In this lesson I compared my tragic drama film opening idea with other current tragic films out in the industry today.
I think that my groups film compared the most with "My sisters keeper" and there are many reasons why.
Firstly I think that normally tragic drama films are independent but My sisters keeper wasn't as it appealed to a mainstream audience, was shown in the cinema and was hugely successful and this is what we want our film to be like.
Also both our films have completely different story lines (My sisters keeper is about a young girl fighting her battle through cancer however our film is about a little girl who has already died and we see the relationship between the girl and father were far from perfect, something isn't right).
Our films both involve a whole family who are involved in the situation and also there are deaths in both films although in My sisters keeper the death is at the end of the film where as in ours it has already happened.
Discussing the openings there is big similarities, both our films start with the little girl talking now in My sisters keeper the girl is talking about why she was born and in ours the little girl is talking about her memories so they are two different things. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS55xHZWzEo
Lastly in the opening we both see clips and images of the family together which is another similarity.
Although there are lots of similarities with our film and My sisters keeper, the whole storyline is completely different we just have similar aspects that you can compare the films with.
In this lesson me and my group had to come up with our institutional name and logo for our film.
For our main institution we decided the name that we most preferred was the one we were originally given which was Pink Productions. We decided to stick with this name as it fitted in with our style of film but also was the kind of name which could easily relate to a lot of ideas.
We also came up with a second production name as we felt we needed another one which defined our group. We came up with different ideas of what this could be called and all agreed that the kind of name we wanted to go for was something that was quite innocent and child like. We then thought of different toys and objects associated with childhood and decided whether they worked or not. we came up with institution names such as; Finger puppet productions, Roundabout productions, The Music Box and Happy Bean productions.
In the end we decided we were keen on on Happy Bean as we felt this was the most original idea but also was not sure whether the audience would get the wrong impression before our film started and that they may think it was a film aimed at children.
We then decided that The Music Box was something that could fit into our film really well. We decided that the music made from the logo could be a light instrumental tune that could carry onto the beginning of our film.
In this lesson me and my group started planning on the things we need to consider in our opening, we discussed actors, location and costume.
Actors - For our opening we will need the voice of a little girl which we will be allowed to do because we are only filming her voice and not actually her physical appearance. We need to find someone to play the Mum, this person needs to be middle aged, they also need to come across distraught and emotional because of there daugthers death, they don't really care about anything else. Lastly we need a Dad, now he is going to be the antagonist in our opening, you see the bad side of him as he didn't care for his daughter, he comes across quite cruel and intimidating.
Location - We started planning where we were going to film and the following locations/settings we will need are:
- A Park
- Kitchen for birthday decorations
- Study room
- Bedroom
All these settings are very easy to get we just need to make sure they look right and consider the mise en scene.
Costume (colour, connotations) - We started thinking about what our characters could wear and this is what we came up with.
Mum - We want the mum to be dressed very casually, in comfy baggy clothes and this is because it shows she doesn't want to make an effort, her daughter has died so she doesn't care what she looks like, she just needs to feel relaxed. I think she should be wearing neutral colours, to show her innocence and portray her as the protagonist.
Dad - We want the dad to wear a black suit, the suit shows him as a buisnessman who cares alot about his work and maybe more than his family, and the black shows him as dark and evil and shows him as the antagonist.
I worked with my group to produce our first initial storyboard and script.
Script - For our script the main thing in the opening is the voice over of the little girl, we thought a opening doesn't have a lot of conversation dialogue because it's just introducing you to the film. The little girl is going to explain whats going on with her family to introduce us to the film, we wanted to make her sound very innocent. We didn't want to the script to be to complicated as an opening is quite simple and we want our opening to end with the dad and the mum just beginning to have a conversation.
At first the script was quite hard to do but once we got going on what the little girl was going to see we started working really well and was very happy with our first version of our script.
Storyboard - I found the storyboard very easy to do, this was because me and my group knew exactly what was going to happen because we had already planned the setting the acting and the titles so it all went together really well. When we finally completed our storyboard we were very pleased with it the only improvement we could make though was to maybe make it a bit more basic because I think its a bit too complicated for an opening but its our first initial storyboard so we can still make a lot of changes if we feel it's necessary.
