ManFlick Presents. Apple.

4 weeks, 3 edits and 83 apples later, ManFlick Productions is ready to show you Apple.

Enjoy.

Apple Soundtrack

The Apple soundtrack is finally finished. After a full weekend working on it I finally feel it something that represents the piece. Have a quick listen below, but do bare in mind it's meant to go with the film and therefore may not make complete sense without it. Please note that this is a completely original composition by me and only makes use of copyright free loops right at the very end with the drums. Enjoy.

It starts of very light and dreamy with a chorus of 'Ahhs' to lighten the mood. Some bright happy motif's played on. A guitar rhythm in the background helps add to the happiness of the sound. This melody is the signature apple motif and returns a few times in the piece. The next part of the section is a piece on stacatto strings to make it seems a little more emotional but casual.

The next section is very different. A pedal in the background mixed in with an eerie glockespiel solo makes this passage a little haunting and unsettling. This breaks into a melodic minor section which is meant to connote the confusion felt by the cyclist and the uncertainty the apple faces after it is thrown onto a bench.

This soon errupts into the happy opening sequence. We get an added Flute melody that represents the little girl drawing the face on the apple.

The drunken section is made up of unnerving pizzicato strings, purely to get across the drunken confusion of the 3 men out on the town. The pizzicato strings also give the scene a dainty edge as though there is no real danger for the apple.

The next section is something different and is made up of lots of descending sequences. There is a happy sound. It has a sense of inquisition about it which is meant to represent the dog.

The next section after this is a haunting glockenspiel melody that is an intertextual reference to Witness using the same motifs and melodies. This ties in well with the scene as the tramp is an intertextual refrence to Witness.

This then defers back to the main melody giving the scene the happiness and sense of voyage of discovery we see on the first section.

We then get an atonal descending sequence with loads straight into the climatic ending which is quite dissonant in parts.

This is finally ended with a sad and lonely piano riff detailing the demise of the apple and its grave sacrifice being overlooked by the man.

Ancillary Task: Magazine Review

Our second chosen ancillary task is a magazine review page (words by Joe Sullivan) and is meant to be from a quarterly short film magazine entitled 'Art House'. We decided to use photo's from production from and center the main colours on green as this keeps with our apple theme. The background image is also one of the promotional shots for the film. We gave the film 9/10, we though it would be best to impartial obviously!

Ancillary Task: Promotional Poster

Our ancillary tasks have now been finished. We decided to do a promotional poster and a magazine review page. The other day we decided to head up into photography and have a little photo shoot with the apples using some of the white backdrop's in there. We toyed with the idea of having the pen in our promotional posters but we eventually decided on just having the apple on a white back drop. We went with green text in keeping with the tone of the Granny Smiths and kept the layout simple. We added in a premiering date which is actually our Media Deadline and also put in a tag line "How far does the apple fall from the tree?" which is an obvious reference to the apple traveling. Here is the poster is all it's glory.

One Final Effort . .

. . is all that is needed to completely finish Apple. Filming is now down, a soundtrack is on the way, the ancillary tasks are nearly done, the blogs are almost complete. All it takes now is one final push over the weekend to make sure all of these things are done properly before the premier on the 14th of December.
Here is a slideshow of some of our production photo's taken during the filming
(Slideshow by Jack Parfitt)

The Final Day + 5th ManFlick Podcast

Today we went out and reshot 2 shots of Sam's fruit vendor scene. This officially marks the end of production; we have finished all filming, reshoots and pick up for 'Apple' and are now completely is post production.
We have put all our progress and current status' in podcast form, so you are fully updated with our progress. the podcast can be listened to in the following video. Enjoy.

Stop Press!

We decided to put on a last minute change to the story. A new section that sees our apple become a subject of fun and fascination for 3 men out on the town who see it with its new face and decide to take photos of it.

The storyboard for the new scene are below.

Night Time Storyboards

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First Draft results are back . . .

We handed in our first draft to the teacher today and it went down quite well. He had a few issues with it which is what we expected and we hope to address them in the coming days.
Issues that need to be sorted:

The ending, which we already said needed to be reshot due to lighting continuity irregularities

A soundtrack needs to be written for it because we are using a copyrighted track

Editing and continuity issues throughout the piece need to be addressed

More variety of shots as we have too many standard eye level shots

These are the issues that need addressing so we are going to work hard in order to get them sorted so we can meet our deadline.

