WELCOME MODERATOR

Welcome, moderator! I am Francesca Tarpey 1476 and I worked with Alfie Wolstenholme 1462

I hope you enjoy my blog, which contains my work on my G321 Foundation  Portfolio. We chose the video brief, the titles and openings of a fictional thriller film which we named Asylum.  My preliminary exercise follows immediately underneath. 

I took specific responsibility for making the ident, and for directing some of the film.

My evaluation questions are above.
Our film opening

CONSTRUCTION: VISUALISING OUR OUJIA BOARD SET

• nightlight
• glass
• ouija board
• flowing robes
• swaddled baby 

In this scene we are going to suggest that the three teenagers are quite daring, thinking they should do a ouija board not knowing the spirit that would come alive.  This resulting in the teenagers being haunted around the mental asylum by the evil spirit. The sound effects would include broken strains of a lullaby, would emerge in the night. You would hear the hesitant voice of a mother humming to her baby.

In the edit we intend to capture glimpses only of a ghost mother cradling her baby singing a lullaby. We intend to achieve this by low opacity, cross dissolves, as well as insuring in our initial framing that we have a very restricted frame. Glimpses of the mothers bare feet, her hand on the bundle up baby clothes, maybe glimpses of her hair. 

 

Here is the newspaper we found, there was a page on wedding dresses, and how to make baby clothes with a postcard saying 'I'm counting on your darling'.

RESEARCH

RESEARCH
 Look here to see an online display method for collating your research into a single magazine page
PINTEREST Pinterest is a versatile, easy-to-navigate online pin board tool that displays visuals and text linked to websites. I created a 'pin' on....

I used Pinterest so I can look at the style of our characters and what they would wear and how they would act, what age group they are in. By using Pinterest i can look up these photos and create a pin about the character development and then write underneath about the images. 

PICTOCHART
An infographic tool with a wide variety of templates including useful charts (pie charts, bar charts taken in through Excel)  
BLOGGER Blogger hosted all my other new technologies at the research and planning stage. As a multi-media social networking tool it allowed me to collate, archive, display and create research and planning with images, videos, sound files and posts that I could share with my group. It hosted all my other presentational tools, from Emaze to Slideshare. Later, I used it for feedback (adding my work in progress) and evaluation of my finished work (on YouTube).  It is easy to use and very versatile. My blog is the hub of all my production work. I used blogger because I had to see what to do next for my planning for my film for research. 

How To Add Video to Blogger  
TWITTER

Look at the post that I have prepared for you about the usefulness of Twitter. Our class blog describes this here.Last year, you all signed up. You can now give an account of how you are using it for thus production. Use the framework that I have prepared if you wish; include screenshots, specific examples etc and be as detailed as necessary. I set up a twitter account so I can see all the latest news in media. Here I also looked at the latest films that were out and I followed the producers and distribution companies.  

Alan Rusbridger: Why Twitter matters 
How to use hashtags
Discover more about the new Twitter 

YOUTUBE
You have used YouTube for research and for inviting feedback on your own video work. Claremont has its own TouTube channel. I looked at their Youtube videos so I can also get ideas for our film and the camera angles I may want to use. I also looked at Hurtwood House youtube channel as well.

PLANNING 
WHATS APP I used What'sApp to keep in touch when planning with my group. We used WhatsApp as part of our character development to interview our characters and the film.
PINTEREST Pinterest enabled us to collect together a series of images for the mise-en-scene, props and lighting for our 1950s office set. We sourced images of 1950s detectives, what they wore and their postures and gestures. This was essential planning to guide our directing of the scenes. We needed to create an authentic period feel. We also wanted to convey the weariness, reluctance and underlying hard-boiled quality of our central detective figure. We constructed our characters using pictures of Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade with their feet on the desk, their hands wrapped round a whiskey tumbler with the smoke from a cigarette curling on the desk. Pinterest is a collaborative tool that let us build up an image bank.  Here is the Pinterest that I made for the representation of social groups in our film. They are images that I found with descriptions underneath.
https://uk.pinterest.com/francescatarpey/represention-of-social-groups/
TRELLO
I used Trello to plan what I was going to be doing for our film and it makes a list that we can tick off. Here is a screenshot of my post of my Trello list.
https://trello.com/b/fG2qYXUc/research

SNAPCHAT
We used this social media to contact each other whenever we had an idea about our film.  This way we can be ready and prepared for it before we got to the lesson.
MOBILE PHONE
Have you found this useful for keeping in touch with your group, for planning & location shots, for playing your track while out and about?

