ALL - Coursework idea

The coursework idea that i will be working on is going to be a zombie film like films such as "Dawn of the Dead" and "Night of the Living Dead" These will help us get ideas for our film, we are going to be doing a serious zombie escape film, with the protagonist being Jack Hanson, a local well established actor. The Zombie will be a challenging genre to do, as the gore scenes will be hard to make effective.


The opening two minutes of this film will be of Leading actor, Jack Hanson at the present time, trying to stop zombies from breaking his barricade there is then a close up of his eye, this then triggers a flashback, the flashback includes before the infection and then to his family eventually getting killed by zombies, during the flashback there will be a non-diegetic sound of a radio news bulletin explaining the outbreak in zombie infection, after the flashbacks it then reverts back to the present day, as this drives him on to fight off the zombies, which starts the film off with his drive to stop the zombie infection.

PRELIM: sweded film

'Sweding' is the term for recreating (typically in a humorous way) movies in a low-tech, zero-budget fashion, and that is what you are going to attempt to research, plan, shoot and edit for the lessons on Wednesday December 8th.I will be pitching my own idea for a swede to the class in Monday's (Nov 29th) lesson, with Tuesday and Wednesday to plan and shoot (i will be shooting over Thursday/Friday/weekend if need be), and the lessons on Monday and Tuesday next week to upload and edit.


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.


Match on action - either an action commenced in shot A is completed in shot B, or an action in shot A is mirrored by an action in shot B, for example when we cut from character A in location A reading a letter to character B in location B reading the same letter.


Shot/reverse shot - After an establishing shot, the shot-reverse shot refers to the close-ups used when two characters are in conversation. (Because we have already used an establishing shot, we now know where the characters are in relation to one another.)


180-degree rule - The 180° rule is a basic guideline in film making that states that two characters (or other elements) in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line.

Rom Com Opening : Love Actually

Film: Love Actually (Richard Curtis,2003)
Budget: £30,000,000
Box Office Takings: $59,365,105(US) £36,238,777(UK)
IMDB Rating: 7.9/10

Production Companies:

Universal
Studio Canal
Working Title

Deconstruction: (Opening : 2:00)

Emotional scenes, with emotive music - non-diegetic
Music is long string notes, the music starts before anything appears on the screen, which brings out narrative enigma.
Voice over from one of the main characters (Hugh Grant)
No Diegetic sound
Colour exposure signifying fantasy/dream world.
Slow motion montage of reunions.
White text signifies seriousness, turns to red, shows love.
The words "love actually" appears on screen then this disappears just to say "Love"
Sans Serif font, gives anchorage that it is a light hearted rom com.
More romantic than comedy

Lessons learnt from Micro Drama

From the Micro Drama that we created i have learnt:

• That you should always have your call sheet with you at all times.
• To always have lots of coverage and you can never take too many shots.
• Always know the plot inside out.
• Use Cut shots to keep the audience interested.
• When planning your Micro Drama always know the plot so you do not end up changing it during the filming.
• Make sure you don't record in bad conditions, can damage the footage and make the sound unrecognizable.
• Don't use inappropriate language
• I have experienced the iMovie film software where i have used everything from sounds to editing in my work

My 5 Favourite Films

My 5 Favourite Films consist of:

The Hangover (Todd Phillips, 2009) - IMDB   
Budget - $35,000,000
Gross- $311,000,000 (UK+USA)
I love this film because its absolutely hilarious and is smart in the way it uses comedy to make the audience laugh as much as possible. It also does in some way relate to real life situations, making it more realistic.


The Trailer:

ShawShank Redemption (Frank Darabont, 1994) - IMDB
Budget - $25,000,000
Gross - $30,000,000 (UK+USA)
This is in one of my top 5 because it is purely an amazing film. It is one of the best films i have seen because of its classic story and realism. As it has everything from violence, sadness and happiness.

The Trailer:


The Matrix (The Wachowski bros. , 1999) - IMDB 
Budget - $63,000,000
Gross - $200,000,000 (UK+USA)
I love this film because the plot is simply the best thing about it as it is simply an amazing story. Which is obviously not real but it makes you think and question the world we're in.

The Trailer:



American Pie (The Weitz bros. , 1999) - IMDB
Budget - $11,000,000
Gross - $115,000,000 (UK+USA) 
I've loved this film from the first one to the latest one. They are all just hilarious and all keep you wanting to watch.

The Trailer:


Donkey Punch (Oliver Blackburn, 2008) -
IMDB
Budget - £3,000,000
Gross - £305,000 (UK+USA)
This is one of the only slasher films i have really liked, as it has a gripping plot and really caught my eye as it seemed to be really realistic to me.

The Trailer:

My Coursework Task

THE BRIEF

Your mission is to carry out the following brief:

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.

The coursework is worth 50% of the AS (same at A2) and the marking (detailed later) is divided into 3 sections:

RESEARCH AND PLANNING: 20%

PRODUCTION: 60%

EVALUATION: 20%

EVALUATION

Even before i start shooting (let alone planning) my production, i will need to keep this final stage in mind. If i start (b)logging notes on this now it will save me a lot of stress as the final deadline (in May!) approaches. I am tasked with answering these questions (see below for details on how this is marked):

• In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?  

• How does your media product represent particular social groups?

• What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? 

• Who would be the audience for your media product? 

• How did you attract/address your audience? 

• What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? 

• Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

HOW ITS ALL MARKED [ie THE ASSESSMENT CRITERIA]

Below is a grid on the mark scheme criteria, I will read this every once in a while to refresh my memory.
For each section there are key components of the work which are assessed as being one of the following:

MINIMAL
BASIC
PROFICIENT

EXCELLENT

G321 - Simplified Marking Criteria as 1 Sheet