Directors And Their Style of Filming

Martin Scorcese

• He is the director of very successful films such as: 'The Wolf of Wall Street', 'Shutter Island', 'The Goodfellas' and The Departed.
• He is acknowledged to be one of the best film makers of his generation.
• Leonardo DiCaprio features in a number of his films: 'The Wolf of Wall Street', 'Shutter Island', 'The Departed', 'Gangs of New York' and 'The Aviator'.
• Scorsese's trademarks: 
• Frequent use of slow-motion. (Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Godfella, The Wolf of Wall Street)
• He often has a short cameo in his films. (Mean Streets, Who's That Knocking at My Door, After Hours)
• More recently his films feature corrupt authority figures. (The Aviator, Gangs of New York, The Departed)
• Guilt is a frequent theme in his films. (Shutter Island, Godfellas, Brining Out The Dead, Mean Streets)
• He often uses long tracking shots. ( Taxi Driver, Casino, The Gangs of New York)

Quentin Tarantino

• Quentin was born in Knoxville, Tennesse.
• He is well known for films such as: 'Django', 'Pulp Fiction' and 'Kill Bill'.
• Quentin has some trademark elements that he includes in a number of his films, like:

• The Trunk/Hood POV shot - this shot shows people outside the trunk being watched from the inside. ( 'Reservoir Dogs', 'Pulp Fiction', 'From Dusk Til Dawn') 

• The God POV shot - he uses this shot to convey that something/someone bigger than the character is watching over them. ( 'Jackie Brown', 'Kill Bill' Volume 1 and Volume 2) 

• The use of black and white filters -Tarantino had a love for the way that films looked in the early days cinema. ('Kill Bill' Volume 1 and Volume 2, 'Natural Born Killers' and 'Death Proof') 

• The shots of characters looking in the mirror and speaking to themselves. It reflects the intimacy of being alone. ( 'Reservoir Dogs', 'Pulp Fiction', 'Jackie Brown', 'Kill Bill' Volume 2 and 'Death Proof') 

•  The Mexican stand-off. It originated from Tarantino's favourite film: 'The Good The Bad And The Ugly'. ('True Romance', 'Inglorious Basterds', 'Pulp Fiction', 'Reservoir Dogs')

Concealed Pitch

What is Going to Happen On The Screen?

'Concealed'will start with a loose frame shot of Anastasia with her right arm chained to a pipe. The audience will see extreme close-ups of her body and facial expressions, as they are weak and deteriorating from the antagonists attacks.

There will be background sound of voice-mails from the protagonist: Dylan. It will show his growing concern of Anastasia's whereabouts. The voice-mails will start off relatively calm, as Dylan asks Anastasia if she wants picking up from getting their food. They will then gradually get show he is concerned for her safety, as he waits longer and longer for a reply. As this non-diegetic sound is playing for the audience to hear, there will be close-ups of Anastasia's bruised and cut up legs and arms. Her white clothing will be dirty to signify the dangerous and bad situation she is in, but also show the audience that she is a good character rather than a bad character, as white connotes purity and . It will then show extreme close-ups of her dry lips and her sunken in cheek-bones. Her facial expression will be emotionally drained, however the audience will still be able to gain a sense of fear from her watery eyes. She will also be shivering.

The sound of footsteps will begin to take over the voice-mails as there is a whip pan of Anastasia's growing fear and the door. It will create tension for the characters as they will see that whatever is getting closer to the door is terrifying her and they want to know what it is. Then finally when the antagonist comes through the door, an over the shoulder shot will still conceal his identity from the audience.

The antagonist will then reach out for Anastasia's face and caresses it. The audience will then see a close-up of Anastasia beginning to panic and try to resist the antagonist's touch. Then when she starts to scream there will be a cut to the equilibrium. This is before the kidnapping and will show Dylan and Anastasia happily together.                           

Music

This is the small selection of music that we feel will fit nicely with the opening scene. 

• The Woodsman
• Suspense Creepy Ominous Ambiance

Sound Effects

• Ominous breathe 
• Alarm Clock
• Voice mail answer machine

Communicating Our Genre By Ollie Clark

What genre signifiers will we include?


