More Genre Research: Triple Frontier

       To being with, the movie Triple Frontier starts off with the movie titles. While the movie titles are playing, in the background there's diegetic sound, which is a voiceover of somone speaking. This voiceover carries over into the next scene which shows a women speaking. This is filmed at an eye-leveled shot. Once the subject is finished speaking it cuts to a wide shot at and high angle to show the people whom she's speaking to. The actor in this scene are dressed in army combat uniforms, along with some being dressed in business attire. After the women ends her speech, another man begins to talk. He's dressed in casual attire with jeans and a rolled up long sleeve shirt. This is filmed from an eye-leveled angle. The shot it is filmed in is a Long shot because you can see his whole body. Eventually the camera starts zooming into the subject slowly.  The sound in this scene is still diegetic because the man is still speaking to the audience. After the subject finishes speaking, there's a cut scene. It cuts to an aerial, wide, tracking shot of a helicopter flying over a town. After this it transitions to a close up of someone sleeping, which he then wakes up in the helicopter.  In the background to his left you can see someone in a police vest flying the helicopter. To his right you can see the town in the background. After this it cuts to the helicopter flying and a soundtrack begins to play. One of the things I didn't like was the setting in which, the people were talking. I believe if the setting was the location of where they are heading to, it would of been a more intense talk rather then them sitting in a police station. I did like the talk because it did explain one of the main character in the movie and how he's going to be portrayed for the rest of the movie.

       To add on, in the middle of the movie the movie is focused on the subject which was sleeping in the plane. He is with partners which are dressed in vest and combat attire. In these scene the actors are equipped with props. the props include: lighter fluid, radios and guns. All of these shots are filmed at eye-level. tracking shots are also used to film the actors search the building that they are in. Non-diegetic sound is playing in the background which is creating suspense in their search. As they proceed to search the house, the shot switches into a 2 shot and it shows one of the subjects searching under a room, while the other is pouring lighter fluid behind him. Once the subject pouring the lighter fluid is finished, he pulls out another prop, which is a lighter. Once the lighter is pull out, a cabinet dresser moves from off the wall and someone pops out and beings shooting. The next scene is a gun fight, which is very loud because of the noises of guns firing. The people searching the house, kill the subject who was shooting at them. Once they do this, the enter the secret room in which he is hiding in. This room is full of  props: guns, money, and food. One of the thing I enjoyed, was the quick moment of silence before the bad guy popped out and began shooting. Something I didn't enjoy too much was the dialogue aft the man was shot. It was in a joking matter while the situation was serious because someone was wounded. 

       At the end of the movie, the group which was searching the house earlier in the movie were walking through a forest. They had makeup on as well. The makeup was dirt on their faces, along with gashes. This was filmed in a Medium Long shot because it showed them walking from the knees up. The props in this part of the movie were weapons, backpacks, and they were all carrying a duffle bag. The lighting was dark because it was night time and they were in the middle of nowhere. As they continued to walk they approached a vehicle. They didn't know if anyone was in the vehicle so they drew their weapons and got closer. The lighting rapidly changed too bright because the car turned on and someone rushed out of it. This was still being filmed in a medium wide shot because it was from the knees up. It also switched between a Medium close-up, wide shot, and a closeup. There was diegetic sound because they were all speaking. The languages switched from English to Spanish. The person who rushed out of the car had 2 props. He had a gun pointed at the main characters and he also had a radio. After being on foot for so long, the subjects loaded the car with their equipment and drove off. Them driving off switched to a tracking shot. The sound changed to a non-diegetic sound which was intense music in the background of the subjects speaking. You could also hear the sound of the engine roaring. Not only were they trying to get away, but they were firing shots, so you could also hear the sound of gun shot. While they were driving the sun started to rise so the forest wasn't as dark and there was dim natural lighting. After being on a chase down from the enemy, the managed to escape them and got onto a boat. Once on the boat it was filmed on a wide shot. The non-diegetic sound of the music switched from intense music to a celebratory and more soothing music. Then the shot switch to an aerial shot as the rode off in the boat.

