Ident Ideas

Ideas for my company Ident


My first ident idea is called Purple Gorilla Productions, this is a good idea because it is unique.
The concept of this is that i will create my logo which will contain the gorilla on the right but purple obviously, above 'Purple Gorilla Productions'.  I am yet to use the LiveType software so i am unaware of any of the animations i can use, but i want my Ident to be simple and to have smooth transitions or effects.

Purple Gorilla

My second ident idea is Swag Films as it would add a modern touch to my movies, i have come up with the idea for the logo but that is all, this idea was slated in class so im not sure if i should go ahead and produce this ident. My text however will look like this, $ SWΔG FILMS $ but in a font of my choice.

Idents

Idents

A company ident is a way of showing the audience who is behind the film as it is a form of advertising. You tend to see a couple of idents at the start of the film before every movie starts you will never see a film without company idents unless it is extremely indie. Most idents come with their own jingle, theme song or sound. The notorious MGM ident is a good example to show a sound effect used.

Columbia Pictures ident, this contains

 its own music and a zoom out to reveal the standing woman.

It depends on how the company chooses how they design their ident for how much it will cost as they don't have to be extremely costly as they are easy to make on an unambitious scale. But most popular idents are very appealing and don't look like they have been made within an hour. I don't particularly associate an ident to a film being good but i do have my preferable idents for some reason, my favorite company ident would be Paramount Pictures for no reason i just like watching the ident as i think it looks allot better than others like Hammer Studios for example.

Final Girl Concept

Final Girl

The final girl is a thriller and horror film (particularly slasher) trope that specifically refers to the last woman or girl alive to confront the killer, ostensibly the one left to tell the story. The term was coined by Carol J. Clover in her book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Clover suggests that in these films, the viewer begins by sharing the perspective of the killer, but experiences a shift in identification to the final girl partway through the film.

The final girl has been observed in dozens of films, including Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Hellraiser, Alien and Scream.

 According to Clover, the final girl is typically sexually unavailable or virginal, avoiding the vices of the victims (sex, narcotic usage, etc.). She sometimes has a unisex name (e.g., Teddy, Billie, Georgie, Sidney).


Halloween (Wes Craven, 1978) Laurie Strode defines the final girl archetype in Haloween, specific detail is that she carrying books and later in the sequence she quotes 'ive forgotten my biology book' and the girls that she is with; the scream queens, laugh at her. She also wear unglamorous clothing - long cardigan and thick white tights and the final girl will be convetionally a brunette.    The final girl and the scream queens are binary opposites this is signified by the scream queens smoking and wearing much brighter clothers to stand out against the final girls dull colours. Scream (Wes Craven, 1996)   Sydney Prescott, the final girl she is signified to be the final girl through denoting her nightdress as long, old fashoined and childish. We also first see her doing her homework and she has the conventional brunette hair. The mise on scene is her bedroom as neat and tidy and not to the taste of a stereotyped teenage girl.   We get a false scare The boy refers to watching the excorsism previously and it reminding him of her. Final girl is a virgin 'i wouldnt dream of breaking your underware rule' Billy Looms

Here are some useful resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_girl
http://harpymarx.wordpress.com/2008/11/02/the-final-girl-misogyny-and-the-slasher-film/
http://lewismediamassacre.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/final-girl-theory.html

Festival Masterclasses

Warp Films 
Masterclass

We had the pleasure of going to York to the ASFF Short Film Festival including a Warp Films masterclass featuring Barry Ryan. Barry Ryan is a producer for Warp Films, the company is celebrating there 10th year anniversary this year.  Danny Cohen  on the other hand is a cinematographer for Working Title and is a member of the British Society Of Cinematographers, He has worked on a number of films and TV projects for the past 12 years and is very successful.




Danny Cohen Masterclass

Danny Cohen

This masterclass was the second one we viewed, it was set up as a relaxed conversation between himself and Mariayah Kaderbhai. Danny Cohen began explaining his road to a cinematographer and surprisingly a cinematographer is not what he imagined himself doing. Initially he took a social science degree and then therefore became a photographic technician which is how he got into the filming industry.

Danny Cohen gave inspiring and general tips to the audience for any aspiring directors, producers and mainly cinematographers. An example of an inspiring tip would be when he said that "you have to be very resourceful, you're never going to have enough equipment or crew". He also said that you "start small and make mistakes that then becomes something interesting". 

The masterclass also included alot of footage in which Cohen had been a part of which gave the audience the scale of how many projects he had worked on well known films such as This Is England and The Kings Speech.

Barry Ryan Masterclass

Barry Ryan

This masterclass was the first of our viewings, this was set up in a much different way to Danny Cohens, Ryan had a presentation on screen which he used to address the audience and offer useful information. Ryan was keen to tell us that it was Warp Films 10th year anniversary. He elaborated on many different things including, marketing and distributing a film. He spoke a lot about how they were celebrating 10 years and he mentioned all the achievements and what they have accomplished over that time, for example 18 films and 5 TV series which i see as a valuable achievement.  



