Final Piece- Surveillance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UXmwGyVF5Q

Enjoy :)

Production Day 2

What might be final shoots were captured this morning with Rachel Proctor of Edgedare Productions making her debut acting role in our sequence. The wheel of experimentation is rolling with regards to editing and title styles. All the footage has been captured onto our login and we are currently cutting here and there - it's unclear wether we'll be shooting more work though we do have 2 willing female actresses on standby for next wednesday - should we choose to use them.

Phase 'Capture'

Having received a group login, we are now in the process of capturing footage on that login. This is the first time the group has seen the film since shooting it - we do not intend to start editing as such until we have our entire storyboard in the login.

Phase 'Music'

Production opens up again next wednesday - not willing to waste time, we have been toying with different forms of music that might be used. The footage has been filmed especially for certain eerie musical pieces - we believe that music can suggest a great deal about a situation which may appear to be visually normal.
Also currently in development is the discussion of the titles themselves - the name of our film has yet to be decided.

Phase 'Film'

Day 1 of DDST production 'Untitled Sequence' commenced this morning in the town of Reigate; due to major let downs on the part of female cast members, exec. producers Dan and Tom were forced to pull the faces on screen. Myself and trusty AD Sam made the mistake of telling the lads that dialogue was completely unimportant - so they chose to converse about subjects that you wouldn't usually hear discussed in public places, confirming the fact that we will have to cut all human sound...
Extra locations not photographed below were used for certain shots, including the castle grounds of Reigate and the Reigate tunnel(which was used specifically for the interesting lighting that it provides.)
Afore mentioned let downs meant we filmed all that we had storyboarded to film with the cast members present... coming next week: 'day 2' of filming.
Watch and learn from 'the making of' videos posted below.

Making of...

Heres what's going on behind the scenes at DDST productions!

Above are pictures of possible locations that we have scouted around the town of Reigate. Also shown are photographs of the storyboard - the storyboard itself is a very loose version of what the final sequence might be.

Graph showing peoples' favourite opening sequences

The graph shows that 7 out of the 15 people who answered the questionnaire thought that Donnie Brasco was the best opening sequence - this is effectively the information we wanted to receive considering our own production has been largely inspired by the Donnie Brasco sequence.

Logo

Our decided logo has been developed - this will feature at the start of the film presumably, though this is not definite.

Photos of possibe locations are being processed; they will soon be attached to the blog. The images depict certain areas and places in Reigate that might be used when filming the sequence. Though we intend to use a lot of close-ups, back ground will still be important for certain shots.

Also in process is the stroyboard for the sequence. It's brief but features the major details of shots thatbwill be used.

"Phase 2"

We are currently in the process of story-boarding for our production. Today we have; 

• Discussed our Production Team logo, "DDST"
• Story boarded our title sequence.
• Discussed possible casting for our production.
• "Tidied" our blog, read comments, and edited posts.

Questionnaire

The purpose of this questionnaire is to gather information about films from 18-29 year olds for our media coursework.

 

Name:

Age:

Occupation:

Gender:

 

 

 

What are your top 3 favourite films?

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What is your preferred film genre?

 

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Most recently viewed film(s)?

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What is the most memorable opening sequence(s) for you?

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Having seen the title sequences for Donnie Brasco, Seven and The Silence of The Lambs, respond to the questions beneath:

 

Which was your favourite sequence? (You may watch the sequences again)

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What made your favourite sequence so effective?

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  What film sequence made you want to watch the rest of the film and why?

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Which one did you dislike most – what was bad about it?

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Thank you for participating in this questionnaire – Dan M, Dan W, Tom W and Sam H

 

          

 

Questionnaire Planning

Having established our target audience, we are now collating reasons and ideas that we would have a questionnaire bring about. Asking males and females of ages from 18 up to 29, this questionnaire intends to deduct information about:

• Favourite films
  
• Favourite genres
• Recently viewed film
• Memorable opening sequences
  

We also intend to include questions about our selected sequences - opinions on title sequences could help us to construct our own sequence.

Questionnaire Title Sequences

Questionnaire Title Sequences.

These are the sequences that we will be showing to participants in our questionnaire, we will ask them to answer a selection of questions that we hope will give us an indication into what makes a good opening sequence.

The Silence of the Lambs


Seven

Donnie Brasco

Summary of Research into Target Audience

Observation of rating/voting graphs for 3 serial killer films have lead us to decide that our target audience should be 18-29 year old males. This conclusion has been reached due to the large amount of 18-29 year old males that have voted in general and highly for our 3 selected films. This age group has also lead us to ensure the film would receive a rating of 18.

The graph information was acquired from highly acclaimed film site www.imdb.com

Graph of audience members for the serial killer Kiss The Girls(Fleder)

In this graph, males under 18 are not as high as in other serial killer films. This goes against the conclusions of the other graphs.

