Storyboarding

Storyboards, a set on Flickr.

This link takes you to my scanned pages of storyboards for Solitude.

Storyboarding is a very important aspect to filmmaking, through planning how your shots are going to be organised and also giving you a look into how your film will actually look.
"The making of the new and re-arranging of the old" Bentley 1987
This quote goes to show how to make market successful media, you need to look at current existing products, through following common conventions you know what your target audience already like. When producing and creating shot types I used influences from other films, such as 'Hunger' by Steve McQueen, which contains lots of camera movement, steadicam shots and pans between characters. This technique is included in my storyboard, in my opinion helping to create a very fluid, smooth and professional looking film.
Steve McQueen's 'Hunger' is a great film for me to analyse, as it is evidently targeted towards a similar audience to mine. It's an powerful, independent British film which was funded by Film4 and won numerous awards at film festivals, exactly how my film is intended to be.

Shot list

1.     Long shot. Establishing.  Eye level. Camera focus pulls from hospital background to elder in bed. 5 seconds.

2.     Medium shot. Slight tilt down to show elder in bed. 4 seconds.

3.     Close up. Tight framing on the face, while elder says “No please. Not now!”  5 seconds.

4.     Medium shot. Camera tilted, looking down at elder in bed. 5 seconds.

5.     Point of view shot. Camera tilted towards the ceiling. 4 seconds.

6.     Medium shot. Camera tilted, looking down at elder in bed. 2 seconds.

7.     Point of view shot. Camera tilted towards the ceiling, shot being pulled away into black. 4 seconds.

8.     Extreme close up. Eyelevel. 3 seconds.

9.     Medium shot. Camera tilted, high up looking down at elder in bed. 3 seconds.

10.  Long shot. Eye level with elder. 3 seconds.

11.  Medium shot. Front on, eyelevel head and shoulders shot. 2 seconds.

12.  Over the shoulder shot. Camera pulls from the child’s shoulder to the elder in bed. 4 seconds.

13.  Point of view shot. From elder’s POV, long shot of child sat chair. 3 seconds.

14.  Extreme close up. Elder’s eyes. 3 seconds.

15.  Black

16.  Medium shot. Eyelevel. 5 seconds. Elder “Someone much wiser than me….”

17.  Close up. Low shot. Children’s feet running. 2 seconds.

18.  Long shot. Eyelevel. Camera pans to follow child running. 5 seconds.

19.  Medium shot. Eyelevel behind child. Following him running. 3 seconds.

20.  Long shot. High, dutch tilt to child. 5 seconds.

21.  Close up. Low level. Focus on stones. 3 seconds.

22.  Long shot. Eyelevel. Pull focus between elder and child. 5 seconds.

23.  Medium shot. Low level looking up at child. 7 seconds.

24.  Long shot. Pan from child searching for stones to elder observing. 5 seconds.

25.  Close up. Camera pans and follows the child’s hand. 6 seconds.

26.  Close up. Camera focused on blood as child finds it. 3 seconds.

27.  Close up. Point of view. 2 seconds.

28.  Extreme Close Up of rabbit’s face. 4 seconds

29.  Point of view (rabbit). Tilted up to see the child’s reaction shot. 4 seconds.

30.  Medium Close up. Low shot. Camera pulls from rabbit in foreground to elder in background. 4 seconds.

31.  Long shot. Over shoulder (elder). 3 seconds.

32.  Medium shot. Ground level. 4 seconds.

33.  Point of view (rabbit). Tilted up to see child inspecting and becoming upset. 4 seconds.

34.  Medium shot. Eyelevel with elder as he finishes his speech. 6 seconds.

35.  Medium shot. Eyelevel with child. Camera pans as the child runs away into woods. 5 seconds.

36.  Extreme close up. Elder’s face. 3 seconds.

37.  Faded to white

38.  Long shot. Camera moves into the hospital scene. 3 seconds.

39.  Over shoulder shot. Camera pans around from behind child to end of the bed. 5 seconds.

40.  Medium shot. Eyelevel with child. Rule of thirds. 2-3 seconds.

41.  Medium close up shot of brother. Eyelevel. 2-3 seconds.

42.  Long two shot. Eyelevel. We see both characters in the frame talking. 6-7 seconds.

43.  Long shot. Eyelevel as the brother starts his long speech. Camera slowly pans into his face. 20 seconds.

44.  Medium close up. Reaction shot of brother. 3-4 seconds.

45.  Long shot. We see the whole bed. The camera pans from the end of the bed to the head. 5 seconds.

46.  Long shot. Slightly higher than eyelevel. As they hug, the camera pans left. 4 seconds.

47.  Medium shot. Behind child, the camera follows him leaving the room. 4 seconds.

48.  Long shot. Brother turns in bed. The camera creeps into the shot towards him. 4 seconds.

49.  Extreme close up. Brother’s face. Close eyes. 3-4 seconds.

50.  Blank.

51.  Extreme close up. Elder opens his eyes. 2-3 seconds.

