Cinematography
Regarding continuity, we studied many other films to look for continuity errors and how to avoid them or correct them. Here, in Insidious, a male is sat downstairs with his shirt undone and a T shirt underneath. Then he’s seen running up stairs with his shirt fastened and a tie. This often occurs when a scene is being filmed over a period of days. To avoid this happening, we saved screen shots of our attire and wore the same clothes with the same hair/makeup on another day of filming.
Regarding continuity, we studied many other films to look for continuity errors and how to avoid them or correct them. Here, in Insidious, a male is sat downstairs with his shirt undone and a T shirt underneath. Then he’s seen running up stairs with his shirt fastened and a tie. This often occurs when a scene is being filmed over a period of days. To avoid this happening, we saved screen shots of our attire and wore the same clothes with the same hair/makeup on another day of filming.
These
scenes were filmed on different days
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMHjWiMqgQs
We used a variety of continuity techniques to help break up the film slightly and make it more visually interesting such as match on action, shot reverse shot, 180 degree line and eyeline match.
Firstly, we used a lot of match on action throughout the film to make the film smoother and easy to watch. Here are a few examples of our match on actions:
For conversations between characters, we used the 180 degrees rule and shot reverse shot to show each character's reactions from the other's perspective and view towards them. To achieve a successfully effective shot-reverse-shot, you must abide by the 180 degree rule, whereby the camera must be over one character's left shoulder and the other's right, otherwise viewing becomes uncomfortable and the location and perspective becomes confusing and the audience wouldn't know where to look. Here are some examples of shot-reverse-shot whilst maintaining then 180 degree rule:
However in one scene, we had to break the 180 degree rule in the bedroom scene between the mother and Ella. The reason being because due to the limited space within the room it was physically impossible to obtain the 180 degree rule. However because the room was small and you could see the majority of the room from most angles, it wasn't hard to watch and wasn't as noticeable as it would have been in a larger environment with many different features:
Mise en sene
Regarding mise-en-scene, this was an easy process mainly due to our foundation genre being a modern fairy tale of Cinderella. Our Cinderella charatcer was the obivously named "Ella". In the traditional Cinderella story, she's covered in ash and wears old, torn clothes. However with it being a modern version of the story, people who dress like that now are depicted as a totally different charatcer, such as homeless people or tramps. Therefore we dressed Ella in an old hooded jumper with plain leggins. She has no makeup on and does nothing with her hair. As Ella, like Cinderella, is meant to be depicted as intelligent and responsible and more interested in working that scoialising, we made her look like she wanted to make a slight effort with the modern leggins and jewellery probably given to her by family, but lacked enough motivation to attempt to fit in. properly with trendy clothes and hair styles as well as makeup. We chose to give her a blue jumper as blue represents sadness and emotion. At the end of the film, she is still wearing a jumper but a coral pink one, which is a lively, happy and bright colour to reflect her new found confidence.
Chez is the villain in our story. Today amongst youths, the largest icon for hate and dislike are chavs, as they are commonly associated with vandalism, violence and verbal abuse and are disliked by most teenagers. Since the film is an urban thriller surrounding teenage society, we thought that making our villain a chav would me the most appropriate. We looked at what chavs typically look like, such as Devvo, who is a famous chav character on youtube. He typically wears addidas jumpers with a cheap T shirt underneath and either cinos or trackie bottoms. We also looked at how Devvo spoke, normally with taboo language whilst mumbling and not pronouncing words correctly, which we used to inspire our own "chav". Chavs are also depicted as being violent and are infamous for carrying knives and are associated with knife crime, which is why Chez is seen with a knife in his pocket ready to stab Seth as his weapon of choice. We purposely chose to give him a green jacket as green represents jealousy, which is Chez's motive for his actions (he is jealous of Seth's relationship with Ella who is his love interest).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RBelz8BgX0
Our chav
Devvo, a famous chav
We used a variety of continuity techniques to help break up the film slightly and make it more visually interesting such as match on action, shot reverse shot, 180 degree line and eyeline match.