Genre Research: Skyfall

        At the start of Skyfall, the camera angles, were slow, did not really give the whole scene, and were intentionally high to show the opening scenery of the movie in taking place in the middle east. The movies mid section had little variance of camera angles. However, there was a lot of reversal shots taking place as the commentary increased. There we also a couple more oblique shots as the action had increased. The purpose of this was add suspense to the upcoming chase scenes. The costumes stayed really the same. In the opening, middle, and closing, the main actor was wearing a suit. The only time the main actor would change was when his suit was ruined or he was getting intimate. The lighting in the beginning was terrible. The shots were mostly relying on shadows, and the while first 4 minuets were in darkness. However, the middle was bright and there was always a high sun as the viewers needed to see the action clearly. The ending was also bright, but there was long stretches of open day shots, whereas the middle part changed angles a lot and this effected the lighting, due to the chase scenes.
       The sound in the beginning was minimal, you could hear a pin drop. There was music over this minimal sound, but you could tell the sound was low on purpose. The middle however was much different, there was lots of sounds from hearing feet on gravel, to the reloading of guns, to even the characters spitting. The end was quiet, it was like the opening because of the lack of noise, but it was different because all the noise was nature, like birds chirping. The use of props was very consistent all the way through. This first scene there was a gun in the viewers screen. Near the middle, there was many more props, guns were everywhere and things like train cars were being destroyed to add to the depth of the movie. Nearing the end, there was a ceramic bulldog that had made appearances several times throughout the movie, this was in the ending and it gave a comical finish as the main character hated the bulldog.
      The biggest difference was the editing. In the beginning, there was little to no change in shots, and no added visual effects. This left for a rather boring start as it was not holding my attention. The middle was a different story. There was a lot of editing magic going on. There were some larger than life explosions that took place, and the editing was flawless. In the middle, there was perfect shot transitions and they missed a single important shot. The end was very similar to the start. There was little added effects and the shots were not as magical as the beginning. The only thing that held the movie together at the end was the actual acting, as the head actor really sold himself on the closing acts. My favorite part of the movie was definitely the fact that the movie never actually stopped, there was breaks in the action, but the actual flow of the movie was turned off.

Researching Horror and Action

Establishing our Genre

Throughout the genre researching process, my group and I have researched a total of three different genres. The genres we chose to research were: Comedy, Horror, and Action. When researching we learned that these genres have many aspects in common with one and another. For example, we learned that both action and horror films like to include a little humor to shift the mood of the movie, which keeps the audiences attention. After diliberately thinking as a group, we came to a consensus that our final genre in which we will film our movie in, will be action. We decided on the action genre because it is the best genre for our pitch idea. Acton films consist of many different camera angles, movements, and editing transitions from scene to scene. This is was led us to choose action because when it comes to filming a robbery turning into a chase down, we believed we could make the best quality movie, if it was filmed as an action film.

Genre Research: Comedy PowerPoint

 In the beginning of the year, we were assigned to complete a in-depth research about a genre which was given to us. For this project, I had to research the Comedy genre. The research for this project consisted of me having to look up different aspects about the comedy genre. For instance, I researched different lightings, camera movements, and common Mis en scene. Not only did we research features from the pre-production and production but we also researched aspects of post-production. The primary feature in post-production aspects that was being researched was editing. Not only did I go in-depth about the editing of comedic films but I also got to elaborate on aspects of the film in which I enjoyed. After elaborating on the aspects of which I enjoyed, I also got to elaborate on aspects which I really did not enjoy. On top of this, I also got to choose a couple of examples from this is genre. It was quite enjoyable researching the aspects of this film because I familiarized myself with it.

Coming Closer to Starting Our Final Project!

