Further research into the music we will be using

A song in particular that we liked was the instrumental to the song ‘Chiraq’ by Nicki Minaj.

I like this song in particular because:

• The instrumental will fit our film opening much better as if there was singing/rapping in it as well then this will take away the audience’s focus on the main character running away.
• The beat of the music has a lot of relevance/similarities to the beating of the heart as it is quite upbeat and this can help create our desired tense atmosphere.
• There are some parts of the music which are different to the rest such as 1:56 and this opens opportunities for us to explore different editing techniques so that it suits the change of music.
• The overall sound of the instrumental helps to represent the character as a ‘thug’ therefore making him look like the criminal who killed the man. (Although he is innocent)

Problems and solutions

The problem, however, with using this instrumental to the original song by Nicki Minaj is that we will have to get permission to use their music seeing as we have not produced it ourselves and it would be considered as copyright’. Since the song was re-produced by someone on ‘Soundcloud’, I thought our group may have a closer chance of being able to get permission to the music. I signed up for an account and emailed the producer of the instrumental to see if we could have permission to use their music in our film opening. We have also considered the idea of discussing with the music department if they would be willing to reproduce the first two minutes of the instrumental to the song so that we could record it and use it in our film opening. The problem with this, however, is whether they would agree to do it and how if they will be able to learn it and do it before December 15th. (Deadline day for our film opening)

Other possibilities/choices

I have also considered other possibilities of music to use in our film opening if the Nicki Minaj instrumental will cause a lot of problems for us. On youtube, there is an account where they produce their own music for movies and allow you to use their music if you ask for their permission and credit them.

Here is an example of some people asking to use their music

Some examples of their music that could fit into our film opening:

Although this song is completely different to the song above, I like it because it is quite dramatic and tense and the ending of it will suit the film opening perfectly. This is because when the wrongly accused victim looks up to see who was actually arrested, he can look shocked and the music in the background will quieten which will pull more focus towards his facial expression.

This song also fits the ending of the film opening, as mentioned earlier.

By Sophie C

Good examples of movie opening credits

Examples of how we can make our opening credits:

-When the wrongly accused suspect is holding a knife- there could be a little bit of blood that drips on the floor in slow motion and this will be where we can have his name come up and slowly expand as the blood spreads on the floor.

-When there is a a shot of the dead body- there could be a person from the party kneeling down besides it and as they shout for help, their name could come come up as if it was being blown out of their mouth- could emphasise the impact of her voice and loudness- how serious the situation is.

-When there is a shot of the people’s reactions of the dead body- for every shot of each person and their reaction, their name could come up.

-When there is a shot split into 3, it could show the names of the people in the scene

By Sophie C

Atmospheric Music for our coursework

By Phoebe.M

Phoebe Maloney's "A"level Media Blog

Ideally when adding music to our film opening we would like it to be instrumental and not upbeat. We also have found a music beat that would be great to add as it includes heartbeats that could be added to emphasis the emotions at the beginning when the person is dead, this also juxtaposes the dead person.

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A detailed storyline for our new developed ideas

The clips in our storyline…

1. We are firstly going to have a black screen which will last for around 5-10 seconds. This will include the opening subtitles such as who it is starring and the title of our short film opening. It will consist of atmospheric music which will be police sirens or an upbeat tune to match the heart rate of the boys running away during the end.

Here is what we came up with: (Although the video may take a away a bit of the realism, we tried to just focus on the editing techniques used)

The idea could be to begin the movie with the black screen along with the low pitch music at the start to begin creating the tense atmosphere as desired. Then we could use a blurring transition at the beginning in order to sustain the suspense of the viewers who want to see what is happening. The blurring transition then slowly reveals the face of the dead person clearly.The different subtitles can fade in and out quickly to the beat of the music which will create tension and emotion for the viewer. As the first shot is black it will also create a sense of mystery and it will have not yet revealed the genre or what the film is about. The subtitles will also be in a different colour e.g. white or grey so it stands out and juxtaposes the background.

