Jamie Parker

The film opens with a long shot of the three main characters; Sam Appleby; Jacob Lexis; and Terry Colby. We see them slowly pacing away from the camera. The long shot is representing that the three characters are now 'out of reach' with modern society as we know it.
The character Sam then proceeds to stop at a Rock which he rests on. Through the use of the characters attire and general accessories such as their bags the audience can come to the conclusion that the characters know they're going to be out in the 'wilderness' for a long time to come.A shot of the landscape is shown, an array of ruined Skyscrapers being symbolic reference to the break down of society. Immediately our audience becomes aware that this isn't any form of holiday, yet a disaster beyond comprehension.
In comes the dialogue, with the characters Jacob and Terry voicing their frustration at Sam for taking a rest, as well as dialogue itself we also show this through a series of sighs, and overall body posture; folded arms to show their 'fury'.Following on from this is a long shot of Jacob beginning to sit down next to Sam. By doing this we are showing that Jacob's anger has turned to sympathy and he's now on Sam side. This is further backed up when we jump to a mid-shot of Jacob saying "Yeah well five minutes isn't gonna do much harm Terry".

At this point the plot begins to take a much more sinister twist when Terry retaliates with "Oh shut it J. If we don’t get there before dark tonight, then we won’t see light again."
Multiple questions are going to be jumping to the audiences mind. Where is the place the trio have to get to? Why won't they see light again? And more importantly why are they in this situation? By us making the audience think all these questions, we're keeping their attention and making them want to watch the movie for more. We're also making them get emotionally attached to the characters as they're going to want them to survive.

Going to a close up Sam says his dialogue in a very vicious tone due to his tiredness and frustration. We then proceed to get the first most significant lines of the movie from Terry
"Sam. Just over a month ago I was worrying about trying to get my English A-Level essays in on time. Now I’m trying to survive a nuclear apocalypse - am I really being all that dramatic?" A harrowing yet true line, that is sure to send shivers down the spine of the audience. We've taken such a normal situation such as 'trying to get English A-Level essays in on time' and put a sinister twist on it so we can try to relate the audience to how normal of a situation they have come from, and what a unthinkable situation they are in now.

Sam proceeds to drink a bottle of water he retrieved from his bag, the camera stays on him as Jacob begins to speak his next portion of dialogue. The effect of keeping the camera on Sam perhaps hints that he's a bit of a selfish character? He wants all the limelight, and we can see this from the first minute of the movie when he's the one who protests about walking and stops for a rest, without asking the others first.
In comes the mid-shot when Jacob asks the other characters if they've seen the 'skyscraper over there'...after exchanging further lines of dialogue, it ends with Jacob saying his dad used to work there, to which Terry replies with "Well he won't be now." This makes the other two characters extremely uncomfortable; and this is portrayed via them looking down to the ground.
So far in the story the audience will feel an unprecedented amount of sympathy for both Sam and Jacob. Yet the audience will be reeling by the sarcasm; and spiteful edge that Terry has whenever he speaks. Of course the audience might also understand that they've been put under a stressful situation, and feel not quite as much resentment for Terry.
Continuing with a mid-shot, Jacob returns to the rocks and sits with the other two characters. He looks much more upset, and glum then the other characters. This is done to show the idea of 'alienation' and he feels like he can't relate to the other two as much anymore after the catastrophe. To end the shot off the three characters all look up towards the skyscraper in the distance. Making them look extremely inferior, and powerless. The screen then fades through white.
The camera begins to zoom up to the building, but it's easy to see the time period has now changed. The skyscraper has dramatically changed and has far less greenery. We then fade through white and return back to the present day.

We then move to a close-up of Jacob, a close-up allows us to show the emotional strain that Jacob is currently under, and we can also see he's looking beyond the camera and thinking of something as if it's appearing right before him. This is only further extending the sympathy that the audience feel for him. Looking extremely upset, a tear begins to roll down his cheek, and as this happens the camera begins to blur, by doing this match on action we're allowing the audience to get far more involved with the movie as they can see the reality of how Jacob is currently feeling.

