Coming Down the Mountain

Recently I have studied the television series 'Coming Down the Mountain' to help me understand how to use various aspects of media (camera angles, mise-en-scene, editing and sound) to convey the message I wish to in my own production piece.

Story Board

This is our first story board. It that shows all of the different aspects of our film intro that we would like to include, such as: an in depth description of any sound (both diegetic and non diegetic) that are taking place, a clear description of all of the shot types that we would like to use and what will be happening in each shot. There are also some drawn pictures that give a rough idea as to what mise en scene there will be and what we would imagine these shots would look like if we did manage to successfully take them.

Sound

All of the sounds that we plan to use in our production piece so far are diegetic. Whether
or not we have any non diegetic sounds in our film opening we are not sure, but if we did then it would be in the form of a soundtrack of some slightly sinister music. I would want this music to be entirely instrumental instead of electric because it would not suit the tone of what was happening and contextually it would not make sense for the time period our piece is set in.

Costume

As this film is going to be taking place during the night, we want all of the actors and actresses to be wearing pyjamas. I have been doing some research and it looks like during the 1940s, dressing gowns were as popular back then as they are now. The only difference is that it looks like a lot more adults would have worn them in comparison to how many children wore them. Depending on peoples social class, their dressing gowns would have been different colours and materials. As all of our characters are of the upper class, some of the actors are going to wear dark red burgundy dressing gowns as they give connotations of wealth and luxury.

Platoon Opening

As our film is a war based film I have been looking at some openings for popular war films so that I can get an idea for what I want our film to not only look like, but feel like. One of the films I have researched is Platoon. In the film opening for Platoon it immediately jumps into the action of war using both diegetic and non diegetic sound, whilst simultaneously demonstrating to the audience with mise en scene and camera angles what this film will be about, and where in the world we are.

This is similar to what we want to try to do in our film opening, because we want to be able to show the audience the time period, location, and who the main characters are. Mise en scene will be vital n order to show the audience what time period this film is based in. This means that we need to think about the types of toys that we are going to have laying around the setting. Like for example rather than having a toy that is electric in any sort of way, we would maybe have something wooden like a Yo Yo. We couldn't have anything electric because that is not the type of toy that a child would be likely to have during the 1940s.

Film Opening

We have now started what we are going to do for our coursework. For our coursework we have to create a film opening that is around 2 minutes long. We have decided that we want to do an opening for a film based during the War. What we are going to do is going to give us a lot of opportunities, for example, we will get to work with a larger cast than we are used to, we will get to create a professional storyboard, and also get to write an in depth script.

In our film opening we are going to have a house filled with children being evacuated by the owners of the property and into a bomb shelter due to a siren sounding. Because we are starting our film with an intense scene it is important that we use a wide variety of camera angles so that we can show the audience what the feel of the moment is.

This is a mind map that we drew up in class that displays some of the ideas that we want to incorporate into our film opening. Along the bottom their is a time line of what we would want to happen if we were filming the entire film.

The Woman in Black Opening Analysis

The opening sequence to 'The Woman in Black' is clearly meant to frighten and intrigue the audience. This is obvious not only because of the actresses, but definitely due to some of the things that you can see in certain shots due to the camera angles.

This is the first shot in the film. As people already know that this film is a horror movie, to have something as innocent as this be the first shot on screen will make people feel uneasy as the mise en scene connotes thoughts of childhood and purity, giving them a false sense of security. The non-diegetic sound of the soundtrack starts to play in these close ups and because this music has such an eerie feel to it, it makes the audience start to think that something bad is going to happen, although they don't know what. Also during this shot, the diegetic sound of the glasses hitting each other echo to give a more eerie feel to the opening sequence.

In this next extreme close up shot we start to get a better idea of the creepiness that this film is trying to display. This is mostly because of the doll which is a piece of mise en scene stereotypically seen in the horror genre, but also because of the fact that we can now see the little girls hand which reminds us of this idea of innocence.










This extreme close up gives us a good look at another sinister looking toy, and also shows us that their is more than one child currently in this room. the close up also hints at the era this film is set by the mise en scene of the type of doll they are playing with.









This wide shot is meant to prove to us that their are in fact three girls in this room. We can also see by looking at the mise en scene in this shot that this is based around the 1900s. The mise en scene of the costume and props are effective in demonstrating where about in time we are in this wide shot because the audience can see that they are not only playing with old fashioned toys but are also surrounded by other aspects of mise en scene that can place the time period such as the furniture or the style of pram. the wide shot also reveals that the little girls are alone, increasing the feeling of uneasiness in the audience as young girls are stereotypically seen to be naïve and unable to protect themselves.




The repetition of extreme close up shots in the opening amplify the feeling of uneasiness in the audience as they cannot see what else is in the room, so they are unable to identify anything that could pose a threat to the characters in this scene. It also makes the audience feel trapped.





















This two shot and close up shot show the audience that these girls are innocent and pure. The reason for this is that it shows their happy facial expressions. It increases the eerie atmosphere as it continues to give the audience a false sense of security as the girls look happy, though we can tell by the shot types and both diegetic and non diegetic sound that something bad is going to happen.

Film Openings

The two film openings that I have decided to study in preparation for our course work are 'Life of Pi' and 'The Woman in Black'. I have decided to study these two film openings because of how vastly opposite they are. The fact that they are so different should hopefully help me to get a wider range of opinions and views on the two film openings as a whole and I will be able to see what codes and conventions are used in different genres.

