Audience for 12 Hours

Our active audience for '12 Hours' is mainly in the bracket of 16-24 yr olds. Our project should appeal to them in a similar way to that of Kidulthood & Skins this is due to it being clearly set around the lives of teens and their actions. Seeing as teens are represented a lot in our film this should be evedent even in the opening 2 minutes. Although it is aimed at 16-24 yr olds we feel the film would be better suited to an 18+ certificate, this is because we would like to achieve and almost gritty feel such as Kidulthood does. Seeing as the certificate would ideally 18+ we think that 16 & 17 yr olds would still watch it as the majority of them wouldn't care about this certificate, this fits in with the theme of rebellion that is evident in our film.

Mid Filming

We started our filming on 5/12/10. Filming has not gone very well, we have a few shots (over the shoulder, close up, medium shots and aerial shots) in and around the house however we havent filmed any of the night time stuff that is going to be done in the next few days. We have all the shots we need that include walter being in the house and in the bed with the girl (Emma) Also we have almost finished the scene where he makes himself some food using crane shots. However we need to so the shots where Joshua gets beaten up which is a night scene.

We filmed Walter (Joshua)  all around the house getting a few still shots of Joshua walking down the coridoor into the shower and then coming back the same way but this time is dressed. Next is the first moving shot of Joshua walking down the stairs . Firstly we see Joshua waking up and there is a clock next to him with the time 11.59, the shots is still for a few seconds and then the alarm goes off for 12:00 and Joshua wakes up walking past the camera into the bathroom. The camera is stationary in this and is at shoulder level. Next the semi diegectic sound of a shower is present and the camera is still in the same place. The mise en scene represents the character Joshua as being normal teenager going through a normal life, the camera is still to represent this.

Storyboards

Characters

Joshua:

Age-17

Ethnicity- White British

Relationship- Sleeping with Ciara.

Costume- Black Harrington on a grey zip up with blue jeans and white Reebok Hightops.

Actor- Walter Righton

Ciara:

Age-16

Ethnicity- White Irish

Relationship- Sleeping with Joshua. Seamus’ younger sister.

Costume-

Actor-

Seamus:

Age-18

Ethnicity- White Irish

Relationship- Best friends with Scott & Adrain. Ciara’s older brother.

Costume-  Red shirt on a Black pullover hoodie and trackies with Reebok Sir Jams

Actor- Jordan Goff

Scott:

Age-18

Ethnicity- White British

Relationship- Best friends with Seamus & Joey

Costume- Black crewneck and blue cotton trackies with a brown beanie and Vans

Actor- Aaron Morey

Adrian:

Age-18

Ethnicity-White British

Relationship- Best friends with Seamus & Scott.

Costume- Grey crew neck and black trackies with a black beanie

Actor- Joey Helsby

12 Hours Storyline

12 Hours Storyline

Introduction – Joshua leaves his house. However, he is being followed by Snake and Smithy he enters an alleyway where he is confronted by Seamus Keane. He try to run but is stopped by snake and smithy, he then proceeds to be knocked out. Cut to Black.
Time now goes back to 12 hours earlier (12pm) were we find Joshua and Sybil Keane in bed. Joshua goes to have a shower walks down stairs makes breakfast. Sees a note from his Mum saying she has gone away.
Joshua goes to the football match with a few of his mates and invites people to his house for later. We are also introduced to Joshua’s love interest called, Sandra.
Joshua’s friends come over and as does Sandra and a few of her mates including Sybil .
Sandra walks in on Sybil and Joshua getting off. Sandra runs off and Sybil follows since they are best friends. Sybil goes home and speaks to her brother, Seamus.
Everyone is getting on well and they get very drunk however they run out of beers and Joshua goes to get some from the local shop and keeps trying to get in touch with Sybil, its roughly 11:55 at this point.
Once he leaves the house Joshua is found by a fuming Seamus who wishes to beat up Joshua. Its 12.... and 12 hours since noon. Were back at the beginning.

