Josef Fritzl Research

As we had decided to make a film on a specific case, we had to research further on what actually happened to know what we could use in our film opening. We did this by all three of us logging onto a computer and researching what he was really like and the actual events which lead to the capture of Elisabeth. We watched documentaries of what happened and read reports which described the poor conditions which Elisabeth was kept for so long.

(This documentary has other parts which carries on)
This is The Documentary which we watched. It explains in detail about how Josef fritzl got away with the hostage for 24 years, it also shows a 3d remake of the eight passages and doors to get to where Elisabeth and her children were kept.


On Wikipedia, we found a timeline which best describes the sequences of events:

1977	Fritzl begins sexually abusing his 11-year-old daughter, Elisabeth.
1981 to 1982	Fritzl begins to turn the hidden cellar into a prison cell.
August 29, 1984	Fritzl lures Elisabeth, now 18 years old, into the basement and imprisons her.
November 1986	Elisabeth has a miscarriage in the 10th week of pregnancy.
1989	The first child, Kerstin, is born, and lives in the cellar until 2008.
1990	Stefan is born. He, too, stays in the cellar until 2008.
1992	Lisa is born. In May 1993, when she is nine months old, she is discovered outside the family home in a cardboard box, allegedly left there by Elisabeth, along with a note asking for the child to be looked after.
February 1994	The fourth child, Monika, is born.
1994	Fritzl enlarges the prison for Elisabeth and her children from 35 m² (380 sq ft) to 55 m² (600 sq ft).
December 1994	Ten-month-old Monika is found in a stroller outside the entrance of the house. Shortly afterwards, a phone call is made to Rosemarie, apparently, from Elisabeth. The caller asks Rosemarie to take care of the child. However, it is assumed that Fritzl was able to use a recording of Elisabeth's voice to make the call. Rosemarie reported the incident to the police, expressing her astonishment that Elisabeth knew their new and unlisted phone number.
May 1996	Elisabeth gives birth to twin boys. One dies after three days; Fritzl removes his body from the cellar and cremates it. The surviving twin, Alexander, is taken upstairs when he is 15 months old. He is "discovered" in circumstances similar to those of his two sisters.
December 2002	Felix is born. According to a statement by Fritzl, he kept Felix in the cellar, together with Elisabeth and her two eldest children, because his wife was not able to look after another child.
April 19, 2008	Fritzl arranges for the critically ill 19-year-old Kerstin to be taken to a local hospital.
April 26, 2008	During the evening, Fritzl releases Elisabeth from the cellar along with her sons Stefan and Felix, bringing them upstairs, informing his wife that Elisabeth had decided to come home after a 24-year absence. Later that evening, after an anonymous tipoff during a visit to the hospital, Fritzl and Elisabeth are taken into police custody where she reveals her decades-long imprisonment during questioning.
March 14, 2009	After a 4 day trial in the town of St. Pölten, Fritzl pleads guilty to the charges of the murder by negligence of his infant son/grandson, Michael, as well as the enslavement,incest, rape, coercion and false imprisonment of his daughter, Elisabeth, and is sentenced to life imprisonment.

From all the research we did, we decided that Josef Fritzl was definitely the case we would like to base our film opening on. Once we had carried out the research, we felt much more confident about getting it right, and choosing the right themes throughout the opening!

Initial thoughts and feelings about The Opening Sequence

In this post, i'm going to describe our thoughts and feelings about each brief and explain why we picked the brief we did, and our first inspirations about carrying out the brief. 

We recently found out the choices of briefs we have to choose from. The 4 briefs have all been to challenge us and to take us out of our comfort zone. The Briefs are:

Film Brief 1

'A mainstream action film that will appeal to 15-25yr old males Your film should appear to be based on a "fictional" comic book.'

Our thoughts on this brief:

The initial reaction to reading this brief is that it would be quite fun to produce, and would challenge our skills, however it is a film appealing to 15-25yr old males, which we agreed that none of our group have much interest in.

