FIGHT DANCING

I have spoked to a friend of mine who has been studying dance for several years and in a few months will start a dance diploma.

I told her that we were looking for someone who could choreograph a fight scene with some dance lifts in it to make it funnier.

She suggested looking at a dance group called Beyond Words that use some contact dance in their routines, here is the one that she showed me:

We have also agreed that she will be on set with us during filming so that she can direct the actors and get the most out of it.
Tomorrow we shall start discussing the types of things that we want to include in our dance.

Meeting 15/02/12

On Wednesday 15th, Ernie, Tas and myself met up to discuss the refilming of our project.
We came to desicions on everything and I have outlined it below:

• We decided that it was absolutely necessary to refilm: after rewatching our film, we reaslised that we wre dropping too many marks on silly things like mise en scene, having bags in our shots etc.
• We decided that we wanted only serious actors to be in our film: as funny as it was with all our friends, we are now running very short of time so we need theatre studies students so that we don't need to do as many takes for each shot.
• We decided not to film it at night: it would be fun and exciting to film it at night, but we want it to be funny so we will keep it at the day time so as not to confuse that audiences expectations.
• We are going to keep the storyline the same: we decided that we are going to keep the whole opening the same rather than starting from scratch as we will not have enough time.
• We are going to revise the makeup: we noticed that the makeup was much too obvious. We have decided to try it out with less black around the eyes and yellow face paint instead of white to make it more subtle and authentic. Tas is now investigating how else we can do the makeup.
• We need more zombies: after watching Deadrun, the previous sixth form short film, we realised that the thing that made it so effective was that it had so many more zombies in it, so we are going to add more zombies into our opening.
• We need to make it funnier: in order to make it funnier we are going to employ the help of a dance student to choreograph the fight scene so that we can have more dance like and therefore more fitting with the music and the general tone of the piece. Here is a clip of a dance that a dance student showed to me, she will be attending the filming with us so that she can direct the actors according to our brief. 

FEEDBACK 31/01/12

We showed our updated blogs and film openings to the class the other day. We have not changed our piece since the last time however we shared our ideas for re filming it and below is some of the feedback that we got:

'I agree with re-recording the introduction because of the jerkiness etc.. I think you should include some sound whether it be very quiet and fading in. Also, keeping the outro is also a good idea, I think you should also keep the black outs which are synced to the audio because it's definitely very powerful.'

'You should definitely keep the ending. I think when Cameron falls over, you can tell it's pretty fake. The stuttering start hinders your project. If you are trying to emulate Shaun Of The Dead, remember that it is more reliant on it's dialogue, so turning the fight into a dance sounds like a great idea.'

'You were bang on with where you need to improve and change, once you tighten up the opening with regards to movements and time it's going to look slick and professional! You could have some real fun making the audience jump with this, for instance when the camer is filming out of the window, it would be cool if you could somehow have a zombie jump into the shot?'

'I think you should still do it in the day rather than night, or have it in a moderately well lit area at night, streetlamps as spotlights or something? The editing in the ending is really great so you should stick with that bit at least. Some of the shots could have been steadier but still great.'

In response to this feedback, I think we have decided that we are definitely going to keep the ending but we are going to refilm the entire thing.

After reading the comment about making people jump, I have been thinking that it would work if we had the humans stumble round the corner straight into the zombies or something similar because it will be very difficult to have it in the first shot as we are two stories high.

Also, in response to the last comment about filming it at night, I will go out at night and have a fiddle with the settings on my camera to see if we can increase the contrast to the point where all you can see is what is under the streetlamps.

Finally, we definitly need to view the dance fight as the central comedy moment of it and so it will take serious choreographing and for this it may be of use to spend an hour or so with someone who does dance as a hobby for them to give us some pointers etc.

TITLE BOARD ANALYSIS

This title board has a clear focus that is the title of the film 'Shaun Of The Dead' as well as its main star, Simon Pegg.

The creator has made this focus by using contrasting colours; an element that has also been applied to the text as well as the the character.

The use of red as the main colour for the background connotates blood alerting the audience that it has elements of horror in the film. The white has been used to contrast the red and gives a humorous atmosphere. If black had been used for the lettering then it would have given the film a much darker, more serious feel, which would have deceived the audience.

The zombies have also been used to anchor the viewers thoughts. The zombies are unsaturated and grey whilst Pegg is in bright colour instantly catching the viewers eye as it is highly contrasted with the zombies. 

The confused look on Pegg's face also connotes humour and alerts the audience to the comedy in the film.

The font that has been used is bold and clear and also very eye catching which makes it easy for the viewers to see the title. The typography used gives a sense of dirty and rushed to finish as the edges of the letters appeared jagged. This works well as it mimicks the movements of the zombies directly above. The hand in the letter A gives the film a stereotypical zombie film feel and combined with the design plays on the audiences expectations about the genre of film and what it will be like.