Quickly the situation changes, we have a fade through white that takes us to a news broadcast. The newsreaders explain the situation as it's happening, this gives our audience the back story of our movie, and already within the first two minutes of the movie. They know a lot about the three main characters, and how they've got too where they are now.
Cutting to a hand held camera we a shot of people running over the American flag in a frantic state of panic. In normal circumstances the American Flag is seen as a huge iconic figure, yet in desperate times people are forced to lose all sense of decency and run over it. Throughout this portion we still have the newsreader talking over the top of the clip.
Jumping to a shot of the president speaking over a background of the Presidential Seal he begins to tell people to remain calm and in their homes as there is nothing to gain by leaving their homes. At points throughout this broadcast we jump to different shots of mushroom clouds over various landscapes. This is so that it contrasts with what the president is saying, and the audience can see the harsh reality of what is really happening, and what people in the movie are being told.
Just as the president is about to close off his speech with "God Bless America" he gets cut off just after saying 'Bless' with a picture making it look like the transition is ending, which swiftly jumps to an 'EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM' logo. We decided to use this as it's something that everyone recognises, and people know how desperate a situation has to become before that logo is shown.

Fade through white again and to a close up it brings us back to the present day. There is a muffled voice in the background, that gets louder and clearer each time eventually we can tell it's Terry frantically shouting Jacob to move over to him. Jacob sharply twists his head in Terry's direction. A mid shot occurs where we see Terry kneeling over Sam's limp body. Terry tells Jacob that Sam's passed out. Now as an audience their opinion of Terry has changed, originally they saw him as a somewhat 'nasty' character, but now they can see his caring side so now they'll also like Terry as a character. Furthermore by Terry's body language they will be able to see that deep down he's just as weak as the other two are in this situation.

Jacob runs down opposite Terry and kneels beside Jacob. He checks for a pulse, and looks extremely shocked when he sees Sam's hand. Terry picks up on this and proceeds to ask Jacob what it is. Jacob drops the palm of Sam's hand for Terry to look. Then Jacob closes his eyes to confirm what Terry already knew "He’s... He’s infected?"

For this portion of my blog, I shall be analysing a series of film/TV series openings related to our post-apocalyptic genre; from this I will be able to gather the list of techniques that they use and see if we can link them in with our own movie opening.

Survivors TV Series: Episode 1.
Devised by Terry Nation and produced by Terrance Dudley.
Target Auidence: Fans of post-apocalyptic media and TV dramas.

This series is all about an accident at a bio lab releasing a deadly virus that kills 99% of the population. After the disaster the survivors form a group to try and rebuild the world as we know it.
From watching the first episode I was able to gather the show uses a number of fast closeups; namely of the many various cities worldwide. This is used to the effect of showing how big the catastrophe actually has affected the world, and the fastness representing how quickly the virus has spread.The first shot shows an idyllic summers day (the calm before the storm) with a woman playing tennis, building up suspense in the audience making them want to watch further to see how the situation is going to change.
We then zoom out and see she's actually playing tennis with a machine, this is showing the idea of
isolation; being alone, something that the survivers of a post apocalyptic disaster would be feeling.
The only other significant thing I could pick up from the first few minutes, is when we have a match on action when a woman hands over a glass of orange juice.
I believe that I wouldn't use too many features from this series, it's far too slow getting started and I believe if I took this route with our movie, then it would be extremely boring for the audience.

The Day After Tomorrow
Directed and produced by Roland Emmerich.
Target Audience: Fans of disaster movies e.g. 2012 and also movie enthusiasts.


From the offset the music is extremely subtle, and something we would often stereotype the 'upper-class' to listen to. It comes across as very royal and this links in with the whole scientific theme of the movie. From this I can infer that The Day After Tomorrow is extremely quick at setting the story for the rest of the movie; something I would want to link into my own movie opening.
The first few minutes are title credits, that stand out effectively on the snow and ice. We are shown a constantly moving aerial view of the ocean, we can see that the majority of the ice has melted, as said above this is great in linking in with the scientific, and global warming theme that is portrayed throughout the duration of the movie.
Characters only come into play around the 2:45 mark of the movie, although this is a very long time for a movie to go without characters, in the case of The Day After Tomorrow it works perfectly in being able to set the scene well.

