Personalise

I finally personalised my blog, again, this time using all the original pictures we took during the course of working on our project. Personalizing my blog was an attempt on my part to become more familiar with Photoshop and also make my blog look more original. For the first layer I used an orange yellow colour for the background and used grain and patchwork texture from the effects tab in Photoshop. I then  increased the brightness and contrast as I felt that the orange yellow may be too dark. This is what the first layer of my background looked like. The size of the background is 1600 x 1200 pixels and the background is 100% opaque.

Then I merely blended all the scanned notes my team has made up till now and included the storyboard we did for the preliminary exercise. First I used the picture we took at Pyramid Studios of a ceiling covered with a magazine cutout. I covered the whole background with that picture and made it 75% opaque with the background in the second layer. Below are all the pictures I blended after this picture

 

This Picture was taken on the second day of the preliminary shooting when I was explaining to Schanza Khan( Principal) about the script. 

 

These pictures were taken when we were taking separate pictures for the poster in the chemistry lab. 

 

This picture was taken on the first day of shooting in the Lab when we were setting up the video cameras. 

Besides all the photographs above I used a photograph of this audio mixer that we took in the studio.I also used a group photo that I had posted on this blog earlier. Every layer was made 65% opaque with the layer below except for the first and the second layer. After merging all the pictures I saved the file in a JPEG format. This is what I came up wuith after bending everything:

After making my wallpaper I made a PNG image for the topic and the description. The font I used is Forte MT for the main title and description. I used a color stroke, inner glow and drop shadow on the main title. For the second title I only use a black font color and a red stroke. This is how my title looks like. 

From a suspense to a drama

Our third attempt at making a script did not go well. We found out that our other class fellows are doing suspense films as well and were afraid that all our projects might turn out too similar which we want to avoid. So now we are left with Drama or Comedy as genres. Today we came up with another idea where we can show comedy and drama. We can show the morning routine of a person who wakes up late and leaves his house. On the right is what we planned.

We will show a person who is woken up by either an alarm or by a phone call. For a comedy and drama we can show him dressing up hastily as if he is late for an appointment and we can emphasize on his apparent distress and his life going through a complicated phase by emphasizing on his messy house. He is also unable to locate his toiletries and other things he needs in order to get ready and they turn up in unlikely places which shows that he is in a habit of waking up late and is very disorganized and messy. 

.

Above are the possible list of names we have come up with. The movie we want to make is a lighthearted comedy. By showing an ordinary routine and using a random but a very unexpected name, we want to define the character yet work up some anticipation in the audience. The list of characters, storyboard, treatment is yet to come as now we have to make sure that there are no flaws or any issues that might force us to abandon yet another project.

Work in vacations

For our winter vacations we planned on visiting Pyramid Studios, a post production studio owned by the advertising company Inter flow to see how movies, commercials and drams are shot and edited. We started visiting the studio on December 22, 2010. On the first day they arranged an orientation for us where we were shown around different rooms and were classified into groups. We were to spend three days in each department. In this way we were to experience the editing room, audio room, 3D graphics room and 2D graphics room and learn the basics of professional production and how it is organized- this will help us with our final project. My class mate Afia Lateef and I were assigned to the audio room but since the person in charge of audio was late coming to work that day we were temporarily sent to the 3D graphics room where we were introduced to  3D Max Studio software. We were taught the basics about operating that software. On our first day we were told that the key to mastering a software is to spend as much time as we can to experiment with different graphics and shapes.

A drastic change.

An inspiration of a suspense title that hits Fatmah is written below. This is somewhat like the story we first planned and  this story does exudes thrill and suspense and no doubt we will make an interesting topic. but than it will mean we will have to go back and start our research from the very beginning. However we will keep this synopsis in mind and modify it

Her idea in her words: 

Okay so here is an idea different from all what we have been discussing:
We are making an opening title so the first 3 minutes :


We can show a girl (a teenager) whose mouth is tapped with a white cloth and she can not open her mouth nor can she speak. We’ll show a close up of her face with her eyes closed (she is sleeping/or her eyes are just close), in dim natural light – showing evening time. Then suddenly a sound of footsteps will enter the room and she’ll be waken up by a man in mask and a wide shot will be shown, in which we’ll show an empty, dim lighted room and the girl was lying on the floor with her hands and feet tapped as well, the man who comes will angrily speak “Get up, it’s time for another recording that your father would like to see, who is getting late by every second in saving your useless life” she will be grabbed to the other room, her feet will be untied. The man takes her to another room where there is a chair and a camera on the tripod (wide shot) makes the girl sit on the chair. He turns on the camera and tells the girl to speak, the girl with scared, painful expression on her face begins to weep (close up shot) and says “Daddy please save me, they’ll kill me, please come and save me, I am scared, I want to come home, please” The man in the mask comes and puts a knife on her neck, and says “she does not have much time” (The camera here does not show the man’s face only a wide shot cutting the man’s head and only showing the girl) the film ends.


