Marcus's Screen grabs

This shot is very affective as we chose to use the rule of thirds, showing that our character was out of sync thinking about what took place the night before. We chose to keep our character in black clothing and made him sit on a black chair again going with the idea that black is associated with death and a dark past. The messy clothes on the top of the chair show that our character is lost and confused in his thoughts. I like this shot very much and feel it is one of our best.

~Marcus Charles

Character Juxtaposition

When comparing characters in films, we chose to juxtapose the character Max (played by Marcus Charles) with the character B.B from the film Honey. Both characters are similar in the way that they are both painted as thuggish and involved with dealing drugs, also both reflect the common stereotype of a 'Gansta' in the way they are depicted during filming, both violent and threatening.

~Rose McGinley Redon

Marcus's Screen grabs

This shot fits very well in our film opening because it shows our main protagonists lifestyle which as you can see is very crazy at the moment, hence the messy clothes in the background. We chose to put a cartoon poster on the wall to show an innocent but immature side to our character. We also took time thinking of how we could show our main protagonist was innocent but stuck in a sticky situation. We chose to find a white room and use white bedding to suggest innocence and a good hearted person. We then chose to dress our character in black suggesting death and evil.

~Marcus Charles

Shot list

We originally had two different ideas for the opening of our film , we were not exactly sure which one we wanted to use so we created a shot list for both ideas , however we thought about which one would convey a stronger sense of a social realist film and also which one would be more straightforward in terms of shooting , mise-en-scene and acting , which brought us to the conclusion of using the second opening idea .

Some of the problems we would have had if we used the first idea were , having to rely on other actors outside of our media lesson to participate and be punctual, an indoor location which was would have been big enough to shoot and it also would have been more time consuming in comparison to our second idea.

Below are both of our shot lists which I had to re-create in order for the them to be read and understood fully ,as the writing on the originals was not very clear when uploaded to the computer

Shot list 1

Second Shot list

~Nathan Jameson

Editing Process

Editing process

FL studio

the program used to make the instrumental in the opening of are movie.

After effects.

this is the program that was used to make the special effects in are 2 minute opening.

here is a preview of some of the effects that had been created with after effects.

TV turning off

Final cut was used for the main editing of the opening of are movie final cut is a simple program to use and is really effective when you have to make difficult edits.

~Isaac Stewart

Nathan's screen grab

My first screen grab is a medium close up of my character , i chose this shot because

it was clear and worked very well in showing my facial expressions/emotion. we did not choose to use an extreme close up because we wanted to include the costume of my character to allow the audience to become more aquatinted with his personality. The facial expression which i was trying to express was sadness and mental pain , the dark lighting connotes the social realist genre as well as setting the mood which was intended to be sorrowful. The close up shot also captured the wall in which i was stood next to , this was done to make it seem as if the actor was trapped as if the walls were closing adding to his despair which lead to the next shot were I collapse under the pressure.

My second screen grab was an over the shoulder shot of me looking into a mirror, the general use of costume was used to show the characters mental as well as physical breakdown, the colour of the T shirt was chosen to show mourning for the recent loss a close friend , my hair shows how the character is beginning to become slightly un-hinged. Although it may not be visible in this screen grab , there was also water dripping from my face, this shows that the character was trying to wash away his sins as water symbolizes cleansing.

~Nathan Jameson

Rose's Screen Grabs

My first screen grab is the establishing shot of the film. It shows the characters

in a full body shot with the buildings towering over them making them appear small and weak, it also gives you the beginning impression of the characters (dark figures in an alleyway at night) which is connoted by their attire, (hoodies etc) which gives you the classic impression of dangerous people. You cant quite yet see what's happening which adds a sense of mystery, if you paused the film now people would want to watch on. Furthermore the lighting and the time of day we used adds to the shifty atmosphere and connotes to the social realism genre.