52.  Long shot. Behind the elder and child. Sat center frame on bed. 2-3 seconds.

53.  Long two shot. Elder and child on bed. 8-9 seconds.

54.  Close up. Cutaway of child holding elder’s hand. 3-4 seconds.

55.  Close up. Elder’s face. He takes a deep breath. 3-4 seconds.

56.  Long shot. Eyelevel with elder. Camera is pulled away into darkness as they disappear. 5-6 seconds.

57.  The title fades in.

58.  Credits.

Little White Lies magazine analysis

Little White Lies magazine analysis

In further depth, this magazine is laid out very differently to conventional magazines, for example the curved edges on the images connote a very retro feel and the use of interesting graphics are iconic to the magazine in question. The exaggerated first letter draws the reader into the smaller text through starting the sentence and wanting to read more. Using an image from the film also gives you a sneak peak into what you are going to see when you go to the cinema, and also shows the locations that you might expect to see. The choice of this particular image is interesting, as it is very blue tinted with a dull inner city lighting. This connotes the bleakness and deep nature to which the film will be concerning, in this case it is sex addiction.
With my film poster I intend to use images of one my characters in a hospital bed, with very washed out and blue/grey tones to get across to the audience the dark nature of my film. The use of columns in this particular article really fits with the generic conventions of magazines and newspapers, making the text very easy to read, whilst the use of four columns also makes the page very symmetrical and has a good flow to it.

You could say that this particular film and the way that it is presented in the magazine fits in well with Katz and Blumer's Uses and Gratifications Theory (1974) and Dennis McQuail's more detailed breakdown which suggests that audiences are more likely to consume a text for these specific reasons:

• Gaining insight into circumstances of others
• Self-education
• Satisfying curiosity and general interest

This relates to my article as the audience would be more likely to consume a text such as information on a film about sex addiction because they would like to gain insight into the addicts life, learn about the character's problem and/or satisfy their curiosity and interest into an intimate and powerful film. This similar theory relates to my own film, due to it's dark nature concerning a topic that not many people seem to talk about.

Empire magazine analysis

Very much unlike my film this poster features a product that is very heavily reliant on mise en scene to create verisimilitude as it is set back in ancient greek times. Therefore the opening photograph on this magazine is going to immediately connote themes such as ancient history and fighting, whilst also relating to similar films such as 300 and Jason and the Argonauts. Unlike Little White Lies, the background of the page consists of two images, not just plain colours. This adds the appearance of a full page and unlike LWL the spread isn't consistently symmetrical.

"Humans use patterns to help them deal with a chaotic world. As much as some humans enjoy chaos or the randomness of life, most are upset by it, and probably ancient humans even more, as they hadn't a clue what was going on." (Kunu Chuck 2010)

This explains why humans are drawn to symmetrically, because some are upset by the chaos and randomness of life. I like to think that also having a clean cut and balanced layout looks far more professionals, and this is reflected in LWL's target audience of independent film enthusiasts (more likely to be social grade c+, my target audience).

I believe that the images and background within the page causes an interesting contrast between the dark moody atmosphere of the greek soldier and the white of the ancient marble, this links in with Levi Strauss's binary opposition theory which states that "great contrast is created to draw the viewer in and create interest". This relates to this double page spread, as well as my film and possibly my poster, not necessarily because of my choice in colour scheme, but because I intend to feature my two main characters who have a considerable age gap between them.

Unlike Little White Lies, this article has a title, whereas LWL has a page before it explaining "In this section we review Shame". This isn't something that I would do because I only need to do a double page, so including a title to the article could give a better impression on the audience. The use of a large section of writing that leads into the main article is really interesting too, as it draws the viewer deeper into the main article, which is also relevant to the exaggerated first letter which does this also.

