Working Title and Warp Films

Institution and Audiences

1.       Who are Working Title

Working title are a company who produce films they are also part of a conglomerate, they’re parent companies are Universal Studios and BBC Films. Working Title have a high budget due to being owed by BBC Films and Universal Studios.

Who are Warp Films?

Warp Films are film producers. They are an independent company which have small budgets

They are a sister company to Warp Records, which are a company who produce Music

2.       How does the ownership of the company affect the budgets for film?

The ownership effects the budgets in a big way because Working Title are Co-owned by Universal Studios and BBC Films so these have a large budget compared to Warp Films who have a small budget, They are an independent Business.

3.       Create a list of films that both institutions have produced.

Warp

·         This is England

·         Bunny and the bull

·         Hush

Working Title

·         Ali G indahouse

·         Hot Fuzz

·         Robin Hood (1991)

·         Nottinghill

·         Jonny English

4.       Choose one from each list and compare the budgets for these films and how much they made.

	This is England	Hot Fuzz
Budget	£1,500,000	£8 Million / $16 million
Gross Revenue	$8,069,240	$80,573,774
Studio’s	Warp	Working Title

5.       Now choose a Hollywood Blockbuster and research the budget.

Pirates of the Caribbean at Worlds End

Budget: $300 Million

Revenue:  $960 996 492

Studio: Walt Disney Pictures

6.       Where do Working Title and Warp Films get their funding from?

Warp films got their early stage funding from Nesta (National Endownment for Science, Technology and Art.)

Working Title are funded by BBC Films and Universal Studios which are Based in America. Where as Working Films are based in England along with BBC Films

7.       In the case of Warp Films, how does the budget affect the genre they use?

Warp films tend to produce Horror or Comedy films due to the risk assessment and the high possibility of not selling the film to the wide range of public which Comedy and Horror films capture, whereas Drama films have a smaller audience, Compared to Working Title who have a larger Audience. This means that due to the risk of producing a drama they tend to attempt to make the most of their budget and produce Comedy or Horror films because they hit a wider range of a bull’s eye.

8.       What is the main appeal of this genre? Give examples.

The main appeal of this genre is that people like to be scared and to be made to laugh because they are more entertaining films than Drama Feature films, for example Shaun of the Dead and Saw 1.

9.       Who are the target audience for Working Title and Warp Films?

Working Title has a target audience which ranges from young children (U) to over eighteens (18). Warp films have a similar

10.   What is the main genre of the films Working Title produce?

The main genre of films that working titles produce are mainly comedy such as Hot fuzz and Shaun of the dead, they also produce quite allot of horror film such as Saw

The office scene is our inspiration of our movie
(The title is a link to the Video)

On my video prelim I worked with Damon Coates, we managed the task by drawing a scene by scene plan of what we decided we were going to do, once we had drawn our plan we went to find a couple of friends who wanted to be in our film, after we had decided who was going to be in our film we went to find where would be a good place to film.

When we were planning our sequence we started by talking to each other about the different ideas we had and the different shots we had to take in to consideration the following points that we were goings to include in our prelim video project. We knew the basics shots that we would add to our film were;

·         To continual e.g. we were told to film a person walking through the door, so we would have to film from one side and then the other but we would have to have the person and door in the same place for each different shot of the door being opened.

·         We would also have to film the character walking across the screen

·         Then he/she would have to sit down opposite to another person and have a shot-reverse-shot conversation with each other.

After that we started talking to each other about what we would have the characters do and talk about we came up with idea of a person sneaking in to a office and looking through different secret documents and items, we then decided that he/she would pick up a laptop or phone and pick it up and scroll through files, then they would get caught by the owner of the office and documents, they would speak about what was happening and then the culprit would be shot. The inspiration that we used for our ideas was James Bond, we decided to reverse some of the roles, e.g. the person who normally gets shot in a James Bond film would be the owner of the office where as we decided that we wanted the secret agent who was sneaking around the office to be shot.

The technology that we used was a video camera, a tripod, Firewire 400 cable and an Apple eMac to do the film editing on. We also used a DV tape to capture our film on.

We decided to use the eMac because they are easy to use and the software allows you to do more features than the similar software on a windows computer. We also had better knowledge of the different advanced features which was included on iMovie.

The factors that we had to take into account when we were planning our film;

·         Where we would film

·         What it would be based on

·         Who we would use as characters

·         What they would say

·         What camera shots and angles we would us

·         Another was when we could film because we didn’t want the area to be in use also we had to consider when was best for us to meet up and film.

