Todays Lesson 24th March 2011

Today Ben wasn't here however as our group is pretty far behind so me and Brendan will be out filming. We will be shooting in our location of the forest. Hopefully we will get a large amount done, upload it and continue Monday.

Art of the Title - Website

A Brief History of Title Design from Ian Albinson on Vimeo.

The website "Art of the Title" has been incredibly helpful during this project, the site has a wide selection of previous opening credits from actual films. The video above is directly from the site and features several parts of opening credits from throughout the years going from the golden age of cinema all the way to recent films such as "Zombieland!, "Juno" and "Scott Pilgrim vs the World". This site has been helpful as it allowed our group to understand how a title sequence should look and be put together, however some of the title sequences are not helpful due to them being computer-made whereas our film has to be filmed so it rules quite a lot out, however, films such as "Zombieland" are the films we can look as although it is not the type of film we are making it is filmed outdoors ausing cameras.

Todays lesson 22nd March 2011

Today I will be booking a camera for Thursday's lesson, our group can not film today due to Ben not being here, no matter what we will now have to film on Thursday as if we don't we will be very far behind all the other groups. Because of this drawback today will be another day of blogging.

Drawbacks for our Opening Credits

For our group the Opening Credits project has been a lot harder than the preliminary project our group have suffered a lot of issues when it has come to filming. These problems have included not booking the equipment, not being fully prepared, one of our group not being in, bad weather conditions or just running out of time. Several times we have had to postpone filming due to one of these problems causing our group to fall behind of the others. However, a good thing about these drawbacks is that we are now fully prepared so when we do finally go out filming we will no exactly what to shoot so hopefully we will get it done very quickly. Also, these faults will help if we are to work together next year as we will be more prepared for each project as we will we be used to the equipment.

Todays Lesson 21st March 2011

For today's lesson we will continue blogging to allow us to catch up with other groups and to be at the level we should be at, at the end of the lesson I will go and book some filming equipment for the following 2 lessons after this we can film allowing us to use the 3 lessons next we to edit and complete our film.

Zombieland Opening Credits

Ahead to our filming I decided to look at the opening credits to "Zombieland". Although, the film is a different genre (horror comedy) to what we are doing (fantasy) the film has been incredibly helpful as it gives us an idea on how to shoot outside, something our group has not done yet. The entire opening of "Zombieland" uses slow motion whilst credits slowly break away from the screen. Something which our group can possibly think about doing.

Change in Acting

Again due to time constrictions we now no longer have time to find a suitable actor for our film, plus some of the people we wanted to get had some things they had to do with there group. As a result I have been selected to be in the film as the protaganist. This should help with planning and be easier for as I have been involved in the planning process.

Changes to the Film

Due to time constrictions and the absense of a member of our group me and Brendan have decided to change some of the filming locations, any interior scenes will now be cut to cut out any time that may be used to finding a location. Our film will now begin in a car park or possibly the entrance to a shop but will then cut to the location to where we took photos of.

Our Film Script

Below is our script, it is however an extremely rough outline and just the generic idea of what we will be doing. The fact that we have no dialogue however, is an intentional decision by Me, Ben and Brendan, we done this everything we film can be visual and spelled out by the character through dialogue. Also, our film seems to be extremely short through the size of our script, which it is however, through more disussion and the eventual input of credits the film should be significantly increased in time.

Film Script - Rough outline

Film Script

MAN begins walking on his way to work. He is roughly 18 and is wearing smart casual clothes.

On his way he comes across a diversion on his path causing him to divert to a different route. On his way he encounters a forest to which he enters.

As he is walking down a path he suddenly drops. The MAN then suddenly awakes in to a visibly different location to which he is completely isolated and stunned.

Todays Lesson 15th March 2011

Today we were set to be filming for both todays lesson and at some point tomorrow due to having Thursday off, however, Ben is not here today so filming has had to yet again be postponed to a later date. We however, can not organise this date as he is not here so filming can not begin till at least next Mondays lesson. Today me and Ben will be blogging whilst I will be beginning to work on the script that Brendan failed to complete yesterday.

