Feedback on Film Opening Drafts

Teacher Feedback - Film Opening

One teacher said that our shots were very well and gentle. This worked well with the genre of the film. Also worms eye view shots of the boots looked really good. It would be even better if the titles were further apart and not as close to the edge of the screen. Also if we included dietetic sound in the changing room of football boots and people talking in the background. Also we had a wobbly at the end which we sorted out and was still.

The other teacher said the start was very good and it set the scene. They wasn't sure on the font of our titles so we searched for better ones that fitted the genre more. The transition from old to new wasn't clear so we needed to fit the change in better so it was clearer for the viewers as to which one he was. Also the story line wasn't clear for the rest of the film. Making the transition better made it clearer.

DRAFT - Film Opening

Production diary - Film Opening

Monday 9th November

On this day we were put in our groups and set the task to create an individual film pitch about what we would individually like our film opening to be. My one was about an old man suffering with dementia and looking at the details of what is going on in his head. Harry's was about a football player preparing in the changing room for his first football match. Joe's was a drama about a spy and his first encounter on a busy day.

Tuesday 10th November

On this day we pitched our individual pitches to each other in our group and came up with an idea which we all liked. We mainly took ideas from/ merged mine and Harry's ideas. We came up with a plot where an element of all our ideas was included. .

 -Olly presenting his pitch.

Wednesday 11th November

We then developed our idea further and developed a film pitch based around target audience, genre and marketing putting all of our ideas on to a PowerPoint ready to present it the next day.

Thursday 12th November

On this day we pitched our film to our classmates. We all contributed to the presentation taking turns speaking and all contributed to the questions we were asked at the end. The only problems we faced was not having a name for our film and people couldn't get there heads around a biographical drama, but after giving them a couple of examples such as 'Forrest Gump' and 'Best' they seemed to like the idea more.

Friday 13th November

On this day we started to plan our planning what we would do on each day which took around about 30 minutes. Then for the other half of the lesson we focused on Fonts and titles and Harry did a Mood Board.

Monday 16th November

On this day we looked at music, we felt that sound was the most important factor of the film opening as sound can transform the context and feel of any footage and we wanted a specific image for our opening. We also decided on location and casting.

Tuesday 17th November

On this day we went to Baddow Recreational Park to take some pictures of the park and find a good place to shoot and to do some test shots.

   

This is a picture of us taking test shots.

These are some of our test shots. The last one is upside down because we had the idea of using this technique to try and do a successful tracking shot. It was not successful and we avoided using the shot in our final film.

Wednesday 18th November

On this day we went to the changing rooms at Great Baddow High School and took some pictures of the changing room and decided it would be perfect for our film opening as it looks old fashioned which is what we wanted as its quite a plain room with nothing modern. However, the camera we had died whilst we were doing some test videos so we decided to come back the next day and get some more test shots.

Thursday 19th November

On this day we went back to the changing room and took some more test shots.

Friday 20th November

On this day we worked out what shots we were going to actually do at the Rec and what order we would do them in. We then prepared our risk assessment for filming at the Rec. In addition to this we practiced the shots we would be using in the first scene we were filming on the following day.

This is some test shots we did when we worked out what shots we were going to use. We found that the camera was on the wrong setting and the footage was too dark because of this. Therefore we remembered to check the camera setting on the actual shoots.

Monday 23rd November

On this day we did all of our filming at the rec. Harry's Grandfather was the only actor we needed for this scene. He fitted the part perfectly, he looked like an old football player which was exactly what we wanted. After we finished filming we uploaded the footage to a computer and reflected on how we though the shoot went. We all thought it was successful and concurred when we saw the footage later.

Tuesday 24th November

On the first day of editing i separated the clips i wanted to use from the ones i didn't and put them into order. I thought that when applying the sound to the clip it would all just slot into place, this wasn't the case. I decided it would be better if i put the music infirst and then apply the clips to the music. Which is what i began to do the next day.



This is the order of our first scene.

Wednesday 25th November

On this day i began to fit the footage we got to the music, this took me the whole lesson as i wanted the transitions to occur on the strong beats in the music.

Here is the music we used as non-diegetic sound on the second audio channel.

