Lego research

We need to use our research on the genres of horror and Westerns and the planning for our original film opening and apply it to our animation. Our original research relates to the mise-en-scene of our new project:

There are Lego settings of deserts which would be appropriate for our film opening. However, we will probably use a green screen to make the mise-en-scene more impacting and realistic.

There are a variety of Lego figures that are available, including zombie and cowboy versions which are appropriate for the characters from our original film opening. The different features of the figures will allow us to distinctly display each character e.g. the difference between the Little Guy and the Hero.

Animation research

Before starting the new film opening, we researched into the most effective methods of animating. We chose to use Lego as it is the simplest way to animate, rather than making our own models.

There are many tutorials on Lego animation online:



There are also internet guides from Wikihow on stop motion:

Get objects and figures to use in your movie. Some good choices include clay, wire, Legos or similar building block figures. Be imaginative in the types of objects and figures that might work for your movie. For amateurs, it's best to use a toy rather than making a figure, as it is easier to animate.

Set up the figures (characters) in a particular position and within the "set."

Place your camera in front of the "set" that you are going to take photos of. Make sure that it can view the entire frame. It is very important to support the camera or place it so that it is sitting steadily and cannot shake as you take the photos. Otherwise, the end result will appear chaotic and lack continuity.

Set up a good source of lighting. It might be a lamp or a flashlight. If your light is flickering, you need to shut off other sources of light like blinds or curtains.

Take a single photo of the figure in the selected position.

Begin the movement sequence. Move the figure bit by bit, in very small movements each time. It may be the entire body if the figure is walking, or it may just be an arm, head or leg. If you are moving only one body part and you find that the figure is tilting or threatening to fall over, make use of poster tack under the feet or other area touching part of the set.

Repeat the movement sequence until your action step is completed, or your camera's memory is full.

Save the pictures on to your computer in an easy to remember place.

Use your movie-making software as instructed (or see two popular software methods below). There are a few key steps regardless of what movie-making software you use.

Import the pictures into the desired program. Make sure the pictures are at a very small duration so they flow fast. If you are disappointed by the speed at which your program can animate, try exporting the project as a video file (before adding audio), then importing it again and using a speed effect on it such as double speed (these effects only work on video clips).

Then, if the resulting speed is sufficient, you may add your audio. Add titles and credits if you would like. You can also add effects or transitions, if desired. Make sure you like the end result of your stop motion animation. Keep going if you need to complete more actions to create a story.

Save the video. If you plan on having multiple stop motion segments, save each segment as a separate movie. Once the entire group of segments is completed, you can import all the segments into the final movie. This will make it will look much better and it will be easier to finalize.

Analysis of previous AS Film Opening

To understand how to improve our own film opening we have looked at some previous film openings made by other students. This will help us to see which areas of our film opening have been misses out or could be better.



This film opening is a based around a very different subject to ours, and is in a different style. It covers many characters and a wider time period, introducing the general situation and group dynamic effectively in a fairly short time span. While ours focuses more on the beginning of the overall narrative arc of the film as a whole (which we did plan out before shooting), the technical side of it has helped us to go about improving our own film opening. They use a quick editing style which gives the clip a fast pace, contrasting with the long, wideshot that concludes the opening. This contrast was very effective in making an impact on the viewer, making them want to continue watching, so from this we decided to add a greater variety of shot lengths and camera movement, as most of the shots in our opening are fairly similar.

The mise-en-scene of their film opening was also striking, giving the audience more details of each character and their situations effectively in a subtle manner. The setting of our film opening was our school, which we chose to reflect the trend in zombie movies of being set in familiar places, adding to the fear of something unnatural invading them - something that features a lot in all types of horror movies. While we did attempt to add to the mise-en-scene by adding zombie warning posters that we created, these were not very clear when we edited together our first draft. Watching this film opening made use decide to get better shots of these posters to add to the atmosphere of the film opening, which will also help to build up the tension before the zombies are actually introduced - this build up in tension also adds to the comic effect when the Little Guy is suddenly knocked out.

