Shot Inspiration- Phone Call

Our new idea involves a phone call and so we were looking at how phone calls were often filmed.

This shot is from YouTube short film "Strangers in a Bed". We want to use a close up like this in our opening.

Or like this shot from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off".

We also want to use shots similar to the phone conversation in "Taken".

We want to use a low angle shot like this one

Star Wars Film Review

Today I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens directed by JJ Abrams and starring Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and Oscar Isaac. I found the film very enjoyable and overall a fantastic film, which managed to keep faithful to the tone of the original films but at the same time introduce new and in-depth characters.

The music is such an integral part of Star Wars that I found myself getting shivers as the film opened with the main theme, other people in the cinema whooped. Obviously this reminded me of how carefully we are going to have to chose our music when creating our film opening.

The film uses a lot of different shot types but most notable were probably the epic establishing shots of spaceships and new planets and the tracking shots and fast cuts of action sequences as well as the obvious high and low key lighting used to portray the Light and Dark sides.

In my opinion, Abrams managed to balance the funny, tragic, and bitter-sweet moments of the film perfectly, giving the audience the right amount of time to wipe away the tears before leaping into another space battle. The old characters felt like they had in the first films, and the new characters like Finn, Poe, and Rey, felt like they belonged. Abrams has been criticised in the past for his arguably excessive use of lens flares when directing the Star Trek reboots, but for this film, the cinematography and overall tone really fit with the original films so it just felt like them, but modern, which I thought was really effective. The film ends with quite the clliffhanger, meaning I will definitely be going back to see Episode VIII in 2017.

Jessica Jones Opening Titles

Netflix's original series "Marvel's Jessica Jones" is a thriller about a former superhero who becomes a private investigator in New York.

I found the opening titles of the "Jessica Jones" very interesting and thought we could use them as inspiration for our film opening titles as they share a genre, even though they are more abstract than the titles we will create.

Throughout the opening titles, you cannot see the character's faces, which means that nothing is revealed about them, they are just mysterious shadows. The music behind the titles is very tense and speeds up as the titles reach their ending. We would hope to use music similar to this in our film opening. In addition, there are several slow cuts throughout the titles, which again adds to tension.

Se7en Film Review

Today I watched David Fincher's "Se7en" (1995) starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. The genre is thriller and so fits with the genre that we want our film opening to fit.

Overall, I felt that the film was very well shot by cinematographer Darius Khondji, using the rule of thirds throughout the film. In addition, the camera was often fixed down, allowing the characters to move around in the frame, rather than moving the camera to follow them, adding to the tension as sometimes the camera stayed fixed on the characters and their reactions rather than what they were looking at. An example of this would be when Morgan Freeman's character sees what is in the box towards the end of the film, but the audience never sees, which only adds to the suspense. Many of the shots had a long duration, which built tension in the scenes also.

An example of the use of the rule of thirds in Se7en

Music was also used very effectively in "Se7en", as the music began to crescendo whenever the two detectives were close to finding a body. The music helped to unsettle the audience, which added to the disturbing tone of the entire film.

Below is the theatrical trailer for "Se7en".

London Spy

I have been enjoying the new BBC2 spy thriller London Spy and we can use it in addition to the case of the death of MI6 agent Gareth Williams (an article about the case can be found here) as inspiration for our film opening, in which a girl stumbles across a suspicious suitcase in a wood. London Spy further shows that the thriller is a popular genre as it pulled in 2.5 million viewers on its first episode.

We may be able to use some of the shots of the main character, Danny, discovering a suspicious chest in the attic as inspiration for shots in our film opening.

A slightly high angle, almost POV, shot of the chest

A mid shot of Danny's reaction

Close up of Danny reaching to open the chest

Most of the shots in this part of London Spy have a long duration, which really effectively builds suspense and tension, so this is something else we would want to make sure we included in our film opening.

Gogglebox Task

Here is a version of Gogglebox that we made, which has helped to improve our editing skills.