New York Footage

For our opening, we wanted to feature shots of New York City in order for our audience to draw similarities between our production and other big screen productions in the same genre, e.g. the ones we researched like 'Spiderman'.

Thankfully, Isaac and Chris were able to travel to New York City during the February half term (22nd - 26th). They were able to collect shots of New York's most famous sites, and a large amount of footage to give us multiple editing options upon their return.

The locations they visited included; Grand Central Station, The Empire State Building, Times Square (and multiple examples of New York during the day and at night, which was highly beneficial.)

Upon their return, we compiled all their footage and began sifting through it to find the shots which best suited our opening. Then the editing process began and we 'sped up' the shots to give the illusion of a time-lapse.

Comic book style

To fit with the comic book style of the film, we wanted to have some shots in comic book style and then to change and fade into a real-life shot. Isaac had a go on photoshop at changing a photograph of a new york building into a comic book style. He used effects such as accented edges and poster edges.

We fiddled around with making it outlined in black and with a dark red background. Isaac then added a little box of text.
This all helped to make it more comic like. We decided that if we could we would copy this effect to stills of shots that Isaac and Chris managed to get in new york.

Storyboard

From our ideas and planning on sheets we came up with the storyboard for it. This was difficult because we didn't know what shots Isaac and Chris would be able to get once they were in new york. We also had to do every shot from the quick  in the second half of our opening.

After we finished the story boards we then converted them into an animatic showing how long each shot will show for and to give a general idea for the layout of our opening in a more visual form.This also gives us the chance to show the music choices.

Further Planning for film opening

  
Heres a quick 1st plan of what we wanted to do. We Squished all our ideas into two parts of an opening. The beggining with the narrator talking over time lapses of new york.

First section



Second part with the quick shots



And then a second part with quick succession shots of a man who was getting up in the morning and getting ready to go out. We wanted to keep his identity hidden to make it more mysterious and to make him seem like an everyday guy that was relatable and easy for the target audience to put themselves in the guys shoes. We decided that this guy wasn't going to be the superhero.

We decided to name the super hero the silhouette!

Film brief and ideas

We got given 4 film briefs to choose from. We got into groups according to which one we wanted to do. The briefs were:

Film Brief 1

A mainstream action film that will appeal to 15-25yr old malesYour film should appear to be based on a "fictional" comic book

Film Brief 2

A supernatural thriller that will appeal to female audiencesYour film should appear to be an international co-production

Film Brief 3

An independent movie featuring a young protagonistYour film should appear to be financed through regional funding

Film Brief 4An art house feature to appeal to adult audiencesYour film should appear to be based on an actual event in the last 2 years.

I chose film brief 1 which put me into a group with Issac, Tom and Chris. The brief wanted us to create the opening to a film that looked like it was based on a comic book and with that theme running through it. This seemed like a great choice because we would be able to create our own character from our comic book and bring the idea to life. We knew we wanted to set the film in New York because Issac and Chris were going on a Media new york trip. that would allow us to shoot alot of establishing shots of the city making it look like it was set there. 

What we wanted to include in our opening





We decided that we deffinately wanted to try and keep a 'comic' book feel by including animated and comci book style shots. Film and shows that we thought of that included animation and live action shots were shows like bewitched which has an animated title sequence and The hard times of RJ berger which uses animation instead of action sequences, memories etc.

http://www.artofthetitle.com/2011/01/03/scott-pilgrim-vs-the-world/

Scott Pilgrim vs the world was a really good film for us to look at because of gamer and comic book style and references. We briefly thought about looking at the Comics of games like dead Space or comics that have been turned into games but decided against it as we wanted to stick more to the idea of a comic book based film rather than a game or anime based film.

We want to use fast quick shots like in shaun of the dead when he's making Tea and getting up in the morning. This 'mtv culture' style is also seen in films like requim of a dream by Darren aronofsky.(add video link)

We thought time lapses of new york would be a really good way of showing the busy lifestyle of new york and to properly establish where the characters lived. We wanted to include a sunsert timelapse, people walking past, subways etc.

http://player.vimeo.com/video/18554749

We wanted to include good up to date music in the film to make it right for the target audience of 15-25 year olds.  

need to finish

shot by shot analysis of Amelie

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Production and post production

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pre production preliminary task

Preliminary task brief

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