Last night I watched death at a funeral a 2007 British comedy film directed by Frank Oz. The story line focuses on a family attempting to resolve a variety of problems while attending the funeral of the patriarch. It is honestly my favourite film of all time! It is so funny, I've watched it 5 times now!



They recently made a 2010 American version of the film but it is no comparision to the 2007 one. I personally thought there was no point making an exact copy of the film especially considering it wasn't even as good.

My favourite character was Simon played by Alan Tudyk. He is such a funny actor. In the film, hoping to calm Simon's nerves his girlfriend gives him what she believes is Valium but actually is a designer hallucinogenic drug manufactured by her brother Troy.

Here are some of the momentsin the film that made us all laugh...







This one is quite discusting but I thought it was really funny!

So I've just come back from my four day drama trip which meant no internet access for 4 days not even on my phone as we were out in the sticks (method acting). So anyway now I'm back I have some catching up to do.

I have been working on my questionnare questions:

1. Gender?
2. How old are you?
3. What is your favourite movie genre?
4. What is the genre you dislike the most?
5. Why? (for question four)
6. Specify a little about your preferred genre? (eg Horror - Psychological horror, Comedy - Chick flick)
7. How important are the first ten minutes of a film to you?
8. What is your view on using a freeze frame in the genre you have picked?
9. Does the actor choice influence you when deciding whether or not to watch a movie?
10. Do you have a favourite actor/ actress? If so which film genre's do you like to see them in.
11. What is your favourite film? (from the genre that you picked as your favourite)
12. What is your least favourite? (also from that genre.)
13. Name three things that you would want to see in genre you have picked? (eg if a horror you may say blood)
14.Which age certificate is your most watched?
15.Why? (for question 14)

I have started to hand these out amoungst my family as I have loads of cousins of all different ages which is great as it is important that I get a variety of responses. I will also hand some out in school when I get back from the half term.

Recently me and Charlotte have been looking at production company names and after watching lots of different film openings we noticed that they all had an introductory clip that shows which company produced the movie. This makes the film look professional and so we would really like to do something similar, however in a simpler and more quirky style to suit our chickflick/comedy genre. Like my idea from before, Bumble Bee Productions, a similar style to Juno who were called Mr Mudd Productions. We were thinking of having a little animation of a bumble bee buzzing around the production name, which Charlotte's dad can help us make as he is a graphic designer.

Here are a few examples of film company openings...

Last night I watched East is East, one of my all time favourite films. East Is East is a 1999 British comedy-drama film, written by Ayub Khan-Din and directed by Damien O'Donnell. It is set in a British household of mixed-ethnicity, with a British Pakistani father and an English mother in Salford, Greater Manchester, in 1971. George Khan (played by Om Puri), the father, expects his family to follow his strict Pakistani ways, but his children who were born and have grown up in Britain increasingly see themselves as British and reject their father's rules on dress, food, religion, and living in general.



It's so funny had us all in stitches.

I noticed some interesting use of shots to add to the genre of comedy, for example the point of view shot when Saj is looking out from his hood which, he never takes off ("that bleedin parker"). They must have put a fluffy trimming around the camera to make it look as though the camera is Saj and is seeing what he see's. It stood out to me as it is the only point of view shot footage they used in the film, and I really liked it. Simple but funny.

The mise-en-scene used throughout the film shows the that they are in fact not a particularly well off family. For example the small tin tub they use a bath and the buckets they use as toilets. Also at one point the camera zooms in to a small plate of biscuits that the mother has put on the table, whilst calling her 5 adult children to come down for breakfast, again adding to to the comedy genre. There is great contrast shown between the two different cultures. The father George (who carries a strong Pakistani accent with a hint of Manchester) insists on buying his sons traditional Pakistani clothing, and when this side of the culture is shown there are lots of bright festive colours in their costume and traditional Pakistani music (non diegetic) played.

The parents both have a very strong vision of themselves. The father, George, wants his children to be accepted by the Muslim community and live by its rules and customs. Ella, has agreed to this on her marriage but is still herself a Catholic and has influenced her children with her ideas. In contrast to the Pakistani culture the British culture is also shown throughout the film. Ironically George owns a fish and chip shop called 'The English Chippy'. Perhaps you would expect him to own a Pakistani restaurant with his strong views and passion for his religion.

The certificate of the film is 15 and this is likely due to some nudity and mostly the strong language, mainly coming from the father George, "bastard bitch", "bloody fucking idiot" etc. However because the swearing is used all through the film it becomes part of their general use of language and so we get used to it. It's just funny and used in a light hearted way.

Last night I watched BBC Three's supernatural Being Human. Being Human is a British supernatural drama television series. It was created and written by Toby Whithouse and broadcast on BBC Three. It stars Aidan Turner as Mitchell, a vampire; Russell Tovey as George, a werewolf; and Lenora Crichlow as Annie, a ghost who are all trying to live a normal life. The first two series were set in in Totterdown, Bristol; during the show's third series, Sinead Keenan became part of the main cast, and the series relocated to Barry Island, Wales. The series is one of the most popular shows on BBC’s iPlayer.

