Media Trip To BFI (Akshay)

Last week Tuesday we visited the BFI (British Film Institution) which is in Central London, the trip was to help our Media class with ideas on how to make a thriller opening. We would take notes on what Pete Fraser was telling us about well known film openings, such as Juno, Dawn of the dead and Catch me if you can. The main features that he would explain to us were: Genre, Narrative(enigma), Character, Atmosphere and finally setting. He explained how important it is to look at these features because its vital that the opening has a structure and that it makes sense. As he showed us previous film openings by students he told us what we thought about it and if that group had followed the key features.

Pete Fraser

My overall opinion on Pete Fraser was vey positive. This is because i learnt very useful exam techniques and tips, but more importantly i learnt how to create a very good Opening Sequence. The main aspects he taught me was how to use genre, narrative, character (enigma), atmosphere and setting usefully in my opening sequence.

Simon  Frame 

Simon Frame is involved in visual effects, he has worked on 'The Kings's Speech' which starred Colin Firth and he explained about how important and vital Visual effects are.

Joe Cornish

Joe Cornish is a director who had worked on the Film 4 production of 'Attack the Block' and he explained about how important it is to go out and experiment with filming and getting used to the technical equipment.

Overall the trip was a fantastic experience, it had a relaxing atmosphere just being there although it was very intriguing and interesting at the same time, and it really helped in giving us ideas that we could relate to our own openings.

Pitching Our Thriller Opening Idea (Ricardo,Antonio,David & Akshay)

Yesterday our group had to pitch our idea on different aspects of our story 'The Innocent' to our class. We had a mood-board to explain all of the different types of features such as; Props, Location, Characters, Inspirations and Costumes which would be involved in the opening . Plus to aid us about trying to present the first couple of minutes of our story, we had a storyboard which I drew earlier in order to give a visual representation of our ideas. Also if that wasn't enough we had a time limit to follow whilst explaining our chosen features, it was about 15 seconds each.

Antonio spoke about : Location (Where we will be filming and directing)
David spoke about : Characters/Story (What characters will be involved, Summary of the story)
Akshay spoke about : Props (What objects/props we need)
I spoke about: Inspirations and costumes. (What films gave us ideas, What we will be wearing)

Advantages about our pitch

• We were told that we had good timing for the features that we had and that everybody got something to say with equal amounts.
• The Mood-board was very organised and well set out
• We all spoke fluently and coherently with no signs of hesitation or worry 
• The drawings on our story-board were clear and visible

Disadvantages about our pitch

• The class did not say anything bad about our pitch, but our teacher did point out that we didn't have an Animatic storyboard, which was fine but it would of been nice to of added it in. (Our group lost track of time.) 

The reason why we did this exercise is because it showed progress within our story and how it has evolved from where we just started think of ideas about thriller openings. It was a good experience for our group and we also learnt that this technique of pitching is actually used in real life in order to present a film idea. 

Ricardo

Pitch Lesson

Today we pitched our idea to our class, we gave everybody a jist of what it consists of, and sold our idea to our teacher.
We discussed further ideas to add to our opening scene and got rid of ones that weren't relevant.

David

The Innocent Part 2

Synopsis Of The Film:

A teenage boy known to be an underdog by his friends as he isn't the most intelligent or best vocally joins three others on a criminology. Saying this, there is some mystery about   Frank as outside of his friendship group he is known to be a good friend and servant to local gangster. Frank along with his 3 other friends set out to go and find out more about criminology, but without them knowing, he is ordered by Tommy to go and kill his 3 'so called friends' otherwise if the task is not completed, his life will be put on the line too.

Characters for the film.

Frank - The Protagonist
The Boss - Local Gangster
Kevin - One of the friends in the group. (David)
Tommy - One of the friends in the group. (Ricardo)
Mike - One of the friends in the group. (Akshay)








Antonio Murugesan & David Owusu-Afriyie

Media Trip To BFI (Antonio)

We went to the BFI (British Film Industry) where we received some key information and advice from Pete Fraser, Sam Frears & Joe Cornish. The point of the trip was to pick up key points and information that can be used in our opening scene, during the times we were being spoken to, we would take notes on what we think would be beneficial for us.

Pete Fraser 

Firstly, Pete Fraser spoke to us and carried out a presentation of useful items to include in our opening film scenes. He gave us seven main points which will ensure our opening scenes gain the best marks possible, some of which is Setting, Atmosphere & Narrative. Using these points he explained how we would incorporate them within our opening scenes. However, i didnt feel that Pete Fraser's presentation and lecture was beneficial. I say this because i felt as though most of the information and advice he gave us had already been provided by our teachers therefore i didn't feel he was beneficial.

Sam Frears

Sam Frears showed us how visual effects are used in movies to help creates scenes and make things we see in movies a lot more believable. He also showed us some of the work he carried out in the film 'The Kings Speech' and various other pieces of work he is currently working on. I found Sam really inspiring and what he said was very useful.