The composition of the typography emphasises the word 'dead' again anchoring thoughts of the genre of the film and brings attention to the title of the film.

Overall the mixture of both the image and the typography instantly creates a mixture of horror and humour. The image suggests comedy and the typography suggests horror, combining both genres visually to give a clear representation of the film.

In our opinion, Shaun Of The Dead has a great title board that raises many techniques and styles that we will have to consider when we design the title board for our film 'Not Quite Alive But Definitely Kicking.'

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Below is a powerpoint presentation showing how we started to think about some of the things detailed above for our production logos.

Production logos

View more presentations from ErnzzzeLimbo

LOGO AND PRODUCTION TITLE

In order to come to a decision about our production logos and title boards we Ernie created a questionnaire for our media class to fill in as they fall into our target audience. Below are our findings. 

Designs 3 and 4 were the most popular with our target audience so T.E.E Productions will have to decide between the two by weighing up the pros and cons of each design. We may also develop them according to the feedback given by the participants of the questionnaire:

The general consensus of design 3 is that the original design appeals to the target audience and as a group, we agree.

The feedback of design 4 said that the audience like the clear focus of the design as the word 'TEE' appears to be the main subject of it. Also, the audience found the 3D effect very appealing as it is modern and futuristic.

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There is a definite tie between designs 2 and 5 and TEE Productions will have a difficult time deciding on which one to use. 

Design 2 seemed to be popular due to the combination of the camera and the tea and this has been noted as the selling point of the design. The audience liked that it related to the Film Industry and has been pointed out in many of the questionnaires.

An improvement that has been suggested is that steam could be coming off the word T.E.E which is a very good idea and will definitly be taken into account if we decide to develop it. 

Design 5 also won many votes and this is due to the simplicity of the design. However, there was one person who suggested that it may be too simple.
An improvement suggested for this design was a little puddle of tea, or Spillage. Another suggestion was to add a border and this will be taken into account if we decide to develop it.

STORYBOARD 2.0

In a previous post I have outlined the generic storyline for a zombie film, below I have outlined the narrative for our zombie film for which we are making the opening of.

• Female protagonist introduced - she gets into trouble with zombies, about to be eaten.
• Male protagonist is introduced - he is a 'Zombie Killer' mysterious killer (the man in the mask in Misfits series 2).
• Male protagonist saves female protagonist.
• F.P falls for M.P and starts to deliberatly get herself into trouble in order to get him to come and rescue her.
• Zombie Antagonist is introduced - he/she is cleverer than the others and is trying to catch them (I am Legend/The Dead)
• M.P and F.P fall in love - there is a period of time during which they are fighting zombies side by side and having fun.
• F.P is killed by Z.A - dramatic romantic moment when she is turned into a zombie in front of M.P
• M.P committs suicide - runs into battle and brings down as many zombies as possible.

This is a brief storyboard of the rest of the narrative for our zombie film. If we decide to redo our film opening from scratch I would suggest that we use the first 3 bullet points for it. I am putting together a storyboard at the moment that illustrates how we could do this, it will posted up very shortly.

IMPROVING OUR FILM OPENING

After rewatching our film a few times, we came to the conclusion that it was neccessary for us to refilm even if we kept it the same. This is because that lots of the shots include things that shouldn't be in them as part of the mise en scene. For example:

Here the tripod is very plainly in shot. This will lose us marks as it is an example of bad mise en scene.

When we redo this, we shall move all equipment that we are not using into the hall of the block of flats nearby so that there is no chance of it being caught in the shot.

This is a shot during which Cameron (male human survivor) looks at the camera and asks if it is filming. For our rough draft we decided that the moment between him doing thsi and him breaking free from the fight was too short so we had to include it.

In our refilm we shall do many takes to the same shot so that we can eliminate any breaking of the $th wall.

This is another example of msie en scene. This shot lasts much longer however, so the bags and equipment are much more prominent and this will lose us even more marks than the first shot.

Again, to overcome this problem in the refilm, we shall put all of our bags and things that we don't want to be in the shot in the foyer of the block of flats from which this shot was taken. That way they will not be caught in the shot.

We have also been considering the option of rewriting the whole thing entirely and starting from scratch. At the moment, we really like how quickly it is paced and the shots that we have used. However, it needs to be shorter and we think that it is not funny enough for it to be a comedy zombie film.

We were looking to create a deliberatly amsuing zombie fim opening, however at the moment, it seems much more to be a tongue-in-cheek accidentally funny piece.

We are going to add some mroe things in that will make it funnier, for example, making the fight scene much more dance like so that it is more amusing. I am making a quick storyboard that includes some of the things that we feel would improve it.