Appearances:


The Girl: she is wearing jeans, which are now very dirty, a T-Shirt or any top, which is also dirty and shred may be from a few places, her face is all messed up her hair are tangled and her face has dirt, black spots, bruises as well. This will represent that she has been kept a hostage for quite a few days.


The Man: The man is wearing dark colour clothes and a mask on his face with big boots, and has a scary Image.


The Room: the room will be a dark room, in which the window is the only source of light. We can shoot in a store room, or any empty class of our school, (A1-B) can be a good place.

How we made it simple for ourselves

Facebook is a social networking site, which is very common amongst the youth and adults nowadays.  And to stay in touch me and my group members made a group on Facebook where we can carry on with our group ideas and discussions instead of waiting for the next class. Discussing ideas via cell phone text messages also turned out to be inconvenient and so with Facebook we can also share useful links, ideas and pictures.

Another kind of technology we used for our media work!

Planning for our new opening title

We decided to take the opinions of our classfellows and the fact that most of hard work thus far has been for nothing, gracefully and immediately came back to high gear. This is a rough outline of what we did in class today. We now plan to make an opening title with a morning routine or a title where we will show a person tied up on a bed mysteriously. Here we will not give away very much about the story but let the anticipation build of what must have happened. We thought of making it a comedy where the boy will be tied up in his own bedroom and suddenly the alarm clock will go off following the ringing of his phone will comically struggle to free himself. 

Our idea is still in a rough stage and we might bring about some changes to this basic plot. 

A not so good option

After showing our treatment to the rest of the class and listening to their opinions, we realized that our storyline is more confusing than funny and it is not good enough. And eventually after a long group discussion and arguments we all came to the conclusion that we neither have enough resources nor enough time to make an opening title of a spoof. And even if we did then we wouldn't have a good comical or funny treatment and no one was so thrilled about making a golden raspberry award movie. However the research we have done so far is for a film in the comedy genre so maybe we can make a comedy or a drama or maybe at least try to include both elements in its opening title. Maybe we might even change our genre entirely. What we have to ensure is that we work step by step and plan our work well.

Vampires suck. opening titles and poster

“Vampires Suck” is a parody of the Twilight series including Twilight, New Moon and Eclipse. There are some elements of the TV series, Vampire Diaries, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and True Blood. The opening title of this movie begins with the common logo of twentieth Century Fox. Then we see another logo of The Regency corporation. The movie starts with a scene taken from the middle of the movie. This is done to create a sense of anticipation in the audience, however, it is very familiar to those who have watched New Moon. The scene begins with the establishing shot of the location with the caption appearing at the bottom “Saint Salvatore's day”. The location is an old castle with stone walls and a flag on one of the walls. There are a couple of shots of all the people dressed in red capes. Then there is a wide long shot and then a mid shot of Becca running.  Jump cut is used here. Those shots are shown in slow motion and in the background we hear non diegetic dramatic music and a narrative voice of Becca. Then there is another bottom to top panning shot of Edward where he appears in the sunlight and his skin starts gleaming.The mid shot of Edward is taken from a low angle.In that scene mid shot of three Volturi leaders and over the shoulder shot of the main Voulturi leader is used. Then we see a shot of Becca who finally stops and dramatically spreads her hands screaming Edward's name. 

Then we see a fan of Edward stopping next to Becca and saying she loves Edward. Then Jacob's fan holding a shovel enters the scene and angrily claims that Jacob is the best and smacks the Edward fan on the face with it. Then we see a high angle shot of the Edward fan and jacob fans heading towards each other for a fight and Becca tries to get through them to reach Edward. We hear non diegetic faint sound of drums beating which is a contrast to what we see as this music indicates something significant and serious is going to happen and the diegetic sound of the screams and the crowd talking. The war like scene here between two fan groups is far from real as no blood is shed and the expressions and movements are more comical. The music here also gets louder and the tempo increases. The still shots are taken to show the fighting with only slight camera movements.

