Task 3 - construction

Planning

One of the first things that we had to discuss in our group was what type of genre our film would follow and how we could achieve this. We all knew straight away that we would all be happiest following the comedic route. Each of us had different ideas on the story our film should follow and so we decided that we would put our ideas to each other to find the best one. We each had some good ideas and so we decided to blend them together.
Our story consisted of the main protagonist who felt he was extremely unlucky in life and that things can't get any worse. We then put all our ideas into a story board on which we would base all our filming around. We knew from the start that we would not be able to reproduce the story board shot for shot in our filming as things change for example, on the day that we were supposed to be filming the main bulk of our clip I was unable to meet with my group due to unavoidable circumstances. This meant we were left with less time in which to film. Our original idea was to have our central protagonist walking to a job interview. He is happy, the sun is shining and life is good. We then wanted a cut shot with the exact same scene but instead of the sun shining and life being good it would be raining and everything would be going wrong for him. So really we needed at least two days to shoot it. However, because I was unable to attend on one day we had only one day to shoot and so this became impossible. This is just an example of the dilemmas we had to overcome to produce our overall film.

Filming

The first step we had to take in filming was choosing the setting at which we would film the first half of our sequence. We knew it would have to be at someone’s house what we had to decide was who had the most suitable house for the film. Once we had established who’s house we were going to use to film our sequence I found out I would not be able to attend as I had to work however my group was very good at filling me in on what steps they had taken throughout the day of filming but it was still very difficult filming with only two of them.
I was told that the weather on the day was also an issue throughout the day, which meant they had to do the filming outside at different time intervals when the weather brightened up a bit.
When we realised we were going to have to shorten our story we decided to add a montage of the protagonist getting up, getting ready and eating his breakfast. This turned out to be very successful and worked well within our film.

Editing

After finishing the filming, we had to edit. This went relatively well as we only had one major problem. Connor was making the music on one Mac and Dom was doing the majority of the editing on another Mac. When it came to transferring the music over, we couldn't transfer it into Garage Band, so we had to sync all of the music with the film, whilst the files were on different computers, and they copy the song over into iTunes and upload it into iMovie. This proved to be very difficult and a lot of hassle, and we had to try it a few times as some parts of the music didn't sync properly.

Main Task 2.4 - (Generic Conventions)

It is important to firstly distinguish the differences between conventions and iconography as the two can easily be mistaken for one another; often its easy to mistake iconography for generic conventions- e.g. in a horror film an icon of that genre would be a knife and an audience would expect to see that; however, that does not make it a generic convention as a generic convention is relative to the narrative of the film. In this assignment I will assess and analyse the conventions and iconography of 4 different genres.

Horror

Initially, I will research the genre of Horror. Conventions that audiences would expect to see are as follows:

- A central or a group of central protagonists who are usually vulnerable - this tends to be accented by an atmosphere of isolation; which can be in terms of setting or emotionally.

- Usually features themes of the supernatural, illness and death.

- Often all protagonists are killed and there is no explanation as to who/what/why?
- There is on almost all occasions a key antagonist who is out to kill the protagonist - they are usually conveyed as a 'creature' or 'monster' who contrast greatly from the protagonist/s and are unlike anything in society.


The video i have chosen to represent the horror genre is Saw. This is a typical horror film conforming to all the generic conventions including isolation of the characters and the helplessness surrounding them. The film includes lots of blood and gore (often excessive) which to is typical to the genre.

War

The war genre looks at many different themes including comradeship, courage, emotion and loss. Most war films are based on real life events that have been adapted for the audiences entertainment.
Generic Conventions in a war film include:

- Follow the struggles of one central protagonist, who will usually be fighting a battle with himself emotionally as well as the enemy, and a group of others who will all try to defeat the enemy (antagonist).
- usually action driven.
- The central protagonist's comrades are usually killed one at a time. This is when we see the emotions within the central protagonist and the theme of loss is explored.
- The Protagonists are mostly outnumbered and look like they are fighting an unwinnable battle.
- Before the equilibrium is restored the audience is usually faced with a dilemma that explores the emotions of the protagonist.

