Film Poster

This is one of our film posters that I designed for our film. This would be an appropriate layout to advertise especially on an underground advertisement as it is a landscape layout and there is a limited amount of writing. 

Storyboard

This is our storyboard for our film along with a commentary about the shots. 

Titles task

For this task we had to watch a few short clips about the history and origin of 'titles' to see how they have evolved and developed over the years. Then we had to compare their titles to ours. 
This is the titles of Paranorman. They all lasted around 3 seconds. 

Conventions of Teen Drama Film Openings

A typical convention of a teen genre would be: 

Themes

• a romance between a girl and boy best friend 
• cliques (cliques are staple to any teen drama)
• out caster
• 'hating life'
• peer pressure

Characters

• nerds
• cheerleaders 
• jocks

Settings

• high school
• the houses of the characters  
• the mall 
• sometimes universities 

The typical conventions for a teen drama are shown above and they feature as a big part of any film. A genre convention for teen drama is usually an over dramatized teen issue such as boys or looks. The titles usually appear in a creative and girly style like being written out in lipstick. They also contain a voice over of the character speaking about his/her life. We have included a voice over in our film opening to convey the genre clearly to the audience. We also styled our titles to appear in a creative way. The setting usually follows the main character involved and you get to know them and their importance within the film. In our film opening we follow the girl on her journey on the train. 

Amnesia 1st Draft

This is our first draft of our opening scene "Amnesia".

Shot List

Here is a list of our shot in the order they appear:

-The first shot is a level shot of Libby standing looking out the window of the lift.
-The next shot is a low shot of Libby walking up the stairs in the train station, we shot it from the top of the stairs.
-The next shot is a level shot of Libby walking through the barriers at the train station.
-Next is a static level shot of the train pulling in to the station.
-The next shot is a close up shot of the train moving past the camera.
-The next shot is a static shot of Libby walking onto the train from the platform.
-Next is a tracking shot of Libby walking through the train to find a seat.
-Another tracking shot but this time the camera is close up to Libby as she sits down.
-The camera pans around Libby as she looks at her scrapbook.
-The next shot is from over Libby's shoulder as she looks through her scrapbook, at the end of the shot it zooms into the scrapbook before zooming out into the next shot.
-The next 2 shots are both of the scrapbook, they fade into one another as the pages turn.
-Next it zooms into the middle picture on the right side of the scrapbook.
-It then dissolves into the first memories which starts as a still shot of Libby and Katie before paying round them.
-The next shot is from Libby's point of view as she walks through the arcade so it is close up.
-For the next shot we used the tripod to film a high shot of Libby bowling.
-The next shot is a long shot of Libby sitting looking out the window of the train
-The following shot is an extreme long shot of Libby and Katie walking down the pier.
-The next shot is an establishing shot that pans across the sea front.
-The next shot is of Libby and me playing air hockey.
-It then changes to a close up of the air hockey as if it were from Libby's point of view.
-Another establishing shot but this time of Adventure Island.
-The final shot is a static shot of Libby standing infront of the sunset.

Production diary

10th November: This was the first day we sat together as our group to discuss film ideas for our potential opening sequence. We pitched each of our ideas to each other to see which we thought was best and we came up with 2 or 3 ideas although they were fairly similar. The first we came up with was an idea about a girls holiday where you could film the opening sequence as them getting ready in the morning whilst including the titles into that, however it didn't really have a plot to develop so the rest of the film wouldn't be interesting. The second was a pregnancy theme, the girl discovers she is pregnant whilst in an abusive relationship. You don't discover until the end that she is pregnant but she shows signs and symptoms throughout, although we didn't go with this idea as we thought it was done too often. The third idea that we did come up with was a girl with amnesia who is on a journey as she looks through her scrapbook of memories. We eventually chose this idea because we felt it had the best story line and we could develop it the most. We also talked about the different locations we could use to film our opening scene. 

11th November: We put all of our ideas for the film onto a power point so that we could present our film pitch to the class. We each typed a slide so that it was a joint effort. 

12th November: Frankie wasn't here today so Katie and I decided on the character names for the titles and for the characters in our film. These were, Libby - Daisy Blackman, Katie - Eliza Thomas, Frankie - Naomi Waters. Then we researched some similar films to ours such as Memento, which features a man who creates a strange system to help him remember things; so he can hunt for the murderer of his wife without his short-term memory loss being an obstacle and the Notebook, which is set as an elderly gentlemen telling a lady a story from their past in which, a poor and passionate young man falls in love with a rich young woman and gives her a sense of freedom. They soon are separated by their social differences, as they follow similar memory loss story lines to ours. We time lined the titles of the Notebook, the last passenger, Memento and 50 first dates. 

