Split Screen

Being an avid fan of the 24 series i have seen a varity of shots to help further the greatness of a film. Throughout the 24 series they use many split screens, to show the story in many creative ways also fastening up the lengths of the sequence and shots.



After seeing this effect work many times on 24 i wanted to see if it works for our idea. The idea we have is to show our characters getting ready together in seperate bedrooms in seperate houses, we wanted to use this split screen to show their simularies and make the audience wonder and think as to why we putting the empathsis on them. This is a technique we hope and want to use within our film.

Lottery Themes

We had many ideas as a group as to what style of short film we wanted to create. After reasearching into Charlie Chaplin and silents films we settled on a theme of 'The Lottery'. Which then lead us to the short film called 'The Lottery'.

"The Lottery" is a short story by Shirley Jackson, first published on June 26, 1948, issue of The New Yorker. Written the same month it was published, it is ranked today as "one of the most famous short stories in the history of American literature".
The response to this story was mildly negative this suprised Jackson and the New Yorker, many of these responses lead to readers cancelling subscriptions to the newspaper.

The plot of the story contrasts details of contemporary small town American life with an annual ritual known as "the lottery". In a small village of about 300 residents, the locals are in a strange and nervous mood on 27 June. Children gather up stones as the adult townsfolk assemble for their annual event, that in the local tradition has been practiced to ensure a good harvest. In the first round of the lottery, the head of each family draws a small slip of paper; Bill Hutchinson gets the one slip with a black spot, meaning that his family has been chosen. In the next round, each Hutchinson family member draws a slip, and Bill's wife Tessie—who had arrived late—gets the marked slip. In keeping with tradition, which has been abandoned in at least some other neighboring communities, Tessie is then stoned to death by everyone present as a sacrifice, while Tessie bemoans the unfairness of the lottery.

This lead to the 2007 film 'The Lottery' this was a slight adaption to the origanal, keeping the main theme and story around the film however. This created a newer fresher look for the film, helping us see the difference and transformations between both the eras, looking for inpiration to help our film idea come along.

Filmmaking Techniques

Charlie Chaplin never spoke opening about his filmmaking techniques claiming this would be tantamount to a magician spoiling his own illusion. Chaplin never shot from a fully finished script until he began making spoken dialogue films with The Great Dictator in 1940. This made his filming and filmmaking unique, creating his own style and humour on the set, or during the post production phase. Chaplin's unique filmmaking techniques became known only after his death, when his rare surviving outtakes and cut sequences were carefully examined in the 1983 British documentary Unknown Chaplin.



Chaplin was an incredibly exacting director, showing his actors exactly how he wanted them to perform and shooting scores of takes until he had the shot he wanted. This is one reason why Chaplin took so much longer to complete his films than his rivals did, however this setback of taking longer to make the film became the BIGGEST advantage Chaplin had over his rivals. With his over exgaggerated directing helping the actors act more fluently and to the best of their ablities, shown in his amazing short and silent comedy films.

Modern Times

Another one of Charlie Chaplin's all time greats was Modern Times



This silent film uses music and its fast editing pace to create the humour and comedy throughtout the film. If listening to the music without watching the video you will create in your imagination that the film will be a fast edited pace. Then watching this film with the music you will see how it compliements the film perfectly, when the workers are working in the factory and one of the actors jumpers into the machine just as the music gets higher and faster.. This is then followed by a trademark Chaplin style of the title cards saying 'Is he crazy?' Then going through the machine fully to come out the other side, through all the clogs and grinds the music changes to a simlaur theme to fairytale music.



This is one of the films most famous scenes, where everyone recongises the film


The film just like 'City Lights' had a high review on IMDB with 8.5 out of 10 rating!
With the box office fiqures looking like this

Budget:
$1,500,000 (estimated)
Gross:
$163,245 (USA) (24 October 2004)

City Lights

One of Charlie Chaplin's most famous film is 'City Lights'..






In “City Lights,” the Little Tramp falls in love with a blind flower salesgirl who believes him to be a rich man. Desperate to maintain the illusion, he attempts to obtain enough money to pay for an expensive operation that can restore her eyesight. Its ending is often considered to be the greatest in film history. He successfully affords the operation fees for his love, and the end is show as them exchanging words (through the black and white title cards) With the woman falling in love with the main male character.

City Lights recieved a vote of 8.6 out of 10 on IMDB.

Box Office
Budget:
$1,500,000 (estimated)
Gross:
$19,181 (USA) as of 6 July 2007

Charlie Chaplin

For our A2 task we needed to create a silent film after being given our briefing. The idea of a silent film is to have a film without any scripted dialoge. Many people assocaite silent films with the muted handed guestures and the black and white title cards. However this is not only the case.

With us deciding to move down the comedy silent film track we needed to research into specialist comedy silent film directors, such as Charlie Chaplin!



Charlie Chaplin was an English comic actor and film director of the silent film era. He became one of the best-known film stars in the world before the end of the First World War. His most famous role was that of The Tramp, which he first played in the Keystone comedy Kid Auto Races at Venice in 1914. Chaplin was one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era. He was influenced by his predecessor, the French silent movie comedian Max Linder, to who he dedicated one of his films to. His working life in entertainment spanned over 75 making him one of the all time greats in the film industry.

Charlie Chaplin has recieved 3 Academy Awards in his lifetime: one for Best Original Score, and two Honorary Awards.
City Lights and Modern Times, considered by several polls to be two of the greatest of all motion pictures..

Film Poster 2