Styles of editing (finished)

There are many different styles of editing when it comes to movies and film producing and many different types of transitions or "cuts" throughout the whole film.
straight cut:
This is the most standard form of transition or editing which can occur in films, a straight cut is when one shot moves instantaneously to another without attracting the audiences attention, straight cuts are "invisible" to the audience as people do not generally pick up on them and do not worry about them they just view the movie as normal, this helps to retain reality.

dissolves:
A dissolve is when one shot fades off screen while another fades in screen and takes its place, the audience will be able to see both shots on the screen at one during the "midpoint" of the dissolve this type of transition is generally used if the director of the film wants to show a connection between two characters, places or objects.

Fade:
The fade is a gradual darkening or whitening of the screen and image until it eventually becomes fully black or fully white, one shot will only fade until eventually nothing can be seen apart from that one colour which it faded to, it is generally used to show the passing of time in a movie.

wipes:
a wipe is when one image is pulled off screen by another, the image can be pulled off screen either to the left or to the right, it does not matter however it is more common to be pulled off to the left side of the screen as this is better associated with time moving forward.

jump cut:
this transition is where the audiences attention is bought onto something very suddenly, and it "jumps" to the object of interest, it appears as if a section of the film has been lost or removed and continues with a different section.

graphic match:
This transition is when the film maker chooses to place shot in a certain order one after another to create a smooth visual transfer from one object to another, the two object or scenes have to generally look similar as to create the smooth transition.

production meeting 2 (finished)

Production meeting 2

this is our second production meeting once we had split up into our two separate groups, we immediately began to work on thinking up ideas for our own separate movie even if the other two from the original group were going to also star in it we had to think up our own separate idea and own movie, we discussed the different types of shots that are going to be involved, what the plot-line for the story is and we also discussed the setting and any possible props which we were going to use. 

"rope" blog (finished)

"rope" blog

The director of this movie is Alfred Hitchcock it is based off a play by Hume Cronyn from Patrick Hamilton, the play itself is said to be based off the grisly Leopold and loeb case of 1924, the case itself involved the two upper class law students murdering a lower class teenage boy which they knew and done it simply because they believed that they could and would be able to get away with it due to them being higher class than the victim and they believed also that their intellectual superiority made them void of any punishment from the law which the rest of us have to obey.
Thriller movies themselves are mainly characterized by the films fast paced and frequent action, this is true for rope as throughout the whole movie from the point where the body is hidden all the way to the end where the body is discovered all of the characters are in the same room as it and the trunk without even realizing even to the point where they are eating off the trunk where the body is hidden and still do not realize at all, this definitely gives the movie its fast paced action as we want the people to just open the trunk and find out about the murder which was committed however every time that  any of the characters even get remotely close to the body they are asked to leave the trunk alone and to not open it up, however as the trunk get closer and closer to being opened and they are stopped in their tracks this raises more and more suspicion with one of the other characters who almost plays the "detective" role in ultimately discovering the body, this movie does a very good job of keeping us on the edge of our seats at all times. 
However the other main aspect which thrillers are known for is the idea that the villain or villains are the ones which create the obstacles and the problems which the heroes then have to overcome this is only true to some extent with "rope", instead of the villains throwing multiple obstacles which our hero has to overcome there is no real indistinguishable hero and the only main obstacle which they have to overcome is simply just finding the body and solving the mystery behind the murder. Another two devices which this movie seems to use very well is suspense and the use of dramatic irony, throughout the whole movie there is suspense, we do not know if the body is ever going to be found with the idea of it being able to be found at any moment and at the same time the two villains keeping everyone away from it extremely well, this creates suspense as we know that anything can happen at any moment also dramatic irony comes into play with the audience being the only people besides from the villains to know about the crime which had taken place and where the body is
located i think this is a very well used tool as it creates tonnes of suspense and a lot of fast pacing throughout the movie as well and works a lot better than if we also did not know the body was there, another reason why i believe it is better that we know is that it makes the audience almost wish that they could jump into the big screen and tell everyone what had happened and thus gets you directly involved with the movie.
I think that the editing is done very well considering the fact that it was all done in one massive take and each time the cameras closes up up onto something that is when the ten minute reels are changed and when the cuts take place and the fact that the chest is always in shot fits very nicely into this, it is always reminding us of where the body is and gives us this sense of claustrophobia with the box taking up a seemingly large portion of the screen at all times, the continuous editing as well also gives us this idea of it all happening live in front of us as one massive play which gets us even more involved with the movie and makes us feel more as if we are part of it. 

