Finished Prelim

I am happy with the final outcome of our prelim, however I hope to improve over the course as there are many elements I am aware are not perfect and could do with improving. I enjoyed working in a group and found w whelped each other and spread out the different roles when creating the piece.

Denotation - Connotation

Google's definitions:

• Denotation: the literal or primary meaning of a word, in contrast to the feelings or ideas that the word suggests.
• Connotation: 
  an idea or feeling which a word invokes for a person in addition to its literal or primary meaning.

The first image connotes a simple kitchen knife, however due to many past famous horror films, we also hold a sense of fear and gory, famous throughout all slasher films and in particular psycho, this is the denotation. A denotation is the surface meaning or what the image or object seems to be, the connotations of this are the deeper meaning is what we automatically associate this thing with.

Second Editing Session

Today we finished editing our prelim, it was not too challenging at first as we just had to cut the sections we wanted and put them in order. It then became challenging as we realized that the shots differentiated in sound and therefore made the cuts seem jumpy and disconnected. To solve this, however we decided to drag some of the audio from other  shots and try to match it with what the actor in the shot was doing. This was also hard as in the scene Tyler and I had said things at different speeds through out and this did not identically match what audio we were using. We also realised that when I say "I wont wait for you" I said it at slightly different times which meant syncing it with new audio became difficult. To fix this we added audio when my face was turned so therefore it looked as if I was saying it with out seeing my mouth moving therefore not showing any errors.

Kyle Cooper - American Horror Story

This is my favourite Kyle Cooper opening sequence as I find it disturbing and enticing. It begins silent with an extremely fast pan of a shadowy brick awl; straight into the hallway of an the asylum, there are light leaks and the sections of footage are quick and flash on the screen momentarily we see a clearly sick woman and an extreme close up of an eye, we begin to hear a mechanical sound which is repeated. we then hear louder noises which are scary and begin to crash and make the audience feel uncomfortable. There are light notes of a piano playing underneath and the last image we see is of a statue of Mary in which we see her face change.

I love the tension this scene builds and I feel the short sharp, quick changing shots compliment the light leaks and strange/haunting music. 

Kyle Cooper - Spider Man

This opening tittle sequence begins with an exciting and dramatic start, we see the classic Marvel comic's flashing as dramatic orchestral music is played over the top. We then see "Marvel" followed by "A Columbia Pictures production" this gives us an idea of what film we are watching - very high budget Hollywood production.The other credits begin to appear on a blue, animated spiderweb, with white typography against a blue background. As the actors names appear, their character appears as an animation and slowly some images are taken from scenes in the film, becoming more and more realistic. through out this whole scene there is a blue, red and white colour scheme with bold black lines floating around on the screen at different angles and speeds, this resembles a spiders web as well as a comic book. as the scene comes to an end we hear a voice over of peter parker talking about who he is, as we see an animation of a spiderman which then fades into a real spiderweb as the film begins.

I particularly like the use of animation in this scene as although you can tell its animation it still has a sense of realism. The scene is also incredibly dramatic and the music creates suspense.

Kyle Cooper - Godzilla

The opening tittle sequence introduces us to the film and this one is incredibly dramatic and Cooper has made it seem incredibly historical and almost like some sort of scrap book or a memory. It begins with pictures and sketches of what seem to be dinosaur fossils and different bones from various animals, it then fades to words which have been processed on a typewriter and other headlines cut out from newspapers. All of this tales place really quickly with everything sliding and flashing on the screen quite briefly. The sequence is then taken over by waves, crashing and old battleships which lead into beach crashes and old marine war scenes! As all of this is happening the music is slowly building in the background it sounds epic and orchestral, it adds to the drama of the sequence which then shows short animations and some still image. We begin to see extremely old computing equiptment and war technology, with images of old cameras and computers. short clips of what seem to be wars and world disasters begin to show, we also see a shot through a telescope. We hear a voice over of a woman saying 5...4...3...2...1 and then an explosion which leads to clear destruction and at the end of the waves a creatures back covered in giant horns. All of this chaos then fades into an image of a pure white light, which to me seemed to suggest some sort of heaven. Breaking through the light we see the word: GODZILLA, this is accompanied by angelic sounds and we hear women singing high notes which.

I like this opening sequence as I like the tension in builds with the dramatic music and the short and fast cuts which contrast wight he angelic and heavenly ending.

Introduction to Kyle Cooper

Kyle Cooper directs and designs motion picture tittle sequences. He was born in Massachusetts, America, 1962, and trained at Yale University in which he got an MFA in graphic design. He has been nominated for many awards such as: Primetime Emmy Award for outstanding Main Tittle Design, Satellite Award for Best Visual Effects, Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Film Editing (special) Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Multi-Camer Picture Editing - Miniseries,Movie Or A Special, and a Sports Emmy For Outstanding Production Design/ Art Direction. He has directed over 150 film tittle sequences and has been credited as "almost single handedly revitalising the main-tittle sequence as an art form". He has worked on five films this year, these were: The Monuments Men, Godzilla, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Good Kill.

Course Work Defined

Video

Preliminary exercise: Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

Main task: the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.

All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source. Both preliminary and main tasks may be done individually or as a group. Maximum four members to a group.

Editing the Prelim!

In the editing lesson we learn't how to edit using the software 'Adobe Premier Pro', this was exciting and interesting to editing the prelim. Firstly, we opened the project with all of our videos already loaded on it, this was quite overwhelming as there were lots of clips which weren't named or sorted and we had to create suitable folders and names.The next bin we created was 'Rushes', in which we dragged all of our rushes into.  We started by adding a bin we created 'Rushes', in which we dragged all of our video clips into. Next we added a bin which we then called 'log bin', and dragged all of the rushes which we were going to work on, we also named these. The next part was the trickiest, we had to begin the editing process, we cut the sections of each shot which we wanted, and dragged that cut down onto the timeline. We then cut the next section of our scene from a different shot, however this time we had to match it up with the end of the previous shot.


I enjoyed this part of our prelim process, however it was hard and frustrating at times, however the end result was good and I am happy with the progress we made.

Prelim Task

For the prelim we each appointed roles in which we would do in order to create our small film, these were: actors- Tyler and Grace(me),camera man- Igor ,assistant director- Ksnenia  and director- Kingsley. Although these were our main roles, we all helped each other with everything and got a chance to look at what we were doing from other perspectives. We used a tripod and a Sony NX5 to film our sequence, this worked out very well, as we were able to get all the angles we wanted to easily and were able to change the height of out shot in particulars sections.  After setting up our camera we bubbled it and began by presenting the camera a piece of paper with our names written on it, we then flipped this piece of paper and did a white balance, and began setting up our first shot. The task we had to follow was to shoot a short sequence, in which we were given a storyboard to work from, we had to get all of the shots on the story board and then if we wished we could add extra shots in order to develop our sequence.




Overall the prelim went well, however I would have preferred to have spent more time on making sure each time we shot we planned to do exactly the same thing each time and therefore been able to get each shot exactly the same, making it much simpler to eventually edit.