Workshop 2: 180-degree rule

180-degree rule or “crossing the line”

• Used by filmmakers to treasure the audience members that they know where every character is and where all the actions are happening in the scene
• Helps the audience to know which of the characters is speaking (if the characters look the same) and when and why
• For the first times, to help you can put something in between the characters (toys)
• The easiest way to do so is to figure out which way is character is looking and to keep them facing that way throughout the rest of the scene

In order to learn better the technique, I decided to do it myself. Here are a few examples of it. I put a pencil in between toys (characters) in order to have a better idea of where about 180-degree should be.




That is an example of a wide-angle using a 180-degree rule.

 
                                                                                   
 

That is an example of a Close Up using a 180-degree rule

    




And finally, that is an Over Shoulder using a 180-degree rule.

Independent research on Saul Bass.

 Saul Bass was born in 1920 and was originally from New York, he then moved to Los Angeles where. worked as a freelance designer and commercial adviser. He was also working for Warner Bros Studios, he created the logo of it.  

His first job was with Otto Preminger, he designed a film post for the movie called “Carmen Jones”






One of his other famous posters is the poster for the movie “Psycho” directed by Alfred Hitchcock, “Vertigo" and many other famous films





All of the posters were minimalistic and colorful to create emphasis.







Saul's main target was to bring life to graphics through making titled sequences for the films. It is also a well-known fact that

Saul revolutionized titled sequences with his typography and interactive design, before Saul all of the title sequences were boring and the time when they were shown was considered as a time for the popcorn and the toilet.








Saul also directed a documentary film called “Why man creates” in 1968 and it won an Academy Award for the Best Short Documentary.







He also created long-lasting cooperative logos for companies: such as Kleenex, AT&T, Quaker, and many more

All the information provided above I took from Wikipedia and the YouTube videos, you can find one of the embedded videos that I have used for my research below.

In order to know his work better, I decided to analyze one of the opening titled sequences done by Saul Bass. 

I chose to do the opening of the 'Not with my wife, You don't!' (1967), directed by Norman Panama and distributed by Warner Bros.   

       

In this opening sequence, there is a mixture of just titles on the black background, minimalistic cartoon, and even some small camera shots. 

All of the titles in this films were colorful, minimalistic, and were coming up in the different parts of the screen 

All of these factors can suggest that the film is going to be a comedy genre.

The other thing that adds to the titles and gives a hint on the genre is the soundtrack. The soundtrack that was used for the title sequence was energetic, funny.

                                                                                                            Continuing with the cartoon.

It was fairly minimalistic, there was only one character -- dinosaur, which represented the main character of the film. 

Feedback from a group pitch.

 When my group and I pitched our idea there were a few notes from our teachers on the idea, that we had to expand on. The first one is the fact that the main girl character has to have a target, why she would like to purposely kill somebody, especially in the lift. The second thing that our teachers drew our attention to is the fact that what kind of narrative of the story is going to be. Is she going to kill only him throughout the film? Is she going to be a type of killer that kills everyone or only men? All of that we had to discuss in between ourselves, in order to have more complete idea, in order for us then to be able to start thinking about other things such as planning. Apart from feedback from our teachers we discussed our idea in the group, so we had feedbacks from every members of the group. From that talk we agreed on the feedback that was given to us from teachers and we also talked a little more about whether the two characters  from the opening are going to be students, business workers or just a regular people. We agreed that it is going to be university students, because that would make a perfect sense of why woman would know her victim but he wouldn’t and why she would like to kill him.

Group pitch

 This is the presentation that I did with my production group (Adrianna, Tegan, and myself). 

Workshop 1: camera composition

 

Rule of thirds:

• chops the screen in 3 horizontal and vertical areas
• puts shot in a balanced position
• where the lines cross, it is the area where to put the main subject of interest.
• Changing the camera height to the same as the subjects makes the shot more interesting, better.

As an example of all of the composition rules, I took a photo of this cactus.

In this picture, I tried to put it in the top left corner.

Lighting:   

• if there are some lights on and some lights off it make the shot more interesting to watch 

 In this picture I left the cactus on the same part of the rule of thirds grid, however, I have changed the lighting, on the blue. I did so by putting a blue screen on my laptop, switching off the light in the room, and putting the brightness of the laptop all the way up.