Film Brief 2'A supernatural thriller that will appeal to female audiences Your film should appear to be an international co-production.'

Our thoughts on this brief:

Initially, this is the brief that stood out to us the most seeing as all of our group were into horror films. This was a good option for us to do, and we were considering this one as our chosen brief.

Film Brief 3'An independent movie featuring a young protagonist Your film should appear to be financed through regional funding.'

Our thoughts on this brief:

At first, this brief also sounded quite  interesting, and we definitely had a lot of choice of actors/actresses with us being at a school, but we weren't too sure about many ideas for this one, so we left it as a possibility.

Film Brief 4
'An art house feature to appeal to adult audiences Your film should appear to be based on an actual event in the last 2 years.'

  

Our thoughts on this brief:

Our thoughts for this brief were overlooked at first for this brief as its not an obvious choice. Although, when we started researching the brief, we found that it could be a really effective opening sequence because there has been so many interesting events within the last two years.

The Decision
After some considering and research into each brief, we decided we would expand upon film brief 4. Our reasons for choosing this one is because we all seem to have good ideas about how we could carry out the film opening and also what event to do. 

The first thing we decided to do was to brainstorm events from the last two years. We had some ideas straight away, and we also searched on the internet some events. This is the list of events we came up with:

·         Swine flu

·         Haiti

·         Deaths in fordingbridge

·         Raoul Moat case

·         Josef Fritzl

When we had thought of Josef Fritzl case, we decided that this would be a really interesting film to make. We decided to research more into the case and what happened. When we started reading about the case, we were really interested in it because it was such a terrible thing.

As we researched more into Josef Fritzl and what happened, we started to think of Film names. if we thought of a name, we would write it down on a list. This is the list so far!

The Names for the film ideas:

Beneath

The unknown

Secure
Seven
Below
Under the house
Chained

Host

Lock and key

7 (there were seven children)

7+1 (seven children + Elisabeth)

Father

Amstetten (the town name of the house)

The Tyrant of Amstetten (His nickname)

when we started to think of names and look at the information, we also had some inspiration about how we could go about making the opening scene. This is also some initial ideas about what we could do in the opening:

Initial thoughts of opening scene:

Architech drawings- When Fritzl extended the house, he also illigally extended the house more than was given permission. This is where he kept Elisabeth.

A child playing- This could be Elisabeth as a child?

Lullaby song tune/spooky- By having spooky music, it would keep the creepy feel to the movie.

Time lapse- We could do a time lapse of the outside world with day and night flashing to give an illusion of days passing.

A teddy- Having a teddy bear as a key character of the opening symbolising how young the children were and all the years that Elisabeth missed out on through childhood.

Opening a safe like door- This could be like the enterance to the chamber.

 Thats all thats been happening in the early stages of pre production, i'l keep posting every week to record whats happening!

Our Group!

Recently, we were told we had to pick our group in which we will be doing ALL of our media project which is to create a film opening to a certain brief of our choice. In my group, is Georgina Barker, and Alice Clark who are also in my media studies class who are just as enthusiastic as me. I think we're going to get on well, and hopefully produce a good piece of work!

I Am Legend analysis

Our task was to analyse a film opening of our choice and think about the way that the director has achieved different atmospheres. We tried a few film analysis' in class together, then we were set our own one to do. I thought about what film that I thought had a good and interesting opening to analyse and decided 'I Am Legend' had an interesting chase scene but without choosing something obvious to analyse such as romances and horrors because a lot of them are very similar. It took me about 20 watches and pauses of the video before i knew what i could write, and then I print-screened all the interesting scenes and began to analyse them.

Heres the final Analysis! :

The life of a film task

Our brief was to choose a film 4 film and do in depth research on every stage of its production and distribution. I have chosen Slumdog Millionaire to do this task because i really enjoyed the film because i thought it was very well made and thought of, and I think the film was very well marketed.

