Filming Session 08/12/16

blog post 14- micro and macro anaysis

micro analysis- small analysis like shots, songs and technical stuff

macro analysis- large anysis like propes and the backrounds

It uses creepy music at the start to create a sinister atmosphere. On the screen it comes with the name of the show with freaky font. Goes to a black screen then fades into a toy circus looking environment.

It then goes to an image of a merry go round and with ‘FX presents’ and it uses a lot of shadow to move around the toy/circus environment then a partial head pops around the circus cart which leads to balloon making sounds with hands making the balloons with a clown costume.

 After it goes to a flickering pictures appearing to make the skeleton bike move with the name ‘Sarah Paulson.’

Then it fades to ‘Evan Peters’ with toys in the background. The music has got more sinister and creepy with carousel music. Then it goes to a large clown head which looks like it’s made with plastic and latex. The background is black with a few little dim lights. The head is moving clockwise with the sound of ticking clock background.

Then it goes to a rotating human dartboard with a two headed clown with the name ‘Michael Chiklis.’  A knife hits the human dartboard as it moves around.

Then a close up shot of a toy moving with two claw hands with flickering images that makes it appear to be moving. Then it goes to a wide shot to include background of a tent with the name ‘Fances Conroy.’

Return to weird rotating creepy clown face again which is much more visible. The clown has sharp jagged teeth, chipped off nose and crossward looking eyes. Then for a split second, it goes to an image of creepy small clowns sinisterly smiling. The images now alternate between the clown face and the little clowns. It appears there are two faces of a clown: one side has nothing on the face. The small clown does a 180 degree turn with its head.

Image of the inside of a tent with the shadow of a London eye looking ride.

Creepy image of a monkey wearing a clown choker with a small top hat with a cymbal.

The small clown lying down on the ground with a smile.

A one handed man nailing things into his face with the name ‘Denis O’Hare.’

Skeletons with the name ‘Emma Roberts.’

Puppet stage with a marionette hands held up with the name ‘Finn Witrock.’

Then back to the large faced creepy clown again with the name ‘Angela Bassett.’

Return to balloon hand making clown. The music has got a bit quieter.

A scene of doll babies in a cage taking their heads off and rolling it towards each other.

Animated circus ringmaster toy zips open with blood running down the mouth with the name ‘Kathy Bates.’

A toy head with a hat with a beautiful background and the name ‘Jessica Lange.’

A man on stilts pulling a cart with the name of the show: ‘American Horror Story Freakshow.’

Return to monkey cymbal image then the name ‘created by Ryan Murphy & Brad Falchuk.’ The background comes into focus to reveal the monkey with jagged teeth and black eyes.

Close up shot of outer edges of tent with the name of the show: ‘American Horror Story Freakshow.’

over all the American horror story title sequence required less costume and physical factors and really depended on editing and props. the fact the props depended on mainly reds and whites to symbolise the  circus and add blacks and dark bleak colours to create the contrast of the fun lovable childhood memory to this demonic nightmare. the toys in the title sequence also symbolise a character, situation and or part of life that accrues in the programme. the backgrounds where also either edited in using a green screen and others using painted or large toy sized backgrounds to make it match the creepy toy and childhood aesthetic of the title sequence. over all the music and the actions match pretty well and clearly all the movement of the toys are images all put togather to make it look like moving images to make a choppy effect. theres a lot of over the shoulder and mid shots  

Looking Over Footage

Our group went filming on the 2nd of December at Jeannie's house, when we got back to college on the 5th of December we looked over the footage that we filmed, we discovered that the lighting changed a lot throughout the shots taken. This is a problems as the shots will not flow well and the title sequence will look choppy and unprofessional, this will not suspend disbelief for the people watching our title sequence. After we discovered this problem we decided that we are going to re-film the footage at a different location of Jessi's house.

By looking at the over view of our footage it was evident that the footage was too dark to use, this means that we will need to go out and film again. This is not good for our group as we are running out of valuable filming time. 

Rough Cut Editing

To get a feel of what the final outcome of our title sequence will look like we decided to create a rough cut edit. This allows us to create our desired outcome in a long period of time instead of rushing all of the editing before the deadline. By doing this we can create our desired title sequence.

We try to edit the rough cut title sequence each time we film so we can decide whether or not we need to go out and re-film any footage. If we come to the conclusion that we need to re-film our footage, we reflect on what went wrong in our previous shoot during class.

Filming mistakes!

On the 30th of November our group decided to go filming at Regents Park so we could re-film the footage that came out too dark. We had a successful time whilst filming as we were able to film everything that we needed to and more. However, when we got back to the editing suite at college we realised we create ourselves a mise-en-scene problem that would appear in a couple of our shots. What we discovered was that we left the camera bags in the middle of our shot, it was very obvious mistake but when we were filming we didn't see it. Unfortunately, we desperately needed this shot in our title sequence so we had to find a solution and quickly. We didn't have the time to go out to Regents Park and re-film the scenes again as we had to go to different locations to film more footage for the rest of our tile sequence.

Luckily we were able to come up with a temporary fix that would help us for a short amount of time. The media technician helped us cover up the dark, grey camera bags that were in the middle of our footage. He cut out a piece of the screen which featured leaves in it.

He then layered it on top of the camera bag that was evident in the footage, this worked as there was lots of leaves and trees surrounding our filming location for this day so the cut out camouflaged into the background. The technician then feathered out the edges of the cut out and it blended into the background.

When the technician had finished trying to blend the cut out into the background, we asked people in our class and the other technician to see if they could see anything wrong with the footage and none of them noticed the cover up until we told them what we did. This temporary fix could work out for good and hopefully we will be able to use it in our final product, otherwise we will have to go out and re-film the shot.

Filming Session 2/12/2016

On Friday our group (minus Nadia - she couldn't make it to the shoot this day) decided to start filming the next proportion of our title sequence, for this shoot we had to film at a different location to the one we had filmed at for our previous shoots. We needed to film the interior and exterior of a house so we decided to use Jeannie's house, we filmed here as it had a family feel to the place which we hope to reflect in the character of the title sequence. We wanted to emphasise the fact that the girl was once a normal teenage but she did something bad in her life and is now paying the consequences for what she did.

Whilst at this location we had a strict time frame to film all of the scenes for the title sequence, if we didn't manage to film what we needed then we will have to go back to this location and re-film the footage. At this location there were 3 big things that we had to shoot; the girl opening the door and entering the house, the girl washing her hands and the keys and finally the part where she receives the text from the anonymous number. We filmed them in that order so we wouldn't miss anything out and it would then be easier for us when we are editing the footage.

Here is some proof of us filming:

Great day filming at Jeannie's house pic.twitter.com/hoYn1RioHx

— Group 23 (@candimedia23) December 4, 2016

(Please click on the Twitter link as we are not able to embed the photos from our tweets)

Mise-En-Scene Update (Newspaper Headline)

Keeping in mind of the mise-en-scene of title sequence we needed to create a newspaper article that our main character will come across. Thus for our title sequence, 

 we created a newspaper article, that the main character will come across. Above is the final newspaper article I created. I had faced several difficulties in making making the picture of the girl, (who is in fact a member from our group) to ensure she looked alright on the page. I do acknowledge that I have made a grammatical error, on the sub-heading at the bottom. However, in our shot we will only focus and pay attention to the heading- MISSING SARA,15 as this will be the most important element of the title sequence.