In the next scene we see a mid and a long shot of two guard vampires where one applies a SPF 500 lotion and another drinks true blood from a bottle. We see a close-up of the SPF lotion bottle as well. Here the music changes and slowly fades out. then we see a wide shot of edward who has by then removed his shirt and here the Voulturi leader realizes that he is exposing himself. The voultri leaders signals those guard vampires to kill Edward as now he has exposed himself. Long shots mid shots and closeups are used here of Edward, Voulturi leaders and the guard vampires. Then we see Becca airborne after she jumps on a person who has leaned down and somersaults in the air. Seeing that the guard jumps and airborne, heads toward Becca to kill her first. We see that when he snarls, he has only one pointed teeth in the middle instead of two canines like all vampires have in horror movies have and the zooming in and close up has been used to show his tooth. Slightly low angle shots are used to show the airborne Becca and the vampire to make them look as if they are actually flying. Then we see Becca screaming and the camera zooms in to her mouth and then the whole screen becomes foggy. As the mist fades away, the name Vampires Suck appears on screen along with another establishing shot of a different scenery. 
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1666186/

Treatment of the final movie

Treatment
Establishing shot of the school. Than the long shot of corridor. The alien teacher is a psychic who get visions and has a bit of a vision problem himself. When  he tries to goes inside his classroom, he keeps slamming onto the wall until someone guides him. Outside the classroom window we see Celina Dion outside window singing my hear will go on and the teacher taking attendance.

When coming across Celina Dion's name;

Teacher: she is no more (repeated three times. in the background we hear the theme music of titanic)

Harry confused but shrugges off and starts looking at betty who tries to take out a stuck food from her teeth. Betty looks at him and gives a scary smile

later when Celina walks out of the room an all time serial killer (dressed in black hood and holding a dager) kidnaps Celine Dion
next day the news comes that Celine Dion was found dead in school parking lot. Harry is even more confused.

Same repetition done with with ugly betty when she is present in the class.

Teacher: Betty,
Betty: Here
Teacher: She is no more
Betty: (louder) I am here!
Teacher: She is no more
Betty: (crying loudly) how can you not notice me!

On that harry even more suspicious

He looks at his magic ball and finds serial killer doing something stupid. and than looking at betty's picture. harry immediately rushes to help.

Betty tied up when harry dramatically enters the room.
Harry: stop before I do something you will regret.

killer stops

Betty: kill him will you. he also called you a confused man who cannot decide between Cho and Ginny,
Harry now offended: oh now you are so dead
Serial killer oh no (white light of magic from the wand than the name of the movie.)

Synopsis, characters and location in the movie

We have decided to work with is a suspense spoof. the storyline will include characters from different fantasy and suspense based, sitcoms and movies. 

Our main character in the opening titles will be 

Harry Potter. A brave but a nosy student who tries to interfere in everyone’s business but ends up saving their lives. A 17 year old teenager kicked out of Hogwards after the return of Voldemort ,he is now doing his AS level in a sub branch of Hogwarts named Dogwards. (Parody of Harry Potter series)

Another character, Betty is a 17 year old with a hopeless fashion sense and with a complex about being a wall flower. She is very handy with computers and along with Harry looks for the killer in Dogwarts. Despite a few emotinal outbreaks and slow understanding of jokes and sarcasm, she is a jolly person and is always ready to help out. (parody of american show called ugly Betty)

A third character will be the psychic Alien (teacher) who is a sorry excuse for an alien. He was deliberately thrown off the UFO by his other alien fellows. In the human world he is harmless with a distorted vision due to an injury from being thrown off the Spaceship. A stubborn, uptight and a pompous alien, he is a geology teacher in Dogwards. He gets psychic visions regarding people with whom he is directly or indirectly connected.

Another character is a Serial Killer, who is a figure common in slasher movies. He will appear in black overalls wearing a hooded jacket, gloves and holding a lethal looking dagger. Here he kidnaps the girls and report back to the mastermind who initiates the killing.

