Evaluation (Question 7)

Evaluation (Question 6)

Evaluation (Question 4 and 5)

Evaluation (Question 3)

Missed Information

• One of the main reasons we chose paramount for our opening was because paramount have done previous work on action-thrillers and have distributed them, Examples include and not limited to: Iron Man, Mission Impossible and Transformers

Evaluation (Question 2)

Evaluation (Question 1)

Used and Challenged Conventions

Codes and convention	Result	Example
Weapons – knives/ guns	Yes	One of the characters is seen holding a gun
Fights	Yes	A fight occurs between two characters
Futuristic cars/ bikes	No	N/A
Explosions and crashes	No	N/A
Cat and mouse chase	Yes	Goodie is chasing the enemy
Killings	Yes	One character strangles the other
Outbreaks in windows	No	N/A
Massive destruction	Yes	Nuclear bomb in introduction
Sinister, upbeat music	Yes	Played throughout the scene
Outburst in setting	No	N/A
Hi-tech big machinery	No	N/A
Goodies and Baddies	Yes	Both protagonist and antagonists are featured
Always a motive	Yes	Stolen nuclear weapon
Mission waiting to be completed	Yes	Cliff hanger
Big modern city	No	N/A

Behind the Iron Curtain

This is Our Final Project. I had an amazing experience filming this and editing it. Alex and I put plenty of time and effort into this and wanted to thank both Miss Hitchens and Miss Tedford for being granted the opportunity to film this. Enjoy it

Storyboard

Here is a finalized version of our storyboard.

I tried to find images that closely resemble what we will produce for our opening scene, On important thing to note is that their will be mild violence just because its an action and you need to have violence in an action or else its not an action.

Filming and Editing Journal (Finale)

21/1/16

We had now finally completed our opening scene, Both Alex and I were happy with our results and we could never create something greater than this, It wasn't until we uploaded that we discovered several problems that we had not noticed:

• One Scene seemed to have a vertical camera shot rather than a horizontal one
• We did not include our information throughout the opening (I.e directors and Producers)
• The frames on each did scene did not match the predecessor scene, so we had o have each scene with all the same frame size. 

So this editing session was to add the finishing touches and add corrections,  Firstly we had to remove the vertical shot scene as their was no way we could flip to a horizontal shot, we then made each scene the exact frame size, this was a long process as we could not do every scene and transition in one go and had to each one individually. Finally we then added the correct texts to the scenes with all of the directors, cast and producers.

After all that we had finally completed our opening scene, afterwards we had no more mistakes and have successfully developed an opening scene.

Royalty-Free Music

Within our project, we used several different sounds and effects that we already put into our editing software, These sounds do not require any copyright laws or effects meaning we had free use to put them into our opening, Examples of some sounds we used Included most non-digetict sounds and one piece of music.

Sounds Effects

Radio Static- Used during the transitions as a way of creating an atmospheric feel of the classic radio effect during the late 60's and early 70's

Gun Cocking- Used in the part where our Protagonist is acquiring the weapon and to include a non digetict sound into the Mix

Typewriter- This is heard several times within the opening, We used it as an effect to the typewriter text on our title and notices to the production crew. We wanted to use this sound to make it seem more like a classic spy film.

Music

We only used on piece of music within our opening, It is a piece of soundtrack from the Film Fury, This piece of music is included from start to finish within the opening, We had all the rights and freedom to include it within the opening and overall it gave a good effect as a background music.

Filming and Editing Journal ( Week 2)

12/1/16

During this day we started to put the footage in the correct order, This took us a while as we had multiple takes on each scene to get the perfect shot. After about 20 minutes we were happy with the footage that we filmed and now begun to import clips from the internet to give the beginning of the opening a more realistic and professional opening. We imported 3 clips, one was taken from a documentary about the Soviet invasion of Berlin. Another was taken as a Gif of a nuclear weapon aftermath and the final clip is from another documentary of the U.S invasion of the Iwo Jima islands.

Once we had all the Clips imported, we had now got a complete opening, all we needed to do was to add transitions and  import some background music. The music we obtained was from the soundtrack of the action thriller film Fury, We had sent an e-mail to the company behind the rights of the music to avoid copyright and allows us permission to use it (a post later on highlights this).

13/1/16

With our opening almost complete, we now had to add the transitions between each slide. The transition we used was the radio/Television static, This was used to create an early 1960's feel to the opening with radio static and black and white effects to make the opening seem like it was actually in the 1960's-70's. Overall it was to make our opening seem more professional.


In the screenshot it shows us adding sound affects from the sound bible to add some non-digetict sounds to the opening. This is one of the many non-digetict sounds we included in our opening scene, We included the use of radio waves to be used in the transitions to add a more nostalgic feel to the opening.

