Friday, 8 January 2010

Evaluation

This is my evaluation of the video, it includes audience feedback from people who have seen the film.

Video

This is the final video, there are some problems with the editing near the end with a cut which is too fast, but I have addressed the main issues with the previous piece. The length has been increased and the music and titles have been changed.


Friday, 11 December 2009

Re-do



Due to the grade I got for this coursework I have decided to re do it. I am going to use the original film, but add to it and remove certain parts which are not good. I filmed in late October and will hopefully finish editing by Monday 14th December. Unfortunately Jack isn't here anymore so I'm doing it all by myself. Cue the Celine Dion.

Due to the fact any aspects containing characters would create large continuity error I have mostly filmed some establishing shots and some Point of view shots. The main problems with the old film was the length, the titles and the music. The previous film wasn't even a minute long however after I have finished editing it should meet the 2 minute requirement. The titles were not in keeping with the Thriller theme, however they are an easy problem to change so I will use something more conventional. The music was also a problem, as we tried to use part of a Finch track but it wasn't thriller-y enough. However I have found a more conventional track ('Blue Sizzle' by Kevin MacLeod) which is a synth composed piece with a low bass sound and some epic swells. This creates a dark atmosphere and should work well with the sense of mystery and the unknown involved in the video. The music is roylaty free so it is legal to use it.

Friday, 6 March 2009

Preliminary task.

This is our preliminary task. We had to film two people talking in a room including 180 degree rule and shot revers shot and match on action. Yeah.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5gT_nzJwH0
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Thursday, 22 January 2009

Cloverfield.


Cloverfield is a horror/thriller film directed by Matt Reeves, produced by J. J. Abrams and written by Drew Goddard. It was released in 2008. The film is set in New York and is filmed as though from a handheld digital camera.

The movie starts as though the camera has been found after the story, with official numbers written over it. There is a disclaimer stating that the following footage is of a case designated "Cloverfield" and was found in the area "formerly known as Central Park. This builds tension and suspense as to what will happen because we are left unknowing. Then the camera is being used and voiced over by a character looking round his apartment in New York. The screen has a time and date stamp on to make the handheld camera seem real, the characters are also aware of the cameras presence. It then cuts to a later time (shown by the change of time in the time stamp) a character is walking with it shakily down the street. There are cuts which don’t match as this shows when the character has stopped filming. All this helps to add to authenticity of the digital camera. There is no music, apart from the diegetic music at the party. What happens is kept in suspense and not shown to us.

Wednesday, 14 January 2009

Hammer film productions


Hammer Film Productions is a film production company based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for the series of Gothic "Hammer Horror" films produced from the late 1950s until the 1970s. Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers and comedies – and in later years, television series. Hammer films were cheap to produce but nonetheless appeared lavish, making use of quality British actors and cleverly designed sets. During its most successful years, Hammer dominated the horror film market, enjoying worldwide distribution and considerable financial success. This success was due, in part, to distribution partnerships with major United States studios, such as Warner Brothers.
Hammer's first significant experiment with horror came in the form of a 1955 adaptation of Nigel Kneale's BBC Television science fiction serial The Quatermass Experiment, which was directed by Val Guest. As a consequence of the contract with Robert Lippert, American actor Brian Donlevy was imported for the lead role, and the title was changed to The Quatermass Xperiment to cash in on the new X certificate for horror films. The film was an unexpectedly big hit, and led to an almost equally popular 1957 sequel Quatermass 2 – again adapted from one of Kneale's television scripts, this time by Kneale himself and with a budget double that of the original: £92,000.
In the latter part of the 1970s, Hammer made fewer films, and attempts were made to break away from the then-unfashionable Gothic horror films on which the studio had built its reputation. Neither The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974), a co-production with Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers which attempted to combine Hammer's Gothic horror with the martial arts film, nor To the Devil a Daughter (1976), an adaptation of the Dennis Wheatley novel, were very successful. The company did, however, have some surprising commercial success with the 1971 film version of the ITV sitcom On the Buses, which was popular enough to produce two sequels, Holiday on the Buses (1972) and Mutiny on the Buses (1973). Hammer's last production, in 1979, was a remake of Hitchcock's 1938 thriller The Lady Vanishes, starring Elliot Gould and Cybill Shepherd. The film was a failure at the box office and all but bankrupted the studio.

Tuesday, 13 January 2009

Some horror films

Dracula
The huge box office success of The Curse of Frankenstein lead to the inevitable desire for a sequel in The Revenge of Frankenstein and an attempt to give the Hammer treatment to another horror icon. Dracula was yet another successful film character for Universal, and the copyright situation was even more complicated than Frankenstein. A full legal agreement between Hammer and Universal was not completed until 31 March 1958 – after the film had already been shot – and was 80 pages long.


John Van Eyssen as Jonathan Harker.
Meanwhile, the financial arrangement between AAP and Hammer had broken down when money promised by AAP had not arrived. Hammer began looking for alternatives, and with the success of The Curse of Frankenstein signed a deal with Columbia Pictures to distribute the sequel The Revenge of Frankenstein and two films from the defaulted AAP deal The Camp on Blood Island and The Snorkel. Hammer's financial success also meant the winding down of the parent film distribution company Exclusive, leaving Hammer to concentrate solely on filmmaking.



Alien
Alien is a 1979 science fiction/horror film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm and Yaphet Kotto. The film's title refers to its primary antagonist: a highly aggressive extraterrestrial creature which stalks and kills the crew of a spaceship.
Alien garnered both critical acclaim and box office success, receiving an Academy Award for Visual Effects, Saturn Awards for Best Science Fiction Film, Best Direction for Ridley Scott, and Best Supporting Actress for Veronica Cartwright, and a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, along with numerous other award nominations. It has remained highly praised in subsequent decades, being inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress for historical preservation as a film which is "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and being ranked by the American Film Institute as the seventh-best film in the science fiction genre.
The success of Alien launched a media franchise of novels, comic books, video games, and toys, as well as three sequel and two prequel films. It also launched Weaver's acting career by providing her with her first lead role, and the story of her character Ripley's encounters with the titular Alien creatures became the thematic thread that ran through the sequels Aliens (1986), Alien 3 (1992), and Alien Resurrection (1997). The subsequent prequels Alien vs. Predator (2004) and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007) diverged from this theme in favor of a crossover with the Predator franchise.