During the first talk of the day, Pete gave us a presentation on famous film openings and we studied how they set-up the rest of the filma nd what effect they had on the audience. He told us that film openings establish the genre of the film, the narrative, the principal characters and also the complete atmosphere. Pete showed us The Art of the Title website which we'd already looked at in classed and used to conjure up our own timelines of famous films (I used Mission Impossible II for my timeline example).
Pete really stressed the importance of sound - and foley - and how many students don't give it much attention or put much care into making/choosing a track. He showed us through another student's film how sound can be layered and what effect it can cause to generate interest into the piece.
Visual effects supervisor Simon Carr also talked to us and showed what his job entailed, so we could have a look at the finer details of film making- the special effects, cgi etc. I found his talk very interesting, especially as he did a case study of one of my favourite films ever feautring Ben Barnes- Easy Virtue!! And it was also a great chance to get an insight into the post production side of film-making too.
^Last December, meeting Ben Barnes at the Comedy Theatre (after an evening production of Birdsong)
Actor/director Dexter Fletcher gave us some very good advice about how to open a piece of film - one of the most important things to do first is to establish the characters and define them quickly, but not nessercarily through a script but through actions, and imagery. He also said a good idea is to get other peoples' feedback on what you've created during the actual making process, because for instance, if someone doesn't understand why a character does something, you need to change it so it makes sense for the audience but at the same time doesn't give too much information away or patronize them. Dexter Fletcher also said that when dealing with typical characters, to make the character interesting, turn them on their head. If you expect a character to react a certain way to a situation, make them deal with it in a different way to show variety and surprise in the story.
Dexter Fletcher told us it was all about storytelling via letting the pictures tell the story and that's eaxctly what my group plans to do for our final thriller film piece. He also gave us some good advice including keep the location close and all sets near a base so it wouldn't take long if you had to quickly change plans and go to a different location.
Overall, it was a really great fun and informative trip, and I'll definately take everything I've learnt into consideration during this course.
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