Story Writing Task

Friday in class we were given the task of writing the opening of a story, the first paragraph or two, with the first line "Ross, a ___ year old male woke up & looked around him, he was". From this we had to write a story, passing our story on to the next person every 2-3 minutes, to write the next paragraph. Here is mine

1. Ross an 83 year old male woke and looked around him; he was sat in a brown arm chair in an unfamiliar room. He is wearing a white dressing gown, embroided with the words 'Loony bin, care home for the elderly'. The room is full of other people, about his age sat in chairs, similar to his. All of them dressed in the same white gown. Other than one man in the corner, sat on his own, completely naked with a towel wrapped around his head.After a few seconds a bell rings and two men in white dress trousers and shirts enter. Ross brushes his comb over to one side, clears his throat, stands up and screams at the top of his voice.

2. He is detained by the two men and returned to his room, thrown onto the bed and locked in. Ross looks around his possession and stares at a picture of himself in the woods with his Commander Ted.

3. A light knock on the door is heard; Ross looks up from the photograph."Who is it?" he exclaims
"It's me sweetheart" a calm, croaky voice said, lovingly.Rose opens the door slowly, and walks in, wearing a pink robe & slippers, holding a mug of tea. She wore glasses with a tortoise shell frame and smelt of musk; the smell wafted in the air. She walked towards Ross and sat down next to him, and handed him the mug of tea.

4. "Now how are you feeling today?" Rose asked with a smile. Ross looked at her blankly as if he'd never seen her before "Get out. Who are you?! Leave me alone. I want to be left alone"
His anger had taken it out of him as he stopped and took another breath

5. "I just wanted to know how you are" pleaded Rose
"No, go away. I just want to be on my own!" screams Ross
He turns his back towards Rose and looks intensely at the photograph. Rose stands up and places the mug of tea on the coffee table. She opens the door, turns and sighs with sadness as she leaves the room. The mug of tea smokes as Ross looks up at the door from his anger. He turns to the coffee table where the only thing left is the disappearing condensation from the cup of tea

Strangly the story which others have written is very similar to what was my own idea. I had pictured him having a photograph in his bedroom & has contemplated him meeting an old friend and not recognizing them, although the story is similar to what i had devised when first imagining it, i don't think that i will take it any further, as it would be very expensive to get the props neccessary & difficult to find enough elderly people willing to act for me.

Logos

This is the Warp films logo, the first thing we notice is the sharp almost lightning bolt shape through the middle of the logo, dominating the logo, suggesting their movies are the best, as the bolt & name of the company covers the sphere behind it, which reminds me of the Earth; although this could give the wrong impression, of them churning our movies as fast as they can, like lightning. The logo is very simple, and is easy to remember, it gives the impression they don’t mess around and they just make movies. Also the name Warp, it suggests that they may not conform to the norm & may warp the normal ideas of genre into their own mixtures of genres and stories.

Momentum Pictures logo is even simpler, it is just their name, with the pictures slightly smaller than momentum, but in caps. Also the words are slightly italic, this all shows simplicity in their company, they make movies, simple. They have probably gone for simplicity because, although people may not be able to remember exactly what their logo is, they should remember the companies name; where as lots of other companies may have very complicated logos, making it harder to remember the name of the actual company. Whereas this logo is very easy to remember and means that the company’s name will be remembered too.

Production Companies

Warp Films

­Warp films is based in London & was established in 2001. The made movies such as Rubber Johnny, This is England & Four Lions, they have also made a lot of short films & TV films for Channel four and BBC, their most popular being This Is England ’86. They have also worked on music videos, for bands such as Vampire Weekend & Kasabian

Vertigo

Vertigo films in a UK based Production & Distribution Company created in 2002 by Allan Niblo. They have made films such as Bronson, Outlaw & Monsters. The original purpose of the company, was to produce two films The Football Factory & it’s All Gone Pete Tong(which won ten awards), their goal now is to produce and distribute 4 films per year.

Momentum Pictures

In 2000 Momentum films was founded, since then, they have created on average 20 theatrical films per year + even more direct to DVD releases, including The Men Who Stare At Goats, District 13 Ultimatum & Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In Feb 2011 The Kings Speech won 7 BAFTA’s.

Studio Canal

In 1988 Pierre Lescure founded Studio Canal, as a spin-off of Canal+. They have made such films as Terminator 2, Total Recall & Highlander. Studio Canal has merged with other companies, such as Carolco Pictures & EMI Films, They have the third largest library of films in the world & Studio Canal have also funded a lot of French movies, as originally they planned to do mainly French & some European movies, although now they have many deals with American production companies.

After Effects: Day 1

Today we have learnt the basics of animation in After Effects & how to draw custom shapes using the pen tool, we have been re-creating the intro to Anatomy of a Murder, one of the first movies to have animated title sequences.
I have created a replica of this title sequence using what we have been taught on after effects.
I found this reasonably easy to get the hang of as I have used Adobe Flash before, which is similar for simple animations.

Opening Credits Timelines

The Matrix
0.05 - The Matrix
0.10 - Nothing
0.20 - Nothing
0.30 - Still Nothing

Forrest Gump
0.03 - Paramount Pictures Presents
0.07 - A Steve Tisch/Wendy Finerman Production
0.12 - A Robert Zemeckis Film
0.17 - Tom Hanks in
0.22 - Forrest Gump
0.28 - Robin Wright
0.33 - Gary Sinise
0.39 - Mykelti Williamson
0.42 - and Sally Field
0.47 - Casting by Ellen Lewis
0.52 - Co-producer Charles Newirth
0.57 - Executive Music Producer Joel Sill
1.02 - Visual Effects Supervisor Ken Ralston
1:07 - Costumes Designed by Joanna Johnston
1:12 - Music by Alan Silvestri
1:17 - Edited by Arthur Schmidt
1:22 - Production Designer Rick Carter
1:28 - Director of Photography Don Burgees
1:32 - Based on the Novel by Winston Groom
1:36 - Screenplay by Eric Roth
1:41 - Produced by Wendy Finerman - Steve Tisch - Steve Starkey
1:52 - Directed by Robert Zemeckis

In Bruges
0:27 - Focus Features presents
0:36 - in association with Film4
0:43 - a Blueprint Pictures production
0:52 - in association with Scion Films
1:31 - In Bruges

O Brother, Where Art Thou
1:27 - O Brother, Where Art Thou
1:50 - George Clooney
1:54 -John Turturro
1:57 - Tim Blake Nelson
2:05 - Charles Durning
2:08 - John Goodman
2:10 - Michael Badalucco
2:13 - and Holly Hunter
2:21 - Stephen Root - Chris Thomas King
2:24 - Wayne Duvall - Daniel Von Bargen
2:35 - J.R. Horne - Brian Reddy - Frank Collison
2:39 - Casting by Ellen Chenoweth
2:47 - Supervising Sound Editor Skip Lievsay
2:50 - Film Editors Roderick Jaynes and Tricia Cooke
2:53 - Music by T Bone Burnett
2:56 - Costume Designer Mary Zophres
3:05 - Production Designer Dennis Gassner
3:09 - Director of Photography Roger Deakins, A.S.C., R.S.C.
3:13 - Co-producer John Cameron
3:16 - Executive Producers Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner
3:24 - Produced by Ethan Coen
3:26 - Written by Ethan Coen & Joel Coen
3:30 - Based Upon “The Odyssey” by Homer
3:33 - Directed by Joel Coen

Title credits

We have been learning how to animate title credits and have been looking at the opening credits of different movies & how they portray the genre of the movie. We have looked at movies like se7en & forrest gump & talked about how the titles make us feel & what they tell us about the movie