180 Degree Rule Storyboard

Continuity Editing Task - 180 Degree Rule

Planning: 

Shot List: 
1.  Camera by hall window, looking out at parents entering reception
2. Camera inside entrance looking towards reception windows - family looking through window, camera looking at their backs
3. Cut directly to shot 3, pan shot following parents through reception through the double doors
4. Shot of parents walking through/down the corridor - angled camera
5. Still shot of parents walking out of the doors opposite the quad
6. Shot of parents walking into Rubicon
7. Ariel view of parents walking to Media 1
8. Walk through set of doors before Media 1, angled shot by girls toilets, we see them open the door
9. Direct cut - Match on Action to door opening
10. Pan shot of Media 1 as they walk left side of the classroom
11. Hand shake with teacher
12. Zoom in on the hand shake and pan out again
13. Shot reverse shot (over the shoulder) of parents talking to teacher

Shot Lengths:
1. 5 seconds
2. 8 seconds
3. 3 seconds
4. 5/6 seconds
5. 2 seconds
6. 3 seconds
7. 2 seconds
8. 6 seconds
9. 3 seconds
10. 7 seconds
11. 3 seconds
12. 1 second
13. 4 seconds
14. 2 seconds

Planning: Researching the Crime Thriller Genre

Crime Thriller film is a sub-genre that incorporates the suspenseful aspects of a thriller with a crime film plot. This sub-genre's plot usually centers on a serial killer, murderer, robbery, or manhunt. As opposed to traditional crime films, the story line focuses both around the criminal and the protagonist. Crime Thrillers use both action and psychological aspects to build tension and suspense.

Conventions of a Crime Thriller: 
- Always a Protagonist and Antagonist 
- Sense of Enigma 
- Usually and investigation 

Thriller and Crime Thriller conventions usually cross over because they are both very similar. For example: 
- Low key lighting 
- Quick cuts
- Tense music

Cinematography of a Thriller: 
- Close ups and extreme close ups of the protagonist ~ this is often used to present their emotions about a situation in the narrative and evoke emotions on the audience. 
- Shots of the Antagonist will be cut quickly and will aim to hide their identity away from the Protagonist and the audience ~ keeps a sense of mystery and suspense. e.g. -A low key shot, a shadow or silhouette of the Antagonist. 

How Things Should Relate To The Evaluation Questions

These are the questions which should be addressed and referred to thoughout the process of creating our practice and final two minute introduction to a film. Our practice intro has to use the '180 degree' rule and use professional filming and editing techniques so that the members of our group has some experience before creating our final product and the final film has to be from a film of the 'Thriller' genre and also has to use the same quality techniques. These editing and filming techniques are graded on the mark scheme and can also be looked at while planning and filming, however the listed questions below are insightful and analytical which would be good to look at even before are products are created so that we can include as many good media techniques first time round and improve theses on our final product. For now I will be looking at the questions and talking about how we can use these in our '180 degree rule' intro.

- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The 180 degree rule product we will be producing should use some typical  conventions of pre existing openings from television and film as a base and starting point to our piece of work, however should include our own styles and twists to make the work fully ours. By this I mean we should use some similar camera angles which are pre-existing in the media in similar genre film/television programs as we know these angles can be effective in making the audience see an event in a certain way, however we should include other creative editing and filming techniques which would benefit our storyline and narrative as other techniques could work better than others in portraying our story in the way we want it be. This would then challenge other existing opening as ours would be very different and in our own style.

-How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our practice opening includes a family entering a school for parents evening who then walk through the school to the teachers room who they then speak too. The family is made up of a mother and father and a teenage boy. The social groups that will be portrayed in our opening would be a father and a mother of a middle class background and a child with influences of teenage trends and some stereotypical teenage attitudes. We have chosen these social groups due to our introduction being mainly based on our technical abilities rather than a combination of technical aspects and storyline. This is because our practice has to be including the 180 degree rule and we need to practice getting our filming and editing on point before a storyline is introduced. That is why our social groups will be basic and slightly stereotypical, however this will not be very noticeable as our product will be focused on technical aspects which will be clearly evident when watching.

- What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

A film or television institution would most likely distribute our work once completed. This would be due to it being made for a film introduction so it would be created using specific editing, camera and sound techniques most suited to this style of institution. If it was for another institution such as a music institution or the internet then other ways of producing it would have been taken, e.g. music- sound recorded in a studio and perfected or internet- funky intro to draw in viewers and made personal for people to connect with the maker of the video.

- Who would be the audience for your media product?

- How did you attract/address your audience?

The media product we will be producing will be aimed at adults as the content doesn't have conventions of many genres. This is because it is being made to show and practise our skills so storyline isn't the main concern. It is then aimed at adults as the two minutes we will be making could further progress into a reality style program because of it being about normal life or in our case about parents evening which happens in normal family life. The audience will be addressed due to the activity happening in the intro being relatable and using over the shoulder and close up camera angles to make the footage personal.

- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Due to this piece of work being about are skills with technology there are certain things we have to aim to get right to make our '180 degree rule' product successful. There should be a range of well filmed camera angles which should be used appropriately throughout the clip and also the 180 degree rule should be evident throughout. Aswell as this the editing should be sharp and precise to make the filmed clips flow well and make the overall piece look professional. To add to the professional look the camera shouldn't shake so that the clips are easy to watch. If these are followed then we will know how to correctly construct a media product and we can use our learnt skills in our final piece or learn from mistake we may make in this practise.

- Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? 

As we are creating our preliminary task now, we hope to learn about the difficulties and easy parts in producing a piece of media in a professional way. If there are parts we don't get right first time round, we can evaluate what has gone wrong and can learnt from the mistakes so that we do not make them again in the final piece to make it as professional looking as possible. We also hope parts obviously go correct first time round as we want some reassurance in the production of the final piece that we have certain skills in the bag so we are not starting it like we have never created anything before. 

