Peer Assessment

Rob, Becky and I showed our rough edit of our film opening to Neil, who gave us positive feedback and things to improve on. 

When holding a shot steady, where appropriate; He gave us a level 3, he thought this because of our good use of our equipment with the tripod and when we were doing point of view shots the camera shots were steady enough to understand what was happening. 

Framing a shot, including and eluding elements as appropriate; He again gave use a level 3.

Using a variety of shot distances as appropriate; He said that when opening into the opening we did a good shot of our character and her surroundings, letting the audience take everything in first, so he gave us a level 3.

Shooting material appropriate to the task set; He said that we did the best we could with the equipment provided, as it would of cost a lot more money to use expensive equipment on our short opening. Level 3 was given.

Selecting mise-en-scene including colour, figure, lighting, objects and setting; He thought that this was our best area, as he commented on the good use of the pill box, sick makeup and ghostly makeup. Which as a group we were very happy about because we wanted our make up and props to make the scene as there isn't any dialog in our opening. Level 3. 

Editing so that meaning is apparent to the viewer; He said that this area was hard to mark, this is because not all of our editing is finished and some scenes have been made in a different colour to the rest, so we knew before we showed him that this area was our weakest. He gave us a low level 2. 

Using a varied shot transitions and other effects selectively and appropriate for the task set; Again, because we haven't finished with our editing he couldn't mark us on the editing side of this area, however, he did like the range of different shots we used within our opening, so he gave us a high level 2.

Using sound with images and editing appropriately for the task set; We haven't added in our sound yet, which we informed Neil about, so he again said that he's take that into consideration. But we did have some natural sound over the top which he thought was very effective within the film opening, but because there wasn't a lot of sound within the film he only gave us a low level 2. 

Over all Neil's view of our film opening is that the use of mise-en-scene with the props was good. And he particularly liked the pill box, as it informed the audience as to what our character's illness was. And he also said that the sick on her face and in her hair looked really realistic. He also said at the end that our story line is really good, and that was mainly down to the use of good actors within our opening. 

Editing within a music video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCkCTOqt8TU

How does the editing in Be The One by The Ting Tings construct the meaning of relationships between characters?
From watching the whole of The Ting Tings music video i think that the relationship between the two character in the video is that with use of their action they want to get away from whatever is bothering them but, using the context of the words in the video is seems like its an relationship that's making them want to get away, with the use of the words "This was not my idea. Don't you keep me wait... What you gonna offer now?" Makes me see the two characters as having an affair with each other, and wanting to escape with each other.

The use of editing techniques helped me to get this picture. I only analysed the first 60 seconds of the music video, as there was so much editing techniques used in them 60 seconds.
The girl wakes up in the hospital, this already has the audience wanting to know why she's in there and is she okay? Within the first few seconds, at 0.02-0.003 there is a eye-line match, which is the first part of the hospital environment that the audience see. The next shot that is used is of her pulling herself up, using a close up which then cuts, using a match on action shot of her then again pulling herself up (in the same action) but this time the shot is taken from a further away shot, showing her whole environment. Telling the story of where she is and using her facial expressions which shows her confused helps the audience to get a bigger picture of her not knowing why shes in there. Another eye-line match is used when she turns to the heart monitor machine and then there's a close up of the machine, which shows she is alive so the audience (if they had thought she had died) had that equation out of their heads. The action then cuts to another character, playing the music which is in the video. The editing used here is cross cutting, as this action with the man playing the keyboard is happening at the same as the girl is in hospital. This makes the audience link the two characters together, as they are of a different sex and they would assume they are an item. Within this shot scene where the audience see the man is a DJ, but not a very popular on as there isn't many people there, which with the context of the song "Don't leave me waiting" he could be wanting to get away. Also the time of this all happening makes people think that its night, as it a DJ thing, which most people would associate with night life.

All the way through the video there is parallel editing, making he audience see that these two characters are doing the same thing (walking) at the same time. This is done by editing with the cameraman taking different shot of the characters, and during the editing process merging the two together creating the audience's minds to link the two characters together, also creating a relationship between the two. My first thought in this part is that they're in a relationship and meeting each other because the road they're both walking down looks the same. However, the screen behind shows a day time view so then it makes me think of the two characters having a flash back to what happened earlier between the two of them. The screens also link into visual effects, done by filming the same sequence but at a different time, merging the two to what i previously said of a "flash back" effect. I think this because it's following the character behind and with use of the facial expressions to me it looks like they're both thinking. 

