Location - The Old Mans House

The location for our protagonists house was originally George's house, as it is near to the school, for ease when shooting. However we soon came to realise that the house, although old was filled with lots of modern technology that someone from the older generation wouldn't stereo-typically have. To overcome this we researched various care home instead. However we thought that it would take to long to get into contact with them and would be inconvenient for shooting within school hours, and if we needed to reshoot at short notice for any reason.

To overcome this we decided that instead of the care home we looked at other houses belonging to the older generation (grandparents) of our group members. The decision we made was that our group would film in George's grandparent's living room and guest room and change the setting of our scene so that our character would go downstairs, as the guest room didn't fill all of our requirements for the second half of the scene.

The reason we chose this location is because it's a genuine elderly persons home, which keeps up the realism and verisimilitude. Allowing the film opening to become more real and believable for the audience.

Credit to George Turner

What is Copyright and Why is is Important?

Copyright is a legal right made by the government as part of the law to the country. It benefits the creator of any original work with exclusive rights in which that they have the control over the work by use and distribution with all intentions of enabling the creator of whatever work is specified for normally a limited amount of time. It is property ownership in intellectual form applicable to any sort of original work. It is most seen to be used within multiple authors which each of them hold set of rights to use or license the work in which ever they wish to do so, these people are use referred to as the "rightholders". The rights in which they have access to is repoduction, distribution, public performance and moral rights such as attribution.

Credit to Katy Ward

Things To Buy

• Top half of soldier costume :)
• Gun prop :)
• Bucket :)
• Spray Paint :)
• Sack :)
• Fish wire :)

:) = bought 

BFI Film Academy

I have another blog, one documenting my time at Pinewood film studios as part of the BFI film academy. I have to run this blog as part of my NCFE Level 2 Award in Preparing to Work in the Film Industry. I thought I would link it as it has help me greatly in the development of our war thriller opening.

http://mariellasbfiacademy2015.blogspot.co.uk/

Searching For Props!

After talking to Mr. Ford about our props the other day we decided to see what school resources we could use in our short film. The first prop in which we decided to search for was the wheel chair, therefore we went to the medical room and asked the nurse if it would be possible for us to borrow the schools one. She agree to let us borrow it, as long as she knows where we are with the wheelchair,  in the case of an emergency and she needs it back immediately. Due to the wheelchair being a success we moved to our next prop of the World War II helmet which we decided we would search for up in the art department. We went into the cupboard where all the ornaments are kept and asked The art technician if it was okay for us to borrow the helmet which she responded to agree as well as we saw an old fashioned bucket with she also allowed us to take when needed. However as the hat had minor adjustments made to it by other student we then asked if it was okay to fix the helmet back to how it was for this we had to ask for an art teachers permission so we asked Miss Crow Stewart who was more than happy for us to reconstruct it back to how it was. Therefore I then mixed up some paint until it nearly matched the colour it was and painted over the top of what was already on the helmet, we took some pictures in the process and this was our outcome. 

Credit to Katy Ward

Names For Our Opening

Brainstorm of Initial Ideas

• Jitter
• Backdrop
• Backstory
• Flashback
• Internal war
• Lost Identity
• Front Flash
• Front Lines
• Mind Stuck
• FLAWED
• A War On Two Fronts
• Internal war
• Paranormal Past
• D.S.T.P.
• Dead Or Alive
• It Never Ends
• Inpost
• Superstitious Past
• Figment Of A Disillusion
• Was It Just A Mirage
• Conception Of The Mind
• System Of The Corrupted
• Figment Of The Past
• Misleading Mirage

These are the names we have created for what we wanted our film to be called. As of yet we haven't decided on a name but I have highlighted our favourite names. These names either are ones we like or ones that we like the concept of. When creating names we wanted it to link to both the physical war that our protagonist experienced and the psychological war inside him.

First Actor Profile

Name: Fraser Camp
Age: 16
Occupation: A level Drama Student
Previous Experience: School Productions





We have chosen our friend Fraser to be our actor in our film opening. He will have to play the parts of both the old and young man. We chose him because he has acting experience and his friendship with members in our production team. The reason behind our choice in Frazer being in our actor for our film is for the reason in which that he has experience within drama, therefore acting due to him starring in many past school productions as well as drama exams. The role in which we have set him for our movie-tailed is having him to play both the part of the older man and younger man, so that both our persona's will look the same as they should be and not have too much differences. As well as it would be hard to schedule with two actors as they both may not be able to have the same free time as one another, therefore we have more reliability than hiring an old man. This then leads onto why we chose him specifically as we chose him for his bone structure as odd as it may seem we can imagine our actor as an older character such as our persona. This was highly important to us as we need to sell the illusion of him being an older character to the audience, that he was older within the modern world and a younger persona within the time our war is set- World War II. To show that our actor had the potential to be an older character as well as a younger persona, we made him face the sun so that he would squint therefore making him to seem older than he is. As a group we are highly pleased with our actor and are confident that he will pull the role off perfectly.

