BBFC

The British board of film classification (BBFC) is an organisation in charge of rating films and deciding on the film certificate e.g. U, PG, 12. In one of our lessons we watched some short sequences from several children's films and were asked to rate them ourselves. we looked at the specifications on the BBFC website (http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/) and used them to help us. The first sequence we watched was from harry potter and the chamber of secrets. although it didn't contain any bad language or visible violence we rated this film as a PG. We did this due to the horror theme as we thought it might frighten younger viewers. sequence 2 was from Up. we decided to rate this film U as it didn't have anything that might be considered unsuitable for young children. the only thing that was noticeable was a small bit of slapstick violence but as this was not visible we thought it bad. Finally, sequence 3 was from watership down. this sequence shocked the whole class as there was a strong theme of violence, including blood when witnessing rabbits tear each other apart. we felt this film should have been at least a 12 but we were shocked to find it was a U.

The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) is  a group of people that are responsible for certificating movies.
The are in charge of saying whether a film is a PG or a 18 and so on. One of our lessons we had to analyze several sequences from different film including Up, Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets and Watership Down. We then had to decide if they were PG or U, as they were all children films. There was only one U out of the several sequences which was Up. Up was certified a U because of the of slapstick that was fortunately censored if it was shown to a younger audience. The other sequences were certified as a PG. We know that Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets was a PG because it contained hardly any violence, cursing, discrimination or unappropriated images.  There was a sequence from "Watership Down" Everyone was shocked at how much blood and violence it had during the sequence, when it is after all a childrens film. The British Board of Film Classification rated Watership Down a  PG which is making everyone think it should really be rated "12" considering the content it contains, even though it wasn't made recently like the others were.

Making of Pete (Pre-Production)

Cat Took the Photos

 The Making of Pete

 Typing on blog

 Making Pete's face

 Structering his head

Pete mark 1.

Stuart Little inspiration

For homework, we were given the task of choosing a movie that gave us inspiration for our opening squence. It was fairly obvious which film I was going to pick as it had a very similar storyline to ours, Pete's Struggle. Pete's Struggle is about a small clay figure that was adopted as a baby by humans. So what better movie to pick for inspiration than Stuart Little? Although, Stuart Little was treated as part of the family, Pete is not however. Fortunately, he makes a friend near the end of the sequence where it all, hopefully, ends well. Stuart Little opens with the parents and their son on the day of the adoption. George (the son) says he wants to stay but unfortunately has to go to school. So the parents stay and adopt when they see Stuart. The atomosphere is very warm and welcoming and the music in the background has a very homely feel to it. In Pete's Struggle we decided to go for a more sympathetic opening to really draw the audience in. However, this can be quite tricky as we do not want to put off the viewers by making the opening too saddening.

BBFC

BBFC stands for British Board of Film Classification, a group of people that specializes in certificating movies, for example, PG, U, 12 etc. In one of our lesson, we were to analyze short sequences from different films and decided whether they were PG or U (they were all childrens film). Most of them were PG, containly hardly, if not no violence at all, cursing, discrimination or "disturbing" images. One of them was a U, which was fairly amusing as there was a hint of slapstick that was fortunately censored if it was shown to a younger audience. However, when we watched a squence from "Watership Down", I was taken by surprise from the amount of blood and violence it had in it despite being a childrens film. It was certificated a PG which is ridiculous with the amount of "12" content in it. It was made a fairly long time ago however, so certificating then mustn't have been as solid as it is now.

Back to the Future storyboarding

One of our class activities was to storyboard the movie, "Back to the Future" ourselves, remaking it on a sheet of paper with boxes on it symbolising the different types of shots that the movie had contained. Our group decided that the boxes were far too limiting when it came to directing the scenes and it gave us trouble as we couldn't find a way to fully explain how the scenes were portrayed. With this in mind, we completely went out of the boxes, with arrows, annotations and titles filling the sheet. Indicating camera movement was much more easier and more understandable as it was not shrunk down into the tiny boxes. As a member of our group pointed out, we would not be able to fit all the details in one shot into the same box, so we had to split it up into two, if not three seperate boxes showing different points of views of the scene. This was crucial and it taught us that no matter how much detail we would try and fit in, it just wouldn't be enough. What I learnt from the activity was that even though the whole page was covered in our writing, it was somewhat difficult to read. From this, I know that next time when we storyboard, we should have it a bit more simpler to understand but have enough detail.

Stuart Little 2

Stuart Little 2

There are many different types of techniques used in this opening sequence. Right at the start the titles are being shown on a background of establishing shots of New York City, this shows the audience that it will be set in New York. It shows a happy family, which hopefully children can relate to, with their parents being happy. It then shows George, who doesn’t want to get up, this relates to children in the audience, shows the audience can feel in the shoes of the character. The mouse, Stuart, is dressed in human pyjamas to make him look like a member of the family, so he gets treated the same as a normal child.

This gives us inspiration for our film, as our film is about a family with a child that isn’t human, but he isn’t as involved in family life as Stuart is.