Where I am now

What I have been doing these past weeks
Recently, because I am the editor, I have been in and out of the studio editing the footage that we have filmed so far. I've been familiarising myself with Final Cut Pro, and capturing clips from our tape and saving them in the right places on the computer. I have then been looking back at my teaser plan and shot lists to remember what we want our teaser to looks like and where abouts on the timeline I need to position certain clips.
I have also been researching some film posters briefly, to get some inspiration as to what I want my film poster to look like. One of the film posters that I looked at was for the film 'Alfie'. Our group has looked very closely at this film, and so I thought it would be highly useful to see what the poster for it looked like.

As you can see, this particularly poster for 'Alfie' is extremely simple, yet quite sophisticated. The 'L' has been substituted for a photo of Jude Law, which I feel is quite clever and makes the whole poster looks much more visually interesting. The white background contrasts with the black text, making the headings stand out extremely well. The letters of the word have also been positioned on different levels, making the poster quite playful and suggests to the audience what Alfie's character might be like before they have even seen the film. For my poster, I want to keep it this simple and professional, yet I would also like to include images of the women that features in the film as well, to give users a much clearer idea as to who is in our film.

Planning

Filming Schedule
As we are working in quite a big group, I decided that it would make things a lot easier if I created a schedule for everyone to be able to see easily where each member of our group was during the week.

I created this schedule in Excel, writing out when every member of our group had study sessions between the hours of 08.30-3.30, Monday to Friday. I colour coded each member so that it was clear who was who, and I highlighted the different time periods in yellow where we were all in the same study sessions. I printed a copy for each member of our group so that whenever someone needed to know where a group member was, they could check the schedule and easily see.

Contact List
Although the filming schedule shows you where they are meant to be, some group members may not actually be in the common room during their study sessions. That is we why decided to create a contact list so that if a group member needed to get hold of someone urgently, they could easily phone them on their mobiles or send them an email.

(I have blurred out the numbers to protect our group members' privacy)

Time Plan
This is a gantt chart that I made using Microsoft Project. It shows how long each task of this project will take, as well as the dates that we should complete them by. By creating this time plan, it means that our group can stay on track of things, and know what we need to do and when to do it by to make sure our project is finished in time.

Alfie

Alfie, similar to John Tucker Must Die, is also about a man, this time in his late twenties, who lives in Manhattan and works as a limousine driver. He too lives a hedonistic lifestyle "meeting, romancing, and seducing women" as a hobby.

As the trailer opens, you can immediately see the different audience that Alfie is targetting. First of all, the music is a laid back sort of jazz which is completely different to the more upbeat and technologically advanced track played in the opening of John Tucker. It also shows Alfie, a working man travelling alone in a city, and not at an American High School. This immediately suggests that the target audience is much older, probably women aged between 20 and 35 years of age. Also shown in the beginning seconds of the trailer are clips of Manhattan and its skyline. This immediately sets the scene that it is based in America. However, Jude Law, the character who plays Alfie, is an English -born actor. By casting a British actor to appear in this American film it is clear that it is going to be released internationally, therefore intending to appeal to a much wider audience.

There is a much clearer message that runs throughout this film, and as a viewer, I picked it up much more quickly then I did with John Tucker, which I feel is purely just a film for entertainment value. 'Alfie' possesses much more serious issues, for example the cancer scare that Alfie has during the film. He teaches the audience not to be so shallow and to enjoy every day as if it were your last.

John Tucker Must Die

'John Tucker Must Die' is an American film of the genre 'romantic comedy'. Released in 2006, it focuses on three girls who want to get revenge on a boy in the year who has secrely been dating all three of them.

The trailer begins with clips of John Tucker playing basketball in an American High School. This immediately suggests that the target audience is probably females aged between 14-19 years. The music playing is also a song by the All-American Rejects, which not only relates to the plot of the film, but also appeals to the modern day target audience of young teenagers. As the trailer continues, we hear a voice over of the second -to-lead character, who describes to the audience the situation. The different shots cut quickly into each other, which adds to the whole chaotic atmosphere of the basketball game, and appeals very much to the younger audience who would have no problem keeping up. The language used by the character also appeals very much to the target audience, using phrases such as 'She's so hot!".

It is clear that this film is a modern adaption of the film 'Alfie', aimed at a much younger audience. However, it was given an age certificate of PG13 in America, due to the amount of sexual references throughout. We want our film to appeal to those between the age of 13 and 18 years of age, meaning that it would receive a 12A rating. This therefore means that we need to be careful when referencing anything of a sexual nature.

30th November - 4th December

My Role:
What I have done this week
At the beginning of this week, I was in charge of creating a moodboard for our film 'Nick'. I created this moodboard on Animoto, as this website allows for you to create a short video with exciting and interesting effects. In our moodboard, I decided to include images from other films where we have gotten inspiration from such as 'Alfie' and 'John Tucker Must Die'. I also included images of locations where we would like to film, such as Central London and Starbucks Coffee house. This particular location of central london, and filming in coffee shops such as Starbucks really gives a good impression of where the main character is from and the life he leads. He is extremely busy and earns quite a high salary, due to the fact he lives alone in the central of London.

I have also been in charge of drawing a storyboard and creating an Animatic for our film, based on Susan's (a member of my group) shotlist that she provided. However, the story board does vary slightly from the shots that she gave me as we wanted as many different ideas as possible to make sure that our final shotlist is the best one.

When drawing the storyboard, I remembered to keep all the boxes the same. This was so that when I come to creating my animatic, it flowed better and looks much more professional. I remembered to include every single shot, even drawing a character's movements for example if someone is walking. The more frames you include, the more realistic your final animatic will be. Once I had finished scanning in my images (I chose not to photograph them as the lighting would change for every photo I took), I then cropped them on Adobe Photoshop to make sure that they are all identical in size. I then imported them each individually into Windows Movie Maker, where I set the transition to less then a second. This means that when I played my movie, the images would move extremely quickly and look like real moving footage. I then added some jazz music into the background, which reflects the lead character's personality (laid back and easy going). However, this music that I used was in fact the ssample music already given to me on the computer. Although I felt that this still worked quite well, I could have used a more unique song to make my animation different from anyone has ever seen of heard before.
I used Vimeo to upload my video and copy the code onto my blog.

Next week, I am going to be present when my group is filming, giving my advice and watching to see how it is all going. The next time I will have an active role will be when all footage has been filmed and I will begin editing it on the computer.

Animatic Video

Nick from Lucy Cornelius on Vimeo.

I created this animatic, which gives viewers an idea as to what our film teaser trailer will look like. I drew each image individually in the same sized box, so that when i did eventually put the pictures together, it looked as if it were moving. Although this process was quite long and required me to have a lot of patience, I feel that it was worth it as the final result was quite successful.

I created the actual animatic in Windows Movie Maker. I did this by making the duration of each image extremely short, so that the images would flick from one to another extremely quickly. This gave the impression of movement. I then added a song by the band 'The Script', as I felt that this slow and romantic music fitted in well with the genre of the film.

MoodBoard

This is my moodboard that I created using Animoto. I decided to include many images of London City, as this is where we want our film to be set. By choosing well known landmarks, viewers will also be able to clearly see that this is a British film. I also included some images of films that inspired us when we were creating the synopsis to our film. Inspiration came from films such as Alfie and John Tucker Must Die.