I still have not heard from Jersey Water Board re the La Frigete fountains, so today i e-mailed them asking if they knew anything about the part they were waiting for to come down, and when they think they will next be turned on. Hopefully, i will get an e-mail back soon so i can begin either rehearsing my dancers or looking for another place to film.

I phoned Jersey Tourism to find out what times the fountains i was planning to use turned on, the woman i spoke to told me that the last information they were given on them was that they were turned on from May through to September from 10am - 6pm. She then told me that it is the Jersey Waterboard Enterprise that deal with them, and gave me their number. I phoned them and the lady i spoke to there told me they are waiting on a part, so she took down my number and told me she would give me a ring when they know more.
This has given me a problem i didn't think i would get! I now need to re-think my fountain idea. I will wait until the lady i spoke to at the Waterboard to phone me back, and depending on what she says about when they will get the part in place, i will see if i need to re-think where to film.

Yesterday, i tried dancing in the sea to see how easy/difficult it would be and to uncover any problems that could occur. I soon realized just how difficult dancing in the sea actually is! Everything takes twice the effort and everything ends up in slow motion. This, potentially, could be a problem! 

I have not tried dancing in the fountains i have in mind yet as when i was there they were not turned on. I have danced in the rain before so i know there is no problems with that. 

I now need to find out when the fountains are turned on so i can dance in them and see how easy/difficult it is. I shouldn't think there would be any problems as its pretty much just like dancing in rain.

I have now decided final desicions about my film. I will do it on dance, and i think it will be hip hop/ street dancing. Since watching Step up 2 i loved the idea they used about filming in the rain. I will have to rehearse my dancers for a while and we will work together to come up with an effective routine. Then i will either have to wait untill it pours down with rain or i will do it in the sea/fountains, i haven't decided yet. We will have to practise in both the sea and the rain and decide which one looks more effective. We may find that dancing in the sea is much harder than it looks therefore we might have to change some of the movements to work for the dancers and keeping with the music.

This is an image from the film Step Up 2, i think its a good action shot. Beacuse it is raining the actors/dancers are getting drenched which makes their clothes tight and their hair wet, which is a convention of a dance video/film. This makes it more effective and exciting, especially for females! Also the audience can tell which style of dancing the film is about through the clothes they are wearing and where abouts they are. i.e. if they were in ballet shoes and in a dance studio, we get the impression they are doing ballet.



This image is from Save the last dance. I like it because it shows the dancer in a dance studio with what looks like could be her teacher. Which implies that she is trying to either learn how to dance that style of dancing or just learn how to dance. Because they are in a dance studio it puts the contrast between the hip hop style of dancing which she is learning and the more placed style of dancing, ballet.



This image is from the film Step Up. This image is good because if you didn't know what the film was about it is quite intriguing. They are photographed in what looks like a dance studio or a stage, which suggests during the film they do a performance together. But the male dancer is wearing the type of clothing a street dancer would wear and the female dancer is wearing a dress, as if to suggest she is a more contempory dancer, which is a contrast in itself as these two type of dancers would not usually go together.

Yesterday Charlotte and Me borrowed a camera from the media department and went around the school filming each other doing something i.e. walking from all different angles.
I filmed Charlotte walking out of the lift, i filmed her walking straight towards me to begin with, then i stood diagonally to the lift and filmed from the side walking out. Inside the lift on one side the wall is a mirror, so when i filmed her from the side i could see her in the mirror also, therefore it looked like there was two of her. This looked really effective. i then stood behind her and filmed her walking out from that postion. Then, i walked out with the camera recording so the audience would be seeing what she would be seeing. When we were happy that we had a few different angled shots we came back and downloaded it onto the Apple Mac's. We used a program called 'iMovie' to edit our short film. Mr Bonny gave us a quick demonstration of how to use this program so we could play around with it and become familier with it as this was the program we will be using when we come to edit our actual film introductions we will be making. Fortunatly, last year when i was at Les Quennevais School, I produced a short film for my GCSE ICT project using iMovie, so i was already familier with the program.
We 'cut' scenes down to the only bits we wanted and put in place another scence we thought would go well there instead. We used transitions inbetween the scences to make them flow smoothly and effectivly from one to another. Once we played around with our short film amd we were happy with it, we saved it and went outside again to film another. "Practice makes perfect"!!

This time Charlotte filmed me doing a 'split leap'. We did exactly the same as what we did when i was filming Charlotte and filmed from all differnt angls. Front, behind, side and this time underneath also. Once we were happy we had filmed from every angle we came back in and downloaded it onto the Apple Mac, used iMovie and edited it the same way we did our other footage. Once we were happy with it we saved it and watched it back.

Today i have researched various dancing films looking at reviews on them, seeing what the critics liked and disliked about the film. At home i watched a few film intros on Youtube and noting down more ideas.
Mr Bonny showed us a Youtube clip on movie making and the '180° rule'.

For the last two lessons i have watched a series of film introductions and noted down what i liked and disliked about them and what caught my eye. This was to give me some ideas about the things i would like to use in my film.

Stomp the Yard
Close ups of slow motion dancing
under shot angles
crews/groups
competition
bikes
crowd - cheering
street/hip hop dancing
dance off
back flips
rivelary

Step Up
Close ups of feet - ballet shoes to trainers
contrast between the two different styles of dancing - ballet and hip hop
the ballerinas do the same steps and the hip hop dancers but each in their different style
dance studio - street
shows the two different styles and how they warm up - stretching

Step Up 2
Voice over
street dancing in the street
audience/crowd
'The Streets'
talking about when she was younger - mum dying giving audience an insight to her history
public place - train - masks - hiding identity
recording the prank
running from police - shows whatever they are doing is illegal

Sace the last dance 2
Interview with the dancer
close up of point shoes then trainers
showing hip hop and ballet together - contrast
background - her as a baby, trying to dance
in front - her presently - ballet dancing and then hip hop
keeps cutting from her younger self then older self
as if she is talking straight to us/audience
telling her story - makes it feel personal

Shall we dance?
Trains - sky scrapers - city
voice over - telling his story
suit and breifcase - businesman - not a dancer
sophisticated - suggests sophisticated dancing i.e. ballroom
birthday wish - leaves audience thinking - mystery

By doing this research it has helped me think of lots of ideas i would like to include in my film introduction.

In my third lesson i decided to change my mind about producing a music magazine. I had done something similar to this in Year 11 and didn't really enjoy the process. So i decided to do the Introduction to a Film instead. I knew this would be more work and meant i would have to do most the filming outside of school and in my own time, but i was prepared to do this.
I now have to begin my research for my film project by watching a bunch of film introductions - all genres as i haven't decided on one yet - noting down different effects i see in each film, the way the directors capture the viewers eye, the music - fast, slow, creating suspense - and weather it is a fast pace creating a sense of confusion or a slow pace creating a relaxed feeling.
I understand that i will have to lend one of the school's cameras and tripods to do my filming, this will make it more difficult as i will have to be completely organized and confident where and what i will be filming and how long it will take.

In todays lesson i will begin looking at film introductions on the internet and taking notes on each one.

For the first few lessons we have been around the 'jcgmedia' website, becoming comfortable with it and knowing where our personal blogs are.
We got the given the choice by Mr Bonny to produce a 4 page magazine spread including a local band on the cover and inside a interview with the chosen band. If we chose not to do this we had the second choice to produce a film introduction in the genre of our choice.
I chose the magazine option and began my research. In lessons i looked through a few magazines and noted down pages i liked, the design on the page, what was on the page and certain images that caught my eye. This was to give me some ideas as to what i would potentially like to involve in my final piece. I did this for the first few lessons.