British Independent Film Makers

I have decided to research British Independent Film Makers as its relevant to our final film piece, as our film opening will be a completely British film, it would be helpful to research British film openings to get a sense on what they're about and how they are directed. I am going to focus on Ken Loach and his film `Looking For Eric`

Ken Loach is an English film and television director born 17th of June, 1936. He is known for his naturalistic and social realist directing style, which are shown in most of films, especially in Looking For Eric.
Loach prefers to employ unknown actors rather than big name stars, as unknown stars have some of the life experience their characters may portray. He points out the genuine interplay between the actors and puts aside special effects. Loach also makes great effort to help the actors show themselves as naturally as possible. He believes in shooting from the first scene to the end, as it helps the actors find a response to the characters circumstances. Many of the actors he employs do not receive the full script until the first day of shooting, so they can experience the story just as the fictional character will do. In Looking For Eric, the main character (Steve Evets) discovered that football icon Eric Cantona was featured in the film when he turned around to see him in the scene, with the cameras rolling, capturing the real emotion/surprise of the actor.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2009/mar/26/looking-for-eric-ken-loach-eric-cantona
This is the trailer to the `Looking For Eric`.

Looking For Eric is British film about `the escape from the trials of modern life that football can bring to its fans.`

Director Ken Loach said "We wanted to deflate the idea of celebrities as more than human. And we wanted to make a film that was enjoying the idea of what you and I would call solidarity, but what others would call support for your friends really, and the old idea that we are stronger as a team than we are as individuals."

The film was shot on location in Greater Manchester by Ken Loach's company Sixteen Films.
The Budget of this film was £4 million and in the opening weekend the film made £215,173  in the UK after being shown on 225 screens.

I chose to look at this film as it is completely British, filmed only in Britain with British actors (apart from Eric Cantona). It also shows the real life situations that many people find themselves in. For example, the main character in this film is struggling with family live and watches football to escape. I can imagine that many football fans up and down the country go to see or watch football to escape away from the modern world. So this film relates to real people. I also chose this film as its filmed in a real life block of flats and filmed in real life locations, rather than choosing to build an expensive set in a studio representing a block of flats.

The film is in association with Film Four, meaning Film Four will show the film on their channel for a lower price than another film. It also has associations with European production companies encouraging different nationalities to view the film.

http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi4100261657/
This is a clip of the film, showing the location and the interaction between all of the characters.

Film Analysis 2

For the second film analysis i am going to look at Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSIOopnk7L8&NR=1


The film starts with a title coming out for the black. This shows already that's its going to be a dark/mysterious film. Also the music seems to increase in volume, which adds to the tension. The Camera then seems to go through the Warner bro's logo, revealing skulls.

The camera pans down to the bottom of the skulls and a snake comes out of a hole. At this point the film is still dark, creating tension for the audience. The camera pans up and reveals in the sky the `Harry Potter and the Goblet of fire` title coming towards the audience just like the Warner bros. The Harry Potter theme tune plays when the title appears and when it goes out of shot, it goes back to the original starting soundtrack.
An establishing shot is shown, to set the scene for the audience. 

The film then focuses on an elderly man, boiling a kettle. He sees a light in the manor house from his home in the grounds. there's a close up of him picking up his keys and then there's a long shot of him with a torch walking through the gardens in a hurried pace. A close up of the torch, showing how bright it is. He enters the house, and starts to shine a torch light at things in the house.

 As he climbs the stairs, voices start to appear from up the stairs. A long shot of light coming from a room is shown. Diagetic sounds like the creaking of the stairs is heard. The camera then zooms to a close up of the people in the room. The man is then hit by the hidden mans spell and the camera is drawn straight back to the now boiled kettle.

The conventions of an action/adventure film are:
Story of a good character verses a bad character, where disputes are solved by physical force
Normally requires big budget special effects and stunt works Its likely a chase scene will be involved
Damsel in distress tends to be used but in recent movies female characters have become stronger in action/adventure movies (becoming main characters e.g. Hermione in hp) and even work alongside the strong male characters.
And the good character always wins.
Harry potter uses all these conventions in their films.

Analysis of 2 Film Openings

For my film Analysis i have chose 2 films from completley different genres. I chose `The Holiday` which is in the romance genre and `Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire` which is Fantasy. I chose 2 different genres to see whether the conventions of a film opening change depening on the genre.

The Holiday was released on the 8th of december 2006 in the UK. The filming locations include, Brentwood Los Angeles, Chipping Norton Oxfordshire, London England and San Marino California. 
The budget for this film was an estimated $85,000,000 and during the opening weekend in the UK made £2,826,520 after being shown on 428 screens.
When seeing this film at the cinema myself, i remember seeing couples or groups of females aged 15 plus. I believe that this was the target audience of the film.

The film starts with a couple kissing, after about 10-11 seconds the camera zooms out and reveals a editing screen, giving the impression that they were trying to trick the audience into thinking that was the real thing. During this time the first title is shown.

More titles then appear after this, showing titles like `A Film By Nancy Meyers` in a very simple white font, fitting in with the film perfectly. After this the actors/actresses names appear in different positions around the screen. Using the entire space of the screen. 



Shot Reverse Shot



After the second title comes up, a voiceover starts. The voiceover matches the actors/actresses eye-line. They also use a shot reverse shot in the first minute of the film. It's used to show the characters are looking at each other, and by the way they look each other shows the relationship between the characters. In this case, its a young couple, looking in love.  They use the shot reverse shot technique alot in the first 2 minutes, to get the audience to know the relationships between people.

In the first scence, 8 characters are introduced to us, making the audience assume they are the main characters. The female character doing the voiceover talks about love. Comfirming the genre of the film. When the voiceover is talking, the scenes change matching the voiceover.
For example:
`It was Shakespeare who also said "love is blind". Now that is something I know to be true. For some quite inexplicably, love fades` When the character says this, a couple in a car are shown on screen looking sad, and un-loved.

Then in the next scene, an old man is shown, walking to his bed with a walking stick and then looking at a picture of what is assumes as his wife, at the this time the voiceover says `for others love is simply lost.` Following on from the previous scene.

The film follows the film conventions of a romance film. They use men and women as the main characters. Two people fall in love and something gets in the way, but in the end its a happy ending. Its set somewhere romantic, for example in this films its set in L.A and a small village in the english countryside. They have relaxing, calm music playing (normally classical) to set the atmosphere. Lots of close ups are used to show emotions and shot reverse shot are used alot.

Preliminary Task Video

This is our preliminary task video. We had to include:
-180 degree rule
-Shot reverse shot
-Match on action

180 Degree Rule The 180 degree rule is a basic guideline that `states that two characters (or other elements) in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other`. If the camera crosses over the imaginary axis, its called crossing the line. However the new shot from the opposite side is known as the reverse angle.
Examples: In the example of an action scene, such as a car chase, if a vehicle leaves the right side of the frame in one shot, it should enter from the left side of the frame in the next shot. Leaving from the right and entering from the right will create a similar sense of disorientation as in the dialogue example.

Shot Reverse ShotShot reverse shot is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character, and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. As they are facing towards each other, the audience immediately assumes they are looking at each other.

Match On ActionMatch on action refers to a film editing technique where the editor cuts from one shot, to another view that will match the first shots action. Although the two shots may have been shot hours or days apart, the match on action gives the impression of continuous time when watching the final film.

FeedbackI feel overall our prelimary task worked well, seeming as this was the first time we had filmed and edited footage. We had no major problems when filming, although some of the minor problems were the noise in the background when filming the door handle scene. We wanted this scene quiet so you could hear the noise of the handle, although when filming at school we found it difficult to find a place with a noisey enough door handle but a quiet area, in the end we were able to maintain a small period of quiet and i guess a little bit of noise in the background gives the impression of a school. When editing first of all, me and my partner were lacking in confidence when using final cut, but we asked our teacher questions about things we were unsure of and she helped alot and in the end we were very confident using the programme. The things we will use in our coursework is the 180 degree rule, so it keeps the films running smoothly and will help with the continuity and we will take away the experience of filming and editing footage.

Techniques

Continuity editing is the main editing style in cinema and television. 


The purpose of continuity editing is to smooth over the different cuts during the editing process, so the film is flowing all the way through. 


Diegetic sound, fade out and cross cutting are some of the techniques used in continuity editing.