Memento: Film inspiration

Memento is a film directed by Christopher Nolan and is all about a man who has short term memory loss and is trying to track down the guy who killed his wife. The film starts with the end of the film and carries on going from the end until the beginning. This gave us inspiration for our film and we decided to put what happens at the end of the film, at the very beginning. However, we would not carry this on throughout the rest of the film but after the title is shown we would go to what caused the ending (the beginning of everything that happened).

What makes a film British

In our lesson we got some newspapers and magazines and cut out everything in them that was British. We then made this into a moodboard/collage. It involved pictures of the good side of Britain such as the queen, the pimeminister and the olympics. We asked ourselves if it was a good representation of Britain and we all decided it wasn't. I though that there was a lot more to Britain that wasn't so lovely and good. This involved the rough streets and the homeless people that are actually living in Britain. The British Film Industry set up a criteria that shows what makes a film British. These things include:
- Film set in the UK
- Lead characters
- Subject matter and/or underlying material
- Language of original dialogue
- Contribution of the film to British culture
- Principal photography/visual effects etc
- Music recording/audio post production etc
- Director
- Scriptwriter
- Producer
- Music composer
- Lead actors
- Majority of cast
- Key staff
- Majority of crew
These aspects are key for the film to be a true British film.

Changing our ideas

After talking with the fair owners we have decided not to go with the kidnapping idea as they felt it would create a negative image apon the fairground. Also, it would be very difficult to achieve the versimilitude as the crowd would be there wearing modern clothes and not 50's like we would have had to have everyone wearing at the time in the fair. So now we have chosen to do another storyline that is still shot on the fairground. It will be based around a social networking site and will involve thriller aspects.

James Cameron's film style

James Cameron is a director best known for his films Titanic and Avatar. His films are mostly action based and have some element of romance in them but are not romcoms. They are all quite dark films and involve gun action such as Terminator and True Lies. As well as this he gets involved with a lot of underwater filming. He did this in Titanic and The Abyss where he went down in a submarine and directed the film under the water. He has become extremely successful over the years with all of his films but he is especially known for his epic remake of Titanic and also the incredible science-fiction film Avatar. I really like his style of film and the way he does them. They are incredibly enticing and everyone loves them.

Films that he directed include...
- The Terminator (1984)
- Rambo: First Blood Part 2 (1985)
- Aliens (1986)
- The Abyss (1989)
- Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
- True Lies (1994)
- Titanic (1997)
- Spider-Man and Dark Angel (2000-2002)
- Documentaries (2002-2012)
- Avatar (2009)
- Sanctum (2011)

Pitch of our film (Seized)

Today in the lesson we pitched our treatment, screenplay and storyboard to the rest of the class...

Storyboard

1. Happy fairground music. Initial opening P.O.V shot. Sky moving down, pan down into new shot.
2. Same shot now looking directly forwards at slide.
3. Same shot. Mother can be seen waiting at the bottom of the slide.
4. Close up of mother and child embracing (3 seconds).
5. Mid close up of the 3 on gallaper horse (3 seconds).
6. Close up of light bulbs twitching (2 seconds).
7. Shot of the twins on the train (3 seconds).
8. Shot of the 3 on ride (1 second).
9. Shot of the twins on another ride (1 second).
10. Close up of mum smiling and laughing with sons (2 seconds).
11. Close up of twins feet running through crowd (2 seconds).
12. Music stops, heavy breathing and footsteps start. Close up of mums feet running (2 seconds).
13. Close up of kidnappers feet running (2 seconds) Switch between mum and kidnappers feet.
14. Close up of mums screaming face (3 seconds).
15. Jolting camera. Tracking shot of mum running through the fair (3 seconds).
16. Close up shot of face pans round full circle (10 seconds).
17. Black screen (3 seconds) title (seized) appears and fades into next screen.
18. Panning side shot of mum on horse (4 seconds).
19. Close up of mum looking back behind her (2 seconds).

Canon 550D

As part of our task for the begining 2 minutes of a film we will be using a new Canon 550D which is a DSLR camera. It came with 3 prime lenses; 35mm for wide shots, 50mm for mid shots and 70mm for close ups. This will make filming easier and make the quality of the film better. We went out and tested the camera just to see what the lenses look like through the view finder and we tested the focus so that we had sharp and soft shots.