In this lesson I created two time lines which showed the titles for the opening of films. The reason I did this was because when it comes to me and my group making our film we need to start thinking about the titles as they are very important in an opening! I chose the opening of my sisters keeper because it's a popular tragic drama which is helpful because it's the genre I'm doing. I then chose to do Forrest Gump because that is also one of the best drama films out in the industry today. My Sisters Keeper http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS55xHZWzEo
0.00 - Start
0.02 - Film makers name
0.07 - Main actors name (female)
0.17 - Main actors name (female)
0.24 - Title of film
0.33 - Main actors name (male)
0.37 - Main actors name (male)
0.40 - Main actors name (female)
0.46 - Sub actors name (female)
0.51 - Sub actors name (male)
0.54 - 3 minor actors names (shown together) (male)
0.58 - Casting directors name
1.02 - Costume designers name
1.09 - Music directors name
1.12 - Co-producers name
1.25 - Editors name
1.29 - Production designers name
1.34 - Director of photography's name
1.41 - Executive producers name
1.51 - "Based on novels" name
1.55 - Producers names
2.01 - Screen plays names
2.05 - Directors name
2.05 - End
Forrest Gump http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7voy1vit6Y
0:00 - Film production and distribution company logo
0:12 - Film distribution name
0:16 - Film production name
0:23 - Producers name
0:28 - Main actors name
0:32 - Title of film
0:38 - Sub actors name
0:42 - Sub actors name
0:47 - Sub actors name
0:53 - Sub actors name
0:57 - Casting name
1:02 - Co-producers name
1:08 - Executive producers name
1:12 - Visual effects supervisors name
1:17 - Costume designers name
1:22 - Music by name
1:27 - Editors name
1:32 - production designers name
1:37 - Director of photographers name
1:42 - Based on the novel of name
1:46 - Screen plays name
1:50 - All the producers names
2:02 - Directors name
By doing this task I have started to realise how import the titles are in the opening, this opening is only 2 minutes yet it has 23 titles! I noticed that the title of the films came up very early in this both of the openings as well (I wouldn't want ours to come up so quickly. When we come to making our film opening we will defiantly need to add in all the titles because they are very important as that's what makes and opening an opening. I am glad I did this task because it will really beniefet my group because we will be experts in what titles we need and the order they should go in.
In this lesson me and my group were carrying on planning our opening we started to think about our script, what the dialogue would be and any stage directions needed, we are going to have a voice over in our opening which will be the little girl talking about memories with her family. The other characters we have are her mum and dad but we are not sure if any of them will say anything yet but we will carry on developing our script next lesson.
We also began to consider mise in our opening, where it would be set, the lighting, make up, costume and props and we will again carry on doing this next lesson.
Lastly another thing we started planning was our story board but just a basic one and then we can make it more detailed when we have the rough idea of what's going to be involved.
In this lesson we started to develop our scene list, this is what we have come up with for our opening we were going to have short clips of family videos for scene one, scene two would show the girl having fun in a busy park and then all of a sudden the park is empty, and scene three would be the mum looking at happy pictures of her daughter and the dad isn't interested.
In this lesson me and my group started planning our film, we started thinking of story lines and themes because we needed to consider the whole film before we focused on the opening.
I looked at the audience expectations to help me and my group decide what our opening could be about.
The following themes were
- Death
- Terminal illness
- Love
- Money
- Anger
- Depression
- Betrayal
- Family
- Losing someone you love
- Heartbreak
- Family
- Accidents
- Violence
- Abuse
- Problems
- Life changing challenges
- Miscarriage/ Abortion
- Missing
There are a lot of things our film could contain!
We wanted our film to involve a family instead of a couple because we didn't want our film to turn into a romance, we thought it would be a good idea to add in a little girl to add innocence to the film (we decided at the start of the film we could have her voice talking, something is going wrong in her family and you feel more sympathy if a child is talking compared to an adult because you see things in a different light).
Our film is going to be about a family, who have some kind of issue with the dad (we haven't decided what yet) and it will affect the little girl mostly.
With ideas for our opening we were thinking of having the little girl talking about her memories, and all the things she has loved doing but then something always goes wrong and ends up being ruined (but we need to look more into this)
I think we have our basic idea of what me and my group are going to do but next lesson we will develop more into the detail of our film and opening.
I was looking at the 2 different types of audience (Mass & Niche) to find out what one would suit my groups film opening best and what we would aim for.
I think a tragic drama could hit either a mass or a niche audience.
Mass -A mass audience is a large group, Hollywood films are usually considered mainstream, aiming at a mass audience along with blockbusters, Mass audiences watch films that are advertised absolutely everywhere in the public eye. They have the biggest Hollywood stars in mainstream films, and are also always played in cinemas.
