problems.

We have come across a few problems whilst filming our opening sequence.

Day one of filming.
The first problem was the location, we had to find an empty unused room in the college to film it in, this problem was soon solved. We didn't have anyone in our group who could play the little boy, but we found one of our friends who had a free lesson, who was willing to act in it for us. Once we had set up the camera and had it all in position, we then realised that it was light outside, and in the film, it's supposed to be night time, so we had to sort something out to make it look darker, so we put a blanket up at the window.

Day two of filming.
Our next problem was the lockers in the school corridors were going to be in the screen, and you wouldn't particularly find that sort of thing in a house, so we had to, again, use our blanket to cover them up. Our idea of slitting two peices of paper together in front of the camera to make it look like the children were blinking and that we were seeing things from there point of veiw, didn't really work, and it didn't look very good, so we just left that bit out.

Day three of filming.
There wasn't many problems on the third day, except the time of day, it was last lesson, which meant it was dark, so most of the film would have been lighter than the little bit we filmed on the last day. Our idea of using paper to make snow on the title piece didn't work, because the paper didn't show up well on the camera, but it worked well anyway because it was foggy, so it looked like it should be snowing, and that it was winter.

Editing.

When putting the film together, we came across a few problems, we were unable to do the split screen of the girl and the boy waking up as we didn't know how to. Also, we were told that we had to make our own soundtrack to the film and we didn't know this before, so we had to do it last minute.

the characters.

idea for changing sequence.

This is the film life size, this is the transforming sequence where a doll turns into a human, we wanted to watch this to get an idea on how the doll changed to a human.

Back To The Future Storyboard

This is our storyboard for the first two shots in "Back To The Future".
The storyboard includes information about the shot number, what's happening in the shot, camera movement and the sounds in the shot.
The pictures show each bit that happens in the first shot and then the final picture is the last shot.

This has helped us to understand that a long lengthed shot cannot be shown on one square on a storyboard, it must be spread out along many squares, showing every part of the shot and what happens.

Song Choice for opening credits.

We have chosen this song for our opening credits because it is relevant to the theme of Christmas and sets the scene well and draws in a wide audience of parents as well as children.

Narrative

Its a week before Christmas, and a brother and sister have found one of their presents. They both open them early to see whats inside. They find a barbie and ken doll and a magic reaction takes place after they both say, at the same time, "i wish you were real" to the two dolls. This causes the dolls to transform into real people. This makes the children excited at first but soon come to realise after receiving a letter from Santa saying that all other dolls have disappeared due to their naughty actions, of opening their presents early. The children are then given the chance to right their wrongs by turning the dolls back into plastic, however the dolls have fallen in love with each other and do not want to be turned back into plastic so they run away together to escape. The children now have to find them, with only 5 days before Christmas eve to return the dolls to their rightful place. This leads them on to an adventure, filled with magic and trials, that will take them all the way to the North Pole. The film ends with a stereotypical happy ending where the children find dolls who are willing to return to plastic as long as they stay and play together, meaning that the siblings have to get on, which adds a moral lesson to our storyline.

Toy Story 1

Narrative

Starts with Andy playing a game with his toys, shows his view on each of the toys as what he represents them as in his game, e.g. good guy or bad guy. The disruption is that it's Andy's birthday, and they are all worried whether he'll get new toys and not want to play with his old ones anymore. They don't want to be replaced. It also introduces the characters in the way that Andy wants them to be introduced, but once Andy has left they introduce themselves in a way of what they do. When Andy leaves the room, it also reveals the secret of that they are all able to talk and to move.

Genre

This film is a hybrid as it contains a range of different genres, for example, adventure when all of the army toys are sent off on a mission downstairs. Comedy, when Mr Potato head puts all of his facial pieces on the wrong parts of his face - this is amusing for children. Romance between Woody and Little Bow Peep, when she gets all flirty with him. And also a bit of fantasy because toys that can talk and move on their own aren't very realistic.