Science-fiction

A science-fiction (Sci-fi) film is usually set in the future, which is a typical generic convention of sci-fi. Similar to horror, Sci-fi will have characters that are supernatural due to the expectation that the audience has about futuristic people and places. These people could possibly be aliens.
Also, sci-fi may a plot linked in some way to a love relationship between two protagonists. Iconography in sci-fi usually revolves around a special weapon or futuristic technology which in this case is the Lightsabre (which typically in Sci-fi generic convention, the antagonist has the better, more powerful weapon), a spaceship and other science related icons such as planets or the Sun.

Main Task 2.3 - (Production Company Logo)

Task 2.1 synopsis

After a long group discussion with my group members we have decided to go with the comedic genre.
Our film is similar to the one we produced for the preliminary task. However the interview in our film plays only a minor role and we focus more on the characters life leading up to the interview.
The story is based around one main character and he is very unlucky in the way his life is.
It begins with our character getting up to go for an interview and it is a very nice day and he is dressed well and has plenty of time. Cheerful music begins.
On the way to the interview he has many lucky things happening to him, such as finding a £50 note on the floor.
Then he walks into the interview and there is a freeze frame over his smiling face and a narration over the top saying "if only my life was this simple."
there is then a rewind and the character enters the room again but instead of being happy and smiling he is late for the interview covered in rain and looking very scruffy. He then says "Thats more like it", the music carries on and the screen fades to black ending the sequence.

Task 2.2 - Production Company Background Research

The production companies i have chosen to look at are Disney and Pathe. To begin with Pathe was a record producing label, established by brothers Charles and Emile Pathe, in Paris in the 1890's. In 1894 the brothers diversified into the film industry and in 1896 their films were exported to America. Pathe was a pioneer in the birth of newsreel footage, which in turn became the forerunner of documentary films. The logo of Pathe has changed a lot over time. the logo shown on the left was the first logo produced by the company. During the time at which this logo was produced Pathe were restricted to the technology of the time that did not allow them to use colour or animation in any of their logos. the rooster below the Pathe logo has now become more distinguished and is immediately reconisable and is more centralised in the newer logos. The new logo for Pathe uses much brighter colours to fit in with modern times. It is also written in a more dynamic font rather than traditional text.
Pathé, as a production company, has produced family films such as The Two Brothers (2004), The Magic Roundabout (2005) and also co-produced the film Slumdog Millionaire.

The Walt Disney pictures logo has changed over time aswell, but still keeps its same feautures in the same way that Pathe modernises their logo. As you can see the two Walt Disney Pictures logos have kept their recognisable features, but the quality and outcome of the new logo is more well suited for the 21st Century.

Preliminary Task Storyboard

Our story board depicts our prelim sequence, if we shoot it exactly how our storyboard states then our sequence will have the right feel and style.

The first two shots are establishing shots, this is to show the whole scene and show the 180 degree rule being followed. From there on there is a lot of over the shoulder shots etc where the corresponding characters are on their corresponding sides.As the argument becomes heated the shots become more dominant towards the employer to show he is the one in power.

The shots become lower to make the employer look higher and bigger while the interviewee looks smaller.

At the end it all turns around because the interviewee turns violent before a final establishing shot and fade to white

synopsis

After discussing in our group what we should do, we have decided that we would like to go down the comic root.

Our film is based around a similar idea to our prelim but instead the interview is hypothetical and only plays a small part.

The story is based around one main character and he is very unlucky in the way his life is.
It begins with our character getting up to go for an interview and it is a very nice day and he is dressed well and has plenty of time, when he gets to the interview there is a freeze frame and a narration over the top saying "if only my life was this simple".

It then cuts to him waking up in a mess and noticing that he has overslept he rushes all of his jobs and encounters a lot of misfortune like spilling coffee over himself and missing the bus.
He turns up at the interview in a bad state where the employee asks him "what happened to you?".