Resident Evil Apocalypse.
Directed by Alexander Witt and produced by Paul Anderson.
Target Audience: Video game fans and fans of the franchise.

This movie starts off totally different to the others in this genre. Various high tech screens are shown, with the main character detailing the outline of the plot; without making it obvious. I think this is a brilliantly clever technique to use within a film, especially with this one that takes quite a lot of concentration to understand the storyline.
The most notable part during this section of the film, would be how we realise through the characters dialogue that she's in fact speaking after the events have happened; perhaps ruining the plot that she's likely going to survive?
A blackout transition then takes us to the title sequence, fading out again to take us to the start of the film, similar to the other ones we then proceed to be shown a plain idyllic scene clearly showing how unsuspecting the characters in the movie are to the catastrophes to come.
Costumes in this film are practically the same as others in this genre; plain clothing is used to show us how normal peoples lives are before the events of a catastrophe. Although sometimes we do have out of the ordinary attire for certain characters to distinguish them differently from the rest; as the main character in this film does.


Knowing

Directed by Alex Proyas and produced by Todd Black

Target Audience:Sci-fi fans.

Beginning with the title sequence on the background of a stary night, this links in with the movies storyline of a future being predicted; mainly including the event of a alien invasion, the reason for having a night background.
Swiftly the movie jumps to a long shot of a school with the location and date being shown at the bottom of the screen, this is defiantly needed in helping to show people the change in both time from modern day to now, and exactly what country the film is set in. Straight away a setting is being established.
The camera then begins to be took up by the vivid brightness of the sun, this is a match on action as when the camera zooms closer into the sun, then our view as an audience gets harder to focus. An obvious effect of the sun. We're using a similar sort of thing in our own movie, where someone has a tear rolling down their cheek and the camera blurs to match this.
As the sun takes up the full proportion of the screen we instantly cut from the courtyard to the classroom.
The remainder of the first few minutes just continues with a typical classroom atmosphere. Although one thing I could pick up is one girl feels 'isolated' from the rest of the class. Isolation is a big theme in this genre; so it's great they managed to link it in.

Overall from my analysis I've been able to note costumes; editing; sound; camera shots; and general techniques to build up a list of potential things we could use during the first portion of our movie.

The post apocalyptic is a sub-genre of science Fiction. It's roots can be traced all the way back to even a story like Noah and the Ark which describes the destruction of the current society and the rebirth of a brand new one; an obvious reference to an apocalyptic situation.
Moving back to modern times, the earliest noted piece is Mary Shelly's - The Last Man. In comparison to the Noah story it's on the other side of the post apocalyptic spectrum, but applies just as much nevertheless. The story tells of a plague that wipes out civilisation. Often when people talk about the 'post apocalyptic genre' they think of nuclear wars, and global warming, yet back then the plague was a big issue. This shows how much plots differ now then from back then.

Not a lot of post-apocalyptic novels were wrote until the cold war, when the genre saw a large increase in interest; this was due to obvious reasons as the threat of a nuclear war was looming, and to some seemed like a certainty, so they would want to in some respects 'take comfort' from knowing 'how the world was going to end' and try to prepare themselves for it.
Although during this period, many other situations started to break through, sometimes to an extreme extent, for example; Alien Invasions; Mutants; or future weapons.

As said in the first paragraph, Mary Shelly's - The Last Man was based around a pandemic. This made many other books decide to follow the same path. We have an array of publications that follow this suit in 1980-1990's such as the novels Emergance [1984] and Blindness [1995]. We still see the pandemic issue cropping up today with popular TV series' like Survivors [2008] based around 99.9% of the worlds population being wiped out by a pandemic. This clearly shows that people still have near enough the same view now as they did 20 or 30 years ago, and the genre of post apocalyptic certainly isn't going to go away.