Slumdog Millionnaire

The Film                                           

Synopsis

Slumdog Millionaire is the story of Jamal Malik (Patel), an 18 year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai, who is about to experience the biggest day of his life. With the whole nation watching, he is just one question away from winning a staggering 20 million rupees on India¹s "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?"

But when the show breaks for the night, police arrest him on suspicion of cheating; how could a street kid know so much? Desperate to prove his innocence, Jamal tells the story of his life in the slum where he and his brother grew up, of their adventures together on the road, of vicious encounters with local gangs, and of Latika (Pinto), the girl he loved and lost. Each chapter of his story reveals the key to the answer to one of the game show¹s questions.

Each chapter of Jamal¹s increasingly layered story reveals where he learned the answers to the show¹s seemingly impossible quizzes. But one question remains a mystery: what is this young man with no apparent desire for riches really doing on the game show?

When the new day dawns and Jamal returns to answer the final question, the Inspector and sixty million viewers are about to find out.

Marketing materials

Official Trailer:



Interview with the stars:

Album Cover:

Posters:




Bus advert:

Website:

Production

What was your film’s production budget?
Slumdog millionnaire, directed by Danny Boyle and made for a budget of only $15 million.

Which Production Company (s) provided the finance? What other films have the company (s) produced?

 A company called Celador financed the movie. Celador have also financed films such as:

• Separate Lives
• The Descent (2005)
• Dirty Pretty Things
• Slumdog Millionaire (with Fox Searchlight Pictures, Warner Bros., Pathé and Film4)
• The Illusionist (with Sony Pictures Classics, Pathé, Tiger Aspect Productions BBC, France 3 Cinéma and Django Films)

Distribution

Who are your films theatrical distributors? How many countries has it been distributed in and what are they?

Fox Searchlight Pictures made an initial offer that was reportedly in the $2 million range, but Warner Independent Pictures made a $5 million offer to win rights to the picture. The director was suddenly informed that Warner Independent was being closed down and that Slumdog, to which he’d devoted a year of his life, would be condemned to the obscurity of a straight-to-DVD release. Then Fox Searchlight took on the film which saved the film from going straight to DVD.

 

Who are your films home distributors? what countries has it been distributed in?

• Fox Searchlight Pictures (USA)
• Warner Bros. Pictures (USA)
• Serenity Entertainment International (Taiwan)
• 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment (Canada)
• 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment (USA)
• Ablo (Romania)
• Argentina Video Home (Argentina)
• Audio Visual Enterprises (Greece)
• Bazuca Films (Chile)
• Bontonfilm (Czech Republic)
• Castello Lopes Multimedia (Portugal)
• Channel 4 Television Corporation (UK)
• Cinéart (Belgium)
• Cinéart (Netherlands)
• Distribution Company (Argentina)
• EDKO Film (Hong Kong)
• Europa Filmes (Brazil)
• FS Film Oy (Finland)
• Filmax (Spain)
• Fox STAR Studios (India)
• GAGA (Japan)
• Golden Village Pictures (Singapore)
• IPA Asia Pacific (Thailand)
• Icon Film Distribution (Australia)
• Lev Films (Israel)
• Lucky Red (Italy)
• Mediasoft Films (South Korea)
• Monolith Plus (Poland)
• Monopole-Pathé (Switzerland)
• Myndform (Iceland)
• Pathé Distribution (UK)
• Pathé (France)
• Phars Film (Middle East)
• Pinema (Turkey)
• Prokino Filmverleih (Germany)
• Svensk Filmindustri (SF) (Scandinavia)
• Twin Pics (Netherlands)
• Viva International Pictures (Philippines)
• Vizio (Hungary)
• Volga Film (Russia)

Exhibition

What was your film’s box office takings? Would you expect it to be shown in Romford VUE? Why?
The box office takings in the UK was £31,283,374

The box office takings in the USA was $140,751,191 (In GBP =£87,128,505)

What formats is your film available on for home exhibition?
 You can buy Slumdog Millionnaire on DVD and Blu-ray, but not in all countries, most have DVD, and a lot of them have Blu-ray.