Graph of audience members for the action thriller The Silence of the Lambs(Demme)

Votes	Average
Males	129,463	8.7
Females	24,048	8.6
Aged under 18	3,328	9.1
Males under 18	2,593	9.1
Females under 18	734	9.1
Aged 18-29	92,602	8.7
Males Aged 18-29	77,890	8.7
Females Aged 18-29	14,213	8.6
Aged 30-44	44,667	8.6
Males Aged 30-44	37,563	8.6
Females Aged 30-44	6,536	8.6
Aged 45+	12,562	8.6
Males Aged 45+	10,182	8.6
Females Aged 45+	2,219	8.4

This film is an 18 but under 18's have have rated this film highest. However we cannot target a film that would have to be an 18 due to its content at 15 year olds. Our target audience will be 18-29 year olds, it is worth noting that this is also the predominant age group for "The Silence of the Lambs". You can see this by the large viewing figures from that age group, with 92,602 people ages between 18-29, with a high average rating of 8.7.

Graph of audience members for the thriller 'Seven'(Fincher)

Votes	Average
Males	151,661	8.7
Females	23,632	8.4
Aged under 18	3,361	8.9
Males under 18	2,727	9.0
Females under 18	632	7.8
Aged 18-29	116,390	8.8
Males Aged 18-29	100,582	8.8
Females Aged 18-29	15,289	8.6
Aged 30-44	46,259	8.5
Males Aged 30-44	39,841	8.5
Females Aged 30-44	5,921	8.1
Aged 45+	8,867	7.8
Males Aged 45+	7,260	7.8
Females Aged 45+	1,504	7.4

The above graph clearly states that younger generations were attracted to the film Seven. The highest set of votes and best ratings are those of Males under 18. Our own film is the same genre as Seven, therefore we intend to target a similar audience of 15-25 year olds.

Reservoir Dogs

Similar to Pulp Fiction, the opening scene of Tarantino's debut sees a group of suited men discussing different topics over coffee. While this technique of relaxing the audience is effective, I don't expect we'll find quality acting or dialogue to create a scene ourselves.
What does interest me is the cutting from character to character as the actor's name comes up on the screen. Though a simple idea, I think this is very neat and clear without being too cheesy. Hopefully, we will implement the same technique.

Donnie Brasco

The most inspiring of the 4 films that we have looked at, Donnie Brasco's opening sequence has the advantage of being in black and white which means a lot of visual information can be placed in the frame without bringing to much attention to each object. What I personally like about this sequence is the different camera positions and frame compositions. All of the main cast are introduced one way or another yet they all appear to be of equal importance due to the way they have been shot.
The fading between shots of the same object is something I think could be used in our sequence to suggest things about certain characters.

Pulp Fiction

The crisp dialogue and attention to detail between Quentin Tarantino's opening characters completely distracts us as an audience from the fact that we are watching a film. However, when the freeze frame arrives, the speedy guitar tune arrives with it providing a particularly exciting beginning to the titles. The retro font gives the production a stylish look, although the slow movement down the frame of the words 'Pulp Fiction' is somewhat pretentious.
The credits seem to roll for some time and slowly the dramatic start is forgotten but our main inspiration from this sequence has been the use of freeze frames and music. We intend to create similar tension and excitement by either bringing in music late in the scene or by upping the volume and tempo at a significant point.

Se7en

Widely regarded to be one of the greatest title sequences of all, Se7en sees director David Fincher collate graphic imagery with searing music to suppress a feeling of dread. The brilliance lies in the combination of restricted information and yet progression through the narrative - the events taking place that are shown in brief shots do have a relationship to the film's plot, as is revealed later on.

Scratchy, shaky writing combined with saturated colours provide a particularly eerie feel to the film as a whole, even though we are not provided with much information. The graphic, disturbing images can be expected due to the nature of the genre, however our own title sequence is for an action-thriller and therefore will not rely greatly on the use of title sequence to promote fear. Having said that, there are still many techniques used by Fincher that we would like to implement into our own project, for example the font style and placement in the frame, the choice of imagery and camera range upon it, the use of quick cuts to build tension etc.

Synopsis

Our action-thriller sees a serial killer with an alter ego slowly pick off members of his inner social circle.

Phase 1

Over the Christmas period and our first media lesson back at college, different ideas have been thrown around the table. General consensus is that the genre of action-thriller is the most popular in our group. Therefore different ideas have been discussed to do with that genre - we have studied various well-known title sequences from films that come under the umbrella of action -thriller. Studied sequences include that of Donnie Brasco, Se7en, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and some contemporary productions from alternative colleges.
Though the alternative videos have been extremely uninspiring, we will pull through! The major productions mentioned above are widely regarded amongst the members of our group and will hopefully influence the final product.