The music of the completed film opening that we looked at also made us decide to add more sound, to contribute to the build of tension as well. While they had music running throughout, we had already added suitable Western themed music to our film opening. We had also added sound effects, but we decided to add more to increase the effect of the opening, as it had to immediately engage viewers. So we added a heartbeat and breathing sound effect as well as improved sound effects of the zombie being hit, which we created ourselves as none was available for free on the internet.

Feedback and changes to our film opening

After getting feedback on our film opening from the rest of our class, we made some changes to improve it.

No credits other than the main title board – to include credits of the people involved, as are generally found in the opening of films, we layered text over the video in an editing programme. We chose to only include a few names, as credits are clearest over still shots. The majority of our film opening is of a character running, with unstable camera movement to create the effect of her being chased. Our opening shot after the title board is the steadiest so we put the credits over that. We attempted to stay with the theme of the font used in the title, but we weren’t able to because of problems with the editing programme, so we used a clearer font. We used red lettering to keep with the horror atmosphere that our opening begins with.

General editing – there were some problems with the editing of our opening. We managed to fix the glitch that occurred in the split screen showing the two zombies, as well as tightening some of the transitions between shots by removing some unnecessary moments that stopped the pace being so smooth e.g. the removal of a close up of the zombie before she falls to the ground.

Improvement of sound – it was suggested that we could add more sound to build up the tension when the Little Guy is running before he is knocked out. We thought of certain sound effects that would relate well to the setting and situation and added them in. They included heat beat and breathing sounds, to emphasise the character’s fear, and the sound of the zombie getting knocked out at the end to make it clearer to the audience what had happened. We also made the previous sound effects smoother, making them continuous rather than broken by editing them in Audacity.

Shot of Little Guy – after this character is knocked out by running into a lamppost, there is a shot of her from above panning upwards to display what has happened to her. Though we wanted this shot to be fairly unsteady rather than smooth, to convey confusion and the danger she is in from the zombies, we realised this didn’t translate well. To make this clearer, we used an effect on the editing programme to distort and blur the shot, which more clearly connotes her unconsciousness in a more interesting way than just showing her passed out.

Logo for film opening

This is the logo we are going to use at the beginning of our film opening, before the opening title card and credits. Production company logos always appear at the start of films, with usually multiple logos displayed (we may create more for our final draft). This will give our film opening more authenticity.

Titlecard

The titlecard from my previous post was a basic use of Microsoft paint and fonts downloaded from the internet. To make the titlecard more interesting and more engaging to the audience, I have experimented with adding some images to it.

I have added an increasing number of bullet hole images that I found on the internet to the titlecard. This could possibly be used with sound effects, with each version shown after the other to create the impression of shots fired. As the images, which I edited to improve how they looked (e.g. edited out website logos and corrected by size), are of bullet holes through glass, this relates to the presentation of the film on a screen, making the opening more interactive to the audience. It also closely relates to the genre of westerns and the red lettering used for the word 'cowboy' which has connotation of blood and violence, reflecting the aspects of horror.

This is an example of the images I found on the internet from websites such as gettyimages.com and shuttershock.com. I then edited them into my previous titlecard. This is the progression of each one:

Film Opening - Sound

We looked at a range of sund effects and techniques and we have come to a decision to use the following sounds:
. Heartbeat effect
. Breathing effect
. Zombie growl effect
. Car alarm effect
. Footsteps effect
. Ecstasy of Gold (Music)

We decided to use these effects as we studied many zombie films (EG. Shaun of the dead, Dawn of the dead, Zombieland, 28 Days Later) And we also studied some westerns (EG. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Magnificent Seven, Fistfull of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, Paint Your Wagon.) And we analysed common sound motifs used in these genres. We wanted to base our film in the modern era, and to use mostly zombie film style sound effects, however we decided on the western style music to combine the two genres. The zombie sound effects are generally used in zombie horror movies to create fear in the audience, though in our film opening the desired effect is more based around comedy due to the ridiculousness of the combined genres. These effects will build the intensity of the opening until the comedic payoff of the slow moving zombies.
We decided to use the song Ecstasy of Gold as part of our soundtrack and also looked at the differences between soundtracks and musical scores. Soundtracks are made up of various found songs from different artists and sources, while scores are originally composed for the film. The style of the score will generally be based around the genre of the film.
We decided to use our effects as sound bridges and form a soundscape over footage of the little guy running.