4th ManFlick Podcast

This Podcast focuses on the work done filming and we also talk about out first draft

9th Day of Production: The Ending

Today was the last scheduled day of production and although I know we are definitely going to have to do some reshoots, it feels really good to have the main bulk of filming out of the way.
The material shot today was mainly useable but unfortunately lighting issues have rendered a few shots useless. We have kept them in our first draft however because without them the film will not make sense, reshoots are inevitable but luckily it’s not all the much.

8th Day of Production: The Child

Today we filmed the child and her parent. Cassie and Geraldine Rose were the daughter and mother and both were very enthusiastic about the whole thing. The weather became a serious problem for us as we ended up having serious continuity issues. It absolutely poured down to the point filming was impossible. After waiting a while it finally cleared up a bit, however we were left with completely soaking wet ground and cloudy sky. Eventually we decided to carry on filming anyway as we had to stick to schedule and we are going to cover up the irregularity by having a time lapse in between.

7th Day of Production: The Fruit Vendor

Today we did the Van and fruit salesman mix. Colin Thorpe did an excellent job of being our grocer driver and kindly let us use his him and his van for the sequence. It went of relatively smoothly with no real problems. We forgot to take photo’s of the shoot which makes this post look a little boring. Apologies!

6th Day of Production: The Jogger

Today we went out and filmed the jogger scene. Danny Germain was our Jogger and his costume was completely his own design, Why he chose such a random assortment of clothes I do not know. The day went of relatively smoothly, the only main problem being wind mucking up the sound, but that is something we can fix in post production.

5th Day of Production: The Tramp

Today we filmed the tramp scene where Jack is a tramp that drunkenly moves and kicks the apple along to it’s next destination. Again the scene went quite well and Jack did a very good job of pretending to be drunk of a mixture of watered coke in a Jack Daniels bottle, though I have to say he got his fair share of odd looks.

You will also notice that Jack is wearing the same clothes from Witness and that he also has a camera. This is because Jack is an intertextual reference to the photographer. Whether this meant to be the same photographer, driven to a life of alcohol after the events of Witness, or whether he is just a coincidence is entirely up to you.

4th Day of Production: The Dog

Today we filmed the dog sequence. In the end Mike Clarke and his dog Alfie were very happy to do the job. Alfie performed surprisingly well and did something we did expect him to do - he happily kept the apple in his mouth when filming and did not bite into or completely destroy it. We were originally planning on using a tennis ball, which we did have to for some of the later shots were Alfie lost interest, but its great he was willing to do it with an Apple.

3rd Day of Production: The Bike

Day 2 of production saw us filming the bike scene. In this scene the apple falls of the bridge and lands in a cyclists basket. We got Brigitta Rose, our actress to ride a bike through town. This scene was fairly straightforward as it just involved a few shots of her riding the bike and eventually throwing it onto a bench. Our main problems was actually getting the apple into the bike basket, but some excellent throws by Sam Thorpe did the job beautifully.

2nd Day of Production: Opening

Today we filmed the opening sequence of the film where the apple is bought. However the day was not without it’s problems due to restrictions on filming. We filmed the opening sequence in Waitrose, this was not a problem as Jack and Joe work for them and were able to speak to management about it. They were very welcoming and happy for us to film there.

However the part in town was another matter. We were stopped by security when we tried to film there. After a conversation with the managers of the complex, we were told filming wasn’t allowed because it might be linked to terrorism. We found this ridiculous.

On a brighter note the opening sequence went really well and it feels good to have a proper scene of the film finished. Below are some snaps from the day.

1st Day of Production: The Opening

We started our journey through ManFlick 4 today as we started filming. Today we did the sequence where the apple falls down the stairs and I have to say it went a lot better than we initially expected it to. Though we are a few Apple's down . . .

Storyboards Galore 2!

We have finally completed our storyboards. Below is a slideshow with our complete storyboards. Of course these will most likely change slightly during production, but they are a rough guide nonetheless.

Storyboards

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The 3rd ManFlick Podcast

The Cast

We're almost ready to start filming, all that's left is a quick check of props, cast and locations. First, the cast.

ManFlick 4 Cast

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A brief synopisis

Here is a brief video synopsis of Apple so you can get an idea of what it will be like

Location Hunting

We have been location and here is a short video made by Jack Parfitt of some of the area's we plan to shoot in.

