Costume development for superhero films

Just a quick post for GCSE Paper One students. 

The image below shows the development of costume for Superman and Batman across TV and Film. This is the kind of useful information that might be handy in an exam, especially for questions 3 & 4. 

Remember: you don't need to be a costume expert to mention this stuff-describe the changes in broad terms first (more colourful, less bright, more realistic, a bit silly looking, more technology etc) and the just describe WHY you think the chances might have happened. 

A good revision technique is to try it with this image-describe the changes and why they've happened. 

Then, try for other costumes; search google for 'captan america costume development' or 'Spider-Man costume evolution' for example. 

The sound design of Captain America: Civil War

Sound design is often one of the most important, but ignored, aspects of micro elements in filmmaking. 

This video gives viewers an insight into how the sound design of Captain America: Civil War was designed and what the sound designers wanted to achieve. 

This is a great resource for GCSE Film students looking for revision for Paper 1 or anyone with an interest in filmmaking. 

http://nofilmschool.com/2016/05/what-does-superhero-civil-war-sound-sound-design-captain-america

How Deadpool aced viral marketing.

This is a brilliant article about the superb marketing campaign for Deadpool which has been incredibly important in the success of the film at the Box Office. 

A must read for ALL film students; you'll get to learn about viral marketing, will see some brilliant examples of marketing and discover LOADS of information about marketing campaigns that you can refer to in exams. 

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/02/how-deadpool-aced-viral-marketing.html

Momentum takes just £46 at the Box Office! Why?

Great for GCSE Industry Analysis and AS Level case studies on distribution: you can almost literally see where the £46 spent watching the film went. 

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/nov/24/morgan-freeman-thriller-momentum-flops-uk-cinema

129 of the greatest shots in movie history?

An interesting collection of stills from films via a BuzzFeed post, linked below.
Some wonderful images here.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/danieldalton/there-will-be-scrolling#.dka168LXe

Really useful video for revision

This video below is a brilliant way to quickly go over many of the key points, characters, themes and narratives of Marvel films since 2008. It goes into a lot of detail about things that might not be important to the Paper 1 GCSE exam such as the comics and backstory, BUT, it's a really handy recap about some film titles, characters, super powers and other things that you should be revising by now!

Have a watch, make some notes, answer some questions in the revision guide and revision powerpoint and remember; this is just the tip of the iceberg-go to YouTube and search for other clips from other superhero films.

Brilliant example of foley sound

http://www.empireonline.com/features/cinema-sound-secrets-foley-artist/

The Business of Film Podcasts

These podcasts narrated by the brilliant Mark Kermode,  are an incredibly useful tool for AS Film Studies, as well as the Industry Analysis section of GCSE Film Studies controlled conditions work.

The link to the series is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/businessoffilm but I've also embedded them below for you to listen to.

Each episode is only around 30 mins in total and will be a really useful insight into the film industry. Some of the language can be really specific and assume that the listener already knows a lot about film, but these are a really enjoyable and informative listen and are highly recommended.


Episode 1: https://www.dropbox.com/s/x1xc97h0bqw1uhb/businessoffilm%20ep1.mp3?dl=0
Episode 2: https://www.dropbox.com/s/f5zzx1v9j3joj0s/businessoffilm%20ep2.mp3?dl=0
Episode 3: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wnlhzagv03pp382/businessoffilm%20ep3.mp3?dl=0

The making of Batman (1989)

A really interesting video has turned up online to coincide with the 25th Anniversary of Tim Burton's Batman film from 1989.

The video is a 'behind the scenes' style video that looks at various aspects of the film before it was made, showing investors why the idea of a dark and gritty Batman would be a successful one. It seems as though the film was made to show the people whose money was needed to make the film that they should continue to give the film money even though they weren't convinced the film would make money. There is also some really nice background to Batman comic books and the evolution of the character, so could be a really useful watch for both GCSE Film paper 1 and for FM2 section of AS Film.

Well worth 20 minutes of your time:

X-Men: Days of Future Past begins viral campaign

Last week saw the unveiling of a website, Trask Industries.com that marks the start of what is promising to be a long campaign in advertising the latest X-Men film, Days of Future Past, which is released next Summer. With The Wolverine film now released, attention has seemingly turned to the new X-Men film which is unites many of the cast of the original trilogy from the 2000s with characters from the last film, First Class. Added to this cast is Bolivar Trask, played by the quite brilliant Peter Dinklange, as a military scientist who develops a robot army called Sentinels to track down and destroy mutants with the 'X' gene.