Niche - A Niche audience is small and defined which has a particular special interest in a film genre. They watch films that aren't advertised globally but to a precised audience. The cast in there films are usually not very well known. The niche audience will have a specific interest and not a main genre (example comedy) it will be more defined.
I am going to look at some tragic drama film trailers because I want to find out the storyline of the film, what makes it a tragic drama and what themes occur in the film. My Sisters Keeper
Trailer
Narrative – The trailer shows the film is about a girl fighting for her life battling cancer.
Genre – The Genre is a tragic drama.
Atmosphere – The atmosphere at the start of the trailer is very happy because the girl is talking about her and her family but then when we find out the actual storyline the mood is very sad and emotional.
Titles – The titles do not come up until we (the audience) start to see how tragic the film is going to be, they show there happily family and then once we know the storyline the titles start appearing which I think is really effective because it separates the two atmosphere's well (one positive and one negative).
Sound – Once again the sound separates the two atmosphere's at the start the soundtrack is very happy and enjoyable but then it turns to very sad and serious (when we find out whats going on).
Character – The characters are a family they have a very close bond which shows a tragedy like this will change their lives forever.
Themes – The themes are love, betrayal, terminal illness, death, family and life.
Setting – The setting looks like quite a quiet place, but I think they are still in the city.
My sisters keeper is about a young girl who is battling her way through cancer but in the end she gives up, she doesn't want to do it anymore so she gets her younger sister to help her and make her look like the antagonist but the truth all comes out in the end.
My Girl
Trailer
Narrative – The trailer shows the film is about a young boy and girl who are best friends.
Genre – The Genre is a drama.
Atmosphere – The atmosphere is quite relaxed, at the start it seems very joyful but nearer the end you realise something will go wrong in the film.
Titles – The titles used are quite basic and old fashioned (this is because the film isn't a recent one), the use of the titles being in black and white make the atmosphere very dramatic as you haven't actually got a colour to set the mood.
Sound – I think the music in the trailer is very basic and calm which makes the atmosphere very relaxed.
Character – The two main characters in the film are a young boy and girl which portrays innocence and is quite stereotypical because drama films often use children.
Themes – The themes you see in the trailer is friendship and relationships.
Setting – The setting is out in the countryside it seems, so it's very quiet and calm for the drama film to be shown.
My girl is about a young girl and boys friendship and also shows the relationship between the girl and father and his job. During the film an incident happens where the little girl loses her best friend which is sad to watch as you see her try and cope without the most important person in her life.
The Shawshank Redemption
Trailer
Narrative – The trailer shows an innocent man who has to serve two life sentences in prison.
Genre – The Genre is a drama.
Atmosphere – The atmosphere is very tense and serious, especially at the start as it shows a court case but near the end of a trailer but then near the end it all seems quite relaxed, but you know it's not going to stay the same in the film.
Titles – The titles used are shown in the colour red and this connotates death, this makes the audience think in the film there will be death.
Sound – The soundtrack in the film is very basic and slow and is quiet because it has been taken over by the voice over.
Character – The two main characters in the film is two middle aged men, this is quite non-sterotypical as in drama films they normally use families and children or couples.
Themes – The themes you see in the trailer is justice and freedom.
Setting – The setting is in a prison, which you know is going to be dramatic.
Shawshank Redemption is about an innocent man who is sent to prison for a crime he does not commit, later in the film we see him escape freedom and justice is served. Titanic
Narrative – The trailer shows the true dramatic story of when the boat titanic, hit an iceburg.
Genre – The Genre is a true tragic drama.
Atmosphere – The atmosphere is very emotional as you see an old women tell the story of the film, as she was there.
Titles – The titles used are in the colour white which shows pureness.
Sound – The sound at the start is very calm and soothing and then all of a sudden near the end it changes to very dramatic music as the ship is sinking.
Character – The main characters are a couple which is very sterotypical as you see there relatioship throughout the trailer and show how they are destroyed at the end.
Themes – The themes are love, tradegy, and social classes.
Setting – The setting of a film is all on the ship which is out at sea in the middle of the ocean.
Titanic is a true story about how the ship titanic, struck and iceburg and shows the true disaster of what happend. We also see an upperclass girl fall in love with a lower class boy and we see there relatioship expand through the film.
By analysing all these films it has given me an idea of what I want my group to do for our film opening. I like the idea of "My sisters keeper" the most in having a tragic drama involving a family and then having a terminal illness or a death which tears the family apart. I think when we start planning and creating our film opening we will relate to "My sisters keeper" a lot because we like the storyline and also it is also a very recent tragic drama which has made millions so it is very succesful.