We had a long talk about all the pitches and we all compared our pitches. After trying to get others to not want to do their idea, we finally cut it down to only two pitches. This process took a while because we all thought we could turn our pitches into really good films. After deliberation, Alex decided to let go of his idea. This left me and Jorge. Jorge's idea was to film two robbers breaking into a house, realizing someone is inside, where they try and kidnap them, and the victim tries to escape. My pitch was someone gets kidnapped and that person must run and try to escape robbers where they encounter situations. Both pitches are very similar, but we both have very different visions of what we want to do. Both also have very opposite shots and don't even require the same skills. The biggest different is probably going to be how easy they are to film, both are long and drawn out but they dont even have the same places of filming.
 As mentioned before, Jorge's idea for the pitch is two film an innocent victim escape during a home invasion, which quickly turned into a kidnapping situation. This idea would be executed with many different angles. We'd first start off with an establishing shot of the location where the victim lives. Once this is shot, the next scenes will be from inside the house where the victims is going along his day. After a raid transition, it will cut to the burglars arriving at the destination and trying to break into the house. Once they've successfully made their way into the house it will cut to them encountering the victim. After a quick and suspenseful scene, the burglar start yelling and chasing the victims as he's making a run for it. These scenes will be filmed from a tracking shot and maybe even a point-of-view shot. These different shots will really put into perspective how the chase down really looks/fells from the perspective of the actors. Some of the downfalls of this pitch may be, that if the neighbors of where we are filming think this is an actual robbery, they may end up calling the police. Which is why we plan on staying the property of where we are filming. 
Jack's idea however, is of someone who gets kidnapped. This person is then forced to have to flee from the robbers and end up being on the run from them. This type of movie would have to use a lot of point of view shots. When the person is running from the robbers, we will use a point of view shot to give the viewer an idea of what it would be like in a situation such as this one. We would also use tracking shots. While the hostage is running away, we will make the camera track behind him. We still have not settled on a location for this movie, however, some ideas I had were a forrest, hotel, or just in a neighborhood. As for sound effects, I have had some good ideas as what to do with the sound. We could make a scene when the hostage is on the run and then stops to see if he heard anyone. During this time of silence and stillness, we could add the sound of a leaf crunching underneath her foot. In order to get really good sound of the leaf crunching, we can record the sound of the leaf crunching separately. One downside to using this idea would be that we would have to find somewhere where we can freely run around since there will be a lot of action in this movie.

Start of Final Task

        Hello, my name is Jack and I am a senior in high school. Growing up in Florida I am always outside and love the outdoors. My favorite activities including boating and fishing. These are year around activities here as we do not really have a winter which allows me to participate year around. My brothers and I always find a joy in this as we can compete and push each other to do better. I also really enjoy playing basketball with my friends. I do not play for a team as I have some injuries that have caused me to avoid playing as avidly. Being a senior, I have found I have had less and less time to do these activities because of college. It is right around the corner and I have had to do a lot to try and get into the schools I like. I hope to be going to the University of Florida and I will find out if I get in or not within a couple weeks. My group for this project is Jorge and Alex.
        Being half way through the year, I have came a long way in this class. Before, I knew very little about the film world, and now I feel I have the skills to make a movie and edit it fully. The most important thing I have learned how to do is edit. I can now make different video clips look coherent and flow. This is a big deal because before my editing was choppy and did not look proper. Another important skill is the use of proper shots. This can really add depth to a movie as a variety of shots mixed in makes a movie look good. I am really excited to start our big project and I am most excited to be able to shoot proper scenes with the correct use of the camera. A final thing I am excited to do is edit as I think I have came a long way in this section.
       Before we talk about our ideas for our project, I thought I would explain what a pitch is; It is a Hollywood term used to describe an idea for a film in less and 25 words or one sentence. Our first pitch was from Jorge, two burglars enter a house, but when they realize someone is in the house, they try to kidnap them, and the victim tries to escape. Alex's pitch was some people are searching for treasure and they go on a journey to find the treasure map and then they find the treasure. My pitch was someone gets kidnapped, they are able to get out, and they have to run to escape and find their way out away from the robbers.