Thursday 14 January 2016

Analysis of Film Title Sequences


Here I will be analysing title sequences (outside) my group's selected genre:

'Django Unchained' (2013, Quentin Tarantino) (#1)



-Graphical
-Western iconography - the gun, cowboy hats, horses
-A particular colouring pallet (red, orange, black, white)
-Font has Western connotations
-White text
-Slow-paced
 

My Continuity Sequence

This is my produced continuity sequence:

I was instructed in-lesson by my two media teachers to create this via group work.
(up to 4 people max)



My group comprised of four members: (Me, James Covill, Ghanshyam Shiyani and Thomas Sibley)


PRE-PRODUCTION:

  • As a group, we unanimously decided that we were all going to use the exact same footage to produce our sequences and, come-production, all edit it differently to one another.We planned this so that all our sequences could be distinguished with ease upon completion. 
  • To ensure we knew exactly what footage we wanted, we drew out a sequential shot-by-shot storyboard, outlining exactly how we pictured our sequences both initiating and concluding; we did this successfully within the double-period (2 hours) that we had.
  • We planned to film our footage in the classroom E20 after school in the media department.

PRODUCTION:

  • As the cinematographer for our group, I went to acquire two cameras (what we wanted) from the school's media department; this was so that we could film all our planned shots on our storyboard from numerous angles so that more selection and variety was enabled come editing for all of us. Unfortunately only one camera was available to borrow at the time, nevertheless, we still managed to gather our footage with just the one available camera.
  • I filmed the footage one day after school during November 2015, whilst I was filming, the rest of my group enacted their roles: Ghanshyam and Thomas both opted to be actors within the sequence (they depicted the two key character seen) whilst James, similarly to me, had more of a supportive and technical role. James ensured that we had all the necessary props and that the setting was configured exactly how we had planned it during the construction of the storyboard (his role concerning mise-en-scene).         

POST-PRODUCTION:
  • Personally, I found editing the most tedious stage in the process of producing my sequence; from this task I have learnt that I am not particularly fond of it/skilled at it.Editing took up multiple media lessons' time and even after the given lessons I still felt an urge to back to the media department after school and make further tweak/adjustments, which I ended up doing twice. It was time-consuming because we consistently disputed which shots we were each going to use and how exactly we were going to deploy them sequentially within our sequences - we wanted to avoid similarities being noticeable across our sequences.






Wednesday 13 January 2016

OCR Media Studies Specification


Preliminary exercise: Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.
Main task: the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.All video 
and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s),with the exception of music 
or audio effects from a copyright-free sourceBoth preliminary and main tasks may be done individually
 or as a group. Maximum four members to a group.