Voice over discussions

We've decided that we can use the opening of "The life of David Gale" as an idea for our voice over by starting it when the black screen is up for our credits. We all agreed that this was an effective way to start a film as you are introduced to the story even before you see any characters physically.

Molly also had an idea that we could start our voiceover with the sound of a tape being put on to be recorded like it is in a police interview. This could be the first sound that our viewers hear when the black screen starts. I think this will be really effective and now we just need to start recording our voiceover and match it to our film.

New draft

After watching the different film openings to look at the different types of credits and their positions in the films we decided that we should follow the opening to a film that Charlotte had recently watched "Step Brothers" We all agreed that the order of their credits worked well and we liked them so we made ours similar to theirs.

This is the link to the opening of Step Brothers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sczh_KjjFNU

We decided that our production company name could be "mac one" for the simple fact that we are working on the first mac at school and we came up with a simple 3 letter combination of LBC for another distributor.
We put all of our names at the beginning as well to see what it looked like but after putting it on youtube we decided they looked better a bit more spaced out and we also need to give eachother roles in the production and add that on

Here is our next draft:

Film Opening looking at credits

In class we looked at a few different film openings to look at where they positioned theyre credits and what kinds of other things they had such as the distributors and production companies names.

In the film "Derailed" the opening was in a prison and the first thing you saw was a black screen with "Miramax" production company. As the action started the credits appeared on the screen over the moving image. First it was the names of all the technical team, then the director, the main actor and actress' name, the title of the film and then the rest of the actors.

In another film "The life of David Gale" the credits were quite different and this time the production companies were "Universal" and "Intermedia". There is then a black screen with the distributors names on and a black screen for the tutle of the film. This is all before any action starts and there is a sound bridge over the black screen to introduce you to the conversation before you see any actors.

In another film opening that we watched "Bourne Identity" this opening was again slightly different with the credits. In this one the production company is again "Universal" but this time there is a little bit of action and then a black screen with the name of the film and no actors names are shown in the opening.


After watching these openings it made us discuss our own credits and decided that the name of our film should come right at the beginning rather than at the end to make it look more like a film than a trailer. We also decided that we should give each person in our film a role such as editor, producer etc to make it look more authentic.

Voice over decision

On friday our group further discussed our voice over as we have decided we need to start recording it as soon as possible.
We thought that to make our film a bit more creepy we could make out that the girls' mother is the person who has put her there as she has some kind of problem. We decided that we could show this in the voice over by having a police interview with the mother where she is asked questions and answers them in ways that suggests she is quite strange and innocent by changing her tone of voice to change moods and by some of the answers she gives.
We thought that we could also still use the idea of the news report as well in the style of Plan B. We could have the news report cut up into 4 parts and have it over the parts of our credits. This way it would give our film some variety.
We have started to think about a script and who we can ask to do the voice over for us and hopefully we can record it some time soon using the microphones at school.

We also decided that we will need quiet background music to go with our voiceover but we want to keep it simple so the viewer is not distracted from the voiceover. We could prehaps just have a slight heart beat or something similar to that.

Voice overs

Our group discussed our voice over that we want to put on our film and we spoke about all of the possibilities we have. We thought that we could make the voice over similar to the content of our film by having different voice clips cut up and put together. For example, parts of a police interview, parts of a news report, parts of a conversation the girl is having with a friend, parts of a conversation the person who put her there is having and maybe some of the girls relatives and friends speaking about it.
We thought of some possible voices that we could use for these ideas and made a list of some people at school and some teachers we thought would be good to ask.
We need to talk more deeply about our ideas but I think it will work out well and hopefully sound good with our film.
An idea that we had for an example of a good television or radio report is in Plan B's song Suzanne. The song is about the Camden Ripper who raped and killed 3 prostitues. Towards the end of the song there is a news reporter who is talking about the case and the reason why we liked this was because the names were blocked out which made it seem quite creepy

This is the song Suzanne:

Forth draft of our film and film name

Our group were adding some more touches to our editing and decided that we would like to change the name of our film as we did not like Pulse. We decided that we could have use the name of the girl who has been left in the woods as the film is centred around her. We also thought about the recent film Chloe that has been brought out which uses a similar technique for the name and we all thought it was quite effective. After thinking about names and looking on baby name websites, as a group we decided on the name Leyla for our film.

This is our forth edit:

Shutter Island

Last night I went to see the film Shutter Island with Leonardo De Caprio and really enjoyed it. I had heard reviews about how good the film was but did not actually know anything about the plot apart from that it was based around a mental institution on a remote island. I think that because I knew nothing about the plot this made the film even better because everything came as a suprise. There was a really good twist at the end that was unexpected and really well put together.

The storyline was at first quite hard to understand and was one of those films that only came together at the end when everything was revealed. I still really enjoyed it though and would recommend it to everyone but I think it would be best to see it in the cinema as it wouldn't have the full effect on a TV as some parts were quite jumpy.

This is the trailer to Shutter Island:

Copyrighted music

For our film we have been told that we are not allowed to use anyone elses music if it is copyrighted and this is what it means:

'Copyright protects creative works and enables composers, literary authors and other creators to be paid for their work. Copyright is the means by which those who create and own works (e.g. music and lyrics) can control who makes use of each work and the circumstances in which it is used, to ensure that the integrity and value of the work is respected.'

'Copyright in a song
Every song comprises two copyright works:

The music itself (a musical work)
The lyrics/words (a literary work)'

'Rights of the owner
Subject to certain limited exceptions set out in the CDPA, if you own the copyright in either type of work, you have the sole right do any of the following, or to authorise another to do so:

Copy the work
Issue, lend or rent copies of the work to the public
Perform, show or play the work in public
Communicate the work to the public (i.e. broadcast it via television, radio, online etc.)
Adapt the work'

Casino

Another film that has a voice over to open the film is Casino with Robert De Niro. The opening to this film is very simple but it is explained using the voice over and it is also quite similar to our film in the way that the beginning does not make sense until the end of the film when the same scene is repeated again and the viewer then understands why it has happened.

This is the only video on youtube I could find of this opening scene. It is only 19 seconds long and it's hard to hear what he is saying so I also found the trailer -

Opening scene:



Trailer: