Foley Sound- Exercise

Here is out Foley Exercise names 'Boyfriend Troubles'. We used a variety of shots including shot/ reverse shot, pan shot and establishing shot to allow the viewer to see whats happening. We used foley sound for Zoe's singing, her dancing down the hall and also for the final scene in which they have a conversation. I found the task quite difficult because it wasnt easy to match the sound with the video. However I think I did an alright job at the editing process, and am confindent in using foley sound in more of my own videos.

Foley Sound

 

We did a workshop on Foley sound. Foley sound is sound that you can hear in a film that has been added in editing. For example, a films score or perhaps even the characters sound. Foley sound appears in almost every form of film and television, including animation where all the sound you hear has been added in the editing room. The job of a Foley Artist is to produce these sounds.

 

We produced out own short foley film. We were to include at least 3 scenes where foley sound was used, and some without. Our scene was a girl who gets called by a sad friend who is going through relationship troubles.

Film Idents

We are currently looking at film idents- the usually animated version of a production companies logo that comes before the opening credits of a film, and looking in to making our own. To gain more inspiration and understanding of idents and their purpose, we have been looking at specific companies and digging deeper into their meanings.

Dreamworks

Dreamworks are a production company who makes films which are usually computer animation and largely aimed at children/ young people, even though they are often designed for the whole family. The ident shows a man fishing from the cresent moon in the clouded night sky, filled with stars as 'Dreamworks' spells out in moonlike writing.
These are connotaions of a dream land- symbolising that in cinema the sky is the limit, and a form of escape for the audience and filmmakers alike. It draws you in because it is calm, and the music is soft and gentle- the audience is relaxed, and they know what kind of film they are about to view.
Dreamworks often alters its ident to fit with the specific film it comes before. For example: the ident used for the Shreck films is different from the others- the title is in colour, and instead of night time- the sky is shown during the day. This is so that the sudience could possibly know the specific film they are about to watch. They could also slightly alter the ident due to the genre or audience of the film.

Walt Disney

This was the ident used in the Walt Disney films during the 90's, and is probably the most famous one composed by the company. It shows a traditional 'princess' castle (the stereotype somewhat formed by Walt Disney itself) and a rainbow like ray of light forming around it, followed by Walt Disney's signature appearing accross the bottom. This ident is simple, and give the idea of a fantasy world because of the connotations of royalty. I would say that this ident may show signs of its target audience being young girls, who often dream about being a princess living in a magical castle. 
More recently, Walt Disney has joined together with Pixar studios to form 'Disney Pixar' whose main form of film is animation directed at young people.

Saul Bass

Over the past couple of weeks, we have been studying film opening sequences and opening credits, their importance and their effectiveness and one of the main people we have learnt about is Saul Bass.

 Bass was a graphic designer and filmmaker, widely known for his film posters and title sequences. He has worked for the film greats such as Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, and Martin Scorsese. His first major work was creating the title sequence for Otto Preminger's 'The Man With The Golden Arm'

He then went on to produce ground breaking opening credits that changed the way cinema saw title sequences, and made their use more important in the set up of the film. He was responsible for the opening creids of Hitchcocks 'Vertigo', 'North by Northwest' and 'Psycho', and other famous films such as 'Cape Fear' and 'Anatomy of a Murder'.

Saul Bass, and other title sequence designers such as David Fincher, demonstrate the importance of opening credits in their work. The function of an opening sequence is, of course, to introduce all the people involved in the making of a film, such as actors, the director, producers etc. However, they serve another purpose. They are also used to draw the audience in and set the tone of the film. If the sequence is fast paced, it is likely the film is also that way etc. Its can also foreshadow the climax or even just a part of the story line of a film.

Shot/ Reverse Shot

Shot/ Reverse shot is probably the most used shot type in all cinema and television. We did this exercise to practice this type of shot and work out what looks best. The scenario we used was two friends sitting down and one has to tell that other that she is unexpectedly pregnant, with the father unknown.

 The topic of discussion is quite a serious one, so we used close up and extreme close up shots to capture the emotion in the actors faces. We also used the 180 degree rule to keep the eyeline match accurate.

I found it harder than I thought to cut the shots to make them flow with eachother- matching up the dialogue, movements and positions ith the clips before and after it. I think I did quite a good job for my first time editing a shot/ reverse shot.

Homecoming- Short Film

 

This is the first practical work we did in this course, and also the first time we used Adobe Premier Pro to edit. We were given a genre of film- a thriller, and a title- 'Homecoming', were put into groups of three or four, and were given about an hour in total to film. As a group we had complete creative control without any outside influences.

A variety of shots were used to capture the story and make the genre and theme of the film clear. Shots such as close up, tilt shot, long shot and extreme long shot were all often used. To encourage the theme of a Thriller, we decided not to use any dialogue until the very end to build up the suspense but also to put more focus on the different shot and angle types.

Each member of the group were responsible for different shots, and we all ended up with the same clips to use however we wanted. The good thing about this is that we could use these shots however we wanted- either conventionally or as abstract as we could, so no one in the group ended up with exactly the same finished product. One member of he group, Jacob, used different styles of cutting to make the film fast-paced, while I opted to put the clips in chronological order and keep the pace slower to add suspense.

This is the first piece we have done, so a lot of improvements could be made such as the cutting of clips and putting more effort into the mis-en-scene and more thought into the different camera shots and angles.