Editing/Problems

All this week we have started our editing for our introduction for our film. We have cut up shots and in some cases taken sound from one shot and put it into another shot. As in some shots we had taken we didn't realise that the sound was slightly off. But we have some very good shots to work with but unfortunatley at the moment we don't have enough film to make up the 2 minute marker. So therefore we now have to do some more filming and place our titles in more carefully just incase we don't get enough film on our next shot.
Also the extra shot (close up of the taking of the bag of the coins) we have decided to put the new footage at the beginigng of our film.
But the most biggest problem is the horse scene. On the day the horse we were using started to misbehave so our rider/actor didn't feel comfortable not riding the horse without a hat ( which was very understandable for safety reasons ). But unfortunatley at the time this skipped our mind that the hat would be a problem. As when we returned to editing we realised that a riding hat wouldn't fit the western genre. So our next plan is to take out the horse shot and make different shots (still using the horse) to remake the scene. We have a couple of ideas at the moment such as filming the horses feet, showing the rider picking up the reins etc. But one idea we had was as we can't put 2 people on the horse like how we planned (due to the horse misbehaving) we thought we could instead trick the viewer into thinking that both people are on the horse when infact neither are. We have an idea of sitting our two actors on top of a car or some form of tallish object which can be moved so the background will move with the speed and action of the horses hooves which we could put in before or after. We have still not fully decided on this idea but we are going to produce a storyboard for these few scenes as we feel we will need to be very well planned and quite crafty with this.

Day of filming

On our day of  we had a little problem our "angry man" dropped out because he was ill. But fortunately we managed to find another "angry man" called Daniel Paton. Also we had a few problems with sound as it was quite windy so we had to shoot some clips a few times to make sure we didn't have to much wind noise. Filming took shorter amount of time than we had planned. I think this is because everyone was very cold and wet so wanted to get the job done quickly. Which worked to our advantage.

Also we decided to do an extra shot of the women taking the bag of coins as we felt this will tell the audience more about what is going on and also will show that the bag is important.

Props

Props	Supplied by
Bandanas	Nikki
Cowboy hats	Actor
Logs	Nikki
Blanket	Jess
Horse	Nikki
Seating	Jess
Bag (money bag)	Jess

Timing for day of filming

Time
11:30	Actors Arrive
11:35	Make up and costume
12:00	Set up to film
12:15	Start filming shots on hill
12:45	Shots flat land
13:15	Close up of feet (on hill?)
13:30	EAT
14:00	Horse shot
14:40	Camp shot-set up fire and shelter
15:30	Pack up
15:50	Go Home

Actors

Woman in distress - Jane Kelsey

Angry man 2 - Daniel Effendi>>

<<Angry man 1 - Dan Paton

Husband - Rob Smith>>

Media Questionnaire on Westerns

Media Questionnaire on Westerns

Please circle the appropriate:

Gender:  Male Female

           4      3

Age: under 13 13-18 18-25 25-40 over 40

         1        2     1      1       1

Please answer and give details in the space provided if need be

1) Are you a fan of Westerns?

    Yes No

     5   2

   

2) What is the usual plot of the ones you have watched?

Good vs Bad, Damsel in distress, woman, hero, villan, horses, guns, Good/Hero always wins/gets the woman, stealing, kidnapping, 

3) Is this your preferred story line? (if no please give details of how you would prefer it to be)

    Yes No

     3    3
No - more action, less chasing, bad guys win instead of good 

4) What are the stereotypical characters that feature in them?

Bad guy, good guy, woman, outsider, children (seem very grown up)

5) Are there any other characters that you think should feature in them?

Women who fight for themselves, bad guys who win

6) What do you think is the best way to open a western?

with a fight scene, introducing the characters, action.

The horse we are going to use for our film.

Contemporary Westerns Research

We did some research into the different sub genres of western and have decided on doing a contemporary western. They have lots of typical features and are often set on rugged rural terrain with a central plot revolving around conflict between good vs evil/rich vs poor. Some typical elements in them include guns and gunfights often on horseback (but also on foot), shootouts, horses, human massacres, open landscapes and the characters haver their distinctive western clothing (denim, jeans, boots, cowboy hats, guns etc). The heros are genrally local lawmen, cowboys ranchers or army officers that are both courageous, tough and moral and independent. Sometimes even people outside are the heros. They stand alone against danger (often outlaws) and display physical skills such as horse-handling and gun-play. We will use our research from the internet and asking for peoples views to help us make our film meet the criteria of a western.


Examples of Contemporary Westerns:

• Hud  (1963)  
• Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)  
• El Mariachi (1992)  
• Lone Star (1996) 
• The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005) 
• Brokeback Mountain (2005) 
• Don't Come Knocking (2005) 
• No Country For Old Men (2007)

Here is a copy of our script. This is what we intend to be said however this may change if we encounter problems whilst filming that interfere with the sound.

This is our initial narrative structure.

Above are our storyboards, this is how we plan to film our opening however, as with the others they may change as a result of interfering factors. 

 But as we still need to carry out questionnaires to ask people about their preferred type of western, if the results conflict with our planned hollywood narrative then we will adapt it to fit peoples preferred type of western films.

Locations

Here are the locations that what we will use to film our scenes. They are in a big field that we found that is in a local village.

Art Of the Title-once upon a time in the west

We had trouble accessing the art of the title website and linking a video to our blog. But here is a link to the  video of once upon a time in the west.


http://www.artofthetitle.com/2008/04/10/once-upon-a-time-in-the-west/

Timings for titles to The Proposition

0:10 - UK film Council presents

0:16 - A Surefire films production of

0:22 - An autonomous and Jackie B productions, Co- production in association with Pictures in Paradise

0:28 - With the participation of the pacific film and television corporation and the film consortium

0:38 - Actors name

0:43 - "

0:49 - "

0:55 - "

1:01 - "

1:07 - "

1:17 - The Proposition

1:28 - Casting by

1:35 - Costume designer

1:41 - Production designer

1:47- Music

1:54 - Editor

2:00 - Director of photography

2:06 - Executive producers x2

2:13 - Executive producers x4

2:19 - Executive producers x1

2:25 - Producers x2

2:31 - Producers x2

2:37 - Screenplay

2:44 - Director

These titles last longer than two minutes, ours won't be as long as this because of the fact that we have a limited amount of time and also we will have less credits to show. For example we won't have seven executive producers, unlike this film.

Today we decided on our genre for our fiction film, we chose western. But not sure on our sub-genre as we may do contemporary or euro western. we chose to do a film from this genre as we wanted to explore something different.