Edgar Wright directed the films Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead. These are both parody's of films or film genres, for example Hott Fuzz is a mick take for any typical action/crime film and Shaun of the dead is a mick take for the film Dawn of the Dead. He has made the films very comedic and has done this in a very clever way. His films seem to mostly be about drama and gore but in a non gruesome way and he achieves this with the comedy that is incorporated into it. I really like the style of his films because they are less serious and enjoyable to watch.
Tim Burton's film style
Tim Burton directed many films such as Frankenweenie, Edward Scissorhands and Sweeney Todd. He creates a sense of spookiness in most of his films and you can pretty much always tell when the film has been directed by him. We were given a task to go out and film the first 2 shots of any film that we made up. Our first 2 shots was of a person riding a horse across a field. We shot this film and we thought about ways in which we could change it into a Tim Burton style film. We thought of many different things such as setting it in a dark forrest or graveyard, changing it so that the horse was a toy that came to life, exaggerated features such as large eyes and eerie sounds that make it spooky. If we incorporated all of these things into our film then it would be in the style of Tim Burton.
Analysis of the first 2 minutes of Inglorious Basterds
The first two minutes of Inglorious Basterds are very much there to create the sense of enigma. The first one minute and forty seconds are the opening titles on a black background. The fonts change from block writing to more fancy writing. this is all for the actors and the director and producer. Then when the name of the film is revealed, 'Inglorious Basterds' is written in yellow fancy writing. On the one minute forty seconds mark the screen goes completely black for 10 seconds to create the sense of enigma which makes you want to watch even more of it. The next part of the film is a man axing a tree stump and then it pans to show an establishing shot of the house. This is all creating enigma which is very important for the opening sequence of a film. I think it's a really effective opening to a film and the music adds a lot more to it because it makes it feel like an old thriller movie.
Analysis of the first 2 minutes of Forrest Gump
We watched the first two minutes of Forrest Gump to prepare ourselves for our main task. We watched the two minutes but stopping it every 10 seconds to write down what happened in those 10 seconds. We wrote this down on a story board so that it was easier to keep track of what happened in each section. The first 50 seconds are of a feather floating around high up in the air among the trees and the tops of buildings. While this is happening the credits are showing in the middle of the screen. This is the establishing shot. After this the camera pans down still following the feather to the street. This shows cars and people walking along the street. The first person we see is Forrest (main character) sitting on the bench but this isn't obvious as the camera is still panning around. The feather almost lands on someone crossing the street which makes you think he is the main character. Then the feather gets lifted up again and lands on Forrest's dirty shoes. He then picks it up carefully and puts in away in his very neatly packed brief case. Throughout all this time There is calm music playing and the shot is just one whole panning shot with no cuts what so ever. This makes it seem very simple and calm which may represent who Forrest is and what his personality is like.
Creating a genre
Our genre for our task was psychological thriller. We created this genre in many different ways. The narrative was quite a good one for this genre because we could make it a mystery quite easily. For the flashback, the camera wasn't still at all and so you have to catch up to what is happening and really concentrate which gets you tense. This gives the effect of a psychological thriller.We had to pick the right music to create the atmosphere for the short film, so we chose something that was quite fast pace and used a Muse song to set the tension. For the mise en scene we had to think about costume. For the flashbacks we had to get the right clothes for different era's. We also used the parcel as a prop which had a sense of mystery to it which gave the psychological thriller feel to it. Finally, the editing is the most important in making the film a psychological thriller because it's where we put all the flashbacks together and put in the sound to create the tension.
Preliminary task reflection
Camera framing, Composition and movement...
- While filming, we always thought about where abouts the camera was in relation to what we were filming. For instance, at the beginning we always focused the camera on the feet of Ashley so that the audience got a sense of confusion and suspense. We then moved the camera up to the hand to show the parcel which revealed a bit more about the person and then we cut from there to the office where everything was revealed and you could see Ashley's face.
Sound...
- We used a song called New Born by Muse to create a sense of tension. We used this song throughout the whole of the short film so that people could get the sense that something strange was happening. This was non-diegectic sound because we added it in afterwards. We also used a phone ringing as non-diegetic sound and i that was all we did as non-diegetic. All the rest was diegetic such as the dialogue and the door opening.
Mise en scene...
- We made sure that Ashley wore the same clothes for modern day and the same clothes for the flashbacks. This makes the audience understand what is what. We also made sure i wore the same clothes for the receptionist and i wore glasses to make myself look more like a receptionist. We also used the props in the appropriate way and made sure that the parcel was in it at the correct time.
Editing...
- This was the area that we made the audience know it was a psychological thriller. We added in the music at the editing stage which was the most important thing that showed the genre. Also the border around the edge on all the dream shots had a massive effect on what the audience would think.
2 things i think went well on this task and that i would bring forward to my main task would be the flashbacks that we did and how we edited it, this is because it gave a really good effect and makes the genre stand out a lot more. The other thing would be the sound that we incorporated into it at the end, this is because it also created the sense of the genre and without the music it wouldn't have been anywhere near as good.
2 things i think i would avoid doing in my main task is not shooting the shots enough times so that we had backups if some weren't right. We need to shoot enough shots because then we have lots of different shots to choose from if something goes wrong. The other thing would be looking out for mistakes when we shoot the film so that we don't have shadows for example in our film. This is because no matter how many times we shoot the scene, it would still have the shadow in it and so we would have to go back out and shoot the same scene over and over again which wastes time.
- While filming, we always thought about where abouts the camera was in relation to what we were filming. For instance, at the beginning we always focused the camera on the feet of Ashley so that the audience got a sense of confusion and suspense. We then moved the camera up to the hand to show the parcel which revealed a bit more about the person and then we cut from there to the office where everything was revealed and you could see Ashley's face.
Sound...
- We used a song called New Born by Muse to create a sense of tension. We used this song throughout the whole of the short film so that people could get the sense that something strange was happening. This was non-diegectic sound because we added it in afterwards. We also used a phone ringing as non-diegetic sound and i that was all we did as non-diegetic. All the rest was diegetic such as the dialogue and the door opening.
Mise en scene...
- We made sure that Ashley wore the same clothes for modern day and the same clothes for the flashbacks. This makes the audience understand what is what. We also made sure i wore the same clothes for the receptionist and i wore glasses to make myself look more like a receptionist. We also used the props in the appropriate way and made sure that the parcel was in it at the correct time.
Editing...
- This was the area that we made the audience know it was a psychological thriller. We added in the music at the editing stage which was the most important thing that showed the genre. Also the border around the edge on all the dream shots had a massive effect on what the audience would think.
2 things i think went well on this task and that i would bring forward to my main task would be the flashbacks that we did and how we edited it, this is because it gave a really good effect and makes the genre stand out a lot more. The other thing would be the sound that we incorporated into it at the end, this is because it also created the sense of the genre and without the music it wouldn't have been anywhere near as good.
2 things i think i would avoid doing in my main task is not shooting the shots enough times so that we had backups if some weren't right. We need to shoot enough shots because then we have lots of different shots to choose from if something goes wrong. The other thing would be looking out for mistakes when we shoot the film so that we don't have shadows for example in our film. This is because no matter how many times we shoot the scene, it would still have the shadow in it and so we would have to go back out and shoot the same scene over and over again which wastes time.
Post production (Editing)
Before we did any editing we got to grips with Final Cut Pro and learnt the basics of how to use it. We then imported our footage onto the Mac's and the first thing we did was rename all of our clips so that we knew what was what. This helped a lot, further on in the editing process. This took almost all of the lesson to do because we had about 50 clips to rename. On the second day we started to put our clips together just to work out the order of how it went. As we did this, we did also try out some effects to see how they looked. In our main task we won't do this because we will put it all together before adding in any effects.
After putting it all in order we sorted out the flashbacks and cut the clips up and chopped and changed them so they looked like the feet were going up the stairs at the same time in the modern day and the flashback. As we did this we also put in the effect "Bad Film". This made it look more black and white and also put an edge on it that made it stand out as being a flashback.
After the editing of putting all the clips together we thought that we would need a particular blurriness or a border throughout the dream so that you could tell it was a dream. For this we put a black faded border all around the shots apart from the bed shot which wasn't a dream. We thought it would have been better in white but we couldn't change it to white so we left it as it wasn't that important.
We had to keep the 'match on action' up to scratch the whole way through so we had to check that it was edited very precisely to make sure there were no mistakes in this area. After all of this was done we added in the music to create an atmosphere. For this we chose the song 'New Born' by Muse. It was an edgy song so we thought it went with the genre psychological thriller. Finally, we added in a bit at the end that said 'To be continued...' which made it more of a cliff hanger and more like our genre.
After putting it all in order we sorted out the flashbacks and cut the clips up and chopped and changed them so they looked like the feet were going up the stairs at the same time in the modern day and the flashback. As we did this we also put in the effect "Bad Film". This made it look more black and white and also put an edge on it that made it stand out as being a flashback.
After the editing of putting all the clips together we thought that we would need a particular blurriness or a border throughout the dream so that you could tell it was a dream. For this we put a black faded border all around the shots apart from the bed shot which wasn't a dream. We thought it would have been better in white but we couldn't change it to white so we left it as it wasn't that important.
We had to keep the 'match on action' up to scratch the whole way through so we had to check that it was edited very precisely to make sure there were no mistakes in this area. After all of this was done we added in the music to create an atmosphere. For this we chose the song 'New Born' by Muse. It was an edgy song so we thought it went with the genre psychological thriller. Finally, we added in a bit at the end that said 'To be continued...' which made it more of a cliff hanger and more like our genre.
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