All in all, I intend to use some of these conventions that you would find in generic magazines, such as the main title of the review page, the image(s) of the actors within the film, exaggerated first letters, the name of the film and the use of large titles. Using these conventions, I feel that I will create an interesting, professional looking magazine review page that will be suitable and attract my target audience to see my film.

Empire Layout Analysis

Tyrannosaur Film Poster

Tyrannosaur Poster Analysis

This is my second poster analysis of Independent British film, 'Tyrannosaur' directed by Paddy Considine. I have been aware of this film through my Magazine, 'Little White Lies', which is good for images and posters. I have started to see conventions on these posters, such as the director's name, the age certificate and the clear indication of the title. With these analysis' in mind, I intend to create a professional looking and eye catching film poster.

In more detail, the use of colour on this poster is very bleak which connotes the dark and intense themes that are underlined in this film such as domestic violence. The image of the small figure in the midst of a large landscape really connotes the insignificance of the protagonist in relation to reality and the council estate on which he lives. The graphic of the dinosaur underneath the ground not only links to the title, but also relates to the theme of underlying messages, that there's always something beneath or behind someone that you don't know about.
As with films that have dark meanings and underlying messages, the reason audiences view them is to gain an insight into the life of others and educate themselves in the subject matter. For example, Katz and Blumer's Uses and Gratifications Theory (1974) and Dennis McQuail's more detailed breakdown which suggests that audiences are more likely to consume a text for these specific reasons:

• Gaining insight into circumstances of others
• Self-education
• Satisfying curiosity and general interest

This all relates directly to my film through the dark themes of death, if my poster connoted that then I'm sure that I would attract the viewer to see my film out of curiosity, which is a great way of making sure my film meets the right target audience.

Treatment

“Someone much wiser than me once said that hindsight was a glorious thing. A chance to line our choices in front of us and show how every decision affected the outcome of our life”.

‘Solitude’ is a thought provoking short five-minute drama following the moments between life and death, looking back at your life and regrets before finally accepting that death is nothing to be afraid of.Following a dying man in hospital, we witness his death and are taken into a bleak empty space where he sees his younger self. The child takes him back to re-live his first experience of death, a dead rabbit. As the child stares at the dead rabbit, the elder narrates over what is happening, explaining how he became fascinated by the grandest mystery of all, death. As the memory fades away, we are taken forward to a memory of a near death experience that his brother had. The child asks him questions, such as “What is it like to die?” further continuing his strive to understand the concept of death. As we are taken back to the empty space, the man talks to his younger self about death, and finally accepts the fact that he has lived life to the full and that death is natural. At the end, the man decides that it is time and passes away. These scenes are set in three locations, a hospital, an empty, endless space representing limbo and a wood where the man recalls his first experience of death. The hospital and woods represent an idea of fear, isolation and the concept of life and death (life circle). Although the overall theme for this film is upsetting, it is something that everyone can relate to, therefore making the characters involved in the film on the whole more powerful and relevant to the audience as they could easily associate themselves, or people they know with the concept of death.

The dark nature of the film really contrasts with the uplifting ending, as the elder dies we can see that he is happy, in turn creating more of an emotional impression on the audience, hopefully giving them something to think about after they’ve seen ‘Solitude’. In short, members of the audience will definitely care about characters in my film, as they symbolise the futile battle that every human has against death. Furthermore, the characters represent the audience directly and people they know, such as elderly relatives or children.In terms of style, my film takes inspiration from films such as Steve McQueen’s ‘Hunger’ for the hospital scenes and Shane Meadow’s ‘Dead Man’s Shoes’ for the drama and hard hitting tension built by narratives, I feel that this film would fit in well with the independent British film scene. The use of fluid steadicam shots, interesting cinematography, powerful acting and hard-hitting narratives really reinforce this point, helping to make my film follow the conventions of real existing products that, like my film, are targeted to a niche market.

The particular focus of my film is to give a production which impacts my audience, in order to do this I will use the Uses and Gratifications theory in the way it gives my target audience a chance to gain social approval from seeing my film, I need to challenge the question ‘what people do with media?’ (Katz 1959) By doing this I can include features which will gratify my audience in their every day life. My initial thought into achieving this is offering my film as a product of a more higher class social trend, as the upper class B and above are more likely to attend film festivals and watch more independent films as part of their hobby or with friends on a social occasion.