Thursday 26th November

We also came up with idea of having commentary from the 1966 world cup final come in quietly towards the end of the old man scene. We spent this lesson looking for the right piece of sound.

Friday 27th November

In this lesson we applied the old fashioned commentary to our clip and began adding a couple of titles in.

Monday 30th November

On this day we attempted to film our second scene in the changing room. We had all of our character (The football team) ready to film, however when we arrived at the facility there were people using it. We did book it but we were pumped at the last minute this meant we were pushed for time for filming and editing with one week until our deadline for our first draft. Our Next filming opportunity wasn't until the 2nd.

Tuesday 1st December

On this day we recorded our story board talk through, edited it and posted it onto YouTube and eventually onto the blog.

Wednesday 2nd December

On this day we filmed the second part of our film opening. We filmed this in the changing room, unfortunelty the teacher who was organizing the slot for us made a mistake which limited the time we had to film. We did our best to get as much footage as we could. We then took it back to the classroom uploaded and were delighted with the results.

Thursday 3rd December

This day was designated to editing we import the running order of the clips to adobe premiere and then applied the sound.

Friday 4th December

This was the day of our first deadline. We spent our lesson working out the levels for sound and tried to get the transition between the scenes right which took a long time. We then exported our first draft under the name 'Replay'.

Monday 7th December

On this day we watched all of the films opening and began to evaluate them.

Tuesday 8th December

On this day we finished evaluating the film openings.

Wednesday 9th December

On this day we looked at our feedback. We found that our film wasn't long enough and the transition between old man and teenager wasn't great. We decided to do another shoot and extend the end of our piece.

Thursday 10th December

We already had a risk assessment prepared as this shoot was in the same place as our last. The filming process was very quick and I feel it was successful. I edited the order straight away and that night I also recorded some foley to go over this part of the film opening.

Friday 11th December

On this day i applied the sound i had recorded the night before and worked on the transition between the first and second scenes. This was the day our second draft was due in.

Monday 14th December -Friday 18th December

Over the last 5 days i made the editing as perfect as i could work primarily on titles. The rest of my group worked on the marketing campaign and made sure all the blog work was up to date. They also made a poster for the film.

Above is the finished film with all of the sound, footage and titles.

Film Website - Film Opening

http://joekiff45.wix.com/cohen

We created a website for our film Cohen using Wix. It is a way of marketing our film and also showing off some visuals of who we are and our film opening.

Representation - Film Opening

Throughout our film we are going to be representing different people. A key group of people we will be representing is people over the age of 65 (the elderly). However, we not be getting our character to walk with a stick or limp or appear to be worse of, it will be evident that we are representing them just through the use of actors. Our actor plays an old aged George Cohen a footballing star.

We are also representing football players in our film, we are going to show there passion for the sport and how the love for football has slowly shifted to a glamorous lifestyle these footballers live. Another group we will be representing is footballers wives, we will display how the glamorous lifestyle has made footballers fall for glamorous models and stars and forget real people who they now see beneath them.

The people we are representing gives gives our film a variety of directions it could go off into, and ideas it can express throughout it.

Institution - Film Opening

We decided to use the production company milkshake films who are associated with lots of independent football films such as the Goal film series. Milkshake films is a small English company. This is why we thought they would be good for our small budget football film. We also used our own company 'Lingo Films'.

Film Poster - Film Opening

Film Poster for Cohen-

Fonts and Film Name - Film Opening

Here is our thoughts on why we chose our film name and the specific fonts.

We decided to use a subtle white font for the titles in our film. We used the titles in Saving Private Ryan and Forrest Gump as a bases for this as these films of both biographical dramas. We also looked at the film Goal II but the font was too bold and bright and didn't match our genre well.

Coming up with a Film Name took a lot of thought. We came up with a few, the first was 'Cohen the Lion' this was because our characters name was Cohen and he played for England and obviously the England badge has three lions on it. However, when we told our classmates about the name they didn't understand the link between the lion and the England football team so we scrapped that name. The second name we had was 'Replay' this one worked better as it was clearly justifiable from our film opening of an old man looking back at his life. However,we felt that this name didn't match our genre very well, it seemed too Sci-Fi in our opinion. The last and official name for our film was simply 'Cohen' the name of our playing. Influenced for this name came from other sport films such as 'Best', 'Rudy' and 'Rocky' which is why it worked for our film.