13th November: Today we found an art book that we could use for our scrapbook so we covered the front page in butterfly wrapping paper so that you couldn't see the writing on the front. Then we thought of some designs we could put into the book and where we could fit the titles into our opening scene. Today, we finalised who we wanted to produce and distribute our film, we decided Runner Productions would produce our film and New Line Cinema would distribute it. 

17th November:  In this meeting we decided on the task we were each going to complete separately and the ones we should do as a group. I started to plan out the storyboard roughly as we were still unsure on how we would work all the shots. Frankie wrote the script for the voice over that daisy will recite at some point during the film and Katie wrote a list of props. 

18th November: We continued to progress with our designated tasks in today's meeting. I carried on planning the storyboard, adding to it and changing certain bits so that they fitted to the genre. Frankie created the shooting schedule which gave us a plan of what we wanted to film, when we wanted to film and where we wanted to film. Katie started to research cover tracks of songs we could use as background music for our opening sequence. 

19th Novemeber: Today, I started to research into the font for our titles. I researched which fonts would be suitable for the genre and themes of our film and wrote why they would be appropriate. Katie continued with some research into music for our film. Frankie started the mood board in which she screenshot evidence from other films of our inspiration. Throughout this week we keep changing our minds as we're coming up with more or different ideas as to how the film can continue. 

20th November: In our meeting today, we all continued on previous tasks we had started. I continued to research font titles and researched the fonts of titles from similar films to ours and Frankie continued to develop the mood board. Today we also started to practice and trial out how we wanted the titles to appear and how we could work them into the scrapbook. It proved to be quite challenging as each time, something wasn't quite right. 

24th November: Today, we began to film our titles which I was going to write letter by letter so that we could film it individually and edit them later using premiere, however when we tried to do this we found it difficult as the camera angles weren't exactly the same so the shot was moving around meaning the titles didn't stay in the same place. So then we decided to film me writing the whole word out and speed it up later by editing it on premiere however we weren't impressed by the titles as we thought the styles weren't as stylish as we thought they would look. Frankie told us her mum had smart handwriting and that she would be happy to write out the titles for us, so Frankie took the camera home to film. 

25th November: Frankie showed us the footage she got of the titles her mum had written out and we all agreed that we liked them. Once we tried to edit them to make them look more aesthetically pleasing we realised it wasn't working and you could see there was nothing on the page overleaf. So we thought it would be a good idea to shoot the titles again with a series of pictures portraying a memory on one page of the double spread and then the titles spelt out in foam letters on the other side.

26th November: Last night, I took the scrapbook home and began to decorate a few pages of memories to make the scrapbook look personal. Then when we met at school, Katie and Frankie decorated more pages. Whilst they did this, I started doing some audience research for our film. We got some feedback from our teacher and some other peers within the class and the general feedback was that the genre wasn't clear and it was a little confusing as to how you would tell the memories apart from the present day. So we re-evaluated the storyboard and the genre of what the film had now become due to the music we had chosen.

27th November: Today we finished the scrapbook and decided all of our shots that we need to shot whilst on the train, at the train station and in Southend. Katie began to rewrite the storyboard out in neat and Frankie began the marketing campaign. 

28th November: We completed a risk assessment for the day we planned to shoot and made sure we had everything ready for Saturday so we could film. We also recorded the voice over, so that we were able to edit that into the film once we had all of our footage. We finalised the storyboard and shot list so that we were clear on everything we needed to shoot. 

29th November: Today we filmed. We were faced with a dilemma once we got to southend as our main idea that the film was based around had to be ruled out as the theme park was closed so we were unable to get our roller-coaster shot. Instead we tried to get some other footage so that our film didn't finish short of 2 minutes. 

1st December: After filming on Saturday we sat down and got all of our footage onto the computer so that we were ready to edit. We began to edit a few of the first clips in this meeting and added the music that we had originally chosen, and we put some video effects into the footage, whilst also adding the titles on via Premiere as the written titles didn't go to plan. 

2nd December: Today we continued to edit together. We experimented trying different effects and transitions to make the opening sequence more interesting and also decided on where we could edit in the numerous titles we needed to include. 

5th December: Today was the deadline for our 1st draft. Before we handed our film over we tried to add some more footage into our film as we were around 30 seconds short of 2 minutes as we had a vital shot that we weren't able to include although we will have it filmed for our final piece. We also changed a few bits around and changed the speed of one or two shots. Our teacher gave us some feedback that we are able to improve on for our next deadline. 

Recce Shots

Here are some of our recce shots that Frankie took. This enabled us to see the different places within the locations that we could film in. 

This was the first shot that she took of the train station. We thought this was appropriate for the location of our first few shots in our film. We filmed going throught the barriers, on the platform and getting onto the train. 

This was the second recce shot she took. We used a train as a location as the representation of the film relied heavily on the train moving. We filmed quite a bit of our footage on the train. 