When filming the factors we had to take into account was;

·         The camera shots

·         The amount of light in the room

·         Where the actors would be positioned when filming

·         How we wanted the actors to act

When we was editing there was a number of different factors we took into account which are;

·         Which computer we should use a XP machine or a Mac

·         Which software to use

·         If we wanted a opening title scene

·         An end title scene

·         Where we should edit

Overall I think our movie turned out ok but I believe we could improve upon a lot if we did it again because of the experience of doing it the first time and now being able to see on the Mac some of the mistakes we made on the movie. I think that the parts to identify which worked well was our continuity with the shots on the door, also the high angle shot of the secret agent walking to the desk worked well. In hindsight I would use the tripod on the shot of the spy opening the door. I wouldn’t use have a shot of the camera man following the actor whilst zooming out from a close up shot of the door handle being opened.

Another thing I would improve is the not making the room as dark as it was because when it came to editing and reviewing the filming it was obvious that it was too dark in the room, even though you could still see the actors it wasn’t light enough. When you look through the camera it seems lighter that it was when reviewing the film.

I have learnt that when filming I shouldn’t make the room very dark unless it is necessary because it isn’t very visible when watching the film back on a computer, also I have learnt more about how to improve editing on iMovie. I believe that this will be very significant later on in my coursework because it will make my overall movie look less amateur and more professional which is what I aim for when producing a Movie.

Picture (Magazine Front Cover)

I worked on my picture prelim work with Damon, Damon Took the pictures and together we planned how we wanted it to look like before we went and got out images, I used Photoshop to edit the images and to make a front cover for our final prelim piece.

We planned our sequence on paper before we even set out to get images, we drew up a draft design on paper in my book which we then went out to get our images for our front cover, once Damon had taken the photos and we were happy with them we went into the media computer room to edit them and make it into our front cover and contents page.

The technology that we used to complete the tasks we were given was;

·        A camera

o   Tripod

o   USB cable

·        Photoshop on the computer

We used the camera on automatic mode which allowed Damon to use the camera because we didn’t want to change any of the setting of the camera. Damon used the tripod for the shot of Tom playing football, and for the shot of the trainers we used on the contents page Damon didn’t use the tripod

The factors that we had to think about when we were planning, shooting and editing our front cover were;

Before we started shooting and editing, we sat down and talked about how we wanted our front cover to look. We got a piece of paper and started to design our magazine cover page. Once we had finished designing the cover we went out to find the shots that we wanted. We had to think about who would be on our front cover, we asked our friend Tom King who was happy to be on the front cover, we had to decide how we wanted him to act, where to stand and what he should be doing when we were taking photos of him. We also took a couple of photos of a pair of trainers we planned of featuring in the front cover. When editing our front cover we had to change a couple of ideas we used on our plan for example we said that we would use stars and circles to add text into. Also we couldn’t write Withers across the front of the magazine because we had taken photos of Tom King, due to Rhys Withers not wanting us to take pictures of him. Another thing we had to think about was that when we put some of the features into action of Photoshop we didn’t think some looked professional and they looked childish, so how was we going to put something to make them look better and of a higher and more professional standard.

I think our Magazine Front Cover was successful, we had to make a couple of improvements that we necessary, because our front cover wouldn’t look as professional as it does now it would look childish, but I do think that there are a few downfalls to our Print Prelim work, which are, where it says “New Total

       90’s

Reviewed”

I think we should have put the words “Total” and “90’s” on the same line because it would have looked better. Also I miss spelt Mourinho, i spelt it “moruinho” and put “99P” instead of “99p”

            Whilst I have been completing these tasks I have learnt that even small mistakes like miss capitalising a ‘p’  on the price makes it look less professional after all of the hard work which you have to put into designing, shooting, editing and then rechecking it even if you miss the little error that has been made whilst editing it can make all the hard work which you have put into making a high quality professional magazine seem less high quality and professional. Another thing I learnt is I didn’t realise how much effort and thinking you have to put into shooting even before you actually turn the camera on.

The film The Royal Tenenbaums is about a man called Royal Tenenbaum who is the dad, a mum called Etheline Tenenbaum, they have three children called Richie, Chas and Margot Tenenbaum. The children are found to be geniuses from a young age. In first section of the film you are introduced to them at a young age, and their lives, which are quite different to normal children’s. I decided to write about Richie’s life because I found him to be the most interesting person out of the three children, also because you didn’t really get introduced to Royal and Etheline.


Richie is very enthusiastic about tennis I can tell this because whenever you see him as a child he is always wearing a piece of tennis clothing be that a tennis head band or a whole kit, also another way I can say this is because he has been a tennis champion, he turned pro at seventeen and has won the US open twice. Another of his hobbies is to collect toy cars and to play the drums, he has a full size drum kit in his bedroom along with his large collection of toy cars which we see him lying next to with them lined up.

He has a falcon which I assume is his pet because even though the bird has its head covered to keep it calm like they would if they were about to be released to hunt, the family are based in the middle of New York.

