Genre Analysis

 The genre we have decided as a group to do is ,psychological thriller, the reason for this is because it makes the movie more suspenseful and emphasises its characters rather than the plot which would make it more interesting for the audience and for the people taking part in the movie opening.

Psychological thriller is a good genre because it is a mix of action and psychological which both are used to add to the suspense. Elements of drama, mystery and horror can often find themselves in the psychological thriller due to the emphasis on motivation and the mind.Psychological thrillers often deal with common themes such as death, reality, perception, identity, existence or purpose and one or two of these themes should be wound through the novel.

Initial Film Ideas

My initial opening scene will be about a young boy that has a disability and is struggling with most basic things in life. he is unable to do basic stuff such as cleaning up, making his bed or even pouring water into a cup. He has a severe condition called "Dabbing" this condition does not allow the boy to participate in many things in life because he dabs too much.

The boy is 15 years old and is going to a normal secondary school, located at south west London.The boy's name is Toby, Toby lives in an average middle class family with his mum, dad and two younger brothers. Toby's has had this condition from the day he was born, not only has this created stress on his parents but Toby's siblings and friends too. The condition that Toby has does not just affect him, it affects the people around him, no one can be around Toby because he dabs too much, whoever is with Toby, usually gets hurt or embarrassed.

Toby loves to play basketball during his free time, but he always ends up with a red card, but not due to his condition he is always hitting other players losing the ball.

Editing Techniques

Editing Techniques 

Continuity editing:

Continuity editing is a sequence of shots arranged in a specific order to suggest a progression of events. As there are various amounts of shots an editor can suggest different scenarios, using only two or three shots.

Accelerating Time:

Accelerating time is just long scene shorted. For example if its meant to take someone 90 minutes to drive from London to Brighton, it will only show a few seconds of certain clips, getting dressed (3 secs) getting in the car (2 secs) driving (3 secs) quick stop (1 sec) arriving at destination (3 secs) this is good because the audience will not be bored, instead they will be more entertained, as the 90 minutes of a drive has shorted to nearly 20 seconds of footage.

Expanding Time:

Expanding time is when two separate and different shots are eventually going to emerge together while creating suspense. for example if there is a car a fast car chase happening there will be fast, suspense music in the background, while the other shot will be the opposite of what is happening, which would be a child peacefully be playing with a ball in the park or in front of their house, this scene would be having calm and relaxed music. eventually the chase will get closer and closer to the kid. After that something tragic may occur, typically this is when the kids ball gets kicked or thrown into the middle of the road, where the fast car will appear. The editor creates suspense by constantly changing shots between those two scenes back and forth, this builds suspense because it will make the audience engage about what might happen next.

Cause, Effect and Motivation:

Cause, effect and motivation are all linked as the cause can lead to the effect which then leads to the motivation. For example, if a woman was murdered and she had killed someone before, in this case, the motivation would be revenge, which had a cause

Insert Shot

An insert shot is close-up of something that exists within a scene, they also add needed information to the audience. For example, if a drug deal goes down and the buyer overdoses on the drug, a close-up shot would reveal what drug they bought.

Cutaway:

Unlike insert shots that show additional information in a close-up shot, cutaways show additional information by cutting away from the main scene.

Relational Editing:

Relational editing refers to establishing a relationship between scenes. For example, if someone is calling someone 

Thematic Editing:

In thematic editing, also referred to as montage editing, images are edited together based only on a central theme. In contrast to most types of editing, thematic editing is not designed to tell a story by developing an idea in a logical 

Parallel Editing:

When segments are cut together to follow different story lines. For example, in "The Great Train Robbery (Film)", the creator constantly cut scenes to match different story lines.

Cross-cutting:

In a cross-cut the camera will cut away from one action to another action, which can suggest the simultaneity of these two actions.

Analysis of Citizen Kane opening

In the Opening of Citizen Kane there are various of different shots being used, creating many effects. In the very beginning there was a close up shot of a sign saying "No trespassing", this is telling the audience that the place this movie is situated in, is dangerous and could also hint of the genre which could be either horror or drama.The establishing shot was of a possibly abandoned castle in a deserted cemetery emphasising the fact this movie will contain thriller and horror. The extreme close up was when Kane spoke his final words, while this was happening the camera zoomed around Kane's lips; these were his final words that Kane spoke.