Also, our film will feature: Celine Dion:

A student who is obsessed with all the romantic movies like Titanic especially and who is the first victim of the serial killer (parody of the singer Celine Dion)

Supporting characters:

Students in the classroom.

Synopsis of the movie:

Girls Mysteriously started dying in the city and when the chain of victims begins at Dogwards, Harry along with his friends and the psychic alien solve the mystery. In the beginning Harry eliminates a serial killer who was assigned to kill Betty but the kidnapping continues and Harry and his friends, helpless against the odds, try to find their way through the avalanche and chaos of dramatic murders. One seemingly stupid clue leads onto the other and finally things come before them at their prom when they make a shocking and (sanity threatening) discovery.

                                      

Location:

Beaconhouse School system.

A levels corridor

Classroom

Any dark room where Betty is kidnapped

This is the mind-map of the story. it was made by Sama Tanveer. 

Analysis of an opening title: Scary movies 2

Scary movies 2. Analysis

In opening title sequence of this video the names of the characters are not shown. The title starts with the name of the production house. Then there is an establishing shot of a house looking like an all time horror villa usually in old horror movies. The name Hell House also appears at the bottom of the screen. In the next scene we see a group of people gathered around a piano singing and clapping in time to the music. The scene shows a small casual social gathering. The mise-en-scene is constructed so as to give the scene a very old period look with the dressing and the mannerisms of the people. In the first establishing shot in the background we hear a sound bridge of piano and people singing which takes us to the next scene. Then there is a wide shot of people standing around the piano and enjoying the music. 

Also the mid shot of a female character who leads the singing and of the Priest who is playing the piano is used here as well. We hear him using slang dialoguesThe songs played by him also seem to be too colloquial and modern for the time period shown in the movie. The fusion of slang language with the formal and dated attire shown was comical here. We hear the diegetic sound of all the people laughing and clapping. No sound effect or asynchronous sound is yet used. The mid shots of  other people standing over on the other side of the piano is also shown. The rule of thirds is followed in this shot with all the people filling the frame. We can tell that the film is set in a bygone age as because of the way the lady curtsies after she finishes the song and in response to everyone’s complements. However it canot be set later than 1990. The makeup and the costumes matches the mise-en-scene as  the men are dressed in suits besides the Priest and the women are dressed in skirts.

Then we see a long shot of the girl as she enters. She seemingly looks like the daughter of the lady who had been leading up the party up till now.  Everyone sobers up and the priest looks scared. The girl wears a haunted look but her slang diagogues,  “you suck” is very out of place and odd. Then there is a shot of her feet and we see that she is peeing right there in front of everyone. We see a close-up of amused and horrified expressions on the other guests’ faces the embarrassed expression of the lady who is the girl’s mother (this scene is a parody of Exorcist). the peeing continues for a long time and on that one guest even remarks “she is good!”. The expression of the priest shows a casual sympathy here. Then the girl’s mother walks up to her daughter and politely tells the guests that the daughter is very sick and then suddenly pushes her daughter on the floor facedown and starts beating her which was an unexpected action on the part of the mother and so in a way is hilarious. There is also a cutway shot of the guests who are shown wearing a pompous look. In the background we can see the carpeted and old style staircase.

Next is the outdoor scene where a taxi arrives and stops outside a house. Than there is a two shot of the cab driver in the front seat and the Reverend sitting in the backseat. Here while the cab driver tells the passenger how much he has to pay, Reverend runs out of the tazt and then we see a wide shot of a car and the father running away from it and the driver shouting  fot his money. In this scene  non diegetic music starts playing and the tone of the music indcates that something significant is taking place.  than there is a mid and a long shot of the mother opening the door for the father and he enters the house.

The conversation between the Mother, Reverend and another priest who later enters the scene is shown using mid shots and over the shoulder shots. Mother looks obviously distressed and the priest sober but the Reverend looks relaxed and also speaks in an urban slang language. We also hear that girls scream in the background. 

Reverse shots, long shots, are used when the father enters the bathroom. At first he is shown seated and opening a book. Here the audience is unaware that he is actually seated inside a bathroom and they think that he is in an empty room reading a prayer. there are shots of flies accumulating on the window and the buzzing gets louder thus creating more anticipation. Fast paced editing of the shots of the priest who within seconds appears in pain while chanting prayers. Some flies also stick to his face. Then we are shown a side shot where the father is shown seated on the commode and his taut expressions visibly relax. Focus pulls are used here when showing the flies on the window and we also hear a Nightingale chirping in the background.