2.Here the establishing shot is of the boy dead. He will be situated in the kitchen and will have cuts and bruises with fake blood over him, this will be done by Amber.F as she is the Make-up artist in our group. It will be in the evening so there still will be a bit of light but mostly dark to add emphasis on the death. The innocent victim will be shown standing by with the knife looking shocked also covered in blood. It will last for a few seconds and will be faded in from the black screen at the beginning and will then fade out for the next faded in shot. It will be a close-up to start of and then slowly zoomed out so we can see their surroundings and the boy holding the knife. The boy will be dressed in a gangster demeanour to show that he is hard and was part of a gang lifestyle.Our first glimpse of the body will be a close-up of the head and hand but with a blurred head and a linear hand. As it is a close-up we can see the bling on him, such as a diamond earring and a chained necklace. Whilst the shot is appearing after the black screen we hear a load crash as if something had broke when the boy had fallen

 3. We then go into an extreme close-up of the boy so we can see the blood and bruises on his face, this will fade in from the shot before and again will only last for a few seconds. His facial expression conveys sadness and worried emotions as his mouth is wide open and we see a tear rolling down his cheek, this then portrays innocence as the audience start to feel sorry for him. His face becomes highlighted from the forced light from the kitchen light. We can also see a diamond earring in the boys ear which also shows he comes from the same lifestyle as the boy on the floor. The atmospheric music will rise up on this shot to create suspense for the next shot.

4. We then go to an extreme close up of the knife on the kitchen side. This is an image of danger and foreshadows what may happen in the ending. It will again last for a couple of seconds and the atmospheric music will stop so all of the viewers concentration is on the knife. By doing an extreme close-up we also see the reflection of the innocents boys face.  By each of the first shots lasting a couple of seconds it lets the viewer have a quick glimpse of the background story. A new background noise will occur and it will be soft and quite but still relating to a criminal genre.

5. In the next shot we see a shocked crowd looking into the kitchen after hearing a crash in the kitchen, the door creeks open and we see the shocked faces. As the boy is innocent of killing the boy on the floor we quickly pan to an eye which is either peeping around the corner or hiding in the shadows of a cupboard. This creates tension and suspicion as viewers then try to guess who killed her through out the opening. This slide will last around 5-10 seconds as we need time to pan to the person in the shadows and to film the shocked faces. Atmospheric music will stop here s the opening background story is finished. The panning action lets us swoop over the shocked crowd and allows us to see where the person is hiding and their surroundings.

6.Tables and chairs will be turned over in the kitchen to show the distress of the murderer. This also creates a shocked moment for the audience as this has not yet been revealed fully.

By Phoebe.M

Praises from Mr Gilbert :)

By Phoebe. M and Sophie and Mr Gilbert (teacher)

Our establishing shot…

This is one of the most important shots as it sets the scene and gives the audience an idea of what the film is going to be like and the genre. For our establishing shot there will be a boy dead on the floor with cuts, bruises and blood over him.

Here are some examples….

1.2.

3. 4.  

In theses pictures we can see the angles of which the person is lying on the floor. These angles also help to see the person face and would best suit our opening.

1. The first shot lets us see the setting and as we will also be setting in the kitchen this would be a great idea for us as it allows the viewer to see their face, their odd body position and their surroundings.
2. Number 2 allows us to see the wreckage around her which we will also be having in our film when everybody has left.
3. This lets us see their blank face with no emotion or expression which emphasis death which would be a great opening shot.
4. The last also lets us see her surroundings and her body language of death.

By Phoebe. M

Our “brief” storyboard

Since our last media lesson, we have been working on trying to make our two minute film opening less revealing. Before, our film opening was practically the whole movie squashed down into two minutes basically telling a short story however a member of our group came up with a good idea for changing the film opening. He didn’t change the original concept of the film but developed our idea to make it less revealing.

