CONSTRUCTION: DEVISING OUR FILM TITLE

Today we worked on the exact wording for our film title. We wanted the title to:

·         establish the film’s genre (spy mystery thriller)

·         Convey the key ideas (our ce)

·         Intrigue the audience (it suggests a deadly plot, our central female character carries a mysterious box)

·         Tap in to intertextuality through shared knowledge of cultural codes

OUR SHORTLIST

Beyond Belief, Behind The Barrel, Behind The Wall, The Berlin Brief, Operation Meisterhaus, In Cold Blood

We ended on In Cold Blood because it has many connotations that work with our plot, in  particular, the reference to the Cold War and to ruthless violence. The Cold War was a war between America and Russia, where no actual fighting took place however there was a constant threat of nuclear disaster. In our film, we have many connotations of the title, such as the threat upon the girl when she is shot and the era that it is set. 

29/01/14 FILMING: FIRST FILMING SESSION

Today was our first shoot for our film opening. In this scene we had Thomas, George and I sit around a table looking at a file on this girl. We each had to take in different props and costumes. We borrowed a camera, tripod and two lights. We decided that we would film in a room in our school that looked like it would fit the 1950s period of our film. We had props from that era such as an old newspaper, and big trench coats. We managed to film the shot that we needed to. We filmed many different ways we could, including pans and zooms. However we will only use one of those shots for the final piece. Below are pictures from our shoot.

RESEARCH: FILM OPENING ANALYSIS

Today I analysed the opening of Zen (BBC 1) a thriller television programme. I saw the ways that genre was shown; such as images of guns to show crime, images of keys as a reference to prison, the protagonist in a dark, formal suit with sunglasses, looking authoritative and buildings relating to Italian police headquarters. ‘The Questura’ is clearly inscribed in stone. This series follows Aurelio Zen and his detective works in Rome and is based on the novels by Michael Dibdin. I saw how the opening had many visual signs of the Italianicity of the show, such as; the red, white and green in vertical strips which connotes the Italian flag, silhouetted images of St Peter’s Dome as well as top down shots of St Peter’s Square which are iconic symbols of Rome, known all over the world over, and Fiat 500 cars.

I used the website The Art Of The Title (www.artofthetitle.com) which I thought was necessary for me to use. It is a site that is dedicated to displaying and examining title opening sequences. I picked three opening sequences to analyse: Moon (Duncan Jones 2009), Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Guy Ritchie 2005) and The Player (Robert Altman 1992)

PRODUCTION LOG 08/01/14

Today we planned the first scene we were going to film. This was in a room inside a mansion with a whispering conversation between a couple men.  We knew which room we were going to film in but we did not know what props or costumes we wanted. We then thought that the men should be dressed in long coats and fedoras, however we did not know where to get them from. We are planning to film on Wednesday 15/01/14.