Firstly, we used a lot of match on action throughout the film to make the film smoother and easy to watch. Here are a few examples of our match on actions:
However in one scene, we had to break the 180 degree rule in the bedroom scene between the mother and Ella. The reason being because due to the limited space within the room it was physically impossible to obtain the 180 degree rule. However because the room was small and you could see the majority of the room from most angles, it wasn't hard to watch and wasn't as noticeable as it would have been in a larger environment with many different features:
Mise en sene
Regarding mise-en-scene, this was an easy process mainly due to our foundation genre being a modern fairy tale of Cinderella. Our Cinderella charatcer was the obivously named "Ella". In the traditional Cinderella story, she's covered in ash and wears old, torn clothes. However with it being a modern version of the story, people who dress like that now are depicted as a totally different charatcer, such as homeless people or tramps. Therefore we dressed Ella in an old hooded jumper with plain leggins. She has no makeup on and does nothing with her hair. As Ella, like Cinderella, is meant to be depicted as intelligent and responsible and more interested in working that scoialising, we made her look like she wanted to make a slight effort with the modern leggins and jewellery probably given to her by family, but lacked enough motivation to attempt to fit in. properly with trendy clothes and hair styles as well as makeup. We chose to give her a blue jumper as blue represents sadness and emotion. At the end of the film, she is still wearing a jumper but a coral pink one, which is a lively, happy and bright colour to reflect her new found confidence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RBelz8BgX0
Our chav
Devvo, a famous chav
Next, we have Jessie and James. These are the bullies and the "evil step sisters" characters of the film who in the original story were shallow and only judged and cared about appearances and social status. Not only do we illustrate this through the script, but the characters are both wearing trendy, expensive and in-fashion clothes that are in date with today's teenagers including leather jackets (which are depicted as being expensive) but they are also black, to reflect the character's personalities and to show the audience that they are clearly antagonists. Jessie's dark, smokey makeup also helps represent this.
Lastly, we have Seth. Modern clothing amongst teens today is the "mosher" look with leather jackets, jeans and band T-shirts. People who wear this attire are normally pleasant and sociable and we wanted to make it seem at the beginning that any chance of Seth being interested in Ella would be hopeless to establish more shock at the end. Therefore we wanted him to look the opposite of Ella: fashionable, trendy and sociable.
The genre of our film was a modern
fairytale. Obviously for it to be modern, we have altered typical aspects to
make it appeal to our target audience, which is from 12 to 35 years of age, but
kept some traditional aspects to make it quirky and memorable, such as cliché
language and situations such as the villain fighting with the hero over a
woman.
Our film’s target market is men and
women aged between 15 and 30 as there is strong language as well as bloody
violence. The language was deliberate; typical fairytales are typically clichéd
and innocent, as they are not only intended for children, but are meant to
communicate some spiritual morals into the audience. Our storyline and
characters are similar to that of Cinderella, but to achieve our desired
reactions of surprise and shock from the audience, we used strong and modern
language amongst 15 to 30 year olds today. Our director influence was Quentin
Tarrantino who takes historic or older genres and makes them modern through
means of language, effects, non-diegetic music and titles. This technique is used
by Tarantino. The strong, unusual language seems misplaced in the film; however
should the situations in our film occur in real life, this sort of taboo
language would be used, which makes the film seem more realistic and believable
as well as shocking. Inspiration for this aspect comes from Inglourious
Basterds and Kill Bill in the following sequences:
In the Kill Bill scene, Beatrix is
seeking revenge on the woman in the door, a former assassin, who betrayed her.
During this scene, they call each other “bitch”. This is a very common, taboo
word and, again, wouldn’t be typically used in a dramatic scene such as this as
most directors would fill it more with emotion and depth with poetic dialect.
However, in a fight between two women with a bad past between each other in
reality, it would be the type of language used.
In Inglourious Basterds, the spies’ covers
have been blown by a Nazi officer
but is being held at gun-point by one of the
German spies. Typically, this
would be a dramatic, nail-biting scene, which
it is, up until the point where
Stiglitz says “say Auf Wiedersehen to your Nazi balls” This is not only
unexpected, but creates black humour which
will be memorable to the
audience. However, they are sat at a table
and are aiming their guns at each other discretely; the only effective place to
aim is at the genitals, thus being a realistic situation. Again, although not
expected in a typical war film, it would probably
be the sort of thing a Nazi-hating German
would say to a Nazi. This is a good
way of producing a shock factor whilst
maintaining realism.
Lastly, regarding editing, we used a
technique called Paralell editing used by Jonathon Demme in Silence of the
Lambs whereby the FBI are knocking on what appears to be Buffalo Bill’s front
door and when Buffalo Bill goes to open it, Clarice is there, and it turns out
the FBI have gone to the wrong house. This is to create shock and suspension.
We do it with Chez looking at his phone cross
cutting with a fair of feet in a solarized effect. I did this so that not only
would the audience not know who it was, but to foreshadow danger which would
include a knife, Chez and another character. The solarize was to symbolize that
we would have no inclination as to who this unfortunate would be, as is
revealed later as Seth and Chez fight, you assume it would be Seth, when in
fact it was Ella who got stabbed with the knife.
