Planning: Storyboard practice

Unfortunately i missed the lesson on storyboarding and why it is important, how to do it properly, and also what the different arrows might mean. But i did catch up with the lesson through my group member Bethany, she did a quick run through what the lesson about and what i need to no. After i had caught up we then had the task of creating our own storyboard to the title 'Terror of the night'. We got given a sheet with all of the acquirements a storyboard should have and then an empty space for our drawing of the scene.

I was grouped with Bethany i found it a lot easier to work with someone else on the storyboard because we both could input our ideas and Bethany had a clear understanding of different shots we should use. We both drew a little bit each but by far Bethany made it very clear that drawing storyboards was her expertise and personally i think she should do our final story board for our film.

Planning: Mise en scene/shot list

Planning: List of jobs

Although most of our planning is done considering the plot and some of the mise en scene and shot list there is still a lot to do and a lot of jobs for people to do. We need to:

• the timings of shots--Me
• start storyboarding--Beth/Oscar
• research more on religious thrillers--Imogen
• find actors--Beth/Imogen
• confirm locations--Me

 Other then this i need to make sure i keep up with my blogging and that i blog the developments that we go through as well as my exam work. So far our planning is on track and we are slowly getting everything ready for when we start to film.

Planning: Development on new idea

Today in our media lesson we spoke more on our new idea of a religious thriller and tried to develop it. In our idea at the moment our plot is a very religious man who goes around torturing and killing people who have sinned against god. When we sat down and spoke more about our idea we decided that we are going to use polaroids for our titles and the titles are going to be had written in a scruffy way, the polaroids are going to be pictures of the sins these characters have committed. We also decided on our introduction to the movie we wanted it to be very ambiguous and unclear to the viewer what this man does so, we wanted a priest to speak about the kidnaps and tortures through a radio.

Planning: Change in idea!

Today me and my group had a change in idea, because as we pitched our idea to our teacher Mr Ford and he told us that it was very typical approach to our task. But me and my group don't want to be typical we wanted to do something new, improved and unique something that a student hadn't tried yet. So we wrote down what we all wanted to do genre wise and we got, a crime, physiological, religious and cults. So we picked out the ones that we though were generally the more typical types of thrillers and tried to mix them around to see what we got. We stepped away from the crime thriller idea as we were in danger of falling in to a cliche of many different crime thrillers, we also stepped away from the physiological thrillers because they also have a danger of falling in to a cliche pattern. Instead we looked more in to the religious and cults idea, we didn't really like the idea of cults even though it would of been a very interesting conspiracy theory to include. But we though a religious thriller is something no one has ever done yet so we built on that and came up with a basic plot line on what we think it would be. This turned out to include most of the genre's we wanted to do anyway because there is aspects of a phycological thriller, aspects of a crime thriller and there is even a hint of the conspiracy theories that is presented in the cults. So to conclude our new unique idea is a religious thriller.

Planning: What is a thriller?

The definition of a thriller is to thrill to keep the audience that you are targeting alert and on the edge of there seat. The protagonist is normally set against a problem a mystery or some kind of mission/challenge, this gives the film a chance to develop and move on through a series of obstacles that the protagonist has to face. Even if a Thriller is a sub genre is will still emphasis any danger that is represented in the film, and because it is the main theme in our introduction we need to include that sense of danger as a main theme. Thrillers tend to be fast moving with a lot of interesting and fast pace cuts between different shots from the camera. They also tend to be from the physiological genre and be very threatening for the protagonist and the characters involved in the movie but also to the audience that is watching it. The also seem to have a lot of mystery behind them and include some extreme villainy such as espionage, terrorism or consipiracy. My group has decided to go with the conspiracy side of things but because we aren't doing a full movie and just a title sequence we need to make this convention obvious in two minutes.

Thrillers are normally seen to have a sudden plot twist that surprise and adds interest to the narrative of the film or book. When the thriller genre is used through a T.V. series it normally adds a 'cliff hanger' to add suspense and to keep the audience intrigued and to ensure that they will watch next time its on. A thriller in conclusion is something that is deigned and made to keep the audience on edge with suspenseful and sensational action.

