Christmas Opening Scenes

The Grinch

The Grinch starts looking at snow falling then zooms into a snowflake to show a small town. It then zooms into the town and moves around the streets showing people shopping for presents and doing other stuff related to Christmas. The films titles appear on the screen in red and green.

Elf

For Elf the opening titles they appear in a book animated so that the pages turn showing with different pictures next to the names.

Shooting Schedule

This is our original shooting schedule and we got each of the shots completed on the days. We had to re shoot some of the scenes on other days.

Filming Planning and Editing

What we all did

I think our group got on really well together. We all had our own different strengths and weaknesses which worked really well because what someone wasn't great at, someone else was. I believe we worked really well a group because we also had fun whilst completing the filming. It went how it was meant to which shows we worked well together. We all gave what we could to the task before and during filming; Lucy and Bonnie provided the outfits and many props, Tom gave us the Christmas tree which was needed in the film, helped produced the storyboard and was a great actor for his role (Santa) and finally Chay worked really well with the camera and captured some really accurate shots and was also a good actor and helped with the storyboard. 

Editing 

Chay and Tom mostly focused on the majority of the editing as they were best at it, Bonnie and Lucy continued to write up things onto the blog which included the production diary and how well the filming went. Tom and Chay were best at editing because they were good at working on little bits that needed fixing and Bonnie and Lucy set the order of the videos. 

Filming Photos

Filming

Shown below are some photographs I took when we were filming, I took them when we were filming shots, when people were acting and getting ready (e.g. setting up and getting into costumes).

These photos are of us getting ready, myself and Bonnie were setting up props and Tom and Chay were sorting out locations and costumes.

Shown above are photos of Chay having a go at filming, he filmed Tom (Santa) coming from the chimney/fireplace.

Photos of Chay helping Tom with the Santa costume and when Tom was ready to act.

I took these photos to show some of our props we had (left) and some of our costumes we had which were the elves (right).  

Here are some more images to show the filming we did. On the left is Tom practising the first shots and on the right shows where we placed the tripod, it was in the corner of the room so it showed all what went on in the scene. When I had a go at filming, I used to the tripod to put the camera on to keep it still, I then had to pick it up really slowly and carefully as I had to bring it back to show the movement of Chay and Tom in the 'fight' scene. this was hard as I had to move the camera really slowly so the camera remained still.

Titles

Baubles: 

-Lucy Fitch

-Olivia Frain

-Oli Wong

-Katie Jones

-Tom Lee

-Sam James

Books:

Casting by: Dan Amato
Written by: Tom Richardson

Special effects by: Bonnie Johns

Stockings:

Delilah Tulips

Lee Hart

Card:

Costume designer: Lucy Harding

Production designer: Issy Payne

Cookies:

Music by: Phil Carp

Present tags:

Produced by: Bessie Hawkins

Director of photography: Chay Pollinger

Prelim Evaluation

Was the genre evident?

People said that the music helped to show the genre and also some of the parts within the actual video were funny.

Did it use all shots? 

It used all of the shots except the 180 dialogue shot. People liked the aerial view looking down the stairs best.

Was the film put together well? 

People said the editing could be better as some dialogue was cut off and not very smooth.

Prezi and Presentation?

People said it contained a lot of detailed information about the film.

Representations

Representations

Age – There is a countertype with the fact that Santa Clause is old yet he fights back a bit when he gets grabbed. The stereotype is held when he eventually gets beaten by the younger man.

Gender – The fact that the males are fighting and the elf that is passive in the foreground is a girl holds the stereotype men are more aggressive than women.

Class – The house in our film is quite nice with lots of presents giving the impression it is a high class house where as a lower class house would have a dirty house with very few presents, if any.

Religion – We have chosen to represent the Christian religion because Christmas is a Christian celebration.

There is no chance for self-representation in the opening scene with our teen audience but the rest of the film is set on Jack Frost who is a teenage character so there is chance for self-representation there.

Marketing Campaign

To promote our film we will create a poster that can be put up in cinemas and on different buildings for people to see and hopefully persuade them to watch the film.

Storyboard

First storyboard

This was scruffy and didn't show much detail about the separate shots.

Second storyboard

This was an improvement to the first storyboard as it shows in more detail how the different shots would need to look.

Final Storyboard

This is our final storyboard, although it is final some of the shots swapped order when we filmed as it worked better with where we filmed.

