Coursework: cast

We have made our final decisions about our characters.

 The main guy (DJ) - Joshua Lesser

Girls - Emma Bokken and Eden Bowyer

Friends - Guy Newland, Myles Lamond, Eduarda Anguita 

   

Coursework: test shoot

Last week we went to the studio to make a test shoot. We just tried to show our idea, how do we see it. Later on, Max edited it. So here is our test shoot:

Coursework: music

The sounds and music are very important in our opening, so it was very hard to find something suitable.
Firstly, we were thinking to take Kanye West Freestyle 4 Instrumental. However, we changed our mind as we thought our opening can be banned as it is not our music.
Another idea was to make our own music for this. The student from our school, which is actually is going to be a DJ in our video is good in it so he agreed to make it for us. Joshua and Max created couple of versions. Every time we were discussing with a group what needs to be improved.

Coursework: storyboard

Coursework: props

We decided, that we are going to need those things for our open title sequence: 

·     Coach

·     Chairs

·     Laptops

·     Sounds boards

·     Main computer

·     Headphones

·     Mugs

·     Glasses

·     Cans

·     Liquor bottles

·     Foam cups

·     Posters

·     Plates

·     Pizza boxes

We also have some ideas about posters, which we want to put in the studio:

Coursework: location

We needed to choose a place for shooting. For our title sequence it had to be a sound studio. We had two studios in our school, so we thought they will work as we don't need a professional studio.


We had a choice of two studios: green and blue.
The green one was bigger, so we would have more space for all equipment, but there was also a window to the next room, so we thought it will be hard to shoot there as the reflection can be seen.

The second room (blue one) was smaller but we liked it more, because it looks darker and more comfortable.

We understand, that it will be hard to place there everything we want. Also, the shooting process will be hard because not everybody can fit in the room.

Also the big benefit of the blue studio is that it is used rare compared with the green one. This means that we could find the date for the shooting easier and set the room beforehand.

Coursework: characters

Age group: 17-20

Main DJ

·     Height: 5”11

·     Style: individual/artistic/planned mess between 6 and 8 sets of clothing

·     Hair: planned mess

·     Possible choice: Josh Lesser

Girl #1 and 2

·     Hair: one blonde one brown

·     Height: irrelevant

·     Style: groupie

·     Possible choices: Daisy jelly, Eden Bowyer, Maddy Bowyer, Emma Bokken, Charolette Mcgee, Vicky barnes,

Friends( Tom boy, Guys)

·     Height: varied

·     Hair: messy, styled

·     Style: individual/artistic/planned mess

·     Possible choices: Guy Newland, Amory Flint-Wood

Research into moving shots

(Done by Petr Zheltov from my group)
While thinking about the way we would want our thriller to look we understood that we want it to be very smooth and literally flow like the song which we would have in the background. This could be achieved by using moving shots, but moving shots are quite hard to film, so we looked through many films and information in order to understand how to film moving shots correctly.


Here I took 3 movies as examples of moving shots.
The first one is Inception and here a robot and lots of equipment was used to film the moving shot. As a result you can see a perfect moving shot which makes the scene look very smooth and appealing.










The second clip is the opening title sequence of the movie Touch of Evil. This is the opening shot of the movie and it was filmed as one moving shot which looks absolutely amazing. Here also lots of equipment was used to make the shot more stable, for example a crane was used to capture the shot from the height.










This is also a video from a movie by the name of Boogie Nights. You can see how pleasing to the eye is this opening title sequence because of the moving shot which just makes everything flow and makes your mind flow into the movie and concentrate on the plot. This is what we want to achieve.

We had some ideas of how to film perfect moving shots without shacking the camera at all, but we understood that we do not have enough space in the studio, so would just have take the camera into our hands and move around. Nevertheless we learnt how to move around with the camera correctly in order to get good shots. At the end of the day our video can and should be a bit rough and shaky because we have young actors who do not think a lot and do all sorts of stupid things. This can be also represented in the camera movement in order to sell this idea, but the mixture of moving shots and a bit of rough/ shaky bits can be just perfect.

