Titles

Previously we looked into films and TV Programmes that are similar to the short film that we are making. From this research we found a TV show called that explored the world of celebrity through the eyes of a magazine editor. The titles from this show are a great example of a technique known as Rotoscoping.


This is the titles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3dZY5PpnZg&feature=related


What is Rotoscoping?
Rotoscoping is a technique in which animators trace over live action film movement. Famously Walt Disney and his animators used Rotoscoping in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 and in many more of their creations. The film crew on The Beatles short film Yellow Submarine employed rotoscoping on numerous occasions, most notably Lucy in the sky with diamonds. The film A Scanner Darkly starring Robert Downey Jr, a tale about deception and identity was filmed entirely using this method.

A Scanner Darkly Trailer : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXpGaOqb2Z8

How it was used in Dirt
The advertising campaign for Dirt was created in this method to give a colourful, pop-art/comic book look. The main idea was to show leading actress Courteney Cox, who plays the editor as a wonder women almost superhero presiding over Hollywood. The 6 promos show Hollywood "stars" and celebutants caught in the act of wild, unbecoming behaviour, punctuated by clever comments from Cox's character. In one spot, entitled "Lights, camera, mugshot!" we see a carload of partying female celebrities speeding down a California highway. A police siren quickly ends the party as we quickly see a disheveled starlet posing for a mugshot and going to Jail. The spot ends with an animated Cox looking at the camera and asking sarcastically "Where's a stylist when you need one?"

Lights, Camera, Mugshot! : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Afa95h44cQ&feature=related

For our title sequence this could be very good indeed. Although we do not have the facilites to actually use Rotoscoping, if we were able I think this would be a very good unique selling point of our film. Rotoscoping is very similar to the works of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichenstein and with this we could use a pop art style in our film poster.

Location Problems

After lots of research into finding a location to film at for our main scene's we found a place called Northern College and we got in touch to see if they would give us permission to film there. However when we went up there we were greeted by the woman who had been in discussion with us. However she had miss understood what we wanted to film but set about trying to see if we could have permission. We were then left standing and the woman never returned and we saw her head back to her office so we took that as we are not allowed to film here. so we were back at square one we needed a location, in last desperation we had to improvise and use a road which looked like a drive with a large house at the end and using the camera we tried to make it look like our house.
We understand that the location doesn't do our film the nest of justice because it looks slightly scruffy been a farm but there was no other alternative if we wanted to complete the film.

Film poster research

For our film poster, we wanted the main attraction (eye-catcher) of the poster to be Connor (the actor, played by Brett). We also wanted to show the fact that he is an important celebrity, so maybe a photograph looking up at him, (as though he is an inspiration and of a higher status.

We like the idea of our's being like the following posters- where the only image on it is of the main character, (to show the importance of them to the film) Examples include:

However a more busier looking poster might be good also, as this will give the audience a bit more of an insight into what the storyline is all about. Examples of previous films posters like this, include:

I came across this website while researching film posters and it is quite useful...
http://www.all-film-posters.com/

Film opening scene (titles)

In the process of our film being made, we decided to show Connor and Lucy having a photoshoot, to show the audience that they are celebrities... We then decided to have this as the titles, with still shots added in (with the actors name at the side). We thought this looked very effective, as many films have done this in the past and again, showed the audience the jist of the characters at the very beginning of our short film.

Filming Problems

In our film we need to use a car for most of the shots. When we wrote the storyline and planned our filming schedule we were able to use a car that one of us had however just before the start of filming the car was involved in a crash and was wrote off. so this has made it that we will be delayed with our filming until the car has been sorted which should be in the first week of January 2011.

Film Time Table - By Rachael Whittaker

This is an updated version of the film time table I made to try organice the group. Unfortunatelty though we lost a week of college time due to the big freeze that happened the week that had planned to film which was the week before the editing time I had put in. Which also ment due to having no filming, men having no editing. We did make a break through though as on Tuesday, 14 December we did start filming but could only so far film the scenes that are at the location of inside Mel's house as the wheather is still not right for our filming outside due to snow and ice still being around and not melting at a fast paste. Also we still have no car vehicle we can use for the other scenes, so at the moment we just have to play the waiting game and just work wih what we've got.

Logo

This is our logo for our production company. I decided to add the joker cards to our logo because it fitted with our first film and also the idea of Las Vegas aswell.