Memento summary

Memento-Christopher Nolan 2000

Memento is based on the character leonard who has a condition that causes him to forget everything that he does after a few minutes. The plot of the film is shown in a non-linear way, most of the time being backwards showing each scene leading up to the scene before. This raises alot more questions than showing it in a normal fashion would due to leonards condition.

To keep the audiance interested they keep conceal the real identities of many of the characters until the end, for example they don't reveal that "Teddy" is actually a cop until right at the end of the film.
There are two main narrative strands running thoughout the film which are what Leonard has done leading up to killing "Teddy" and a telephone conversation that he is having with someone unknown. The telephone conversation is in black and white which helps it to contrast with the rest of the film. The two strands eventually link together into a scene where Leonard is confronting "Teddy".
There is very little ellipsis of time involving the narrative which means that almost all of a complete section of time is shown.
The ending of the film still raises questions even thought most have been answered, this is conventional of thrillers

Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino is an american director, producer and actor whos films are renowed for their non-linear storylines and themes or violence.

He has directed:
Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill volmumes 1 & 2 and Inglourious Basterds

Acted in:
Pulp Fiction, Desperado, Alias and most of the other films that he has directed

He has also produced:
From Dusk til dawn 1,2 & 3, Hero and Hostel parts I and II

here is the opening scene of one of quentin tarantinos most famous films Pulp Fiction:














http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Tarantino
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000233/bio

Thriller directors

Some of the most popular and most well known thriller directors are: Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan.

Alfred Hitchcock:
Alfred Hitchcock is one of the most well known names in thriller he made a large contribution to establishing the genre. He began filmaking in the 1920's and continued up to the 1970's. His most famous films include The Birds and Psycho.



A trailer of psycho where Hitchcock explains some aspects of the plot.

Sources: http://movies.toptenreviews.com/directors/list_thriller_director.htm
, http://hitchcock.tv/

Definitions of a Thriller

1. They are types of films known to promote intense excitement, suspense, a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, anxiety, and nerve-wracking tension.



http://www.filmsite.org/subgenres.html



2. Thrillers are characterized by fast pacing, frequent action, and resourceful heroes who must thwart the plans of more-powerful and better-equipped villains.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thriller_(genre)



3. A film that tells an exciting story about murder or crime.

www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/thriller

Thiller sub-genres

one of the most moticable features of thrillers is how they can be combined with almost any genre to form many different sub-genres such as:

Action Thriller: contain fast paced exciting narratives with a large amound of action usually in the form of guns, explosions etc.

Conspiracy thriller: When the protagonist is up against a conspiracy usually carried out by some kind of antagonistic organization

Crime Thriller: When the narrative is centered around a crime, usually it is the protagonists aim to capture the perpetrator

Disaster Thiller: Contain some kind of disaster that the characters have to deal with

Erotic Thiller: A cross between erotic film and thriller

Legal Thriller: When the main character is involved in the legal system.

Medical Thiller: When the main character is involved in the medical proffesion and may be trying to fight a deadly virus or some other unusual or dangerous health concern

Psychological Thriller: very suspenseful and usually require alot of thought to understand. usually have complex narratives or characters

Political Thiller: When a main character tries to keep his government stable even against powerful forces

Religous Thiller: When the main events are related to some kind of religous prophecy or scripture, can be controversial due to the way religions may be represented.

Spy Thriller: When the protagonist is an agent or spy who has to retreive somthing or take down an enemy agency

Supernatrual Thrillers: When either superpowers, magic or other paranormal forces are involved.

Sources:
http://action-films-thrillers.suite101.com/article.cfm/subgenres_of_the_hollywood_thriller

Thriller Conventions

Some of the main conventions of the thriller genre are:

•They Often have a complex narrative with many clues, red-herrings and other enigmas
•A narrative that consists of many revealing enigmas that keeps the viewer interested in what is going to happen
•A protagonist who often has to overcome the antagonist even though he has a lot less power in some way
•Characters the audience can identify to, usually the protagonist
•The protagonist usually has a weakness which the antagonist uses to his advantage
•A crime of some kind at the center of the narrative
•They often overlap with themes from other genres
•The antagonist may be an organization or some kind of natural force rather than a character
•Elements that “Thrill” the audience

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thriller_(genre)#Directors
http://barney54.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/thriller-conventions/

Evalutation

We showed our film to our media studies classthe feedback we got was mainly positive. The elements that were being analysed were continuity, furfillment or brief, mise-en-scen, camerawork and sound. We were given at least good and excellent feedback in all criteria, However the one it seemed we had most to improve on was sound. I also showed the film to some people outside my media class, the feedback was also positive. The audiance said that the lighting was good and that it looked fairly professional.


