"The Kuleshov Effect is a film editing (montage) effect demonstrated by Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov in the 1910s and 1920s.It is a mental phenomenon by which viewers derive more meaning from the interaction of two sequential shots than from a single shot in isolation." - Wikipedia
Me, Emma and Jake attempted to recreate this effect within the school premises as it would be important to understand the effect of cutaways to maximum capacity to prepare us ultimately for our AS Thriller Piece.
Lev Kuleshov was a Soviet Filmmaker who was originally involved with the dissection of the basics of filmmaking, he researched the dissection of film for juxtaposition and in consequence revolutionised the assembly of film.
"In a 1964 interview for the show Telescope, Alfred Hitchcock called this technique “pure cinematics – the assembly of film.” Sir Hitchcock says that if a close-up of a man smiling is cut with a shot of a woman playing with a baby, the man is portrayed as “kindly” and “sympathetic.” By the same token, if the same shot of the smiling man is cut with a girl in a bikini, the man is portrayed as “dirty.”" - Elements of Cinema
I have decided to research the BBFC Age Rating System, what makes a film a 15? what makes a film an 18?
Due to my film being a thriller, to be appropriate and befitting I believe it would have to be rated either 15 or 18.
If I watched a 15 rated film, what would I expect to see? (extract from BBFC.co.uk)
strong violence
frequent strong language (e.g. 'f***').
portrayals of sexual activity
strong verbal references to sex
sexual nudity
brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence
discriminatory language or behaviour
drug taking
If I watched an 18 rated film, what would I expect to see? (Extract from BBFC.co.uk)
very strong violence
frequent strong language (e.g. 'f***') and / or very strong language (e.g. ‘c***’)
strong portrayals of sexual activity
scenes of sexual violence
strong horror
strong blood and gore
real sex (in some circumstances)
discriminatory language and behaviour
I was unaware, but there is also an age classification called R18 which in common tongue is porn, even pornographic content has a content restriction, for example, in an R18 film, consensual sex is allowed but some certain extreme features are not allowed such as Urolagnia and uses of illegal drugs.
I predict that our thriller piece will only have an age rating of 15, if we include any violence into it then it will be implied, there will be limited dialogue, definitely not enough to include swearing. The film would be 15 but the opening could even be a 12, it will be dark and have a tone of crime but it won't include gore nor blood, only a scene where the murder of a woman is implied.
The cultivation theory divides audience into Light Viewers and Heavy Viewers
- Heavy Viewers are affected by the Mean World Syndrome, where they believe the world is nastier than they think.
These watch TV for 4 or more hours a day.
- Light Viewers watch the TV for less than 4 hours a day.
Chandler put forward the argument that "The more we live with TV, the more invisible it becomes"
believing that what we become tolerant of what we watch on TV, if we watch a lot of violence on TV then we will believe its socially acceptable to be more violent.
It was put forward that the more TV you watch; the more materialistic you get, indifferent about environmental issues, more racist and more violent
George Gerbner observed that in primetime, TV was 80% violence. So, heavy viewers was watching 80% violent TV, if his theory was correct, proving that the Heavy Viewers would get about 80% more violent due to their tolerance with violence in real life.
The Hypodermic Needle theory
When the entire concept of advertising and conveying a message was still fairly new, when TV was only a couple of decades old, Governments was interested with advertising and in effect, Propaganda was created to try and persuade people to do as they said, exactly.
The Hypodermic Needle theory suggests that the message relayed in advertisements will transmit itself into the mass consciousness of the mass audience, it implies that all audiences are passive or heterogenous. That what we watch on TV will affect us directly and brainwash us into doing what the media makers want, if they advertise a lot of violent TV then we will be violent.
The Uses and Gratification theory
This theory is different to the preceding two theories as both of them (Gerbner and Lazasrfeld)
The film industry began with The Lumière Brothers shooting their first film named Arrival of A Train At La Ciotat in 1896. These brothers are iconic to the film industry as their work features in the modern film named Hugo directed by Martin Scorsese.
The Lumière Brothers created a lot of films, for example Moscow: Tverskaia Street and The Pyramids. These then inspired other early cinematographers such as Georges Méliès (who also features in Hugo) with the film Le Voyage Dans La Lune, the revolution of films took the world by surprise, the notion of moving images simply of a train heading towards the camera eventually evolved in the creation of Blockbusters such as Avatar and Inception, the gradual change of silent movies, to colour, to CGI, to 3D is truly remarkable.
From Méliès to Hitchcock to Scorsese to Fincher to Tarantino to Mendes, from Rear Window and Psycho to Kill Bill and American Beauty, the creation of genres took place later on when the audience began to expect more.
