Reviewing the films i watched on the plane: Part Two: Wild.

The other film that I watched on the plane was Wild, a film by Jean-Marc Vallée starring Reece Witherspoon. This film was released in 2014 so it is relatively new and I have to say that I really enjoyed it.

It got off to a slow start, and I was quite wary as I couldn't see how exiting a film about a woman hiking through the desert could seriously be, however I was pleasantly surprised; the film was utterly compelling and engaging with enough flashbacks and perils to keep it interesting. Reece Witherspoon's performance really made the film for me, it is so important for the acting to be of a good quality for a film that revolves around one character and it truly was, as was the performance of Laura Dern as the mother in the flashback scenes. The story was extremely sad and moving, however not in a way that overpowered the film and the story was just as interesting as it was sad. The movie moved at a good pace and didn't drag on, I was fully engaged after I got over the hump of the first 20 minutes. 

Jean-Marc Vallée perfectly portrays the convention of a woman alone in the wilderness without it becoming cliché, the story is one that is unique and a compelling, uplifting depiction of the transformative potential of nature. 

To conclude this film was the best film that I have seen in a while, and I would certainly recommend it to anyone. It is wonderfully moving and compelling, with a sad yet uplifting storyline about moving on from the past and moving forward in life, whatever it takes.

Reece Witherspoon was nominated for the Oscar for 'Best Actress' and Laura Dern 'Best Supporting Actress'.

Wild had an (estimated) budget of $15,000,000 and grossed $40,037.009 worldwide.

Reviewing the films I watched on the plane: Part One: Four Weddings and a Funeral.

As a media student, I try to fit in watching as many films as I can. The perfect opportunity for this is a long haul daytime flight.

My Kenya Airways flight from London to Nairobi had a large selection of films to choose from. The first film I watched was the Working Title film 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' which I thoroughly enjoyed. Most of the action of the film takes place either at, or immediately before or after, one of the four weddings and the funeral mentioned in the title. I really liked the way that it jumped in time between each of the services, it meant that we did not know what happened in between the events meaning that the situation that the characters were in always came as a surprise e.g. The last wedding was of the main character, Charles, this wedding came as a surprise to all of us as he was not marrying the woman that we all knew he was going to end up with.

All of Richard Curtis' films seem to paint England and a lovely, green way. This film was certainly no exception, the mise-en-scene was cosy and made me feel nostalgic of how England used to be, even though it wasn't really like that in 1994 and I wasn't alive, this just shows that Curtis did a good job in his writing...

The nice thing about the genre of romantic comedy is that you always know there is going to be a happy ending, so you can just sit back and enjoy the drama unfolding knowing that the couple will end up together in the end. Overall i really enjoyed this film, the characters were loveable right from the beginning and i got very emotionally invested, i found myself rooting for every single one of them. It ended in a very satisfying way tying up all the loose ends, i dont always like it when films do this as sometimes you want to be left to make your own assumptions, however in this film it worked perfectly.

This film was nominated for two Oscars, four Golden Globes and eleven BAFTAS. It won four of those BAFTAS and one Golden Globe.

It was a huge success for Working Title grossing $52,700,832 in the US and £25,532,239 in the UK.

Batman v Superman takes $424m at global box office.

Despite terrible reviews, Batman vs. Superman has outdone itself and made huge profits in its first five days.

It broke records for a March debut and it was the sixth-highest opening weekend in the US.
On Rotton Tomatoes dot com, the film received 29% rating from critics, with such bad criticism from experts you would think that it would turn people away from watching the film, but clearly not as it received a 69% rating from the audience and the fans seemed to love it.

Perhaps the concept of two superheros joining forces was one just two good to miss, despite the actual film not being that great. Or perhaps the saying 'no publicity is bad publicity' is applicable to this situation, i'm not sure, all i'm sure of is that Ben Affleck will be feeling better now than he did in this video after hearing about the box office takings.



Sources- http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/batman_v_superman_dawn_of_justice/
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35909299

Editing: Day Four.

After playing around with the filter yesterday we knew exactly which one worked, we added more bleaching and light leaks to make our film look more artistic and aesthetically pleasing.

We then came up with the idea to change the opacity overlap and layer to create much more confusion and paranoia, this reflected the mental disorder perfectly. In the opening we wanted to create an effect that may suggest daze and confusion within the character when the 'flashbacks' happen. Also we did this to differentiate between the flashbacks/visions and real life.
Once we had finished adding the effects and filters we made all the finishing touches that our opening needed and checked it over many times to make sure we hadn't missed anything . 

Overall I was happy with the finished product and i thought the editing process went very smoothly, we had made it with plently of time to make any changes if we need to. 

Editing: Day Three.

Today we added the titles to our film using DaFont. We had to decide when would be the perfect time to add the titles to create the most impact.

For example when the door closes or when she puts her keys down on the table.

We also created our own movie title for our film company 'MRM films' at the beginning.

After we had done all of this we started playing around with filters, we added a bleached filter as the beginning to make it feel more eerie and bleak.

Editing: Day Two

Now that we had the shell of our film done, we moved on to adding the sound, Millie wasn't in so me and Rachel started editing the sound. We started by detaching some of the audio from our footage of wildlife (birds tweeting etc.)  and putting over the bits that we filmed in the park. It was much better than just silence because it created a sense of 'calm before the storm' which added to the suspense.


We then added other sound effects which we found in Final Cut Pro such as a dripping tap and a knock on the door. We had to find the ones that fitted perfectly with the footage, so this involved us looking through quite a few different ones.

Once we had added these effects we decided that there was something missing, we decided that there needed to be some music in the house. We started looking for the right music but it was difficult to find music that fit in well, finally we found rights free classical music that started slowly and built up, we believed that this added to the tension of the opening.