These sounds will work as anchorage, to inform the viewer of the modern context, while including an underlying western theme, combined will common features of a zombie film.

Sound mind map



This.

Westerns are dead. Like zombies. Oh, the irony.  

Filming schedule

Shoot film: 26th October (2pm - Summertown)

Reserve filming date: 30th October (2pm - Summertown)

Editing: 29th November (My house after school)

We managed our time effectively by creating a group thread on facebook, to see when our whole cast was available. Originally we were considering filming on 28th October, however we had to change our date due to unavailability (A father's birthday.)

We planned a reserve date for filliming incase we didn't finish filming on our in
itial date, or if we had to cancel for whatever reason. Upon uploading our footage to my computer we discovered a shot missing, so on 30th we filmed that shot and all was well.

We have each worked on individual pieces of editing/typography/music, and on 29th November we are going to combine our work and hopefully finish our film opening. :)

Location for film opening

We have taken some photos of the location that we have chosen to shoot our film opening in.

This is the road we chose to film on. It has the lamp post that we needed, some rails for zombies to swipe at the, little guy through, and our shots can be framed by the trees and buildings on either side.

These railings will be where the zombies first target the little guy.

This is where the little guy runs into a post during the zombie-chase sequence.

The area we are using is the road next to the South Site carpark. 

Props for film opening

These are some Western style items of clothing that we based our costumes on for our film opening.

We used fake blood to give a zombie-esque quality to the the make up of our cast.

Posters for mise-en-scene

These are an example of some posters that we used when filming. As our film opening was set in a zombie apocalypse setting, we used these to make the mise en scene more believable and to foreshadow to the audience what was going to happen to the Little Guy (zombie attack). We used our school as a location as we thought that using a familiar and recognisable location would make the beginning (before the comedic elements of the film) scarier and more tense, as it is a threat occurring in a place our demographic would know well.

Typography in the title card

This is a potential title card for our film opening. I used the fonts that I had experimented with in an earlier post but edited them onto Microsoft Paint. As the background is now black, similar to the title card of Dawn of the Dead, I changed the colour of the words to red, white and gray so they would be visible. I chose these colours because of the connotations with blood and the contrast white has with red. I used grey for the 'and' to make it more neutral and as close to the background while still visible as possible so the other two words would stand out more.
The other set of writing will be edited onto the film opening over shots rather than in a title card as to keep the action in the film flowing without being broken up too much by titlecards. I used the same fonts to continue the theme though different colouring to make it stand out more.

Our film opening (in reference to mark scheme and other films)

We have filmed most of the footage for our Western and horror based film opening, involving a character being attacked by zombies and rescued by another. To do this well we looked at film openings in these genres and looked at the construction section of our mark scheme so we know what we had to include:

To create a believable location for our zombie apocalypse setting, we added to the mise-en-scene. We chose to film it on the road by our school as it was easily accessible to everyone and gave us an urban setting with wide open spaces (school field) as is similarly seen in Western films. The location and mise-en-scene of John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’ was influential to us, as it begins with an incredibly wide and barren landscape with an unknown threat within it. This influenced us at the start of our film opening, using long shots of our main character in the road before switching to close ups. ‘The Thing’ was influenced by Westerns (as written about in this article) in its imagery and directorial style, though it is a horror-alien film, similar to ours. 