CONSTRUCTION
ANIMOTO for animating still photos and text such as an animated account of how you made your stop frame animation.
HUE WEBCAM for stop frame animation

 DIGITAL CAMERA Canon D550, D650  
ADOBE PREMIERE
Our new video software editing programme. Expalin how you spent time learnig to use it and what it offers that gives it the edge over iMovie. 
ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS
You may make your production company ident in After Effects (or STOP FRAME ANIMATION).
ADOBE PHOTOSHOP

You will make your  digipack and magazine advertisement in PhotoShop

YuDu

To make dynamic page-turning leaflets

EVALUATION

SNAPCHAT I used Snapchat to present in a slick and fun way the evidence of how I constructed XXX (filmed the date scene / created my production company ident / sourced props for the hospital scene). I added text to my Snapchat photos straight from my mobile phone.
NEW HIVE enabled me to present all my evidence about how I used technology in a visually exciting and logical way with images, text, embedded video and audio.

PLANNING: FILM OPENING CREDITS

To complete our opening film, we have to produce opening credits at the beginning of our film. Listed below is the order of the credits:

Studio distributing film: Verve
Verve is a British documentary production company. They are attracted to first time movie makers, and up and coming talent.
Production company: Electric light studios
Main artist credit: An Wolstenholme and Tarpey Film
Principal actors: Francesca Tarpey and Alfie Wolstenholme
Film title: Asylum
Featuring: Megan Sedgwick
Production design:
Edited by: Alfie Wolstenholme
Director of Photography:
Screenplay written by:
Director: Alfie Wolstenholme

REPRESENTION OF SOCIAL GROUPS

I have created board where I have collated images and representations of the social groups in my film opening. I have added analyses and descriptions in the comment box below the images. Please open my live link to see my Pinterest.
https://uk.pinterest.com/francescatarpey/represention-of-social-groups/

Here is also a screenshot of my Pinterest.


Here is also the character interviews we did.

PLANNING PADLET

Today our group started using Padlet. A Padlet is like a digital noticeboard that can involve other people on the topic. You can add videos, pictures and audio message as well as word messages. By using this we can interview our characters. This is part of character development for our film openings.
Open this hyperlink to see my Padlet.
.https://padlet.com/francesca_tarpey/aqh3ryxymnpy
Here is a screenshot of my finished Padlet.

MARC RIBOUD

This photograph was taken by Marc Riboud, it shows a hippie girl standing in front of soldiers. The girl is holding a flower and the soldiers are pointing weapons at her. This shows a symbol of peace against war. It is contrasting as there are lots of aggressive looking men standing against a young girl all by herself. The girls positioning with her hands almost makes it look like a prayer, to stop the war that is going on. The image is taken outside of Washing DC as hippies protest against the Vietnam war in 1967. The girl is dressed in a flower blouse to match what she is holding in her hands, whilst the soldiers are in dark uniform that match their weapons, this shows that the men need protection from defenceless people.

DISTRIBUTION

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

An independent distributor would distribute my film, our group has chosen Verve because it is a smaller distributor that mainly uses small independent films which is what our group is making.
Distribution is the process of making sure the film is in the hands of the theatre chains, broadcasters, video stores and video on demand operators. The companies that do this are called the distributors. A producer gets a sales agent to license a film to distributors outside the producers own country. Distributors acquire films via deals with studios, and production companies. Any distributor may compete for the rights to release a film, whether for cinema,satellite/terrestrial television and DVD. Distribution deals cover the overall rights to a film for a set period of time, this usually includes the release plan, media promotion and what edits and changes are allowed. Distributors must create an entirely new film release plan for each project to identify the unique selling points and attract the widest audience for the film. They also oversee the marketing plans, expenditure evaluations, forecasts and revenue breakdowns.