After we added the music we realised that it didn't look quite right, we wanted to look like it was coming from a radio but we didn't have the right footage. We decided to film some extra footage at school, luckily I had the same red nail polish on that Lola had had on and we found a surface simular to that in the house. We added the footage and it fit perfectly with the other footage

Editing: Day One.

The first day of editing involved uploading all the footage off the SD card and on to Final Cut Pro. In this first editing session we were learning the ropes of the software so it was a bit slow as to be expected.

We started by looking through all the footage and choosing the best bits to use. We put all the basic scenes in to chronological order and then added any extra bits that we thought looked good and were aesthetically pleasing.

By the end of this session we had the skeleton of our film finished.

Maximazing production values on a low budget.

We intend to make an Independent film, as a newly founded independent British film production company, we would have to work on a low budget typical of independent films. However we wanted to maintain high production values throughout.


Ed Burns (also known as 'independent Ed'), is a filmmaker known for making low budget films with high production values.

He had very modest ambitions for his first film, 'The Brothers McMullen' and had a small budget of $25,000. The film ended up grossing $10,246,600 which was a huge success, it also won the 1995 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance festival.


Ed Burns has made films since then with budget more than half of that of his first Indie film.
One of his most recent films 'The Newlyweds' had a budget of $9000.
Burns advises young filmmakers to make use of the cheapest tools they can find.


“You guys have access to cameras that cost under $3,000. Why not just go make your movie? And it’s up to you to fight the good fight, market the hell out of your film and use Facebook and Twitter and email blasts and do all of the things indie rock bands have been doing for the last 10 years,”




This is how we intend to market our film. Alternatively to expensive advertising campaigns, we would maximise our available social media resources such Facebook and Twitter, to gain exposure through word of mouth. We would also make a website for teaser videos for our film.






Filmmaker Joshua Caldwell made his feature film Layover for just $6000; he cast his friends, borrowed a Canon 5D, and now it's competing for the New American Cinema award at SIFF.
This is similar to our methods of filming, we hired high quality cameras to ensure high production values, we used an up and coming actress who's rates would be lower than a big name. We used tripods and steady cams to ensure that our footage looked professional, while still keeping the feel of an independent film.

Naming our thriller.

Neither Me, Millie and Rachel really had any clue of what to name out film. We wanted to name it something that fitted in with the genre of thriller but would also stand out.

It had to be relevant to our film but I also wanted it to be quite ambiguous.

Some ideas we had were:
The Dark Past
Remember Me
Mother Dearest
Black Roses
Thirteen

We thought that 'The Dark Past' and 'Mother Dearest' sounded to much like cheesey horror films so we decided against them.

'Black Roses' and 'Thirteen' were too confusing and irrelevant to our film.

We really liked the name 'Remember Me' as it is quite ambiguous and the meaning will only become clear to the audience when watching the film. It is relevant to the film because it is about a girl slowly remembering the awful things that happened to her, this makes the name eerie and spooky. It doesn't give away too much and will leave any potential audience members wandering what the film is about, drawing them in. It also fits into the genre of thriller and therefore will attract fans of the genre.

Filming our thriller.

After some deliberation, we all decided the most convenient day to film our thriller was Tuesday the 16th of February, as we were all available on this day.

Filming Time Line

10:20 AM: Meet at the school gates.

10:30 AM: Pick up all the filming equipment from the media room.

We then left school and walked to the bus stop to meet our actress Lola.

10.40 AM: LOLA AVIVA CALL TIME 

Once we had met Lola we walked to first filming location (heath extension)

10:50 AM: Arrive at Heath extension and set up filming equipment. 

This was relatively easy as Nuray had shown us in the lesson how to set up the equipment, the only issue was that the floor was quite muddy which meant that setting up the tripod was slightly difficult. 

11 AM: Begin filming. 

We started with the shots of Lola sitting on the bench smoking, we did the establishing shot using the tripod so we could do a wide shot of her. After we had done all the shots we needed with the tripod, we then began to use the steady cam to do the tracking shots of Lola leaving the park and walking back to the house. After we had done that we packed away the filming equipment ready to move on to the next location.

11:45 AM: Walk to the next filming location.

This is when we came across our first issue; Tom, who's house was our next filming location, was not answering his phone despite agreeing to let us film at his house and despite us checking with him the night before if it was still okay, we later found out that he was still asleep at this point. This meant that we had to think on our feet and come up with a new idea, Millie decided to call our friend Isobel who lived 5 minutes away from where we were and who had a very nice house and bathroom. She thankfully agreed to let us film in her house so we headed there and set up all our equipment.

12 AM: Begin filming at house.

We started with the shots of Lola walking though the front door, up the stairs and into the bathroom, we filmed all these shots with the steadycam. We then set up the tripod in the bathroom to film the rest of the shots that we needed. 

Our next hurdle had arrived: we were filming using the mirror that I had brought from my house, the next thing we needed to do was crack it, so me and Millie took it outside to do so. However, instead of cracking the whole thing smashed into hundreds of tiny pieces. This meant that we re filmed all the scenes of Lola in the bathroom mirror instead, but we could not smash it. In the end this actually looked better and far more subtly scary then it had before, as we made the mum out of focus behind her which was really creepy.

We were done with all the filming by 2:30 PM, we had filmed all the shots on the shot list and quite a few extra ones to add to the mise-en-scene.

Personally I was really happy with how the whole day went, it proved to me how well we worked together as a team especially with all the problems we faced. I think we dealt with everything really well and efficiently, and i'm exited to begin the editing process.