interview with shane meadows

06:07

Whilst watching an interview with the writer/director from Warp films, we took notes on his styles and preferences. Firstly we noticed his love for low budgets and that he doesn't mind not using famous actors and that when using farely well known actors the end result didn't matter, it was the story that made the film. Also he mentioned his technique and system in making films and that it is ususally wrong but then said that directing all his films with this system was his style and that made all the films similar. He went on to say that his style is usually to improvise with his actors and develop a relationship, this stems from his dislike of writing, but he says he's comfortable with changing his script and creating an end result different to his previous plans. This is hugely different to Hollywood films and any other high budget films because he mentions that most directors feel compelled to keep to a plan and prevent creativity. Shane meadows style could be described as Social Realism for his use of realistic lighting and mise en scene. As he relies on his old system to create films when recieveing a bigger budget for his latest film he still used realistic elements.

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Working title and Warp film questions

05:06

1: Working Title Films is a British film production company, based in London, England. The company was founded by Tim Bevan and Sarah Radclyffe in 1982. It produces feature films and some television productions. Eric Fellner and Bevan are the co-owners of the company now. They are part of universal studios.

1: Warp Films, a sister company of Warp Records was set up in 1999 with funding from NESTA. It is based in Sheffield, England with a further office in London and has 14 full-time staff. They are independent.

Conglomerate- a group of small companies, brought together by a larger company which work together.

2: If the company is owned by a bigger company then they will have a bigger budget for there films.

3:

warp films:

· My Wrongs #8245–8249 & 117

· Dead Man's Shoes

· Rubber Johnny

· This Is England

· Dog Altogether

· All Tomorrow's Parties

Working title films:

· About a Boy (film)

· Ali G Indahouse

· Atonement (film)

· User:Nayrouz Aly/Atonement

· Barton Fink

· Bean (film)

· The Big Lebowski

· Billy Elliot

· The Boat That Rocked

· Bob Roberts

· The Borrowers (1997 film)

· Bridget Jones's Diary (film)

· Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (film)

· Burn After Reading

· The Calcium Kid

· Captain Corelli's Mandolin (film)

· Catch a Fire (film)

· Chicago Joe and the Showgirl

· Chihuanhas

· Dead Man Walking (film)

· Definitely, Maybe

· Doraemon: Nobita's Dinosaur

· Drop Dead Fred

· Edward II (film)

· Elizabeth (film)

· Elizabeth: The Golden Age

· Fargo (film)

· For Queen and Country

· 40 Days and 40 Nights

· Four Weddings and a Funeral

· French Kiss (film)

· Frost/Nixon (film)

· Green Zone (film)

· The Guru (2002 film)

· The Hi-Lo Country

· Hippie Hippie Shake

· Hot Fuzz

· The Hudsucker Proxy

· Inside I'm Dancing

· The Interpreter

· Johnny English

· Land and Freedom

· Loch Ness (film)

· London Kills Me

· Long Time Dead

· Love Actually

· The Man Who Cried

· The Man Who Wasn't There

· Map of the Human Heart

· Mickybo and Me

· Moonlight and Valentino

· Mr. Bean's Holiday

· My Beautiful Laundrette

· My Little Eye

· Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang

· Nanny McPhee

· Ned Kelly (2003 film)

· Notting Hill (film)

· Brother, Where Art Thou?

· Panther (film)

· Paperhouse (film)

· Paul (film)

· Plunkett & Macleane

· Posse (1993 film)

· Pride & Prejudice (2005 film)

· The Return of the Borrowers

· Robin Hood (1991 film)

· Romeo Is Bleeding

· Rubin and Ed

· Sammy and Rosie Get Laid

· A Serious Man

· Shaun of the Dead

· Smokin' Aces

· The Soloist

· State of Play (film)

· Tales of the City (TV miniseries)

· The Tall Guy

· The Comic Strip

· Thunderbirds (film)

· United 93 (film)

· Wild Child (2008 film)

· Wimbledon (film)

· Wish You Were Here (1987 film)

· A World Apart (film)

· The Young Americans (film)

4: Shaun of the Dead- £4million budget

Dead man’s shoes- £723,000 budget

5: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) is the current highest budget film at $300,000,000

6: Working title films get there funds from universal pictures and Warp films get there funds from being awarded £4.5 million from the UK Film Council.

7: The genre of Warp films are social realism as seen in ‘This is England’

8: They are more realistic then normal films as they are gritty and more realistic as they appeal to the British audience.