““The Thing” is a remake of another Howard Hawks film, and while it may take place in the arctic, and may have a villain of a shape-shifting alien, it’s following once again the “Rio Bravo” structure. Tough men in a small place defending themselves from an obviously evil outside force. They may have technology at their disposal, but they use dynamite and fire as their main weapons. It’s tough and gritty in certain ways. And, knowing Carpenter, most likely influenced by the cowboys”

'The Thing' - opening location and mise en scene

We made and printed out zombie warning posters to put in the mise-en-scene to foreshadow the threat of the film before the zombies are revealed. This was an attempt the make the atmosphere more unsettling, as a paranormal threat in a familiar setting such as the school would be more unnerving and closely based in reality.

We varied between holding the camera steady and moving with it fast, depending on the action of the character. The more shaky effect as the Little Guy runs at the beginning should emphasise his need to escape the zombies quickly. We also used static shots when filming the range of close ups of the zombies at varying lengths to highlight the Western technical influence, inspired by stylised Spaghetti Westerns such as Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy. We mainly tried to stay as close to the storyboard as possible to so we would get the shots that we needed to edit it together smoothly and stick to the narrative beginning.

Closeups on poster for 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly'

The most significant instance of framing the shots was when the two zombies begin to slowly move towards the Little Guy’s unconscious body because a variety of close ups on the characters had been building up to the wider shot. As the scene is based on horror style Western showdowns between two characters, the symmetry of the shot was important. Placing the Little Guy in the middle of the shot between the two zombies at the edge of the image showed that the LG is what both were aiming for.

When we have got the rest of the footage, we will focus on editing, adding typography and matching the images to music to add to the horror-Western theme.



Visual planning

Story board for the film opening by Rosie


This story board is very useful, as it clearly shows what will be in each shot (including the mise en scene) and gives a written description of which shots we should use. Sticking to this storyboard helps use get the footage we need to maintain the narrative.

Music for film opening

The music we will use has to be western themed, but become intense fairly quickly to correspond with the zombies and their battle. Ideally the music would be fairly dark to give zombie-esque qualities, and should also have a pause for the establishing shot in which the 2 zombie begin to shuffle towards each other. (But that is very specific, so it is unlikely that I will find something exactly right, and will have to make do with whatever I can find.)


I listened to many western film scores on you-tube, but I have narrowed my choices down to these two: 

The first video, "A Fistfull Of Dollars" is also by Ennio Morricone, and is much more traditionally western, however I think the second song would fit out film opening much better.

I prefer the second one as not only does it sound much more zombie-esque, while still being originally western,  but it provides a good link to the modern themes that our opening includes. Zombie films are a fairly modern concept, so using this will blend the modern zombie aspects with the old western themes much more effectively. This song was originally composed by Ennio Morricone for the film, "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly", however Metallica have done a cover of it and used it extensively in their concerts. There is also a suitable pause in this song before the heavier guitar comes in, which could be used to our advantage. 

(Music research by Rosie!)

Location

The locations of horror films tend to be enclosed spaces, emphasising claustrophobia in the audience and making the threat of an attacker more frightening and ever present. Westerns tend to use wide, sweeping landscapes of America, such as this location used in 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly':



As we are trying to make a combination of genres, this contrast could be a problem. However, we are only taking the element of the threat of horror films and putting them into a typically Western style and situation, meaning we should be attempting to find locations that are reminicsnet of Western settings. However, there are not many areas in Oxford that look like this. There are many parks across the city that could give a wide landscape to film in. Also, due to the more urban and less natural nature of horrors, we could attempt to modernise the style of Westerns by using a contrasting location such as a concreted carpark or road. This would give a darker visual style than a park which is what we are aiming for.

Audience Research

The opening of a film is very significant as it establishes the overall theme and tone of the film and gives the audience an impression of what they will be watching. It should set up or foreshadow the narrative but also establish the atmosphere of the work. Filmmakers must know what will appeal to audiences and make them want to continue to watching. Different genres have different audiences, meaning that a combination of genres will attract a wide range of people.

