Tuesday 23 December 2008

If you go down to the woods today...

We had our first attempt at photographing for our opening sequence today. We decided that as Kirsty would be going into hospital soon it would be better if we did all the outside shots ASAP so that we could hopefully get them done before she goes in.

What we did forget unfortunatly was how quick it got dark. So the flash was needed from the very first photo. This meant that unlike what we were hoping where we could take continous photos we now had to keep waiting for the flash to cooldown as it was being used constantly. This meant that where Kirsty was walking normally and the continuous shooting on a bright day would have caught almost every step but due to it being a dismal December evening and haveing to wait for the flash after almost every photo we decided that it would look better if Kirsty paused after every step so that we could capture the movement properly instead of having 5 step jumps between photos. This worked much more succsefully and we are really pleased with the results. We hope to meet up again soon to continue with the photographing.

Monday 15 December 2008

Experimenting with Digitalism



In lesson today George unfortunatly wasn't in so we couldn't really crack on with our storybords so instead myself and Kirsty decided to experiment with digitalism seeing how many photos the camera could take per second.

We discoverd that it took more photos with the flash off but then unless we changed the shutter speed then all the photos would look really dark.

Another idea to consider when editing the photos is when Kirsty becomes evil is that we have ocasinoal flashes or parts of the film that are inverted/negative. This will look good because then it will show how the two personalaties are complete opposites.



I think the eyes and sky both look really effective heer, this is somthing we should definatly consider especially with your make-up Kirsty.

Monday 8 December 2008

Pia Pia Piano.....

Today Kirsty played the music she wrote on an old piano they have kept in the Music Dept. It was amaizing. It really gets the point across of our title sequence creating a real sense of tension as the lead charicter decends into panic and confusion.

A masterpiece.

5 stars: *****

Even More Disscussion

Once again we met up to finalize our ideas, easier done than said, literally when George has lost his voice. Anyway we conluded that we will deffinatly use the Juno idea of photogrphing the title sequence and then editing it together for it to become animated. To do this we will use George's sisters DSLR camera on multishot to capture the movement of kirsty. We will then travel to Oxleas woods and also photograph other objects such as trees etc that we wish to include in the film.

The other aspect that we were also talking about was inclusion of spiders in the title sequence. This idea came from the big picture were the schitzophrinic serial killer would place a Magnus Opium in the victim. This is a pod of web created by the spider to protect the young. The spiders then fight through this when old enough, like a hatching egg, to find more prey, the victim. This gave us ideas such as useing webbing for the titles plus also useing actual spiders in the sequence to crawl over objects such as knives and other leathal killing instermants.

The link between the spiders and the lead charicter isn't all that different. Spiders wrap up there prey before eating bits them, just like our cereal killing schitzophrinic. Plus she also commits suicide at the end of the film just like some spiders do after giving birth.

The reason for her doing all this spider related killing is due to her not being able to have children of her own. Thus she reaps revenge on those who do not look after there children. This lets the audience relate to the charicter as they then understand that she is doing some good to the world. This also relates to other current events such as baby P etc.

We also disscussed today about make-up as after our thoughts with spiders we thought some nice web designed tatoos would be effective on Kirsty's hands and face. I suggested face paint but unfortunatly she is allergic and so we will experiment with other make-ups like eyeliner and mascara and whetever else there is to. Prehaps some nice smudging would work well. Something out of "Kiss" I think could look quite appropreate maybe?


Here are some examples of spiders hatching



Watch this clip too its awsome lol
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=VseTG4dCQ6A


Other Stuff


We also decided today to include quick flashes into the sequence. This is usually used in film to create tension and so I think will work well with what we are doing. I did origernally post a piece on here with this style of editing but for some reason it did not save? give me a sec i'll try and find it :)



HaHa Found it, Now you must understand that this film does go OTT but then it does say it's stretching the boundries. I think that around the 16-18 second mark is about as slow as we should edit but personaly I think we should go for a quite a bit faster, maybe around the 25 to 27 second point would look better.

One other thing we mentioned how this seamed like a strange Japanese horror film, commpletely insane but also toatly terrorfying at the same time. Here I have some exaples of there horror films although don't watch for too long these rally play on your mind.



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Loglines

OOPS, Just realized that I havn't created a logline for our film. This isn;t good as without an awsome logline it would extreamly diffiicult (with 2 I's, not a typo) to sell the idea of the movie to a producer or director etc. "THE INDUSTRY"

When createing a logline you have to consider three main parts of the film, and no not the beggining, middle and end it's not that simple.

1: Who is the main charicter and what does he/she do? What is his/her personality?

2: Who is the villain and why are they the villain, who or what do they wish acheive.

3: What makes this particular film unique? What sets it apart from any other idea, Whats the twist?

Here are some ideas that I have created for our film.

