Unfortunate Lee - Final Opening Sequence

Our main actor.

The main actor : Ibby Mirza, showed alot of dedication whilst fiming and was always willing to try new ideas out to help advance our production. Throughout the rain and cold he did as we asked, especially when it came to the stop motion which we had to do a total 3 times in order to get it perfect. Waking up at 4am in order to get to Southbank at the required time seemed hard however he still turned up .. sometimes half asleep however we managed to do what needed to be done without too many complications on his behalf :)

We appreciate his help and even though sometimes the group would have to push him, he is very much appreciated not just by us but our teachers for taking part in the film, and we think his hard work paid off as our final production clearly shows.





So from all of the team .. THANKYOU =]

Voiceover or Quotation?!?!

We had finished fully editing our film and our initial idea was to have a voiceover although, the music had blended in so well with our shots that it almost hurt us to think about the audience not being able to hear the music well. We then thought of having a quotation instead which, could express the same feelings in a lot less words and with a lot less focus and concentration from the audience. We went on many websites to try and find the quotation and, finally we came across the perfect one which actually envisaged our plot aswell by, Vincent Van Gogh-''One may have a blazing hearth in one soul, yet no one comes to sit by it''. This foreshadowed the idea of Lee wanting someone to come and sit by him but, no one did even though the audience knew his character was someone who was open to loving someone yet no one came to him ignoring his ''blazing hearth'' in his soul. :(

By using a Vincent Van Gogh quote we are targetting an audience who would be quite art oriented making our film a niche product-something that is more for sundance or cannes film festival. When we tried to think of a film that also used this technique of a quote to set an emotional feeling with the audience we couldnt however, we did think of films that had narrative explanations at the beggining of films such as the star wars beginning or schindler's list. We subverted the technique and allowed our film to explore their emotions and Lee's emotions by using a genuine feel quote.

Editing part one

Today we began to edit our complete shots which were not fuzzy, too light, or too dark! We began with the opening sequence of Ibby walking along London Southbank this is when we faced our first editing decision. When we filmed we used a stick to identify how far away Ibby should walk away from the camera just so that he wasnt much closer or much further in the next shot as we thought this would break versimilitude with the audience. We were not sure whether to make Ibby walk through the whole shot or to split the shots in half so that he is walking in front of graffiti and then in front of Southbank buildings. We decided to let Ibby walk completely through the frame so that we did not break focus between the audience and scenery. We then began to edit the shot where Ibby was sitting on the bench. We edited the shot so that we had a match on action when Ibby opened the lunchbox which, signified the importance of the lunch box in our plot-an metonymic shot of his loneliness. We began to play around with the sound of the atmosphere. We copied the sound and pasted it over as much film we had so, the atmosphere sound was equal and we didnt have car horns and trucks driving past or the bells from buskers which, was especially annoying!!

Filming our opening sequence take 3

We arrived in london at 5pm because all we needed to film were the dark shots of ibby leaving the bench at night to show how long he had been waiting for his date as we previously the out of focus shots. We waited until it was fully dark so that we could film Lee, giving up, eating his sandwich and, leaving. It became dark and we were all anxious to film our last shots..little did we know, there was no battery in the camera. There was no way we could film and we needed to get the shots done in order to finish editing the opening sequence in time for the deadline. We had however a stills camera. We decided that we would shoot all of the last shots in stop motion as we had no other option and the lighting looked amazing through the camera so we decided to go ahead with the other option. We took pictures of Ibby opening his lunchbox, eating his lunch and, walking away from the bench he had waited at for so long. We are happy we thought of the stop motion idea seeing, as we had done so much research into stop motion and it did in fact come in handy!

Naming our movie???

We thought long and hard to think of a name. It was one of the very last things we finished, and it quickly became clear that we had to find an appropriate name which would fit of the image of our character. We thought that he looked like a jonathon, although when trying to incoporate that into a name we came up with the adventures of Jonathon and the adventures of Cyril.
We soon realised that it had to be cheesy but not to much that it was just off putting.
We talked long and hard and soon came up with the word unfortunate, yet still we had to think of a name for our chracter.
Bang just like that with a bit of help from sir it came to us. "LEE"
Unfortunate Lee.

It was perfect.

Filming our opening sequence take 2

We went on the second filming to correct some of the errors of the last shootings such as, how quickly the lighting changed. We filmed all of our chosen shots successfully (undercover so southbank security didn't catch us) however, when we uploaded the shots they were out of focus. hmph. We realised the group before us used the camera and changed the focus on the camera so when we filmed using the flip up screen instead of looking directly through the lens the shots looked in focus but, in reality they were very out of focus. We realised then that we would have to yet again go to london to film at 5 am to make a success out of our opening sequence!

