More research into the article

To help us understand the article better we needed to do some research into the beliefs of the people in the article.

Paganism is a word used to refer to various religions and religious beliefs from across the world. It is a term which, from a Western perspective, has modern connotations of spiritualist, animistic or shamanic practices or beliefs of any folk religion, and of historical and contemporary polytheistic religions in particular.

I found another article from The Guardian website that gives a good insight into what paganism involves. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/oct/30/religion.uk1

Test Photos

Light and dark experiments

I have done some test photographs to see how we will be able to create simular effects to the example photos below. To light the test photographs I used different lamps and torches to see what would work best. I found the best way to light the photographs was to use a spotlight lamp that you could bend so it shone where you wanted it to. I also found the photographs worked the best in rooms with dark coloured walls. This meant less light reflected and the parts of the photo i wanted to be in shadow were alot darker.

Photo

This was another photo I found on the picture this website that used light and dark really well.

Ideas

After reading the article we came up with a few ideas of how we could represent the article. I though we could focus on the fact that at spring equinox there was an equal amount of light and dark in the sky. I found some photos on the 'Picture This' website that used light and dark really effectively. They also gave the image of an equal amount of light and dark which would be a really good way to represent spring equinox.

Guardian Article - The druids celebrate the equinox

The article i found was about the different groups of people who went to celebrate the spring equinox at Stonehenge. The group is made up of all druids, witches and shamans and all the others who are proud to call themselves pagans. In the article they all wanted to show that even though they may have unusual beliefs they are still normal people. They want to show they are just ordinary people - lawyers, bankers, teachers, IT consultants - who believe in paganism.

The spring equinox is that moment in time (not a whole day) when the centre of the Sun can be observed to be directly above the Earth's equator, occurring around March 20. When this moment occurs there is an equal amount of light and dark.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/21/religion

Production

Extra equipment needed - Tape for camera

- Need something to mark the street so people know where to stop and start walking

-Photo of main character

-Torch for extra lighting

Music for film- I found out that Stewart Copeland produced the music for Rumblefish, so i searched on itunes and found several tracks from the film that i could download. I chose the track- Tusla Tango, i felt it matched my opening shot best.

Storyboard

The first storyboard I drew up was abit too long and the first section and end section didnt really match up very well. So I decided to leave out the first shots i had come up with and just keep the second section. For the establishing shot the camera is gojng to move infront of the characters as they walk. To acheive this i am going to use a skateboard to keep the camera as still as possible.

Ideas

I have decided to make a short that uses similar stylistic devices to rumblefish.
Stylistic features that i am going to use;
-Use a setting simular to the narrow dark streets used throughout the film.
-Create a eerie and lonely atmosphere but use upbeat drumming sound in bakcground.
-One of the characters thoughts will be used over the top of the natural sound.
-Use of one continuous long shot, moves along with action. Could be created with a skateboard or trolley.

Rumble fish - Initial thoughts

-I found the plot of the film abit weak, there wasnt alot of action and the story seemed to move quite slowly. The fight scene was quite disapponting, i think it was set up really well as they are walking to the fight, but then only two of the characters actually fight. No-one else gets involved.
-The style and mise en scene in the film made up massively for the plot. There are some really interesting shots used. For example the last shot where the camera moves along and sees all the other characters reactions to the death is really effective.
-The sound was a major aspect in the film. Throughout the film there was noises in scenes that obviously would not be there in real life. For example the noise of tap dripping is included in the background of several scenes.
-As the characters are walking to the fight scene with rusty, there are different noises that keep unsettling the characters, like the cat and train.
-When the motorcyle boy looks at a photograph of him and rusty when they are younger the natural noise disappears and you can hear the noises that the brother is remembering from his childhood.
-I also noticed that the music chose doesnt match the mood or atmosphere of the film. Often the mood is quite slow and dark, but upbeat music is used.
-I think Coppola uses an emphasis on sound to show how in life we can decide what we want to hear. We hear thousands of noises everyday but we naturally pick out what we want to listen to.