Here is some behind the scenes's footage of last nights episode...

"McNair... you'll be needing this."
With these words the stake was passed over and the wheels of vengeance were set in motion. A fight to the death was on the cards and McNair was determined to deal the final blow.
On set the mood was charged with adrenaline. Dozens of actors, two camera crews and a vast abandoned swimming pool were combined to create one of the finest scenes in Being Human history. We got stuck in behind the scenes to see how it all happened, and somehow managed to avoid McNair's stake, Mitchell's fists and Annie's baseball bat in the process.
Episode four has passed and the truth about The Pack has been revealed. But already dark clouds are gathering and the return of Herrick is imminent...

With the clip above its amazing to see how much effort, time and money goes into one small scene in the episode. They obviously have to repeat the scene a number of times in order to get some really good shots. I love it! Its pretty much a combination of everything you want to see in a tv series. Its a mixture of genres including horror, comedy, thriller, romance etc, literally a bit of everything.

Here are some screenshots and google images from some of the episodes..

Obviously the makeup department must take a lot of time to create such intricate, realistic detail like in the photograph above. Much research must have gone into how a burnt, scarred, rotting corpse looks. It's also fasinating looking at how they make the characters slowly transform into warewolves and how the combination of graphics and stage make-up can produce a very scary, grusome yet successful look. 

The appearance of the famous star Lacey Turner attracted hundreds more viewers. I loved her cheekiness and her well, not so 'Stacey Slater' from eastenders attitude. She definately pulled off the character well, she is actually a very talented actress and didnt let the hight standards of Being Human down.

Here is the reply to our email that we sent to feeplaymusic.com

Here is what Charlotte said in response, and so now we just have to wait, but things do seem to be looking up! 



Today we looked at music ideas and discovered that the website we previously found called freeplaymusic.com does in fact use music that is not copyrighted.

We then sent an email to the owners of the site just to be a hundred percent sure that we can use this in our film opening. Here is a screenshot of the email we sent. (You can click on the images to enlarge them, and read the message that we sent)

 And then they replied with this..

Here's a video to show you some of what we did on our day of filming. It shows you how we managed to film certain parts of our footage, for example how we filmed with the skateboard, and also you'll see some of our thought process behind it all.



As for the teletubbie music (Joely's idea) well I wasn't planning on putting it all the way through but it went shockingly well with certain bits of the video and so I decided to leave it there just because it made us all laugh, and of course the sad violin music at the end, as an extra touch(Charlotte doesn't know about it yet!)

Anyway here's our running order which we followed throughout our filming to help our day run as smoothly as possible.

In today's lesson me and Charlotte had lots to catch up on as unfortunately I wasn't well and so couldn't come in on Friday. Charlotte kindly managed to write up a list of all the things we will need to re film..for the third time now. Its all the footage of me (Kate) in bed asleep and all of the Snorricam stuff, which was darkly lit.

We also began to discuss ideas for our production company name and the actual credits themselves. We decided to go on YouTube and look at some more examples of film openings for chick flick/comedy genres. We watched the opening of mean girls, Juno and Cloudy with a chance of meatballs.

We liked the quirky colourful font colours they used for the credits especially from Mean Girls (couldn't get it off YouTube due to it being copy righted) and decided that we really liked the idea. Although Juno and Cloudy with a Chance of meatballs mainly use animation we still got ideas for the orders in which we will display our credits. I made a list for the order in which Mean Girls display their credits so that we know the main ones we will need to include.

Here is the order from Mean Girls..

1. Production company (Paramount)

2. A...(someones name) production

3. Main actor (Lindsey Lohan)

4. The title (Mean Girls)

5. Actors names appeared on the screen whenever the character was shown (this continued for a while)

6. Casting by..

7. Based on the book..

8. Music supervisors..

9. Music conducted by..

10. Co producer..

11. Costume designer..

12. Editor..

13.Production designer..

14. Director of photography..

15. Executive producer..

16. Produced by..

17. Screen play by..

18. Directed by..(at this point the directors name was shown on a plain yellow door which allowed it to stand out from all the other credits, this was also used in Devil when the directors name was shown on the plain white floor in order for it to be seen clearly)

We found this really helpful as before we had no idea of the kind of credits we needed.

For our production company name we found that it can literally be called anything, like for example in Juno their company name is Mr Mudd productions. I suddenly had an idea for a name we could use 'bumble bee productions' and the idea of maybe using some kind of graphics to make an animated bee fly around either to spell out the company name or underline it. Charlotte's parents are graphic designers so she is going to ask them if its possible to help us create something like that.

Maybe something a little like this bumble bee..(ignore the fact its foreign)

Here is something that we roughly put together on Garage Band then edited on imovie in order to experiment with the kind of music that would suit our genre and go with the footage we have got. They two separate songs in which we have combined, however we will still continue searching around for un copyrighted music until we are 100% happy with our choice. This is a very brief example of what we are hoping for and we haven't made a decision on whether to have music at the beginning when Sam comes in to wake up Kate. We quite like the idea of the music starting just after Sam leaves and  Kate wakes up.