A moving train used to be enough to wow an audience, now it takes a lot more, innovative and unique plot with great character development, themes to your preference and other factors that The Lumiere Brother's didn't have to take into effect, they could create what technology allowed them to, whatever their imagination could allow them to imagine and create.
In this textual analysis I will be analysing the film industry as a whole, however I will especially highlight the Contemporary Thriller Genre as that is my end goal, I will keep in mind my practical task, to create a short opening to a thriller film.
Before we begin creating our movie, we need to research the context of development, there are five phases when creating a movie, these are:
Development
Pre-production
Production
Post-production
Distribution
I will be discussing all 5 of these stages thoroughly in this blog post.
Development
In development there are a further 8 factors to consider.
Story - developing the script with the director and script editor. Converting the first draft into second drafts until they eventually reach a final
Appeal
Genre
Past Experience
Budget
Castability
Marketability
Payability
There is such a phrase that Filmmakers dread, Development Hell, where an idea gets tossed about that much, scripts get thrown away just as many times as one is written, time is wasted at business meetings after business meetings and the entire meaning of the film gets altered from one thing to the exact opposite within the space of 2 hours. Where no concept gets "caught" all ideas just float about, this movie then lands itself in Development Hell.
In development you need to hire the original team, Screenwriter, Directors and Assistant Directors, Cinematographer and all the crew; Location Scout, Costume Designers etc. It is where you decide whether the film will be financially viable, have an audience. It's the key part of filmmaking where people fail due to lack of preparation.
Preproduction
In preproduction, it is what it states, you prepare for production.
Filmmakers plan the locations, plan shooting, plan the budget, casting, shot list, costumes, overall organisation, travel and accommodation.
If Development has been done well then Preproduction should be a lot easier, Preproduction is a key, where Storyboarding and Scriptwriting has to be finalised ready for Production.
Production
Production is where the actual filming takes place, this is where the cast rehearse and the crew plan the scenes to create the ideal situation, principal photography is done. All of the plans from Preproduction and Development get converted into the Production process, all of the shots are created, all the scenes are filmed.
The shot would have been blocked by the director and all people need to do is keep to the plan and shoot the film.
Postproduction
In Postproduction, all of the footage shot in Production is edited, put together in an appropriate sequence, the sound is mixed, specialist people will be hired to use The Art of Foley to create more realistic sounds, the score is created, sound effects and music is finalised. A trailer should be created, a 90 second clip that will be interesting enough to give the viewers a small overview of the film. Depending on in which language it was shot in and where the film is being distributed, dialogue scripts should be created so when played in foreign countries, sub-titles will be used to aid in understanding dialogue. All the finishing touches should be made, visual effects created and it should be ready to be a feature film. Distribution
The success of a film is usually celebrated by the director, producer and screen writer, etc. However an even bigger part to the film making process is distributor and marketer. In my opinion the film Cloverfield was marketed extremely well. The film itself only achieved a 7.1 rating on IMDB but managed to gross over $80,000,000. It released a series of teaser trailers to spark a lot of hype.
Cloverfield used techniques of viral marketing such as: Teaser Trailers, Synergy (with Japanese drink named Slusho) and an extremely intriguing technique where they created their own websites spreading conspiracies similar to those reached in Cloverfield to attract more viewers and hype.
Distribution is important to advertise the film, to create revenue for the film, to get viewers and audience to increase the overall income.
Films will be played in cinemas all over the world, the more cinemas that play your film, the more people will watch your film, distribution allows people to watch the movie and in effect raise the total gross of the film.
Barthes' narrative codes consist of: Action Codes, Enigma Codes, Semiotic Codes, Cultural Codes and Code of Opposition.
During our preliminary task we was unaware of these narrative codes, however, we included all of them, possibly unintentionally due to our awareness of the genre and intention to create a believable thriller.
The narrative codes was implemented by Barthes, a French literary theorist. In essence it id the concept of the narrative being told implicitly by these 5 codes.
The Enigma Code (Hermeneutic Code)We interweaved this code in the diegetic dialogue implying a sub-plot. When I see 'It's not going to be as easy as you think'. The mystery of the plot is shown by lack of information spoken about. However we could have used visual enigmas to raise questions to and suspicion within the piece. We would have had a greater effect on the audience if we had used visual effects such as a letter or a mask to cover the identity of the man, saying this I believe our implicit plot was enough to create buzz. The Hermeneutic Code is refers to plot elements of a story that are not explained. They exist as enigmas and rely on the audiences interpretation for meaning.