Relating films opening to our own idea

Setting: The setting of this opening is at a school, where we see lots going on. This represents to the viewer that the film is going to be about school children and very lively. The setting is in a wide open space which denotes thats the characters are quite open about themselves. I think that the director has chosen to do this to show the viewer the nature and the personality of the character involved. However using this setting we dont get a sense of what kind of character they are. Since the setting is at a school, the viewer quickly sees that they are school kids.

Camera shots: Lots of mid shots used to get a perspective of what friendship groups are apparent, the director has chosen to do this to show the viewer which characters you expect to be friends because that is very important in youth films. We see the first close up of a boy using a drill on a gun (trevor) this is the first close up because he is the main character in the film. In our film opening, we do something similiar however we don't introduce any character before the main character. He is given the first close up though.

Camera movement: The camera moves lots in between mid shots in the opening sequence of kidulthood, the director might of chosen to do this so that it represent the busy lives of youths and how fast they live their lives. The camera is pan between groups extremely quickly and is never stationary. Firstly it moves to look at the two girls in the scene and quickly onto another couple of girls, this contrast between the two. The camera continues to pan between a series groups then cuts to someone doing some work on a gun in a classroom. All of the movement and the cuts denote to the viewer that the people involved are typical teenagers and gets the point of the film over to viewer easily. The camera is always panning between groups and then zooming into the group. This gives a the viewer the a better idea of who the main characters are because since it is set in a school there a lots of people involved therefore its a good way to get across who the main character are. By zooming into them it establishes who is who. In our task the camera doesn't move atall.

Relating films opening to our own idea

Between 1.56 and 2.50

Setting: The narrative is explained by the setting because its in a tunnel where a man is getting beaten up. He has blood all over his face. This setting explains that the story is going to be about fighting and hooligans. Since the man is on the floor this puts none of the focus on the setting, all we can see is that is it dark and all the light is on the person on the floor. We get the feeling this is set in some kind of tunnel because we see some light but not much. I think that the director has chosen to use this type of setting to represent th nature of the man and the nature of what he is involved in. It could also be used to represent that this man has no chance of getting out of what he is gotten into by the light and the tunnel.

Lighting: The light is very dark and dull because it represents how doomed this person is who is getting beaten up . The lighting is all on his face and the blood stands out this establishing that the narrative is going to be very violent. In the next scene we seen the man standing out by the use of lighting, he isnt wearing the most colourful clothes but the blurriness of background presents the foreground very well and denotes that the story is going to be about this man. The lighting is used to make the audience aware of what is going on and takes them into a world of football violence and its denoted by the darkness.

Choice of shot: Extreme close up, this use of shot focuses purely on this man and gets the image of him into the mind of viewer. Next, the camera zooms into the mans face, this establishes that the story line is going to be about this man and puts the viewer into his head. The camera dissolves to the next shot in a complete comparative view to the last he is walking down the street looking very happy and everything else is blurred out so that represents to the viewer that the story is going to be about him. This is a very easy technique to use to get the viewer to know who the main character is. In our production we have just used close ups to mark down who the main character is.

The choice of clothing that the man on the floor wears again represents the type of genre of the film. he is wearing a big coat in both scenes the denotes the character of football hooligans and shows the viewer what kind of a person he is. After the black-out  the contrast between the three people in the scene captures three completely different characters. This suggests to the viewer that hooligans are completely different from everyone else.


This type of film opening is relevant to our because of many reasons, one the storyline is very similar ours starts of as a man getting beaten up and then is explained later. Also in this film its very similar if not the same, the man gets beaten up and then the narrator (himself) sets the scene for why he gets beaten up. This can relate to our film very easily. Another reason why it relates to our opening is because its shares very similar genre's: Violence, action and crime.

Within this sequence we don't see any narrative arch's appearing because we have only met one character. However we know that this man is going to to involved heavily in football violence. The voice over explain this clearly and explains that it is what he wants to do. This leaves the narrative arch's open to be developed within the rest of the film. Compared to our opening, we don't see clearly that there are arch's present however we get the sense of one from when the man is confronted by three other people. The character arch is clearly represented.