In the next scene when the Father and the Priest enter the room to take the evil possession out of the girl, We are shown a wide shot of the girl tied to the bed post and also an outdoor shot of a part of the house with an eerie blue light coming out of the girls bedroom window. To make it appear more horrifying the girl’s make up is done accordingly with visible and unreal cracks on her face which become visible to us when we are shown a close up of her face. Her face is obviously angrier and more menacing as compared to the earlier face when she had entered the living room. We hear and see loud lightening on the screen. Here we see a punch line where instead of both priests enter the room gulping but nevertheless bravely, the Father utters an expletive and tries to run away. After they both start their ritual, the girl interrupts and says something more urban and foul which is again very unexpected and again a source of hilarity. The girl then sticks out her tongue which is longer and more pointed than normal and the father in turn starts showing her his tongue. they both carry this on for some time which distracts the Priest and he seems annoyed as he reminds the father that this is not part of the ritual. The proceedings start again and are interrupted again by the girl’s dialogue which should appear menacing but the priest interprets that his mother is also hidden under the cover on the bed and is playing games with him. Than we see his mother coming out of the covers and walks out grumbling , and after she gets off the bed, the girl politely says goodbye to her.

As they try to carry on the ritual again and the priest throws holy water on the girl, the girl throws up and the vomit is so big and fast, it hits the priest on the face as if it was coming out of a hose pipe. The girl starts laughing at the priest and then the priest returns the manner in the same fashion and before long, all three people start throwing up on each other. All these scene are shown without any camera movement and static reverse shots are used here. Then we see a two shot of the father and the priest cleaning up and again for the last time starting the the ritual again and this time more seriously. As they start off the girl again interrupts saying something obscene about the Reverend’s mother. Here the reverend's expressions are more like a normal contemporary man's who is on his last thread of patience. In a dramatic way the reverend raises his gun and shoots the girl in the head and then we see the screen go black. The name of the movie appears on the screen. Here in this video we are shown a close-up of the girl's serious expression when she realizes that she has gone too far and the Reverend now intends to kill her. The object of comedy was when they try and interrupt the ritual and the attitude of the priest which was far from serious. Even with  a scary mise en scene, the video turned out to be more laughable.

What I plan to do now?

As I have often heard that media students and workers have to be super organised and pre-plan their agenda, here is a list of things I plan to do for my movie research:

In December I plan to:

watch and analyse the opening titles of the following movies:

The Scary Movie films (any one)

Vampires Sucks

 Johnny English

I also plan to find out what institutions make parodies and select one to find out more about them

I also plan to design a narrative of the movie we are about to make

I want to try and figure out some details for our audience research.

Poster of the preliminary exercise

This is a poster I made for my preliminary video and also as an exercise to practise using Photoshop. Here in this poster I used 12 layers. The background was orange and the caution sign and the old paper texture given below were merged in with the background.

For the third, forth and fifth layers I used the photos of students. The photographs are shown below.

The picture of the flask was taken from here.

I erased the background from the photographs by using the magic selection tool and also the hand erasing tool. Then, I smudged the edges with the smudge tool so that the drawing looked more neat and natural. The opacity of the picture of the flask was reduced so that it would look more realistic. For the text, I used different layers. The fonts I used were Hobo STD, Tahoma and Verdana. From the blending options I used inner and outer glow option for the heading to give it more body and a stroke to all the text so that the captions stand out on the poster. The face of the Principal was taken from the video of the preliminary exercise.

Mainly blending was done here and the color compositions of the characters were brightened with +33 brightness and +5 contrast.

Brainstorming on spoofs

Parody brainstorming and the Basic Skeleton of our opening title 

After the brainstorming, we decided to watch as many spoof movie opening titles as we can and than finalize whether we can actually make an opening title of a parody movie or not. One of the movies related to our parody is the Addams family movie. Below is an opening title and the theme music.

Addams family is an American show which originally aired in 1991 and since then many versions have been released. This show is about all kinds of horror people living as a family in one villa. On our spoof we are planning to imitate cousin It.

The theme music of the Addams family movie’s opening titles includes non diegetic music and the diegetic sound of fingers snapping every verse of the theme song is heard in the opening credits. Below is the picture of cousin It. dressing up as cousin it is an easier costume as only a pair of sunglasses and a hat are needed.