The Action Code (Proairetic Code) This code refers to the plot development and is used to imply further narrative plot. This code creates a lot of suspense as it relies on anticipation of the audience, it shows the initial action, the audience suspects what will happen next but the mystery isn't uncovered until the director wants it to be. This code can be used as a shock tactic as an unconventional secondary action could be used to scare or to break tension. We used this code when our assassin opens the door, it is quite obvious that she will then walk through the door. It is currently implied what she is going to do due to the context, this is then backed up by the next shot of her in the next room.
The Semic Code (Semiotic Code) This code uses signs and symbols, the semantics of visual expressions to add context and ambience to the narrative. Saussure insists that language is “form and not a substance”. Him and Barthes' have similar belief with this code as he believes everything has a semantic field, everything. Every sign and symbol has a relationship of signifier and signified. For example the word "open". When the signifier "open" is seen outside of the shop window, it is obvious that the shop is open (the signified). We used this in our preliminary task as both characters wear darker coloured clothes, we used the spectrum of blacks and greens to show villain or antagonistic representations.
The Cultural Code (Referential Code) This code refers to everything in the narrative text that suggest external knowledge such as; time period and location. Within our preliminary project we unintentionally projected the cultural codes of Britain due to our accents, language and ethnicity. These 3 stereotypes allow the audience to assume we are English. We could go further to admit the weather was extremely british on the day of shooting, this could suggest location too. The Code of Oppositions (Binary Opposites) This code refers to exact opposites to most commonly juxtapose one another and have a more significant effect on the audience. The Yin and Yang is an extremely good example for the binary opposition of black and white, good and evil, passive and aggressive and femininity and masculinity. We used The Code of Oppositions with man and woman, I being the man, directly contrasted to Emma, the woman however we could have used more oppositions within our piece.
Utopia utilises the notorious comic-book aesthetics throughout the series unlike any other TV series, this composition of colours creates an ambience of futuristic change. As this colour combination is unorthodox, people find the colours quite disturbing, unsettling especially within the context of Utopia.
The colour correction used in Utopia is extremely effective as it makes a clear contrast between the darker colours and the lighter colours.
Conventionally TV uses the colour palette of Technicolor's - greens, blues and reds but Utopia uses colours of magenta, cyan and yellows. Munden, the director of Utopia has been influenced by 1950 Doris Day films with the yellows and turquoises. The main influence was the elements of comic-book look. I believe they use the different colour palette to create a type of escapism, a visual representation of diversion.
Within the post-production they use the grading software Nucoda Film Master. “As lenses and equipment get more sophisticated, film-makers are getting closer to a very ‘real’ look – but I wanted to do the opposite of that,” says Marc Munden. He says that "he wanted to create a world that felt recognisable in its issues and characters, but also heightened and delirious.”
It was shot in Autumnal England, quite a bland, bleak time. Nature looks extremely bleak, this gives the editors a 'blank canvas' to create the ideal look.
In the pre-production for our preliminary task, Jake, Emma and I decided to compose a script as we are using actors external from our media class, this will overall increase the realism of the film, however we are currently having issues with communication and organising the times and dates of shooting. We decided a script was essential, no matter how little dialogue we are having in our project - it will not only increase our scriptwriting skills but also improve the quality of performance of our actors. I will print these out and hand them out to our actors so they know what to say, when we shoot I will direct to get the desired look.
Sunday 5 October 2014
Preliminary Project: Location Scout
In the task of making our short film we are still in the pre-production section; Emma, Jake and I went on trip through our school. As I am new to this location we relied on Jake to give us a tour and take us to all possible locations.
The criteria was that the room had to be quite big to fit the table and could potentially be quite dark so that we could create a sinister feel to the scene. By having a darker room the mise-en-scene would be easier to create due to low-key lighting and by applying obvious conventions of thriller and horror.To do this we had to stay away from coloured rooms of Yellow and Green.
Preliminary Project: Story boarding
In the pre-production of every film, story boarding is key. We had been asked to story board our two minute clip, personally I found it difficult to plan what we would shoot in the future, especially as this is prior to the location scout. We developed a narrative and some iconic shots to horror we could use to create an extremely tense Job Interview.
Even though art isn't our strongest skill we made it as legible as possible however we used it to give us a strong overview of what to shoot, we gave it a quick description such as camera movement, diegetic and non-diegetic sounds and editing techniques.
We drew up some camera shots that we need to move the plot along and some shots that will create an extremely tense shot, we combined a variety of camera shots and editing styles such as a simple close up to a graphic match.
Chiefly, we will use the storyboards so we didn't forget what we was going to shoot and how we was going to shoot it, also, so we can shoot it all in one go and then move onto post-production without having to revisit the production of the film.