MicroDrama: Finished Film and Reflection

MicroDrama: Finished Film and Reflection

Low angle, long shot when we were all together

Shots and Camera angles:
We used a number of different shots and camera angles for a number of different reasons. We used lots of High angles shot early on in the film to hint that the characters are very vulnerable and to also give the audience a sense of anticipation.

We used an establishing shot at the beginning to give the audience a sense of the location for our micro-drama, this is common in a lot of horror films. We used this for the very first shot of the house and the boys coming into the shot because it 

High angle, mid shot

created a sense of equilibrium, which is what we wanted at the
start of our film.





                                                                   
Mise en scene:

The suitcases for mise en scene

In terms of mise en scene, to be honest it wasn't one of the main focuses whilst we were shooting however we knew we needed a few key pieces of mise en scene to signify certain things so the audience would meet our preferred reading.

We used the suitcases to signify that the boys were going on a holiday of some sort.

Beer cans

We played up to the stereotype of teenagers in our micro-drama a way we chose to signify this was to show beer cans in certain shots.




Editing:

Match on action used

We used the simple editing techniques in our micro-drama to give the film continuity and to not break the verisimilitude.


Sound:

The sound we used in our micro-drama was non-digetic sound. As it links in with the editing we didn't have time to produce a sound track or include any sound effects, this is what lets the micro-drama down.


To summarise, this was our first time doing anything like this and i think we did quite well in the end. Although there are a few things i would change and things i would do differently. The good thing is from this we were able to take feedback and we know how to do certain things in certain ways and hopefully i can apply my knowledge to future coursework tasks.

Microdrama: Editing

Editing

In our group we split into 2 different editing groups, it would of been to much work to watch, if all 7 of us each individually editing the film ourselves. In my group there was George, Jake and Ben. We all worked together whilst editing this each putting in valid points across to make our micro drama better. We didn't struggle whilst editing the micro drama as we did have enough footage and we weren't missing any vital shots. However, we could have done with a lot more shot variety so we could of had more footage to play around with to break up the long takes - which was seemingly an issue whilst watching the finished micro drama.

The process started by importing all of our footage from the memory card onto the computers hard drive and then onto Final Cut Pro which therefore appeared in the final cut library. From this we were able to delete our excess footage and keep the footage that we needed. We then added our footage to the timeline a began to build up our micro drama.

We decided to include titles in the opening scenes, we used the titles tool to create the text and choose our choice of words carefully, we decided to include the title 'lads on tour' in the opening but we saved the credits until the end because we felt it was not appropriate to include them at the beginning. Also the transitions tool was used to fade from black to normal to create a suspense for the audience this method seemed effective at the time we edited but proved not so when we watched them over.

Another thing we added in the editing process which we couldn't do whilst filming or we couldn't get a sound that created a sense of realism, was adding in additional sound effects. We chose from a wide range of sound affects in the sound library and chose the ones best fitting. Also we could make our own music from a keyboard which we composed ourselves and then imported it to this library that added it to the scenes which we wanted the music in.

Microdrama: The Shoot

The Shoot

We organised for the shooting to be held on the 2nd of November, due to the credit of social networking we were able to communicate and organised this date easily therefore, each of us knew where we were shooting and what time we had to be there.

The Suitcase scene

We encountered many problems during the shooting process of the micro drama, to mention a few; our
arrival scene was next to a busy road luckily there wasn't any dialogue at this point in the film but we wanted to get the sound of suitcases trailing along the floor which took a few attempts as we had to wait for gaps in the traffic. Another problem we had was the lighting, this is where our creative thinking came in, because the rooms in Ben's house were so dark whoever was not in the shot had to hold a phone torch next to the camera so the light was better and it produced a better shot. Other problems consisted of pure stupidity from my classmates with unintentional noises and so on but this problems was easily solved by removing them from the room.

Through shooting the micro drama we definitely helped ourselves in gaining experience from this and what we can do next time to make our films better, things such as close ups to show characters emotions we forgot to use due to the rush of the filming, another thing we could of done better was to create a sense of realism which we did in some places but not in others this affected our preferred reading. Our main lesson we can take from this is to film alot more shots of alot more variety so we have alot of shots to work with in the editing process.

Microdrama: Planning

Planning

The task we were given was to use the key narrative theories to create a micro drama with our class, we had the choice to work together or in separate groups, the choice to work in separate groups was made - Boys vs Girls. Not only were we sure that we would make a better micro drama than the girls but we also knew we would work together much better in a smaller group and our creative minds wouldn't clash, as well as our personalities if we were to work with the girls.

So the planning process began, we had all viewed each others pitches beforehand, so the case was to choose a pitch that would work well with the facilities and budget that we had. Therefore Georges pitch was the one we all thought would work best. The pitch was that 5 boys were on a 'holiday' at a rented house where they would be greeted by a serial killer, and they would consequently each be individually killed.