The Fading transitions does also suggest that the shots will continues. The use of accelerating time was used to fast forward the time from the bottom of the cemetery until the death of Kane on his deathbed.When Kane is laying in his deathbed about to pass, hes holding a mysterious object which later turns out to be a snow globe. This snow globe falls and breaks as soon as Kane dies. The snow globe is representing Kane's life, once he died everything will be gone and vanish.

The music and sound being played in the background is very creepy and eerie, this creates suspense because the music is slowly starting to progress and build up speed as it get closer to the main part which is the death of Kane. At times the sound went silent to bring in the audience and to make them more focused into the movie. The lighting was low-key this caused intimidation and tension because the audience did not have a clue of might happen during this scene. Fog was used to emphasise the fact that it was really hard to see and it also to emphasise more the scene this was situated in was more scary.

Different type of camera angles were taken to not only make the movie better but also to emphasise the spookiness of this castle. A low angle shot was taken to make the castle seem much more bigger than it is. Pan shots were used to show us how empty the surroundings of the castle are and to also emphasise on how big the whole area is.High angle shots of boats were taken to show the inferiority compared to the castle.

Preliminary Task Evaluation

 

 1. At a micro, technical level, how well did you observe the conventions of continuity and the language of editing?                                                                                                                            

Our scene involved a disturbed patient (Danny) talking to a psychiatrist (Iggy) and his personal secretary (Casey) about his problems on the opposite side of the table. While the patient is walking to the room, where the psychiatrist is waiting for him, he bumps into someone that he has seen in the past (Omar). In the beginning, our Camera men (Iggy and Owen) did an establishing shot of the building which our scene was situated in. Our first shot was Danny, walking into the building nervous and anxious, we also have our first match on action scene, when Danny reaches out to open the door, the camera angle changes into a shot of just his hands pushing the door open, this creates more effect and suspense. While Iggy and Danny are having the one on one conversation between each other we made sure that we wouldn't break the 180 degree rule as a result, the shots we took came out looking amazing.

2.What were you pleased with? what seems to work well and why?
I was pleased with many things that we did, firstly i was happy with the fact that everyone was satisfied with each of their roles and also everyone was participating and had equal roles. I was also pleased with the story-line we created, it was very unique and was fun to make. The location we used to take the shots for our scene went perfectly with our psychiatrists office theme, the school itself looked its part, every part of it did remind us of a psychiatrists office. Also the table that we used in one of our scenes for the one on one conversation, really did its part, it really brought the whole scene to life. 

3.What mistakes did you make? what would you have done differently?
We did encounter some mistakes, one of them was a camera angle shot which broke the 180 degree rule, this was when Omar and Danny have been confronted by each other in the hall way. Also another mistake we made was when Danny was about to open the door for the psychiatrists office his hand was on the handle, but when we go to the second shot it clearly shows that his hand was not present, as Iggy opened the door on the other side. Another difficulty was the shaky camera. Even though we had a bi-pod some shots required the camera angle to be moved, as a result the camera was kinda shaky at certain points. Furthermore because we were recording shots at a busy school, some of the rooms were busy and were being used by teachers and other people, such as the conference room, also known as the psychiatrists office.

4;How did you manage the group dynamics, equipment and resources?
For our shots we did not need that much equipment; our shots were simple and wasn't complex. We only had one camera and a bi-pod to hold the camera, which was enough for us. The group dynamic was fairly simple. We only filmed on two days. The first day was when we got most of our shots, we finished it quickly; everyone was prepared and knew what they were doing. On the second day, we encountered a few problems which was that, there were lots of teachers messing up our shots, by going on scene by mistake, this delayed the shots and it took us longer to film, unlike the previous day.

5.What problems did you encounter logistically?
While we were trying to take the shots there were lots of people walking around, this delayed us because we had to retake some shots which were kinda long. In one of the scenes when Danny is walking in to the reception area there are teachers and other people waiting inside so we had to wait in order to complete the shots. Everyone in the group got their preferred role and got into it. Everyone knew where to be and when to be there, this was good; it saved more time and allowed us to enjoy filming this.