Sound Design Evaluation

Sound Design Evaluation

 

I found the Sound Design task to be the most difficult task we have had to do so far. I think The Dark Knight Rises clip was probably more challenging to find sounds for, than when our group had to take some footage of our own. This is because there were already original sounds for the film clip, so I had to try and make my own version sound as much like the original as I could. Although, this was hard because I’ve never really used Garageband before and I thought it was a little confusing to use. Beforehand, I had played with Garageband to find sounds for our own footage though, so I think this helped the second time around as I already had an idea of how to use it. Also, it was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be at the beginning, trying to find similar sounds to match the original Dark Knight Rises clip, especially since there are so many sounds to go through and listen to.  

On the other hand, with our group’s own footage, I found it slightly easier. This is because it was just a random clip, so I could choose through a bigger range of sounds, as nearly anything would have worked. Particularly, if we were trying to make it sound silly, instead of serious. An advantage of this is that I think I could have gotten further with that task and applied more sounds to our own than I did with the Dark Knight task.

Overall, I think I mostly got frustrated a lot with this task, so I didn’t really enjoy it and it didn’t turn out too well. 

Horror Audience Research

Stalker?

This is our prelim task, where we had to make a one minute short film and we decided we wanted to make it a Thriller and so the storyline was for a character to "stalk" another character, but we also wanted it to be light hearted, so we made the ending funny where the character wasn't actually being a stalker, she just wanted to give some books back. However, because we had to make the video so short, we ended up having to cut out quite a bit of footage to make it the correct time.

The History of Action Genre

 The History of Action genre

Action is a film genre where heroes are put into a series of physical challenges, which include, fight scenes, violence and car chases. Often in action films, there will always be a villain and will include a life threatening situation, which will conclude in victory for the hero/heroin. They will most likely include big budget stunts and disasters and crisis’ (explosions, natural disasters, fires). Action has been a recurring component in films, but in the 1970s, began to develop by increasing the amount of stunts and special effects and has remained strong throughout cinematic history. This type of genre is also associated with other types of genres, such as: thriller, adventure, sci-fi, crime drama, horror and war.

The action genre is split into sub-genres. Some examples of these are:

Action comedy- This involves action and comedy/humour and became popular in the 1980s. The genre is often light hearted and very rarely will involve any death scenes.

Action horror- This genre includes a supernatural event and is often found to have the theme of zombies, vampires, ghosts and demons.

Sci-fi action- This is much like a science fiction film, but sci-fi action films emphasize on space fights, gun play and invented weapons.

Spy film- This is the type of genre that always has a hero who works for the government and throughout the film has to take action against another rival government. Often, spy films have British main characters as the films are set in the British Secret Service.

Action thriller- First developed in the 1970s and often features explosions and the use of guns. This genre can also have elements of mystery and crime.

Superhero film- Always action based and will usually have elements of fantasy or science fiction in them. Superhero films are often about people who possess super powers/abilities.

The 1980s was known as the ‘action era’ and was made popular mostly by actors such as:

·         Sylvester Stallone

·         Chuck Norris

·         Arnold Schwarzenegger

·         Bruce Willis

In the 1990s and 2000s, US actor Vin Diesel and Asian actors Jackie Chan and Jet Li became popular and appeared in many different types of action films.

Other actors include, Steven Seagal, Douglas Fairbanks, Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson.

Action films are regarded as a large studio genre in Hollywood, but in Hong Kong, action films are quite often, mostly modern variations of martial arts films. They have a much lower budget than the Hollywood made action films, so generally have martial arts fight scenes, acrobatics, gun play and dangerous stunts performed by stunt actors/doubles; instead of the American type action films where huge explosions are often seen. The 1970s to the 1990s was where Hong Kong action cinema was at its peak.

According to ‘Guinness World Records’, ‘James Bond’ is the series of films to make the biggest profit, although recently has been taken over by the Harry Potter and Star Wars films.

Sources-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_film

http://www.filmsite.org/actionfilms.html

Opie Evaluation

Opie Task Evaluation- Courteney Siggens

The Opie task was the first time I had ever used Photoshop and I think the first time I had ever really attempted to use a Mac computer, so the experience was quite new to me. Although, being shown the steps of how to work it, I think it’s quite easy to learn how to use. 

Starting the Opie task, I thought it was quite confusing having to add the different layers and where I was supposed to place them to make everything look right. An advantage that I found was that the paint brush was useful for when I needed to zoom in and fill in smaller areas, instead of using the paint bucket all the time.

Another thing I found to be a disadvantage is that there a lot of tools down the side bar that I hadn’t used before. This made the process more complicated, as it was harder to find which tool I needed to use.  Another thing I enjoyed was being able to play about and change things about my hair, clothes and face.

Overall, I think the Opie task was quite enjoyable and fun to do. This makes me think Photoshop might be quite useful to use in the future. 

This was the first task we were given to complete and it was also the first time using Photoshop. I imagine that in the future, I might use Photoshop again on another piece of work, or in a film.

Film Clip Analysis-Taken

Taken

Zooms out into a wide shot- following and showing where the person’s going

Medium shot/medium close up- showing actions but it’s close enough to see the facial expressions too

Close up- show expressions and how the actor feels to build the tension

Establishing shot- shows where they are and what the actor would be seeing

Swaps from the close up and the event that’s happening (establishing shot)- so it makes you feel like you’re in the room and watching what’s happening, so you feel the emotions the actors do

Long shot- you can see there’s some men dressed in black in the house, so this makes you worried and tense.

 Shot of their feet- makes you feel tense and scared because you don’t know who the feet belong to

Low angle shot- shows the character running away and heading towards the floor so the audience knows she’s heading underneath the bed

 Starts from further away and slowly zooms into a close up- gets a better idea of the emotions portrayed on the characters faces

Camera starts on close up and in front of the character and then stays there even though the character is moving away- allows you to see the emotions and expressions on the characters face but you also see that they’re being dragged away

This is an analysis on the film Taken. I watched a scene from the film and these are the the camera shots and angles used in the film, it also explains why I think they have used these shots and what effect  they have.