AS Media Studies

31/12/2011

Testing the school cameras

On Tuesday Joelle and I tried the school cameras and wether we can film our opening how we wanted it. The photos show places where we could film.

29/11/2011

Storyboard: Main title

Today Joelle and I decided not to make the main title at the end but quite at the beginning because we find that it could look like a trailer if it was at the end of the opening.

23/11/2011

Storyboard

This is the (hopefully) finished storyboard for our film opening.

We tried to include all the titles but we haven't got all of them as we don't know the "actors" yet.

11/11/2011

Main Project Working Outline

This is the Main Project Working Outline for our film opening.

06/11/2011

Analysis: "Das Wunder von Bern" opening

The film „Das Wunder von Bern“ starts with the names of the film companies on a black screen. The titles appear in white letters and a soccer field is intimated by white lines. The film title is shown above a goalmouth. That lets the audience know that the film is about football. The music playing in the background is non-diegetic. It is classical and calm and matches what you can see. Then it fades into an Establishing wide shot which shows a dreary industrial estate. The camera tilts down slowly and at the bottom of the frame the words “Ruhrgebiet, spring 1954” appear.

After this, the camera switches to four boys and a girl standing in a tree, looking expectantly into the sky. To show this, a Low Angle is used. They seem to be a bit poor because of their clothes. One of them is holding binoculars. The next shot is made as if the audience looks through these binoculars. It is therefore a Point of View shot. Suddenly you can see a dove through the binoculars. The children climb out of the tree and start running. That makes the audience wonder why and where they are running. The dove is shown again, but this time by a Long shot. The camera movement used is Tracking. The music is becoming a bit faster and louder which is matching to what you can see.

They run through a poor, dirty village and finally enter an attic with a dove cage in it. One of the boys walks purposeful into that cage and takes a note off a dove. To show the boy opening that note, an Extreme close-up is used. The boy reads out loud: “Allemania Aachen - Rot-Weiß Essen 1 : 0.” This is obviously the result of a football match. Because of the childrens’ reaction everyones knows that they support Rot-Weiß Essen. Now the audience also knows the reason why the children were waiting for that dove.

The colours during the whole opening are very dreary and although it is supposed to be spring, the sky is grey and it rather looks like it is autumn or even winter. That creates a sad, cool admosphere. Nevertheless, the music sounds quite happy. The lighting used is High-Key. Ther is only one type of editing in this opening. This type is a straight cut.

01/11/2011

Presenting our initial ideas

In the lesson yesterday, Joelle and I presented the three intitial ideas for our film opening which I posted earlier. All of them belong to the thriller/crime genre.

We finally decided to choose pitch two because our teacher advised that and because it also was our favourite idea from the start.

"Our second idea for an opening shows to girls going home from a party at night. As one girl reaches her house the other one goes on alone. She's followed by someone on her way."

We wanted to film this by starting with the two girls leaving the party and then switching between different scenes and times.

Lighting

The lighting in films helps to convey the mood or atmosphere.

bright lights draw attention or give importance keeping the minor objects in relative darkness
shadows can be used to create suspense or to conseal something from the audience

Main sources:

The Key Light → main light