I think we did fairly well at acheiving continuity in our piece, we did have a few shots that we took that may have comprimised the continuity of our film however, we took these out during the editing process. I think our film flowed smoothly most of the time.
Our brief was to create a film that contained a character walking down a corridor sitting down and talking to someone, while including continuity, 180 degree rule, eyeline match and a graphic match. I think our film included all of these although the graphic match that we originally intended to have which was a hot of the gaurd punching the captive going into one of the bosses foot moving so instead we used the shot of the gaurd pulling the sack of the captives head form different angles as our graphic match.
I think our camerawork was pretty good, we could have used a larger variation of shots however using to much of a variety of shots may have made it the film seem a bit over dramatic. I am proud of our use of the master shot and the floor level shots we had of the gaurd and boss walking.
In my opinion the area that we did best in was mise-en-scen, this is because we found a good location which suited our intended genre, we also had the actors wearing suites which also suited what we were intending.
The aspects of sound that i think went well were the gunshot effects used and the part of the soundtrack before the shooting.

One aspect of the continuity that i dont think worked as well was the gunshot scene, it seemed to jump straight to will screaming, altohugh this does work for dramatic effect i dont think it improves the smoothness of the film.
Another thing that i would change next time would be the brightness of the black and white effect we used, in some of the shots it was hard to see what was happening, the audiance commented on this and we also realised this after viewing our finished product.
I don't think there is much we could have done to improve the mise-en-scen, although one of the audiance did suggest that the captives shirt could have been more ruffled up to make it show that he was in bad conditions.
Another thing which we could have improved on was our stunts such as where we planned to have the guard punch the captive which we did not include in our film because we did not have good enough footage. I think if we had put more plan into how we would act out this part it may have worked, also the fake blood in the scene didn't really work either so improvement in how we use it may also be a thing to work at.
One of the areas which i think needs most improvement would be sound, although our soundtrack did basically fit our film i think it could have been alot better, to improve it i think we would need more practice using garage band and to find an easier way to quicly test whether a certain piece of music fits with the film.

Overall i think we did a good job and learnt many skills involved in making films

Our final production

Self Evaluation

At the start of this Media Studies course I knew a fair amount about the filming process from studying media previously in years 10 and 11. Since then I have learnt a lot more about camera work, editing, sound and mise-en-scene. So far this year I have learnt more vocabulary for each section. Camera work for example; master shot, canted angle, rule of thirds, depth of field, deep and shallow focus and how to use focus pulls. These camera techniques have helped us in our film to give us more shots with variety. I have learnt vocabulary in editing such as; graphic match, match on action (which was one factor we had to include in our film), cutaway. Again these techniques helped us when we did our editing process.

In GCSE we got to make a short opening to a film so we had already learnt some techniques when filming and editing. We had learnt about continuity so when making our film we had to make sure the actors were kept in the same place otherwise it would show up as a jump cut when editing. Also we had to make sure we filmed more shots than we needed otherwise we may have had to film on another day when actors might be wearing different clothes or we hadn't got the same props we used in a different shot.

By learning these different techniques it helped our film because I had a better understanding of how to use different camera shots, editing process, mise-en-scene and sound.

Self Evaluation

At the start of term, i knew a fair about media production from doing gcse media, howver i had little detailed knowleage.
i knew most of the main techniques used in the main elements of film language, such as long shots and close-ups in camerawork, dissolves and fade ins/outs in editing, diegetic and non-diegetic sound and some of the connotations connected to mise-en-scen.