past student thrillers (finished)

previous media studies thrillers

Hidden:

I think that while this is a good idea and a good concept it is not really carried out as well as it could have been and a couple of the shots within the sequence are very out of place, for example at the beginning there is a very unnecessarily large amount of walking down to the girls house and could have easily been either edited out or should not have been shot at all as it is just too long and the walking takes up too much time of the whole thing, another shot which i did not really like was the over the shoulder shot of the girl, while it was a nice idea to have an over the shot of the conversation we are instead greeted by glaringly large light coming off the street light, and finally the last two shots do not make really any sense at all, all that we see is a straight cut to the boy dead then it cuts to black at the end with the girl looking out of the window with a scream, we really do not have any idea what has happened and a lot of it is left to the imagination, even if there was some grabbing at the end that would have made it somewhat slightly better.

After Eight:



I believe that this one is done really well and keeps us well informed and filled in as to whats going on throughout the whole thing that is up until the end, what i mean by this is that we can clearly see at the beginning that the man has came home from work or school while the woman is cooking dinner for both of them as the guy has finished in the shed doing what he needs to he sits down reading a newspaper until the dinner is done and while this seems a bit boring what i like about it is that there are a couple of things that they do not openly explain or show us that keep this interesting for example the man seems very shifty always looking around when he is walking up to the shed then he is seen reaching into what seems to be a freezer but he does not pull anything out or put anything inside of it and once he is finished and returning the way he came he seems to have had a change of clothing for no apparent reason most notably losing his coat and the goes to sit down for dinner as if nothing unusual has happened in the first place, the thing that further enforces this sense of mysteriousness and danger is the fact that we are not shown what the girl is cooking until the very end and to me seems to be some kind of hand/finger and they both act as if it nothing unusual where it then cuts to the title screen, all in all this is a great set-up for a horror movie and the editing is also done very well even if the only transition used was straight cuts it work extremely well in this clip to help build that worry and keep the pace up as well as keeping an eye on both of the characters, it just all works very well together.

First production meeting (finished)

First production meeting:

For our first meeting we had discussed between our group what it was that we were going to do for the media clips, the group consists of me,sam,James,destiny and azimul. we had decided that we had to do two different mini movies when it comes to filming them as we had too many people to just produce one.
we have decided that group one will be destiny,sam and me while group two will be James and azimul while we will be all working together with one another.
our group has decided to produce a film in which the basic premise is where someone will be captured and held for ransom by a psychopath/serial killer, The movie is going to be called "illuminate" and the setting is going to either in an abandoned kind of hut which we had found over central park or we are going to see if anybody has a empty shed in which we can use, 

studio idents (finished)

Studio Idents

All films have at least one film company or studio idents backing them, a studio ident is a company that specializes in making and helping to produce films so i guess you could also call them production companies however in this we are talking about when a studio or multiple idents which help the movies director to produce their film through funding and also advertisement/propaganda for the movie for example posters and television advertisements, there are many different studio idents out there and you will always see them during the opening of the movie by their unique opening sequence and after watching or seeing them quite a few times you will almost always instantly recognize them without having to watch the entire sequence play through as the majority of them or at least the major ones have been around for a very long time and have backed many,many movies especially the major titles which we all love and know such as matrix, titanic, aliens etc. here are some great examples of some of the biggest studio idents out there:
Walt Disney:

20th Century Fox:

Warner Brothers:

Modern thriller openings

Modern thriller openings: 

mise-en-scene (finished)

mise-en-scene:

mise-en-scene is used in every movie that you have watched throughout your whole life, it is a french term which translates to "in the scene or frame" and means is basically anything which the viewer can see in that particular scene of the movie.

mise-en-scene has a lot of different elements to it and is not just one thing, it is a collection of different things and themes for example mise-en-scene is normally referring to 5 very specific things which you can see within a movie these five things are as follows:

1. setting and props
2. costume, hair and make-up 
3. facial expressions and bodily language 
4. lighting and color 
5. positioning of characters and objects within the frame

These are the main five things which we discuss when we are talking about mise-en-scene however when we are talking about these we also like to include two other aspects or ideas and which we talk about these are denotation and connotation.

• Denotation is the literal description of an idea,concept or an object for example if a movie has a scene where a person is injured then it fades to white and a scene where he is not present the denotation of that would simply be that it became lighter and bright all of a sudden.
• Connotation however is what we associate with a particular idea, concept or object so if we again talk about a scene where a man is injured, it fades to white and then he is not present our connotation of that would be that either he is in hospital or more than likely has passed away, this is because we frequently associate the bright white with heaven/afterlife 

When it comes to both connotation and denotation color can play a very big and important role within these two as color often creates moods within the sub-conscious mind.