Relating films opening to our own idea

Protagonist

"one who plays the first part, chief actor"
Protagonist is the main character, it who the plot revolves around. The terms protagonist, main character and hero are variously defined and, depending on the source, may denote different concepts. In fiction, the story of the protagonist may be told from the perspective of a different character. An example would be a narrator who relates the fate of several protagonists, perhaps as prominent figures recalled in a biographical perspective. Often, the protagonist in a narrative is also the same person as the focal character, though the two terms are distinct. Excitement and intrigue alone is what the audience feels toward a focal character, while a sense of empathy about the character's objectives and emotions is what the audience feels toward the protagonist. Although the protagonist is often referred to as the "good guy", it is entirely possible for a story's protagonist to be the clear villain, or antihero, of the piece. 
Their aim: After all, the eventual aim of the protagonist is to find a means to die, an aim that requires some fairly serious motivation. It is usually an active aim which is fulfilled with time.


Antagonist force: The antagonist is the character of a story who represents the opposition against which the heroes and/or protagonists must contend. In the classic style of story wherein the action consists of a hero fighting a villain, the two can be regarded as protagonist and antagonist, respectively. However, authors have often created more complex situations. In some instances, the story is told from the villain's point of view; in such a story, we must regard the hero as the chief antagonist of the story!

Script

Police arrive at the family home to inform Idi that Raza has been arrested at work - charged with the murder of a local man, Frank Cordingley (a colleague of Raza's, from the University - he is a security guard, and ex-soldier - having served in Iraq and Afghanistan).  Cordingley is found dead in his flat, following the extraction of a large amount of money from his bank account.  A neighbour has identified Raza as visiting the house earlier in the day.  Questioning takes place.

Criminal Justice

This first scene starts off being very dark as the camera is zoomed in onto a black door. Next, a semi diegectic sound of a police man banging on a door.

POV shot of the police man

Police man: It’s the police, open up!

Cut to: Over the shoulder shot of the police man

Slight pause, Idi comes storming down the stairs and walking into shot as the camera is still focused on the door. Idi’s side of the door is red. He swings the door open sharply.0

Cut to: Close up of Idi

Idi: It’s 4 in the morning what do you want!?

Cut to: Over the shoulder shot of Idi

Police man: Your son has been arrested and charged with murder of a local man.

Cut to: Over the shoulder shot of Police man

Idi: You must have got the wrong guy; my Raza wouldn’t do such a thing. He’s upstairs sleeping.

Cut to: Over the shoulder shot of Idi

Police man:  We would appreciate it if you would come down to the station with us.

Match cut: Idi is now standing at the police station looking up at it, Idi takes a seat in the waiting room.

Semi diegectic sound of police sirens

In the police interview room it is dark and all the light (minimal) is on Raza.  Raza is still wearing his security uniform. In the background is one police officer and in the main part of the scene is Raza and the interviewer.

Dissolve cut to: Extreme close up of Raza

The tape is on, raza’s interview has began.

Raza: I didn’t do it!

The police man is pacing around the room making Raza look small.

Cut to: Medium shot of everything in the room with the interviewer circling Raza

Interviewer:  So Mr Cordingley was a friend eh? What could possible drive a man who has no criminal record, helps out at the local mosque to commit such a murder?

Raza ignores the question. Then shakes his head.

Cut to: Close up of Raza

He lies back in his chair and put his hands on his face.  The interviewer ruffles through his files.

Cut to: Over the shoulder shot of the interviewer.

Interviewer: Mr. Cordingley, a ex servant in Iraq and Afghanistan with two sons and three grandchildren. Had a big pay off from a football bet, won a reported £100,000. He recently settled down in a new home with a new job after the tragic death of his wife.  

Pause

Interviewer: I think that you were jealous of Mr. Cordingley and couldn’t stand that he had such a better life than you. Especially after winning £100,000 when is it going to be a better time to kill the man that you hate and take all the money?

Cut to: Over the shoulder shot of Raza

Raza is looking down at the floor, he is seemingly very anxious and doesn’t know what to say.  He folds his arms

Cut to: Over the shoulder shot of Raza

Interviewer: where were you between the hours of 9.00pm and 11.00pm?

Cut to: close up of raza’s hand tapping on the table

Raza’s hand stops tapping

Cut to: over the shoulder shot of Raza

Raza: I was at home watching television. You have nothing on me, let me go or charge me.