In our opening sequence we will include genre signifiers such as blood and wounds on Anastasia's face. You would only conventionally see a high volume of blood and deep cut wounds in genres such as action, psychological thrillers and thrillers, therefore blood being demonstrated through extreme close ups and normal close up shots already breaks it down for the audience. The audience could also suggest hat if somebody has blood all round her face and is unable to get out of the situation then somebody has put her there, which the audience could then infer that they might have been some sort of psycho. According to Rick Altman's genre theory, all films contain semantic and syntactic elements. This opening shot strongly supports this theory because as well as being visual to all the blood and deep cut wounds, the use of close up shots connote that she is in grief as well. People might also enjoy the repetition of blood in psychological thrillers, therefore want to watch more. This links to Steve Neales genre theory that audience might enjoy repetition of conventions in genres and would want to see more.

We will also communicate our genre to the audience by using taboo language when the character is in distress. This is extremely common in horrors and psychological thrillers because the idea is so the dialect expresses the main characters level of distress, frustration and anxiousness. This is seen most famously in classics such as Saw where he shouts 'someone help me' in an extremely high pitched voice. As Saw is a horror film, this supports Roberts Stams theory as some people may argue it is a hybrid of genres rather than just a psychological thriller. However it could also challenge his theory because, dialect of distress is also seen in other genres such as action and thrillers and not just horrors.

The use of camera shots and angles will connote that the films genre is a psychological thriller by showing close ups of the girls facial expression to signify she had been psychologically effected. Her beautiful face and long shots of her tied up to a pole in a basement suggests that a psycho is obsessed over her, therefore took matters into their own hands and locked her up all for themselves. The audience may be able to infer that this psycho may be somebody who is obsessive and unable to control themselves. This challenges Robert Stams theory because no film contains a obsessive psycho other than films of the genre 'psychological thriller'. These inferences give the audience a clear understanding of the genre as they have been demonstrated in the opening sequence. Camera shots and angles are also key in contributing the genre because they help the audience understand the daunting atmosphere Anastasia is in. For example the over the shoulder establishing shots connote that the atmosphere is conventional to a thriller, a psychological thriller or a horror film.

All the elements of a psychological thriller such as high amounts of blood, a psycho villain, a princess and prize and a protagonist all thrown into one film contribute to the film being able to push the boundaries of the genre, which supports Steve Neale's genre theory as his idea is that genre is always evolving through a cycle of events. Therefore our film, concealed, pushes the psychological thriller boundaries because all the key concepts take the genre to the next level.

Finally, the use of non-diagetic sounds and music will communicate the genre of our film. The use of high pitched music to work together with dark lighting of the mise-en-scene and pan camera shots create a daunting atmosphere to the audience, and could also help them come to the conclusion that Anastasia is psychologically effected by this as the music could have links and annotations on to how she is feeling.

Contingency Plan By Sophie Stead

When filming an opening sequence in a group many things could go wrong, so as a group we have come up with ideas to prevent any of these event occurring. An issue is that could happen is if someone of the cast dropping out or being unreliable, to ensure this doesn't happen we have chose people from our own group and people who we trust and we know wouldn't do this, but if it does we also have back up actors if this does happen to the group. If the crew keeps being late we will would tell them an earlier time so we get there at the same time but also we are making sure the place we film is somewhere everyone involved knows about but if they don't we can show them beforehand so that no one gets lost.

Our film is in a attic so we won’t have the issue of too many people in the background, but looking into the location not letting you film there, we have ensured that we have a backup place encase the first location we want to film at falls through. The Camera will be used a lot and could run out of battery but we will make sure it has charge the day before we film every time and not mess about with the camera otherwise will run out of battery quicker.

There are often many Continuity problems within any film, for example if your filming one day and an actor is wearing a green top but the next day and your filming the same scene but they are wearing a red shirt thing will look very silly. To ensure this doesn't happen we will have specific filming clothes for the opening sequence that we wear every time. Continuity errors can ruin the illusion of realism and affect suspension of disbelief.

Examples of continuity errors in films:

Wizard of Oz:  There is a scene where Dorothy and the Scarecrow are fighting the trees, the Scarecrow taunts the trees and gets hit with some apples. The very next shot, Dorothy is wearing black shoes instead of her Ruby slippers. Although a small continuity error it was still quite obvious, the error is easily explained and prevented. When making the film the actor would have worn comfortable shoes if her feet weren’t shown on camera. The Frame was larger than expected and someone must have forgotten to look at her shoes.  This is why you should always check the actors costumes to make sure they are correct and in the same position.