Another change in filming.

We had planned to film on Thursday however, due to it being a progress review day we have had to change our schedule yet again to filming possibly tomorrow and Wednesday.

Costume Design for our Fantasy

Our protaganist in our fantasy film is an office worker so he will be dressed in office buisness clothes, possibly a suit.

Todays Lesson 14th March 2011

For today's lesson I will continue to blog after falling behind in my group, we have been discussing new ideas for our film after deciding that we will be cutting the first couple of minutes of our film that were going to be set in a house. This is because it will be irrelevant to the rest of our film plus as our group is falling behind there are tim constrictions. Me and Ben will be blogging whilst Brendan will be writing a script for our film.

Internet Resources we have used

Throughout both the preliminary project andn our Opening credits project we have used many websites to help us with our research, these have included -

• http://www.imdb.com/ - Mainly for any information to find about an individual film or actor. Very helpful when searching for films of TV shows like our own.
• http://www.youtube.com/ - Helpful when searching for a video for our textural analysis, these have helped on several occasions and our also very easy to upload to a blog.
• http://www.wikipedia.org/  - A very reliable source when looking for pretty much anything to do with a film, actor or TV series. All articles are very in-depth.

Production Logo

We have been discussing several idea for the name of our production company that will feature on each film that we make. Some of the ideas that came up were -

• Giraffe on a Segway
• Giselle on a Forklift
• Meerkat on a Tram
• Koala on Zeppelinn

However, we ended up choosing this logo which Ben made for our group -

Rough outline for our Opening credits sequence

After some discussion about which one of our four ideas we were going to do (Romantic Comedy, Action, Horror or Fantasy), we decided on doing the fantasy project. As we were falling behind we had to quickly think of a rough idea for what the events would be of our film. We also decided we want our fantasy film to be grounded in reality.

We decided that our film would follow this rough plotline -

• Protaganist awakes in his house in normal universe
• Begins to get ready to work
• Leaves his house and begins walking
• Walks his usual route into a forest
• Falls down a hole and awakes in to a different part of the world

Titles will be shown throughout. We planned for to be as normal as possible before this event to make it seem like this is a random occurence in this universe and not an everyday thing like in most fantasys. By doing this it will ground the film in to a reality.

After writing and drawing an entire storyboard for our popening credits film we drew out a small picture only one onto post-it notes. Ben took them on his camera and uploaded them. They are only a very rough outline of what our film will end up look.

Filimng equipment for our opening credits

These will be relatively similar to the equipment we used for our preliminary project, however, as we will be filming outside we will have to more to make up for the sounds the microphone can pick up outside.

However, we will still be using the Panasonic handheld video for all of our filming, a standard tripod and Ben's a200 DSLR to possibly take photographs. To handle the outside enviroment we may need to taken extra microphone and microphone cover to handle outside noise taking over the actor. Also, to get over this pontential problem dubbing may have to be used.

Filming postponed

Due to the bad weather conditions and our actor not being available for today, we are going to have to postpone our filming and hopefully be ready to start straight away next week. Meanwhile, we will have to constantlly be blogging.

Why we chose to make a fantasy film

For our opening credits film we decided to create a fantasy film that was grounded in reality. For example the majority of our opening we be centered around an average working man having a typical day, it is only towards the end that something strange happens in his world. The idea of a realistic fantasy appeals to our group due to not really having a limit to what we can do but could still be easy to film as the film will be quite realistic, using real people and real locations. We are looking forward to seeing how this film is going to turn out.

Location Shots

We had to go out again to get Location Shots for our opening credits but this time we had to include a person in the shots. Me, Ben and Brendan went out to our  location for our film and began to take photos and began to plan where we would make our actors and where we would shoot from. We decided we will be shooting in a forest no more than 5 minutes away from the college. We took about 7 photos all representing where the camera will be when we film. We came back and uploaded them on to our blog.

Location Shots for our Opening credits Project