Main Post 1: Conventions of a opening sequence

Die another day, James Bond - the opening starts with pierce brosnans name layed over the first clip of a scorpion, throughout the opening credits we see a switch between animated images of fire in the form of women, and real clips of the actor being tortured. this sets the tone for the film. From the opening you can tell that the film is going to be dark, and action based. The music for the opening is a song that was made especially for this film so will obviously fit with the camera work. there are many different shots used when filming the opneing mainly long shots or reaction shots.

Scarface - The start of this film is the sound of Fidel castro voice on a black screen, it then cuts to Al Pachino in an office in america trying to become a refugee, then we see a lot of cuts with the conversation between Tony Montanna and police officers. Scarface is crime/drama/film-noir genre as it has many different aspects to the film which make it such an amazing film.

storyboard and shot list

here we have our story board whihc is a rough outline to what shots we will do and what order we do them in, a storyboard is important when starting to film as its like a business plan for a company it sets your goals and what you aim to achieve by the end.

Here is our shot list, this again is an important part of filming as it gives us something to stick to so that we dont start filming parts that we dont need.

How the shoot went

To start with the first time that we set to start filming we didnt manage to finish all the shots in one session, so on the next lesson we realised that we were all wearting different clothes so we would have to start again. Then the room that we first used was booked so we had to find another location, which actually worked out better as we found a more appropriate location. During the filming we found some shots were difficult to caputure so we had to play around with the angle of the camera for a while to reach the right angle for the shot e.g over the shoulder shots were difficult in the small space of our location.

Overall i think that the shot went ok considering it wasn't very well planned, it needs a lot of work when editing but through this we all learnt a lot about how to film and what works best when filming, so in that sense it worked out alright as we all learnt valuable lessons that will benefit us in the future.

Mise-en-scene

We needed a location that would fit to the characters that we had created, we managed to find a location that suited our script and characters it only needed a few minor ajustments before we could start filming. We used the schools physical education office, which suited one of our characters as he was the head of the P.E department. For costumes we decided that we need smart business clothes, and the P.E teacher would wear a jumper that would link him to the department, no make-up was used in the filming as we didn't want to go over the top on it.

Rish assessment

Before we started filming we had to do a risk assessment on the area that we would be filming in, bellow are the pictures of the potential hazards that we found.

Here we can see that there are many things just alying on the floor, each one can be a hazard when filming as they are easy to trip over when you're not concentrating on what is on the floor. To avoid these items being a hazard before we started filming we made sure that they were all cleared off the floor and out of the way completely.

Here there are more potential hazards, electrical equipment may be a hazard as there is liquid next to the plug sockets which could easily be spilt causing a hazard whihc could potentially lead to a fire. So to make sure that there was no chance of this happening we made sure that the sides were cleared before we started filming.

Rule of thirds

here is a link that will take you to the definition of the rule of thirds
http://www.digital-photography-school.com/rule-of-thirds

Post 4 : script writing

here is our groups script that we all contributed to creating.

Post 3 : continuity

what is continuity?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuity_(fiction)
Continuity is where you keep the mis-en-scene the same throughout the whole of the filming, also this involves the characters still in the same place when the scene is cut.

The 180 degree rule
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/180_degree_rule
this is the rule that movie makers use when filming it allows the characters to stay on the same side of the camera throughout filming, so if a character is on the left side of the screen they will stay on the left had side all the way through that scene.

Shot reverse shot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_reverse_shot
this is where the camera angles changes when two characters are in conversation it would start looking over the shoulder of one character then it would switch to an over the shoulder shot of the other character, they would be edited together.

Match on action
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_on_action

Match on action is where the production is cut from one shot to a different shot which usally makes a new view which matches the action from the first shot. Match on action gives an impression of continous time between the shots even if they were shot hours apart.