At 0.49 - 0.53, the editing uses cross cutting to one scene to the other, by using the night sky as a blank canvas to go back to the other character, causing a dizzy effect which would link to them both thinking about the same thing. 

Back Ground Of The Film

The Soloist, based on a true story of friendship and trust between two men in L.A. The film is about Nathaniel Ayers, also known as Nathanial Anothony Ayers who was a homeless musician living in L.A and who suffered from schizophrenia. The friendship within the film is based on Nathaniel Ayers and a L.A. columnist, Steve Lopez who was intrested in Nathaniel and wrote a series of columns about the musician who he met on the busy streets of L.A.
Nathaniel Ayers moved to L.A, California still suffering from his mental illness of schizophernia, which is the reason for him becoming homeless and living on the dirty, run down streets of Los Angeles. The only posesions Nathaniel had with him were a violin and cello, both of which were in very poor conditions, yet he played with a clear passion and love for music, showing that even though his life was difficult life circumstances and suffering from his illness.
The film orginated from the colums and book that Steve Lopez worte about the aspiring musician. The book was called ' The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikey Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music', which was a very popular book making Working Title film production wanting to take it on to make into a film.

Make Up

For Abbi's main character of Susie, we first of all wanted her to look normal, so we told Abbi to turn up in whatever she wanted to wear, but to make sure that her jacket had pockets in them (for the scene on the porch). 

After the bit when Susie runs to the toilet to be sick, we wanted to make sure that Abbi's makeup made it clear to the audience that she was unwell and that she had in fact been sick. To show this we put the white face paint that we had also put on Chloe, but we didn't want her to be as pale as Chloe yet, so we only put a small amount on her. We also thought that her eyes needed to be darker to show she was tired, we did this by applying a small amount of eyeliner round her eyes, this made Abbi look more ill as her eyes sank and her pale face made it clear, linking to her being sick in the previous scene that she wasn't well.

On Abbi's chin you can see something which resembled sick. We thought to make her being sick more realistic to the audience we needed to make something which on camera actually looked like sick. I came up with the idea of mix banana and oats together, I got this idea from a documentary i watched on the sixth sense, when the girl is sick over the tent and they used a similar mixture of food, this is because if it did get into Abbi's mouth it wouldn't cause her any harm. 

When applying the banana and oats (sick) onto Abbi's face, I had to make sure that I didn't put too much on, as this would make it look fake, i also needed to make sure that i got it in the right place, which I think would be where i put it, of the lower right side of her lip, where the sick would fall if someone hadn't wiped it off. I also put it in her hair, this is because when she was pretending to be sick over the toilet, her hair came over her face, and if she was really being sick, it would of also ended up in her hair as well as on her face. 

Make Up and Costume

Here is Chloe, our imaginary friend in all her gear. Although her costume isn't what we expected, as Becky and I wanted more of an innocent nighty looking costume, i still think the blood stained cut up t-shirt works. 

Her hair and make up went very well, for her hair we added in hair extensions which we put olive oil in, giving them a greasy worn look and also back combed them to make them look even more ratty. We did this to the rest of Chloe's actual hair, which make her look dirty and ill. We added in flour to her hair to give it a dusty effect. 

The T-shirt that Chloe is wearing, Rob did at home. He cut hole into the T-shirt and splattered tomato source and fake blood over the top, even though Becky and I didn't think that there should be blood over her top, it looked very effective on the camera and made it clearer to the audience that Chloe's character was the "baddie" in all of the scenes. 

Chloe's tights are mine, we didn't expect Chloe to be wearing any tights on the bottom, because I thought that the t-shirt/nighty would be longer, which again would add to the effect of Chloe looking creepily innocent, but i think having the cut up tights and mud all over her and the tights again made her look more like the baddie and more scary overall. 

Make up

As a group we knew that in order to make our film opening realistic and clear to the audience about the difference in character our make up had to show that the imaginary friend was dead, twisted and not right in the head. We did this by making sure Chloe's make up on her face and any other areas of skin that was on show was pale which the occasional mud mark and bruise. 