Below are some links to the Addams family movie and also to information about the origins of the show and about the various movies and animations that have been spun off from the original.

brainstroming for opening titles

We have a new member in our group for the final project. Now we are a team of four members

In today’s class we did the rough brainstorming for the final opening title we are about to make. The idea is to make a spoof or a parody of an opening title. The names of the cast will appear on zombie bandages while the zombie will be walking. In the opening title all kinds of fantasy characters will enter and leave the scene with the exception of Hulk who will stay back and create havoc and scare off the other monsters but who will obey the American soldier while walking out. 

Since the title is of a comedy we will show hulk stamping on American soldier as he walks out. Hulk will be shown through camera tricks and angles and the editing on Photoshop will be done to make a person appear small in front of Hulk. Virtually this is time consuming and very tedious but the video might turn out good so we all are playing with this idea. Other characters can be bought in easily e.g linen wraps for zombie, black tights and shirts for ninja's.

preliminary video - evaluation

  

The crazy Lab Assistant

Our preliminary video was shot inside our school and is 2 minutes and 45 seconds long. the first scene begins with two students working on their experiment. Here one student is wearing a lab coat and the other is not. This was a mistake on our side as we should have also bought in another lab coat. Though we chose these actors because they were available at that moment and the student without the lab coat did not have chemistry as a subject therefore she didn't have a lab coat. Our group member Fatmah played the assistant in this video. Using an actor from within the group has its advantage as he or she will be available at all times and also will go through many retakes without getting sick of it. Retakes were inevitable as we were using only one handy cam. This scene begins with Fatmah dropping the plastic glass and the sound of a crash. The crash sound was downloaded from the internet and then edited and adjusted in the video. The close up of the spilled flask was shown with zooming. The speed was increased in window movie maker by selecting the effect of speed up. The speed was increased to create a dramatic effect and also to disguise the movement of the camera. Tracking closer was more feasible, however, as the picture was getting blurred or we should have zoomed in only until the picture was clear. We will make note of that and avoid this mistake in our final exercise. The shots of the students and lab assistant are taken from the top of the chemistry lab table and from the other side of that same table because we wanted to bring the lab in view. We couldn't try other angles because the lab had bright windows without any blinds and a very bright light would have distorted our image.

  

The next scene unfolds in a principal's office. Since the dialogues for the principal were long therefore we had chosen someone to play the principal a day before the shoot and had handed her a copy of a script. To cover the uniform and show a figure of dominance we used a gown worn by the members of students council in our school. The scene starts with the principal pretending to read a complaint sheet. Fatmah enters and sits down. We have experimented with high angle shots of the principal and also an over the shoulder shot of the principal has also been taken. 

We couldn't repeat the same for Fatmah as there wasn't much room behind principal's desk and so we were only restricted with reverse shots. Many shots taken had not been used such as Fatmah's low angle shot from the left as the lighting was bad and Fatmah's face seemed covered in shadow. In edit we just used a high angle shot from left and panning when Fatmah left the room crying in the end. Most of the shots of the principal have been used in our final cut. Reverses shot are taken to show continuity in the conversation. Panning was also used when the lab assistant enters the room. we used the school career counselor's office because  it was almost arranged like a real principals office. Here not much of props were used besides the files and pencil available on the table. All the shots shot in the office were taken in two days.On the first day we took shot the principals dialogues then on the second day we shot the lab assistants’ part therefore there was a huge difference between the two shots in the lights and the colour composition of both shots

The shots of the principal had perfect light and white balance and the shots of the lab assistant were too dull and dim and there was too much red mid tone in it. Where the walls were suppose to appear off white they are tainted with red and too much shadow. these shots were improved to some extent using Premiere where I used the effect of colour balance and reduced red composition to -14 and increased blue and green to 30. and also added more light and contrast to the picture so now it is appearing like this. the sharpness and lights are not as good as they are in the principals shot but at least better than the original shots of the lab assistant. we will make note of taking extra care of lights in our final video.   

Later on further editing, I reduced the green mid tone to 20. in the picture above, only the mid tones of the video clip was changed. At first I felt that highlight and shadow were not significant, later I found out the picture quality actually improved and neglecting shadow and highlight was a big mistake. I added three effects to the video clip, brightness and contrast, color balance and lighting effect. in lighting effect light type was directional and white light was used.  

