In the past I have used filming gear and editing software in a casual "hey, lets make a movie" sort of way, and this past experience, however naive and unsubstantial, really helped me. I have spent countless hours just filming my surroundings, often in Media Studies to Ms Kazimi's dismay, and so I know the functions and operations of my Sony Bloggie quite well.The actual structuring of shots and positioning of the camera were a new steppingstone for me, as adding meaning to the shots was an idea disregarded in the past. I really focused hard on the positioning of the camera in this piece, although as a completely point of view film I faced some difficulty in maintaining the continuity of the effect; though I believe it is this simplicity that will in fact be beneficial to the film.
The microphone built-in to my camera is not exactly the highest of quality, and so I used an external microphone in order to record the dialogue included within the film. With regards music, I wanted something to emphasise the video-game-esque nature of my film, and so I resorted to using a piece of music from the game "Borderlands". It included quite heavy drumming to stress action, which juxtaposed the actionless events on screen.
Editing was the highlight. I used Adobe Premier Pro CS5 and After Effects CS5 mainly, although I often used Mocha, an attachment to AE for Motion Tracking, etc. I used quite complex greenscreening techniques to obtain the "walking hands" that so frequently appeared in my film. Masking out the "green" (well, in my case, red) in the shot allowed me to overlay the hands on top of my raw footage and to give it that "Doom" (1993) or "Wolfenstein 3D" (1992) feel, ancestors of the video game industry.
The HUD that was positioned perminantly on screen was taken directly from a screenshot within the game "Borderlands", edited with Photoshop, and overlayed using After Effects.

Overall I loved this process. It has been a life long dream (and still is) to enter the film and television industry, and this gave me another boost of enthusiasm toward it.
The most positive element of the process was the editing part, as I learnt so much more than I had ever imagined to, simply from creating this film.
The planning stages of this production did not go very smoothly, as I struggle to get my ideas down into words, seen especially in my storyboards and treatment, although this did not stop me attempting.
I did several versions of my storyboard, each improving on my last, until I had a vivid image in my head of the film that I would come to produce. I think that over time I have developed on my organisation and time management, and overall my skills have improved tenfold.
I think that the repetitive development of my storyboard helped me later in the development process, as when it came to filming and editing, I knew exactly what I wanted visually and the whole film formed a very satisfying result.

Props needed:

• Sultana Bran
• Weetbix          -All accessible from home.
• PB&J

Costume needed:

• School Uniform
• Black suit jacket    -All accessible from home.
• Hawaiian shirt

Crew: I shall be in charge of filming, lighing and sound, and so I am the one and only crew member.
Talent: My mother has kindly agreed to being in my film, along with school friend Zac Neill.


Master List:

• Myself - Tom O'Brien
• Unseen character of "Tom", Filming, lighting & sound
• Wendy O'Brien
• Mother of "Tom"
• One line of dialogue
• Zac Neill
• Friend of "Tom"
• One line of dialogue

 My idea is of a boy who is so addicted to video games that he has begun to see his life as though it is one. Seemingly mundane, everyday tasks are now seen as though they are elements of his favourite video games. It has a lot of social commentary on the severity of the obsession the youth of today has with video games. All shots will be First-Person, point-of-view shots to simulate the well-known First Person Shooter style

Two people lying on hospital beds wake up and remove the various medical equipment attatched to them. They look around, and leave the building. The streets are deserted, with cars abandoned. In the distance, there is someone dancing, a very peculiar dance. Shuffling. They begin to approach him, speaking out to him "Hey man, where all da people at?", when they are tackled out of the way behind a car. The man gives them the "low-down" of the situation, a zombie apocalypse has occured and one of the characteristics of them are they shuffle. Music starts blaring from nowhere, and the stranger forces them headphones to block the music, and weapons.
The two step up from their hiding place, and shuffle their way into the middle of the crowd, where they stop moving, and in slow motion reveal their masses of weapons, and start attacking all of them.
A montage ensues of the following action, showing them going overboard with the zombie killing, attacking innocent people, garbage cans, and even the stranger that helped them. Upon attacking the stranger, the two stand over his body, he asks "Who are you?" in his dying breath. They pull out their guns, and say "Blu Foo and Sky Red bitch" and fire, where it immediately cuts to black.

"A moon wrapped in brown paper”

-Nisrene Kazimi on the topic of onions

In a paragraph on your blog, comment on the following:
1. Party Rock Apocalypse - Genre: Zombie Dance
2. I wish to portray the idea of the dangers of conforming, symbolized with the dance style, "shuffling".
3. I want to make the audience first to find it enjoyable, but then be shocked at the twist in the video.
4. The audience needs to feel fear for the idea of following the herd mentality, and realize that the loss of independence is happening all around us
5. 2 people wake up in hospital, leave to find abandoned streets, rubbish everywhere, and one person shuffling. A person quickly pulls them aside, and gives them the lowdown of the situation. Music begins to play and people emerge from everywhere and begin dancing. When the music then progresses, they begin to get violent, and attack the two original characters, but they defend themselves and kill the majority before making an escape. It starts quite light heartedly, but then turns quite violent quickly.