Apple's can spark off good ideas

We have decided on the basic premise of ManFlick 4 (Working title). Our A2 coursework will be a short film of roughly 5 minutes about an Apple that saves a man’s life through chance, luck and random occurrences.

An Apple in a supermarket is bought by a lady who proceeds through town after her shopping trip. After traveling through town she is makes her way across a bridge. Two school children from the opposite side of the bridge are playing around and run across the Bridge, one of them knocks into the woman and this causes the apple to fall out of her bag and off the bridge.

At this moment a woman on a bike rides underneath the bridge and the Apple handily lands inside her basket.

The cyclist rides up the main street and after a while realises the Apple is in her basket, confused, she takes it out and throws it onto a nearby bench.

A child and parent also walking along the street happen to go past the apple.

The child picks up the apple and decided to draw a smiley face on the apple. The parent sees this and tells the child to throw the apple away.

The child then leaves the apple on another bench.

That night the apple stays on the bench and in the early hours of the morning three men who have just been out on the town come across the apple. Drunk and rowdy one of them sees the apple and finds it hilarious due to the smiley face. He then asks his companions if he can have his photo taken with the apple. After this event takes place the trio move on.

The next morning a jogger running near the bench stops and sits down so that

they can tie their shoes. They notice the apple and decide to take it with them on the run, eventually throwing it down a staircase.

The apple bounces down the stairs and eventually rolls towards a dog walker and their dog. The dog mistakes it for a tennis ball and runs at the apple, picking it up and running off. The dog walker catches up with their dog and rips the apple out of the dogs mouth and throws it.

A drunken tramp then sees this and decides to go after it. The tramp then walks in along the road before taking another swig of whiskey and in the act of passing out throws it further down the street.

A fruit vendor coming out of an establishment sees the apple and assumes it is part of his shipment and must have fallen out. The fruit vendor place it with the rest of his apples and goes off to deliver his next shipment at a train station. On his way to the entrance he falls over accidently throwing out the box. It lands on the road.

During this occurrence, a business man is coming off a train. In a rush and not looking where he is going he head’s out into the road towards oncoming traffic. It is as this moment the apple saves his life as just before he steps into the road he steps in the apple, and stops walking. Because he stepped on the apple and did not carry on walking he did not walk into the path of the car and therefore was not hit by it; in short all the people in the film contributed the to the prevention of this mans death, and the apple was the tool used to carry out this act of luck. Or random anomalies, which ever way you seem to see it.

Starting Afresh

In the past month we have been busy working on ManFlick 3, our A2 Media Studies film, however after much deliberation we have decided to scrap the idea and start again. The idea has several holes and problems, it would have been a very strong idea but due to time constraints compressing the storyline, it soon became undoable.
We are currently working on a new idea though, still a short film but now something different that should stick closer to "Short film"

The target audience of Short Films

The target audience of Short Films

Short film is a genre with a very small foothold in the film industry. You don’t see short films advertised on television or hear about famous and successful directors making them. Short film caters for a very small niche in the market.
One of the main reasons short film does not cater for the majority of the market is the subject matter. Normally, short films deal with quite moving and thought provoking subjects, topics that rally make you think when you watch them and for the majority of people that’s just not entertaining. When people pay £10 to go to the cinema they don’t necessarily want to be entertained, and not to watch something that will make them think.
However, some of the most popular short films are not thought provoking, meaningful works but in fact fun and uplifting films. Films that try out new ideas and have fun and original concepts that many people won’t have seen.
The kind of people that go and see short films are typically not your average movie going audience, they are more into the genre as an art piece than as a form of entertainment. They are more interested in what a piece means and what it is trying to say.
To look at the target audience of short films you have to look at who makes, them,
Typically short films are made my aspiring directors, people wanting to add to their showreels and trying to break into the industry. Works like these would most likely appeal to those in the film industry like fellow directors/film-makers or producers looking for talent.
Critics would also have to be part of the main target audience. Short films often shy away from the conventions surrounding mainstream films and television programs so they might provide a more challenging and intellectual watch for critics and might be something more interesting for them.
Films that challenge new ideas and concepts, particularly ones that are very visually stimulating, can appeal to much wider mainstream audience. User-generated content websites have made viewing and exhibiting films a lot easier. If a film on the internet seems to be particularly interesting it can easily spread among web users, the ‘word of mouse’ hypothesis. Typically films that fall into this category and more entertaining than thought provoking and that’s why they appeal to wider audiences.
In conclusion the target film is made up of a wide range of people, but people looking conventions of short films. In very brief terms, either something thought provoking or fin exciting and original concepts.

Second Textual Analysis

To further my understanding of Short Film I have a video textual analysis.

Textual Analysis on the short film 'Dawn'

In order to further my understanding of short film I have decided to do a textual analysis of one. I will be analysing a short called ‘Dawn’ (Fiction Factory, 2005) directed by Shreepali Patel. The general synopsis goes something like this:

Two children awake in their council flat on an unforgiving estate. With their mother asleep in bed with a stranger, they embark on a morning full of freedom. The only rules are the limits of their imagination. The stranger and the girl share an intense look. When he leaves, the boy hurtles into his mother’s bedroom. He hugs her tightly. Underneath her bed lies an abandoned syringe, empty of its deadly content. Framed by the window, the girl watches as the man walks quickly across the estate.

This short is very similar to a feature length film in style, in is fairly conventional and does not try to be experimental in any way and could easily be compared with something like Shane Meadows ‘This is England’ in style in the way it comments on social class and the representation of working class Britain. It has one many awards including the Brisbane film festival award, the Cardiff screen festival award, the Edinburgh film festival award and the D.M. Davies Bafta award, Cymru.

It was produced by fiction factory, funded by the Arts council of Wales and exhibited mainly through independent film festivals. It was also chosen by the BBC Network which specialises in showcasing new talented British filmmakers through their website, where I coincidentally found the film.

To watch the film, please click here

The film starts off relatively slowly showing a milk cart doing its rounds as well as showing establishing shots of a local council estate. These establishing are generally held for a relatively long time further enforcing the setting of the story which is crucial. Due to time constraints it is very important in this short that the audience are aware of the setting, a council estate, so the emphasis on it during the beginning is a good way of cementing it into the audiences‘ mind. It is also where we see a shot of some graffiti on a wall saying “ Charles and Diana, 29 July 1981’, a device for telling us when the story is set.

Generally the piece has very well composed shots, more care has been taken from an artistic point of view to make the piece aesthetically pleasing as it does not need to be so focused on driving the narrative. The use particular shots however are used to emphasise some of the underlying messages in the piece. For example the use of a birds eye view shot to show the boy pouring milk into the goldfish bowl emphasises the lack of parental supervision these children have from their mother as they are allowed to do what they want, their naive recklessness due to a lack of guidance can be seen at another point, when we see the door to the hamster cage is wide open. Subsequently many shots from floor level show the hamster running around the flat freely further connoting this lack of parental supervision.

The editing of the piece is fairly conventional without use of flashy editing techniques, it adheres to the rules of continuity editing occasionally harnessing temporal ellipses in order to pace up the narrative.

The use of ambient sound in the opening of the film gives more prominence to the gritty urban setting. A non-diegetic score runs throughout the piece, it is generally uplifting and happy but very relaxed and calming.

There are several recurring themes throughout the piece, one notably being the milk brought into the estate at the beginning. Milk is seen as something pure and innocent and is generally associated with children, yet in ‘Dawn’ the milk is stolen 4 times. The first time, by a postman walking past, the second by two teenagers who are caught by the milk man which causes them to drop the milk and smash the bottles. Once by a drunken man on the housing estate who drinks some then spills it all over the floor, and once by the little girl.

The train is another important recurring theme. The train line is featured 6 times in the piece, with the distinctive noise of the tracks and the trains themselves. This gives more prominence to the setting; the dirty grubby council estate. The area these children live in is portrayed as a bad place, the train line is cut to several times during the film to reinforce that they are not living in a nice or glamourous area.

In my opinion the main underlying point to this story is how these two innocent children are caught up in a bad world, a bad world that they most likely with eventually become a part of. It is a snapshot moral and social disintegration and these children are a product of the ongoing breakdown of society.

What exactly is a short film?

Short film is a very hard genre to define as it doesn’t really follow the conventions of any other genre. Short is essentially a free genre that does not have to follow any sort of genre. It is a free form of expression similar to that of absolute music, music for musics’ sake.

Because short film is in some ways an infinite genre, the genres it covers can vary. From small action shorts, to just a simple story like a break-up being told through words. Short films can vary from being a short 5 minute piece to longer 45 minute subjects. As pieces of film I find that they are less likely to follow the conventions of telling a narrative through dialogue and developed constructed characters, but instead tell stories or convey emotions or themes through their use of camera, shot, angle, composition, editing, sound and mise-en-scene.