This is the top ten UK box office results from the current week. It displays a wide range of genres, including horror, comedy, thriller, drama, romantic comedy and family films. The genre of horror is popular with audiences because it is enjoyable to be scared and they are easy to watch and highly entertaining, unlike some of these films which may be more complex and difficult.

 This graph from the UK Film Council shows the demand for different genres of films, based on a poll taken by 1978 people. As is also shown here, the genre of horror is fairly popular, though Western is much less so. This is because of the gradual loss of mainstream Western movies over time. They were very popular in the early to mid 20th century, as the whole genre of Western in other fiction had been prominent around that time. Since then Westerns have become far less popular and it is unusual to see them in the cinema. However, there has been a phase of modern Westerns becoming popular, such as the American television show Justified. Remakes such as '3:10 to Yuma' and 'True Grit' have been successful in the last few years, indicating that Westerns and genre films in general may be gaining popularity again.

This shows that both Westerns and horrors are more popular with men than women and generally younger people. This could be because of the exaggerated fast paced nature of them.

Typography

Typography is the art of lettering based around the style, size and type being used. As a large amount of lettering is used in the credits of films, it is a significant area for us to investigate. The opening credits and the title board of a film give the audience an impression of the overall tone and genre of the film because of associations we have with certain styles of lettering. Writing is also sometimes used in film to display the place and time events are occurring. As typography establishes so much about the style of the film, I have looked at different uses of it in film.

Our aim is to create a film opening that comically combines the two contrasting genres of Westerns and horror. Both are very recognisable and stylised, meaning audiences will gather expectations for the film based on the association of the font used.

Westerns are one of the oldest film genres, as they were based on popular Western fiction in other media from the late 19^th century, the style of typography used in them has developed over time.

Posters such as these were used in the actually Old West and the typography used in them was developed into the lettering seen in Western films.

These are screenshots from Sergio Leone's 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly'. It is a Spaghetti Western, a more arty and stylised type of Western made by Italian American directors. The typography mimics the aforementioned posters typography, giving the film and impression of authenticity. The manner in which the lettering appears on the screen is reminiscent of a splatter of blood, emphasised by the sound of gunshots. The font is large and consistent in the centre of the screen, signifying strength and certainty of the characters and theme of the film.   

A similar technique of transition is used in this horror film, 'Dawn of the Dead'. The typography more realistically changes into blood and disperses than in the Western. This could be due to the darker tone of the horror genre and more graphic nature of the violence in this film. The colour also connotes aggression and blood, relating to the death caused by the zombies and the infection of the disease. The font used is also in the centre of the screen, signifying the strength and relentlessness of the threat in the film. It is also less decorative than the Western font, showing that the film is more serious.

This is from David Fincher's 'Se7en', a crime horror film about murders based around the seven deadly sins. The typography used here is small and off centre as the lettering flickers, signifying fear and the fragmented nature of the characters and tone of the film. The font is simple and childlike, contrasting with the image on screen in an unsettling manner. White is used for the letters to emphasise the darkness of the rest of the image, making the words seems very distinct.

The colouring here also contrasts with the background, emphasising the significance of the typography. The lettering is slightly more rough and and less formal, relating to the cartoonish drawings in the title sequence. The Walking Dead television show was based on a comic book, meaning that the visual style of typography relates to this.

From looking at this examples of typography, it's clear that relation of the lettering to the visuals is especially important, as well as the positioning of title and credits on the screen.

To find a suitable font for our film opening, I used the website http://www.dafont.com/ which provides free downloads of a range of fonts in different styles.

This is a fairly simple font used for every word that reflects Western style of typography. However, while it is more comical and informal than some fonts, I think that the combination of genres is not obvious enough and could be represented better through the use of contrasting styles.



I used contrasting fonts in this example. First I used the more horror associated style with the word 'zombie' and Western style for 'cowboys'. However, to make the combination of genres more clear, I swapped this around, using the red, violence associated font for 'cowboys' and Old West style for 'zombie'. The positioning of the typography is uneven, signifying the damaged and fragmented nature of the zombie attack.