Planning: Plot plan number one

Planning: First planning session

This week was a our first planning session to what our starting title is going to look like. So of course to make it a lot easier to go from one idea to the other and be able to develop these ideas in to something amazing and unique with an artistic twist. Our first few thought on the brainstorm was to include crime and maybe some cults elements and we also decided that we wanted to include as much nature as we can and have decided for it to mainly be outside. We also liked the idea of a phycological thriller and maybe adding elements of the supernatural or horror genre so that we have a lot of sub genres and have made our own hybrid. We defiantly want our film to be very unique and something that hasn't really been done before in the class so that we can shock the exam board with our new and exciting idea. However i think that we need to get a few more ideas down just some possibilities so that we have option just in case this idea doesn't plan out exactly how we think it will. So personally i think that before we start shot listing, thinking of locations the plot or story boarding we need to do some research in to thrillers a lot more. And i think that we should look at different sub genres just in case we can come up with something that is a lot better and something that is even more unheard of.

Exam: Merlin analysis

Today in media we looked a status in the running TV series of Merlin. We tried some new note making techniques to see if it would be faster and easier to get as many notes as we could down ready for our detailed analysis essay. We used the grid method i chose 4 different sections which were 'office with the woman', 'street market before the fight', 'fight with prince', 'old guy talking about magic'. Then i spoke about the camera, editing, sound and M.E.S this helped me to pick out the main technical features which i have been struggling on lately. However i found that i was quite restricted to how much i should write because the boxes were so small and i couldn't fit my writing in to it, so in all i did miss out on certain notes and some might of been important and essential for me to use.

However we picked out the different positioning of the camera, the way it travels such as a pan and the way it goes from one transition to the next. We also looked as prevalence of the character, new editing cuts such as intercutting and how that effects the pace of the rest of the section of sequence and what that may connote of symbolise for the rest of the extract. There was also a great amount of focus of the sound and the non-deirgetic sound and what that may do to the tone and effect the feeling to the whole piece i found this quite an easy thing to do as i am a musician. An example of this would be at the beginning when the music is very eerie and manly played in the minor scale to present it is a very sneaky uneasy tone. However out of all the technical features we looked at today on the Merlin extract i found it specifically hard to analyse the M.E.S because i normally analyse it and by accident describe instead of analysing in a detailed and technical way. But overall it was a bit overwhelming because we had never put all of the technical devices together as one and trying to include and describe them all with out babbling and describing i found was very hard.

I then went home and wrote all that i had found in the analysis in a essay form this i found especially difficult because there was so much to write that i kept on writing to much that had nothing to do with the question. This i need to learn to do and also to stop describing and start to use the correct terminology such as a wide close up or a long shot or a birds eye view. I then also need to use this and describe it in detail and also get the right place where it was shown. I also think that the way i sectioned the piece up wasn't as good as it could of been i could of been able to fit in at least one more section and split up the fight. I could of split it up in to two things post magic and then the use of magic this would of been easier to talk about and it could of also broken up my essay a lot more and of made it flow and of added a sense of continuity.

Media so far

Media so far for me has been a very interesting subject to be learning as i now no how much work goes in to films that i no and love and what actually goes on behind the scene's, with planning the plot, editing it and filming it. I feel i have struggled a little bit in being able to pick up the language and key words of media and understanding certain terms but i feel a lot more confident with them now then when i did at the start of the year. My weaknesses when it comes to writing essays and analysing the text's are getting the meanings of the different semeiotic terms correct and also some of the camera terms as some of them sound and mean similar things. However i am vert strong with sound as i am a music student and can analysis non diegetic sound easily as i no the different tones, scales and instruments and what feeling that it might bring to the surface for the audience watching. I also find the editing terms very hard as well as i tend to mix up the editing terms with the camera terms and start to get confused with the meanings of them. This is mainly because i have never learnt about editing before and this is the first time i am hearing these terms along with the camera and mise en scene. However i have a strength in the mise en scene as i like to analyse the different props they are using how they are dressed and the setting and location. However i think that the more i revise these different terms the more i will get used to using them and when i eventually get to filming and editing myself and i will start to understand the language a lot better. However at this point i haven't just learnt different things through the lessons and my teacher but i have also learnt a lot through my research such as sub genres and hybrids and the meaning of these and also how they can add interest to a film.

My targets to achieve next term would be to revise the semiotic meanings, to revise the camera and editing techniques and skills.
Another target of mine would also be to be able to write in much more detail and make sure that i get all of the films sections in my essay's.