Game of Thrones Extract Practice Essay

In this extract, I believe that the author's vision was for Lord Stannis and Sir Davos to be the underdogs and have a 'Never-say-never' spirit. The one boat filled with ragged men entering the city looks little compared to the big city that is shown. Throughout the extract, many, obvious, aspects lay out the idea that Lord Stannis needs the help of the Iron Bank and is in a not so lovely position. It is the not so obvious aspects of the extract that makes this into an underdog like theme.
When they are first introduced into the scene there are many aerial shots happening. These aerial shots made them and their ship look inferior in comparison to the city they were going into. That scene was full of ambient sounds and everyone seemed so busy and hectic, it seemed to have no structure. The massive Spartan statue and seemingly calm, beautiful city that is seen when the aerial shot happens further enforces that idea of them being two completely different environments. They have no power when compared to the city they are entering. After that, the setting changes to an empty hall with very dim lighting. This scene is also where the dialogue starts.
Dialogue is a way that the director can get their point of the scene across. This is one of the obvious aspects that I mentioned before. While the dialogue helps give the audience more context on what is happening it does not show the 'Never say never' attitude that the characters have explicitly. The first thing that is obvious about this new scene is dim lighting. I noticed that the places in which the lighting was especially dim, that character seemed to lack confidence or power in the situation. Sir Davos is barely seen when he is first introduced while Lord Stannis' face is seen clearly even though he is right next to him. This shows the importance of each character at the moment to the audience.
After a little bit of dialogue, three men walk into the scene. Unlike Lord Stannis and Sir Davos, their movements were followed, their footsteps were heard. This shows that they have some level of importance which requires them to receive that much attention in comparison to Stannis and Davos. Before those men walked into the scene there were many wide shots which made them seem smaller than they are, somewhat similar to the aerial shots from before. When they arrived suddenly the wide shots turned into mid shots and close-ups. These are the subtle details that show the power structure in the room. When they arrived suddenly both Stannis and Davos were nearly impossible to see because of the dim lighting while the three men of the Iron Bank were clearly seen.
As the scene continued with more dialogue you begin to notice the constant changes in camera position. You notice that there is a slight difference in the height of the people. The three men sitting in the throne-like chairs are, ever so slightly, looking down on Stannis and Davos, while it may not be drastic you can tell that this plays a major role in them maintaining their power. They seem more condescending to Sir Davos when he is sitting down under their gaze in comparison to when Davos approached them confidently while standing. At first, I thought that I was only looking into it too hard until I noticed something. When placed at a higher angle, that actor specifically was clearer to see. It could simply "just be the lighting from the windows" but it seemed more deliberate.
This theory was finally confirmed in the last part of the extract when Sir Davos started fighting back. When he stood up he suddenly was clear as day. He is in relatively the same place as when the scene started but the sudden confidence and 'shift in power' caused the director to have more light shined on him. The Iron Bank men who did not move at all since the extract started seemed to get darker, meaning that they were losing the power that they had before in this situation. If that was not proof enough for me, when the action match happened at the end, the first time it has happened for Sir Davos since the three Iron Bank men walked in, Lord Stannis, who was in front of a window, still did not have the same light on him as Sir Davos did.
The director's vision for these scenes was done in a way that was almost unnoticeable. They used subtle techniques to establish the power structure that was happening in that empty hall. It was not only the dialogue or the use of the throne-like chairs that established who had the most power. It was the use of the subtle high angles and the very precise lighting that would also let the audience know the constant changing of power that was happening within that scene. If I only looked at the dialogue and props used in this scene, I would not have been able to see the very present theme of 'Never say never.' Even when under the condescending eyes of the Iron Bank, who kept denying them, Sir Davos never succumbed to their power, he never gave up.

A Night OutCCR

This is the Creative Critical Reflection of my movie opening A Night Out.

A Night Out (Movie Opening)

This is the movie opening that my partner and I put together. The name of this movie is A Night Out. The genre of this film is Thriller. We took advantage of the ambient sounds that we had and interchanged it with the soundtrack that we used. In comparison to our commercial, this film included dialogue and handheld shots that gave the film more variety. 

Starbucks Commercial

This is the first commercial that my partner and I filmed. We filmed the voiceover from the computer speaker, that is why it is so scratchy. The voice-over will have a description of the tea and talk about the details, like the size and affordability. I play the actor in this commercial. 