The website features an astonishing amount of detail for a 'fake' company and shows that 20th Century Fox are obviously planning on throwing money at the film to make it a success.
Have a look around at the webiste-this is great example evidence for Paper 1 of the Film GCSE and would certainly help in developing your own ideas.

http://www.trask-industries.com

GCSE Exam Practice: Questions 1 and 2

Use this clip to help you practice Questions 1 and 2 of Paper 1. There are also some good examples of editing here to revise from. 

Revision: Editing Techniques

GCSE Paper 1 Practice: Superhero films

Below you will find copies of the Practice Exam Paper that we looked at in class.

The clip you need for questions 1 and 2 can be found on the link above the exam paper.
Remember: you can only watch it 3 times when answering questions 1 and 2 and when answering, you CANNOT watch the clip. Obviously, I can't control that here, but it's excellent practice for the exam to follow these instructions.

There is also a resource for Question 3 to be used as well.

Film Extract for questions 1 and 2

GCSE Paper 1 Revision

This is the exam paper explanation guide for Paper 1.
Paper 1, as I'm sure you know, is the exam paper on Superhero films, is 1 and a half hours long and will be on June 19th.


                             

The second exam paper explanation for Paper 2, the exam on Tsotsi, can be found here: Tsotsi Revision
REMEMBER: this exam is on the 25th June, so ignore any dates on that PowerPoint as they may be out of date. 

Louis Leterrier interview reveals lack of control over films he directed.

The director of The Incredible Hulk and Clash of the Titans, Louis Leterrier, is currently promoting his promising looking new film Now You See Me.


            

In an interesting interview on Huffington Post, Leterrier reveals how he wanted to cast Mark Ruffalo in The Incredible Hulk, as opposed to Edward Norton who was apparently cast at the demands of the studio, Marvel.
He also explains about his lack of control over Clash of the Titans, and criticises the poor use of 3D on the film.

Have a read via the link below to get an interesting insight into the control that a Director has and the way in which large studios operate.

Leterrier interview, via the Huffington Post.

Shot Sizes and Angles

A quick overview on the different shot sizes and angles for camera work. A useful video we used in Media Studies for people looking to make their own films:



This PowerPoint from SlideShare has some good explanations and also includes more definitions about movements:

Shots

Finally, this website has some excellent examples and good set of explanations. http://www.mediacollege.com/video/shots/

Camera Movements

Bit of revision on camera movements after the lesson today where we discussed these in relation to the exam paper from 2011. This first video is designed for people making films but has some very good explanations and excellent examples to reinforce the movements being shown. Please note: this video is American in origin and so may use slightly different terms (such as a trucking movement, which we would call a tracking movement).
 This second video is used for Media Studies and again designed for people who are looking to make films but has some very easy to understand explanations for camera movements:
 Finally, here are a couple of guides from SlideShare:

camera movements

View more PowerPoint from guidedbyboognish

Camera Movement

View more PowerPoint from Tom Whittaker

Useful Websites: Art of the Title

Over the next few posts I'll be explaining about some of the Useful Websites that are linked on this blog. They've all been chosen to either help your work in Film Studies both at GCSE and AS / A-Level, but to also develop your interest in all things related to the Film Industry.

In this post we'll take a quick look at Art of the Title. Art of the Title is a website which looks at the title sequences of films (the information about who stars in and who made the film that you see at the start of a film before any 'action' happens). Those of you who have been in some of my Film lessons will know how much I go on about watching Credits, both at the start and end of films, as they provide you with lots of really interesting and useful information about the film. For filmakers, credits have developed over the last 70 years and are now usually quite long, very artistic and designed to not only tell you about the film but also set up the style of the film. (At some point in the near future I'll do a blog post on the importance of credits and credits sequences-especially useful for Coursework both at GSCE and AS-Level.) With credit sequences being so interesting and artistic in modern cinema, Art of the Title looks at these and breaks them down and explore the style of the credits, the techniques used and usually, interviews some of the key people who helped make them. Below are some pictures of the sorts of things you might find on Art of the Title.

Each film is given it's own post on the blog of the website. You can select the credits for each film by using the side bar on the right hand side of the website. Each post usually starts with an HD clip of the titles from the film, as seen above.

The blog posts usually then goes through some really specific detail about why certain images were chosen and the influences on them, especially in establishing the style of the film.

Some of the posts will also have an interview with someone who helped make the credits and then show how these credits were actually made.

Recently, Art of the Title has also begun to look at the Title Credits of videogames as this is an area which is rapidly growing and many 'big' videogames now have interesting and complicated Title Credit sequences.

Art of the Title is a really interesting look at an area of cinema that many people don't realise just how complicated and how much thought and time is placed on. The website could be useful in coursework for GCSE and AS Level work, but also if you have any interest in art and design, possibly as a career after school.