I researched distribution on the FDA website as well as the FutureLearn course titles The Business of Film and at an A level study day at the BFI delivered by Rob Miller. I also looked at case studies. Overall distributors are creating plans for film release to ensure they reach big audiences and make a profit. Sell and publise films to the media, marketing partners and cinemas for the public. And deal with filmmakers and producers, sales agents, publicists and advertising agencies.
After watching this video many time, Stuart Williams who is a deputy managing and marketing director, discusses the unique ways a film can become well known. He mentions that the 'word of mouth' technique is the strongest because people trust what other people say. We will listen to a film critic and decide whether or not we will go see a film if they say its good or bad. We will also listen to friends and family and decide to see a film dependent on what they say about it. Another way is by social media, people will set up websites and pages on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook etc on a a movie and the more followers or likes it gets the more its spreads around the world and the more people see it.

From my research into the Hollywood Big 6 and other big studios, I learned that big budget films have a wide range of distribution strategies at their disposal. I had already noticed from my own interest in film how distribution strategies at their disposal, such as London has Fallen , as I had seen billboards and a trailer. Then I did a case study on the distribution of Jurassic Park. However, low budget films, like mine, can struggle to find any distributor at all. I did a case study on the distribution of Tortoise in Love , have discovered that the BFI's P&A fund stepped in to help them distribute their film.

Gareth Lowrie from NBC Universal explained to us at the BFI study day how he worked on the marketing for Jurassic World. He explained how at Waterloo Station they set up a dinosaur cage, this interesting people what is was. The next day they had made it look like the dinosaurs had escaped as they had made life like art pieces, the had members of staff dressed like zookeepers and advertisement for the film on the screen around the station. They also allowed people to take photos with the dinosaurs and had a hashtag to spread it around the world on social media. This made the film attractive as they had to think of something unique because the movie is a franchise and had to tell viewers it was going to be different from the other films. This was successful as it was one of the highest top 10 grossing films in 2015.

PLANNING: INTERVIEWING OUR CHARACTERS

I read this article by Charlie Sierra, where he refers to award winning Pen Densham, he mentions about how to get to know our characters. We are going to do character interviews so we get to know the background story of our characters and our film. He writes about how we should think of it like a questionnaire which the characters need to fill out. For our film we are going to interview the girl character from the Dad, so we can see the turn of events that happen.

My Character Interview

One of the main characters is a teenage girl, so for this we decided to use a What's App message interview between her and the characters Dad. Here he shows anger about asking where she is and is worried. She replies saying where she is and that she is just trying to have fun. This then turns badly 

as she then realises she is in danger. Here are the screen shots from our interview

RESEARCH- BIFA

I have been following the nominations at the  BIFA this week, especially since I have been introduced to the film American Honey since seeing the trailer at the BFI on a study day given by Rob Miller on An Introduction to the film industry in November 2016.

https://www.bifa.film/awards/film/american-honey

I am interested in American Honey because of some similarities of this film and the film we are making ourselves. At 2.7 million pounds budget it was not expensive to make, it featured almost unknowns except Shia LaBeouf. It is promoted as defining our generation according to the website. 

I first saw this film at the BFI. I learnt that American Honey counted as a British film as it had a British director, Andrea Arnold. and cast and the key organisations involved. It is an example of a BFI funding model. The director also made the film Fishtank which was funded at a cost of 1.3 million pounds in 2009, (compare this to Star Wars, which was 230 million pounds). American Honey's key themes involve young people and their lifestyle, and how they live in the moment in a carefree way, which are themes and issues rarely shown in mainstream cinema. In addition there were no expensive sets as it was shot in location, as the same for our films. Part of the social realism was created by its camera work: the film was hand held, exploring the urban youth, which gives the cinema verite. 

There are similarities between the film I will be making and American Honey, because ours will be low budget, with unknowns and taken on locations.

PLANNING: THE TOP LINE AND BIG QUESTION

Frank Ash is a creative consultant who has taught story telling and creativity techniques to teams across the BBC and beyond. In this presentation he said to develop and strengthen the story of a film you need to think about the audiences and what do they want from the story they tell. To tell the audiences what the story is all about, he gave advice saying can you tell you story in one sentence? The second most important is telling the audience 'what is going to happen?'