Social Distancing = No Filming :(

We have been advised to participate in social distancing. Because of the coronavirus, it is unwise to leave your house unless you’re going to essential locations. My partner and I only had one little scene that we wanted to reshoot but unfortunately, we haven’t been able to. in this case we didn’t really know what to do. Because the coronavirus is affecting the whole world I wasn’t even sure if my project would even be accepted. luckily our whole movie is done, albeit not to our standards. We had some scenes we wanted to reshoot because it caused a bit of confusion when we showed it to others. Since we can’t do that, it’s best that we have a coherent movie at the moment. I edited the whole movie together so my partner is in charge of making the titles and inserting them. My partner went over what I edited together and asked for changes and at the moment I am waiting for the titles to be done.  After it’s done I can review it and make the final touches. By the time the final product comes out, the movie would have been reviewed three to four times by different people. In the meantime, I started on my CCR. I started by revisiting my previous projects, the commercial and music video. I looked at the CCR’s of those and searched for differences and similarities between what I did then and now. That helped refresh my memory and made it easier to write my CCR. Even though our Cambridge tests have been canceled it’s best to continue putting out work. I wouldn’t want all my hard work to go to waste. I’ve improved a lot when it came to editing my work so I would like to have it shown. While my teachers are not completely sure about what the end result of this will be I am going to continue working towards the original end goal to make this whole year worth it. 

Music = MANY Problems

For our film, having a song integrated into your opening sequence was mandatory. A couple of problems came with that though. Many songs that could be found on YouTube or that my partner and I were familiar with all were copyrighted. Copyright is the exclusive legal right, given to an originator or an assignee to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material, and to authorize others to do the same. This meant that we had to find a song to use that went with our genre. There were two ways that we could’ve gone about this: we could’ve contacted an artist that we knew and ask permission to use their music in our film or get royalty-free music. I preferred the latter. Since I did most of the editing I had to look for the music. The first thing I did was go on YouTube and try to find some royalty-free music that would go with our film. When I first started this we had not filmed yet. This made it harder to find a song that was not only royalty-free but would go with the scenes that were taking place. After searching for some time, I found a song called tense suspense alternative mix on Spotify. I found it on a playlist that solely had copyright free music. To double-check, I went through the description and even emailed the owner of that playlist to make sure that the song was royalty-free. After getting a confirmation I planned on putting it into the film after we edited. When it came time to insert it into the film I ran into some problems. The main problem was that I was unable to get the track from Spotify and into the film. While editing I found that I have very little patience and absolutely no idea how to get the intended track into the film therefore, I decided to find another song. In turn, I went right back to YouTube and look up more royalty-free music. I ended up finding a website named FesliyanStudios.com which, allowed me to download any track that I wanted from the website. The website made it very clear that it was safe and okay to use the music in my film, seeing as it’s not an ad or anything to gain money. I then downloaded the track dark fog onto my computer and then transferred it into my phone, where I was editing the film.  I decided to play the track throughout the whole film; for scenes where I wanted it to be more prominent, I lowered the ambient sounds of that scene. If I didn’t want it to be heard at all I would just cut the sound out for that specific section of the film. While the journey to getting the track was tedious, it was very easy to incorporate it into my film. 

Missing Actor

This weekend we managed to film more clips to improve the quality of the original film. The first problem that we ran into was that Michelle was going out of town. My partner and I both work so this was the only time we could’ve filmed. So we ended up filming at my partner's pool. Instead of it being at Michelle apartment complex with two floors and a more open layout, it was at my partner's house. We knew that our film couldn’t be very different from our original script so we improvised a lot to make everything fit. the original plan was to just have Michelle and Naelys act while my partner and I solely film and direct. That wasn’t the case though. When we found out that Michelle was not going to be available we immediately started scouting different actors but none of them were available. In that case, I ended up playing Michelle and my partner played Jackie. Since we weren’t fully prepared to be playing these roles we weren’t equipped with different clothes to switch into. This created some difficulties when filming. We’d have to be positioned in uncomfortable ways to avoid catching noticeable features. Seeing that it was only three of us and I had majorly worked on the visual aspects of the movie it was a bit aggravating to not have things come out the way I wanted it. Not to mention, we had to film on our phones because of our missing actor. While we could’ve still filmed with the tripod and camera it would’ve taken entirely too much time to do so. We were filming at night so the time period we had to film was very little. As much as I wanted to get everything right that night it was nearly impossible to do. We are planning on filming the car scene one more time because it was quite confusing because you could see that I was playing the mother even though I was playing Michelle originally. If we get lucky, we can get Michelle to come film with us and it might come out better.