Main Task Brainstorming

Whilst thinking of ideas that we are developing for our main task, our group decided to brainstorm a few of the ideas and develop them, particularly look at the conventions of both narrative and technique. We began to consider some key camera shots to emphasise the themes of the storyline we were thinking of, such as a focus on smaller aspects of the main characters appearance to increase the sense of enigma and contrast long shots with close shots to reference confusion. We were particularly concerned with the idea of creating enough mystery and suspense without confusing the audience, yet also had to be careful of showing the audience too much. From this, we moved on to the ideas of the McGuffin and voice overs. We had an idea of a non-labelled map, the McGuffin, which our main character would carry. This was symbolic of the girls state of mind and also presented a mystery that needed to be solved. The voice over was merely a spur of the moment idea which later on in development came to be a little more important.

Following this, we began to develop the character we had in mind, thinking of a key theme: isolation. This lead to us thinking of the kind of clothing she would wear, dark and earthy tones to reflect how she stands out from the crowds. She is a strange juxtaposition in a busy setting, and we thought the perfect setting for this would be the London underground, as it can appear to be very cinematic. The lighting is light but muffled, the trains create loud, passing sounds and the platforms are often busy.

However, this was put to rest a few days later as we enquired about filming on location in the Underground, and realised that the financial limitations of our production would make it quite impossible to film there. We began reworking some of our main ideas after this, and started drafting a synopsis and pitch for our idea...

Forrest Gump: On the McGuffin and symbolism

So what is a McGuffin? A term coined by the great Alfred Hitchcock, it is a object of desire for a character in a film, a plot moving device that is often not incredibly important yet serves the purpose of developing the story. In some ways, this serves to create a sense of enigma around the object and by extension, the plot. The idea of the McGuffin is no more apparent than in the opening two minutes of the critically acclaimed Forrest Gump (1994), with the example of the feather.

The entire two minute opening focuses singularly on the feather and never once does it cut away from that. In fact, the shot is one continous tracking shot following the feather downwards, which draws importance to the item. It's symbolic visual meanings are also highly evident in this first scene - the white of the feather connotes to purity and in some respects innocence too. It also fits in well with the blue sky a white fluffy clouds in the background- a kind of aesthetically pleasing  mise-en-scene.
We noted when watching the film that interestingly enough, the feather can be a metaphorical representation of the main protaganist and his journey throughout the film, shown through the movements of the feather to it's different locations and the way in which the camera follows it.
A brief overview of this; The feather begins up the heavens, maybe showing Forrest as a child with his head in the clouds and full of total innocence. Then as it begins to fall, the camera tracks down with it to see the city, a gentle fall into a reality that lacks the brightness and colour of the sky. It  eventually lands on the shouder of a business man, possibly misleading the audience into thinking that he is the main charcter (also influenced because of the stereotypical character shown here.) Yet the wind slowly blows the feather down to the ground. We thought this may be symbolic of the constant overlooking of Forrest as a strong character and how he is a very unlikely hero. Onelast point to mention about this symbolism idea is the moment when the feather lands on the floor, nearly run over by a car before being lifted by it, perhaps referencing to the ups and downs of the main characters life and how he gets back up from the harsh downs. In a sense, the entire story is shown all through the movement of this one, small feather. Symbolism in it's broadest sense. Forrest himself final picks up the feather and slowly and carefully places it in a book, interestingly on page that puts the feather yet back against that background of blue sky.

The sound used in the opening is mainly diegetic sound; a soundtrack of a sweet, innocent sounding piano piece, reminiscent of the soft and light way the feather floats down to earth. This is all that can be heard until the feather reaches ground level, when quiet sounds of humanity begin to appear, such as cars and people. As for the way in which the camera angles and editing reflect this to create meaning, the using of the continuous slow tracking shot and no cuts to any other shots, making a very
slow feel that could be to symbolise the ambling blind nature of life.

An Inspiring Director: Hayao Miyazaki

In 2001, an innovative Japanese animated film was released from a relatively unknown Japanese animation company named Studio Ghibli that was the first of its kind to win an academy award for best animated feature film in 2003. The films name was Spirited Away and it's director and creator was Hayao Miyazaki.
As one half of the founders of the now world renowned Studio Ghibli, Miyazaki has been compared to many American animation directors, even Walt Disney himself. Despite this, his style is one of the most unique, intricate and beautiful creations I have seen. Miyazaki goes to great lengths to create his perfect vision by undertaking many of the tasks himself in the early stages of development; screen writing, directing, storyboarding, character developing and most importantly, the narrative. When you watch a Miyazaki animation, it is quite possible to get lost in the world, enveloped in fantasy and real life likenesses alike. He fills the screen with breathtaking and often whimsical visions of magic and strife.

Some of his stand out films for me include:

• The aforementioned Spirited Away
• Kiki's Delivery Service
• Laputa: Castle in the Sky
• and Howl's Moving Castle

Hayao Miyazaki uses many different techniques in his film making to build his expansive, mythological worlds in a way that can be compared to no other. His films are full of vibrant, breathtaking colour which is often used in Japanese anime, yet diversifying it into something far more artistic. He tends to also focus upon female protagonists that largely go against the culture of female representation in Japanese manga and anime respectively, which has lead to some of his co-animators suggesting that he is a feminist. Through his work with his collaborators, Miyazaki has built a general style that is quintessentially his own. One of these collaborators is the celebrated Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi, who has composed for nearly every film of Miyazakis making, creating sweeping, emotionally powerful scores that match the shots in the films in every way.

Preliminary Task Reflection

Primarily, the first thing that has to be mentioned about my experience with this task is that it has made me appreciate just how much work really goes into every single part of film making. Because of this, I now have a better informed and more realistic view of time frames for making just 2 minutes of film and therefore feel far more prepared for creating our final piece which will hopefully be of a high quality when we improve upon the things that didn't work well and apply the new techniques will learnt.

When we began to think about the task and start drafting a storyboard for shots, I think it's safe to say that we all thought it would be a lot simpler to produce the 2 minute clip than it resulted in being. Because of this, whilst we we're coming up with a lot of ideas, they were not very structured and this resulted in us becoming rather confused when it came to the initial filming. However, I also think it allowed us to be a little more impulsive when filming to develop better shots that fitted to the style we were trying to create. So in terms of this, I think that one of the key aspects I myself learnt here was that planning can only take you so far - plan too much, and it can limit on the spot creativity. But that does not be that planning should be neglected all together.

At the start of filming, we began to make some crucial decisions that drastically affected what we produced - the location and the actors. Of course, we were limited to creating the film on the school grounds, which didn't fit too well with our genre. To improve this, we focused on the weather in the location we were shooting, taking into account the idea of pathetic fallacy. Filming only on overcast, rainy days fitted the mood of an action film far better than we could achieve for the location and so we relied on this to improve the setting. Luckily, it rained every single day of shooting!

Whilst shooting, we were highly conscious of applying the conventions of our genre to the way in which we produced the piece, as I mentioned in an earlier blog post. The aspects that we included were things such as shaky cam, short shot lengths and mise en scene that reflected the theme of the film. We switched roles constantly to give everyone a chance to get a feel for the camera, which I think will be good to know for our main task. If anything, things we could have improved upon were our time management, which would have enabled us to finish getting the shots we needed far quicker, and more importantly, our continuity. Mainly due to filming on site at school, we had to switch rooms for filming twice and on both days the lighting was consistently different. There were other, smaller inconsistencies but these were easier to miss.

Creating a Genre - "Action" Sequence

When first approaching our given genre of Action, we were, it had to be said, a little daunted. Many of the obvious features of action films happen to be big, exuberant chases or even explosions and the thought of us being able to produce something anything near to that style was quite unbelievable.
It was only after we began to research the conventions of the genre that we realised it contained a lot of signature techniques.

Creating a genre, we found, is more than just creating a narrative that has action elements. The style of shots, audio, acting, editing... it all adds to make a genre.
Knowing this, we moved on to researching typical conventions of the action genre in all aspects of it and then looked at examples of how they have been used in the past.

Narrative Conventions: 

• Stereotypical, sometimes 2D characters - Hero, 'Damsel-in-distress', Villain etc..
• Chases or similar high action sequences.
• Frequent use of tension building.
• Some crossovers with the Thriller and Crime genres.
• Spying and espionage a common feature.
• Strong motives for the characters action that often represent a virtue, in the case of a hero.
• Use of gadgets and weapons can often be central to the plot.
• Drastic consequences of characters actions. (For example, the hero must save the world from destruction in an extreme case.)
• Often set in urban areas.

Technical Conventions:

• Fast paced editing style in high action scenes.
• Lengthier shots used to draw emphasis to specific props or plot points in dialogue.
• Shaky cam is used frequently, possibly to emulate the action of running.
• Tension building music is almost always used and other tracks used, for example, in chase scenes, usually feels very grand or epic in scale.
• Use of special effects for things such as explosions.
• Quite a mixture between very long and very short shots, again building tension or aiding narrative points.
• Point of view shots used in spy situations.
• Shot/reverse shot used heavily in dialogue.
• Dark, yet often saturated colours.

When we were fist given the script, we made the choice to add in a few crucial scenes to add to our sense of genre. The most notable of these was the chase flashback scene, which added more key narrative conventions to our clip. This led to our storyboarding, where we also made the decision to use many shot shots.
The hardest aspects of capturing our genre proved to be the location, continuity and character looks, mainly due to our limited resources within school. Whoever, a positive aspect that came from this happened to be the weather, as it rained constantly on our shooting days, giving the lighting in our shots a dark tone.

Representation: Conventions of the Anime genre

Anime, or Japanese animation, refers to a particular style of productions that are created in Japan. They come in many formats, such as graphic novels, video games, film and television series and often have rather unique attributes, particularly in their art style. Many anime productions have seen a surge in popularity in Western areas of the world, which could be attributed to successful televisions series such as the infamous adoptions of Nintendo's gaming series Pokemon, and the critically acclaimed film company Studio Ghibli. This has also led to American companies and others like them into creating Anime-inspired TV series such as W.I.T.C.H.

Anime television series have noticeable characteristics that are seen across the whole genre. The conventions can more often than not include:

• Colourful graphics
• Action filled plots
• Story lines that focus or fantastical or futuristic themes
• Exaggerated personalities
• Sometimes over the top art design of characters (such as over emphasised features)
• Light hearted or comical story lines
• Exaggerated voice acting
• Occasional unrealistic backgrounds (such as block colours often used in fight scenes)
• Interestingly, many have focuses or the elements or nature in some way
• Magic or some variation of power is often seen.
• Japanese influenced soundtracks and theme songs

This is all evident in a popular TV anime series entitled Ah! My Goddess, which I have recently been watching.

"Action" Post Production Journal

Editing Hour 1
In this first hour, we began by importing the clips that we had into Final Cut Pro. As we had filmed a great variety of clips (and admittedly more than was needed) this took quite a long time and so when it came to the initial placing of clips in the timeline, we began with the first establishing shots, showing the characters and location. When knew from a research on the conventions of the action genre that we wanted to achieve a relatively fast and tension building editing pace and so this became the driving force behind many of our decisions. In total, we used roughly 4 separate shots to achieve the opening sequence before our main character even enters the building, and split these up to produce the quick editing pace. We also began to think about match-ona-action and, in particular, continuity as we had to match the footstep shots to the point of view shots in the sense of location and timing. As we had not yet filmed some of the protagonists dialogue at this point, we continued to add some of the antagonists lines of dialogue, placing markers at key narrative points for shots we would add later.

Editing Hour 2
At this point, we decided to place most of the clips that we had on our timeline in order to see what we had and what we needed. It became evident when we did this that, along with needing to film dialogue, we also needed several other small scenes to improve the flow of the sequence and continuity. This also got us to consider the best way for us to set out the clips to convey the narrative in an interesting way whilst also presenting the action genre effectively. Also, this second hour gave our group a greater chance to familiarise ourselves with the different tools used on final cut pro and began linking up singular scenes, such as the flasback sequence, to which we added effects to distuinguish it from present day events in our piece.

Editing Hours 3-6
We spent a greater length of time editing here to perfect and refine what scenes we had already began to edit. In particular, we added very effective music to the start of the sequence. Interestingly, to increase it's effectiveness, we matched the main protaganists footsteps to the beats of the music, which drew more attention to them and created more of an atmosphere. Along with this, we added some transitional effects to a number of the video clips, such as a fade from black to the establishing shot and an over exposed falsh to the start of the flashback sequence.
It was after this fact that we realised that, upon capturing our footage from tape, the opening few seconds of several of our clips had been excluded and therefore we could not use them. This meant that we had to maually find the clips that needed to be recaptured and try it again before we once again had all the clips we needed.
Making a list of the shots that we needed and any others that we might think of at the time, we then went to refilm what we needed.

Editing Hours 7-8
After finally reimporting all of our clips, our first priority was to fill in the gaps we had left in the narrative. And so we added in both characters remaining dialogue and the filling in shots, such as the images of the clock and our antaganists introduction. We then worked on getting the pacing right, paying particular attention to areas where conventions of our genre would be most evident. For example, in some slower scenes, we added more cuts between various shots to up the pace. One of our final tasks was getting to grips with how to use audio in Final Cut Pro; this meant editing some we had and imposting some we didn't. After a long while of looking at audio effects, we managed to edit the voice over section from the boss enough for it to appear as we wanted. We then hunted around for the right music tracks for the flashback sequence and to build tension in the final confrontation between the two main characters. Inserting this turned out to be relatively simple and we added some fading effects such as Chroma Key on other sounds.

"The Awesomest Action Movie Ever!" - Preliminary Task

Creating the genre of action and using match on action, continuity and a script entitled "Pop Goes".

Representation: British TV Dramas...

...

Looking at this clip from Hollyoaks, a teen drama, representation is apparent for most of the characters.

Firstly, in reference to age, all of the characters are represented as being in their mid to late  20's, possibly 30's, which can be said to be shown through the clothes that they are wearing and the fact that they are wearing and their location, which happens to be nightclub. Along with this, one of the main female characters (Cheryl) dances to an Eighties song, also giving another indication to the characters age. They also behave in a slightly more reserved way, which distinguishes them from their younger counterparts.

The way in which gender is represented is relatively apparent. The women in the clip are 'made-up' for a night out, with full makeup and dresses on, suggesting that they are quite feminine. This is also shown through their discussion of gossipy topics. The males are comparatively a little less defined, however, they still fit into various stereotypes, especially in the suits that a few of them wear.

Looking at ethnicity, there are no specific ethnic minorities represented in the clip. However, when you consider regional identity, there are many different accents seen in the short clip. It can heard from the way they speak that most of the charecters have a Manchester accent, and comparatively only three characters can easiloy by identified by accent to be from Ireland, though this is not shown in any other way.

The audience can also see a clear definition between the able bodied and disabled characters, as all of the able bodied characters are standing, making the disparities even more noticable. Also, several light references to the disabled characters situation are made in the dialogue.

Expanding and Shrinking Time Through Editing

During the editing process, various effects can be created by the editor through various cuts, transitions and other techniques that add to the film or possibly create meaning. This can be done in different ways; either in real time or through expanding or shrinking time.

Expanding time - When you expand time in a film, you are increasing the duration of the footage you have. Although it is relatively rare to many films, it is often used for high action, fast paced shots in which you want to increase tension or draw the audiences eye to minor details.
There are various ways in which this can be achieved though the most common of these would be slow motion filming, in which the speed of the shot is simply drastically reduced.
Other techniques that can be used include the repetition of the same same shot from many different angles or time remapping, a technique which see's the the editor smoothly decreasing  (or increasing in other cases) the speed of the shot at various moments, such as in numerous fight scenes in The Matrix.


Shrinking time - This is far more commonly used when compared to time expansion. When you shrink time, you are basically compressing the space of time in which an event happens to make it shorter than real time. There are many ways in which this can be achieved, some of which include:
Time Lapse editing, where filmakers simply speed up the footage they have by a considerable ammount. A good example of this would be in building construction videos, such as the creation of The Hogwarts Castle Model for the Harry Potter film series...

Time remapping can also be used again, but in a contrasting way, meaning film is instead intermitently sped up.
Another technique key to shrinking time in editing is the use of shots. For example, the editor may choose to use only a certain ammount of shots overall that represent an event, rather than documenting each and every part of it. This effectively cuts down the time that the sequence lasts and makes it quicker than real time.
Finally, cutaways can be used in order to represent aspects of the sequence, such as a dip to black or even B-roll footage. They simply exist to create understanding. This could mean that the audience is able to understand what is occuring in the scene but with a lot less shots.

Real Time - Literally as it is stated, real time means keeping a number of shots in a sequence that are parallel to a sequence that would happen in real life. This mostly means that the time taken in the filmic world is the same taken in the normal world for it to run. This is often used in dialogue scenes as the speed of the conversation takes place at a normal rate.
Along with this, the principal of match on action is frequently used beside real time in films, though it is not essential. Match on action basically means that each shot follows on exactly from where the previous one left off, so for example shot 1 may be of a ball in someones hands and shot 2 may follow from this by showing the ball moving towards another person.

Match on action is not essential however, as is shown by shrinking and expanding time; jump cutting to the ball landing in another persons hands after the shot of it stationary previuosly would be an example of this as we as an audience did not see that the actions matched- we simply assume from the second shot that the ball was thrown.

Technical Update...

Types of Camera shots
One of the most effective ways for directors and film makers to create meaning and represent characters is by using effective camera angles and style shots. Here, I'll list many of the terms for these shots that we have learmt and provide a few examples.

• Close- up Shot - The camera is placed very close to the subject in the frame in which their face fills the screen. This is to give the audience a clear and intense view of the characters emotions if working with an actor, or simply to focus in on other important details that can be important to the narrative.
• Extreme Close-up - Similar to the close up, yet much further in. Only a small portion of the subject or object can be seen and this fills the whole screen. This is also used to show emotions, be can also magnifyu them too.
• Long Shot - This is shot from a distance and allows the audience to the see the full body of the subject on which its focused. It's used a lot in scenes of action where a lot needs to be seen in order for it to be understandable, showing context and setting at the same time as a character. It's also useful for showing what a character looks and acts like.
• Mid-Shot - This type of shot allows for some of the subjects surroundings to be shown at the same time as being close enough to see some facial expressions and emotions. It can often be used when filming coversations between people, with the inclusion of an over-the-shoulder shot or using a two-shot.
• Point-of-view - Literally as it states, a point-of-view shot is filmed as if looking through someone elses eyes. It can be used when one character is observing another.
• Tracking Shot - In this shot, the camera moves horizontally, following the movement of characters freely. It can be useful in running scenes.
• Panning Shot - Similar to tracking, yet the panning shot calls for the camera to stay in one position whilst moving horizontally.
• Tilting Shot - Similar to panning, except the camera moves vertically whilse staying fixed.

Camera Angles
These wotk in unison with different types of camera shots to produce various effects, often influencing the look of the subject or the feeling the audience gets from them.

• High Angle Shot -  The camera is placed above the subject looking down, making the subject of the camera look vulnerable and less powerful.
• Low Angle Shot - Irectly contrasting to the high angle, a low angle shot is taken from below the subject, increasing their sense of power or control.
• Crane/Establishing Shot - With the camera attatched to a crane, the audience is shown a scene from above, which can create a sense of style and gives a lot of information about the seeting. For this reason, it is often used to establish the scene before any main action.

Mise en Scene

The literal meaning of Mise en Scene is everything in placed within the scene. So this literally refers to everything that is purposefully placed on screen wehn the camera is rolling. It tells the audience numerous things and is made up of various components that are used in the frame. This include:

• Lighting and Colour
• Dialogue
• Costume
• Setting
• Positioning and Body Language
• Sound

Lighting
Lighting is often a very subtle component of mise en scene, influencing the audiences impressions of characters or certain situations. It is often decided before had whether the light for the scene needs to be natural or un-natural, dark or bright, coloured or bland etc. Techniques that can be used include:

- High key and low key lighting. These both contrast to one another in the sense that low lighting focuses on illuminating only certain parts of the frame whilst high key lighting allows for the whole frame to be lit by multip[le (although not always bright) lights.
- Coloured lighting, which gives a scene a particular feel. For example, warm, golden yellows make the frame appear safe and sometimes calm or romantic, whereas adding a blue filter instantly adds a snese of coldness, either in temperature or in temprement. Different colours can also make the frame appear artificial, which is why this technique is often used in sci-fi films.
- Digetic lighting comes directly from the scene itself, such as a torch or lamp, but can often be used to produce similar effects as non-digetic light sources.

Along with these key points, the light source and its position is also crucial to the look and feel of a scene; techniques such as up lighting can be used to create shadows that can be effective, or overhead lighting can act as a kind of spotlight on key characters or narrative points.

Dialogue
Dialogue is admittedly a far less visual part of mise en scene, although this does not mean it is anyless important. The words that the onscreen cast speak are key to giving the audience a good representation of the characters and the environment that they live in. Often, many of the other techniques amplify this initial view created through the dialogue.

Costume
Also including hair and make-up, costume indicates the time period of the entire film, whilst also developing a sense of what class, status or type of person a character is. In costume, colour is also important, with certain colours connoting to feelings or what a charcter may stand for. For example, the colour white can often symbolise purity or innocence and this view is then transfered to the character.

Setting
The setting of the action is often indicative right away of the type of characters and narrative that is found within the scene and therefore, it makes up another important part of mise en scene. The setting in the scene is often comprised of:
- Props, as these create the feel of the place the characters are in and are often then used by them.
- Lighting, which works in unison with the setting the either complement or contrast to it.
- Set Dressing, including all of the props, colours and other various decorative embellishments that are decided by the film makers.

Positioning and Body Language
Crucial to the dialogue spoken to the characters, their positions in relation to other roles and body language towards them inform the audience of characters personalities and often intentions or relationships between them.

Sound
In my view, sound is one of the most important components of film itself, always subtly incresing the effect of what the audience see's on screen. Music often helps to confirm feelings and emotions seen on screen (matching sound with image- Parallel sound), or alternatively, completely contrast to what is in the frame (contrapuntal sound). Similar to this, other sounds, such as small sound effects, enhance to overall experience of watching a scene and make the filmic world all that more beliveable. There are 4 different types of sound, including:

- Non-diegetic and diegetic sound. Non-degetic sound simply refers to any sounds that are not part of the scne that the audience is being shown, such as the films score. Contrastingly, diegetic sound includes noise that comes from the filmic world, which may mean something like music coming from a car stereo.
- On Screen and Off Screen sound, which are similar to those above, apart from they are both dioegetic sounds as they come from the film world. However, off screen sound includes things that cannot be seen in the frame, such as a car horn heard from inside a house.

Mostly, mise en scene is what creates all of the effects and feelings seen on screen, all combining togther to influence and aid each part.

The Editing Process

In many ways, editing can be seen as the most crucial part of film making. The script, shots and sound all play a  part in creating the directors vision, yet it is only in the final editing stages that we see the story and genre tht the film is set to become. Some of the most common aspects that editing helps to include are meaning, pacing and narrative...

Pacing: This is largely influenced by the type of shots used when piece together the footage you have. For example, a long and sweeping tracking shot would often present a very different opening to a scene than several, splint second close-ups. It can easily determine the kind of initially feeling the audience recieves from a film. However, thats not to say that the length of a shot can influence the length of a scene. In the examples of Shrinking time and Expanding time in an edit, for instance, shot quick shots can be used to draw out the length of a particular action, and vice versa. The rhythm of the selected scene also depends on these shot lengths, as faster cutting between them can increase tension perhaps, and slower paced cuts add a more relaxed feel.

Meaning: Mainly created through the purposeful ordering of shots in a sequence, the meaning and narrative of the story is one of the most important aspects that results in the editing stage. For exampe, often in films, some frames are placed earlier in the plot as a form of foreshadowing and subconciously alert us to the importance of a prop or pivotal character. This also means that the order of shots can alter the meaning of the piece and in turn, effect its genre and the way it is presented to the audience.