1. Describe

FRANKENSTEIN: In Frankenstein, the “bad guy” we are faced with is a physical monster, duly named “The Monster”. It is made from the parts of the deceased, and was deliberately made to look as distorted and un-human as possible by the director. He made The Monster wear clothes far too small for him and extremely heavy shoes to try to emphasise its largeness and obscurity.

PSYCHO: In Psycho, the “bad guy” we are faced with is a psychological monster, Norman Bates, who appears to be a normal person; until you find out he is a cross-dressing schizophrenic. This is a big difference from Frankenstein, as The Monster was shown to be hideous, whereas Norman Bates is shown to be a charming bachelor, who seduces Marion, and eventually kills her.

2. Explain
The idea of a monster within a horror film was used as a device to scare or frighten the audience, by showing them an inhuman creature with the ability to torment. Frankenstein’s monster, for example, was deliberately made to appear as inhuman as possible, via making him appear far taller than his surrounding characters, and equipping him with heavy shoes and extensive make-up. This idea is effective, as showing the audience something which they have never seen or experienced before, preferably something as opposite to them as possible, created uncertainty, and subsequently, fear. This had a lot of reflection to society within it, considering one of the most common fears in the world is the fear of the unknown, and so tapping into that caused the audience to react exactly as planned, to be afraid. With Psycho, for the majority of the film we are still left wondering who the killer is until the end, but the suspense and mysterious nature of the murder left us tentative.


3. Analyse

Since the first horror movie, the monster has evolved with the time. Although the general idea of the monster has not changed, a creature/person used to create fear, as seen from Frankenstein and Psycho, the way in which the monster is portrayed is quite different. As time progressed, the nature of the monster changed as the world changed and began to realise that things are not as they seem. It transitioned from a physical monster, in this case Frankenstein’s Monster, to a mental monster, Norman Bates. This evolution shows a lot about the society that we are living in; we do not need something to be visibly frightening to frighten us, more so we need something like a person, who could easily walk past without us sparing a second thought, who then reveals themselves as a monster themselves. In Frankenstein, the monster was the highlight of the film, as we saw the changing nature of a creature, essentially doomed from the start. This allowed us to show sympathy toward hideous creature, even though said creature accidentally kills several people. In Psycho however, we do not sympathise towards Norman Bates, even though he appears normal and human.

PART 4:
    -Sound / Music

Sound is what we hear throughout the titles, and music is a medium of sound.

This is the music for the opening titles



The title sequence of this film is guided by it's music. Throughout the titles the dynamics of the music (pitch, tempo, style) change dramatically. Two noticable examples of this are:

•  The bouncing red ball at the first segment, the music is orchestral trumpets, the notes being played staccato (distinguished and abrupt). This compliments the events on screen, as the ball is bouncing, and the music seems to have the same bouncing feel.
• The contrast of the violins to the trumpets, the violins playing far more smoothly and giving the feeling of gliding, grazioso (gracefully) often when the paper plane is on screen.

The music of this title sequence is completely orchestral, predominantly brass and strings, each of which are used to contrast each other, and to contrast what is being shown. Each event on the screen is complimented by the background music, when upon reaching the segment containing the title, the music reaches its climax (18 seconds in), emphasising the importance of what the audience is seeing.

The two examples distinguish how the director has thought of every minor detail, so much as to syncronise the bouncing of the red ball with the strikes of the trumpet, and the plane with the violins. This causes the viewers to somewhat forget that what they are seeing and hearing are two different thing, but instead to feel as though they are actually in a world where flying planes are powered by violins. The repetition of the two main styles of the music, staccato and grazioso, causes the different segments, however random they may be, to feel connected somehow. The director has done this to allow the audience to follow each segment and understand what is happening in each, along with individual sound effects being overlaid to point out the important aspects of each segment, e.g. the bouncing red ball landing on the trumpet valves, with each impact having its own emphasised non-diegetic sound.


This is effective, as in many titles that do not include dialogue, it is easy to lose focus or get lost in the chaos on screen, though this is not the case here. We are shown each cast / crew member's name, but we do not lose the momentum that is sustained in the music and sound. The audience is captivated, the music placing them into a trance, so to speak, where they are completely focussed on the action on the screen, whilst still being able to acknowledge the cast / crew names.

