Exposure And Editing Update

In the new scene that we added of our protagonist's sister, we thought that the shots were quite unidentifiable as a flashback. So, to deal with this issue we decided to heighten the exposure levels to make them seem more like a memory.
Then we decided to muffle out the sound of me talking to make the flashback appear distorted and faded. We then Foleyed on a voiceover of Phoebe, reading out the letter as my character. The voiceover is abruptly interrupted by Police sirens which we also Foleyed on.

Filming Day 4

Today we went to Phoebe's house to film the extra scene that we previously mentioned. As spoken about in this vlog, we filmed a POV shot of our protagonist when she was younger. We placed the camera facing the window so that the figure of her older sister was hazy to give a more obvious connotation that the particular shots were flashbacks. I was cast as the older sister and to continue the flashback theme, we are going to muffle out the sound of my voice shouting at the sister and instead, Foley a voiceover of Phoebe pretending to me reading the letter, to act as a recollection of memories that Zoe's character is remembering as she searches through the box.

The footage we filmed will add about 15-17 seconds onto our opening so we'll only need about 9 seconds more of establishing shots, which I am filming tomorrow after school.

Title Sequence

To make our film opening as similar to real movie openings, we decided to add conventions and forms of a real opening, including a title sequence. Our next decision was to decide which credits to add. The ones we decided on were:

• Starring Zoe Stamoulis 
• Starring Abbie Taylor
• Directed by River Flores
• Filmed by Phoebe Butcher

Film Review: Arrival

I got recommended, by one of my teachers, to watch the new film Arrival (2016). The film is about 12 alien spacecraft's, at once, all landing on earth in a sporadic pattern and the government hires a linguist to study the aliens language in order to interpret it and communicate with them.

As soon as i watched the film it instantly struck me as a great film to exemplify amazing shots and use of camera movements. One of my favourite shots in the whole film was when Dr. Louise Banks and some of the other characters are flying over the sea coast at night time in a helicopter (shown below). I liked that shot because the shot slowly retracts with the helicopter and also doubles as an astounding establishing shot. In fact, almost all of the establishing shots are amazing through this film, especially the shot that pans over the alien spacecraft that is placed in Montana. 

The plot is incredibly intriguing and challenges the typical conventions of films and their time sequence. Unlike most films, Arrival doesn't follow a linear time sequence. Instead it makes you believe that the events where chronological and the actions that occur were a consequence of the events that started the movie until the end when it is revealed that those occurrences where in actuality, the ending of the movie and the result of the films actions. 

Vlog 7 - A New Scene

We decided that, because we needed an extra 16 seconds at least of footage, we were going to add in an extra scene. The scene will need to be shot at someone's house so weather conditions are no longer an issue. The scene we are thinking of shooting is of our protagonists older sister giving the box to her to hide when she was young so we need to cast someone as an older sister which we are due to start thinking about soon.

Gender Representation In Our Film Opening

When discussing our characters right at the start of the term, we thought that it was important to challenge gender stereotypes in our film opening so we decided that having a female protagonist rather than male would help widen the audience interest. The teenage generation nowadays widely appreciates different genders having equal representation in films and in the media so we thought it was important as especially in a particular genres, such as thriller and horror, females tend to be represented as weak and dependent on men but we didn't want that so making our protagonist female would make our film more popular whilst also spreading the idealisms that gender equality is important.