Music issues.

It is clear that music can make a very big difference therefore we wanted to make sure we got it right. We looked at the prepared music which garage band offered us. With experimenting we came up with a few pieces such as, the 70's ballad piano and acoustic guitar 03. Yet when it was put with the film it didn't seem to necessarily go very well and felt repetitive. We again experimented and found a few guitar pieces which were perfect, as well as some lovely music for the part where Ibby looks at Shamaila called soaring. We got the soaring piece off guitarband and it suited the slow motion section perfectly. Yet when approached by the teacher we realised that there were amazing songs available on websites such as free play music. We found a great piece of uncopyrighted music and managed to make it blend well with the shamaila part as it was the same tone. It felt like it was an original piece of music that many people would know and didnt feel as unrealistic and irregular as some uncopyrighted music does. We got the music off freemusicarchive.org and it was called ''we will never be ready so we might aswell now''. When we edited both pieces of music in we realised that they were in the same key so the transition between the pieces is hardly noticeable. This is the link for the music we chose from the website- http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Learning_Music/LMM_212_-_The_Biologic_Imperative/04_We_Will_Never_Be_Ready_So_We_Might_As_Well_Now

Filming our opening sequence take 1.

On Saturday 20th February we went up to London Southbank at 5am and began to film our opening sequence. We needed to go into london at this time in order to have the adequate lighting which was vital when filming as it was part of the narrative. After setting up the tripod and camera we managed to film some footage, however when the SouthBank began to get busy we realised it was difficult to film as there was people passing buy in the back of the shot. We needed to be in a location where there were not many people present as it would effect the narrative and we wouldn't be able to film the footage we needed. When it got to about 8.30 we were stopped from filming by the Southbank security as we did not have permission to film, this posed many problems as we were unaware that we needed to get permission and it slowed down the whole process. It was also very cold, and as we'd been out for many hours we began to get aggitated however we waited till the person we needed to speak to arrived at the media office on the southbank to get permission. As we were not granted permission to film we have to go back on thursday and saturday again at 5am. After leaving the media offices we decided to take the stop motion pictures of our character eating his sandwhich, this was quite a lengthy task and took alot of patience. Once we stopped filming and taking pictures we looked back upon the footage and realised many problems with what we'd taken, for example the lighting was vastly different in the different shots and somehow didn't match. The stop motion pictures didn't run as smoothly as we'd hoped. The sun light had changed dramticcal yby getting darker towards the end this was certainly the effect we didn't want as it was most likely going to confuse our audience. Below is the first picture we took and the last. the light difference is evident.


From this day we know exactly what we need to do in order to get the footage we need and we are all much more focused now. We also forgot to get the black bow tie for our main character Ibby, so we decided to never use the bow tie.

Behind the scenes:

Final storyboard

Choosing our set?!

As you can see from our plan we had many options to choose from about the setting we would use for our opening sequence but we decided to go for the typical romance scene of a park bench. The scenery also presented the river which we thought would completely set the scene for our opening sequence. It was also a very easy scenery to film as the camera would always be a very static shot and we could use the bench next to the one we were using to film to make the camera stable so we could film the panning shot of the girl that Ibby is in love with.

Casting!

We had the big question face us of who we knew that would allow us to film them looking like a nerd! That wasnt the only problem but if we did find someone would they be willing to come to london at 5am and, most importantly would they fit the part. We started thinking with big ideas such as going to acting schools in our local area or going to the drama department in the school to see who we could cast. However, little did we realise that one of our friends could play the perfect nerdy part for Lee. Our friend Ibby. Ibby already had long shaggy hair and had a thin build which, was exactly what we wanted. After character development we began to see that if we paired Ibby with some glasses and a shirt and some cheap shoes, he would be PERFECT!

Forrest Gump- further character development

When developing our ides we thought that it would be best to have our character sitting on a bench all by himself in the park. It came to our minds that this was similar to a movie. We decided to analyse the opening as we wanted to achieve the same sort of empathy for our character.
we watched the opening sequence on repeat and paid attention to the intricate little details which made up such a complex character. The way in which he was dressed made a huge impact on what the audience thought about him with colours making an impact. The pale pastel colour of his suit subtly put together with the blue shirt made him a calm and tidy person. Although this hugely contrasted with his dirty trainers which suggested that his particular character loved the outdoors.
The extremely neat suitcase of his represented his character and maybe reflects on how much time he has on his hands in order to be this tidy. His childish book represents his personality and his child like mind.
One of the most important things about this character is his appearance although not much attention is paid to his clean shaven hair, it made a huge impact on the audience allowing them to understand his somewhat O.C.D. cleanliness.
The long shot allows us to see that he is sitting on the very edge of the bench furthermore emphasising how he is viewed as an outcast or how he sees himself. Yet it is clear he maybe meeting someone of importance to him as he has a box of chocolates for that someone special.
The music within this piece is very important as it hugely reflects on the charcter. It was particularly made for the movie, and compliments it well.
The effect of the feather is lovely as the camera all in one shot is focused on the feathers journey through the street, bringing us to the male protagonist.

