Warner Brothers
Who owns the studio?
Time Warner.
Do they have an "art house" branch?
No.
Have they absorbed any smaller film studios?
New Line Cinema, DC Entertainment.
Which other companies are owned by the same conglomerate?
They own Warner Bros. Studios, Warner Bros. Pictures, Warner Bros. Interactive entertainment, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Warner Bros. Television, Warner Bros. Animation, Warner Bros. Video, New Line cinema, TheWB.com, and D.C. Entertainment.
Film Studies
Monday 14 January 2013
Sunday 14 October 2012
Second Project - The Affair - Critical Analysis
For our second project, we were given the task of producing
a scene of a conversation between two people. On the first day of recording the
sequence, our group was producing a scene in which consisted of a conversation
between a teacher and a pupil. This was the first time we had filmed a sequence
with the use of a microphone. It was mainly attached to me, on the back of my
collar, so I wasn't aware of how visible it stuck out in the camera footage. We
had managed to gain all the necessary footage for the scene on this day; but
only just about, as we had only left ourselves with about twenty minutes for
filming, due to spending quite a bit of time figuring out what we were doing
for the scene. The next day, when we entered the editing process, we unfortunately
discovered that no sound had been captured, due to a faulty microphone. This
meant that we had to go back out, and re-film all of the sequence.
However, we decided to use this opportunity to change it
around a bit. We had lost confidence in the scene we had done before, so we
changed what happened in it, and instead did a scene between a homosexual
couple, in which one man admitted to the other that he had an affair with
another man. We had a better idea of what we were doing as we had used the
sound equipment the lesson before, but nonetheless, we still spent too long
figuring out what we were doing for the scene, so this once again limited the
amount of time for filming. We had managed to film the scene from three
different camera positions, which consisted of the master shot, a shot of David
and a shot of me.
Our final footage was good enough visually, as we used the
tripod entirely, giving us a much steadier shot. It also helped having a third
person in the group to operate the camera, whilst the other two people
performed in front of the camera. However, the audio of the footage was just terrible;
it turned out very quiet. Even whilst turning up the speakers entirely, the
sound is barely audible. I’m not sure what caused the sound to turn out this
quiet; perhaps the microphone was not close enough to our mouths, or perhaps we
were just speaking too quietly.
When we went to edit the sequence, we imported all three
sets of footage onto the computer, and chose which parts of each shot we were
going to put into the final sequence. We then put the clips together, giving us
the full scene in one sequence, with a variety of camera positions. When the
clips were put together, we realised that the full scene turned out rather
short, so we could have done with having a longer script to also have longer
footage. The continuity turned out all right, as the transitions between each
shot changes comfortably; the only issue that I may have had with the
transitions is that two occurred in a short space of time, due to one shot
being too short.
There were two different versions of the sequence which we
produced; one featuring parallel non-diegetic sound at the end, and the other
with contrapuntal non-diegetic sound at the end. These two different sounds
both give a different mood and tone to the sequence. The parallel music during
the end gives off a quite mellow mood to the watchers, making this appear as a
sad scene of a couple breaking up, whereas, the contrapuntal music during the
end gives more off an uplifting mood to the watchers, creating a more cheerful,
or even humorous, scene.
There were improvements which we made during this project,
compared to our first project. For instance, we managed to maintain a much more
steadier shot as we had made better use of the tripod, and also had a third
person operating the camera. This time we had decided what we were doing for
the full sequence, instead of making it up as we went along, so we managed to
produce a scene which flowed quite nicely, and ended appropriately.
Wednesday 10 October 2012
Sunday 30 September 2012
First Project - The Kidnapping - Critical Analysis
For our first project, we were given the task of creating a
short sequence scene of a kidnapping situation. On the first day, we were
mainly getting to grips with how to use the camera and the tripod, so not a lot
of footage was captured that day. On this first day, we were trying out the
different angles which we could achieve with the tripod, such as a high angle
and a low angle. We spent a lot of time fiddling around with the tripod legs in
order to get the tripod angling upwards and downwards, so this left us with
less time for filming and so we produced a small amount of footage.
On the next day of filming, we had a much better idea of
what we were doing and how to use the equipment, so we decided to start from
scratch. We had a rough plan of about what we doing for around the first half
of the film, so we followed that, and then began to improvise the rest of it,
leaving us with a messy ending. We felt that we were limited to what we could do
with only two of us, as when the camera was on both of us, the camera had to
remain in the same position as there was nobody else to move it. For the
majority of shots, the camera was being handled by one person, whilst the other
one was performing. This caused these shots to appear wobbly and unsteady.
I feel like we could have been a bit more risky with what
shot types we used. We used shot types such as low angle, point of view and
over the shoulder, but each of these were just for a brief few seconds, so I
doubt it’s obvious that these small variety of shot types were used. Our excuse for a small range of shot types
used would probably be because we were limited to only two people, but even so,
a lot more shot types would have been achievable if we had attempted them.
The quality of our footage wasn't amazing, but it was
decent. The handheld shots were shaky, especially the scene where the cameraman
is running behind me whilst doing an over the shoulder shot; this scene also
has the cameraman clearly visible in the reflection of a window. The acting in
which we did was not brilliant either, probably because we not focusing on
delivering a perfect performance. We managed to gain over 90 seconds of footage,
which was a substantial amount to develop a reasonably lengthed sequence. However,
whilst filming, if it didn't appear obviously that we had messed up a scene , we didn’t do more, so when we entered
the editing process, we found ourselves with single shots for each scene. So if
we didn’t like a particular scene, we had to stick with it, because it was the
only one we had. We were lucky to not have come across any major mistakes, but
there were a few minor issues such as; seeing the cameraman’s reflection and
producing a poorly performed fighting scene.
This clearly wasn't the best sequence produced by someone of
our ability, but we did manage to learn what changes we need to make for when
we go out a film again. I think we would be able to develop a better sequence
if we had more than two people both operating the camera and performing. I also
believe we should make better use of the tripod, to enable us to produce
steadier shots and therefore better quality footage. We could also try and
experiment using a larger variety of shot types, which may include; a high
angle, long shot or extreme close up. We should also do multiple shots for each
scene, so when we enter the editing process, we can cherry-pick out the best
scenes. I think it is also essential that we plan out exactly what we are doing
before we begin filming, as with this sequence, it was very apparent that it
was improvised throughout.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)