A lot of short films have very basic story lines, things like fate, a man seeing his own death before it happens or a break up, that is shown in reverse from end to beginning. In terms of narrative they are not normally developed. The narrative is merely a spring board that the maker can use to express their creativity as short film is less to do with narrative and more to do with technique and the element of production instead.

Often a lot of experimentation in making films plays a part in shorts. Shot angles and composition are often experimented with varying results. Compositions in shot that might not work in conventional film can work in short films because short films don’t necessarily have to make any sort of sense. Unconventional editing techniques also play in a part in short film and can be the basis of making a short film. Filmmakers can often use the medium of short film as a montage to showcase new techniques of shots that have wanted to experiment with using things like traffic or pedestrians as the subject material. Soundtracks can also be seen as “unconventional”, using unsigned artists or real 20th century style music using dissonance or new edgy tunes as subject material for the film itself.

Mise-en-scene can play a tricky part in a film as it all depends on what the film is about and short film can really be about anything. It can be used in a typical construction of everyday life or to portray weird and eerie worlds. Most importantly, mise-en-scene can play roles in themes. Using mise-en-scene as symbolism in a piece is a technique often used in short film. Like a little girl as a omen, or a red balloon representing love, mise-en-scene is used in this way to show themes and subject matter in place of dialogue and narrative.

Short film is often a genre explored by unknown filmmakers and is a very good genre for indie filmmakers to explore. This has lead to a culture in short film and has led to art house style film festivals dedicated to short films and their makers which can often be used to showcase new and upcoming talent in the filmmaking industry. Short film is rapidly becoming a more explored and accepted genre due to the openness of it. Indie Filmmakers can easily make their own shorts and distribute them through online user generated content websites dedicated to indie filmmakers and short films making short film an expanding and growing genre as well as expanding the fan base and publicity around it.

The beginning

This post marks the start of my A2 Media Studies coursework. We plan to make a short film and to use this blog as a way of showing my progress throughout the project and update every aspect of the short film.

Thats all I shall reveal for now, but what I can say is . . .

. . . watch this space. ManFlick is back

The End.

It's been two months in the making but finally ManFlick Productions have finished their project. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did when we were making it.

ManFlick Productions

presents

Witness.

The Production Diaries

Here are all the production diaries from out entire shoot mixed with a bloopers section at the end.
I hope you enjoy it all!
Some of it is a little bit silly but what can I say, we had immense fun on our shoot, there is also some pretty detailed analysis, narration and picture in picture in the videos. I hope they give you an insight of how we produced 'Witness'

ManFlick Day

Today we spent a full 10 hours editing together every piece of footage that we had. All the production diaries are complete as is the final edit of our project which you will see very shortly ....

watch this space.
ManFlick out.

Evaluation

There is only one final push left in the production of Witness. As we are now drawing to a close on production, I have done an evaluation on everything we have done.

For best results view in fullscreen

Evaluation Presentation

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Production: Day 7

Today was our last day of production.

We headed back to Eton rowing lake and started filming. We did encounter some problems though  ... it was raining which is the complete opposite weather type to the rest of the film. The thing is that today was our last chance to film because the killers car we were using in the film had failed its M.O.T. so we it was today or nothing. Even though the weather type is completely different, it would appear it won't matter.

Due to the time constraints set by the exam board we may have to end our project at when the killer gets into his car but we will se when we finally get to the real edit.

ManFlick online activities

As production is drawing to close, I feel now may be a good to share and show off some of the services we have been using.
You may wish to check out our youtube page which has all the videos that we have made.

We have also made a photobucket account to host all the photo's that we have taken during shoots.

We have also publicised our film and promoted it through facebook
and we currently have 143 members, using this we have kept our fanbase updated on our ongoing filming activities and plan to release the film on facebook for them to see.

The Second ManFlick Podcast

The 2nd of 2 production Podcasts talking about Manflick's production of 'Witness'

In this one we talk about some problems encountered during production and the creation of our new soundtrack

Witness Soundtrack

We have finally written our own score for witness which can be listened to below accompanying our new logo for ManFlick Productions.

It is an original composition that I composed on Garageband to go with the theme and help follow the conventions of our chosen genre, thriller.