Richie also tried and failed as an artist, all of his paintings are in the west wing of the main room which he turned into a gallery. All of the paintings are of his sister Margot, which shows they have a very close relationship another way I can tell this is that they ran away from home to the African wing of the museum for two weeks with Margot.

Even though you see him in sporting wear most of the time he is formal I can tell because he wears a jacket and trousers when he goes out with his dad.

I am assuming that he holds a local radio station talk because you see him talking into a microphone which is linked to a radio transmitter. I suspect he talks about tennis.

Unlike the other two children Margot and Chas, we are introduced to Richie’s friend who is always around his house before, after school, weekends, family visits and more.



I believe that Richie’s character role in the future of the film, will be both a hero and villain, I think that he’ll help is Sister which will make her see him as a kind of hero, I also think that he’ll do something that he shouldn’t like steel an item from somewhere like a shop or museum, which will cause him to need to be saved from what he has done. I am saying this because he has had a very productive and active life but at the same time it seems to be troubled especially because his mum and dad get divorced, even though he lives with his mum. His dad is his favourite out of his parents and he is his dad’s favourite child, his dad takes him out on weekends but Chas and Margot are never invited to go with them.

Evaluation of Practice


Magazine



Upload annotated magazine and give an overview of the conventions

1. Which magazines conventions does the magazine follow?

My magazine follows the conventions of a magazine by having a mid shot of the subject who is on the front cover; I have also used the use of two different texts and three different colours.

2. Which does it break?

Because it is a magazine I can’t show sound or movement.

3. How does the colour palette suit the target audience?

I think that the colour palette that has been used suits the target audience because it has colours which are normally used in football magazines and are liked by men, who are the target market for football magazines. I believe that red, black, grey and blue are

4. How do the cover lines entice the audience?

It captures the target audience’s attention because of the eye catching strap lines and sub headings

5. Does the magazine appeal to new or regular readers – how do you know?

I think the magazines appeals to the new audience because it looks professional and

6. Who distributes the magazine and what is the circulation?

The magazine is distributed every month and by Haymarket Publishing.

7. What have you learnt about producing a magazine front cover?

I have learnt, like in English there is a rule of 3, you should use three colours, three fonts maximum and that the mast head should cover the whole width of the front cover.

Film



Describe the task and how you responded to the task

1. How is the scene typical of a TV soap?

TV soaps follow the plan of a daily life, for example in the Eastenders show we watched, it started of with Peggy answering the phone, then she woke up family living in her house.

2. Which camera angles are used and why?

Establishing, a mid angle, close up and long shot which then went into a zoom. They used these shots because it helped to make their filming effective for example, an establishing shot is used to show the user the surroundings, the items in the scene like characters, cars, trees and animals, it helps to explain what is happening in the opening scene.

3. How accurate was your recreation?

I think our recreation of the episode of East Enders is quite accurate, although there are a few obvious differences between the two for example, we had to you a mobile phone, and blue tack to stick the phone to the wall, where as in the real episode it was a house phone screwed to the wall, We didn’t shoot the scenes in the correct rooms e.g. kitchens etc, also i think we did quite well overall, we got most of the camera angle and shot types correct along with the idea of using the laptop to record the theme tune and starting sequence from.

4. What were the successes and failings of your project?

I think one of the successes of the project is that overall the shots we got where ok, but a failure in our project was that we ran out of time editing the video and we had to use props that weren’t similar to the items used in the BBC.

5. What have you learnt about mise en scene?

I have learnt that mise en scene, is everything you see in that certain scene for example if you pause a film and the character is playing football for a professional club, you should look at the crowd, the colours, the lighting, the characters, basically everything except for sound because you can’t see it,

6. Was the lighting used in your project effective?

We didn’t use the lighting in our project very well, because we filmed our shots in one room and didn’t use it well enough in our episode.

7. What have you learnt about the importance of continuity?

I have learnt that the continuity is very important because you film people talking from one angle then the same conversation from another angle, you have to make sure that when you edit the two different shots that you can continue from the other shot e.g. if I was talking to someone and said “hello, how are you?” but half way though you switch shots you would have to film me saying the same words and edit them together.

8. Which techniques do you need to work on:

a) filming

b) editing

I think I need to work on editing the most because that is where I have the least experience, but overall I would like to improve on both filming and editing.


For my filming I need to work on a couple of techniques which include;


a) Zooming because I’m not smooth enough when I use this technique


b)


In editing the techniques I need to work are;


a) Cropping the scene


b) Adding effects into the movie.

Having gained experience in creating a print based product and a moving image product, which do you feel more confident using and why?

I feel confident making both a print based product and a moving image product but over all I feel more confident producing a moving image based product because it seemed to look more professional and advanced than our magazine cover that we made.