An extremely interesting sub-genre of post-apocalyptic would be that entitled 'cosy catastrophe' that came about mainly in Britain after world war 2. The genre usually entails a group of survivors who set about trying to rebuild civilization. Although in our film the characters aren't shown rebuilding civilization, as an audience we could perhaps infer that any survivors elsewhere in the world set about to do this. Most significantly would be the movie Down to a Sunless Sea [1979] were after a nuclear war a group of survivors try to last as long as they can, and try to escape to Antarctica due to the radioactivity but ultimately in the end are overcome by it and all the survivors die, with life becoming extinct.

Of course, when it comes to movies it's all about making the highest amount of money possible, so time for some facts and figures...

28 Days Later directed by Danny Boyle managed to reach a phenomenal $82,719,885 gross revenue with a budget of only £5 million. Yet even more impressive is I Am Legend directed by Francis Lawrence which on a budget of $150,000,000 earned a gross revenue of $585,349,010. And last but not least 2012 directed by Roland Emmerich managed to gross an impressive $750,0000 from a $200,0000 budget. These statistics clearly show that there's room for the post-apocalyptic genre and a successful movie can be created on any sort of budget, depending on what you're hoping to do and achieve from the movie.

Death³ takes advantage of the current public outcry for films based around the Mayan Calendar which predicts a 2012 disaster and whether it could in fact lead to a post apocalyptic situation, and with TV series’ such as Jericho receiving an unprecedented amount of success due to it’s nuclear warfare’ theme; Death³ takes the fundamental elements of dramas like Jericho to create a truly compelling and harrowing account of post-apocalyptic life.

Many post apocalyptic films often focus on the effect nuclear warfare has on the world as a whole. Yet we’re going to break this mould by focusing on one key area; a secondary school and by doing this we believe the effect on the audience will be much greater due to Death³ being aimed at the teenage to mid twenties age bracket.

The film itself will follow three secondary school pupils as they find out their class were for some unknown reason not told the facility was being locked down. Gradually as time wears on, the group begins to realise that they’re slowly being poisoned from the inside via the harmful toxic smog produced by the nuclear warfare, and the only medicine cure available contains adequate antidote for just one of them.

Throughout the last hour of the movie will be a real time clock which incorporates Aristrotle’s unities, we believe this is vital in showing the urgency that the group of students face, and how quickly a situation can become dire, and somewhat hopeless.

The text throughout the title sequences would have a ‘flashing’ grunge effect on a black background, this creates the feeling of a ‘signal breaking up’ trying to portray that the group have now broke up from the rest of society.

Of course, what would this film be without a back-story? It’s all centered on a global resource race, mainly focusing on the United States coming under a barrage of nuclear terrorist attacks wiping them into an apocalypse with very limited resources and a minuscule amount of the population still alive.

The group make a mutual agreement that none of them shall take the antidote, and if they must then they shall all die together, but around the mid-point of the final hour it all beings to change, greed starts to set in causing the trio to use cunning tactics on each other to try and be the ‘last man standing’.

The trio all end up dead, yet in a terrible twist of fate we see the antidote tipped sideways, revealing a note at the bottom that tells the trio in a nearby location is medicine with an adequate amount of antidote for all three of them. This then portrays the moral that if they were not so greedy and worked together as a team then they would have figured the situation out and all still be alive, to try and rebuild the broken down society that the shattered world has been left in.

The genre of Post Apocalyptic is sterling in the way it can use an unlimited amount of scenarios and apply them to create a tense and dramatic atmosphere. Writers and directors love how diverse that the depths of the genre actually are. The film can be done on any sort of budget; from hand-held cameras showing direct fear to big screen cameras using awe-inspiring effect. Prompting people of all ages to expand into this vastly-growing genre.

Typically within the Post-Apocalyptic Genre we have the feeling of alienation and desolation, due to obvious reasons. But the feeling of greed and deception often crops up countless amounts of times, as a group or person gets more and more desperate. We see this for example with Resident Evil 3 when after a post-apocalyptic disaster, a family become so desperate they have to turn to cannibalism. Evidently this shows that the Post-Apocalyptic Genre doesn't hold back from exposing the harsh-realities that many people would be faced with, if they were put in this situation.

Recently the genre has been expanded to cater for a younger age range. With games such as Fallout 3 giving an harrowing account of what a Post Apocalyptic world would be like; many people from teens up to late 20's are being drawn into the genres vast depths due to it's diverse and gripping nature.