The aspects of narrative our group thought we could use were to some extent Propps 8 recurring character types, in having a villain involved in our micro drama but apart from that the other 7 characters such as the doner, helper, princess, dispatcher, hero and the false hero would not fit into our drama. Todorovs narrative theory went along with our micro drama better but we still decided to change it up abit, we planned to include a state of equilibrium at the outset, a disruption of the equilibrium and a recognition that there has been a disruption, as our micro drama ends un-solved an attempt to repair the disruption and a reinstatement of the equilibrium would not be needed.

Our production schedule was to film on the 2nd of November, Ben told us that we could use his house for filming so we organised the date and seen as though we had a whole day we knew we would get all of the filming done that we needed.

Key Narrative Theories

Vladimir Propp

As well as proposing that narratives can be broken down into 31 basic functions Vladimir Propp argued that there are essentially just seven basic character types, or archetypes.

1. Villain - also known as the antagonist they are the 'bad guy' of the film and they never usually end up 'winning' or having the best outcome at the end of the film.

2.Donor - this person usually helps prepare the hero for for what they have to overcome or gives them something to help them.

3. (magical) Helper - helps the hero in their quest.

4. The princess or prize - the hero that deserves her/it throughout the story but is unable to marry her at he beginning of the story due to whatever villain is doing to stop them.

5. The princess and her father - gives the task to the hero, identifies the false hero, marries the hero, Propp noted that the father and the princess can be quite hard to distinguish between.

6. the Dipatcher - character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off.

7. Hero/Victim - reacts to the donor, weds the princess, also known as the protagonist.

8. False Hero/Anti Hero - takes credit for the hero's actions and tries to marry the princess.

These roles could sometimes be distributed among various characters, as the hero kills the villain dragon, and the dragons sister takes on the villainous role of chasing him. Conversely, one character could engage in acts as more than one role, as a father could send his son on the quest and give him a sword acting as both dispatcher and donor.

Todorov


Todorov is associated with the theory that every narrative can be broken down into 3 basic stages. Equilibrium, dis-equilibrium and new equilibrium. Crucially, the protagonist is not the same as at the outset but has been changed in some way from events. People generally refer to the easier 3 part model but in fact he proposed 5 stages.
1. A state of equilibrium at the outset
2. A disruption of the equilibrium by some action
3. A recognition that there has been a disruption
4. An attempt to repair the disruption
5. A reinstatement of the equilibrium.

Levi Strauss


When we consider the use of stereotypes it is often evident how a binary opposition is at play. For example how we describe a stereotypical poor or working class person in broadly the opposite of how we would describe a middle class or upper class person. Scenes within dramas often reflect this idea with clashing pairs. These binary opposites are what often cause conflict or tension.

Semiotics Rap

Semiotics Rap

We were each told to individually produce a rap which highlighted the key elements and features of semiotics, we then had to perform this to the class.

Yo this is my media rap
this stuff is not whack
first comes connotation this is nothing like denotation
analysis of symbolism is how we define this
this is a thing you cannot miss
next there is a signifier
thisis when a symbol is made clear
another thing is polysemy
this thing is not heavy
it has possible meanings
and could do with some cleaning
but people may want to hide their meaning
this is narrative enigma for the screening
that is the end of my rap.

Semiotics: The concepts & Key terms

Semiotics: The concepts & Key terms

Signifier & Signified
A signifier is a single detail we pick out which we think has symbolic meaning. (The signified): A low angle shot (the signifier) often signifies power or stregnth; with a high angled shot the signified is ofte n weakness or vunerability.

Denote/Conote
Denotation = description of what we see or hear; connotation = the symbolic meaning of these factual details: When we can denote a male having stubble and dark hair this often conotes villainy; this may be anchored through the use of menacing no digetic music.

Binary Opposition
The juxtaposition of the refined parson high up on horseback, and the lowly D'Urbville character, at the very beginning of the Tess mini series is an example of binary oppositio: any mutually exclusive pair form a binary opposition (male/female, rich/poor, rural/urban)

Polysemy/Anchorage
Every media text is essentially polysemic: It has many possible meanings. Our interpretation will be influenced by our knowledge of other texts, genres, our values, cultural background, age and gender. Signifiers are embedded within the text to point us towards a particular preffered, interpretation.

Commutation Test
Always consider what we dont see; the choices the producers have rejected

Preffered/Contested/Oppositional Reading
We may be maily considering what we consider to be the preffered reading, but as the texts are all polysemic, they are open to contested or even oppositional readings.

Narrative Enigma
Mysterious elements within a text form narrative enigma, needed in any drama

Intertextuality
Meaning of one text is tied to another, earlier text, e.g. to fully understand scary movie you'd need to have seen scream, which it spoofs. This can cause contested readings.