My second screen grab comes a few seconds later, i chose this one because i thought the angle and the shot in general were really impressive, this is a high angle shot, which we felt would work best, it caused our camera man to climb a 6 ft wall and then a fence to loop his arm through barb wire in order to get the correct shot. Again the angle makes the actors seem weak and out of control, furthermore the way Nathan (Tyrone) is clutching his hands connotes fear and sadness. Whilst Marcus (Max) is still shrouded in darkness holding the body, this gives the impression that he is far less upset then Nathan which is what we wanted to convey, as Marcus's character was supposed to be a great deal more uncaring towards the situation.

~Rose McGinley Redon

Group 4 Power Point Presentation

~Rose McGinley

Some Contributions from

~Marcus Charles

~Isaac Stewart

~Nathan Jameson

Isaac Screen Grabs

I chose this shot is because of the way it has been framed and how the credit fit comfortably in the bottom corner of the frame, also this shot is well lit.

Using my camera skills i was able to make a leather stool look like a bed side table.

This being the first shot after the screen went black this one is very important, it shows that its the next morning and the time of day, also using the editing i was able to make the sound of the alarm clock blend between the scenes creating a smooth tranisiton.

~Isaac

Logo creation/ After effects

To make sure our film opening was unique in comparison to most others , I decided to create an animated opening for our production company which is called “ Wavey Productions

Firstly me and Marcus had to choose a font for the production companies name, since ours was to do with waves and water we chose a font called “Marcel” fromwww.dafont.com

We then wanted to add something more , so we looked for images which again represented water, we ended up choosing a surfer, we found a font on the same website called "athlete". After we consulted the group on our selected font and logo idea we downloaded the fonts to begin making the font.

we then put together a rough production logo in Photoshop by combining the fonts we had downloaded

After we had a final logo design , I created an animation for our opening using our logo , it was very time consuming but the end result was very pleasing. I created it using Adobe After Effects CS4.

Adobe After Effects is primarily used for creating motion graphics and visual effects. After Effects allows users to animate, alter, and composite media in 2D and 3D space. I did not create the animation at college , I did it in my own time at home, after i had created it i exported the file to an .avi (video file) and we uploaded it into or opening at college.

I began with a blank composition which looked like this :

After several hours of work , my blank composition was made into this :

below is a video clip of the animation I made.

~Nathan Jameson ~

Distribution

After looking at a lot of different distribution companies we have come to a group decision that the best choice, to distribute our film if we were to release it would be 'Blue Dolphin'. The reasons for that being are as followed. First of all due to a lack of experience as a group, we were looking for a company that had great experience in distributing films and Blue Dolphin has that. With over 30 years experience we felt that Blue dolphin would be able to give our group the cutting edge and or the best opportunity in making our movie successful. Blue Dolphin also has great links with other companies such as hotels, airlines and ships and our movie would be able to be seen by a lot more people.

We didn't choose other distribution companies because Lionsgate asked for too much money, Revolver was pretentious and Verve Pictures didn't offer a variety of distribution methods and lacked drive.

Link to Blue Dolphin- http://www.bluedolphinfilms.com/

~ Marcus Charles

Gang Mood Board

This is a mood board which represents the gang theme in our opening to are film, this was used to help us create the right atmosphere for a social realism.

~Rose McGinley & Isaac Stewart

Drug and Alcohol Mood Board

This is a mood board related to drugs, Which was used as research and a handy tool enabling us to meet the criteria of an opening to a social realist film.

~Isaac Stewart & Rose McGinley

Progress of group Four

This is a photo of Marcus, he was reaserching more into the social realism genre and also creating a blog entry. His research into the social realism genre helped us throughout our coursework because we were able to acknowledge how the openinging of this certain genre should be (exposition , camera shots, lighting and also diegetic & non diegetic music) .





This is an photo of Isaac who has been consistently working hard during our lesson and even staying longer after college to edit our opening so that it can get the highest mark possible, he has been using Final cut pro to edit combined with After effect CS3 throughout the project, which are not two of the easiest softwares to use, in this picture he is working on the title.