In this lesson we were learning about certification for audiences because it's very important we decide what age certificate our film has.
What's the point ?
This is what the British Film Institution have said. (The reason why we have certification)
- Legal Obligations - To prevent material from breaking the law.
- Protective - Audience may need protecting from items that may cause harm.
- Societal - To consider broader public opinion in mind with regard to language.
BBFC (British board of film classification) - They decide every certification of every film in Britain.
To help me see what age certification my group could have for our film, I have looked at existing tragic drama films and there certificate age.
My Sisters Keeper (2009) - 12A
Beaches (1988) - 12
Time Travellers Wife (2009) - 12A
Ps I Love You (2007) - 12A
Step Mom (1998) - 12
Seven Pounds (2008) - 12A
If Only (2004) - 15
Shawshank Redemption (1994) - 15
Benjamin Button (2008) - 12A
The Green Mile (1999) - 18
The Champ (1979) - PG
A walk to remember (2002) - PG
My Life (1993) - 12
My Girl (1991) - PG
Titanic (1997) - 12
The Notebook (2004) - 12A
The Last Song (2010) - PG
Gone With Wind (1939) - PG
By looking at these existing films I have noticed that most Tragic Drama films have a certificate age of 12, when me and my group create our film we would like it to have a certificate age of 12 this is because most of the films out there are a 12 so we think it would be most suited to what we want to create.
Suitable for 12 years and over
"Exactly the same criteria are used to classify works at ‘12A’ and ‘12’. These categories are awarded where the material is suitable, in general, only for those aged 12 and over. Works classified at these categories may upset children under 12 or contain material which many parents will find unsuitable for them." This is what the BBFC said about age 12 certification.
In this lesson we had to choose the genre for our opening film, my group narrowed the genres down to three, these were tragic drama, psychological thriller and romantic comedy.
The reason we wanted to do a tragic drama is because the storyline is always something realistic but quite sad which we could easily think of a tragic real life story line, also we have all seen a lot of tragic drama films so we know lots about this genre and what kind of scenarios we could of had.
The reason we wanted to do a psychological thriller is because its a very interesting genre, you have to think more about whats going to happen because you want the audience to piece the film together and figure out the storyline, we thought we could come up with a very clever storyline however a disadvantage is that in my group none of us have seen a lot of these films so we wouldn't be an expert on them.
The reason we wanted to do a romantic comedy is because its a very happy feel good film which we would love to do, its fun energetic and humours and we are all and expert on these films in my group. The disadvantage we had with this though is that we didn't think we would be able to make it half romance and half comedy and we would end up focusing on one more than the other.
In the end we have decided to make our opening film genre a tragic drama, this is because there are a number of story lines we could have because there is a variety of different tragic situations in everyday life and also we are all experts on this genre and out of the three we know about tragic drama so this is the genre we have decided to do for our opening.
In today's lesson we learnt about different audience theories, before we make our film opening we need to consider our audience and what our film opening will do to them.
Here are some of the audience theories we learnt. Hypodermic Needle Theory
This is when the audience receive the information from the film without having to think about it (using their brain), the audience can watch a film easily without actually having to work out what is going on. It shows the audience are manipulated and sometimes are influenced by what they received in watching a film, this is why some people shouldn't be exposed to certain films because they will copy what happens in the film (example - Jamie Bulger Case). Uses and Gratifications Theory
This is when the audience can then go on to think about the film and maybe feel connected with whats happened, (example there own experience). This can be split into different sections.
Entertainment - Taking a break from everyday life, sitting down watching a film which is relaxing and enjoyable.
Personal relationships/social interaction - Identification characters (and whats happened to them) and being able to discuss the film with others. ‡
Personal Identity - Where you compare your life to the characters, you relate to what situation they are in or what situation you wish to be in. You either feel alike with that character or really want to be that character and have there life.
Information - To learn about what is going on in the world (educating yourself). Reception TheoryThis is when the audience watch a film, they are given the information but they have to piece together whats happening, they have to find out the plot. This is very different from just enjoying watching a film, you really need to figure out what the storyline is and think about what the resolution is of the film.
After learning about audience theory me and my group went off and needed to find out audience expectations of our film genre (tragic drama), we needed to know what they thought needed to be including in a tragic drama.
My Audience expectation task is on my group blog.
We were set the task to plan some film openings (of any genre) using jelly babies to help us by adding them into each shot.
The reason we were doing this is because it helps us prepare for creating our actual film opening, to make sure its not too complicated as an opening scene doesn't give to much away.