I have recently watched the film 'Catch me if you can'. If I was to describe this movie in a sentence it would be 'a funny, inspiring and suspense cat and mouse chase between two very much alike characters'.

The big story question in the movie 'catch me if you can' was 'is he ever going to get caught?'. Although they hint in the very first scene what happens in the end, they don't show all of it. The movie then starts the story from the beginning after that, then when it gets to the end of the film, you realise what the main character is really like and you get a better understanding of the beginning again.

RESEARCH:DEADPOOL

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/deadpool/

Deadpool is a comic superhero movie, it is known as comic film which breaks the fourth wall. The fourth wall is a performance convention in which is an invisible, imagined wall which separates actors from the audience. However Deadpool and the main actor breaks this by talking to the camera/ audience. This film came out in 2016, and was very popular not only from Ryan Reynolds starring, and the comedy in all the trailers, but also from the 'viral' videos the came out once a day in December, and in each video Deadpool himself would addresses a different topic for example on 'World Australia Day' and 'Valentines day'.

By having the opening title as a fake one makes the audience realise this isn't going to be a normal superhero film. Here is what the director Tim Miller, and layout super visor Franck Balson said about the fake opening title, and how they managed people to see whether it was a joke or not.

Tim: The screenings were so informative. You get to see when and where the audience laughs. And the magazine cover gets a huge laugh…

Franck: Only at a certain spot though!

Tim: It’s true. We had it later and it didn’t hit.

Franck: We had it earlier, but what we realized was that Ryan’s cover was kind of the moment everything shifted completely into meta, where people were like “Oh my Gosh! This is a fake title sequence!” When we tried the cover later people were still trying to analyze the title sequence as if it was a real one and didn’t understand the jokes.

You can tell this is a fake opening title because unlike in a normal opening they would show the name of the actors and be professional about it, however they say 'starring a hot women and a moody teen'. This straight away tells the audience that it is fake and that the whole movie will be taking a dig at normal superhero films. They also seem to make fun of the main actor by showing old magazines covers of himself being named 'sexiest man alive 2010' and a card of him wearing the Green Lantern costume as Ryan Reynolds also played that superhero in the past.

RESEARCH: BUSINESS OF FILM

In the UK, the BFI and its predessesscor the UK Film Council and, have published a number of reports on the economic and cultural value of film. An example of this is the most recent report on economic impact found that film contributed £3.67 billion to the UK economy. Studies have shown that the cultural impact of films have shown how films, apart from being a popular activity of enjoyment, carry powerful personal and politcal messages for viewers, give new views and insights into other cultures, and help reflect peoples cultural identity back to ourselves.



http://www.bfi.org.uk/education-research/film-industry-statistics-reports/reports/uk-film-economy/economic-contribution-uks-film-sectors


Why film is important to the economy

The UK makes many independent films that are British, such as Pride, Paddington, The Inbetweeners, and the Imotation game.
Many of these films perform well at award shows such as the BAFTAs, and even US Academy awards. This is a source for the UK, this is one of the reasons why there are so many Hollywood stars that are British born.
Another source of income from film and television is from tourism. Tourists go and look around the film sets, for example Harry Potter world near Watford. Around £840 million of tourism spending is by visitors can be added to film-induced tourism.

The benefits of inward investment

The benefits of inward investment is for companies like the BFI, is to deliver economic growth through investment in the UK. The International Strategy has committed £200k to support attracting film inward investment from the US. This is also been in addition to £400k grant for funding the BFI.  This and another £200k to help UK Trade and Investment attract Tv inward investment and film inward investment from emerging markets.

Thinking about the value chain

In the film industry 'value chain' is the series of steps that go from the first thought about the film right to the end of the commercial life of the completed film. The chain includes these seven steps:
Distribution, Concept origination, Development, Finance, Creative packaging, Production, Exploitation. The producer would be the only filmmaker that is with the film on its entire journey through the value chain.
The order of the value chain is:
Concept origination, Finance, development, production, distribution, creative packaging, exploitation.

 Concept origination-find ideas
Creative packaging- hire casting director, secure development finance, secure key cast, hire writer.
Development- secure rights, hire director, secure pre-sales, option agreement.
Finance- preliminary budget, prepare estimate.
Production- pre-production, principle photography, post production
Distribution- marketing campaign, secure rights, broadcast license, certify as British, video/DVD/VOD licensing
Exploitation: Download to own, cinema exhibition, DVD rental and sales.

