One aspect of Pre-Production that we needed to do research into was lighting, as it is vital when filming due to the fact that it helps create depth on the location/set. It also helps the camera focus and actually pick up either people or objects on the location/set.
Tom did some research into lighting and discovered that his dad owned a set of industrial 1000w decorating lights, which he is happy for us to use when filming. This is exceptionally useful as when filming we need to be able to create a lot of deep shadow, which these lights will allow us to do.
Here is the final draft of our script. We didn’t change the script much from the original draft that we wrote, but we did add a bit more detail about the farm sign that features in the piece.
Today Patrick went to the location in which we a planning to film our coursework piece and took photos. We needed these photos so Tom, Charles and I, who have never been to the location before, could get an idea of what it looked like. I also needed the photos to aid me in drawing the storyboard so I knew what to draw, and we wanted to make another storyboard but using photos, we we can use them for that too.
After coming up with ideas as a group on how to further improve the ident and logo of our distribution company, Sidewinder Studios, Tom set about adding to and changing our first version of the ident until we were happy with it. Originally, we called it Sidewinder Films but we decided to change Films to Studios as it sounded better due to the sibilance, and also sounded like a snake hissing, which is perfect as the company’s name is a snakes name. Here is the final version:
We decided we had to have a logo to go with the name of the of the company, otherwise it would just have been a title and not a proper ident. Because the name of our distribution company was Sidewinder Studios, we wanted to have the image of a snake, ideally a viper, to go alongside the title as the logo. We wanted the image to be like a silhouette, but white on black to match the white title. After some searching we managed to find an image that suited our needs and Tom inverted the colour to work and then incorporated it into the ident. After Tom had tried several effects we finally settled on the way the logo fades in slightly after the title appears, and how the whole ident, title and logo, fade out together at the same time.
This week the first official trailer for Marvel Studios’ Captian America: Civil War, their next big movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, was released, and I am very, very excited about it. The movie, directed by Joe and Anthony Russo, is set to be released in May 2016, and looks like its gonna be a cracker. The plot of the film is set after the events of The Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant-Man, and is effectively set around a feud between Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and Captain America (Chris Evans), which divides the Avengers in two. The trailer gave us glimpses of the two teams formed, including heavily anticipated new characters such as Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), but sadly no Spiderman yet; the famous webslinger is set to be in the movie, played by Tom Holland, but it has not yet been revealed what he will look like or in what context he is int he film. A few months ago the two teams of Civil War were announced, causing a lot of excitement and speculation in reaction to see which members of the Avengers sided with either Iron Man or Cap:
Now I know superhero movies aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but the Marvel franchise, this year, has become the biggest and most popular franchise in the world, overtaking that of Harry Potter. I for one am not one of those people and I am very much looking forward to this film; it has a lot of potential and I am very interested to see how it is done, so role on 2016!
“Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
The Princess Bride (Rob Reiner, 1987) is a fairy tale/fantasy adventure based on the novel of the same tile by William Goldman. It is about a man, Westley (Cary Elwes) who must try and find and save the beautiful young woman, Buttercup (Robin Wright), his one true love, from the evil prince Humperdink after many years apart. However, on his quest to save Buttercup, Welsey must battle the evils of the mythical kingdom Florin and encounter various characters who try to hinder him on his way, including the skilled swordsman Inigo Montoya (Mandy Patinkin) and the ginormous Fezzik (Andre the Giant).
I love this movie as although the plot idea is not original at all, the way in which it is conveyed, which is in the form of a bedtime story to a young boy told by his grandad, is quite clever and not a very common technique used at the time the movie was made. It also has one of the best movie quotes ever, in my opinion anyway, delivered by Inigo Montoya when he confronts the man who killed his father, against whom he had vowed to take revenge.
There is also aspects of comedy throughout, which contrast to the serious nature of the film but add to the story.
While I started drawing the first version of our storyboard, Tom set about doing research into how to make animated storyboards. This is because we want to have several different types of storyboard, and ideally one of them will be animated; this shows that we have thought about all aspects of the story boarding process and that we have tried different methods. Its also shows creative skills and skills with software such as Adobe Photoshop and After Effects, which can be used for animations. By animating a storyboard a much more realistic view is given of the director’s vision of what they want the film to look like and what the film could actually look like when it is finished; the camera techniques and the movements of the actors can physically be shown.
Here is one animation tutorial on Adobe Photoshop that Tom managed to find:
We also want to make storyboard using photos that have been taken of the location we want to film on, and Patrick is hopefully going to take those photos this weekend.
As part of our coursework piece we wanted to have the two boys who feature in it looking through a scrapbook with some disturbing pictures, with their faces crudely stuck over the top. We had in mind, or I did anyway, that we wanted pictures of things such as medieval drawings of executions and similar things. However, first we had to set about the unsettling act of actually researching them, which none of us particularly enjoyed. We all did little bits of research towards this. Here are two picture that I found:
Tom also did some research and found some photographs, although we later decided that we preferred the idea of historical drawings instead of actual photos. Here is what Tom found:
Last lesson Tom started making the idents and logos for the start of our coursework piece. We wanted to have the idents and logos for a distribution company and a production company. Here is the first version of the ident he created for the distribution company. which we called Sidewinder Films:
Since the creation of this first version we have had other ideas of how to improve it, such as a different fade for when the text disappears and also the image of a snake, which fit with the name of the company. He has also started making the ident and logo for our production company, which we have decided to call Third Man Productions.
This week I started drawing out the first draft of our storyboard for our coursework piece. At the moment I am drawing it without any visual aid of what the location properly looks like, so I just drawing a basic idea of what we want our shots to be. Patrick is going to visit the location to take pictures to help me, and from those photos I will refine the storyboard. Here is what I have drawn so far:
With the pictures that Patrick takes we are going to use them to make another storyboard so we have more than one, but in different forms. Having a storyboard made with actual photos of the locations will aid us more when it comes to filming.
Jake Carder's AS Media Studies Blog 