Week 14 Homework Task 1,2,3

My mood board

My initial idea is based off a linear narrative, as it will build up to a climax at the end of the short film. This is to create suspense and mystery to the audience. 

With the research I have collected, I have identified that The Black Hole | Future Shorts is the most popular existing horror/thriller short film as it has an outstanding 19,601,317 views, and 110,919 likes. From looking at the comments section, with my own knowledge, I have estimated the age range of people that have watched this short film. The age range is from around 16-25 as most of the comments are either jokes or reviews; and the gender is mainly males, I know this because I have looked at the names and profile pictures.  

This screenshot shows how many views and likes this video has as it is the most popular short film on the playlist. 

These two screenshots shows some of the comments left by YouTube users. As you can see, most of them are joke-related and the others are reviews or 'plot twists'.

In conclusion, I have found out that women are more into thrillers because they enjoy the thrill and have more of an adrenaline rush than men. Men tend to enjoy action films as it excites them. Men also like horror due to it being gory (blood, killing, gbh, etc)

With this research, it has helped me because I have chosen to make a thriller short film, as it has given me a range of ideas of what to do for my one minute short film. It also gave me an insight of what narrative to use (as thrillers and horrors have both linear and non-linear narrative). But I will be using a linear narrative, so it can build up and tell a story. 

Pitch: The Box

One 17 year old girl called Lamara finds an weird looking box, takes it home and looks inside. Whilst eating a sweet from the box, she reads a note saying 'DO NOT EAT THE SWEETS'. By the time she could spit it out, she had already swallowed it. 5 minutes later, whilst trying to vomit it out, her eyes roll back and froth forms out of her mouth. She gets a flash forward of everyone being possessed, like her*. She regains consciousness and is no longer the same. When it becomes dark outside, she becomes possessed. The next day, she invites her friends over, and whilst sitting in a circle in her bedroom, she brings out the haunted box and gives each and every one of her friends 'the sweet'. In the end, they all become possessed. Just like her flash forward. 

Production Requirements

Finance

For my one minute short film, I will be able to borrow a camera from the media department or I could use a mobile phone with great camera quality because it will not cost for it to be rented or borrowed. If I was to buy a good quality camera, the price of cameras varies so it will most likely be from over £90.00 to at least £40,000. 

Time

I will use the equipment given from the college to shoot the short film and use a booking system to keep track of what pieces of equipment has been borrowed, and not to make any mistakes of equipment being misplaced or stolen.

Personnel

I will use call sheets to determine and decide which actors deserve what role in the pilot. The call sheets have the number of scenes there will be and what the scene names are. It also shows the location of where each scene will be filmed.

Facilities

To hire an editing suite it will be: for a dry hire, from £150 for half a day or £250 for a full day of editing. So the budget for this will range from £450 to £600. I will be using the Mac Suite in college because it is free for me to use, also, it has Final Cut X and it is accessible from 8am-5pm on Monday-Friday.

Materials
Copyright free music, also known as Royalty Free Music, allows the purchaser (us) to pay for the music license only once and to use the music for as long as we want to.
Paying for clearances is a good thing because it allows us to use and pay for footage, actors, radio stations (that are heard in backgrounds). It ranges from £50 upwards, so it will not cost much to use in the pilot.

Locations

The main location for my one minute short film will be shot and based in my house. This is because it will be easily accessible for my crew, as we all do not live far from each other. Another location will be at a bus stop, as this is where one of my characters will find the box. I may need a permit from Lewisham Council to shoot the bus stop as it is government property. 

link to video guide

Section 3 - Video Guide Conclusion

Video Guide Conclusion



Explain how early cinema editing developed and influenced the modern so that continuity becoming the dominant principle of editing.
Early cinema influenced the modern period of editing to develop Continuity and Montage. however, continuity stands out more because it is a mainstream technique whereas montage is an alternative technique. In the early years of cinema, films were made for a political reason, where as in this day and age, continuity absorbed the technique of montage for the purpose of entertainment. Continuity is mainly focused on drama, and has invisible and seamless editing, which combines shots into a sequence.


Continuity techniques such as invisible cuts, motivated cuts, cross cutting, 180 degree rule, cut away, point of view shot and shot reverse shot are still used in films today.m This clip shows that continuity editing is still being used in the present period. invisible editing has been used in this clip as it follows the action and keeps viewers engaged.





Discontinuity techniques were first used in the early period by pioneers such as The Lumiere Brothers, Porter, Melies and Griffith. However, Melies broke continuity when filming, he devised some complex special effects, where transitions were used. In 1986, when filming a shot of a bus, jump cuts were used to show disappearing and re-appearing objects. He was the first person to invent transitions because due to him never moving the camera while filming, the camera glitched to create the jump cut. Everything was controllable as sets were used, and the fact that he also used stories. The reason for jump cuts are to create meaning for characters and objects. Melies and the Lumiere Brothers are both contemporary as they have the same principals cinema have today.
Porter also broke continuity when filming. He spliced stock footage, staged scenes, used narrative, and broke continuity. By achieving this, he used temporal overlaps which occurs when cutting out the shot before the scene reaches its logical end.



Contemporary editing uses alternative techniques for many purposes. Christopher Nolan breaks continuity by using discontinuous editing, which is a fundamental element of telling a story, He used non-linear narrative through discontinuous editing and uses these editing to display what is happening from the perspective of the character. Editing helps create a stylised hyper-realistic world for the story. In the film, The Prestige, Nolan presents audiences with challenging and intelligent narratives. Scenes are often interrupted by the unconventional editing style of cutaways. Cross cutting is also used in several scenes of parallel action to build to a climax. The purpose of this is to suggest an interpretation of two actions which are rhythm and length of time.




Quentin Tarantino also breaks continuity while using style and also breaking the 180 degree rule. In Kill Bill, he uses pace and rhythm and combines shots into a sequence, which is used for stylistic purposes - style and entertainment. It is portrayed that Kill Bill is fantasised as it breaks the illusion of realism because it lets us know that it is staged. (when the man jumps on the sword). It punctuates the edit.

Unit 16 Outcome 2 Preparing to Edit

Home



Train station













Street

The screenshots shown are the three bins i put my rushes into. One bin is train station, the second is street and the last is home. These bins are the locations that were shot for the short film. In order to pick what rushes to use, we had to log them by writing the shot type underneath each clips and also writing wether if they are good or bad. If the shots are labelled as 'good', we would use them in our rough copy. One of the main reasons why most of the shots were bad was due to bad camera angles and the tripod being shown in the background.

This screenshot shows my EDL. Edit Decision Lists are used to tell editors wether to use a shot or not; it helps keep shots in order, as it shows the name of each clip on my project, before I labelled them 'good' or 'bad' with the shot type. Another reason for EDL's is that it helps keep all shots together. In order for me to view the EDL, I had to select all of my footage, then click file, and then 'Export XML'. This then gave me a XML file and I had to drag it onto 'Microsoft Excel' in order to view the coded (or embedded) text.