My film is only going to be five minutes long, and therefore the fact that I have a limited budget doesn’t seem to really impact my production as such. I feel that with high quality digital footage, I can create a professional grade, thought provoking drama with only paying for essentials such as petrol money.

Synopsis

“Someone much wiser than me once said that hindsight was a glorious thing. A chance to line our choices in front of us and show how every decision affected the outcome of our life”.

‘Solitude’ is a thought provoking short five-minute drama following the moments between life and death, looking back at your life and regrets before finally accepting that death is nothing to be afraid of.

Following a dying man in hospital, we witness his death and are taken into a bleak empty space where he sees his younger self. The child takes him back to re-live his first experience of death, a dead rabbit. As the child stares at the dead rabbit, the elder narrates over what is happening, explaining how he became fascinated by the grandest mystery of all, death. As the memory fades away, we are taken forward to a memory of a near death experience that his brother had. The child asks him questions, such as “What is it like to die?” further continuing his strive to understand the concept of death. As we are taken back to the empty space, the man talks to his younger self about death, and finally accepts the fact that he has lived life to the full and that death is natural. At the end, the man decides that it is time and passes away. These scenes are set in three locations, a hospital, an empty, endless space representing limbo and a wood where the man recalls his first experience of death. The hospital and woods represent an idea of fear, isolation and the concept of life and death (life circle).

Although the overall theme for this film is upsetting, it is something that everyone can relate to, therefore making the characters involved in the film on the whole more powerful and relevant to the audience as they could easily associate themselves, or people they know with the concept of death. The dark nature of the film really contrasts with the uplifting ending, as the elder dies we can see that he is happy, in turn creating more of an emotional impression on the audience, hopefully giving them something to think about after they’ve seen ‘Solitude’. In short, members of the audience will definitely care about characters in my film, as they symbolise the futile battle that every human has against death. Furthermore, the characters represent the audience directly and people they know, such as elderly relatives or children.

In terms of style, my film takes inspiration from films such as Steve McQueen’s ‘Hunger’ for the hospital scenes and Shane Meadow’s ‘Dead Man’s Shoes’ for the drama and hard hitting tension built by narratives, I feel that this film would fit in well with the independent British film scene. The use of fluid steadicam shots, interesting cinematography, powerful acting and hard-hitting narratives really reinforce this point, helping to make my film follow the conventions of real existing products that, like my film, are targeted to a niche market.

Hal Smith directs ‘Solitude’.

Magazine Institutions

Little White Lies 

LWLies is a bi-monthly, independent movie magazine that features cutting edge writing, illustration and photography to get under the skin of cinema.

As they say on their website:

“Because movies don’t exist in a vacuum, we venture beyond the boundaries of the big screen, exploring the worlds of music, art, politics and pop culture to inform and illuminate the medium we love. Bold, beautiful and unique, LWLies is a magazine on a mission – to reshape the debate across the movie landscape”

I am subscribed to Little White Lies, and I love it because it gives me reviews of independent films, which I prefer to read about, whereas a magazine like Empire will tend to feature a Hollywood blockbuster, which just doesn’t interest me as much. LWL tends to review British films too, which is the industry that I hope to go into in the future too, so this magazine is ideal for me, especially because I’m interested in art, photography graphic design too. The people who read this magazine would more likely be an audience from Social Grade C or above and more likely to attend a film festival to watch short films.

Empire 

Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008. It is the biggest selling film magazine in Britain, consistently outselling its nearest market rival Total Film by over two-to-one and is also published in Australia, Turkey, Russia and Portugal. Unlike Little White Lies, it is released once a month and doesn’t tend to feature and entirely independent film on its cover or in it’s feature story.

In my opinion, my film would be more suited to featuring in Little White Lies, mainly because it has a review section for short films, whereas Empire doesn’t. My film is also targeted towards the same kind of audience as LWL and therefore it only makes sense to model my own magazine review page on this so as to make sure my product reaches my target audience.

Examples of shot types

Before I start storyboarding, I felt that I had to explore different shot types so that I know what to try and use in each scene when planning the cinematography. The first of my storyboards will be uploaded soon.

The use of various shots can really help to create continuity, whilst also creating representation with certain characters. Most importantly, the job of choosing shot types is just one of the many aspects of telling a story a story that I love doing as a filmmaker. The cinematography, framing and movement of the camera is the key to showing the action of the scene and can really make or break a film, no matter how long or short it is.