This is the film opening I created, the genre of it was horror, It starts off with a house in the middle of no where in pitch black then it moves along to showing the little baby asleep, the teenager on her computer, and the mum and dad asleep, next we go to a forest which is next to the house which is dark and scary later we then see a man wearing a mask in the forest and lastly we then see the house the next morning in daylight.
By doing this task it has taught me not to over complicate things, you don't want to have to much in your opening because you don't want to give away the whole story line, you want to keep it as a open narrative so there is still things to come. I thought that my opening was a good idea (as a horror with a house out in the open) but I thought mine was too complicated, you just want to set the scene and not add to many things in, your just introducing the film and it's genre.
This was our last hour to film our remakes and we filmed the rest of 50 first dates.
It was quite easy to film there was just a lot of different shots and settings to do, we needed to film in a kitchen, outside, corridor and a salon and we had to have 7 actors. However we used our sixth form kitchen as the kitchen, we filmed outside for outside, we used our school corridor for the corridor and we used a classroom for the salon, we used the same actress in every scene but just changed costume and wigs which worked perfectly and made filming more straight forward because we only had 1 actor.
Out of our three films I think Vertigo was the hardest to film because we had to be very steady with the camera zooming on the face.
I thought Strangers was the easiest as we only had to do 4 shots and it didn't take us long.
I thought 50 first dates was average as it did take the longest to film but that's only because it had the most shots but the shots were simple to do.
We started to film Vertigo and managed to film it all in that hour.
It was much harder to film than I thought it would be, as it was difficult to keep the camera steady on the woman's face and zooming in.
We used our shot list and story board to help us whilst filming and it really did benefit us as it made our group very organised and made filming a lot quicker because we knew exactly what we wanted to do.
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We gave ourselves an hour in our own time to film strangers to make sure we would get the filming done for the deadline, We started filming Strangers which was quite simple and straight forward to do as there was only 4 shots we needed to film, this took us about half an hour so for the remaining hour we started to film 50 first dates so when we came to our final lesson of filming we would of filmed some of 50 first dates already.
In this lesson we got into our groups (who we would be working with for our final film opening coursework), In my group there is me, Yasmin and Paige.
We got show 9 openings altogether, there were 3 comedy, 3 horror and 3 thriller.
Horror - Stangers, Halloween and se7en.
Thriller - Vertigo, The Shining and Memento.
Comedy - 50 first dates, Superbad and Juno.
We then had to choose 3 openings that we would remake (choosing one from each genre).
We choose to do
- 50 first dates (comedy)
- Strangers (Horror)
- Vertigo (Thriller)
We then had to start planning our remakes and had to do a shot list and story board for each.
Paige did the story board and shot list for Vertigo.
Yas did the story board and shot list for 50 first dates.
I did the story board and shot list for Strangers.
We needed to research more into narrative because it is very important considering a film.
Narrative is the organisation given to a series of facts which are linked, a story is a way its substance however a narrative is how it's shown.
There are two types of Narrative - Open & Closed.
An open Narrative never has an ending and is ongoing, this applies to mostly TV Soaps and Dramas, with a open Narrative you can change the situation, add in new characters (example East enders).
A closed Narrative applies to mostly all films; it has a clear beginning, middle and end.
"Narrative keeps the action going" - Vladimir Propp.
Narrative Theories
Vladimir Propp. He has come up with 8 characters that can be applied to a film.
The hero
The villain
The dispatcher
The helper
The princess
The father
The donor
The false hero
This can be applied to the film "Shrek", the hero is Shrek, the villain is Lord Farquaad, The dispatcher is also Lord Farquaad, The helper is Donkey, The Princess is Fiona, Her father is the king, the donor is Puss in Boots and the false hero is again Lord Farquaad.
Todorov
Todorov came up with the 5 stages.
A state of equilibrium at the outset
A disruption of the equilibrium
A recgonisation that there has been a disruption
An attempt to repair the disruption
A reinstatement of equilibrium
An example of this could be spy kids, you first see them as a happy family (Stage one), then a problem occurs that the Mum and Dad have to solve (Stage 2), The kids then find out what’s going on and that there Mum and Dad are spies (Stage 3), They all work together to defeat the disruption (Stage 4), Everything then goes back to normal and a happy ending (Stage 5).
Linear Narrative
A-B (Film doesn't stop still problem is solved.
Fractured Narrative
When the story jumps back and forth and the viewer has to put the pieces together to figure out what’s going on.