RESEARCH: THE ART OF THE TITLE SKYFALL

https://www.emaze.com/@AWCZWOZO/skyfall


 This is my fourth Art of Title which I presented using Emaze.

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/skyfall/

TWITTER ACCOUNT

 This is the twitter account I made so I can catch up on all the latest news going on within media.
I have followed certain media accounts such as the BFI, Film 4 and Jenny Grahame. Hopefully by doing this it can keep me up to date on all the latest news on media. I also think it will show the real truth of what is happening instead of tabloids writing the wrong.
Twitter is useful for us because it is a form of distribution, its a highly effective way of spreading ideas, information and content. It is where things happen first, celebrities and companies will put teasers of products or news on twitter for there millions of followers to see so the excitement increases. It is a great way of marketing, if people like what you posted they cam 're-tweet' and there followers see it and so on. Twitter allows anyone to say anything, it is diverse, this gets peoples voices heard.
Here is the link for my Twitter page.
https://twitter.com

PIKTOCHART ON AUDIENCES

https://magic.piktochart.com/output/17633707-audiences-2016
This is my Piktochart on audiences.

 This is a screen shot of my Piktochart on audiences when I had finished it.

RESEARCH: THE ART OF THE TITLE NEON DEMON

The Neon Demon is a horror film, it is about a 16 year old moving to Los Angeles to pursue her modelling career, the head of her agency tells her she has potential to become a star but she comes face to face with ruthless vixens. It is directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, 2016

The names shown in the credits are the actors and the production team for the film, these names have been written in different colours every time a new name appears. The background also changes colour which makes the writing bold.

The production company for 'The Neon Demon' is Wild Bunch . By looking at the opening it doesn't give away the period the movie was set in as it doesn't show any actors and there is no narrator. The colours in the background are dark , e.g. dark pink, blue, green and these keep on changing in a slow motion. There are no props in this opening.

For the editing in this opening there is no voices just tense music playing slowly in the background , this gives the effect that it is going to be a horror. The editing is the changing colours and when the title of the film appears at the end it gives the effect that the glitter is being thrown on the screen and then the title appears.

The audience would be drawn in to this opening because of the mysterious changing colours and the tense music that matches it. However it doesn't give away what genre the movie would be.

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/the-neon-demon/

RESEARCH: THE ART OF THE TITLE THE BREAKFAST CLUB

This is my second Art of title on the movie 'The Breakfast Club'

 This is my screenshot of when I had finished my Emaze
http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/the-breakfast-club/

RESEARCH: THE ART OF THE TITLE NAPOLEON DYNAMITE

The genre of Napoleon Dynamite is an offbeat comedy, the actor's names are shown on pieces of food throughout the opening which might relate to the rest of the movie. This is the same with the rest of the names of people who worked on the film, the remaining are shown by a pair of hands opening and closing books and grabbing pieces of paper which show the onset names. Each time there is a new name the background changes its material, for example one background material is white fur, then the next is a brown carpet material. The production company for this film is MTV movies, this is shown at the start of the opening on a plate of food surrounded by eggs and the name written in a sauce.

The period of this movie was in 2004, I can tell this because when it shows the name of the main actor/character on a student ID card it says '2004' underneath. I then found out than in an interview with the director the although the clothes and styles in the film look like they are from the 80s, as the movie is set in a small town the characters are behind in the latest styles, but it is set in 2004.

They use pastel and very plain colours for the background and the type of food they use. The props used are the plates of food and pieces of paper that are related to the rest of the film, each time these appear they show names of the actors or someone who had been associated with the film on screen or behind it.

The music they use in the background is continuous beat of a guitar and the same monotone voice of a male singing. There are no sudden changes to the music, for example the voice or beat doesn't go any higher or lower throughout the opening. There is no talking in any of the opening so it doesn't explain the start of the film and they only show one picture of the main character.




http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/napoleon-dynamite/

PLANNING: TRELLO

I have created Trello account, this is a really useful organisation online tool. This will help me keep track of my work. I will continue to update it as I work.

Here is a screenshot of my Trello account: