Question 7 Looking back on your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full project?

Audience Reactions:


Jake: 17



Jess:18



Jazzie:17



Sam:17



Overall I think that the audience feedback was very positive and encouraging for future projects.

Question 6 What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Equipment we used was a computer, tripod, external hard-drive, Panasonic AVCHD Film Camera and a standard recording device for the music.

From using the camera we learnt how to perfect shots and film efficiently whilst under pressure.

Through using premiere I am now a lot more comfortable with the programme and will be able to use it with future projects. Before the preliminary task I had never used adobe premiere before so initially had to come to terms with it. Blogging was not a new experience for me however using blogger was as previously I had used wordpress. I was familiar with youtube, photoshop and soundcloud however and therefore could use these programmes well. Dafont was a website Charlotte introduced to me so I watched and learnt. Audacity was again a new experience for me but I found it very simple and easy to use.



Question 5 How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted our audience by exploring arthouse cinema and the genre of surrealism. The music is typical of a silent film and the originality of it would appeal to our audience. The music in the opening and the artistic style of our film would appeal to people who like Amelie the french film by Jean-Pierre Jeunet.



Unique selling points of our film are that it is modern yet silent, is of an interesting genre, is British and reflects a lot of aspects of film and literary history.
Our film would be certificate 15 as a result of some of the quite disturbing and unusual imagery such as the Joker-esc clown who has self-harming cuts on his forearms and the violence of the Egyptian who slaps Alice.

Question 3 What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Warp began as an English record label founded in Sheffield in 1989 however since have expanded and now produce films since 2001.

Warp is one of the foremost and most respected creative independent companies. It is based in London, England and Sheffield, with a further office now in Melbourne, Australia. Since its inception as a shop and record label in 1989, it has been a platform for innovative and boundary-breaking talent.

Question 2 How does your media product represent particular social groups? And Question 4 Target Audience

Question 1 In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our Final Film Opening

Development: Filming

Below are some pictures from when we were filming.

Here, Charlotte is filming whilst I direct and make suggestions for how Madeline (Alice) should be filmed when running.

Here is me filming the shot where Alice meets the clown and there is a pan up the body. I therefore had to get in the position Alice was in to do her point of view.

Here is me and Charlotte looking at some of the shots and seeing whether any needed re-doing or not.

Development: Soundtrack

Eleanor Mitchell composed the music for our short film, she is 17 and does grade 7 piano, she is a friend so this worked well as it allowed the music to be recorded outside of college. Below is a short video, illustrating the techniques used in order to efficiently compose an accurate soundtrack. Our video was edited completely and finished before the music was composed in order to allow Eleanor to compose the music that would fit in with the video otherwise there would've the potential to have mis-matched timing. Eleanor has an electric piano so we therefore placed the recording device we borrowed from college directly below the speaker underneath the piano in order to get the best sound.

The Narrative of our Film: ALICE

ALICE.

If our film was to be made in full then it would not continue in this surreal way. Furthermore it would change from black and white, into colour; similar to what happens in "The Wizard of Oz" when Dorothy wakes up in Munchkin Land. Our film will change after this section because the film is about Alice Guy and this first section is just an artistic way of illustrating her childhood. We decided on this because a full length surrealist film would not only be very heavy going for the audience but doing this would make it quite impossible to illustrate Alice Guy's life story. The changing of black and white to colour will illustrate how the first section is in the past and now the film will focus on a more present time-although the time period would still be the 1920s as a result of Alice Guy pioneering in this decade.

The "Alice in Wonderland" theme is more of an underlying theme and means that the title "Alice" almost really has a double meaning. The film is first and foremost about Alice Guy and her life's work as a french female director, "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll simply provided inspiration.

Here is the colour chance in The Wizard of Oz:

Here is a collage of the pictures drawn by Alice in the opening sequence of our film. These characters then appear in the film, although the bride and the male mother do not in the opening 3 and a half minutes. We wanted to keep the drawings childish and bright in order to indicate how young Alice is and that she has a wild imagination. This drawing section in our opening sequence is similair to that of the opening sequence of "To Kill A Mockingbird"(1962) : http://www.artofthetitle.com/2008/09/10/to-kill-a-mockingbird/ .

A brief overview of most recent developments

A lot has happened in between this post and my last. We have been incredibly busy planning and drafting out our storyboard, filming and now editing on Adobe software. We went with the ideas mentioned in my last post. This is of it being called "Alice" and shows Alice Guy-Blache as a child coming up with her ideas for cinema. The majority of the film-if we were doing it all-takes place in a dream sequence similar to that of in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. As a result of surreal films not necessarily following a logical structure, when editing, we have had to get this balance right with making it have some chronology and a basic story line in keeping with our surreal and creative ideas.

Research- Surreal Films- Alice

The idea of our film being about Alice Guy, and of an Alice in Wonderland kind of theme with a surrealist twist reminded us of the film called Alice (1988) "A surrealist re-visioning of Alice in Wonderland". I found this film very inspirational with its bizarre themes and ideas being presented artistically, in a very clever ways. It uses stop/start motion which is probably how we would film ours. The lighting is very dark which reflects the dark theme and it uses extravagant props and costumes. 


            

Research: Early Cinema: Alice Guy-Blaché

When considering options for the title sequence of our film, we thought of the idea of someone sketching Melies' designs of the moon with the face etc whilst the titles appear on the screen. We thought the person would be sitting at a desk by candlelight and this would hint at the mystery person being Melies himself designing his films. However as a result of our group consisting of me and one other girl-who would be doing the drawings-we thought about the idea of instead of us getting a male actor we could do that section ourselves. This sparked the idea of basing our film on a woman around Melies' time and of a similar style rather than on Melies. We liked this idea as Melies' is more famous; (many homages have already been made to him for example "Hugo") and if we based ours on a woman (Alice Guy-Blaché) it would be more interesting as she was the first female director in the motion picture industry.

Her film-making career span more than twenty-five years involving her directing, producing, writing and/or overseeing more than 700 films. From 1896 to 1906, Alice Guy was Gaumont's head of production and is generally considered to be the first filmmaker to systematically develop narrative in films.

We thought of the idea of our film being about Alice Guy, beginning with her falling asleep in a cinema and it being a dream sequence of her being lost in cinema with ideas of designs and characters chasing her. It would be reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland however would be of an altogether different style. Alternatively the girl falling asleep in the cinema could be a girl watching an Alice Guy film and is having a dream containing everything she was just watching. We thought of it being quite surreal and then continued to look at surreal films.

Alice Guy-Blaché

Research- Title Sequences, original style

Here is an example of a modern silent film, which seems to be of the style of Georges Melies but also seems to have been influenced by Charlie Chaplin with the comedy element rather than of the science-fiction genre that Georges Melies often produced. In this silent film, I took particular notice of the title sequence and realised that the typical layout of the title and person responsible separated by dots (...) was recreated which is what I may do in my title sequence.





An example of a silent film that features this original style of title sequences is The General. Starring Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman.

Research- Title Sequences

In order to research how the titles in films are done effectively and well, I visited the website artofthetitle.com which addresses this exactly and has opening sequences of films they think have been done really well. I looked at the ones that I thought could inspire my melies-style old film and sought artistic inspiration and clever ideas. Here are a few I looked at and the main notes of analysis I wrote down:

Edward Scissorhands-1990- Artistic and imaginative    

Titles come in on a slant

Play on words- Edward scissorhands opens up like scissors

Setting is established and Tim Burton’s name is mentioned twice to emphasise his work in the film and to interest fan audiences

Dark atmosphere sets mood for film

Music is quite twinkly and magical which again sets the mood

Ends with an establishing shot of the house we have just been taken through showing it high up on a hill on its own-isolated.