Cut to: Close up of the interviewer

The interviewer looks disappointingly towards Raza and raises a eyebrow.

Interviewer: We have a witness statement saying that they saw you at approx. 9.30pm walking into the home of Mr. Cordingley. So where were you between the hours of 9.00pm and 11.00pm?

Cut to: two shot of both opposing each other over the table

Raza seems to open up, he leans forwards and places his arms on the table fiercely  

Raza: Alright, I went to see Mr. Cordingley about um work when I left he was fine just as he usually is.

Interviewer: You’ve just stated that you were at home watching television?

Raza:  Yeh I was watching television at his place, nice 42” plasma screen. I suppose he got it with all his winnings.

Interviewer: Interesting.

Raza: So, you gotta let me go you haven’t got anything on me. I want to get out of here I haven’t done anything wrong.

Interviewer: Interview terminated at 7.59 AM.

Cut to: close up of Raza

Raza sharply stands up and throws his chair back.

Raza: WHAT, you can do this.

Interviewer: Sit down sir, we have enough evidence to charge you just we have to be sure, ill be back to interview in due course

Exit the interviewer

Raza’s shoulders slump down he slows is reduced to nothing within his chair.

Match cut to: Idi waiting in the reception for news.

Idi walks up to the receptionist confidently and slams his hands down on the desk.

Idi: Are you going to charge my boy or not? This is outrageous!

Receptionist: Calm down sir, I’ll give you the news as soon as I get it. Now can you just take a seat?

Close up of Idi’s hand sliding off the desk.

Dissolve cut to: Raza, camera looking up at him

Raza is deep in thought, he looks towards the ceiling.

Raza: ten thousand pounds.

*pause*

Raza: ten thousand pounds for you, if you tell the man in the reception dressed in a suit the name of the witness. Ten thousand pounds...

Two shot of Raza and the silent police man. Raza is in the foreground and the silent police man in the background. The camera fades into focus on the silent police man.

Silent police man: What?

Raza turns and looks towards the man

Raza: Tell my dad and the rest will follow.

The Silent police man stretches out his neck and a smirk surfaces on his face.

Cut to: Raza camera looking up at him

Raza follows to turn back around

Dissolve cut to: Idi walking up to the door of the witness.

Doorbell rings. Semi diegectic sound of the large man coming down the stairs.

The door opens slowly and a large man appears dressed in black clothes. Idi is dressed in a creamy/brown coloured jacked with suited trousers and leather gloves

Witness: Yes?

Idi pulls out his silenced gun within his lathered gloved hands and places it close to the Witness’s stomach and shoots him twice. Idi pushes the man within the door with his foot closes the door and brushes himself down.

Fade cut to: two shot of Raza and the Interviewer back in the interview room

Raza is looking very confident and smug about the whole situation and is lean well forward with his hands on the table.

Cut to: Close up of the interviewer’s finger pressing play on the tape player.

Cut to over the shoulder shot of raza

Interviewer: Well, you wouldn’t be too surprised to hear but the witness has suspiciously gone missing.

Cut to over the shoulder shot of The interviewer

Raza: really? That's bad news, guess you will just have to carry on the case without him. So what is next?

The interviewer looks angrily towards Raza, shakes his head.

Cut to: Close up of Raza

Interviewer: Raza I’m charging you with the murder of Mr. Cordingley

Typography

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type, type design. Type glyphs are created and modified using a variety of illustration techniques. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading adjusting the spaces between groups of letters and adjusting the space between pairs of letters.

The art of title design

People remember film from good opening title sequences. 

Titles in silent films: 

Words and letters were the biggest part of this type of film, they had to provide essential information for the viewer because of such things as ease of production. This was usually provided by white letters on black backgrounds. In addition to hiring lettering artists, the biggest film studios began to employ typesetters in the production of title cards 

Titles with music:

Movies got more popular and producer started to invest more money into sounds with the titles. For example the dog they liked to convey the tone of a movie through the dressage of its main title. For example black and red letters conveyed horror. Hollywood animation studios, including Warner Brothers and MGM, did give some license to their artists to indulge in title antics. Disney took it upon themselves to put the characters into the title sequence

The birth of title sequences: 

In 1950 Saul Bass, Pablo Ferro, Maurice Binder and Richard Williams At that time, independent filmmakers made commercial headway by doing things differently, spreading utterly fresh ideas about the possibilities of title sequences. This is the era in which the discipline of film title sequence design was actually born. Experimentation on the fringes, where title sequences really thrive, have led to all kinds of innovation.