Request For the Library Images

We noticed we used library images in our opening sequence, Before we did not know what the source of these images were, until after a bit of research, we found that our first sequence belonged to a Documentary called The Invasion Of Berlin. The second images belonged to a Video game Called Fallout 4. We asked permission to use both of these images for our
opening.

I have noted that I will use the footage only for my opening and nothing else, we fully intend to use the library images to create a sense of historical aspect and the notability of previous films from older generations and to create a sense of a realistic background story.

Research into library images

When we were creating our opening scene, We had designed our storyboard and knew exactly how we wanted it, For my storyboard I had found two images to place within the board. I used Google images to find these images.

The first 3 images were used in the opening sequence of the opening. We wanted to include a historical highlight into the opening and link in the to the plot of the story. Because our plot is linked to the rise of nuclear arsenals in the world and our locations include the Soviet Union, We wanted to show the dominance of the Red army during World War 2 and included some images of a Documentary found of YouTube called The Battle Of Berlin'. The Other images were used to show the significance of Nuclear Weapons of the importance of how ironic they are, Weapons that are built to destroy us but ironically are used to create peace. These images were found out to be included in the Opening scene of a recent Video Game 'Fallout 4'.

Filming and Editing Journal (Week 1)

6/1/16

We began filming on the 3rd of January, We met up to proceed to a location that was beneficial to making the scene seem realistic and professional. Because I wanted the scene to seem elsewhere, there was a swamp/forest area not far from us that was perfect, the weather at the time was perfect for filming conditions that would make our scene look very well done. When we were filming we decided to make our opening more professional, that we used a variety of camera shots, We included a close up, steadicam and a point-of-view shot. Some scenes we used different camera shots n purpose for a specific reason, for example during the slow-motion walking scene we placed the camera low and pointed it up to suggest the idea of the fact that we show ourselves as a superior power. With this variety and experimentation, we believed we developed a good opening. To make some of these shots we made holes in the ground to place poles so that our cameras could record and create these camera shots, some took multiple attempts to perfect but in the end it was a success. During this process, Alex and I have a shared role within this project, We will both Act, Edit and film specific points in the opening. By doing this we will have two inputs into the opening and have the ability to have a bigger opinion on how we should create the opening.

7/1/16

Today is the Final day of recording, We used the school's 'Octagon' building to produce the scenes that required us to use the board in the opening, we used tables and bi-pods to create the height of the camera to be level with us. The main problem with the 'Octagon' is that because of its design, is extremely open, making a serious problem in terms of echo. This is where my idea of a narration comes in use instead of a dialogue.

8/1/16

Today marks the first day we begun the editing process, Alex and I collected all of the footage we captured from our phones and other devices and begun to put it together.

This image shows the session where we put all of the footage together, none of it is in order as we are primarily focusing on adding all the footage. Both us gained a lot of experience into editing when we received feedback from our success of the preliminary task from the small mistakes we made and how we incorporated them into something better.

From our last task of editing, we learnt some new features and tricks we could use to make our opening seem more professional and less of a lower standard. We learnt these tricks through YouTube videos from independent study sessions, these features we learnt were how to import clips and music from YouTube and other sources which is what allowed us to import  footage that we wanted to have in the opening but couldn't due to the fact we did not have enough resources.

Major Changes to the Opening Scene

When we were brainstorming we had the initial idea that a lot of the production relied on too many factors, for example we put too much trust into the weather. We very much wanted it to snow around the area. Unfortunately we could not be able to film with the correct features we wanted, Also one of the locations we wanted to film was closed stopping potential production.

One key change we made was the entire opening scene itself, all previous locations that were mentioned and were photographed was not used during production. On our original production schedule we marked filming to be the 30th and 31st of December. However it did not snow on any of these days (and if your reading this you probably noticed it did not snow through the winter of 2015-2016). We fell back to our backup filming days and that was the 3rd and 4th of January, The main reason for this was because I spent time with my friends and family down in London.

We now changed our location of filming top three locations (Pictures and reason why for these locations will be put on a future post). The First location we are now filming is the school, For some of our scenes we are filming in the shape and form of a political meeting and the school can easily provide us with a setting of this sort. The second place we are now filming is Timperley Brook, This location provided us of a great place to film where we could create some action, we used the environment to our advantage including the swamps that were created due to the heavy rain and flooding. Secondly we had the abandon railway tracks to use for our filming which will be discussed later in a future blog post. The last place we filmed was underneath a bridge along the canal, this provided us with a suitable location for a key scene which again will be discussed later in a future blog post.

Research into Filming and Editing

Sound

From my previous research into film openings, I made several notes about different aspects of the opening, In the aspect of sound, I noticed that most sounds that are made are digetict and occur within the opening, This is mainly because the producers wanted to create a sense of realism and used  physical props and environments to maintain the effect of realism. For our opening we don't have the correct resources or any to develop this same effect, Therefore we have to use non-digetict sounds to keep the effect the same. For this our software programme Final Cut Pro X has many Royalty-Free music and sound effects for us to use for our opening.