The beginning of Life of Pi only shows different animals in a zoo for 3 minutes and 56 seconds. By doing this it shows us the sort of atmosphere that we are going to experience when watching this film. When it first shows the title it is shown with colours and fonts that match the background that is surrounding it. These colours and fonts make the viewer of this film feel instantly relaxed.


The Music that plays during this opening sequence is very relaxing. This is clearly one of the purposes of this song, another purpose of this song is to give the audience a better understanding of where about in the world we are. Click Here to here the music that plays during the opening sequence.
















Here are some examples of a few of the animals shown in the opening sequence.

Our Third attempt

Rather than using the footage that we already had this time and adding to it, we decided to make an entirely different film using a new story line with new characters. This time we had the worked in the same group, but with Georgia and JJ as well. This meant that we were now working in a group of 5. Unlike our last films, we actually wrote a script...

·         Ollie – John

·         Izzie – Juliana

·         Georgia – pedestrian

·         JJ – Hostage

·         Ben – Bodyguard

Shots of hallway leading up to the room with John in it. A shot of johns face as ben kicks him. “get up… The boss wants to see you” Ben then helps him up and guides him though the hallway as they leave the room Georgia bumps into him, “sorry!” Ben then continues to lead John down the hall way and then into the office. In the office is Juliana and JJ, JJ is strapped to a chair and Juliana is standing behind him. John then says, “what’s this?”  Juliana then replies, “This is what happens when it turns out that one of our employees is an undercover spy”. She then pulls out a gun and shoots JJ in the head. “Now do you have anything that you want to say”. John then replies, “…No” “Thought not” She then gets out her gun and shoots John.

John then is back at where he first woke up and jolts up screaming “NO!” He then goes through the exact same process again only this time he is acting a little bit confused.

He then wakes up shouting and then this time when she walks out of the room he doesn’t bump into Georgia, he then tries to kill the body guard, and fails and dies.

When he then wakes up this time, he doesn’t scream he just sits up and says “damit” He then pretends to be asleep on the floor. When the body guard then comes in he takes him down and kills him, he then walks out dodges Georgia in a cool way, and the goes into the room. He then proceeds to have the same conversation that he previously had, and then she tries to get the gun off of Juliana and then gets shot.

This time it starts off the same as the 4th one but he then gets the gun off of Juliana, shoots her, and then the film ends.

Now that we have actually filmed it we ended up changing a couple of our original ideas, like for example the names of the characters, or some of the dialogue. The dialogue was changed so that it fit better to the characters at hand. 

This ended up being our longest film so far at roughly 5 and a half munities. the reason that this film ended up being so long was because of how many times we had to show the same footage with different acting. When we were filming we had to film  the same thing from the same angle about three to four times in a row. We wanted to film everything from the same angle when ever it was repeating itself so that the audience would have a better understanding of the situation at hand. One thing that I learnt whilst filming this preliminary task was that it is good to keep anything that you film. This is because we found a lot of shots that we ended up using were filmed on our 2nd attempt out of 5 for example, this is because we found these shots to be more efficient only when we were actually going through them and editing them.

One films that I tried to refer to whilst coming up with what the shots should be in the film was edge of tomorrow. I wanted to refer to this film because of the fact that the story line is similar to ours, and it is also the same genre.

This is the first shot in our preliminary task of cyclical. One way that I think that we could have improved on the beginning to our short film would have been by having one more opening shot like this one. The reason that I felt that we needed to have this was because I thought that it would help to give the audience a much better feel for where they were.







Click here to see our finished piece of our preliminary task.

Our second attempt

Now that we have been given some feed back from our teacher we know and understand some of the improvements that we can make on this film. One of the improvements that we needed to make was making sure that the guess who board was in the same place in all of the shots. We re-filmed the whole office scene so that we could be sure that the guess who board was in the same place the whole time. When we re-filmed this scene we also did it differently to how we originally did it. This is because rather than filming Ollie say something and then moving the camera and filming me, we filmed the entire conversation 3 times from 3 different angles. The reason that we did this was because we wanted to make sure that our tones of voices were matching each others so that it sounded like a real conversation as long as we made sure to have the exact same conversation 3 times over.

When we re-filmed it this time we also had the disadvantage of not having a camera-man. Although this gave us the disadvantage of having less options of where to position the camera, it did give us the advantage of being able to use the tripod. This made every camera shot more sturdy, and more reliable.

Click here to see the second attempt of our preliminary task.

Our first filming experience

In our first lesson we were set he task of making a video of someone walking into a room, and having a short conversation with somebody in that room. The first thing that we were told to do was get into a group of people that we would feel comfortable working with. I ended up working on this project with Jane, Ollie, and Izzi. After discussing our idea and deciding on a rough plan we came up with our ideas on what we wanted to happen in this short film. We planned all of our ideas out onto our first story board.

Our first story board was not very good. This is because we did not take enough time to draw in all of the small details of the camera shots. We also could have improved on the story board by making sure to write a lot more about each individual drawing so that our actual camera shots could have been more accurate to what our original ideas were. Story boards are important when making a film because it makes everything happen a lot faster because you have planned what you are going to do.

Click here to see our first draft of this short film.