Back to Tarantino, we have used inspiration
from the use of titles. We gave Chez a title to indicate his importance and
foreshadow his influence on the film’s events. Tarantino uses this technique in
Inglourious Basterds and Kill Bill. We used the font and nick-name from Kill
Bill where Tarantino introduces Elle, who is a future antagonist and plays a
similar role, influence wise, as Chez. The music, however, I have used from
Inglourious Basterds’ Hugo Stiglitz’s introduction. The strong, electric guitar
sounds powerful, and is used to make Stiglitz seem powerful. Lastly, with
inspiration from the Stiglitz clip, we filmed it so you do not see Chez’s face
until he is at a close up over Ella’s shoulder which is at the same time of his
“introduction”. This is also to make him seem powerful and mysterious. Although
Chez isn’t physically powerful, he has full control over the situations
throughout the movie through his actions and thinking. Whilst on the subject of
music, when the title “The Last Shards” appears, also in the style of Tarantino
in “times new roman” to match Chez’s title, this is during the bullying scene.
The music is in a minor chord, which is associated with sadness. It is also in the
style of disco/rock type of music. This is also used in Tarantino’s Kill Bill
scene where The Bride is fighting O-Ren during a samurai sword fight. The music
is similar to represent old, Japanese martial art video game music but it also
makes the audience focus more on the elegance and power beheld by the two
fighters rather than the emotions purged into it; we wanted to have the same
effect. The music we used, however, was more modern sounding to represent youth
culture, of which music is a big part of.
An effect idea we did entirely on our own was
Ella’s death scene where there is a colour de-saturation and an echo. When
people die, their senses deteriorate gradually one at a time. Hearing is the
last to stop working which is why when the scene goes black you can faintly
hear James calling an ambulance. We also shot this from Ella’s point of view to
make it more realistic and for a variety of cinematography. When the camera was
facing Ella, we kept the de-saturation to show her being more pale and dying
more effectively. Lastly, we made some fake blood using a recipe from a youtube
video using edible ingredients. We decided to make our own edible blood because
when people get stabbed in the stomach, they start regurgitating blood,
therefore to make it seem more realistic and serious, we decided to have blood
coming from Ella’s mouth, thus having edible blood was a necessity.
Another Tarantino inspired shot is when James
drops his can onto the floor when he sees Ella wounded, whilst Ella is brushing her teeth as it zooms in on the tooth paste and when Chez accidently
picks up a banana instead of a knife and throws it down. This is to just cut
the scene up a bit and add a small amount of humour. It is also very weird and
makes the audience wonder why the camera has specifically shot that. Tarantino
does it in Inglourious Bastards. Here, he unnecessarily has an extreme close-up
on the cream being dished and put onto the pudding.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5z1y2jOofQ
Lastly, with our film being a modern fairy tale, we have tried to make that apparent through our characters; the heroin is a young, bright girl with hand-me-downs, put down by two of her peers, has a love interest and a fairy god mother character who boosts her confidence. However, taken from Tarantino styles, we have an unexpected ending where instead of living happily together after admitting feelings, the heroin is killed. The film’s main slogan “Get busy living or get busy dying” is not only our message and moral, but we’ve taken it from the film The Shawshank Redemption, a classic thriller. We did this because we didn’t want the film to be too much of a comedy/parody and wanted it to be taken seriously slightly to get our message across to the audience which is intended to be socially educational as well as morally. Regarding the theory of Utopian Solutions, this film would appeal to people who feel empathy towards Ella. This film contains knowledge, empathy or modern teenagers, community and romance; these aspects are what common teenage lives revolve around as they grow and discover more adult aspects of life which are new to them. Watching our film would satisfy a teenager’s needs and curiosity about such things and would put into perspective/or confirm the reality of teenage life. In comparison with our studies, most people who would watch and rate our film are people aged between 13-21 year old students.
Lastly, with our film being a modern fairy tale, we have tried to make that apparent through our characters; the heroin is a young, bright girl with hand-me-downs, put down by two of her peers, has a love interest and a fairy god mother character who boosts her confidence. However, taken from Tarantino styles, we have an unexpected ending where instead of living happily together after admitting feelings, the heroin is killed. The film’s main slogan “Get busy living or get busy dying” is not only our message and moral, but we’ve taken it from the film The Shawshank Redemption, a classic thriller. We did this because we didn’t want the film to be too much of a comedy/parody and wanted it to be taken seriously slightly to get our message across to the audience which is intended to be socially educational as well as morally. Regarding the theory of Utopian Solutions, this film would appeal to people who feel empathy towards Ella. This film contains knowledge, empathy or modern teenagers, community and romance; these aspects are what common teenage lives revolve around as they grow and discover more adult aspects of life which are new to them. Watching our film would satisfy a teenager’s needs and curiosity about such things and would put into perspective/or confirm the reality of teenage life. In comparison with our studies, most people who would watch and rate our film are people aged between 13-21 year old students.
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