Script - Film Opening

We decided to add some narration to the end of our film opening to add some context to the opening. We did a short narration from the perspective of a young football fanatic.

"On the 30th July 1966,
 96,924 went and watched England win the world cup,
 a day my nation stood strong.
 But the road to Wembley started way before 1966
 for a young George Cohen."

Sound - Film Opening

This is our plan of the sound we will use in our film opening.

BFI School Visit

On Thursday 5th November we visited the British Film Industry in London.

Group Photos - Film Opening

Character Costumes - Film Opening

The characters in our film are:
Elderly Man.
Young footballer
Rest of the football team around 17 years of age.

The costumes will be casual clothing for the elderly man and a football kit for the football team.

Storyboard - Film Opening

This is our storyboard walkthrough of our Film Opening.

Shooting Schedule - Film Opening

Day/date	Scene	Interior/ Exterior	Shot number/ description	Location	Characters	Props/ Special Equipment
Monday 23rd November	1	Exterior	1 On this day we will film our first scene which consists of an elderly man walking through a park and looking at a flat ‘England’ football.	Chelmsford recreation park.	‘George Cohen’ (Elderly) played by John Hazell.	Cannon Camera Monopod Tripod Umbrella Flat football
Wednesday 2nd December	2	Interior	2 On this day we will film the changing room scene which consists of a football team preparing for a football match.	Great Baddow High School changing room.	George Cohen (young) 8 other young men.	Cannon Camera Tripod Monopod Footballs Bags 9 Football kits.

Risk Assessments - Film Opening

Risk Assessment 1-

Risk Assessment 2-

Similar Films - Research

We have to look at films of a similar genre and films with a similar opening to us.
One film that is similar to both our genre and our opening is Saving Private Ryan.

They have similar shots of the elderly man walking through the park. Also the music is similar to what we will use. It replicates our genre and creates a feeling of emotion and meaning to the viewer.
Our group will take different shots from this as they have a very similar scene to what we want. Also we will want to carry the emotion through into our film opening.

Another similar film is Forrest Gump. This film is similar as it is of a similar genre. It has emotional music that sets the mood for the first scene. We will take some ideas from the sound of this film as it correctly shows the genre and different objects match the sound.
Finally, our final similar film is the Goal series. They are similar because of the genre is Sport. Also they follow one individuals career and personal struggles.

Location - Film Opening

We have planned in advance where we were going to film.

Location is very important as it adds to the Mise en Scene.

We decided to use this location as it is easily accessible for all of our group as it is nearby the school. Also it is perfect as it has a thin concrete path flowing through the large amounts of grass where we needed our actor to walk through.

Finally there are football goals in the park and makes the flat football in the park realistic.

Another location we are using is a school changing room.

This is very easy for us as it is at the school so is easily accessible for everyone in the group. Also it is accessible for other actors we need to include in the film.

The changing room we are going to use is large and allows a lot of potential of including a variety of shots.

Shot List

Shot List
Extreme long shot of park, pan to the right at a normal level. This is the first establishing shot of our film opening.
Worms eye view of the bottom of characters legs. It is a handheld shot, walking forward and it tilts up the character staying the same angle. As the character walks away he becomes a long shot with his
whole body in the shot.
The third shot is a long shot into mid shot of the old man in walking through the park as he comes closer to the camera.
It goes to a extreme close up of a football to show what triggers his memory. It is the symbol of his whole career.
It goes to a long shot of the old man to a medium step as he takes 2 steps forward towards the ball. It shows the thing he has looked at and what has triggered his memory.
First in the changing room we will have the younger version of the character in the opening scene showing that that is him. It will go from and extreme close up to a medium shot of the players.
We will have a tracking shot in the changing room showing the players getting ready. like the backs of shirts and boots being done up.

Equipment and Props

Below is a list of the equipment and props needed for the filming and editing of our film opening.

Equipment

·                Tripod

·                Cannon Camera

·                Steady cam

·                Computer with Adobe Premiere 

·                Umbrella (In case of rain)

Props

·                Deflated football

·                Football boots

·                Football kit (i.e socks, shots, shirts)

·                Sports bags

·                Towels

·                Footballs

·                Goalkeeper Gloves