Research into shading into black

(Done by Petr Zheltov from my group)

We want to make our shots as smooth as possible and we want to make the cuts invisible. We have looked into many different ways of making the cuts. We looked at such things as cuts on movement, but this would not work for our film as we want to moving shots which go from one side of the studio to the other and we only want to cut when we are at he end of the shot. Cutting on movement would mean cutting in the middle of the shot and this would disturb the flow of our opening title sequence.

We have also looked at such transitions as dissolving, but this just did not seem appropriate for our thriller and would distract our audience.

We decided to fade into black in each shot as you can see in some of the shots from the video below. We will end and start each shot on something black and in our opinion this will be the most suitable way to do the transitions between shots as it is not jumpy, it is very calm and there is literally no disturbance to the eye. By looking at many different videos we were able to understand that if we would use this effect in our thriller than our audience would just flow from shot to shot. This would allow our audience to concentrate on the action in the shots as they would not be disturbed by the cuts.

Research into shooting of the computer

In our open title sequence, we are going to show how the main character is going to receive an email on the screen of his laptop. In order to make it look good and professional we decided to research into how it was already done in other products.

Shooting a computer screen may sometimes be a problem because of the likely flicker issues that show up on the footage. 

The computer's monitor runs at a certain frequency. Macbook, which we probably going to use, usually runs at 60Hz. So, to avoid

flicker image, the shutter speed should correspond to what the computer screen runs. However there is an information that even if the shutter speed is right, there might still be issues as the screen alternates at times.

Another method is to use a green screen. It can be displayed on the computer or place a green paper over screen. Then it it replaced by needed information when editing

Research into soundtrack

(Done by Max Lieberman from my group)
Sound track


For our idea we need a soundtrack to have playing in the background. After feed back from my group about the last song I proposed, I decided to look into darker and more aggressive beats. I came up with these song:

These songs were produced by Clams Casino, a famous producer in the American Hip Hop industry who is well known for specializing in this type of beat. He has worked with members from A$AP Mob (A$AP Rocky, A$AP Ferg, A$AP Nast, etc.) and other artists such as Vince Staples, Travis Scott, Mac Miller and Lil B.

I decided to look into a related artist, Wondagurl, who has made several songs in collaboration with rapper and producer Travis Scott. They have made successful dogs togeather, such as "Antidote" and "90210". These songs have received mainstream success and have individual sounds in both track and lyrics. They follow the dark nature of rap beat which we set out to achieve.

Research into scenes in music studios

(Done by Marina Waldron from my group)
We researched online to find any scenes that included shots of music studios. This meant we could see what personal music studios look like, how people act in these situations and places, and some popular shots.

Most scenes we looked at came from the film 'Straight Outta Compton' which is a 2015 biographical film based on the lives of the group N.W.A - a gangsta rap group from Compton, California in the late 1980s. Scenes like the one below show shots of the group of friends hanging out together in the studio, playing their music and drinking. This scene uses short panning shots which we were influenced by in creating our pan to black shots, which make up the majority of our title sequence.

In the clip above, we liked the related atmosphere portrayed as the music making was being done in someones home. The props and set were relaxed, which in turn made the characters more comfortable in the room. This gave exactly the picture we inspired to have, of a group of friends listening to music and hanging out together.

We also looked at a lot of 'Behind The Scenes...' videos, however a lot of these were done professionally to show the hard work behind music making and therefore didn't have the same atmosphere we were trying to achieve in our thriller.

Research into products with computers

I was looking on different episodes of films and TV series when the computer screen was filmed. This is quite common shots as we use computer in our every day life.
I was looking on some quite old examples like "You've got mail" , "Sex and the city" and modern ones like "Cyberbully" , "Arrow", "Flash", "Mr. Robot", "The Big Bang Theory",  "The Social Network" and some others.

There is usually some common shots used to show computer work.
For example over the shoulder shots:

This allows the viewer to see what is happening on the screen, but also to have a link with the character. The importance of information is shown by the focus, how close it is and the duration of this particular shot. Looking at the examples above, it is clear that the director doesn't want us to know what is in the computer in the scene from Mr. Robot (on the bottom right) but wants on the others. 