Foreground and background:

The main thing that it does, it makes the shot more interesting to watch. 

In this picture, I left everything the way it was in the previous picture, but now the cactus is a little bit more in front of the wall, which makes the picture look less boring and the wall more dynamic in a way.

Independent research.

 I have decided to do my independent research on how to make realistic-looking wounds at home with the easily available tools.  My group and I decided that we need to know how to do so because in your opening titled sequence idea there will be killing off one of the characters, so at least one of the members of our group has to know how to do a realistically looking wounds.

However, I decided to put my main focus on gunshot wounds, because we will need that type of wound in our opening title sequence. 

So, I decided to focus on that type of wound.     

To learn more about the process of doing so at home I have watched several videos. 

However, most of them include wax but due to the Covid I don't have the opportunity to buy it and it is not something that you can find in an ordinary house. 

So when I did the research I have decided to combine the following two videos to be able to produce a realistically looking wound but with the tools that you can easily find at home. 

  So this video is about how to make wounds at home but the blood for me looks very unnatural, so for the blood, I used the other video. 

In this video, an artist actually. makes that type of wound that I'm doing the research on.

The first step is to clean a part of the body that you are going to do it on with an alcohol wipe. 

Then you have to place small cotton and glue it with PVA glue.

Then it is important to let it dry, you can also do it by blowdrying it.  

The next stage is to put on some makeup foundation to hide the cotton pad, so the wound would look more realistic.

The last step is to use some fake blood to make the wound look like wood, not like some weird hole in your forehead.

My production group.

 My production group differs from other groups in my class. Due to the number of students in my class, we had to have three groups of three people and one group of four. My group consists of four people. 

We are coping quite well together. Over the four days, we had two group calls without our teacher, we also made a group chat on social media called Snapchat.

We chose this social media because everyone in our group has it and it is familiar to everyone in our group.

Feedback from my group on my ideas.

 I pitched my first idea, about a ballet dancer. 

My group said that the layout of my idea was clear and well presented. Pictures throughout the post helped them to see the idea of the image I would like to have on the audience's screen. Talking about the idea on its own my group liked the idea of dehumanizing the main character -- explaining this by the fact that the audience member will be interested throughout the film.

As well as good feedback on my idea, I had some things to consider. For example, the fact that due to the big amount of make-up needed in this opening, our production group has to be spot-on on dong nice quality make-up.

 

The other tricky thing to consider is to find a good actress, that can dance ballet as well as requires for the idea.

My opening sequence has also to have a clearer connection between the ballerina and the serial killer. In order to do so, my teacher had recommended me to do five to six shots that would consist of one of the only ballerina and one only of the serial killer. That would help the audience understand that these two characters have a connection with each other. So I could add some scenes where the ballerina puts her shoes on and straight after the shot where the serial killer cuts open the same shoes, that would definitely show the clearer connection.

The other thing that my teacher mentioned is that my idea is fairly similar to last year's idea. It was also about those ballerinas and the violence towards them but it was about different ways of violence and it also was not made the same way I would like to do my idea.

Here is that opening sequence:

It called Kalender Prince.

Talking about my opinion, I would add something that would keep the audience motivated to watch the rest of the film. For example, I would add the second dancer, who would maybe have fewer or more wounds, so that audience would ask itself a question why is it that way? Why it is not the other way?

Idea for opening title sequence 3

 The genre of this idea will be science fiction/action.

It all will start with two people in lab coats who would mix some solutions until they get a bright blue color. The audience will only be able to see their hands until the shoulders, face won’t be shown until the end of the sequence.  

Then, after lab technicians get the solution needed (a liquid that is bright blue color) they would give it to a person. 

The person at that time is sitting on the chair in the corner, with eyes closed, hands on the lap, as if he is a robot. 

After pouring liquid in that person, the audience can now get the idea of that being not a person, but a robot. The audience starts to see how the robot is slowly starting to wake up, how it is starting to move. All of this is slowly shown and there is music that goes within.

