"Tell" by Ryan Connolly

For our independent study we had to watch Ryan Connolly's "tell". We had to comment about the camera shots and angles and sound. "Tell" is a short psychological short film about a man ed Taylor who psychologically disturbed after he murders his girlfriend Jenny.

To watch the short film click the link below- http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PGgRH7-Qs9g

My view on "tell" was that I thought is was very well filmed for a low budget short film, I think the camera angles that err eased were extremely effective in getti g across what was going on and why it helped web he was upstairs as the mirror gave different angles. Over all I think the use of shots were effective in keeping with sound effects they both grabbed the audiences attention.

British film institute

On Tuesday my class went to London to cost the British film institute, I took notes on the lectures we were given information by various amounts of people such as, Pete Fraser and the chief examiner of OCR media studies, Simone frame and the writer of "attack the block" Joe Cornish.

First of all Pete Fraser gave us information on how to improve and enhance our coursework.
The key features in opening sequences ar followed:
-genre
-narrative
-character
-atmosphere
-setting

This allows us to create an opening sequence which will attack the audience straight away and hopefully keep then watching. Every creator of an opening sequence the jus of things in general first and the. Elaborates on them more specifically and doing research at the same item as well.

After speaking about opening sequences that we way he's numourus of past opening sequences in order to see what makes a good and bad opening sequence taking into consideration the key features. The opening sequence is there for the audience to make a judgement I. What they think the film is you f to be about, we were the. Give. A list of six opening sequences that where common in which we should avoid doing for our final piece there include:
-saw- mysterious stalker
-se7en
-lock,shock
-someone waking up
-flash backs and to the future

We then got information on problems which occur in an opening sequence
-making it look like a trailer
-making it look like a short film
-not many opening titles
-poor lighting and sound quality
-actors which were not directed correctly
-making it complicated for the audience

Pete the. Told us about the sets we should take when filming our own opening sequence

Step 1: take shot
-building on skills, research and planning
-time and giving yourself e Pugh time to shot and edit

Step 2: setting up blog
Step 3: build up skills
Step 4: investigate

Step 5: brainstorm ideas
- mood board
-realism
-feedback
-pitched

Step 6: planning
-experiment-story board

Step 7: shooting
-costume, light, actors, movements, props and setting (CLAMPS)
-rehearsals
-keeping track or record of processing

Step 8: editing
-screen grabs
-audio and titles
-foley
-peer feedback and set a deadline

Step 9: evaluation
-evaluating everything that has been done and filmed

Over all, I've learnt a lot from what the class has taught me, the steps we have to make our final piece realistic and what we should and shouldn't do while filming. Also that we need to plan everything ry well and avoid creating an opening scene that is common.

How to make a video.

In our media lesson we watched a DVD sequence on how to make your own video, it explained everything you needed clearly.

Pre-production
What we need to do first is the figure out which roles will go to each person as there are a lot of roles to make a film or short video successful.
-executive producer
-director
-writer
-production manager
-camera operator
-lighting director
-sound technician
-actors
-editor

All of these roles are what makes a film work smoothly

Shot list
-where we should shot our scenes
-how much time we need
-the different angles we will use
-the date we need it finished by

Post production

We need to take into consideration the purpose of the opening sequence and the target audience and the limitations of what we can and can't do.

- shooting the project
-time management
-the quality( image,sound)
-potential criticism on the limitations

Production meeting 5

During this production meeting we discussed the earlier action points a d we also finished up and discussed our final copy of our shot list

We also discussed the needed new locations for other scenes and we came up with that we will need a man/boys room to film our first shots we then asked around and finally found one compared it to our production schedule and made an appropriate date.

Action points
-discuss what dates are appropriate to film Oxford scenes
-plan date for editing film

Production meeting 4

In this meeting we confirmed our ideas and drew out a rough sketch of our scene table and schedule.

We then had to contact the Oxford City Council to ask permission to use West gate car park as our first scenes. We got an email address but haven't heard any news yet, if we are unable to use this location we will use the streets and subway if Oxford or London as a backup location as we do not need permission and past groups have not had any trouble using it in the past.

Action points

-finish shot list
-discover more locations for other scenes.

Production meeting 3

In our third production meeting we presented our production pitch to the class. We explained our idea and how we would like to approach it a set a clear idea of what we wanted. We had a lot of positive points and feedback like, good clear mind set on your ideas a d we know what we are talking about, also our focus points were to order out our location, cast, props and what the message we want to send across during the film.

Action points
-to find a suitable location
-final shot list
-final draft of storyboard

Production meeting 2

Our second production meeting was in the 13th of December 2012.

In this meeting we discussed our previous action points and if we had trouble or not, we also spoke about the ideas we came up with and we all decided that our best one was our action sequence. This was our first idea, the protagonist in bed, title, action, gun and alarm. We went with this as it isn't that common and it didn't revel a lot about the 'rest' of the film in the first couple minuets. We also thought it would create tension with builds and makes the audience want to carry on watching.

We then looked at various sounds and tracks we could use that Dionne found, we narrowed it down to one soundtrack and two sound effects.

Our action points were:

-create mood board
-create PowerPoint to show idea and what we would like to do
-discuss cast and locations

Production meeting 1

Our first production meeting of our team( Bryony Mann,Dionne Franklyn and myself) was on the 6th of December 2012. In this meeting we came up with three different ideas for our opening sequence. These were:

ACTION SEQUENCE
In this opening sequence we would have our protagonist asleep in bed snapping to a title on black background, flashing to action shots then back to the protagonist waking up to an alarm and gun shot, however the gun shot would be non diabetic as it would be foreseeing the future and what his fate would be.

MIRACLE DRUG
We got this idea from the film "Limitless" we thought we could reenact the opening sequence but in the end we thought it would give too much of the film away.

PHYSIOLOGICAL
We thought about a physiological thriller/horror opening sequence but the. Realised that this may have been done too many times and would have to be done very carefully and very planned out for it too work as it hasn't been extremely i successful in the past.

Our action points for the meeting were:

Myself- creating and putting together the storyboard and shot lists.
Bryony- to find suitable locations that are easily accessible
Dionne- to fine a good soundtrack and non diabetic and diabetic sounds for the gun shot, alarm and the action scenes.