Planning the film opening

We decided to focus our film opening on a combination of genres. Genres films are commonly stylised and recognisable, using many genre conventions including directorial style, soundtrack, cinematography and the content of the film. Combining genres has recently become popular in film and television, with many examples subverting the conventions expected by audiences to create original and refreshing material. We decided to focus on the genres of horror and Western. While both are dissimilar in content, they share many features.

Western: Westerns are based on the American Old West and became popular in the late 19th century. Western films originally focused on life for settlers in that time period and almost always featured a cowboy or gunfighter protagonist. They would typically be brave and a good person who would rescue others from the enemy, though later evolved to be a more complex and darker character.

Horror: First appearing in the 1930s, the genre of horror films are those that attempt to scare the audience. They typically include a form of evil that will evoke the viewer's fear, for example supernatural forces or serial killers. Subgenres have developed, including slasher movies (those that include a psychotic stalking murderer) and splatter movies (those focussing on graphic violence).

The combination of these genres for our film opening could be funny as they are so different. However, they are similar in some areas: both generally make use of techniques that give the films a stylised nature. While both may originally be based on aspects of truth (actual cowboys in the Old West/people's fear and rare true horror stories), there is rarely an attempt to make them appear realistic. They are both based on exaggerated reality for the audience's entertainment. Both also make use of stereotypical character. The Westerns first used a typical heroic male character, then commonly developing into a 'mysterious stranger'. Horrors have developed many conventions that have become so common that they have been referenced and subverted in films such as 'Scream'. They often feature token characters, representing their whole gender or ethnic group.

Our initial idea was to combine the two highly recognisable genres, which we then developed using the 3 act structure:

Act 1:

1. A wide shot of the Little Guy running through an abandoned landscape, with evidence of an infectious outbreak in the background mise-en-scene. He is frightened and panicked, so runs into a lamppost by accident. A bird's eye view shot of him lying on the ground, unconscious. The feet of two zombies appear in a low angle shot from the ground, and it becomes clear that this is in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. They enter into a Western style showdown over him, through the use of close up shots of eyes and hands and tension building Western music. The music cuts out and a wide shot shows them both moving very slowly towards him in competition. A medium shot of one of them shows it falling, to reveal the Cowboy stabbing it. This changes to a low angle shot to emphasise his height. He takes off his shades and makes a cool zombie related quip (which we may or may not actually be able to think of), with the sun shining behind him.

2. The Little Guy follows the Cowboy to his hideout where they agree to team up.

Act 2:

3. The Little Guy treats his wounds with surgical spirit, which unbeknownst to them attracts zombies, causing a raid.

4. They both escape and run to the hospital to gather provisions, including surgical spirit.

Act 3:

5. While searching for the surgical spirit, the come across a room full of zombies consuming it and realise they feed off it.

6. They try to hide in a cupboard, finding a large supply of surgical spirit and form a plan.

7. They leave a massive trail of surgical spirit into the centre of the hospital. The Cowboy lights his last cigarette and throws it into the chemicals, blowing the zombies up as they both run for cover.

8. The Cowboy gives the Little Guy his hat as a sign of respect but is suddenly attacked by a zombie on fire. The Little Guy escapes and recues another survivor, restarting the cycle.

Characters:

The Little Guy:

• Works at the Games Workshop and enjoys strategy games, meaning that he is skilled at manoeuvring around the zombies when they attack
• Was hiding in the Games Workshop with his friends until the zombies broke through their barricade and he escaped
• Has stereotypically nerdy traits: into Warhammer, intelligent, weak - subverted when he helps to kill the zombies

The Cowboy:

• Archetypal hero - very brave and strong but not as intelligent or as rational as the Little Guy.
• Reflects the protagonist of classic Westerns - from the deep South, mysterious stranger, courageous, rescues others, rides a horse
• Carries a 'last cigarette' to smoke before dies - cheesy action hero trait that contrasts Little Guy
• Searching for salvation after zombies killed his family