9: Usually warp titles creates films for the British demographic, but we can find that since working title has been taken over by Universal Studios that their usually british based films are becoming broader and based on US culture.

10: The most common genre for working title is a rom-com which is seen as a genre viewable by any one so they can therefore reach a popular audience.

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Preliminary film intro

13:25
The second part of the preliminary tasks was to design and shoot our own introduction to a film, this had to be an introduction that involved as many different shots as possible and should show case our creativity. Although the film didn't need any scripted acting we could include some aspects of script to add to the film's effectiveness. Another thing required was that a door had to be opened by one of the characters and for this shot we had to use a close up.
With my partner Beau we started to draw up idea's of films and which would be best to create an interesting intro, deciding that a Thriller or Mysterious film was best, we started to think of existing Thrillers that used gripping introductions. But eventually our hearts became set on the film Scarface but we used the title to make our own spoof called Scarf-ace which involves the mysterious happenings of the scarf-ace, a man specifically good at making scarf's. Our plan entailed that the introduction would involve one entrepreneur of scarf's who enters a meeting room and tries to prove to the scarf-ace that he is better, in all the commotion the scarf-ace kills the entrepreneur with his scarf's. The introduction ends with the police finally getting to the crime scene.
We set out to film this introduction with Ross Lockton, Ollie Johnson and Eugene as our actors and used our media room during a lunch time to film the starting scene. Mine and Beau's collective research showed that film introductions are all very carefully planned and carried out to gain the most interest possible before the main story line begins. We also discovered the most effective way of grabbing the audiences attention is to use an enigma code and involve some aspect of action which in turn creates mystery and then forces the audience to carry on watching to solve the problem created.
While filming we experimented with various angles and zooming for each shot to gain the best possible final shot, along side this we also examined our continuity and made sure that the position of chairs and the use of lighting didn't change. However our use of lighting was very inaccurate, without proper consideration we started to film with very lighting in the room and to follow continuity we kept the lighting the same. Overall this meant that all the shots are hard to see and the actors obscurred, if we had the chance to re-film i would employ the use of a direct light so that the actors faces could be eluminated whilst the rest of the room remained darkened.
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Preliminary magazine task

12:00

For this part of the preliminary task we were instructed to create our own magazine cover based primarily on our school: Lutterworth College, with a secondary genre of music, meaning our magazine had to combine our school and a type of music. and we had to complete this magazine cover within a week. In this instance I chose to research music magazines to discover which type of music is written about the most and which particular music magazine is read the most by the public and to ultimately gain inspiration and to help me decide which type of music was best to aim my magazine at. In the end my research showed that the music genre Rock is written about the most and attracts the most music lovers, I also discovered that Kerrang was the most read rock magazine. So with this learnt I choose Rock as my music genre. Also further research into rock magazines showed that the colour schemes are simple and based largely on 3 colours (ignoring black for the lettering), these 3 colours would consist of one primary colour used in the majority of the cover and 2 other colours which are either used for colour fills or lettering. I also noticed that the majority of Rock magazines had lots of pictures, boxes and lettering that were all trying to gain attention which I found off putting, so to create a more professional front cover I've decided to use only a few eye grabbing techniques giving the readers time to understand the whole front cover.
Firstly me and my partner Beau created a plan based on all the research we had conducted in which we included ideas for magazine names, slogans, strap lines, pictures and the main profile picture. With this rough plan we then decided on the name for our magazine which is: School of rock, we then discussed which types of pictures would be best for the cover and who we should use for the profile shot. We then finally decided to use a friend Ross for the profile picture because of his resemblance to the Rock genre and used his team mate Ollie for another shot to use for one of our cover stories. With some quick improvising me and Beau decided to also use Fred Flint for another cover story because of his resemblance to a Bouncer and because of one of our cover stories based on an unfortunate event with a rock star.
After taking our pictures Me and my partner Beau set out to try and replicate our plan on photoshop elements, we first imported the images and layered them out as we had drawn and started to discuss the best places to put the smaller pictures and their cover stories. We then finally cropped the main profile image of Ross and placed him slighted to left so that we could place the other two images to his right so the main picture wasn't obstructed in any way, we also decided upon this because the reader will read from left to right and after reading our magazine name will start to read about Ross and his story. I then started to draw out some designs and write down some ideas for our magazine logo and decided to go for a skribbled on paper look which is very reminiscent of school and also gives off a rebellious feel similar to that of Rock. To put these ideas into a logo I searched a website called Dafont.com to find the font closest to our designs, after searching their school section of fonts I found the most ideal one, typed out the logo on paint and then saved it as a JPEG picture to use in photoshop. I used the same font for our logo: Rock First, Education Last.
Thanks to our previous research me and Beau understood that our magazine had to have a consistent colour scheme, after looking at our main profile picture we noticed that Ross was wearing predominant colours of blue, and that in our other pictures blue walls and doors were positioned behind the person being photographed. This gave use the perfect main colour to use for our cover. We then started to write out our various stories and incorporate the colour scheme into the texts, for instance all cover stories and the logo were in blue, the strap line was in white and the colour fill was in black. We overall believed this to be a perfect colour scheme for our magazine because of the white and black contrasting each other and because they are used commonly in other rock magazines and the dark blue was very representative of the indie/emo rock genre which was involved strongly in the main cover story.
Overall I think our final magazine cover is very effective in combining Lutterworth college and Rock and is very appealing to our target because of the colour scheme, pictures and stories that bring the hyped Rock persona crashing into the dullard stereotype of modern schooling.
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Film Practice - Eastenders remake

