Film4 Films

Film4 Productions is a British film production company owned by Channel 4. Because a British television channel, and not a large media conglomeration own them, they tend to make lower budget films.

Film4 usually produce British films such as This Is England and Trainspotting, two films that are very different to my musical. However, following Film4’s global success with the film Slumdog Millionaire, they could be a good company to produce my film.

Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures is an American film production and distribution company. Viacom, the world’s third largest media conglomerate, owns Paramount Pictures. Paramount Pictures is the oldest American film company, founded in 1912. They will often produce and distribute a film, as well as playing just one of these roles.

Paramount Pictures help make films from all genres, and would therefore have experience when making a musical. Paramount Picture would be a good candidate to produce and distribute my film.

Working Title Films

Working Title Films is a British film production company, founded in 1983. Working Title Films are soon to release a television division. American filmmaking company Universal Studios owns Working Title Films, who in turn is owned by American multinational conglomerate General Electric. Because of Working Title Films’ relationship with these large companies, they often make small budget films, but have the ability to produce films of larger budgets, such as Johnny English, with a budget of $40 million.

Working Title Films are responsible for “stereotypical British Films” such as Four Weddings And A Funeral, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones’s Diary, as well as more traditional British Films such as Atonement, Pride And Prejudice, etc. However, they also make more general films. Because of the companies extensive experience in general film making, although not so much with musicals, I would say that Working Title Films could be a good company to produce my film.

We intend on using the school's 'PEC room' as a location for a shot involving athletic students working out.

We want to get a shot of the school jazz orchestra or symphony orchestra rehearsing their music.

We want to use this science room to get a shot of students doing chemistry practical work with bunsen burners and liquids in flasks.

We think that the library will be a good location to get a shot of stereotypical 'nerds' in the school.

This is the main entrance to the school. Rohan and I think that this will be a good area to get a general shot of students as they enter the school's main building.

We think that the canteen will be a good location to obtain general shots of pupils in the school.

We are going to use this area to get a shot of students 'flooding' into one of the buildings as they are bottlenecked through the door.

Rohan and I like this area because it looks nice and could be used for a number of different shots.

This is an area of the school that looks particularly run down and unpleasant, with a broken bollard and industrial sized bins to the right of the frame. This area could be used when we shoot a section representing more rebellious and willfully disobedient students.

The drive up to our school. We intend to capture a shot of students walking into the school in the morning.

More Ideas Regarding My Two Minute Opening

today we looked at the opening scenes of films of different genres (Kidulthood and Goodfellas for gangster, High School Musical, Hairspray and Grease for musicals and Scream, Saw II, Cloverfield and The Village for horror) and took notes on what we thought were distinctive techniques and characteristics used to help convey what genre the film is. I found this task useful because I will be able to apply the ideas that I have taken from watching the openings of the musicals to my two minute opening scene. I found that musical films are interesting because they do not seem to have to follow a particular theme or use any specific techniques. Also, only hairspray opened with music, where as Grease and High School Musical both begin with scenes introducing the leading characters. I think I will have to include song and dance in my opening scene because there seems to be no other obvious way to convey the genre of film that I am trying to recreate.

Generating Ideas For A Two Minute Opening

Last week Rohan and I presented to the class our ideas for our final two minute long introduction video. After thinking about doing a horror film or a gangster film, we decided we would do a musical style film based in the school, potentially writing a short soundtrack for it ourselves. We have thought about a corresponding story-line and potential cast, what we are going to shoot and how we are going to shoot it.

Our First Video Conversation

Editing

Today Rohan and I cut up and edited our footage. I think the match on action has been done quite well. We have taken as much unwanted noise out of the scene as we could without disturbing the speech too much, and we are becoming familiar with the editing software. After a bit of time spent cutting the clips up and moving things around, we managed to get the speech how we want it. We plan to upload the scene tomorrow.

Today I also did an analysis on the opening five minutes to the horror movie 'Scream'. I learned to make links between different aspects of analysis such as 'sound and editing', 'camera work and sound' and 'mise-en-scene and editing'. After the task, I now feel comfortable with analyzing in this way.

First bit of filming

Me and Rohan started filming for a bit of classwork last week. We have filmed a person walking down a corridor and entering a room where they sit down and exchange words with another person. The match on action when the first person enters the room is pretty difficult to get right but hopefully it will come together when we edit the shots later on.