So in short when we are talking about mise-en-scene we are not talking about editing necessarily or what we can hear/dialogue we are just simply talking about what can be seen in that frame. 

Thriller conventions (finished)

Blog one-thriller conventions               

A thriller is classified in many different ways but the main two ways in which a movie is classified as a thriller is if the movie has fast pacing or frequent action and the main plot is nearly always driven by a villain whilst the hero reacts to the things which the villain throws his way, a great example of this type of plot is in basically all of the James bonds films where the villain is always trying to take over the world or attempting to blow it up, in thrillers the hero always has to be resourceful also finding alternative and interesting ways to defeat the villain from using the environment to his advantage when fighting as shown during the scene where he uses the sink in the bathroom to drown the enemy to using his own wit and smart judgement to escape from the enemies traps.

In a thriller there is always a lot of action all of the time and in those rare moments in which there is no action then instead there is a lot of suspense and a lot of build-up to the action which is going to be coming along shortly, to complement this in most thrillers the hero's are hardened warriors accustomed to fighting and near-death situations so none of these horrific encounters and treacherous traps phase the hardened warrior at all whereas it would shock the audience, although most heroes appear to be hardened veterans there are many cases in which ordinary everyday people are dragged into the action packed situations of heroes and villains and this is very popular with older thriller films such as north-by-northwest and many other of Hitchcock's films, along with this the hero is mainly a male who appears tall and well built as evident with basically all of the James bond films however thriller films have recently more and more often been using women instead of mean as the main character, this is also very evident the film aliens in which the main character Ripley is attempting to hide and escape from the threat which is the alien.
Some people may accidentally confuse thriller movies for mystery story movies however there are many differences between the two, the two types are most easily distinguished by their plots and the way in which the story progresses, in a thriller the movie involves the hero attempting to stop the villain from finalising and acting upon their evil schemes as opposed to mystery movies which involve the hero or mainly the detective in uncovering a mystery/crime which has already been committed, another difference between the two is that in a thriller movie you generally know the identity of the bad guy throughout the whole movie and it is not kept a secret whereas with a mystery story the identity of the villain is kept a mystery throughout the whole movie that is until the end where the identity is the big reveal.
The main way of telling whether a movie is a thriller or not is simply if it thrills you, it is supposed to thrill and excite you as opposed to being mysterious and building suspense, it is supposed to simply keep you on the edge of your seat. 

North by northwest blog (finished)

North by Northwest assignment:

In this assignment we are going to be looking at north by northwest and will be focusing on cinematography,sound,editing and mise-en-scene but the main scene we are going to be looking at is the famous crop-duster scene with the section where roger Thornhill is attempting to escape from the plane that is trying to murder him and we are going to be mainly observing the cinematography in this scene out of everything else.
The cinematography is very widely used throughout this whole scene and lots of different types are used such as the beginning shot which is the wide shot and is used to display the main characters surroundings showing what he is seeing along with displaying this sense of loneliness on the main character and isolation as he is located at that point in time in the middle of no-where with nothing around him, this shows his extreme discomfort and the fact that he is far away from the city and home, the two places where he feels the most safe, this wide shot and pan shot is also used to show how long roger is waiting for this mysterious Mr. Kaplan to show up and that he is looking about everywhere for him.

The camera will then zoom in onto Rogers face to  show a close-up shot once the plane is in motion and is attempting to shoot him, this shot is used to to how his shock and fear that the plane is attempting to kill him while he is in the middle of no-where it could also be said that this shot is used to show Rogers sudden realisation of the fact that there is no Kaplan but instead was all a setup for Roger to be murdered, this however is not an extreme close-up but instead is a normal close-up.
Immediately afterwards there is a low-angle shot to show the plane just passing over his head nearly killing him in the process and this shot is especially low-angle to show exactly how close the plane was to decapitating him.
Finally we end this sequence with a tracking show as Thornhill is running away from the plane which is in hot pursuit and thankfully the plane has to pull up just before the bullets which it is firing comes into contact with Roger killing him, all of these "special effects" such as the explosions,gunshots and the plane are not CGI, graphics or animations these are instead all done live and are all done by trained professionals so when you find out that this is all done by the crew and not the computer then this makes the movie much more impressive.
The sound plays a very important role in this whole movie as basically all of the sounds are non-diegetic and there is no music at all, all of the sounds are sounds in which the character "Thornhill" would actually be able to hear himself such as the plane flying overhead or the gas tanker exploding, or even the cars and bus driving past him, the only diegetic sound which you can actually hear during this sequence is the sharp pitches or tunes which play whenever the plane fly really close to thornhill overhead nearly killing him in the process, the use of sound is extremely effective for this movie scene as it puts us in roger Thornhill's situation as we can both see what he is seeing through the use of many P.O.V shots combined with the use of non-diegetic sound really puts us in his shoes and makes us feel like we are in his place and are in imminent danger just as he is.