The main things we changed:

• Opening scene- Instead of showing the non diegetic sound of panting during the black screen scene right at the beginning, we have decided to use the diegetic sound of police sirens or tense/low pitch music slowly revealing the face of the dead body with a smooth transition.
• Flashbacks- We have decided to not use the flashbacks anymore as this was the main problem we had with the film opening as it made it too revealing. We were telling a different part of the whole story in each flashback which would leave us with no ideas for what the rest of the movie can be as well as the first two minutes . Instead we have worked backwards from this and made sure we had an idea of what the whole film will be about and then we could all decide what the film opening can be about.
• Party scene- We still decided to stick with the party scene however due to the fact that we have scrapped flashbacks from our film opening, we had to make changes to how we will show it. For example, after the dead body is shown at the beginning of the first two minutes, the next few scenes will show the reactions from the people at the party.

By Sophie. C and Niyi. A (rapper)

Our developed ideas and discussions

We have developed our ideas to a more basic storyline leaving less to reveal in our film opening now. Niyi came up with some good ideas and a great storyboard so we could see what he was talking about. In the next post you will see his rap which is very brief but gives an outline to our story.

By Phoebe. M

Allocating roles within the group

In our lesson today in our group, we were required to set up a table, like the picture below, and clearly allocate roles to people so that they understand what they need to do. The benefit of doing this rather than telling them verbally, is that it is more structured and they are more than likely to go along with what roles they have to do as they know that everyone else will also be contributing.

Here is what we drew up in class:

By Sophie. C

Examples of a previous As film opening

Since our group have decided upon the genre we will be basing our film on as well as the actual storyline, we decided to look at some examples of previous As film openings that have relevance to what we are planning to do.

Here are a few that I like:

What I like about this film opening:

The mise-en-scène I like how it is easy to make a contrast between the two people through the use of costumes and props. For example, the first guy shown in the film opening is seen wearing smart clothes such as a blazer along with a suitcase in his right hand. The second guy also known a stye antagonist, however, can be seen dressed more trampy wearing all black (could symbolise death) with his hood up. This helps the audience to establish who the bad person or ‘villain’ will be in the whole film. Body posture and voice/tone also has been used effectively in the film opening in order to intrigue the audience. For example, towards the end of the short opening, the smartly dressed guy finally stops running and he stops and kneels down gasping for breath to make it look like he has actually been running for a long time thus adding to the realism of the film/chase. I also like how we do not see any close ups at all of the two men’s faces and this could add to the suspense atmosphere created, where we wanted to see if the man would catch the man who killed his wife, as the audience want to see who they are.

Music/Sound In the film opening, they use a range of non diegetic and diegetic sounds in order to add to the suspense atmosphere. For example, at the beginning, when the man has just witnessed his wife being murdered in the block of flats, we hear the sound of screaming which makes the scene look more realistic otherwise we would not know why the man looks up deciding to run. Music has been incorporated into the opening and has been played all throughout. It is fairly quiet at the beginning and then as the man witnesses his wife being murdered, the pitch of the music begins to change to a much more deeper tone at a higher volume which signifies a change in mood/atmosphere.

Titles/Transitions I also like the use of titles and transitions in this film opening. For example at the beginning, titles are used in order to inform the audience of who produced the movie as well as who the actors and directors are etc. The choice of colour was also good as we could read it clearly without it blending in with the actual filming

Camera Shots A variety of camera shots/angles/movements were used in the film opening such as the establishing shot being a long shot to show the setting of the scene. A high angle long shot has also being incorporated where it looks like it has been taken on a bridge, and this also helps the audience to establish the setting if they didn’t already know where he was from the establishing shot. The fact that the shot has been taken from behind him gives the impression that someone may be watching him. Panning has also been used on the man chasing the antagonist as he turns the corner to go through the doors. The effect of this allows the audience to follow his route/footsteps as if we were actually in that scene watching him.

By Sophie.C