Music is a key element throughout the film, with Molly Mahoney being a composer. The soundtrack consists mainly of orchestral music, similar to this title sequence, with the same contrast of staccato and grazioso dynamics, used to connect each of the music pieces together. This links the film together without detracting from the plot.

PART 3:

    -Colour

Colour is the visual perception of something when our eye looks at it, and in Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium, there is an extremely large amount of it. The screen is often full of colours of all kinds, usually bright, pastel colours, with many recurring patterns and styles, like zebra print. Examples of this are:

• A simple plain red ball surrounded by black starts the titles, which then unfolds into the rest of the titles, which shows that things are not always as they appear, how a little ball can be so much more. This idea is referenced to later in the film, where Molly Mahoney is given a block of wood, but beneath its plain exterior, it is magical and recovers Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium back to it's original state after it throws a "temper tantrum"

•  Black and white zebra print, surrounded by colour, contrasting that as things may in fact be black and white, with imagination it can be anything, which is shown when Henry Weston, an accountant, first encounters the toy shop, he calls it "just a toy store", whereas later in he realises that it actually is magical.

• The red ball, often seen bouncing around screen, symbolises the ups-and-downs of life, and that once you hit the bottom, it can be so easy to bounce back up. This is relevant to the film, as Mahoney often feels down about her writer’s block, but toward the end of the film, her emotions lift and is happy again. It also relates to events in the film, such as a giant red dodge ball appearing and almost squashing a child.

• The paper plane flies through the scenes, symbolising the journey that we must take in life to find our inner child, a key theme in this movie, and also represents Mr Magorium’s “departure” at the end of the movie. The plane flying through the titles represents his life, and at the end when it lands, shows that all journeys must eventually come to an end.

Helm wrote another film, Stranger than Fiction, which uses very similar mis-en-scene to give an understanding of the main character and his background. He uses visual representations of Harold Crick’s, the protagonist, obsessive nature, shown below, him counting his brush strokes. This is quite similar to the style used in MMWE, although Stranger than Fiction just focuses on references to the character, rather than character, plot and themes, like MMWE.

In this post I shall be exploring the genre and atmosphere of the amazing movie, Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium, and how the titles portray this.

The title is separated into segments, with each one transitioning with some sort of relevance to the last.We start with a very mysterious mood, a black screen and a bouncing red ball, with brass orchestral music playing in the background, giving a cheeky feel. The general mood of mystery is carried throughout the titles, with the surreal abstract visual style used in each of the segments.

The audience can tell it is a magical story, shown by usually inanimate objects moving by their own accord, and we are shown the cheerful, childish mood with the effective use of bright primary colours. This can relate to the main theme of the movie, grown-ups overcoming the delusions of adulthood and realising the world around them isn't so black and white, shown by the constant use of bright colours. The genre of this film can be classed as a Family film, as, shown in the titles, it can be both entertaining for kids, but allow parents to think deeper about this seemingly childish movie, and realise the true meanings behind it.

This movie is one of my all time favourites. It shows us the story of Molly Mahoney, a composer, and manager of the spectacular "Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium".


The title sequence is completely animated, with each of the shots "foreshadowing key pieces of the plot with subtle detail, while never breaking from the tone of the film." For example, when Dustin Hoffman's (Mr Magorium's) name is shown, it shows him resembling Albert Einstein, hinting to the audience that he himself is a genius.

The titles start simply with a black screen, and a bouncing red ball, which then transition into an array of scenes containing toy packaging from the 40-60's, colour, plot references, and the motif of the red ball, a flying paper plane, and zebra print. The fact that the titles reflect the film shows how they link to the film as a whole. It gives us a brief understanding of characters, and subtle references to events in the film itself, without ruining the experience for the audience.

I adore this film, and the title sequence alike. I think this is because of the apparent randomness we see, but upon a closer focus, we find that this collection of seemingly unrelated things, is in fact one, huge, chaotic overture for this superb movie.

Visit http://www.watchthetitles.com/articles/0078-Mr_Magoriums_Wonder_Emporium to have a look at it yourself, and see how many plot references you can pick up on. You'd be surprised.

I have made up my mind. My title that I am studying is.......

SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD!!!

The following posts will track my progress in my studies. Stay tuned for more updates!


*EDIT*

I have been thinking and I'm thinking, for assesment purposes, Scott Pilgrim wouldn't be my best option. Instead I have chosen

Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

I will get moving with my other required posts ASAP.  

Well then, I've been searching around, looking for amazing title sequences, and after narrowing it down EXTENSIVELY, I have finally reached a "Top 5".
The following are my Top Contenders:

• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
• Apocalypse Now!
• It Might Get Loud
• Monsters Inc.
• Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium

I'm pretty sure I've made a decision, but I will think more about it tonight.