Media Trip to BFI (Ricardo)

Last week Tuesday we visited the BFI (British Film Institution) which is in Central London, the trip was to help our Media class with ideas on how to make a thriller opening. We would take notes on what Pete Fraser was telling us about well known film openings, such as Juno, Dawn of the dead and Catch me if you can. The main features that he would explain to us were: Genre, Narrative(enigma), Character, Atmosphere and finally setting. He explained how important it is to look at these features because its vital that the opening has a structure and that it makes sense. As he showed us previous film openings by students he told us what we thought about it and if that group had followed the key features.

Pete Fraser
Peter Fraser is the Chief Examiner for the OCR Media Studies A level. So it was very important that we listened to what he was explaining to us, as he has some really good knowledge on what we can do to make our openings to a high standard. Then after Pete has explained what he needed to, we met two men who were really important when it comes to Media, and all of us were very surprised by who we were meeting.

Simon  Frame 
Simon Frame is involved in visual effects, he has worked on 'The Kings's Speech' which starred Colin Firth and he explained about how important and vital Visual effects are.

Joe Cornish
Joe Cornish is a director who had worked on the Film 4 production of 'Attack the Block' and he explained about how important it is to go out and experiment with filming and getting used to the technical equipment.

Overall the trip was a fantastic experience, it had a relaxing atmosphere just being there although it was very intriguing and interesting at the same time, and it really helped in giving us ideas that we could relate to our own openings.

Media Trip to B.F.I (David Owusu-Afriyie)

 The trip to the B.F.I on the 15th November in my opinion was a very helpful experience.We met Joe Cornish, Sam Frears & Pete Fraser.

Pete Fraser -
He leaded the whole presentation and spoke to us primarily about our opening scene. He gave us important points to help us better our thriller, these are some of them that are vital.
Atmosphere
Setting
Character
Genre
Narrative

Joe Cornish - 

Joe Cornish is a director who had worked on the Film 4 production of 'Attack the Block' and he explained about how important it is to go out and experiment with filming and getting used to the technical equipment.

Overall the trip was a fantastic experience, it had a relaxing atmosphere just being there although it was very intriguing and interesting at the same time, and it really helped in giving us ideas that we could relate to our own openings. 

Simon Frame

Simon Frame is involved in visual effects, he has worked on 'The Kings's Speech' which starred Colin Firth and he explained about how important and vital Visual effects are.

Script

Characters
Frank - The Protagonist
The Boss
Kevin
Tommy

The Innocent

Originally, when we were told that we needed to create the opening scene of a thriller, we got into our group which contained the same members as our thriller. (David, Antonio, Akshay & Ricardo.) To start off with, we individually worked on producing a storyline that could possibly used for the thriller opener. After we all produced seperate stories we came together as a group and decided which story we would use out of the four available. We chose a storyline that was originally produced by David, and felt it would be the best storyline that we could adapt and use all the key features necessary. Once we decided which film we were going to use, we started to think of a name for the thriller. Firstly, we came up with the name The Underdog but after people giving us advice we decided to change the name of our thriller The Innocent.

Antonio Murugesan

Pilot

Hello guys!

From AARD Productions we would like to introduce you to our very first blog.

In this blog we are going to be explaining how we made our prelim clip.

First of all, all four members of AARD Productions sat down and discussed potential story lines for the prelim. We came up with several main ideas such as, Stereotypes, Home life and a Murder Investigation.

As as group we decided that, a Murder Investigation would not only be the most suitable story line for us, using the equipment and resources that we had, but also we felt that the story line was one that wouldn't reoccur amongst the others who are also making a prelim. We then created a simple storyboard of our prelim so we could picture it and clear any problems that may occur if necessary. After completing our storyboard, we picked all the necessary equipment and props that we needed such as, a camera and a notepad and pen, which all will be needed in our prelim.

We then set out to film our prelim and headed to the forest by the school. To ensure that our prelim was good, we didn't start to film unless we were fully comfortable as well as confident of exactly what we were going to say, but also where exactly each of us are going to be standing throughout the prelim.
For our prelim we were advised to include the following camera movements to ensure that our prelim reached its full potential. The camera movements were; Shot Reverse Shot, 180 degree shot, Some form of dialogue or conversation.

The main plot of our prelim is a murder investigation where a teenager had been killed by another, and two forensic officers assess the murder seen to find the murder and get to the bottom of the murder. However, what the audience don't know is that one of the forensic officers is friends with the murderer, therefore he tries to get rid of the evidence at the scene in order to help his friend.

Before filming our prelim we mad several last mintue checks and we then rehearsed the prelim over and over several times and eventually began to film the opening scenes of our prelim. We tried to include all of the required and recommended shots, but we were not able to produce a good shot reverse shot during our conversation.


WILL HE HE SUCCEED AND SAVE HIS FRIEND FROM 10 YEARS INSIDE?

Antonio Murugesan