Introduction to our film opening

I recently visited the cinema and watched The Bounty Hunter and noticed a green screen that comes up in almost every film certifying the film. I thought this idea would be a good idea to make our film seem more of a opening to a film than a trailer, as we have recently realised that our opening to our film is too much like a movie trailer.

This is the American version of the green screen. For our version of it, we have changed the wording to United Kingdom and changed the websites at the bottom of the screen to our own websites.

Testing my blackberry

I am testing my blackberry to see whether I can blog through my phone
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Film Critiques

I recently watched the films 'The Hurt locker' 'The Departed' and 'Law Abiding Citizern. Both films come into the genre of thriller, The Departed and Law Abiding Citizern more so than The Hurt Locker.

I absolutly loved watching The Hurt locker as it was based on real footage from Iraq following a US army Explosive Ordnance Disposal team which at some points in the movie I found this quite discomforting. For instance, there is one scene where a soldier goes to disarm a range of bombs strapped to all areas of an abandoned car in a car park.

The athmosphere is very tense as the newly assigned soldier 'William James' has a reputation of being a "dare devil" as in the last raid, he took off protection wear and disarmed the bomb without the protected suit provided. As he walks slowly towards the armed car, he turns off his radio, which causes major concern for his fellow soldiers assigned to keep watch, and so raises alarm. All the assigned soldiers throughout the film has to learn to deal with James' laid back attitude, as he disarms many bombs and meets a variety of good and bad iraqy peoplr.

The film is amazing to watch as it gives you an insight as to what goes on in Iraq, alongside showing you the horrors of war and that there are so many jobs involved, I didnt even realise was aceptable for humans to do! Even in this picture, you can see the soldier putting his life at risk pulling out buried road side bombs! How scary!

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I also watched 'The Departed' with an all star cast; Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, MArk Wahlberg.

The film is about two just-graduated officers from Massachusetts State Police Academy who follow opposite sides of the law: Billy Costigan is assigned to work undercover with the Irish mobster Frank Costello to get evidences to arrest him. His true identity is only known by his superiors Dignam and Oliver Queenan. The protégée of Costello, Colin Sullivan, is promoted in the Massachusetts State Police and is the informer of Costello. Each police officer gives his best effort trying to disclose the identity of the other "rat".

Each man becomes deeply consumed by his double life, gathering information about the plans and counter-plans of the operations he has penetrated. But when it becomes clear to both the mob and the police that there's a mole in their midst, Billy and Colin are suddenly in danger of being caught and exposed to the enemy-and each must race to uncover the identity of the other man in time to save himself. But is either willing to turn on the friends and comrades they've made during their long stints undercover?

This film was a light hearted, witty thriller, a lot different to The Hurt Locker, and i thoroughly enjoyed watching it. There were good camera shots when both Billy and Colin are running away from the police and Costello, splitting the screen and dramatic effect was added through the tense sounds and sudden movements.

Loved this film!

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I also watched the film Law Abiding Citizern which blew me away. It was full of twists and action which kept me on the edge of my seat throughout the whole film. The plot was magnificent and I definately rate it 10/10 to watch! here is a rough summery to the plot..

One night two robbers invade his Philadelphia home and brutally kill his wife and daughter, and almost kill him. The killers are caught, and Assistant DA Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) is assigned the case. Nick is ordered by the DA to make a deal with one of the killers to testify against his partner for a 10 year plea bargain prison sentence. Clyde doesn't want Nick to make the deal, but Nick says it was too late and the deal is done. The other killer got the death penalty. After 10 years, the other killer is released from prison, and he soon ends up dead. Clyde is arrested and kind of admits to Nick that he did it. Clyde is put in jail, and he warns Nick that he must fix the broken justice system that failed him and his family or else anyone connected to his case will soon die. Even from jail, Clyde's threats become a reality, and Nick must stop Clyde before his family is next.

Definately the best action film I think I have ever seen! Loved It

Rough Edit 6

Here is near enough our finalized film. The Music Box. We have added music, sound and lighting techniques to it to make it seem more professional. This is the first time we have managed to upload our film to youtube via iMovie and so the quality is a lot better, than normally using our mobile phones.

We adding in the ending of the music box spinning as it blurs and your can see the writing. We still need to change the writing, as we were just experimenting with the transitions. Since I liked the black screen with the scary writing on it better than the music box spinning we used both and added "A Universal Studio Film" which may be changed later to show who's producing the film. We then had Billy at the end lifting his hood up to show that he is on the go to "kill" again.

We also noticed as we were watching the film was that we analysed it in depth. For example, as Billy is winding up the music box, the light in the car goes out. This light could symbolise the dancer as in she's dying out. Also the music is a cycle music, to show that his killing streak is ongoing.

After watching Jess' group, we realised that there was more advanced things you could do on imovie by going onto "imovie preferences". This showed us how to overlap to shots, what we've been trying to do for ages, and how to put a green screen etc. So next time we're all together we will experiment with this.

Credits

As you can see from the above clip, the credits appear on the fast paced moving clips that we created. We thought that this was the most appropraite place as it doesn't take your mind too much off of the drama. After watching "The Panic Room" credits, it has insipred my group to come up with credits that mean something to our film. . We then thought, most credits are in capital letters, for example, The Panic Room and Saw. So we therefore changed the names to capital letters.

After this session, Emma thought of a way that our credits could represent our film. She thought that as the name appeared after a few seconds it can be crossed out with a strike through. This will make it seem as if all of us were victims on Billy's list, and we've been killed and thus crossed out. She came to an obsticle thinking of this however, as the text cannot become a strike out gradually to look like someone's crossing it out. It's either crossed out or not crossed out. Hopefully we can find a way to create this effect and our credits would have a meaning.