Then one of the workers takes out a knife and starts to behave aggressively towards another worker, the music becomes denser and louder. Suddenly robot comes to the worker that is without a knife and starts to fight with the other one. Now the robot killed the worker with a knife. 

 

Then we get a small dialogue between a worker and robot where the worker is telling the robot what is his main target. From that dialogue, the audience can understand that robot was made in order to do something but what? and why? 

 

A robot will look as I mentioned earlier like a human being. However, it will have very bright blue eyes(not natural blue). Other than that he will not have any difference from any human being, even his voice is going to be normal, not electrical. 

The rest of the film is going to be about this robot, why it was made. That actually there is a war going on and robots are being developed by the Royal Navy in order to fight the war. So, actually, this film will include a variety of different genres, however, the main ones will be science fiction and partly action.

Idea for opening title sequence 2

 this idea is a thriller/mystery genre. 

In this opening scene, there is going to be one main character and two locations. 

The narrative of the opening title sequence is going to be that: there is a young, middle-aged woman, who is running away from somebody in the middle of the forest. 

She can hear that somebody is whispering to her stuff that she doesn't want to her, whereas in fact there is no one anywhere near her.  

So, the audience sees the woman who is scared and who is running away from something/somebody, audience also gets the idea that the voice is in the women's head.

A woman also has dark circles and both hands are bandaged, so that shows that she might have escaped from somewhere, where she was forced to stay.

suddenly, the voice becomes louder and more real, the woman now starts to hear steps as well. Now the audience sees that there is a man behind a woman who is trying to reach a woman, we also see that the man is holding a gun.

because a woman wears light, almost white clothes and blonde hair, and the man is wearing dark/black clothes and dark hair audience will get the impression that the woman is the good one and the man is the bad one. 

 

After that woman trips over a stone and there is a black screen. Then an audience gets a feeling of the next day and from the woman's perspective audience gets an impression of hospital facilities.  The woman starts to try to get out of the bed but she can't, so she starts to cry.

And that is the end of the opening title sequence.

the rest of the film is going to be about how the woman is trying to escape from that place. The film also will explain. to the audience why she is here and why her. She will find out that some scientists are testing o her some new medicine and that she is the chosen one because she has superpowers but no one knew about it apart from her mother who died when she was 10 years old.

Idea for opening title sequence 1.

 The genre is going to be thriller/criminal.

The main focus of the camera will be on a ballerina but only on certain parts of her body. An audience member will not have a chance to see her face during the opening title sequence. This will be done to bring up more hype around the main character. 

So, as I said above the sequence will be about somebody who kills young and beautiful ballerinas. The audience will get the filling of a serial killer by the amount of blood in the opening scene. 

It will all start with ballerina's feet: it will take the whole screen; there will be feet full of blood, wounds, scars.

It would be very good to also show how the blood is coming out from wounds.

Then, the next thing that is going to be shown is the way the ballerina wears the pointe shoes, the way she tightens them, so the blood is coming out. 

Then we get a scene, where we can see all ballerina's body from her fingers up until her feet. So, the audience sees the entire body but not the face. We also get the idea of a very slim body.

We get that all body is shaking, so that shows that she is definitely not dancing for the first few hours that day.

All the scene with a ballerina finishes on the part when we get the scene, where we can see that all the tights, pointe shoes, and feet are in the blood. 

The next one who is going to be introduced is the main villain. It is going to be a middle-aged man, the audience will get so by his hands. 

He will be ripping and cutting leotards, ballet skirts, and pointe shoes. The audience will only see his hands, nothing more.

This will show to members of the audience that the man is focused on ballet dancers, especially female ones. 

There are also going to be a few little details that will show that he is a bad one is the audience will also see him cleaning a knife from blood and him honing the knife.

Part with a serial killer will be on the dark brown wooden table, man will have very dry hands, so that proves that he is older than the ballerina.

The scene with a ballerina will be set on the dark stage, where warm white light will come on her. She will be in all white, to show that she is the victim(and that she is good). 

The rest of the plot will be about who is the killer, why he is killing only ballerinas, why not everyone else. The audience will find out that the actual man used to be a ballet dancer but his parents were against it as a career, so now he is killing those who are very talented. There is going to be a lot of questions that the audience will be left with and they will never be answered.