 It mainly uses strings, a feature used heavily in Thriller soundtraks do to their ability to play staccato and tremolo increasing tension in soundtravks. It makes heavy use of discords and the pentatonic scale to increase the unsettling tense mood we are trying to create, as well as a key change to the dominant of D Minor halfway through the foot chase to add that little bit more tension

ManFlick Ident

The ManFlick Logo and Ident have finally been made. This will be our stamp or approval and ownership on all future products

Letter to the college

As I said before on production Day 6 we had problems with filming on Eton College's land and unless we could produce a letter that they were happy with we would not be able to film.

So here is the letter we have written for them, it also has our Media Teachers approval and input.

Dear Sir/Madam

We are writing to you to ask you permission to conduct some filming for an AS Media Studies project on your land. Following a conversation with your site team we have provisional permission to do so but we have been advised to make a formal request to carry out this task. 

We are making a 2 minute opening sequence to a film which involves a driving sequence. The sequence has been fully choreographed on our story boards and both our drivers have valid UK driving licenses. We plan to drive along the road which follows the lake to the boathouse and film two cars from different points on the road. We have discussed in great detail the correct procedures the drivers will follow and all road regulations such as speed limits etc. on your land will be followed. We have also discussed health and safety with our Media Studies teacher. 

We don’t expect to take up a lot of time in doing this and we will follow any requests you may have for us. If you wish to know any more about our project we can show you the full planning of production which is available at the following link

http://wbsmediagroup6sam.blogspot.com 

We have discussed this issue with an Assistant Headteacher at school and he has seen this letter. He is happy to make direct contact with you to discuss our intentions if that is desirable. His name is Mr Titheridge and he is contactable at the school on 01753 716060 ext 234.

We would greatly appreciate your co-operation with our project but will fully understand if you cannot grant us this.

Many Thanks

Oliver Clubb

Jack Parfitt

Joe Sullivan

SamThorpe

Production: Day 6

Today was meant to be the final day of production involving the filming of the stationary and interior shots of the car chase. Unfortunately we hit a problem. The land we were filming on for the car chase was private land (the rowing lake) owned by Eton college. During filming a man in a land rover came up to us from the college site team. After a quick conversation we were told that they were happy for us to film at the rowing lake provided we brought a letter detailing exactly what we were going to be doing and one they were happy with, so we contacted our media teacher and wrote out a draft letter as seen below. Its not a big problem as they are happy for us to film there but it does mean we need to add yet another day to production. 

Luckily there is enough for us to be getting on with whilst the college decide if our letter is good enough.

Production: Day 5

Also more retakes needed today. It would appear the shots we decided to add in were not useble because unbeknownst to ManFlick, we were at the wrong location...

We headed back to stag meadow and re did the shots where the body is taken out of the boot by the killer. This posed a problem though; we had found time in the day to do this, early in the morning, but because of the time of day no matter where we put our tripod, shadows would always appear but lukcily we were able to find time to come back and continue shooting. All in all another good day of shooting with extra footage to go in our production diary at the end.

Production: Day 4

Today we started the car chase, we plan to do two separate shoots, one using a 3rd production car and another shoot on a separate day where we will get stationary shots from the side of the road.
Today’s shoot involved the 3rd production car. For the shots of the car I stood out the top of the sunroof with a tripod and filmed the cars driving up and down our road.

For the lower down shots we utilised the gorilla pod, a bendy mouldable tripod which can be attached to many surfaces. We opened the boot and attached it with the camera to the base of the open boot. We sat in the back seat, belted up, and leant over the back to get the shots we needed.
It was a very successful day and now we can’t wait for the next day of production.

ManFlick Podcast

This is the 1st of 2 ManFlick podcast's containing updates of how filming is coming along. In this one we discuss where we are currently at with production and talk through the process of how we got there. It includes our studies of film opening conventions, market research and the first bits of production we have done.

Production: Day 3

The day of retakes

We decided to put in some new footage of sam dragging the actual body out of the car, we hope this will add a bit more sense to the narrative of the piece.

We also did some retakes of when the killer and the photographer actually see each other. This extra shoot does mean that we are now one day behind schedule and will need to an an extra day to the original 4 we had planned.

Here is a slideshow of the days events in Photo's, it was created on iPhoto '09

Production: Day 2

Today's production involved the foot chase scene at Stag Meadow as well as the start of the car chase. We filmed all of the foot chase and we also did a hefty amount of production diaries to 

to show the progress we have got so far.