Also there was a difference in the volume levels which was later adjusted on Premiere by right clicking on the video or audio clip and selecting audio gain. There was too much background noise while shooting in the lab so actors had to speak louder than they did in the office. Here the principal was at a point shown angry and over powering and here we should have taken a high angle shot of the principal to emphasize her dominance by making her appear tall. There are some scenes where we have used different video clips but the audio track is still the same this you will see in the last and in the beginning as well when you will hear a student blaming her teacher while you will see the zooming shot of the flask. This has been done by unlinking the audio and video clip and editing the video part only. This you will see in the end when we hear principal looking at her sharply and we can hear lab assistant crying. the shot of the lab assistant crying is taken from a top angle from the right side. there is another shot of the lab assistant crying and getting up and walking out of the room. 

The shooting took three days given our class timings and availability of resources. An acknowledgement to Schanza Khan for acting as a principal for us. We had to do several retakes and all the actors were patient during the shooting. 

Forget the Film, Watch the Titles - The Blue Horse title sequence

Forget the Film, Watch the Titles - The Blue Horse title sequence

Here is an opening title of a movie of the blue horse film. This is a cheap form of making an opening title without hiring actors. In this video we see a hand drawing with a blue chalk on the paper. The video clip starts with an extreme close up of a chalk line with the name of the production house appearing on the left hand side. Than we see the chalk moving on a white paper with the names of the cast appearing. There are still shots taken of a person drawing. There is non diegetic music which is slow and soothing and we can also hear the diegetic sound of the faint scraping of the crayon and paper. In the first few seconds when basic shapes and lines were being drawn, the name of the actors appeared on the screen. In the next scene we see the same hand drawing on the black paper and this time coloring the shapes and adding more details to the sketch. The crayon used was again blue but this time two to three shades of blue were used.

The names appearing this time were of the crew members. On every name one letter appears handwritten with a crayon. The background sound that is heard is a slow track which creates an intense mood. also there are few dramatic stings in the soundtrack.

At the end the title of the movie appears. This time the whole name of the movie appears handwritten with blue crayon and the name of the movie  “blue horse” is written on a black background and the H is shaped like a horse facing front. The title is not situated in the middle of the screen but moved slightly to the bottom left.

This seemed like a typical opening title of a movie. This title was cleverly done with only a crayon and a paper yet it gave an impression of being the opening to a complex movie. what I liked about this title was that with only a few props and transitions a very effective opening title was made. This was a 1:49 minute opening title with only music in the background and nothing more interesting happening besides a close-up of a hand drawing.

Deciding on Genres

In today class session, my group members and I discussed what genre we going to choose for our final preliminary.

Now we are deciding on our film genre. To decide on a genre we have to be aware of different genres and their sub genres. Below are the links to the site from where I learnt about the various genres.

http://www.filmsite.org/genres.html

http://www.filmsite.org/subgenres.html

We are having trouble deciding if we should choose an ordinary story or make a parody of a movie or a character. Usually making suspense movies are easier. The examples I looked up for the opening titles were suspense and they were very well done whereas on the other hand, making a spoof is a different but a very interesting project. On you tube most of the opening titles made by the AS media students are of thriller and suspense movies and I did did not find much on official spoof or parody films. Therefore we plan to watching few DVD's to see how the opening titles of the parodies are presented. There are few parodies made as this genre is for the niche audience and due to some contents in those movies, some people do not watch them. Parodies are mostly watched by teenagers and young people.

I thought to look around and see if there are any famous parodies of movies made and I was surprised with the list I found

Here is the list of some famous parodies. 

     Scary Movie 1

     Scary Movie 2

     Scary Movie 3

     Hot Shots

     Hot Shots Part Deux

     Not Another Teen Movie

     Naked Gun 1

     Naked Gun 2Naked Gun 33 1/2

     Scary Movie 4

     Don't be a Menace to South Central Los Angelas while drinking your Juice in the hood

     I'm going to get you Sucka

     Mafia!

     Spaceballs

     Airplane 1

     Airplane 2

     Airplane 3

     Young Frankenstein

     Superhero Movie

     Date Movie

     Epic Movie

     Disaster Movie

     Meet the Spartans

      

Here is a link where all the opening titles are available online.

http://www.watchthetitles.com/search