Another quite spread form of showing the information on the screen is a close-up of the particular word, sentence or even object. This was widely used in "You've got mail" and "Sex and the city". It is the oldest examples I have been looking at, so may be in the past the quality of the image was poor so to draw an audience attention, close ups were used. However this method was also used quite common in "Cyberbully". When watching these shots, the viewer will read it subconsciously.

I found that one more well-spread method of showing computer screen is just having it on background. This allow to create needed atmosphere, like working or awareness that character is communicating with somebody.

The last subgroup that I can think of is just filming screen, from different angles without even showing the people in the scene. This image on the screen may move, show video or just show relevant information. Usually such picture followed up by sound like voice or music.

Coursework: main idea and planning

Finally we agreed on our idea:
 Starts with a shot of a music board equipment. We hear someone entering and opening their bag. We hear the Computer switching on, and the music begins to play.

We see the DJ from behind and it begins to pan out. We see the rest of the studio. It begins to pan to the left slowly and we see other parts of the studio.

The shot glitches and the DJs clothes change. There are more glasses and cups. We see another person sitting on one of the coaches. The shot begins to pan to the right.

It glitches and the clothes and room change again. There are 4 people in the studio. The DJ and three friends. The friends are dancing, laughing and interacting whilst the DJ still works. The camera begins to pan to the left again and shot glitches. 

The DJ is sitting by his desk with a girl leaning on his shoulder. The studio is slightly cleaner. The camera pans to the right again.

It glitches and we see him with his friend as they listen to the track together out loud. His friend is pointing out stuff that should be changed.

It glitches and we see him with a different girl leaning on his other shoulder. The camera begins to pan back to the friends chilling in the room on the couch just talking. They get the DJs attention and he looks around. As he does it glitches.

As it continues to pan. We see a constant glitch between the two girls as it begins to pan the other way.

As it comes back to the centre it stops and it glitches back to the original shot. The song ends and the DJ takes his headphones off. He stands up and begins to walk away. We hear an email notification ping. He walks back and opens the email. We see the message and it blacks out. We see the title.

Coursework: developing ideas

After we had spoken with Matt, we had to change our ideas as we were told that Max's idea is not an opening title sequence-it is finished clip. My idea was rejected mainly because the dialog which was there is very hard to film as it would look unnatural. We decided to pay more attention to other ideas and also think about new ones. It was very hard to almost start everything from the beginning, however we have made our decision. Max has came out with a new idea. Actually it was his old idea, which was redone. We have changed it so that it "hit, but not tell". We drew a new storyboard and started to think more about details. Firstly, we wanted to make it look like "Seven" open title sequence, but later on we have changed it again.

Coursework: groups, ideas and storyboards

In our class we were pet in a group of 3-4 people for the coursework. I turned out to be in a group with Max, Pete and Marina. All of us had different ideas and we needed to decide which one to use. At first we focused on one of my ideas and one Max's. The group said that they are the most successful so we need develop them. We started to draw our first storyboards just to show how do we see our ideas. My idea is the one with two men in a car and the body in the trunk (the first idea from my list). Max's idea : the man in the studio who is making music, when there are some dead bodies around him, then two men entering the room carrying another man, they put headphones on him and he is also dying.

However we have also made storyboards of other ideas just in case.

Actual coursework task defined

Video

Preliminary exercise: Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

Main task: the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.

All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source. Both preliminary and main tasks may be done individually or as a group. Maximum four members to a group

Kyle Cooper's work: American Horror Story

American Horror Story is an American anthology horror television series created and produced by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk. These are titles for the first season. 

The main idea of these titles is probably to create an atmosphere. This opening contains a lot of terrifying, hard to watch scenes, which prepares you for the actual product.

The titles are shown on the black screen separately from the actual video, probably they done it this way in order to focus all the attention of the viewer to the video when it is playing and then all attention to the titles. The font of the titles is strange and unique, which creates their own brand.

