G321: Film Re-makes

Here is the final product of our three re-makes:

Vertigo:



We felt that re-making the opening of the film Vertigo was the most challenging of the three. It was hard to hold the camera steady, especially on the extreme close-ups. We first tried filming it using a real person but the focus of the camera often went blurry and it didn't give the desired effect. To overcome this we decided to draw a face and film this instead. We also handheld the camera to film this instead of using a tri-pod, by doing this we could zoom in and out much more freely. When editing it was tricky to organise the titles in time with the background music and the actual image. We kept watching the original opening to ensure we had the right timings for each frame. Overall, we are relatively pleased with the final product and it has helped us to realise that an opening doesn't need to be complicated and can just involve one character.

The Strangers:



Initially we assumed that this opening would be easiest of the three to edit as there are were no titles or complicated transitions. Due to the facilities that were available to us we decided to print the image of houses the film them on a wall. By doing this it saved us a lot of time and we could choose the houses that we wanted to use in order to create a similar look. In the end, when it came to the editing stage, we found that it was in fact quite difficult to arrange the clips and organise the fade-to-black transitions in between. In spite of our difficulties we are quite pleased the final outcome and have learnt a lot in doing it. We have come to find that voice over can be really effective in creating a certain mood for the text and we are considering looking into this for our own opening.


Juno:



Juno was by far the most difficult of the three to actually film due to the various shots and camera angles included. The setting was also hard for us to re-create so we had to work with what we had available. Mainly, we tried to get the positioning and movement of the character on screen similar to the original rather than focusing on the background setting etc. The location we shot in did not have a flat surface which made it difficult to get the dolly to run smoothly which hindered the overall quality of the film. The editing process for this opening took the longest out of three due to the many titles and transitions. Also, the editing programme we used didn't offer the exact same transitions so we found the closest possible and used this. The titling took a while to place in each frame correctly, however in completing the opening we have learnt a lot about importance of titles in an opening sequence.

Cath, Charley, Joanna