The Vimeo video school

The Vimeo Video School is an online community for anyone to learn how to make better films. On it there are many submitted videos about certain filming techniques, mainly about DSLR filming, a way of filming that is becoming increasingly popular.

Vimeo have many videos of professional Philip Bloom to run through the ins and outs of using a DSLR camera, which could be very handy for me because I will be shooting on a Canon 60D stills camera and also a 5D mark II stills camera too. Vimeo Featured Lessons give you in-depth information and tutorial videos that you can follow, or you can just browse thousands of tutorial videos on their website, which are organized into different categories and skill levels. This is good for me, because I already know a fair bit about filming through DSLRs, so if necessary I could look at the more advanced section of the film school.

Lessons are created by the Staff at Vimeo and structured to give you more details and in depth examples about the topics you want to learn about. Vimeo are continuing to expand on its film school to the point where anyone member of the public could upload their own lesson to the online community to display techniques so that eventually Vimeo will have an online resource to clearly explain and teach film-making to anyone with access to the internet.

This online collection of films could be a very good resource for me if I’m ever stuck or need ways to enhance my filming techniques. There are a number of video tutorials that could help me to fully use my own DSLR in an effective way. Looking at the examples online, you can see how effective DSLRs are at producing fantastic full frame HD video, and how good these cameras look in a fully edited and produced film. An interesting technique that I have recently seen on Vimeo is a way of using a neutral density filter to darken down the image which means you can in tern turn down the aperture on the camera to help create a vey shallow depth of field which is what DSLR camera are becoming renowned for. It’s techniques like this that I hope will really turn my film into something more than just a storyline, something that is visually pleasing and beautiful to look at.

Master Shots by Chris Kenworthy

For Christmas I recently received an interesting book on Cinematography, called 'Master Shots' by Christopher Kenworthy. Inside the book there are some amazing examples of shots and how to achieve them, including layouts and framing.

My film is very heavily dialogue based, which I feel might be quite hard to make visually interesting. In this book however, there is a whole section dedicated to shooting dialogue. I have included an interesting section below:

There's also a very interesting section on representation of characters through camera shots and movement and this is something that I could use with various representation theories such as:

“Old people in our culture are also segregated and treated as though they are waiting to die. There are close associations between dependency, illness, dying and death. It seems that increasingly in our culture there are pressures that encourage a reversion to infantile feelings which have to be madly defended against.” (Evans 1998) This theory is made incredibly relevant through the age of my elderly character and the use of carefully constructed camera angles could really help to build on this representation theory.

I feel that this book might become very useful to me when I'm doing the storyboarding process, helping me to create interesting and professional shots.

Snowtown Poster Analysis

For my secondary task, I need to create a film poster for my short film 'Solitude'. I thought that I should analyse some current film posters in my specific genre at the moment. The first of my film posters is of 'Snowtown' a gritty independent low budget film about cocaine.

With such a really thought provoking and gritty film, I feel that this poster really does it justice with it obviously attracting the right audience to see the film. For example, the use of a not very well looking main character with a predominant use of red that really connotes rage, anger and death, let's the viewer guess what the film is about as it really connotes murder and anguish. The actor featured on the poster looks particularly vulnerable, weak and ill which again connotes themes of young people and solitude as there isn't anyone else within the frame. The vague outlines of a landscape in the background and the stony wall that is behind the actor really gives an impression into where the film is set, in a poor suburban area of Australia.

"Adolescence is inherently a time of storm & stress when ‘all’ young people go through some degree of emotional and behavioural upheaval, before establishing a more stable equilibrium at adulthood." Stanley Hall (1904). This particular quote fits this poster and film rather well, because it features an adolescent as it's main character. The dirty and ragged outfit that the teenager is wearing really gives the impression that he is poor and stereotyping would lead you to presume that he's homeless or antisocial. The red that features on the poster and the grittiness in the background doesn't give a good impression on the main character as it represents him as a thief or murderer due to red connoting to rage, blood and anger. However, when you watch the film you know that this really isn't true, as this main character is sensitive, ill and innocent but unfortunately gets caught up in trouble. Hall's point is also relative to my poster as I intend to use an image of the child in my film on it, put instead I will be using lots of white to connote purity and heaven, to avoid producing a negative portrayal of teenagers.Snowtown Analysis