Typography Practice

As George is main editor in the group he felt that it was important to practice his typography before we had even shot the film so that he could develop his understanding and skill on it. The reason for this is because he want to be able to achieve what ever effect we desired without wasting time learning to edit it. In this final title screen he felt that for a first attempt this was not to bad because it went in time with the non diegetic soundtrack and came in and out without any jump cuts or bad editing. However we think he could've used a variety of texts to make certain words stand out.

To make this he was going to use after effects but the software crashed so instead he used final cut's built in motion software. 
Firstly he cut out the actor on photoshop using a freeze frame from the video.

Then he had to get a text. He spent a time looking through texts because we wanted one that looked right and fitted the tone of the film. Before he chose the text he used I tried western fonts because we thought this title screen could be similar to 'The good the bad and the ugly' because of the use of red. However he decided to go down another root and looked at more modern texts.

To add some depth he used a grunge background to have the freeze frame on. Another thing he added was the smoke. He snatched this from an earlier film poster, which was made for this film.The text had to be made to interact with each other, which took a long time because he had to use lots of key frames. 

Credit to George Turner

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Research

The reason in which we decided into researching Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is for the reason that our persona will be suffering from it. Therefore we did not want to start filming or make assumptions on how they would act without even going into any research. 
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or a shorter term PTSD is an anxiety disorder that is caused due to stressful, frightening or distressing events which have happened within someones past. Events that can lead to a disorder such as this are: 

• Road Accidents.
• Violent, sudden personal assaults such as sexual abuse, mugging or a robbery.
• Consistant sexual abuse, violence or severe neglect.
• Witnessing murders / deaths.
• Military combat.
• Being held hostage.
• Witnessing terrorist attacks such as 911.
• Natural disasters such as earthquakes or tsunamis.

It can be developed immediately after an experiencing an event of such as the above or it can occur weeks, months or years after the event. It develops in about 1 out of 3 people who experience severe trauma which can not be explained why some people experience it and some people can go without it.
People with PTSD their brain has parts involved in emotional processing appear different in brain scans. One part of the brain is responsible for the memory and emotions that us as humans consume which is known as hippocampus. People with PTSD their hippocampus appears smaller in size. It is thought to be that the changes in this part of the brain can be related to fear and anxiety, memory problems and flashbacks. If the hippocampus malfunctions i may prevent flashbacks and nightmares from being properly processed, therefore the anxiety they begin to generate does not reduce over any time period. Treatment of PTSD results in processing their memories so that over time the flashbacks and nightmares will eventually and gradually disappear.

Credit To Katy Ward

Shot List For Our Opening

Scene 1
1. extreme close up- shifty eyes
2. medium shot, movement shot - young soldier running
3. medium shot, low angle, still - young soldier running
4. wide angle shot, still- soldier jumping down
5. close up, still - young soldier's face on the ground
Scene 2
6. close up, still, match on action ^ - old mans face
7. wide shot, still/ dolly movement - old man sits up
8. extreme close up, still - water rushing out of a tap
9. extreme close up, still, match on action ^ - water rushing out of an old hose pipe
10. mid shot, still - pipe pouring water in to a rusted bucket
11. close up, high angle, still - old man splashes his face with water
12. close up, still, - [i have no idea whats going on in this shot]
13. close up, still, camera faces vertically upwards, match on action ^ -  young mans face shoved and held in water. N/B camera will need to be in the water
14. close up, still - old mans hand gripping the basin
Scene 3
15. wide shot, dolly movement/still - old man walking his dog
16. medium shot, pan up - old man looks up (camera follows his gaze)
17. medium shot, pan down, match on action ^ - young man looks down (camera follows his gaze)
18. close up, still - barrel of gun, being shot, mussel flash
19. close up, tracking movement, match on action ^- lit match to a candle/ light bulb
Scene 4
20. medium shot, still - old man lights a candle out of shot (if light bulb this shot is not nessesary)
21. medium close up, over shoulder, dolly forward movement - old man looks out of the window
22. close up, still - old man's face curios/ knows somethings wrong
23. wide shot, still - though window you see the house opposite explode
24. mid shot, still - flashes between young and old man being horrified and scared
24. mid shot, still  - flashes between old and young man being horrified and scared
25. mid shot, tracking movement - young man stumbles backwards
26. wide shot, still - back to house, now in smoke and still aflame
27. mid shot, still - old man falls into wheel chair
28. extreme close up, still - belts wrap around the old mans hands and hold him there, struggeling
29. mid shot, low angel tilt, still/ movement - young man in wheel chair freaking out
Scene 5
30. close up, still - belt strap becomes hand of carer
31. wide shot, tracking movement, over the shoulder - over young solider shoulder shows old man with a carer and another person
32. mid shot, still - young solider looking worried, watching
33. wide shot, still, over the shoulder - young soldier moves out of shot, old man's eyes following
34. wide shot, dolly movement (out) -  slowly moving out, young solider walks half into shot and places his hand on the old mans shoulder. "child, its time I told you my story" : old man.
35. Cut to black. Name of film appears, then fades out.