Sunday 28 September 2014
Preliminary Project: Brief
As part of our preliminary project we have been asked to create a piece of film which involves a character walking through a door and exchanging a piece of dialogue with a secondary character; sounds boring right? However, we created an interesting plot of 'An Interview with an Assassin' which will be fun to shoot and watch, however it has a lot of potential to be extremely cinematically tense.
We was given a set list of continuity techniques it had to include such as: 180 degree rule, match on action and shot/reverse shot.
180 Degree Rule
The 180 degree rule is a continuity convention which keeps the camera at one side of the action. It gives the characters a horizontal relationship,an axis in which the camera stays along, it gives the audience better spatial awareness of the characters positions. Sometimes this convention is broken to cause disorientation or other effects; it causes great cinematic tension.
Match on action
Match on action is another continuity technique where editing is used to merge two shots to form a believable sequence of film due to the continuity of match on action. The seamless merge of to different shots will cause the audience to fall for the illusion of continuity due to the believable similarities of the shots, match on action is making the two shots (even though being shot separately) look as if they have been shot chronologically.
Reverse Shot
A reverse shot is used when two players are conversing; in order to convey to the audience the action of conversation the camera has to shoot them in opposite directions so that the audience assumes that they are looking at each other.
Preliminary Task
In this task I am in a group with Emma and Jake, collectively we decided to create a sinister 'Interview with an Assassin' as this plot could be took as satire horror, we will have to deal with the Scary Movie cliches and tackle them to create an immaculately tense film.
For our first ever short-assignment we were given the cameras to shoot certain camera shots but try and involve a narrative into it - at first, we was perplexed with what we were being asked to do but then me and two other students rushed off to start shooting our story.
Our first shot is (like always) an establishing shot, we used this shot to set the scene and immediately give the audience key information such as; genre, setting and plot. This shot reveals information that it is of course set in a school, I think this establishing shot did a good job of fulfilling its purpose as we was coming to grips with the new equipment.
Our next shot was a long shot of the hall, where our protagonist was revising, this long shot reveals deeper insight to the context such as type of school, it also homes down onto the plot a lot more and makes it more obvious to the audience by bringing a lot of attention to the main protagonists location. The protagonist also looks isolated and alone in this shot, which can raise questions to the audience such as 'why?', this sparks tension.
We then tried to replicate visual lines on screen, it tells the audience where to look however I don't feel that in this shot I managed to pull that off.
This shot is a high angled medium shot, it is high angled so the protagonist instantly looks inferior, to convey his character accurately we made him look like all he wants to do is revise, using mis-en-scene in this shot (and the main reason this was a medium shot) we had to see his body language. His head is down and he wants to revise, this implies he is a weak character, coinciding with the high angle shot.
The over the shoulder shot shows what the protagonist can see. It brings attention to what he is doing as well as who is doing it. This shot shows what the protagonist is doing and brings attention the the background.
This is a point of view shot, similar to the over the shoulder shot however this shows a lot more empathy, this physically puts you in the character's shoes where as over the shoulder shot is a lot less personal.
This is a low angle shot which now reveals the antagonist, he is clearly a lot more violent and menacing in comparison to the protagonist, the two characters juxtapose due to the visual hierarchy and power shown by height on shot. The angle makes the man look taller than he is and makes the audience feel a lot smaller than the antagonist, this shows that he is more dominant.
My name is Oliver Revill and I will be studying Media Studies at Tupton Hall School during 2014.
In this post I will be introducing myself and will be reflecting on my interest in Media
Prior to joining Tupton Hall School I had already achieved the grade A at GCSE Media level, the course was primarily focussed on creating a horror trailer, that then got entered into DAFTA Award Ceremony. It was a long process yet extremely fun, I am aware I have much but scratched the surface in the filmmaking business and I have a strong desire to learn more.
Filming and Media has been a very strong interest in mine for a couple of years now being extremely fond of watching and critiquing many of them, I then had my personal aspiration to create a film. I would eventually like to pursue a career in the film business whether that means being a filmmaker or for a production company.
As an avid film watcher, I especially like films such from Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and Sucker punch to American History X and Memento - however my all time favourite film would be American Beauty.
TV series' are also a strong love of mine as an intensely embarrassing fan of Game of Thrones, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, Sherlock and Luther.
I am extremely interested in the majority of contemporary media sources such as; Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Reddit.
The task I will be doing on this course to produce the first 3 minutes to a thriller film, I will do a lot of research and try to create the best possible opening.
I look forward to produce this film and hopefully succeed in this task.
