Introduction to Film

Working from a script - Making Narnia Exterior We used a forest in Wymondham which was local to us so it wasn't too long of a walk to get to. Although, it was very cold and quite frosty, this just added to the atmosphere we wanted for Narnia as it supposed to be winter time. We made sure that our actors (when they weren't being filmed) had warm coats on as we didn't want them to get too cold. We chose to not do snow to make our Narnia as we thought it would create too much mess and it would be hard for us to get the snow in every angle we wanted to film. If we were to do snow, it would mean that we would have to limit what we could film as we would have to make sure snow was in every scene and cover a lot of the forest area which would mean a lot of time would be spent after cleaning it up.  We also chose not to use a lamppost as there wasn't any nearby to where we were filming so instead we used a tree as we believed it would be more effective than just havin...

Working from a script - Directing style DIRECTING STYLE EXTERIOR SHOTS For our LION THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE scenes, I looked at multiple directors, each with their own distinctive styles. I specifically looked at Wes Anderson, as his warm hues and centralised characters create interesting final outcomes. These images show how we have used the warmer hues and tried to centralise the characters. The lighting also created this war mer effect as the sun had been setting. These images are stills from the first part of the scene, when the two characters - Mr Tumnus and Lucy are outside, and when they first meet. The camera work was important, as we wanted to capture the bewilderment on Lucy's face as well as Mr Tumnus' shock of seeing a human. The directing style itself had been quite simple, because I didn't want to over complicate it. As I also played a large role in creating the storyboards, it allowed me to direct each scene nicely ...

DIRECTING YOUR ACTORS Here are some pictures of the script that I have annotated explaining at points how I want the actors to perform through voice, expression and movement.                                                I had a discussion with the editor about what I wanted for the final piece, and how I wanted each part to look and sound. We made two different cuts using the same footage to get an idea of how we wanted each scene to look, one by the editors, one by the director and camerawoman we discussed the different shots that we had and went through each cut and picked out the ones that we wanted to use. The editors captured our ideas really well and the final piece is very similar to what we had imagined and the storyboards shown below.  After reading through the script, annotating it for the actors' directions etc. the e...

Working from a script - Editing After reading the script it is clear that it uses linear narrative, which is when a scene or story has a defined start, middle and end with no cutaways from that order. This is the traditional way of telling stories as it is straightforward to understand, which is especially helpful in Narnia, as it is a children’s story. Linear narrative is used to great effect in this scene to build audience engagement in the world inside the wardrobe, as it allows them to take in the new surroundings at a good pace, in the scene there are a lot of long drawn out parts which help ease the viewer into taking in the new environment. This is often used in films, one example could be Star Wars, every time they visit a new planet there are usually slower paced conversations or shots of the environment to help the viewer adapt from environment to environment. A theoretical effect we could use within our video is the Kuleshov Effect. An example of a location within ...