Barbarella- 1968- old film

Introduces main character bizarrely reflected by music and through close-ups of hands etc

Shaky camera movements, marks and blotches on screen occasionally

One title then none for a while

Character is revealed slowly and sexually

Titles spill from her head as her hair spills out showing theme of film

Other titles (a lot of) slide in from either side

Bonnie and Clyde-1967- old film

Begins with old photographs appearing one by one to the sound of slides being inserted one by one

Music comes in slowly and quietly building and sounds like a record player

Shots alternate between shot of photograph then shot of titles which is simple and easier to understand/follow

The two main characters are introduced with information either side of their pictures and it ends with an extreme close-up of Bonnie’s lips which is the first colour shot we have seen after many black and white photographs.

Research and Planning- Georges Melies

Georges Melies

Georges Melies was a French illusionist and filmmaker renowned for his technical and narrative developments in the very early days of cinema. His creativity and originality blew the minds of his audiences and was the first filmmaker to have the idea of films having a narrative and not just being a form of documentary. His two most well-known films are "A Trip to the Moon" (1902)  and "The Impossible Voyage" (1904) are considered to be the first films of the genre of science fiction featuring bizarre costumes and sets very much reflecting ideas of fantasy and magic. He has inspired many film makers including even Walt Disney and now he will inspire me in the making of my work.

A Trip to the Moon (1902) 

Melies often hand-painted his film in order to add colour and detail to his carefully arranged films that were unarguably works of art. This has provided me with inspiration for my film. It caused me to consider editing my film so as to look like hand-painted colour rather than the typical vibrance of colour film today. Also to add more realism to it being an old film,I thought of adding crackles and blotches to the film.






After watching some of Georges Melies' films and watching a documentary on him that featured clips from his films, I have noticed common themes throughout and have thought about his style in depth. I have realised that most of his films feature a moon at one point or another whether it be in "A Trip to the Moon" or "The Astronomer's Dream" or "A Nightmare". I think the moon adds the feeling of a higher power that adds an element of magic and reflects Gothic themed ideas including skeletons, cauldrons, and magicians. Melies himself in fact began as a magician/illusionist, performing on stage and astonishing audiences with his clever tricks and unusual ideas.

I have thought that as a homage to Melies I may feature a moon at some point during my film. I found Melies' use of skeletons very inspirational as I realised this would be quite easy to recreate and is much simpler than many other of his much more exquisite/theatrical costumes.

Research and Planning- Inspiration

For my personal work -focusing on video- I decided to create something completely different that would allow me to expand by creativity and imagination in the world of film. With the recent release of the silent film "The Artist" and also the release of "Hugo" which is centred around Georges Melies and the history of film, it sparked the idea in my mind of doing similar to what the creators of "The Artist" did; make a film in the style of old silent cinema. I find Georges Melies' work extremely influential and plan to research his style, stories, and performance in his films.

Georges Melies

The Artist

Hugo












In addition, I also researched the animation of Terry Gilliam who did The Monty Python known for its bizarre, unique and artistic style that has a recognized cult following.

Preliminary Film- "The Meeting"

In order to follow the brief of displaying the 180 degree rule in our film, we were required to come up with a short narrative within which we would portray the rule. We realised that with the 180 degree rule, commonly there is two characters that are talking, the camera is required to stay within a 180 degree semi circle in order to not confuse the audience by making the characters appear in a different position which in turn heightens the realism which film aims to provide.

We decided we would need a minimum of 3 people in our group, 2 to act and 1 to film. The story/short narrative we came up with was that we would follow one character going up to another character, throwing a bag ambiguously at the feet of the other character-who does not know them or the contents of the bag-and then disappearing with no real explanation.

Through doing the preliminary exercise we recognised our mistakes which were; the fact that more dialogue was off camera than on, there were not enough close-up shots to establish character and the conversation was quite short. We will learn from these mistakes and show this by hopefully not making the same ones again in our official coursework that will follow on from this preliminary exercise.

Despite our mistakes however, we felt that nevertheless we portrayed the 180 degree correctly and therefore still achieved/answered the brief we were given.