Lighting

Mostly for our opening, we knew we wanted a majority of our opening to occur outside, although our location is in the open, it did grant us the light we needed. Light effects are the most major importance during scenes that occur indoors, we wanted to create a scene where it takes place in a secret location, we want to use a small room with a table with a single light that can give the effect that the whatever is on the contents is regarded as  highly top-secret.

Screen Effects

We have mentioned that we wanted to make our opening scene in black and white, One of the last spy films to take place in black and white was The Manchurian Candidate, The film was produced in 1962, one year before Dr.No was released, The entire film is shot in black and white, it is about a prisoner of war who is brainwashed into becoming an Assassin for the Communist party. The film itself is rather good despite being rather old and in black and white, meaning it can still do good. Another important film to note that is in black and white is Schlinders list, One of the highest rated films of all time, it gained credibility for it being in black and white and used it signify the time period and later in the film, the colour red.

Research into titles

Every film in the world and throughout history have always had a unique title that has represented the semiotics of the film and what it is about and what genre it belongs to. We have mentioned in previous posts that we are taking a classic take on the opening, including a black and white opening as well as typewriter Font for our opening.

We looked older films from the late 60's s and 70's which mainly consisted of the old Bond films, each bond film has a unique title based around the time period, the later the bond film the bigger the change...

Typewriters were used to write up manuals and important documents up until the 1980's until the invention of the computer. This is why I wanted to use Typewriter font to make it seem more realistic.

Production Schedule

Recently after collecting all research, props and knowing our location we are discussing our production schedule. The most difficult challenge is to make it look like a sunrise is taking place and gives us a much better atmosphere as well as professional and realistic. Our main draft so far includes:

29th December 
On this day we will begin filming the end of our opening, why? well because we are having our opening act like it is morning (but we don't want to film at 4am in the morning) and going into daylight. However we are having a flashback within the opening which will take place during daytime. We will begin filming when the sun is at its best point and we will film in Dunham Massey park. Once we are finished here we need to make our way to Devisdale park and this has to be completed before 2pm when the sun begin to go into a sunset.

30th December
During this day, Alex and I will head off to record the main part of the opening that takes place on abandoned railway tracks. This is important as we need to get it right as we would like the sun to be almost coming over the horizon. This should be around 3-4pm.

1st January-10th January
During this period this is the time to catch up on dates where the weather or personal issues has occurred. 90% of this part of the scene heavily relies on the weather being accurate as possible, The main dates only occur WITHOUT snow, To make things more realistic we would like snow but their has not been any reliable dates of snow during this period of time.

NOTE- These dates are the best suited time for us when we do not have any problems of work or personal matters

Distributors of Action films

Looking for our distributor for our film, we have researched some of the current and most popular distributors for action films, These are the three most popular distributors.

The first distributor is called lionsgate, A popular company that has been distributing since 1997. A modern company that has been distributing some of the most popular titles recently including the Expendables trilogy as well as the Hunger games. They have access to some of the most modern technology they we could use for our film.

Universal are part of the 'big 6' corporations in the media world, on rival to Disney, they are responsible to be part of a successful company that has access to a large sum of funds that can be beneficial to a film.

Paramount is possibly the most obvious choice I would choose for my opening, They have plenty of experience in distributing as they have been in transformers and Iron-man. They are also part of the big six and have experience with Action-thrillers

Props

In any film you will need props,why? because you will not be able to construct your film without any object to signify or create a motive. Some important characters in films have a significant object with them, for example Indiana Jones with his whip or Knightrider with his car Kit.

For our opening scene we several props to make our scene look realistic as well as professional. Firstly we will need binoculars as for our characters will be trying to infiltrate and exfiltrate without being detected, In most Films involving infiltration will  use binoculars to investigate the area and to find a route that suits them best. Luckily I already have several binoculars in my possession already which can be useful for filming.

Secondly, we will need some costumes for our characters to make the scene more realistic and professional. Most of our filming is entirely dependable on the weather, if it snows during our production schedule then we will wear winter clothing, i.e white clothing, if it does not snow then we will have to wear clothing to match the environment, i,e woodland clothing.

Thirdly, In order to make our scene effective we are going to use a chair with duck tape that has been snapped in order for the audience to question what is going on in that context they will continue watching to find out why that has happened. Also in this part we will be using a table with a laptop to act as the Intel that we require and what the opening scene is about.

Lastly, since this is an action thriller we will need to have some sort of weapons, obviously we cannot just use sharp objects or any kind of weapon they will inflict harm, instead we are trying to find something that looks real but is actually fake.