A young femail schitzophrinic, obsessed with spiders has lost control of her personality leaving the crazed shell of a human being amogst society. But who will she take with her?

An obsesive femail teenage schitzophrinic who loves spiders has finnaly lost the long struggle with her mind and decended into darkness, heaven knows what monster shall emerge.

Saturday 6 December 2008

The More Modern Killer

In a previous post I mentioned that we were going to too look for the more modern killer so here I have some examples of animated thriller/ horror title sequences, starting with Sin City. Although the style of animation is different to what we plan to do in our own I think that coulour scheme works really well. I also learnt this in my graphics class when studying old communist posters and would think this would go really well with the schitzophrinic idea. More white when on the good side and more black when on the dark side (bad pun).




Now I know that the title sequence of Catch Me If You Can wasn't created by Saul Bass but it was inspired by him. I love the simplicity of it but also the modern feel to. I think if we mix this with the graphic colour scheme mentioned above and with what Kirsty said on her blog about placeing in extreame close-ups to disorientate and confuse the spectator will work very nicely indeed.

Friday 5 December 2008

More Disscussion


Once again we have met up with eachother to disscuss our title sequence and have finnally come up with "The Plan" My origernal idea was to use hand drawn animation to create a title sequence for a thriller/horror film called Aracnid, but when we decided to go with the Juno concept of photo-animation we decided trying to photograph a spider that we didn't have would be a little more than difficult.



In the end we decided to go with Kirsty's idea which was a little like Jeckal and Hyde. A schitzophrinic who has a good side but also evil mass murderous side is on a killing spree in London. I liked the idea of it being a period piece where Kirsty (who has decided to act) would where a top hat and a cape, A little like the phantom raspbury blower from the sketch in the Two Ronnies, (although a lot more serious).



This concept however wasn't really what we were hoping for as a group so we decided to go for a more up to date approach with a more modern killer.

Wednesday 3 December 2008

Our Title Sequence

Well its time for us to create our own opening title sequence and beleive it or not after much deliberation we have actuly decided on something. I have allways tried to stay away from animation prefering to do a live shoot but George managed to persaude me otherwise. So the three of us began to serch Youtube for inspiration for what type of animation was possible for us to do.

This is an example of what we first wanted to do but then quickly realized even if we did manage to pull off the vast amount of drawing needed our sequence still wouldn't look as crisp as the professional production.




We also liked the explosions for the titles in this piece but we thought that again like the anime animation above that this would be little to hard for us to acheive succsefully.



This is what we finnaly decided would be posssible to acheive.



Juno's opening sequence was taken useing many, many photos edited and coloured in photoshop before being strung together. We really liked this simplistic idea as it looked proffesional but was also really simple and acheiveable for us to do. We will have to do at least 24 frames a second to give the sequence a sens of fluidity.

Monday 1 December 2008

A little on Bass

Saul Bass has no doubt experimented with all that is the title sequence. He has worked on infamous films such as Alien and Walk on the Wild Side and yet I find myself not really enjoying his work. This could be down to me watching so many Hollywood blockbusters etc, that I have simply forgotten that everything has to start somewhere and that without Bass’ knowledge and understanding of film these movies that I enjoy so much would be completely dry and boring.

Bass was no doubt one of the first people of the industry to realize and harness the power of the opening sequence to its full potential. For example in Big Country he used the simplistic idea of a long sequence which followed the progression of a stagecoach through the arid wilderness until it eventually arrives at small slice of civilization. This gives the impression that the town is far from anywhere and that the arrival of the stagecoach is big, big news.



One thing that really made Bass’ work noticeable was his use of straight lines. This probably came from his roots of graphic design where lines are often used. A sequence that immediately springs to mind that uses the trademark of Bass is that of North by Northwest. Immediately at the beginning of the scene you are confronted by the lines which created a slightly odd grid. It isn’t till later in the sequence that you realize this is in-fact a office block; and the animated typography which has been moving around the screen is imitating that of the cars reflected in the glass walls of the buildings and the possible ideas of the lifts crawling there way up and down the structure.



One thing that appears to be very similar in the work of Saul Bass is the music used. Now this cold be down to the time at which these films were made as around the 1950/60’s a lot of films were still using orchestral theme-tunes. But maybe Bass being the connoisseur of film could also have produced something more related to the film than the usual generic music.

Despite what I have said about the work of Saul Bass I do believe he was still very important in the evolution of the opening sequence of film. No doubt somebody else would have eventually done this but not in a way that has inspired so many other people, including myself I must admit.

Bass on Film

YES!!!!!! Have finally managed to work out these infernal bloggs. Im gonna do a little more now, im on a roll. After a cup of tea though ofcourse :)

The Continuity Sequence



This is our continuity sequence that we have finnaly created. We tried to film this before but after a series of mishaps and technical problems it all sought of fell through. However we pulled ourselves back together and have created this piece, I am really pleased with how it worked out :)