North by northwest is very much a villain driven story and narrative just like many other thrillers from this movie era were, other great movies which are villain driven from the same time as this can include any of the James Bond movies from back then all the way up to the present day, the way in which you can tell that it is villain driven is that the good guy as such in this movie never really provokes the villain themselves and never will directly attack the villain instead it is just the villain which is always throwing obstacles and traps in the path of the hero which he then has to react to and in the process stop the villain from achieving that which he is attempting to (which is generally something i the way of world domination). In the case of this movie the "hero" is just an ordinary everyday person going about his daily routines until that is when he is mistaken for another person who is an agent working for the government hot on the trail of one of the biggest criminals at which point he is dragged into this insane world of heroes and villains, this is one of Hitchcock's famous devices which he uses in many of the movies which he has made it involves the audience "dipping their toe into the cold water of fear" what this means is that he is scaring the audience in the way that this kind of thing could happen to any one of them just as it happened to Roger Thornhill, this makes them worried that they too could could be going about their daily routine and all of a sudden be dragged into a world of danger.
Another one of Hitchcock's famous devices which he uses extensively in this movie is the concept of "the male gaze", this is the idea that the movie focuses greatly on what males would be looking at themselves, this works well seeing as the main character in this movie is a male the shots and scenes always see the women as objects of male erotic desire which is true within this movie as most of the movie is based around this one woman which Thornhill has fallen in love with and although a large amount of the story involves her she never moves the plot forward herself which is again true for the concept of the "male gaze" in which the plot is only driven forward by males.

Sound film and evaluation

Sound exercise:

This is our sound exercise. Although we lost the audio for half of the footage we decided to make up with it by adding in more audio and sound clips during the editing process of the video, and we also decided to add in some subtitles as well to cover the lack of dialogue. 

we decided not to spend too much time on it due to the fact that it was just a practice film which we were doing to get used to the sound and audio, if we were to spend more time on it we could have re-filmed the parts where we had no audio so that we would actually have something which we could listen to.  the main reason as to why we had no audio was to the fact that the boom had cut out half way through and left us with nothing.

We will be using this older film as a reminder that we should always check the boom is functioning properly before we actually go on to film anything and we should also save enough time during recording for us to go on and continue recording or re-record some stuff if we ever need to which is what we did not do during this one, we rushed it and did not leave enough time for us to back and do anything that we needed to do. 

cinematography filming exercise

Genre

Genre 
Genre is typically a type of topic which a movie is based around, normally there is a main genre that the movie is focused on such as horror or action or sci-fi but then other sub-genres can be added in with the main one. For example you could have a romantic comedy or a action adventure or even a sci-fi horror, some examples of this include "aliens" which is both a horror and a sci-fi movie and grown ups which is both a family movie and a comedy movie. These movies with sub-genres are seen more and more commonly throughout the movie industry with a film rarely ever sticking to just one type of genre or idea. The reason why movies have genres is so that they can be classified and put into groups which is extremely useful when labelling, selling and even giving out rewards or trophies to movies, they are also classified in this way so that it is easier for the public to determine what type of movie it is and if it would be of interest to them this helps when customers purchase a film as they can look for similar films in the same genre and buy them too but not something from another genre as they know they would not be interested in it.

Brief

 Foundation Portfolio: The Brief 

You have been asked to produce the titles and opening sequence of a new fiction film in thethriller genre.

The sequence should last a maximum of two minutes.

You may work in a group of 2 - 4 students.

As acting is not assessed you are free to use actors that are not members of your group.

The film is worth 60% of your coursework grade.

The accompanying blog is worth 40% of your coursework grade

Together the Foundation Portfolio is worth 50% of the overall AS Level.  

welcome blog

welcome!
hello my name is jack Broadbent and this is going to be the welcome post for both film studies and media studies as i take both subjects