Initial Opening Scene Idea

My first idea for the opening scene of the Saving Santa film was to have a fight scene where Jack Frost fights a group of elves in order to get information on where Santa Clause is. The credits would just have been on the bottom of the screen as the fight scene went on. We decided to change this idea because it could be a bit confusing as an opening scene as it doesn't tell much of a story. It would be too much going on too early on distracting the viewers from the opening credits.

Individual Film Pitch

Saving Santa
The film I want to make is an action film about Christmas. The story is that Santa Clause gets taken and someone else impersonates him with the intentions of ruining Christmas by delivering coal to all of the children. Jack Frost has to fight the new Santa and his elves to save Santa and Christmas. I would name it Saving Santa because it gives a simple clue to what the film is going to be about. The audience for my film would be teenagers because there are already lots of Christmas films for young children but not many for older people. I would probably rate the film a 12 because of the action involved in the film.

Genre Task

Genre
Genre simply means type. There are things in films that audiences can recognize to tell them the genre. This can then put a set of expectations into the audiences head.

Film Genres
Oculus - Horror
The music is eerie and helps to create suspense, this shows that it may have some jump scares.



The Guest - Thriller
The story isn't clear and leaves a bit of mystery.



The Vow - Drama + Romance
The music has classical instruments in it and is dramatic music.



Guardians of the Galaxy - Sci-fi Comedy
The costumes and spaceships involved help to show it is a sci-fi. The use of jokes and music show it is a comedy film.

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation Title Sequence

T1 - Production Company Logo 00-14

T2 - Warner Bros Presents 20-22

T3 - A Hughes Entertainment
Production 23-25

T4 - Chevy Chase 29-32

T5 - National Lampoons Christmas
Vacation 33-37

T6 - Beverly D'Angelo 48-50

T7 - Randy Quaid 52-54

T8 - Miriam Flynn 56-58

T9 - William Hickey 59-60

T10 - Mae Questel 61-63












T11 - Diane Ladd + John Randolph 64-68

T12 - E.G. Marshall + Doris Roberts 69-72

T13 - Juliette Lewis + Johnny Galecki 73-76

T14 - Casting by Risa Bramon, Billy Hopkins + Heidi Levitt 78-80

T15 - Costume Designer Michael Kaplan 82-84

T16 - Music by Angelo Badalamenti 85-87

T17 - Editors Jerry Greenberg + Michael Stevenson 91-93

T18 - Production Designer Stephen Marsh 95-97

T19 - Director of Photography Thomas Ackerman 100-102

T20 - Executive Producer Matty Simmons 126-128

T21 - Written By John Hughes 132-135

T22 - Produced by John Hughes + Tom Jacobson 148-151

T23 - Directed by Jeremiah Chechik 155-158

Institution

To make the logo I went onto adobe flash professional to draw the zombie head. I then took the head and put it onto photoshop where I added the text.

Genre Task

Action

Horror

















Comedy

Prelim : The Lousy Teacher

Juno Task

Practice Editing.

Delusion Film Pitch

Delusion from GBHSTomRichardson

The Amazing Spiderman Characters and Narrative

Characters:
Hero - Peter Parker
Heroine - Gwen Stacey
Princesses Father - George Stacey
Villain - The Lizard/ Dr. Curt Connors
Mentor - Uncle Ben
Helper - Aunt May

Narrative:
Equilibrium- Peaceful City.
Disruption- Dr. Curt Connors turns into the lizard and starts to terrorise the city.
Recognition- Peter Parker knows he has to use his new powers to protect the city.
Repair- Peter Parker defeats the Lizard and he gets locked up.
Reinstatement- The city is once again peaceful.

Semiotics - The Walking Dead

Semiotics

Semiotics is the study of signs. Also 'anything that stands for another thing'. 

There are denotations which are what we can actually see when we look at it. There are connotations which are what we can understand from looking at it.

The Walking Dead
You can tell that the man in the centre of the image is the main character because he is centre focus and bigger than the rest of the characters. The two people on the far left are mother and son as she is standing over him in a protective manor. The man next on the left is standing on his own showing he is alone and maybe the odd one out. Although he is the odd one out you can tell he is one of the more important characters as he is bigger than most others. The next two on the left are clearly less important than the rest as they are way further back and smaller in the image than the rest. The next two just to the left of the centre character are holding hands implying they are either in a relationship or related but one of them is way older so it is more likely that they are father and daughter. The two people to the right of the main character are clearly in a relationship as he has his arm around her waist. The next three on the left not including the zombies are also fairly important characters as they are bigger in the image but you can tell they're not necessarily within the same group as the others because they're completely separate from the other characters. Every one of the characters is dirty apart from the man in black showing he is probably most likely to be a separate group from the others.

AS Media