Yet we can't forget how the genre of Post-Apocalyptic works, people within the movies are often faced with a variety of different scenarios, such as:

• Someone who 'sells out' everyone else; often thought of as the 'idiot' character.
• Post-Apocalyptic movies can often have a joke in them, while still hidden behind a veil of seriousness.
• Fear has to be easy for the audience to distinguish, the main characters need to act out their fear well.
• One character needs to be slightly different from the rest; perhaps a more emotional attachment to an event/person.
• Other then the character who's that 'ever so slightly' different, we often have someone who tries to keep the situation calm, and under control.

All of the above are common themes that you can pick out from movies, so when creating our own Post-Apocalyptic film, we will consider each one of those points, and see whether we can apply them to our own.

Possible Music Choices:

Lecarla - Where do we go: Lecarla are an unsigned 'Soft Rock' band who would likely let us use their music. I have my own website and we're closely 'affiliated' with Lecarla. Of course permission, and evidance of permission will be kept if we go down this route. The reason that I would like to use this song, is mainly because Rock music heavily reflects the feeling of post-apocolyptic scenarios, due to it's up-beat, fast paced sound.

Get Set Radio - Turn Up The Heat: Again, as previously mentioned due to me often working with bands, I would more then likely be able to get permission to use the song. I believe this song could be a really good choice due to the lyrics "turn up the heat" we could use this as a reference of heat being pressure, showing the limited time that the survivers have left.

Of course, other methods of gaining copyright free songs will be explored, such as the following websites:

http://Freeplaymusic.com:

Dean Barrett, APRA (50%), Judy Whittaker, APRA (50%) - Black Scorpion:

Stumbling upon this track, we were shocked as to how well it's upbeat tempo would fit our film. The first couple of minutes have some dramatic tense action, which slowly breaks down and turns much more sinister; going from arguements to someone passing out due to being infected. We believe that 'Black Scoprion' reflects this with how it starts off extremely up-beat then gradually dies down as it moves through the track. The good thing about this track, apposed to the others is that it will be far easier to obtain as we would need no permission.

Today we discussed possible places that our filming could take place. With our chosen film plot being 'post-apocalyptic' based, we felt that it would obviously need to be somewhere desolate to represent the destruction that has been caused. After various bits of brainstorming as a group, we came up with a few possible locations:

Rocky Desolate Wasteland

This location that is very local to us, offers a vast array of things we would need from a location including:

Rocks/boulders: We would use these within our film to represent destroyed,fallen down homes, and other forms of buildings. You could also use it as a reference to the 'fall of society'

Desert Style Terrain: The floor in this area is extremely sandy, often when we think of sand our minds immediately focus on 'deserts' this links in with the feeling of loneliness and alienation; all the effects a survivor of a post-apocalyptic disaster would be feeling.


Woodland Area

Again very local. The advantage of a woodland area is we would be able to show survival much more effectively, yet the disadvantage is, would it be showing post-apocalyptic effects in the right light?

Trees: Of course it's a woodland area, so trees are one of the primary things. We would be able to show the survivors hiding under the trees for shelter after the disaster, and also show how quickly a common resource has been even more vital. One problem we could have with trees though, would they cut off a lot of the light, and make the lighting in our film look shoddy and dark? Picking a space with little far extending trees is definitely something we definitely need to consider.

Mud: This is vital in showing the survivors desperation, by covering their outfits in mud we're showing how dire the situation has become; our desolate wasteland doesn't have this terrain so we wouldn't be able to reproduce the same effects.

Of course, as a group we're going to have to weigh up both sides and consider which location we're going to choose, or whether we can merge them together within our movie to represent different stages of the survivors journey. The only problem will be time, it's going to be extremely hard to fit both locations in within 2 minutes.
Correct timing is vital to the success of our movie.

History Regarding Films:

The first ever noted piece of film took place in 1878, they successfully managed to photograph a horse in fast motion using 24 stereoscopic cameras. We then quickly progressed to 1893, where at the Chicago World's Fair, Thomas Edison displayed his first two inventions to the public eye. These included the Kintegraph, which was the first moving practical picture camera, and the Kinetoscope.
Fairly rapidly Robert W. Paul began to realise that films should be seen by a group rather then an individual. Gradually this led to him creating a film projector that had it's first public appearance in 1895. Furthermore 1895 was a massive year for the progression of film. Auguste and Louis Lumiére invented the cinematograph, a portable 3 in 1 device; Camera; Printer; Projector. The ability for people to carry the camera around with them, spearheaded the way forward for the film industry. Leading up to 1900 the most successful company for motion picture was American Mutoscope who were, as the name suggests, US based.

Originally movies didn't really use any type of techniques, cameras were fastened directly, offering none to very little methods of levelling. As time progressed people wanted more from movies, that's when the idea of putting cameras on moving vehicles was established. The first recorded date to have done this was 1896 on the back platform of a train leaving Jerusalem, 1897 saw the making of the first real rotating camera head by Robert W. Paul, and by 1898 many films were shot from moving trains.

Special effects started to come into play during 1900. The earliest surviving example of this is with G.A. Smith's The House That Jack Built that depicted a boy knocking down a girls castle constructed by building block, a screen then comes up saying reversed showing the castle being re-erected. Cecil Hepworth took this even further and made a movie called The Bathers showing people jumping backwards out of water and having their clothes 'magically' put back on.
The most important changes in special effects came around 1905 in which Edwin Porter created inter titles formed by letters moving into a certain formation from a random array.
Things continued pretty much the same up until 1912 when actors started getting recognized and claiming their share in fame. When before they remained virtually anonymous.
In 1912 we also have the first serial movie; 12 episodes consisting of 1 reel each, it also got printed into a magazine which shows that film also influenced other forms of media.

In 1913 we have the first ever full length movie made called Denmark's Atlantis, which lasted 1 hour and 53 minutes. 1914 practically marked the stop of European films due to WWI, although the film industry there did start to recover, it's never returned to its former glory.

1915 was the first change in camera equipment in a very long time, The Bell and Howl camera allowed for camera men to film a closeup without physically moving the camera, a feat never achieved before.
We then leap to 1920 where the first ever colour animated film was made. Only 2 years later, we were seeing our first 3-D movie, which shows how quickly that the film industry progresses.
During 1920-1925 we also have the big movie companies setting up; Warner Brothers; Paramount etc.
Most notably during 1926 we have the first use of sound effects and music within the film, replacing the need for an orchestra. This pushed the way forward for getting rid of the need of a orchestra during a film viewing, we see this when in 1928 Paramount announced their movies were only going to be 'talkies'

Ever since these early days of film, it's continued to progress and turn into a very profitable business. Now in films we often see extreme special effects, good quality cameras, and movies full of sound. All of this stems back from the early roots of the 18 and 1900's

Film Opening Techniques

There are a vast variety of different techniques available to a film maker at the start of a movie, the use of these effects help to set the scene for the rest of the film, and ultimately can make or break the movie, depending on how well and often they are used.

With the movie Sleepy Hollow we see the use of sound to build up dramatic suspense, starting off fast and gradually slowing down; this comes hand in hand with a series of mysterious images that aren't clear to us the viewer at first glance. For example when the man is stamping the letter, our minds immediately jolt to the conclusion that it's blood, when really it's just Red wax. This could be somewhat comparable to a 'Truman Capote' style of building up a great sense of action and then producing an anti-climax.

On the other hand with Flags of our Fathers we have an analeptic opening of a dream sequence. This is portrayed via a plethora of different methods; we have the muffled sounds of explosions and gunshots; a desolate wasteland and above all, a 'ghostly mask' over the picture, telling us the audience we don't know the full picture, and in a few minutes time will know that it's in fact a dream sequence.

Finally City Of God uses a series of shots that gradually pick up pace, becoming faster and faster. This is cleverly used to show the rapidly increasing fear of an insignificant character ; a chicken, while all the other chickens around him are being brutally slaughted. Eventually when the chicken escapes, we're treated to a series of long-shots, this is done to show us the whole surrounding area, and how people have become accustom to 'gun-totaling maniacs' carrying out this sort of behavior.