Brainstorm

Planning- Discussing The Genre

As a group, the first thing we had to decide was what genre we would like to work in and base our opening sequence around. We had a discussion about what genre's we each individually liked and if it would work or not.

The Genre's we spoke about were:
- Psychological Thriller
- Action Thriller
- Crime Thriller

We discussed the advantages and disadvantages of working in each specific genre. Personally, the first genre I did not want to work in at all was Psychological Thriller because it is beyond cliché and it is a very popular genre to choose, it would get very cyclical and boring after a while. I spoke my opinion about working in that genre and our group decided that we would eliminate that off of our list, they agreed that it is a very cliché genre to work in and we want to produce something a little different. As a group we all enjoy watching Action Thriller films, however watching them we know what to expect and it gets a little too repetitive when you watch so many. It would be quite simple to come up with a basic story line for an Action Thriller as they all have pretty much the same codes and conventions. A disadvantage of this genre is we feel that we would not be able to make the opening sequence very original because an audience expects what they see in every other Action Thriller, we would not be able to not follow the codes and conventions of this genre. Lily came up with the idea of looking into the Crime Thriller genre. I instantly liked this idea because I enjoy watching programmes/films that revolve around the Crime genre. I think that working in a genre that you particularly like already definitely makes you more interested and eager to start planning the opening sequence. Our group overall really liked the idea of working in the Crime Thriller genre because as a group we think that we could make it quite unique and brainstorm a lot of ideas that we could possibly use.

In conclusion, as a group we have decided that the Genre we would like to work in is Crime Thriller. We all really like the idea of working in this genre together and we all have a lot of ideas that will contribute to the final idea of our opening sequence.

What Is The 180 Degree Rule?

The 180 degree rule in filming is the technique of filming a scene from multiple angles, however each of these angles should be within 180 degrees of the the subject being filmed. A way of thinking about this in simple terms is if a convocation is happening within a scene and an imaginary line is drawn between the two people and the scene is then cut in half, the camera angles then have to be within this half of the scene the whole time to obey the 180 degree rule. We need to use this in our 180 degree rule continuity task for our task to be successful as it is a good technique as it can portray sides to narratives within the footage.

Continuity Task

This is our practice task which should be completed to the highest standard possible before our final product. The task gets us to gain knowledge on the whole process of the editing and filming side to the production of a movie, which is good as our group can learn some extra skills on the best ways the editing and filming can be completed so that when we produce our final piece we are not starting from square one and we have some experience in the whole process. The bullet points on the sheet should be considered throughout this practice including the 180 degree rule which is our overall heading to this continuity task.

The Male Gaze

The Male Gaze by Laura Mulvey is “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” in my words the male gaze is where you see through a males perspective. By learning this we had to analyse a clip from Two and a half men and show how the men are different.

Straight away from watching the clip you can see that the men contrast against each other. They have different personalities as they like different things. Charlie Harper is the typical cool man who wears stylish masculine clothes and is confident in front of girls well as Alan Harper, Charlie's brother, is a smart geeky character who wears formal clothes and is portrayed as slightly feminine. From this small information you can connote that they are very opposite to each other.


In the scene non-digetic music is added to the shot. This made the scene flow faster as it was upbeat. The laughing in the background was mocking the men which made the viewers realise that they should laugh is well.

Sound Terminology

There is some sound terminology which is important to my learning. This is because I need to know these terms so I can apply my knowledge to my exam when I analyse sound but also in my coursework so I can use a range of techniques in my work to achieve more marks. Here are the sound terminology definitions which I have learn't.

Summary Of Research

From researching over the last few weeks about the openings of thriller films and the genre itself, I have gathered the information needed to be able to move on and start the planning process of the end product. I have researched the genre itself and about its conventions and styles, the openings of a range of thriller films, the art of the title sequence - what it is and whats involved in it and have collected a survey from people about what they like and don't like in thriller films and other important questions related to the genre and openings. I am now going to evaluated all the research my group and I have done to extract the wanted details which we can then use in our planning. This will ensure we have the correct information to make our end product successful.

The Thriller Genre

The thriller genre has many conventions which make it what it is such as near death experiences and problems the protagonist faces, physical and mental plot twists, mystery, quick editing speeds, tense music ect which all together make a film a 'Thriller'. It is important that these things are taken onboard when planning our final piece as it is critical these conventions are followed or are slightly manipulated for an original twist to meet the criteria of creating a thriller opening. There are also many styes of thriller films called thriller 'sub genres' which include Psychological thrillers, Conspiracy thrillers, Crime thrillers ect which we can chose from to make our final piece.

Openings of Thrillers
In our group we have analysed many openings to thriller films which has given us a broader idea of what things we could include. Some started off with a simple scenario such as 'Die Hard' which introduces the protagonist getting off a plane going to a party which does't included any scares or frights but rather uses low key lighting and creepy music to represent foreshadowing events of danger which would be an achievable style. We also saw an opposite in the film 'Skyfall' which has an animated credit scene which is a powerful, creative idea which would be harder but could still be done. A combination could make an original final piece.

Survey 

Our survey showed us that the majority of people preferred action and psychological thrillers the most which is a key piece of information for our group. This can show that it might be hard to create something original to fit into these genres however if we can think of something outside of the box it could be a success as people would enjoy our edit a lot.

Art of the Title Sequence 

There are many things involved in the making of this, it is how the title is introduced to the audience. Many factors such as the typography, the background, sounds used and editing makes this up and is important these all look good together/ all of the same style to make it worth having in the opening. We could experiment which different styles to make up our own for the final piece.