Josie Quigley-Jay's (2015) AS Foundation Portfolio: 2015

Levi-Strauss and Binary Oppositions

12:08

Unspooling the Art of Titles

16:22

To begin with if you've never seen Gone Girl you may want to see the title sequence say you have at least some idea of what I'm talking about. Click here to watch it! Its very chilling.

Just to begin with here's a little bit of random information that's relevant but didn't fit under my titles. The Title design was created by Neil Kellerhouse and the Editor was Kirk Baxter. Both are known for their work 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo'

Camera shots:-

To begin with the first shot used is a close up onto the Main character. This instantly puts across that she is a key feature in the film and that a lot of the story centres around her. This mirrors the camera shot as her being the most important character in the film and determines the story line.

The next set of camera shots are Establishing shots, some at a low angle or ever so slightly tilted. The slight effect of tilted shots gives off a sense of disorientation and combining this with a low angle can make the audience feel extremely uncomfortable which, overall, is what the creator wants. To add to this creepy effect the shots have been darkened which makes the setting appear more mysterious, the something evil is lurking in the darkness.

Typography:-

In the title sequence the font used is Futura put in white.

To begin with the titles introducing the production company and main stars are put on a plain black background with the titles appearing in the centre. When the Film title 'Gone Girl' its shown on a establishing shot background which the title then fades into. This then sets a new theme for the following titles which appear on further establishing shots, placed in either the left or right bottom corners of the screen fading into the image after 2-3 seconds.

Sound:-

Throughout the title piece there the score is 'What have we done to each other' a song by Trent Reznor. The score could be described as Eerie involving pipes, using this music helps set a dark tone to the film along with suspense. Also in the sequence there's added sound effects of birds and crickets which exaggerates the diegetic sounds.

Evaluation

The Evaluation.

11:20

1. What have you learnt during the making of your Preliminary Task?

I've learnt the basics of how to edit videos using premier pro however I still need quite a bit of practice as, it is VERY basic knowledge. I still cannot add in special effects but match on action? I'm not too shabby even if I do say so myself.

Although we managed our time well I've learnt to at least leave a week minimum to edit all the videos together but two weeks would be better. It's also helpful to upload and sort through videos as you film them and not leave it all till editing. Doing this means you can easily see if the shots you've taken can be used or if they need to be redone. Do a day of filming, upload them all that night, sort them into useful and delete worthy.

With group work I learnt it should be fun cause otherwise you never want to get anything done however fun and actually doing the work should be well balance or you'll never meet the deadline. We did manage to balance this and got our task done in time without arguments or boredom.

Our storyboard was not the most extravagant but it worked. It showed us exactly the shots we needed to take and proved its usefulness. However we have learnt to always keep it with you when shooting. When it came to editing I realised we had strayed slightly from the original planned shots as we did not have it with us at the time, instead we looked at it, picked out some shots to do before hand, did some and improvised some to fit our wanted storyline. From this I've also learnt to make sure you're completely happy with the storyboard and know exactly how it fits together before you start shooting.

2. Areas of Success.

3. Areas of Development.

4. How well did you meet the brief?

I believe that we meet the brief pretty well in the time we had. We successfully managed to incorporate shot/reverse shot into our video in the segment of speech in order to show which character was talking. To fit with this we did not break the 180 degree rule which involves the characters having the same right/left. it helped make the characters conversation look more believable as to positioning.

Our Match on Action worked very well when especially in the beginning of our task when Gemma was walking down to corridor and through the door. All of the clips aligned helping to display good continuity.

5. Evaluate your contribution to the group work.

Within the group I had the task of camera work which was something I very much enjoyed. I had to work out the right angles to take shots from and make sure the setting was right for the shot (e.g lighting). I also helped a small amount with editing the final clips together. I was quite flexible with the time we had and was available to film every free period during school hours however did struggle out of hours. Luckily we had plenty of time to get everything done in free periods which made things a lot easier for all of us. I have also learnt that in a group although each person having an individual job makes it easier to organise it is also good to help each other as it takes the pressure off the group a bit more and balances the work load equally.