The Modern era of film titling

Every film title has been effected in some way by computers this is excellent for designers. Creating film titles means participating in the apprenticeship tradition continued The revolutionary title sequence for “Se7en” (1995) by Kyle Cooper was named by New York Times Magazine as “one of the most important design innovations of the 1990s”: The potential of digital graphics and typography has attracted some of the most creative minds to motion design. Pixar and Disney have reserved crucial parts in the branding of their films for the title sequences, using animated character to represent the film

Pete Frasers Blog ideas and planning

Ideas
Keep the ideas simple.  If the idea gets to complex then there is more likely to be more problems, recently The Film Council awarded cash to four young scriptwriters who pitched their thriller, horror or comedy movie ideas in 25 words or less. This 25word approach was raised last year. Research for this kind of project really means getting a full understanding of what the task involves by looking properly at real examples and at examples done by previous media students.


Planning
Planning is the biggest stage of the production, its best to have a record for all the planning that happens. Story boards are the best way of getting the planning easily across. We need to do a visual plan also. With the storyboard, we need to do get across the location of the camera, how long it last and any music. Feedback on the storyboard and ideas can be vital and can bring about lots of improvements.

Preliminary Task

Planning 

For our planning we had to come up with the whole concept of the production. Therefore we had to come up with a storyline and suitable place to film it. We thought of a meeting between a drug dealer and a person who owes money to the drug dealer. This idea is simple and very effective. We chose to film in two different places, for to introduce the dealer and one to film the interview because the room was small and the door and corridor was useful for the part before the meeting. Also we had to get some props together these consisted of a shirt and clock amongst other things.

Filming: 

The filming was very easy because we knew exactly what we needed and wanted to do. First we filmed the drug dealer to establish him and give him power. This was simple and only took a few shots to get it right. Next we changed room to use the corridor and the door that was also simple. After that we did some verbal filming, this was harder than the other shots because it was important that we got it right. We didn’t use very many shots, we used close up, extreme close up, 2 shot, medium shot, over the shoulder shot two shot, cut in shot and a dolly zoom.

Editing: 

This was very easy because we didn’t have many shots that we didn’t need or had to decide between using. The editing took quite a lot of time, the programme is very hard to get used to using. We decided on DSD productions and make a title sequence, this idea came mainly from the music. We had to get rid of a few things within the filming that we didn't need for example people looking at the camera when they are film. We finished the introduction to the film with credits. This was a big part of the editing as we had to find a picture and font to go with each person. Also we had to find a soundtrack or numerous soundtracks that fit the clip. We went for just having one non diegectic all the way through because there is only one line of diegectic sound which is dialogue. When this sound occurs we faded out the non diegectic sound to hear the diegectic sound

State of play

Television is viewed to be inferior to film.
Cinema is superior to television in every way.
Recent advances in technology mean that the picture and sound quality its not poor meaning it can still compete with cinema. Ellis wrote about the aesthics of television he concluded that industrial limitations such as budget can have a effect on camera, mise en scene and editing. Jonathan Bignel also made a similar point about television "the emphasis on mise en scene associated with the greater depth of colour, lighting and camera movement. Film is responsible for the stylistic interest to quality programmes.
HBO- Home Box Office
HBO can afford to make better production because its a subscription channel, therefore they receive good reviews E.g The wire. These create lots of money because they can go on for lots of series and can bring in lots of money from box set sales.
State of play- small screen to big screen
Paul Abbott wrote about the investigation on journalists unravelling a narrative about political corruption.  The film had a $60 million budget. T.V dramas have the possibility of extended narratives, this means they can be more detailed and complex. Television uses one kind of establishing shot in a way that is never used in film. between scenes and before breaks televison programmes uses a repeated visual motif before cutting to the interior for the next shot.