N/B every shot that is of the young man will be shot handheld, and every shot of the old man will be shot on tripod. This is so the audience are part of the young man's battle, therefore they will empathize with him more.

35 shots
5 scenes
2.5 ish mins
150 ish seconds

Animatic Of Our War Opening

We made an animatic showing all the shots within our film. This allowed us to see if our idea actually fitted the marks scheme for example the dedicated time limit. However the time that this animatic is actually is shorter than what we originally wanted. This was due to some of the shots being shorter than original idea because of no dialogue or sound leaving it the animatic with an exsrtention of silence.

The Challenges We Face While Creating Our Opening

Within the making of this film we are going to encounter a lot of problems along the way. One of the best ways we believe to tackle those problems is looking at them early on, this is why we have listed some of our initial problems with the film.
The first problem is a big one... actors. Although we only have about four characters but one splits into a possible two roles their age is a problem. The reason for this is our main protagonist is considerably older than any of the students or teachers at Chalfonts. The reason is because we want someone this age is because they have to look like a World War Two veteran. This is going to be very hard to find someone that age willing to act for free.
Our initial thoughts on this problem was to use grandparents from our families to act in it but this film is going to take up a lot of they're time so we decided that we needed a back up plan. A way around this is using the young actor as the older man as well by using makeup or a mask.
Another problem is to do with location such as the retirement home and the battlefield because these locations are specific and require a lot of aspects that have to be right. The battlefield for example can't have anything modern on  it within the shot because this would take the audience out of the time zone therefore ruining the film. To avoid this we made sure that the war scenes were medium or close up shots so that not much of the background is seen. Another option is to have the flashbacks take place in a kind of cross over time zone where the young character is back in World War Two but this takes place in the current year. This would avoid the problem of the background however we don't believe this would be as gripping as the first idea.
Lastly the visual effects, this isn't as much of a problem as the other two because George has some experience and thinks he can learn how to do them effectively. However we think it would be important to have some test shots for the visual effects and transitions because then we will have practised and have confidence in what we are doing.

Credit To George Turner

How we intend to use Typography

In our opening sequence we have to include certain texts providing information about the people involved within the making of the film. We have started looking at some examples of opening title sequences before but now we believe that it is more important to narrow down the research to the ones that the whole group like. This is important because we origianlly wanted the text to be apart of the opening therefore we have to now look at our storyboard and decide on when and how our text appears on screen.

Our initial thoughts as a group were to have two different fonts which behaved differently depending on the scene they were in. For example in the scenes with the older protagonist we decided that it wouldn't work to have the 'jittery' text because these scenes are slower and sadder due to the character being overwhelmed with the flashback. In addition the 'jitteryness' wouldn't reflect the loneliness and shock the character is experiencing in these scene and would feel out of place therefore leading to the opening not working as a hole. 

Another option was to keep the titles in just one part, for example just the jittery part of the opening. However this may cause the text to become repetitive and meaningless, because the audience may overlook it. This is why we believe we should and use different fonts that behave differently. 

Examples of openings we liked included: 

• Batman TV series 

• Batman Dark Knight Rises

• Dr. No (James Bond)

• Dexter

• Vertigo 

Credit to George Turner