Diary Post - First Filming Lesson

In my first lesson filming I learnt alot, it was very helpful to have some time where I could get to know how to use the cameras and play around with different shots and angles to see what looks good. We had to film someone, me, walking down a corridor, opening a door, entering the room, sitting down and exchanging a couple of lines of dialougue with someone before leaving. We decided to try and make it slightly more interest than just "Hello." "How are you?" "Good." So we had the two characters act out a breakup. This helped us to learn to think creatively so we could make our pieces of film more interesting.

One of the most important things I learnt was that you should always shoot too much footage. It's much better to have too much footage and to have to delete some or just not use it because once you reach the editing stage it is too late to go back and shoot some more footage as you will be wearing different clothes, look different and the continuality will be ruined. We made sure to try and film multiple takes of each scene incase something messed up or so we could choose the best one and we had two different people filming different angles of the same action at the same time. If I was filming this again I would make sure to check that all the areas we are filming in are appropriately lit as some scenes are darker than others and don't fit together very well.

Film Opening Analysis - The Dark Knight

Film Opening Analysis:
The Dark Knight






One of the films I analysed was the Batman film 'The Dark Knight'. I analysed the opening of this film as an example of a stereotypical action movie intro.

The film begins with a series of titles, it begins with Warner Brothers and then Legendary Pictures and then, finally, DC Comics. All of the titles feature the same colour scheme consisting of dark blues, black and a little bit of white. These dark colours set the feel for the film before it has even begun and help determine that the film is going to be a dark, action film that maybe is not suitable for younger audiences. This matches the target audience as a lighter colour scheme would have been more suitable for children so they have avoided this in order to attract only the correct audience.

The film begins with an establishing shot, it appears to show the city of Gotham at peace, there is nothing going on and it is simply setting the scene. I feel like this establishing shot has a similar effect to the establishing shots of my short film, luring the audience into a false sense of security as everything appears normal at first.

The first character we see immediately throws us into the action/thriller genre. He is holding a weapon of some kind which he has used to blow out the window and is wearing a mask which seems to be inspired by horror films. He appears intimidating through his masked identity, weapon and his actions. We can identify him as an enemy or bad guy because of his scary mask.

Within the first two minutes of the film, we are thrown into the action with a bank robbery, a gang of people wearing the same masks as the first character shown storm the bank, stopping any guards and threatening everyone in order to stop them moving. This fits the generic conventions as often action movies are associated with crime and gangs, similarly to Die Hard.

Film Opening Analysis - A good day to Die Hard

Film Opening Analysis:
A good day to Die Hard







When getting inspiration for my film opening, one of the films I looked at was Die Hard. I watched the opening sequence (first two minutes up till the titles) and took screenshots of important frames.

The first screenshot shows the first titles over a black screen, these display the production companies behind the film but do not play an important role in the story in the film or tell us about the characters.

 The second screenshot is of the first bit of footage we see, in this shot we see a plane landing on runway and another title appears on top. The title names the director of the film and the scene behind it helps set the feel of the film and introduce what turns out to be an important part of the first scene, the plane.

The third screenshot introduces the main character and the other character in the scene, it cuts from an outside view of the plane landing to this shot to help the audience realise that the characters shown are in the plane we saw in the first shot. The main purpose of this shot is to introduce Bruce Willis' character and show his fear of flying as he talks to the person next to him.

The final screenshot end the opening two minutes and end with the title of the movie, in this case, "Die Hard". This is used to show that the opening had finished and now the main part of the film had begun.

This opening follows generic conventions to some extent but the narrative of the story is not typical of that of an action movie. Normally movies from the action or thriller genre start with an action sequence or contain a fight scene, this isn't seen in the opening for Die Hard as it is meant to be more tame and family friendly that movies like The Dark Knight and Shutter Island.