This was the third recce shot she took. We chose to use this location as a memory as it featured the sun setting which was a shot we wanted for one of the memories. 

This was the fourth shot she took. We filmed in some of the areas that you can see from this viewing platform. 

This was the fifth shot she took. This was the viewing platform and and the lift in which we filmed. It was an appropriate location as the lift was glass so you were able to see out when we filmed in it. 

This was the sixth recce shot she took. This was the arcade in which we shot a lot of our footage in. This was also an important location as this was where one of the memories took place. 

Font Research

For this I had to chose a variety of fonts that would be suitable for our film title 'amnesia'. I researched similar film titles to see the style of their fonts so that we could base ours on a similar style to suit our genre. 

In the end we actually chose a different font altogether as we thought that the font we chose looked like it was typed like a doctors style. It was simplistic yet still conveyed the complex tone of our film and they don't distract you. This was the font we chose. 

Titles Timeline

Filming

Today we went to Southend (via the train) to shoot our film footage, we went to various different locations to get the footage we desired. By the end of the day we had all the footage we wanted to get at Southend. 

We started filming at Chelmsford Train Station where Katie and Frankie filmed me walking through the barriers from behind, walking up the stairs from above and walking along the platform from across. They then shot me walking onto a train from behind, we tried to make sure shots like these were good as we didn't have many opportunities to re-shoot. We had already accounted for train timings so that we weren't waiting around and were able to make the most of the time we had to shoot at the train station. We watched most of the footage we got at the train station to make sure if we needed to re-shoot it we used our time wisely and where possible in the same places. 

We got on a train to Chelmsford and Katie and Frankie alternatively filmed me whilst I walked through the train to find a seat. This shot also took a few takes as we hadn't thought about the stability of the train and we fell a few times whilst trying to film. We also got the other shots we needed which included, looking at the scrapbook and looking out the Window. 

We had a bit of spare time when we were waiting for the train from Shenfield to Southend so we re-shot the footage where I walked onto the train as when we watched the footage back we saw that someone was staring straight into the camera. We found this quite common throughout the day that people kept staring at the camera when we tried to film but I think we got enough shots without people doing that.  

When we reached Southend we went straight to the seafront as that was where we wanted to shoot the majority of our footage. Straight away we ran into a problem as we discovered Adventure Island wasn't open and we were hoping to shoot some of our footage there so we discussed quickly as to where else we could get some footage so that we wouldn't fall short of 2 minutes when we edited. 

We shot quite a large part of the footage in an arcade where Katie and I featured on an car racing game and Frankie and I had a game of air hockey. It was really busy in there so we tried to go the quieter corners of the arcade so that we didn't get others in the shot.

Then we went to the seafront and got some shots of Katie and I walking down the pier and Frankie filmed a panning shot of the seafront and she got the sunset into it as we filmed at the right time of the sun setting which was in front of me as I looked forward towards it. We also shot the sun setting from the lift at the top of the hill which over looked the sea front. This concluded the footage we wanted to get from that day. Over all it went really well and we got most of the footage we wanted and we were happy with the quality of it. 

Amnesia Representations

Characters: 

• Daisy - Daisy is the main character to star in our film. She represents a teenage girl who suffers from amnesia, which isn't a generic character representation. She is portrayed to the audience as a surprisingly mature young girl and not the stereotypical girly girl. She isn't physically representing a mental illness yet she copes with her underlying problems that she has. To most she would be a character of sympathy and we think she will be viewed as a sympathy character. 
• Eliza & Naomi - These girls are Daisy's best friends and they would been seen as her biggest supporters and always catching her when she falls. They share many memories together and stereotypically are there for each other through thick and thin and help her when she needs it most. They represent Daisy's escape in life, they distract Daisy and the audience from other events in the film. They help to show up Daisy's imperfections and represent normal, young, healthy girls. 

Places:

• The location we plan to use as the biggest representation is the train. We are using it to represent that life carries on no matter what you are having to deal with, it shows that everything around Daisy and her life will move on whether she joins it or not.
• The memories are in a variety of locations, they all represent her past that is fading from her memory as struggles to keep it alive.

Risk Assessment

This is our risk assessment that Frankie completed in order for us to be ready to film on Saturday. 

Institutions Research

We chose New Line Cinema to produce and distribute our film. We did some research into their company so that we were able to see the films they have produced and distributed in the past. 

New Line Cinema was originally founded in 1967. Building on more than four decades of innovation and creativity, New Line Cinema continues its long and successful history of producing critically acclaimed hit films that resonate with both mainstream and niche audiences around the world.