Shot reverse shot

Shot reverse shot or shot/countershot is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character (often off-screen), and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. Since the characters are shown facing in opposite directions, the viewer assumes that they are looking at each other

180° rule

The 180° rule is a basic guideline in film making that states that two characters in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line. The new shot, from the opposite side, is known as a reverse angle. The 180 degree rule enables the audience to visually connect with unseen movement happening around and behind the immediate subject and is important in the narration of battle scenes. Avoiding crossing the line is a problem that those learning filmcraft will need to struggle with. With the car chase, a possible solution is to begin the second cut with the car driving into frame from the "wrong" side. Although this may be wrong in the geographic sense on set, it looks more natural to the viewer. Another possibility is to insert a "buffer shot" of the subject head-on (or from behind) to help the viewer understand the camera movement.

Continunity

This is a fundermental principle of moving image production. Continunity is normally secured by producers following the conventions of the classical realist text, this allows the plot and story to unfold in a way that the audience can assume what happens inbetween each shot or sequence. For example a person travelling on a train, the audience will not think it is short and they will assume inbetween shots there is nothing of significance. But if the character moved then the continunity rule has been broken.

Camera shots T.V Drama

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmfE8kHlxOQ&feature=channel

The first shot of this clip is a close up however it is through a mirror. The reason why this is used is because the director wants to make aware to the view of how sad the woman is. The next few shots are both closes up but using a following shot to keep up with what she is doing. These shots are very cheap to do because there is not much movement, no expensive props and only the one camera used. Also with all of the changing of the shots and the close ups this makes the viewer interested so they don't turn over.
Afterwards it changes subjects very quickly, firstly there is a close up of a man and then very rapidly zooms out on him. This shot is used to bring the viewer out of the world of shameless and denote that the character is not where he is meant to be.
Further on in the clip there are medium shots which show a part of the subject whilst focusing as well on other aspects, for this clip the shot focuses on man but also his two sons. After that there are lots of over the shoulder shots which gets boths characters in the shot so this tells the viewer that they are interacting, the fast editing again keeps the view wanting to carry on watching. All of these shots are very low value.

Camera shots Film

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF4DWljYcac

The first shot is a crab shot which starts close to the ground and the characters move closer to the camera this denotes to the audience that these characters have more power and are more important because we are looking up on them. Next the camera arcs round and quickly edits into a medium shot of the man.
After that the camera slowly zooms into the prison this anchors the audience to the prison because it make you feel like you are going into the prison. This shot would of cost quite a lot of money because they would of had to pay for the equipment to allow the shot to take place.

Semiotics

REMEMBER. Signifier's aren't only visual, they apply to sound as well.

Semiotics is the study of signs.

We look at three types of "signs"

• Symbolic - The learned codes. E.g numbers, letters and punctuation marks.
• Iconic - Resembling or imitating the signified. E.g photo or realistic sounds.
• Indexical - Where something is directly connected to the signified

Media

In class today we were looking at media as a whole and what is it and what the media is. Within class discussion we were talking about everything that make up the media from, Newspapers to the internet to T.V. One word that is very important in media is medium. Medium is something that is in the middle, media denotes this word because the media is in the middle of something happening and people finding out. For example, someone famous dies, the media is in the middle of that and it reaching people. Also we were looking at what is the media, this is individual aspects that make up the media.
To conclude, in this lesson i found out what the media is, what it does, how it does it and how important the word medium is in the subject media.

Juxtaposition Second lesson

In the second lesson of media studies AS level, we were looking at juxtaposition. Juxtaposition is the contrast between two things. These two elements can be very different or have a slight relationship. Within the lesson we were assigned to create a juxtaposition and then evaluate it. I chose to look at the contract between big and small, i collected two pictures. When evaluating the juxtaposition, we were looking at aspects such as what the background signifies, what themes are present within the picture, what the foreground signifies and also to look at the powers that this juxtaposition represents.

First Lesson

In the first lesson of media we had an introduction into what we are going to be doing in the rest of the year. The teacher told us that we are going to have a exam in June. We were set homework to set up a blog so that we can write about what we do in each lesson.