We made her look pale by using white face paint, the mud we used actual mud, this was because we didn't have enough time and money to get brown paint and the mud makes it look more real. With the bruises we had black face paint and a whole range of eye shadows. Because we wanted her eyes to look dead and dark, we put black face paint around her eyes. However, when the black face paint was around both of her eyes we thought she resembled a pander, so we started again and just made one eye have a black eye and the other to have thick dark black eyeliner, to add to the effect of the dead eyes. We also put a bruise on the side of her cheek, this looked really affective as it showed (linking to her costume) that she had been tormented and abused by the drugs Susie (played by Abbi) had been taking to make Chloe go away.

Thumbnails

When filming, we kept to our thumbnails, as we put every thumbnail into our film, showing that we liked the original idea which also helped up to know where we were and what else we needed to do. We did add a few more shots into the opening however, once which i think was a good idea to add in, was the panning at the end round Abbi's head, showing that her head is spinning but also showing that she's thinking. This shot also put emphasis on her face, due to the make up and hair we had put on her to make her look ill and not right. This would indicate to the audience that this girl isn't right, also using a prop, being the knife to show that she's got one intension at this point in the opening, and it's to kill. 

Filming

Monday 8th February. 

As a group we had all planned to meet up at my house at 5:00pm to start to film our opening. However, looking back now i think starting that late wasn't very clever, as a few of our scenes were to be filmed outside, and it was too dark by this time to film anything. But, we did have a lot of shots from inside, which we were able to do. Using our thumbnails we were able to get each scene done quickly without the hassle of having to explain everything. Another problem i think we faced on this day was that people weren't taking it seriously, as during make up we were all having a laugh and didn't take into consideration how much time we had and how dark outside and inside were.

Tuesday 9th February.

In our practical lesson in the class we got to see what our scenes that we had filmed had turned out like. Here we faced our first problem, most of our shots were too dark and we couldn't edit them to look lighter, this meant that when we went to film again on Thursday we had even more to do. However, this also helped us to see how we could change the lighting to be lighter, while keeping the creepy atmosphere, not all of the shots were too dark, just a few which needed to be emphasised more on Abbi's face in that scene. 

Thursday 11th February.

We started at 3.30 this time, this gave us time to make sure that we did Chloe's hair and make up the same, while keeping us with enough time to film all the outside scenes while it was still light. We'd finished the hair and make up by 4.15, and we went straight outside to start to film the opening. I think this day we were more practical with timing and co-operation with each other, as we made a rule of no messing around until everything was done. Also it was cold outside, so we wanted to get all the outside scenes done as quickly as possible.

Once on the inside scenes we thought more about the lighting, and this time the lighting in the hallway was much better, as we were able to see all of the action on the camera, while keeping that creepy atmosphere we were very keen on keeping. 

Actors

This is the other actress we will be using our film opening. The reason we chose Abbi was because we know she can act and she lives down the road so there would be no problems with her not being able to get my house to film.

The original idea of the main character, Susie, was to have her in dark clothing looking like a Gothic character. But then I said that it would be more effective if she looked like a "normal" girl, as this would show that anyone can suffer from schizophrenia, and would make the film more dramatic as its everyday people, which would also add to making it scarier, as they don't stand out from the crowd.

Actors

As we're close to people who do drama we decided to use a close reliable friend in our media film. We decided to use Chloe Smith to play the imaginary friend, we thought that Chloe fitted this character well as she looks innocent and playful, which is what we wanted the audeince to view her as, before they see how twisted she really is.

The plan for Chloe's hair and make up is to have her hair (which is now brown) messy and greasy, maybe over her face to add more tension to who she is. Her make up will be pale with a green tinge to it, this will give the effect that she's ill or possibly dead. The reason i want her to look like this is because i want to make it clear to the audeince that its the drugs that the main girl has been taking to make her imaginary friend go away have made the imaginary friend slowly die and become more disfigured.

The costume which we want Chloe to be wearing is something that looks along the lines of a hospital nighty, however, as these are very hard to get hold of and we dont have enough money to buy a new outfit for Chloe to wear, we're thinking of putting her in a large white T-Shirt, which we will cut up and make dirty to give it a more worn effect.