06:31
For our filming practice we were assigned the task of story boarding a 2-3 minute eastenders clip so that we could reinact all the shots our selves with a camera and then import all the recordings to make a final version. Firstly, while watching the clip we analysed each shot that was used and drawed them with basic sketches and dialogue, this was needed to be as accurate as possible for when we would record the reinactment. After this we recieved all the necessary equipment from the libary we searched for a room with appropriate lighting and space to conduct all the various and different shots.
The chosen scene was very typical of TV soaps because of the basic shot involved which were mid-angle and used very little movement or zoom, however very simple yet effective techniques were used such as the transition between one side of a room to the other but still maintining the same details of the scene. Furthermore the scene was an opening to the soap so typical of all soaps the characters used in the last episode were used in the opening so the previous story can be carried on-this meant there was very little dialogue involved and the clip was establishing the next story.
The usual camera shots used are mid angled to fit most the scene in, but occationally uses of zoom and closeups appear to draw the audiences attention to an important factor of the scene. For instance when two characters are having a shocking conversation a closeup of one of the characters face will be deployed to show the emotion the character is experiencing. Another example is when an important prop is being used which would normally fit into the background and is then zoomed into to show the audience. This occured in our remake of the eastenders scene in which at the end a zoom is used to show a ring one fo the characters is holding.
Within the clip we were shown, over 25 different shots were used so to be as accurate as possible we story boarded the shots that lasted the longest and subsequently had a smaller 12 shots to film and then set out to film those. Although this method was effective in appearing accurate we didn't story board the angle of the shots and had to rely on our memory of the clip to position the camera correctly, also without being able to write all of the dialogue down we made mistakes with names and missed out large sections of some scenes. Overall our representation was quite accurate and our use of props and sound effects made most shots look realistic.
From completeing this task i have learnt about the importance of mise en scene for every filming conducted. Mise en scene is everything in a scene for instance: while finding a place to film we discussed areas that have ideal lighting and investigated the use of props, we also checked for any distracting features of the place we were filming to keep the audience focused on what we were filming. All this relates back to the many aspects of mise en scene. Throughout filming we discussed the importance of getting the setting right for certain shots we storyboarded, like when filming the opening shot we chose an ideal door to reinact the shot and give the best representation of it.
The particular clip we were given used extensive use of lighting, because of the time that the clip was filmed lighting was used to project the setting of morning. To get a similar effect we filmed these shots near a window with blinds and appropriately allowed shades of lighting in to give the same appearence. Also lighting was used in the clip to show emotion and the mood of a particlar character (at the end of the clip), to do this the lighting was limited to only the character which made the rest of the room shaded and dark and therefore projecting the solem mood.
For this project we also learnt the importance of keeping the same setting and changing nothing about character's appearence or the lighting of the room unless a change was scripted. This is because although we filmed in pieces the final clip appeared to be a continuous reality, so to properly give this appearence we checked that every character had kept the same costume and when changing the lighting we kept the same areas lighted. If correct continuity isn't used then the result can be quite confusing for the audience.
Ultimately it was our filming of the many shots that diddn't give an acurate representation the eastenders clip, although we could put this down to lack of time our story board wasn't detailed enough, meaning too many shots were positioned incorrectly and minor mistakes of lighting made a big effect on the end result. However while editing we made full use of the transitions, text, effects and sound bites to add the detail to the shots that we were lacking in, this meant that the end product was still a good enough copy of the original. Also with the edition of extra sound effects we added a humerous edge to the film with background laughter, although this wasn't a core device used in the original it only added to the ease of watching the finished clip.
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