Age Certificates and WW2 Films

The first film that Katy found doing this research was 'Age of Heroes' which is a true story based on the formation of Ian Fleming's 30 commando unit, a precursor for the elite forces within the U.K. and was released in 2011 at the running time of 90 minutes long. The age certificate on this film was a 15, meaning that there would be some references to stronger language, violent scenes; which are expected within a war film or mild sexual references.

The second film she found was 'Inglourious Basterds' which was based on Nazi occupied France during WW2, with the plan to assassinate Nazi leaders in a group of Jewish U.S soldiers. This filmed was given the age certificate of 18, This means that this film would involve high violent scenes which would most likely be extremely graphic which could scare younger viewers, as well as strong language would more than likely be used.

Credit to Katy Ward

Thriller Opening Planning Lists

Costumes Needed

• WW2 Private - male
• NHS modern day Carer - male / female 
• Modern day normal clothes - elderly gentleman
• Bomber Jacket - male/ female (For background symbolism)

Locations

• Care home- including: bedroom, bathroom, living area
• flat field 

Props

• wheel chair
• WW2 gun
• dog/ dog lead
• 
  

VFX

• Gunshot noise
• Plane overhead
• explosions and dust- just in distance
• house exploded
• juttery static movement between flashbacks and normal life 

Basic Story For Thriller Opening

The main protagonist is going to be an old veteran who has war flashbacks while going about his everyday life.
The first flashback is going to be someone knocking on his door to wake him up, but he hears a gunshot.
The second is when he is washing his face and flashbacks to when his younger self is getting water torcher by drowning.
The third is when he is walking his dog on a field and he flashbacks to him running through  no mans land with his gun and explosions and planes.
The forth is when he's looking at a house on his walk back and someone turns a light on. He sees a flashback of a house exploding and goes to shield his face, before realising that he is in the present day and is safe.
The fifth and final flashback is when someone is helping him into a wheel chair, but he flashbacks and thinks that hes being shoved and restrained in the chair.
As the flashbacks go on he starts to blur the past with the present and doesn't know what it real, and what is memory. Also throughout the opening, not only does he go through the day but he ages a great deal as well. we are trying to get across that he has a very repetive life after the war and the experiences still take years of his life away, despite the actual experiences being over. The person who was helping him into the wheelchair comes round the front and sits in front of him. "Son", he says, *dramatic cut to black*, "Its time to tell you a story". This sets up the rest of the film, and lets the audience know what they are getting into.

Test Shots - 180 Degree Rule

This is the first take of our short video for the 180 degree rule. The reason we as a group would like to re-shoot is because while George was editing this video he noticed a couple of errors. The actual plot is missing a chunk of content, it lacks any sense of story or narrative, because the filming was rushed. Another point is the continuity errors with the hand that Katy uses to be a gun. This is an issue because the hand changes making the story even harder to follow. To improve this we want to follow the storyboard more closely because then it would avoid Katy switching hands. Furthermore I want to have a small fight and use my camera with an X-grip to stabilize the camera while it tracks the action because the last shot was terribly shaky. Overall it was a good first attempt, and gave us a good idea of what to improve on and sufficed as a video of test shots, however I really want to improve on it drastically because I know we can do better.

Moral Panic

Moral Panic is where the media creates and publicizes an issue that appears to threaten the social order within society. They can be seen as controversies that can lead to arguments and social tension. The Media usually makes these in order to distract the public from a bigger problem that is going on within society.

Rule Of Thirds

The rule of thirds is a concept in photography and film, in which the frame is divided into 9 imaginary sections. The Points of interest should fall on the crosses, or on the grid lines, either one third or two thirds up the frame horizontally, or across vertically, compared to being positioned in the center of the frame. 

This technique is used throughout film and photography and helps divide the frame up into a more interesting composition.

The examples below are from animated film "The Incedibles"

Costumes Ideas and Resherch

Katy was given the role to research and look into costume ideas that are used within war-time thrillers, then to show examples of them so that there would be a visual guidance to as what costumes should be worn within our project.

The first thing that she found when researching costumes was a girl aged around 5 years old wearing what a typical evacuee would wear once they had been sent off; which included the name tag they would have worn so that when they reached their destination it was easy to locate them to their right carer as well as a cardboard box as a bag which represents that the working class did not have much money and as the government started to downfall so did the whole country with money, which is why they produced ration cards-which should be part of this outfit or maybe just an adults one- so that people could only buy a selected amount so that they country would not run out. As well as the hat which was the typical hat worn around the 1920-1940's as it was the fashion.

The next outfit she found was a youngish women who was wearing the outfit of what the most well known propaganda sign 'we can do it' wore; a bandana with a working jump suit. The use of the woman tensing her muscles opposed to the stereotypical woman before the war started as they were seen to be in the domestic part of society and men were supposedly part of the political part, therefore having propaganda convincing woman to work within the time period it was set shows the countries desperation to help build itself back up.

The next outfit she found was the male persona of a private man of war he was wearing neutral colours such as beige, yellowy brown and light green, colours that can be associated with camouflage which men would need to wear if they were going to fight so that it would not be easy to be spotted on the battle field by the enemy where as if they were wearing every day bright clothing it would be much easier for them to be spotted.

 Research credit to Katy Ward

Updates Project Two - War Thriller Opening

The second project is the one which we will be giving all our attention to after the 180 degree film is edited and uploaded because we want this film to show everything that we have be tort in media and hope that it will look as amazing as we imagine. This film is really going to test us because there isn't a direct link to another film that we could use as help. This is because we have combined two ideas/genres together to create what we hope will be unique film, to some extent. 
The hybrid genre that we want to create is a mix between war thrillers and psychological thrillers because our questionnaires exposed that the youth of today are looking for new psychological thrillers more than others however we didn't want to make a generic psychological thriller because so many others had tried this in media because we as the youth of today like them. So, as a group we came to the decision to create a new hybrid of thriller which younger people would enjoy however would still be new. The reason behind this is because by creating a new hybrid genre it opens windows to pick and choose the conventions that we like from both genres and combine them to create this film. However this doe create more work for us because we then have to research more genres and and then go through the process of seeing what we liked. In the long run I hope this extra work will pay off.
Another point is that this film requires another level of editing that I myself have just started to I think that this is going to be a real push to try and make the film look at a semi-professional level. To make sure that I am up to the challenge I will be research about the way in which these editing techniques are used. For example: Keying, Matting, Chroma-Keying, Colour Grading and 3D Motion Graphics. All of these will serve a purpose in our film to make it look its best.
This is just a small brief of what a huge task is ahead of us.


Credit to George Turner

Updates Projects One - 180 Degree Rule

The first project that we are aiming to shoot is the 180 degree rule, which we have already done test shots of shown in previous blog posts. The idea is that after school we will of filmed the hole 180 degree rule and have it edited by next week. The reason this may be a challenge is because members of our group may be unable to make the shoot therefore we may have to move the day.

In this video George (as a actor for this short) has to do a fight scene. He said he would prefer to use his brother as the second actor, rather than Katy or I. We decided as a group to keep this scene in even though it was inconvenient to film, as our video really needed a climax, as just two people staring each other down would be totally boring and not create the suspense we wanted. 

To improve the film further I am going to use George's camera with an X-Grip  to film, allowing the camera to stay smooth at all times. Including within the last shoot when it is moving around the character, which we found tricky to keep steady last time. Furthermore I shall be using one of the schools tripods when required to keep the camera dead still. Lastly, this time we are filming this after school, not during, which should mean clearer audio because the corridor will be quieter compared with the test shots. 

Research: The Mark Scheme

The questions that must be addressed in the evaluation are: - 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?