First draft anamatic

We were given a task to produce an anamatic for our film to give a nice visual effect and a rough idea of what the title sequence of our film would look like. We firstly had to discuss and draw up a rough shot list to enable us to structure our storyboard slightly better. This is our first draft anamatic using all of our story board sketches that as a group we produced using combined ideas and cooperation. However we inverted the sketches to show our white images against a black background.

As this is our first draft there are some improvements that need to be made which is included in the feedback. But overall our anamatic successfully displays our film in a rough way. However a shot that was hard to portray in a drawing is shot 10, a especially long shot in our anamatic as it a shot of a 360 degree view spinning and it was hard to capture that accurately in a drawing however it is annotated on our storyboard. It was hard to get the timing right for our anamatic as the still sketches aren't as effective as a moving image, we may need to include some transition effects into our anamatic to enable it to have a moving image effect.

Feedback for anamatic:

• The inverted images were very effective.
• A wide variety of shots were used.
• However, too short, we may need: longer shots
• Missing titles: actors and actresses, the title of film, cinematography, editor, sound, producer, director.
• Diegetic sound is needed
• The pace of editing is good, a good sense of continuity.

Character sketches

As a group we tried to get a visual idea of what we wanted our characters to look like, this would make it easier for us to make a final decision in casting the characters.

Camera Practice

As a group we practiced our two main shots; the 360 degree shot, trying to judge speeds and clearness, then the shot of the feet, however we did not have the device (long board) to use to practice it so we had to improvise using a hand held camera, once again judging speed and clearness.

The image on the left is the camera we used 8 mega pixels, xacti digital water proof movie camera.

Initial shot list, props, costume etc.

This is our initial list as we need to change parts. We need to find our main character, we need double the amount of extras and we just need to change and adapt parts. The list will get bigger and more detailed.

The art of storyboarding, sound and colour

Storyboarding
M. Night Shymalan director of films such as Sixth Sense, The Village and Signs.
Shymalan believes in thorough storyboarding, he likes to plan and understand every shot to keep costs of the filming to a minimum, this eliminates mistakes and decisions to be made on set and in theory could speed up filming and keep costs of staff down. Shymalan prefers to keep camera angles more realistic he does not believe in "acrobatics" unlike other big Hollywood directors. He believes thriller films should have emotion, keeping realistic camera angles allows the audience to feel more connected to the film itself, building emotions like fear and intensity key conventions of the thriller genre.
Storyboarding is said to be visual screenplay "making the movie before you make the movie". Shymalan refers to the storyboard as a continual point of reference. A storyboard is shaping the movie it reveals the movie when the storyboard is completed it can be the worst version of the film.

Sound
In the sixth sense the sound editer and creater experiments with sounds, he layers different sounds whether they are breaths, general sounds or dialogue to create mysterious and eary effects. In part of the sixth sense he got many people to breathe, cry, groan and scream into a microphone then layered them all over eachother to create a ghostly mysterious effect that was quite chilling to hear. Sounds are very important to films, films from the thriller genre especially as they help to create an emotional and spiritual feel to the film.
In The Village film the main character is a blind girl so sound is very important as it's all she can recognise. The sound in this film helps to tell the story and in this case the sound represents the main character. For understanding of the blind girl the musicians and editors took a small part of the chime of a bell and replayed it and edited it to make a sound like the girl would here, this would have taken alot of presicion and focus to create.

Colour
Based on In the Mood For Love, Wong Kar-Wai
This film is a chinese film based on a love affair, the woman featured in this scene was the woman often left by her husband as he was having an affair with another mans wife, this man was falling in love with the beautiful woman based in this scene.
She wore a green dress and held a green/blue flask this denotes envy and jealousy, the feelings of this woman at the current time of the film, the same green colour is used through out the scene reinforcing her feelings, this is once again reinforced by the music. The colour blue used through out the scene represents her sadness, sorrow and depression, a blue luminous light acts as a spot light on her, this once against reinforces her feelings. This scene is controlled by the use of colour and lighting.

Continuity Task

We were given a task in which we had to film two people having a conversation, focusing of keeping good continuity between shots. We were given a shot list in which we had to abide carefully by. As a group we drew up a story board based on the shot list, our story board was good but in parts needed more detail, especially when showing what shots were which. When planning our filming we had to think of the 180 degree rule, we had to plan different places for the camera to go without breaking this rule. Our filming was sucessful and we had lots of shots to work with, however not all were right for the final film. Some shots had others talking and laughing in the background, some shots had minor views of others in them and some of the scripted conversation was interupted or wrong. We over came these issues during editing using cutting to get rid of parts of the shots we did not want or need and we also used adobe after affects to edit out the reflection of the camera and a person in the dark window. After alot of editing and tweaking our film finally and sucessfully came together.

This is the first part of the storyboard, it shows the opening of the door (close up), the shot of the door knob then the character in the background (extreme close up of door knob then extreme long shot of sofa), the shot of the character in the mirror (mid shot) and the shot of the character sitting down on the sofa (mid shot).

This is the second sheet of story boards it shows the character in the background and the other character walking over to the TV (long shot), the other character talking (mid shot), low angle shot of the other character (long mid shot) and a shot of both characters (extreme long shot to long shot).

This is the third sheet of the storyboards it shows the shot reverse shot of the two characters shouting (mid shots), the shot of both characters (long shot) and the shot of the head with the character in the background slightly out of focus (close up/ long shot).

The fourth sheet of storyboards show the characters expression (close up), the shot of the character exiting the location (long shot) and the final shot of the cats face (close up).

Targets: Set framing to foreground point, one part in the clip the actor lurches forward out of shot. Use of mid close up and close ups may be more effective in this clip.

Feedback: Effective use of sound both diegetic and non-diegetic, it is said to be "well mastered". Framing was mostly good but more close ups and mid close ups should have been used. Good continuity is the clip however there were some errors towards the end. Effective use of shot reverse shot. The 180 degree rule was abided by well. Use of after effects were acknowleged and approved of.

The grade we received was 32/60 putting us near the peak of level 2, I think this is an appropriate grade for our peice of work.

Ideas

Here is a mind map of our ideas, as a group we combined ideas, shared our own ideas and created an idea.