Thursday, 24 April 2014

The Heist- Final Draft


Final Film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1_KHsAbalw

Quinn's Further Research Into Action Films Similar To Ours

There are many action films that have plots and story lines that have similarities to ours, these usually include other films that have a story line focused around a heist.

The first film I am having a look at is The Italian Job, two of the major similarities between it and our film is that firstly the intention of the characters is too steal gold using cars as a getaway vehicle, ours is similar to this but our characters are using bikes. Another similarity is the location, as a large majority of The Italian Job takes place in a garage, as does our film, the reason for this being that garages and workshops are associated with masculinity. Another similarity The Italian Job our film has is that the characters it follows are the thief’s rather than the police. In our film we also plan to use many of the styles of shots they use in The Italian Job, such as wide shots, which are used in this film to show all of the vehicles on screen.

The next film I am looking at is Snatch, it has many similarities which we hope to replicate in our introduction, some of the similarities include that the music is slow and builds up at first, and then evolves into action packed fast piece of music, like our film, also the characters faces are never revealed immediately within the first two minutes, exactly what we achieved in our introduction as the main characters face is never properly shown. Another similarity is that the main characters are mostly strong aggressive looking males, which is again the same as the character in our introduction, finally the films storyline is about groups of people who want to get money through stealing something valuable.

Lastly I am looking at the classic film Die Hard, although the people who are committing the heist are the villains, they are still similar to the protagonist in our movie, due to the fact they are trying to break into a vault, and also that they are all intelligent males , the main antagonist Hans Gruber is not a faceless boring villain, he is an interesting character with as much character development as John McClain, he is also very intimidating and is not afraid to kill people to  get what he wants, it is also shown that he has brains rather than brawns, which is the look we hoped to achieve with our character. The way they do the heist is also how our film planned it subtle, rather than loud, they sneak in undetected, and also use the method of hacking rather than explosions to get inside the vault, and were it not for the main protagonist they would have likely succeeded.

-Quinn

Wednesday, 23 April 2014

Quinn's Further Research into the Action Genre

From doing further research into the genre of action I have found out many conventions used within the four main categories of Sound, Mise-en-scene, editing and camera angles, through this I have found certain ways and styles that introduction action films are shot.

From the genre of action the sound is usually booming and intimidating, for the introduction of many films the music starts slow then gets faster to build up tension, there is almost always music and it is loud and fast to reflect the action that is happening on screen. The sound other than the music is almost always non-digetic other than the speech itself, most of the sound effects are added afterwards such as gun shots and doors closing.

There are many commonly used props in the action genre like weapons such as swords and guns, other frequently used props are things associated with action such as fast cars. Other action conventions within mise-en-scene is actors and costume, in many action films the characters are usually strong brave males, and they often wear dark clothing which give off a gritty look. The set in action films is again usually dark and not very colourful, and many scenes often take place in stereotypical masculine locations, such as ‘The Italian Job’.

In the genre of action the editing means that each shot is shorter than a usual average for other films because of the fast paced action scenes, another common editing conventions is that introductions to action films often contain a short fast paced action scene before the opening credits to set the mood and establish the characters. One of the most common editing tricks used predominantly in action films is slow-motion, this is often used to make a shot more dramatic, an example of this is ‘300’ which has a staggering 30 minutes of slow motion effects within it.

Finally there are many camera angles which are used very commonly in the genre of action, foremost the low-angle shot is used often, usually showing either the main character or main ‘villain’ in both of these examples it is usually an strong looking male, and the shot is used to portray this. There are also many close ups in action movies, sometimes of a gun or an object or a body part such as a mouth, these are usually used to draw all of the audience’s attention to this object.

-Quinn

Tuesday, 1 April 2014

The Heist- Second Draft

This is our final and finished film: The Heist
or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jua2EmSKcNw&feature=youtu.be

-Jak and Quinn

Animated Storyboard

The Animated Storyboard for our film:
or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF4X2mvpQec

-Quinn Nolan

Original Storyboard

The original storyboard for our film:
or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7Cb23JSR00

-Quinn Nolan