From coursework at GCSE i also learnt some of the techniques involved in making a piece of film that makes sense, such as not changing the scene/ costumes and make-up around between scenes, how to use the camares easily and that most of the time more than one take of somthing is required.
I also knew how to edit a film clips together using imovie so that the finished piece had a fairly clear narrative and a fair bit of continuity.

Since then i have learnt many more of the techniques involved in the main elements of film language such as the rule of thirds, depth of field and canted angles in camerawork; ellipsis, cutaways and parallel editing in editing; sound motif, sound perspective and ambient sound in sound and that i should analyse as deply as possible in mise-scen and in general.

I have also learnt more about establishing continuity in a piece of film, such as the 3 principles of continuity which are: match on actio, shot reverse shot and the 180 degree rule. And that not everything that happens needs to be included, just that the audiance need to be able to assume what has happned.


During the production of my film i have learnt things such as that sometimes you can not follow the storyboard exactly due to certain aspects of the location, so therefore in some situations it maybe good to re-storyboard once the location is established, or at least adapt current storyboards. I have also learnt that it is good to get more shots than you need incase some dont work, and that you need to make sure actors are kept in the same places during scenes as this helps with continuity. Also certain actions such as punches may require more planning than first thought out and that following the 180 degree rule affects the whole shooting of a scene.

During editing i have learnt how to use imovie in a better way than before, for example i learnt how to use the volume levels alot more effectively such as in the scenes with footsteps we decided to turn the volume up so they would be more emphasized. Another I learnt how to use garage band to prduce a soundtrack it was easier than i expected however it was difficult to get a soundtrack that fitted with the timings of the film since that garage band measures in bars rather than actual time.
Finally i learnt that it is extremely to compile a list of things that i have learnt.

Editing Process

To begin editing we first uploaded the footage onto the mac we were using and onto imovie using a fire wire.
Because we mainly filmed in chronologicaal order the pieces of film were easy to arrange into the timeline. We began editing by putting the clips onto the timeline in order. We then began trimming clips and deciding which ones should or shouldn't be included.
We had to remove some of the shots due to lack of continuity, for example in ojne of the shots where Phil was meant to be standing infront of the door he wasn't there.
We fiddled around with the lenghts of clips for quite some time in an attempt to obtain maximum continuity.
We decided not to include the shot of the gaurd punching the vicitm because it did not look very realistic at all, also the fake blood in Wills mouth didn't give the effect we were looking for. We also had to use a cutaway to a shot of the gaurd and prisoner between the two shots of the Bosses feet walking towards the door and opening it, this was because the two best shots wehad were two seperate shots, so putting them one after the other would have made the shot jump, creating a lack of continuity.
For the scene with the gun we had to get a gunshot sound effect, which we downloaded off the internet, We placed this sound effect immediatly after The shot of the boss pulling the tigger. With a shot of the prisoner screaming in pain after that. We used fast paced editing in the scene leading up to the shooting to give a tense atmosphere.
We decided that the film would be alot more realistic and fit the genre we were aiming for if we added a black and white effect. We had to set the contrast and brightness so that it was bright enough to see but there was still a dark atmosphere.
After our film was almost complete we began to make our sountrack in garage band. to give a dark fairly dramatic atmosphere we decided to use orchestral stringed style sounds. We fiddled around with the soundtrack for a while trying to make somthing that fitted with our film.
In the scene leadin up the shooting we used faster paced tense sounding music using the "reflective strings" sound in garage band. After the shooting we used more orchestral music which we had fading out at the end of our film.
Since we were almost finished editing we then decided to think of a title for our production, It alot of brainstorming and thought, but we finally decided on the name "Isolation".
After this we made the finishing touches to our film by doing a bit more trimming and adjusting volume levels to make our production as realistic as possible, for instance we increased the volume level in the shots with feet walking s that the footsteps could be clearly herd.

Matt and Will

Location

These are some stills of the locations we used.





This is the establishing shot we will be using inside the barn we will use to film in. We choose it because it is fairly dim, and unlike the school it is plain and doesnt have anything that would be out of place in a crime film on the walls.




a low angle shot of the chair from a similar angle than that of the some of the shots we took.



