deal of time to animate well. General quotes on the speed of animation of a Wallace and Gromit film put the filming rate at typically around 30 frames per day — i.e. just over one second of film photographed for each day of production. The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is a perfect example for how long this technique takes to make quality animation; it took five years to make.
As with Park's previous films, the special effects achieved within the limitations of the stop motion technique were quite pioneering and ambitious. In A Close Shave, for example, consider the soap suds in the window cleaning scene, and the projectile globs of porridge in Wallace's house. There was even an explosion in "The Auto Chef", part of the Cracking Contraptions shorts. Some effects (particularly fire, smoke, and floating bunnies) in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit proved impossible to do in stop motion and so were rendered on computer. However, in A Grand Day Out, when Wallace struck a match the fire was made of red and yellow tissue paper, and if one looks closely at the fuse, in some frames there was actual fire.

Extract taken from wikipedia

Overall these films have encouraged me to create a light hearted film in which I can use stop motion.

Critical analysis of 'Office Space' (1999)

The opening two minutes of a film are probably the most important part of a film to get right. They are the part that will make you decide whether you want to watch the rest of the movie or not. At the beginning of the film 'Office Space' (1999) we see the '20th Century Fox trademark logo opening the film. This is the first aspect of the film that encourages us to keep watching it as we are aware of the success they have had with films in the past such as ‘Home Alone’ and ‘Titanic’.

The opening credits in the film ‘Office Space’ are placed over the opening sequence of the film. The font, which is the same font used in the title, gives us an idea that this film is a comedy. We can tell this because of its quirkiness and the way it is slightly scattered around the screen. The blue font colour also helps us to understand that this is a comedy and not a serious film such as ‘Angela’s Ashes’ (1999) where there is a plain, simple, white font showing its more serious nature.

We are also introduced to the main characters in the beginning of ‘Office Space’. We are shown their personalities when we see them in the traffic and each one is behaving in a different manner. The music is upbeat and makes light heart of the situation we are seeing. When you see the elderly man with the zimmer frame overtaking the cars in the traffic this is another indication that the film you are watching is a comedy.

media studies brief

The set brief for our Video project is to create the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes. This blog will document the pre-production, production and evaluation stages of this project.