The opening start with some shots of the room. It seems like this house is abandoned and shots were taken at night. It seems like we are going through this corridor into the basement.

Then we are shown some old photos of children. These photos seems very cute, but dreadful when become negative. It is clear from the opening that the season is going to be about children not only because of the photos, but also because we have shots of human embryos on the shelves of the basement. We can also see different medical equipment, which shows that these were probably done in the same place-basement. There are also photos of young women and brides and shots of white dress which also seems like a wedding dress.

After that we see more shots with blood and human skeletons.

Opening title is ending on the photos of babies in the fire.

Kyle Cooper's work: se7en

Seven  is a 1995 American neo-noir crime thriller film directed by David Fincher.  It tells the story of David Mills (Pitt), a young detective who is partnered with the retiring William Somerset (Freeman) and soon tasked with tracking down a serial killer (Spacey) who uses the seven deadly sins as tropes in his murders.
At the beginning of this title sequence, we see just shots of some sketches along with shots of blade. These shots do not draw any specific attention. However next shots are harder to watch, they are much more unpleasant. I think it shows the genre of the film and introduce its atmosphere. After those, the viewer will be more interested and look more carefully to find more clues.
After the title with the name of the movie, shots are becoming longer and have more information in it. We see more shots of work: how this person is cutting out and writing things. Those are close-ups, the time on this shots allows to read such words as 'non-pregnant', 'intercourse', 'transsexual', 'heterosexual' etc. Then we start to see different photos of people; children and some injured people.  All of these gives us more ideas about the plot of the film.  
The titles are mainly showed on the black screen, so they are clearly seen. They are shaky, change it place an look like handwritten. They totally suit the picture we see. 
The music is very depressive. It goes with set of different scary sounds. 

Kyle Cooper

Kyle Cooper is a director and designer of film title sequences. He has directed and produced more than 150 film title and VFX sequences.

Cooper was borne in Salem, Massachusetts. He was studying interior architecture at University of Massachusetts Amherst, then went to study graphic design under Paul Rand at Yale University, receiving his Master of Fine Arts from there in 1988. In 1996, he co-founded and named creative agency Imaginary Forces. In 2008, he became a finalist in the National Design Awards. Cooper has earned five Emmy Award nominations and one win for his work on the 81st Annual Academy Awards. He also holds the title of Honorary Royal Designer for Industry from the Royal Society of Arts in London.

This is his demo reel:

Coursework Ideas

1.      

(1)  This movie is going to be about two friends, who know each other for ages. They still like to pass time together, but they do it in a different way. They have become criminals as such live seems easier and more amusing. They are travelling around the country, meeting their old friends, having a good time with them, but do not forgiving for the past.

(2)  The opening title sequence is showing two friends in the car driving somewhere. The dialog is important in this scene. They are discussing how well they have passed last night with their friend (eg Harry). They are discussing how funny Harry was and how they’ve enjoyed the evening. When they finally stopped one asks another “Do you think Harry would like this place?”. Then they get out of the car and open their trunk: we see a dead body of Harry in there.

2.      

(1)  This movie is about young woman. She is smart and intelligent, moreover she is a killer. She almost has two lives: one where all her friends think that she is shy and cute, an another where she is known as Abaddon. The plot of the movie is how her two lives are intersects and how hard it is to decide what is more important for her.

(2)  The opening title sequence starts with a young lady sitting on the coach and watching movie/listening to nice music/ talking, laughing on phone. We see her from the back (over the shoulder shot). Deeper in the shot we can see news where we are told about a horrible death of the person and among the injuries we hear about scratches on the body. The camera is moving closer to woman and we see that she is filing broken nails.

3.        

(1)  This movie is about a family life which has completely changed one morning. They turned up in the situation where thy should risk everything they have, hide from the government and forget about friends just to save guiltless person.

(2)  The opening title sequence consists of the binary opposition of the typical family morning when parents discuss their routine for a day and a person running through the forest. At the end, when we see kitchen we hear a loud and insistent knock to the front door which scares the people in the kitchen.