Characters

Andy, the child, seems to be conforming to the stereotype a typical boy, he's excitable because it's his birthday party. He is also treating his toys a bit rough, like making Woody slide down the banister. None of the toys he plays with are girly either, for example, dinosaur and cowboy, except from Little Bow Peep of course. He is also a caring older brother and a good son, as he did as his mother asked by collecting his baby sister, Molly, from her cot. Woody appears to been the main character as he has a lot more screen time than everyone else, he orders people to do things, and they do what he says, everyone listens to him, he seems to be more in control than everyone else, the leader of the pack.

Atmosphere

The atmosphere is really happy, it's Andy's birthday, so everything is on his side and going right for him, so he is happy. It's also a very colourful scene, so this also adds and emphasizes the happiness in this.

Themes

One of the themes is happiness, as I have spoken about in the atmosphere section. There is a separate theme for the toys than Andy. Andy’s theme and main focus is his birthday party, whereas the toys main theme is Andy, to make sure that they're always part of him and are always there for him when he needs them. They also want to make sure that no other toys take their place, so they themselves are one of their themes.

Taylor Hayward

Series Of Unfortunate Events.

Conventions of a childrens opening sequence.
Narrative:
- Introduces characters and their personalities and interests (signifies possible events within the narrative)
- Starts conventionally and then immediately changes to darkness. This is going against convention which is usually a happy start, but in this film we get a dark and moody feeling.
- Refers to family secrets, and suggests that we will find out what they are.
- The narrative will be mainly focused on the children.

Characters:
- They don't conform to the stereotypes of typical childrens film
- Introduction - the children do not talk
- you see them from the back initially when they are introduced
- Old fashion clothes (sets time period)
- Children are very clever:- the boy reads and remembers all the books he reads
- the older girl invents things
- The children are very wealthy and a close family unit.

Genre:
- Hybrid (which is a mixture of more than one genre)
- Adventure: - when they become orphans
- discover the family secrets
- Horror (unconventional): - house was burnt down
- graveyard
- creepy man
- Fantasy: - lack of realism
- the flower that grows immediately
- Comedy - when the young baby is biting on the table
-Romance?

Atmosphere:
- Elf scene - happy, humorous. The music is upbeat, joyful, laughing and singing.
- Sudden change to gloomy and dark - dark lighting, low key lighting, gloomy, fog.
- Eery music made an uneasy atmosphere.
- The existence of the contrast between the happy beginning and the dark change, makes the change to the dark bit seem even more dark and worse.

Themes:
- Sense of family - referred to as a group (by their surname) - closeness
- Love (siblings)
- Secrets and mystery of the characters when they are introduced as you only see the back of them, also when the children look around the house once it's been burned down, and find secret objects.
- Overcoming the tragedy of losing their parents.

conventions of a childrens film.

Narrative
-Simple structure
-Resolution - Happy ending
-Throughout narrative, some disruption that characters have to overcome
-Moral message

Genre

-Action


-Romance


-Comedy


-Adventure


-Musical


-Fantasy



Children's films are often a hybrid - contains two or more genres.

ideas for filming.

i had the idea, that for our filming we could use stop motion to create an opening using playmobil characters, i found this clip on youtube to use as an example. i thought that we could use playmobil, because not only does it appeal to girls, but also boys.

Taylor Hayward.

preliminary task evaluation.

From doing the preliminary task, we have learnt that we need to keep to the 180 degree rule, when filming a conversation, this is so not to confuse the veiwer as they may not know where abouts the characters are on the screen if we do not follow this rule. We also learnt how do actually do the angles whilst filming, as we had veiwed these filming angles and shots in many tv programmes and films, but hadnt actually had a go at doing these ourselves, so this allowed us to try it out.

There were a few problems when filming our preliminary task, as one of our members was not in the lesson, we had to compromise and change the story line and location a little bit, this also caused problems with filming because both people in our group had to appear in the filming and another had to film, but as we had noone to film us, we were rarely on the screen together.

This has prepared us for the real filming as we have learnt that we will need to compromise with the resources, actors and locations we have got. We also know how to use the camera properly and all of the editing programmes on the computer.

Taylor Hayward

Welcome

Matt, Taylor & Shanna :)
This is our preliminary task, including Taylor & Matt.