Wednesday, 20 November 2013

Editing...

Cinematic/ Real time, Expanding time and Shrinking time

Cinematic time/Real time: whether what is happening on the screen takes the same time as it would in real life, this can be completed through editing. In film time can be compressed or expressed.

Expanding time: This is when the event that is happening on the screen takes longer than it would in real life. This can be done by including less cuts, slow motion and including extra relevant shots. This is usually used in horror or thriller films.

Shrinking time: This is when what is occurring on the screen happens quicker than it would in real life. This can be achieved by including more cuts and by speeding up time. This is usually used in action films.

The first thing we had to do was to watch two clips, one from Slumdog millionaire and the other from The Bourne Ultimatum and write down some notes about how they made us feel. I felt as though the Slumdog millionaire clip made me feel sad and empathise for the characters however there was also a sense of urgency and even hope towards the end. In The Bourne Ultimatum clip there was an obvious sense of urgency, it was also intense and made me feel on the edge. Below is the notes I made in class:

 
Here is part of The Bourne Ultimatum clip that we watched:


 
 
Here is part of the Slumdog millionaire clip that we watched: (Watch from 16:10 - 21:50)
 

 
 
We then were split into two groups and given some questions which we had to answer on one of the clip each. My group  was given the Slumdog Millionaire clip. The two questions that I answered were:
 
 
The first question I chose to answer was 'Are there any examples of expanding time? How does this contribute to mood?'.
 
In the clip there were examples of expanding time. An example of this is when the camera sequence cuts from the boys in the water, to the woman washing clothes, back to the boys and then to the mother. By including these extra shots, time has been expanded to show not only the normality of the day but the setting and characters as well.
 
Another example of expanding time in the clip is when the boys see the god, the shot has been put into slow motion. This is to show the importance of the god. Firstly as the god is from the opposing religion and also for the relevance of the question on the quiz show.
 
The second question I had to answer was: 'How does he narrative create mood?'.
 
The narrative creates mood as it is telling us exactly what is going on in the storyline, therefore we are enabled to feel empathy for the characters through our understanding of what is happening.
 
 
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Next we had to use either expanding or shrinking time in our preliminary task to create a given mood. We were given panic!
  • Our initial ideas were to include more cuts in the sequence as this would make it jumpy and feel as though time was going faster as you wouldn't see everything the characters were doing.
  • We also decided to speed up the pace of the characters' feet walking so that it look as though they were in a hurry for what they were doing.
  • Another thing we did to shrink time was to not include all of the dialogue between the two characters as this would make the audience feel more relaxed and be ale to follow the storyline perfectly. We decided to leave out some of the dialogue to also create a mysterious side to the storyline as the audience wouldn't know exactly what was occurring between the two characters.
  • We also created a black out half way through the clip, when you can hear the sounds but not see anything which makes it more panicky.
  • Towards he end when we watched the clip back we felt as though it still wasn't creating the right mood even though we had included all of these shrinking time techniques. Mr Lucas hinted that a soundtrack may help to create mood. We went online and found a tense, and fast paced piece of music that we could use.
Here is the clip that we edited to create the mood of panic!:
 



Thursday, 7 November 2013

Sound

In class we learnt about the different types of sound in television programmes/film and why it is used in media. Sound is important in films and television as it sets the mood for the audience and allows them to understand what they are watching. Music/ sound during film/TV may also allow us to follow the narrative and whether I is leading into something positive or negative.

We started the lesson off by listening to 5 different theme tunes from film/TV. We then had to work out what programme or film it was, how it made us feel and what type of programme we were expecting to watch.

The first piece we listened to was from 'The Fresh Prince of Bel Air'. I watch this programme quite a lot and so I was familiar with it's theme music. The theme music made me feel happy/ it put me in a good mood, upbeat and ready to boogie! If I hadn't of watched this programme before I would expect it to be based in America and be about young back people. As you can tell I have pretty much described the programme itself, therefore this is a good representation of the programme and incites us as to what it is about.

Here is the theme music for 'The Fresh Prince of Bel Air'-


 
The next theme music we listened to was from the film 'The A-team'. When this was being played I was unsure of the music as I had only watched this filmed once before, this meant that there was no chance of me writing down what I knew. This piece of music made me feel intrigued, happy and excited. I was unsure of the type of film that it came from and thought that it might be from a superhero movie or one about the army as there was a deep drums playing in the background. However I knew that it was from an action movie from the pace of it and the instruments used.
Here is the theme music from 'The A-team'-




The third one we listened to was from 'Dr Who'. This made me feel sleepy, intrigued and sort of unsure as to whether I liked it or not. The synthesised sound made me realise that it was sci-fi , and was to do with aliens of some form.

Below is the theme music for the 1963 Dr Who:
 
The next theme tune we listened to was from the well-known soap opera 'EastEnders'. This is a programme that I watch everyday and so I knew what it was represented. This music made me feel relaxed, happy and even tense. This was well suited to the genre as it was dramatic and therefore I was expecting to watch a soap opera.
 
The Theme music for EastEnders is:
 
The final piece we listened to was from 'Hollyoaks'. The theme music for this made me feel happy but also slightly annoyed me.  The instruments in the music and the fact that it was the same part repeated throughout it made me think that it was going to be another soap opera. However the instruments used and the key in which is was played made me suspect that it would be mainly focused on young people.
 
Here is the theme music for 'Hollyoaks'-
 

 
We then learnt about the key terminology to do with sound. Below is the work that I did for this. In orange are the diegetic sounds and in green are the non diegetic sounds. This will be useful to use in my final piece.