The Other Day..

An Exampleof a Mood Board For a Thriller Film.

The other day saw me moved to a different group, which was a move for the better :)  also we planned our continuity filming exercise, Lauren was the cinematographer, Siobhan was the Director and I was the actor and concept advisor. During the 2 lessons we had to do this we learnt many things about camera angles, shots and roles people play, this will help us when we start our big project. Until then we will edit our film clips by splicing the clips on the computers and adding music and sound etc, happy blogging :)

Today however we are focusing our attention on Mood-Boards and how we can use them to help people visualise our ideas.

Video Lesson Crash Course

Over the last 2 lessons we watched 2 videos in class about Film Production and the roles involved and each member of the teams job and contribution to the project. the first film focused on the things that make a
film, i.e. the Language of Film and Television, this video explained about  mise en scene,  Cinematography ,genre, editing and narrative structure.

Mise En Scene is anything that appears on the screen (props, lighting, characters, settings, costumes etc)

Cinematography is anything to do with camera work like angles, motion etc.

Genre the Genre is the kind of film, many films have similar features/annotations and connotations, films with similar features are stereotyped into different groups, these groups are called Genres, e.g. all Horror films have the same sort of of features, like dark scenes, spooky atmospheres etc whilst Comedies tend to be very light hearted, brightly lit and funny and other genres have their own unique traits.

Editing is putting the film clips together, in a way so it looks good and creates the desired effect, e.g. continuity editing makes the footage flow freely so it doesn't look jerky and poor quality, a jump cut however is used to jump between 2 separate scenes and is often used by the editor to create a stark contrast between scene locations.

Narrative Structure the narrative structure of the films story, most films tend to follow Todovorov's  theorem of all stories having a beginning, a middle and an end. (correct terminology being an equilibrium, disequilibrium and a new equilibrium or an equilibrium restored) however not all films or stories comply with this exactly, but most of the time they do.

Todays Work

Today we watched a short film about the different key aspects of film e.g. mise en scene, angles, editing and cinematography, we also researched Saul Bass, who was a graphic designer by trade, he was born on the 8th March 1920, and is credited for being 1 of the first to realise the potential of creative film openings and endings, he is particularly well known for creating the opening sequence for the film, The Golden Arm, which was was rather controversial at the time (the 50s) he designed film opening sequences for 40 years and was employed on a varied mix of different genres, he also designed posters for films as well as sequences, most modern films still use sequences like his in their sequences, sadly he died in 1996 on April 26th. included is a picture of Saul Bass with some of the many pieces he created.

Recent Advancements

yesterday we learnt how to use the cameras and practised multiple shots by filming the members in our group, also due to common sense and a lack of practicality, I have changed my screen name (derived from my online identity) from Western Enterprise to my proper name Stephen Pearce, shots include various close ups e.g. Extreme lose Ups and Medium Close Ups, also other shots like Long Shots, 2 Shots and the Critical Establishing Shot, we also learned why each shot must be 10 seconds long at least, as it would be near impossible to edit it. Happy Blogging :)

Week 1

1st day of the course has begun and we are learning all the important aspects and types of shot used in film, of course this is just revision to me, seeing as I learnt these last year for GCSE, however revisiting old work never harmed anyone and was highly beneficial in refreshing my memory.
(Above) a worksheet showing some of the different types of shots that we have to learn.

Inaugural Post

Hello everyone, Stephen here, this is my first ever post on a blog. if anyone is wondering why I used the name WesternEnterprise it is because it is my online name name (other than Silver Fox) I now use this new name as my Steam Community name and as my alternate email address, happy blogging :)