This is a photo of Rose during our media lesson , she had been committed to creating or uploading alot of information to the blog, at the moment she is working on a post on a complete synopsis of the film, as director she has been successful in dictating what needs to be done on the blog by the other members in our group

~ Nathan Jameson~

Plot Synopsis

After the first audience viewing of our film we realised that without knowing what the film in its entirety, one might think the film was headed a different direction then we had planned.

A short synopsis has been compiled in order to help understanding of our film.

A social realist film about three friends, the youngest (who is seen much like a little brother to the other two) dies from a drug overdose in an alleyway, after finding him, the most headstrong character Max (Marcus) insists they dump the body, fearing that they will get the blame for their friends death as it is they who influenced him to do drugs and provided him with the illegal substances.

The rest of the film shows us how Max and Tyrone deal with the death of their friend, Max conceals his grief by taking ample amounts of drugs eventually being sent to rehab by a judge after being caught attempting to hold up a shop to get money. Tyrone slowly descends into madness unable to cope with the guilt of feeling responsible for his friends death and hiding the body, being a close friend of the deceased's family he has to watch them wonder where their son has gone and why he abandoned them.

The film concludes with Max taking an overdose and dieing in rehab (he had bribed the guard) and Tyrone cleaning himself up and giving up drugs, confessing to the hiding of the body and being sent to jail, his conscience finally clear.

~Rose McGinley

Viewing Results 2

After the primary viewing of our film opening we handed out questionnaires in order to find out what people thought of our opening, we expected to get anything from a 1 to a 10 when we asked how much out of ten you would give it for overall quality and how good it was. To the groups delight we received nothing less then an eight out of ten, with a majority of nines and tens, needles to say we were very pleased. The pie chart below shows these results,the purple represents the amounts of 9's, the blue the tens and the yellow the eights.

Please click on the picture of the pie chart if you want to see it enlarged.

~Rose McGinley

Viewing Results

When going through our audience feedback survey it was clear to see that everyone enjoyed our film opening with the majority of the audience saying the liked everything about it. Some picked out specific things they liked such as the location, acting and the voice echo effect we used.

e.g

”The locations were very believable”

“Location was really

good, fits the theme”

“Location and dark lighting helps to emphasise the mood”

“The location was

effective and worked well with the genre”

“I think they worked

well to establish who the characters are”

“Realistic acting”

We asked the audience what they thought our film was trying to

convey and even though the answers were not all the same, as a group we think the audience grasped the idea of our film. The answers we got backed linked closely to what we were trying to show and we feel that if the film went on the audience would understand the storyline and concept of the film a lot more.

The audience felt that we could of improved our end title and we are in the process of doing this. A couple of the audience didn't understand our point of view shots as we would have liked them to and thought that the shots were just shaky, As a group and compared to the feedback of the rest of the audience we feel these shots fit in well with the idea of panic and don't plan on

changing this part of our film.

The audience were also asked if they could define the genre which we tried to use and the vast majority of people identified our film as being a social realism with only a few left thinking it could of been a thriller. They didn't say why they thought this but as a group we suggested that they could of thought this due to a combination of the music we used and the setting.

Every single person in the audience said that on the basis of our opening they would watch the rest of our film if there was one.

~ Marcus Charles with assistance of Nathan Jameson

Planning Methods

When we first started trying to come up with plot ideas we used a useful group method where we sat together and said ideas that came to our minds and things that would link to them whilst throwing a ball.

For example

Drugs > Death > Thugs > Hiding the body...and so forth.

We all really enjoyed this way of working and found it very useful as a way to help us relax around each other whilst working and get to know each other and what talents we could bring to our group to make it as effective as possible.

So...thanks to the purple squishy ball

~Rose McGinley

Filming Synopsis

When we began filming, we chose to do it at one of the actors houses , we chose Adeels house as he was willing to let us use it and it was also the closets to school.

Although the scenes which were recorded at adeels house come in the second half of the opening we decided to shoot them first because we didn’t want to waste time as we were already behind on filming, as we wanted to record the first part of our opening at night we went to Adeels to record until we had the darkness which we required outside

The first problem we had whilst filming in adeels was the mise-en-scene , we had to remove some religious objects from the wall because they did not match the profile of the main character. We also had to add some objects to create a place to put the alarm clock, as adeel did not have a bedside table

We also had to retake the shot in the bathroom a few times because the cameraman’s reflection could be seen in the mirror during the shot so we had to angle it correctly. We also decided that it would look more dramatic if I splashed more water on my face so we decided to retake that shot.