Our location from the other side, when we fiolmed we blocked the windows up so we could control the amount of light and where it was.



The corridor that we shot the boss walking in. We didnt film him walking the other side of the door in the actual location because it is a room the otherside of the door so it would not have furfilled the specification.

Inspiration

Althoguh we planned and decided most of the aspects of our film ourself we were inspired by interrigation scenes we have seen before. One of these is the interriagtion scene in the James Bond film Casino Royal:



The scene that inspired us begins at about 3.16 in the clip.

The one of aspects of this scene that were similar to what we used in our film was the dark colour sceme, this makes the scene more sinister. We also used a fairly plain mise-en-scnen which focuses the viewer in on the action.

Filming process

The first stage before filming was preparing the location, to get what we needed for the shots we had to have a chair in the middle of a dark room with a fairly concentrated light above it focusing on where the victim would be. Since there was no actual light above where the chair was we had set up a portable light, which was clipped onto the beam above the chair, since it was not concentrated and to bright on its own, we also had to make a lampshade out of cardboard which fitted the light. There were also no plugs nearby so we had to use extension chord to get power, this had to be clipped in position so it didnt get in the way or appear in the shots we filmed.

We also needed fake blood, we were originally going to make it out of red food colouring and water, however this was not viscous enough so instead we decided to use ketchup.

To do the acting we got Phill and Tom. Will also acted as well as doing some filming when possible. We decided that Will would play the vicitim, Phill would play the gaurd and that Tom would play the gang leader.

We then had to sort out costumes, we decided that the characters would be wearing suites because this would suite the genre of film we were producing. The gang leader and the gaurd both wore full suites with black dinner jackets and ties, however we decided that will would just wear a white shirt and trousers with no dinner jacket over the top and no tie, we felt this would create contrast between the two opposing sides, and would also help show who is protagonistic and who is antogonistic in the narrative since that white connotes goodness and purity and black connotes darkness and evil.

We filmed in a mainly chronological order as this seemed to be the best way to keep continuity, apart from the scene of the gang leader walking down the corridor which was in a slighly different place. This was filmed after the rest of the film.

We had to adapt some of the shots we used because they didn't work with our loaction. One of these was the shot of the door handle opening as the gaurd walked in, because the door to the room we were shooting in had no handle we had to just film a medium long shot of the gaurd walking through the door.
We found the punching scene fairly difficult to film, because of of the lack of trained stunt personal. Also the fake blood(which we used ketchup for) wasn't easy to spit out at the right angle.
The next shot we had to adjust to suite our location was the shot of the gang leader walking past a glass window in a door, since we had no doors with windows to the side of the corridor we were using we had to just do a straight mid-shot of him walking past.
One other problem we had throughout our filming was that there were beams near the middle of the room next to where the chair was, this made it hard to shoot some of the shots that we planned to film near the chair on the beam side as to not break the 180 degree rule.

Matt and Will

Planning Process

The idea for our preliminary task came from our preliminary preliminary task where we came up with a storyline which included an interrorgation. In the first task we came up with a policeman questioning a criminal. For our main task we adapted this storyline to make the interrorgation happen between a gang leader and an agent-type person.
There is also a bodygaurd who works for the gang leader in the room before him.

We began our planning by brainstorming the criteria for the task and plot ideas which were based on our preliminary preliminary task.
We decided who the characters would be, there would be a prisoner, a gaurd and a gang leader interigating the prisoner.

We then went looking for locations that would suite our film, we wanted somwhere that was fairly dark and sinister, and wouldn't look out of place in a crime movie.

uploading footage

We have now uploaded, our footage onto a mac and begun editing it using imovie, we have found that we may need to re-shoot some shots since we do not have enough and there is a slight lack of continuity in some of the shots we planned to use.
We also started producing our own sountrack using garage band.

Props & Costumes

List of props we will use:

• Black sack- to go over victims head
• Fake blood
• Gun
• Chairs

Costumes:

• 2 smart suites
• Black trousers and white shirt

Storyboards

These are the first storyboards we made while planning our production:

first post

This is the start of the blogging of our planning
we will decide the name for the film later