It was a good day of production which went really well and was heavily aided by our storyboards which made the whole process a lot easier. Hopefully there wont be any retakes to do as we have made a very rough draft of our film. We are currently using music from the Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater soundtrack of the 2005 Playstation 2 game of the same name. In the actual final draft we plan to write our own score but we felt some form of music was needed to accompany the rough draft.

Production: Day 1

The First day of production has happened marking the start of 'Witness'. It was the scene were Sam has to dig a hole and bury our dead body, Joe. We did have to to dig a hole ourselves which we filled in after, we also started making a production diary and took some photo's of the shoot

Production Day 1

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All of the are available at our photobucket

Update

Just a quick update to say we are ready to start filming, nothing is standing in our way as all the necessary things gave been organized. I'll give a more detailed post when we actually start filming, but for now here is a teaser shot of the cars we will be using in the opening sequence.

We have also completed and laminated our storyboard so it will be durable and robust enough to last us the whole shoot.

We have also made a very brief schedule on iCal so we know our shooting schedule over the next couple of weeks.

Cars Slideshow

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Market Research results

We have recently completed our survey and market research. After doing our survey which comprised of 26 people we put our data into a spreadsheet and created charts which we felt accurately displayed the data collected.

To collate and present our data we used Numbers and Keynote part of iWork' 09

This slideshow presentation shows our collected results and analysis from our market research

Market Research Analysis

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Market Research underway

Our Questionnaire is complete and we have started collecting data to collate as market research and get to know our target audience

Market Research

We have started to produce a questionnaire to hand out to people to get an idea of what people look for in a film and incorporate it into our planning for our final project

Hermeneutic Codes

In order to make our film convincing and true to its genre we have studied the hermeneutic codes and linked them to a film that is the same genre as our final project


Discuss how the Hermeneutic codes have been used in the opening sequence in a Film of your choice
The Matrix, 1999

The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction thriller starring Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss. It’s directed by the Wachowski brothers. It is a story about the human race roughly 200 years in the future who live in a dystopian world under the rule of machines and AI.
The film starts with a telephone conversation that reveals two people speaking about one man. The audience is told that “they” are going to kill him, the man is refereed to as “the one”. This is a classic example of how only half truths are revealed to the audience, it poses more questions which causes the audience to want to know the answers.
This then leads to a sequence where the women on the phone is surrounded by police officers. This poses more questions as the audience is not sure why this women is being arrested. A snare is used after this which lets on a small snippet of information regarding the women. Outside the building where the women is, a car parks outside with the rest of the police squad cars, a man gets out and questions the leading officer there as to why they have pursued the women. The leading officer replies by saying “I think we can handle one little girl . . . [my men] are bringing her down now.” The man in the suit replies to the leading officer, “No lieutenant, your men are already dead.” This is a snare as the audience is shown that this women is a dangerous person, but not told why, an example of how only some information is reveled in the narrative and a good example of a snare.
An action sequence of the squad the leading officer sent up is then shown being overcome by the one women. This reveals how dangerous she is, another small snippet of information. She then speaks on a phone to a different character, she states how “the line was traced” and that she “needs to find another exit”, to which the man gives her the location of a phone.
The audience is unaware of what exit she means or who traced the phone line. This is an example of equivocation, truths being revealed through the narrative, but with the use of snares to ask more questions.
Another action sequence after this is shows the woman escaping the building after she defeats the group of officers. One part shows the woman and one of the men in suits jumping over the roofs of two buildings between the street; a super human feat. This asks more questions as the audience wonders how it is possible for a human to do this. This is a half truth, the woman and man are show to posses these abilities but it is not revealed how they are able to do them. It is also shown how only these two can do this as the other police officers stop at the edge of the building, one of them says, “That’s impossible”
The next sequence shows her running down a street and seeing the phone booth mentioned earlier to her by the man on a phone. A rubbish truck on the street she is running on. It stops in a dramatic skid and stops in a position where both are pointing at the phone booth. The woman looks at the phone booth as the rubbish truck starts to accelerate towards it. She rushes into the phone booth and and answers just before the truck smashes into the booth. As it pulls away the men in suits emerge and it is revealed that her body is not in the crumpled phone booth. One of the men in suits talks about how they have found the name of their next target, Neo and that a search for this person has already begun. This is a snare as only half truths are revealed.
Overall the use snares and partial answers causes lots of questions to be asked. This causes the audience to watch the rest of the film as they want to know the answers to these questions, this is the hermeneutic code.

Storyboards Galore!

Media Coursework Storyboards

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Storyboards Galore!

Media Coursework Storyboards

View more presentations from ManFlickProductions.

Storyboards Galore!

Media Coursework Storyboards

View more presentations from ManFlickProductions.

Storyboards Galore!

Media Coursework Storyboards

View more presentations from ManFlickProductions.

location Hunting

During the half term break we went location hunting to look for possible places our film could be shot. 

We have 3 main locations:

Stag Meadow, Great park - Where our foot chase will be shot

St. Leonards Hill - Where our opening sequence of the photographer and the body being buried will take place

Eton College Rowing Lake - Where our car chase will be shot

Photo's from our expedition have been presented here in a slideshow film made using iPhoto '09

A complete record can be found here

Flow Chart of Final FIlm

We have created a very brief flowchart using Keynote to use as a guide to help us storyboard our final project.

Preliminary Analysis

After filming our preliminary task, we analysed them to see where we could improve on for the final project. The analysis follows:-

Preliminary Task Analysis:

Our preliminary task was a short 45 second film about a man trying to change the world. It was filmed and edited by our group with two of us filming the sequence and two of us starring in it.
The first step in making our preliminary was to sit down as group and discuss what our preliminary short film was going to be. After brainstorming some ideas we drew up a very brief storyboard as a general guide and frame for what we were going to shoot, a short film entitled ‘Hunger.’ We made a storyboard which consisted of 12 shots, this storyboard was only a rough guide but was rather crude and vague which made us suffer problems later on when deciding which shot/camera angle we had chosen to use when we wrote the storyboard as we did not make it clear enough.
The film was shot in our school over the course of a one hour lesson. This was an easy location to shoot from as we knew it very well and could decide on the best locations to use. It was also available as we were already near possibly shooting locations making it possible to shoot our film quickly and with short notice.
For our Preliminary task we used 2 low quality Mini DV cameras. We decided to use 2 as it enabled us to be able film our action match as we were cutting from the same action on screen but between two different camera angles which we did for our dialogue sequence.
Overall the shoot went quite well. The composition of most shots was generally quite good. Problems arose with composition mainly due to the rule of thirds not being followed on some shots, this is something we will take into consideration when it comes to the main task. Another problem we faced camera shake as we did not use tripods for our preliminary task, this is something we plan to avoid in the main task by using tripods. The sound quality on our short film was not a very good standard, we plan to overcome this by using directional microphones which will be used with the cameras. The main problem we faced in the shoot was the general competency of the group, the shoot took longer than planned because we did not find a room to film in in advance meaning we wasted a lot of time looking for free class rooms to film in. This was due to the lack of organisation in the pre production stage of our short film.
Another problem we faced to do with the incompetency of the group was the forgetting of lines which can be put down to the lack of organising we did before we decided to shoot.
One of the things that went quite well was the editing process using Macbook Pro's and Final Cut Express 4. We were able to add fade’s and titles to our piece. The rules of continuity editing were strictly followed and we managed to execute it quite well. We added non diegetic music to our preliminary task to fill in silence, it was successfully ducked at the right moments so that dialogue could be heard, although the audio quality was not of a high standard in the first place due to the camera’s we used. We wanted to add titles to our sequence but because we did not have the correct level or technical knowledge to maneuver Livetype, therefore we had to export our sequence to iMovie to add titles which lowered the video quality as it had to be compressed each time.
Our Task went reasonably well, there were some problems we encountered but these were mainly due to the lack of organisation on the shoot. It was all quite inefficient was we did not know what shots needed to be done because our storyboard was not at a high enough standard, other things such as camera shake due to the lack of tripod and some minor problems with sound, are the main problems we faced during our shoot. It was a test of our organisational skills and really showed us what will be required for the task up ahead and showed us ways we can improve which, without doing the preliminary, we probably wouldn't have learnt.

A few screen grabs of the editing process shows our stages of editing:

 - We used Final Cut Express 4 on a Macbook Pro to edit 'HUNGER'

- We added non-diegetic music to our film

- This music was ducked so that the audio dialogue from the footage was audible 

- The footage faded out to at the end to draw the film to close

The Final Preliminary Task