What film producers do to prevent errors?

·         Film all the shots for a particular scene together and all shots of consecutive scenes together

·         Actors remain in costume and in character

·         Stay in the same location, this will ensure the same weather.

·         Costume designers, production designers, prop masters, and make-up artists take instant photographs of actors and sets at the beginning and end of each day's shooting.

However on rare occasion continuity errors can be done deliberately, this is often for a comical affect.

Representation in Our Opening Sequence By Sam K

This post will explore the way in which teenagers are represented in our opening sequence. It is essential that we keep our film as an up to date believable representation of the teenagers because they are our main target audience as well.

As teenagers ourselves we will aim to use all our knowledge of what the people we associate are like to represent people of our age group. The dominant ideology of teenagers is that they go out a lot, dress poorly wearing hoodies and tracksuits, are lazy and that they don't have a lot of emotion towards anything. As we know that this is not always the case we will aim to represent teenagers in a more favourable way as we feel this may not always be tHe case and these ideologies are slightly wide of the mark. However Anastasia and Damien will be binary opposite characters with the interest of representing different personalities within the same age group with an innocent girl who seems to have a perfect life and a quiet but devious boy who has a hidden agenda to cause trouble as the antagonist.
 
According to Steve Neale's theory audiences enjoy texts because of repetition and difference. We will aim to use the repetition element of this theory by representing teenagers in the same way that other films of this genre have because it seems like a bad idea to go completely against the way all the other films have gone considering their success.
 
Camera shots such as establishing shots might be useful in representing teenagers because there is an idea that because of teenagers lack of life experience they tend to create strong bonds with certain locations that mean something to them so a shot like this would be useful to emphasise the relationships they have with the place as well as showing what the place is like.

We will look to use music that highlights the latest fashion and also music that is fast pace and intense to show that certain things can really get teenagers blood boiling and so it would emphasise the intensity of how they are dealing with the situation they are in. If we elect to use dialogue then we should try to make sure that the characters speak with current slang and with a slightly relaxed, common dials because that tends to be how every teenager speaks when surrounded by their peers.
 
It is important that we use cutting as an editing technique because it shows the divergence of attention and short attention spans that teenagers tend to have and how quickly their focus switches from one thing to another. However the use of a two shot might also be effective in portraying how dependent teenagers are on each other especially when in a tricky situation, they rely on each other quite a lot.

The colours that are generally associated with teenagers tend to be darker and plain colours that aren't to vibrant because a lot of teenagers are associated with social groups that tend to follow the same trends as each other so in order to stay safe they tend to prefer plainer colours so therefore the costume and general colours in the opening sequence should be colours like white and black because it emphasises the dominant ideology that teenagers are generally quite simplistic people. To back up the point about simplicity it could also be useful to use simple and bold texts in credit sequences in order to keep going with the simple theme. Also low level lighting could be effective because of the genre of the film making the teenagers seem more intimidating because a baby faced teenager in bright lighting might be quite tame and won't run in unison with the genre of the film.

Possible Shots

Throughout the opening sequence it is important to use a variety of shots to make it more interesting to the audience and to show the different techniques that we hold.

Canted angle shot - It creates a sense of disorientation for the audience, which will reflect Anastasia's deteriorating state.

Close-ups/ extreme close-ups - It will make the audience feel uncomfortable as they watch her suffering.

Over the shoulder shot - We could use this shot to create a sense of mystery, as the antagonist will be in the shot however they can only see his shoulder therefore they cannot identify him. It will also make the audience feel as though they are actually in the scene rather than just watching it.

Loose frame - The shot will emphasise how isolated Anastasia is, as Damien keeps her locked away from the rest of the world. It will make the audience feel more sympathy for her because they can see how lonely she is.

Tight Frame - This could be used to show how Anastasia is trapped.

Tilt - It will show the audience her injured body; creating sympathy for her because the audience can see that Anastasia is in danger and is hurt before even knowing what has happened to her.

Whip pan - We could use this shot as a transition from a shot of Anastasia and then a shot of the door to the basement to build up tension as the audience will have to wait to find out what is behind the door.