Character Development

discovery of select similar clips!

Our previous post stated that we had to manually cut down each shot for the stop motion however we made an imovie discovery! We realised we could hold ctrl down and click to select similar clips which would select all the photos and we could edit them down to make the same effects for each photo. SUCCESS!!

Stop Motion Experiment

As a group we decided to experiment further with stop motion, to include it into our opening sequence. We decided to go to Marwa's house and spent the afternoon taking pictures of eachother. When we were done we converted the pictures onto imovie, however realised that each photo was 5 seconds long and therefore had to be cut down a large amount. We made each photo 0.03 seconds long, the process was very long because each photo had to be manually cut down, which was very time consuming, however was worth it, as we are very happy with our final product. After watching it a few pictures jumped to the other which has made us aware that for our opening sequence we need to make each movement only have a very small difference to the movement done before. We also made it black and white to give it a certain edge, as the lighting in each photo was quite dark, therefore this effect compliments each photo well. The quality of the photos has been drastically lowered, as we exported the file from imovie to quicktime. We realise that this is a problem and will hopefully use a better software to upload our opening sequence onto.

PLAN

From the brainstorm we made it easy to pick and choose the ideas we wanted to develop. We decided, as a group, to use the idea of a male protagonist to conquer the typical portrayal of a woman being left and betrayed by a man. It was thought this would also draw in a larger male audience rather than just a female audience. The plot was based on a lonely man who goes to an organised date as he waits for his date to appear, time goes on, and no one appears. The male protagonist is left to eat the sandwich that he has made for himself and his date and the audience is completely enthralled and empathetic for his character. We realise building empathy will be a very difficult task but we feel if we use a slow motion section of the film and make it blaitantly ''cheesy'' our audience will feel the same as our main character with the aid of a close up.

PLAN

Research

as part of our research we conducted questionnaires to seee who was most interested in what our product would most likely be, a romantic comedy. We asked 15 people to fill in our questionnaire with people being chosen at random. It soon became clear that the people who were interested were female teenagers.
When trying to upload them i came across issues as my internet was not able to do anything. However i will state a few things that we found out.
2 out of 7 females liked romantic comedy as their favourite genre.
whereas 3 out of 6 males liked romantic comedy.
most of the people that we questionned said that love actually, bridget jones, cinderella story and marley and me were the most recent romatic comedy films they had watched.
From this we concluded that we could hopefully target both sexes equally yet we were shocked that a small minority of females liked romantic comedies. we think this may have been like an outlier. As it was certainly something one wouldnt expect.

Preliminary Task

This is our final preliminary task, as we finished early we decided to add a title and a fade in to the establishing shot. We have realised that we have crossed the line from Marwa's right shoulder and the two shot after is on the left. The two shot of Marwa and Shamaila isn't very good because there is a large amount of wasted space around them and Marwa's head cuts off.

Making the preliminary task.

We went to Shamaila's house and firstly set up for shooting. We decided to use the front of her house as the establishing shot. Marwa and Shamaila acted, whilst Yussra and Parmiss were in charge of camera work. We did face some difficulties and aren't entirely satisfied with the final outcome. This is because there were some bad camera shots that couldn't be edited properly. When we began filming the lighting in the bedroom wasn't adequate, thankfully there was just enough natural light to suffice. After our filming we experimented with a digital camera by taking a series of photos of all our faces using stop motion. We also, did some research on Youtube of previous work using stop motion and from this we gained inspiration and have collectively decided to use this in our opening sequence as it will add authenticity. We are looking forward to filming our opening sequence and are sure that as a group we will work to the best of our abilities to achieve our full potential.



This has inspired us to continue with the idea of stop motion.



This is us experimenting with Yussra's face.

Preliminary task

Today we storyboarded our preliminary task to practice techniques for our opening film sequence and, filmed it. We have now understood the way we can use the camera in different ways to create meaning and effect. We also realised that we are going to have to film earlier in the day as, the natural light was lacking in our preliminary task so, we had to use artificial house lighting which, lost verisimiltude during our sequence because of the quality of our camera. All in all, we are happy with our preliminary task as now we are more prepared for the filming of our opening sequence.

Presentation on chick flick.