***********************

We had to re-shoot the alleyway scene many times firstly due to pedestrians which kept passing by while we were recording, this was not helpful because we were working with a camera which had a low battery .

We felt that the angle at which the scene was being shot was not good enough so we decided to have our camera man climb up on a wall to get a high angle shot of the footage

Positioning was also a problem as the actor which played the dead body was quite heavy which meant whilst we weren’t in the shot he was standing rather than being carried, which meant we had to re-film so that the positions of the actors were consistent right the way through

We also had a problem when first shooting due to sounds which were out of our control for example , police sirens. The video camera picked up many other sounds as well as trying to pick up the voices of our actors which meant actors had to speak loud enough to be heard over background noise

We had to apply a slightly darker filter to some parts of our opening (when filming outdoors) as we were filming outdoors for about an hour , as the time passed it got darker which was noticeable in the editing , so by adding the darker filter we were able to get a level of light which was consistent throughout.

~Nathan Jameson~

Cast and Crew !!

This post introduces the cast and crew of 'Leithcote Path'.

Director:

Rose McGinley Redon

Rose was the director of the film, she was in charge of the shots used and the script, she assisted the actors in

their positioning and gave feedback

at the end of each take, asking for retakes if necessary, she worked in close conduct with the camera man in deciding which shots would be used in which scene and made final decisions in shot takes.

She also worked in close conduct with Isaac making decisions throughout the filming process and editing as well, furthermore she organized the group in written worked such as story boarding, character profiling and genre research, contributing a great deal of work herself.

Camera Man & Editor:

Isaac Emmanuel Stewart

Isaac was the camera man and editor of the film, during the filming Isaac was very helpful inputting opinions and taking careful direction, he carefully handled each shot and contributed ideas as time went on, at one point Isaac climbed a wall and looped his covered arm through some barbed wire in order to get a satisfactory high angle shot, for which the rest of the crew is very impressed with and happy with, as editor Isaac did an exemplary job, his work was flawless and he spent a great deal of time and commitment doing it, he worked in close contact with the actors and director taking input and asking questions as the group worked out the editing of the film together and finally Isaac created all of the instrumental pieces in the film himself on his computer and then synced them into the film in the editing process.

Actors:

Nathan Jameson (Tyrone):

Whilst shooting not only did he teach other actors breathing/preparation techniques, no matter how many times we had to retake a shot , he was fine and he truly rose to the occasion. His brightest moment came in the alley way scene when he was truly able to convey a distraught character despite him being someone who can rarely be found less then jubilant! He assisted Isaac in the editing and also contributed his own graphic work from ' Adobe After Effects'. Nathan was also the one who digitally created the company logo on the computer by himself.

Marcus Charles (Max) :

Marcus played the tougher character in this short film clip, he worked very hard in order to grasp his idea of the character at time taking pains to master his lines, despite a lack of drama training Marcus was able to easily project and pitch his voice and project the image of an angry young man while Nathan played his counter part the softer hearted man.

Marcus was also very useful during group work, contributing ideas and working hard on research, he was mainly in charge of the 'Audience Feedback Survey', he created a range of questions that we could ask preliminary viewers in order to perfect and continue to edit our film appropriately, he then brought back the ideas to us for the group to continue the work together.

~Rose McGinley

One of our Shots

This is an example of a high angle shot, from a part of our film we think this is a level 3/4 because its a very interesting angle, it helps to set the scene and convey a sense of powerlessness, it also makes them feel as though they are being watched, furthermore the shot is well framed and not 'wonky' despite it being done using the camera as handheld, from an unsteady height. However we are not sure the shot stayed as steady as we would have liked and have not yet finished editing so we are not yet confident to give it a level 4.



~Rose McGinley Redon