New Line produced the Oscar Award-winning The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, which generated a combined worldwide box office of almost $3 billion (and an additional $3 billion in consumer products and home entertainment revenue). The studio is also credited with revitalizing the genre of the R-rated comedy, based on the success of Wedding Crashers in 2005 and, more recently, Horrible Bosses in 2011. New Line is one of the few film companies that still works in the horror genre, being widely known for the iconic A Nightmare on Elm Street and Final Destination franchises. 

New Line became a unit of Warner Bros. Entertainment in March 2008. The company maintains separate development, production, marketing, distribution and business affairs operations, but coordinates those functions with Warner Bros. to maximize film performance and operating efficiencies. 

Shooting Schedule

This is our shooting schedule of when, where and what we intend to film. We originally planned to film on Wednesday 26th November but due to the weather we were unable to film so we changed the date to the 29th November. 

Audience Research

For our film we decided that our target audience would suit most females as the genre would typically interest them more than males. Our target audience would be suitable for the age group of 12 to 17 as the genres and topic of the film would appeal to them and they would be able to understand the amnesia theme. We would expect the majority of our audience to be teenagers around the age of 14 because they would be of the age to understand the topic of amnesia and what the girl (Daisy) is going through. Jane would be our prototype.
Jane is 14 years old who is a stereotypical young girl who likes to watch romance films and girly genres. She is interested in romance films and loves to see films which would be filled with romance. Our film would suit her as it is a teen drama with a bit of a twist. She is of the age that she would understand the connection of amnesia with Daisy and she has the potential to feel an emotional connection with the girl. 

Marketing Campaign

Synopsis

What we will need: 

• A scrapbook of memories 
• A train (+ train station)
• An arcade 
• Theme park ride 
• Beach 
• Bag
• Change of outfits 

Characters: There are 3 main characters in our opening scene. We have Daisy who is played by Libby, Eliza who is played by Katie and Naomi who is played by Frankie. Daisy is the main character who is featured and is diagnosed with amnesia and Eliza and Naomi are her best friends who are pictured in her memories. 

Costume: Our costumes are simplistic and casual as we wanted to reflect the tone of the memories as casual because she was normal when these memories took place. We kept the costumes simple because we wanted the focus of our film to rely on the memories rather than the actors choice of clothing. All 3 girls wore everyday clothes such as jeans/leggings/tops/jumpers/coats. 

Location: Our film opening will be located at Chelmsford train station and Southend. We will be using the train station and the platforms for some of our shots and then we will also be filming on the train for some of our shots. We will be filming on the beach, in the arcades and the theme park in Southend. 

Audience: Our film is aimed at mainly females, however males can view it if they wish to, around the age of 12-17 as we think it would appeal to this age group more than anyone younger as we think it would be difficult for them to understand the theme of amnesia. The certificate is 12A. 

Music Ideas

This is one of the videos that we looked at on YouTube as a possible choice to use for our music, it is a cover of the song Amnesia by 5 seconds of summer. It is sung by Lauren Bonnell. We like this song because it resembles our actual film title Amnesia, the lyrics relates to the reality of Amnesia and people can connect with it. The mood of the Music also fits in with our genre.



We also looked at this video because the tone and pace of this music makes the situation of the film seem really real. It is a cover of say something by Christina Aguelieria. It is sung by Jasmine Thomas.



This is another video we looked at, we like this cover because the lyrics resemble the struggles that Daisy is going through in this opening sequence. It is a cover of Dont you Remember by Adele and it is sung by Hedda Mathide.

Amnesia Research

Memory loss, also called amnesia, occurs when a person loses the ability to remember events and information they would normally be able to recall. This could be something that happened only seconds or minutes ago, or a memorable event that happened in the past. The memory loss may have started suddenly or may have been getting worse over the last year or so. 

Doctors classify memories as either:

• Immediate memories, such as sounds, which are only stored for a few seconds.
• Short-term or recent memories, such as telephone numbers, which stay in your memory for 15-20 seconds. The brain can store about seven chunks of short-term information at any time.
• Long-term or remote memories - more permanent memories, which have been reinforced because you've repeatedly gone over them in your mind.

Generally, GPs find that patients who see them about memory loss are most likely to have:

• Anxiety
• Stress
• Depression

Their memory loss is due to poor concentration and not noticing things in the first place because of a lack of interest. Sleeping problems make the memory loss worse.

Other common causes of memory loss are:

• a head injury, for example after a car accident
• a stroke that cuts off some of the blood supply to the brain and causes brain tissue to die

These will cause sudden memory loss, where you either forget events that happened before the trauma (retrograde amnesia), or you forget everything that happened after the trauma (anterograde amnesia).

Ways to cope

• Keep everyday items, such as car keys, in the same place and try to do things in the same order each time.
• Write information down and keep paper and a pencil near the phone.
• Keep a diary at home as well as at work to remind you to do daily tasks.
• Use an alarm to help you remember to do something in the future, such as taking something out of the oven.
• Repeat back to someone important information you need to remember.