Horizontal & Vertical Integration

Is your film’s production company a subsidiary of a larger company (Horizontally Integrated)?
The film Slumdog Millionnaire is definitely vertically integrated because they have used different companies to produce and distribute the film.

Are there any signs of horizontal integration between your film’s production company (s) and distributor(s)?

No signs of horizontal integration are obvious to find, but there could be.

Preliminary Exercise

The preliminary exercise we were set was to shoot and edit a short video using conversation dialogue. There were some certain shots that we must include which were:


Match-on-action- This is where two shots cut together where a character finish an action in the second shot begun in the first shot. For example, if a character lights a match in the first shot, the character will draw it up to a cigarette in the second.
180˚ rule- The 180° rule is a basic guideline in film making that states that two characters (or other elements) in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line. The new shot, from the opposite side, is known as a reverse angle. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/180_degree_rule)
Shot/Reverse shot- Shot reverse shot is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character (often off-screen), and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. Since the characters are shown facing in opposite directions, the viewer assumes that they are looking at each other. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_reverse_shot)




Pre-Production Process
As you have read from the previous post, i joined the Media studies Course late which means i missed the majority of the pre-production process. When i joined, my group had already written the storyboard and written the script. The original plot was that the main character (Male) receives a message from a girl  named 'Sammy'asking to meet him for the first time. He is happy to receive this message and walks off to find her. a few people point him in the right direction, then when he finds the right room, 'Sammy' is facing away from the window. Then there is a shot of the main characters face being shocked, then we see that 'Sammy' is in fact a boy! The main character was going to be played by Dan, and Sammy was going to be played by Alex B. This  was the story board that was made:

Production Process
Lights, Camera, Action!! The first lesson i had with media studies, we were starting to shoot the video. We were all assigned jobs to do before we started. I was assigned to be the sound manager, which included making sure the sound was the very best quality it could be by getting the microphone as close to the action as possible without making the microphone visible in the shot. I Also helped with the continuity managing which involved making sure that  We had our first successful filming lesson and we were confident it was going well.


We then ran into a bit of trouble when our main character (Dan) didn't turn up to the lesson where we were going to continue shooting the video. We were running on a very tight schedule and we really needed to get on with the filming and we needed change the plan because we really needed to film. We had a short group meeting and we decided to change the plot.


The new plot was that instead of the main character being a boy, we decided that Alex B would be the main Character. He receives a text message from Alice (the new character). The text says that she wants to talk to him, so he goes to find her. He finds her in a room looking away from the camera and when Alex walks in, she turns around. The suspense is built up by wondering what Alice wants to say to Alex, and when he walks in and asks whats wrong, we decided to use an anti-climax by her only wanting to know what film he wants to see at the cinema!!! 


We were happy with this new plot, but it is a shame because our first plot was really funny, but this one was made up really quickly using a lot of improvising!


This was the script that we wrote as a group:

Alex walks to locker, opens it, then receiving a text message, he takes the phone out of his pocket, read the message and puts it back into his pocket. He then walks through a door and down a corridor to meet Alice.

Arrives at door, looks through then opens it and walks into the room, where Alice is waiting.

Alex: …you wanted to talk?

Alice: Well…It’s just that

Alex: Well…

Alice: Shall we see 'Back to the Future' or 'Buried' tonight?

Alex: I don’t care… 'Back to the Future'?

Alice: 'Buried' it is!

This was the new storyboard:

The actual filming went well, but we ran into some more problems. One of the main problems is that because we were filming around the school, we had a lot of other students walking around and infront of the camera to get past which was a bit annoying, but we had to get on with it, and film as much as we could when we could! We also couldn't find the right settings for ages because all the class rooms were taken! once we'd found an empty class room, we could begin to film the conversation scenes.


The equipment we used was a microphone and headphones (Which is what i was in charge of), A Video camera and a tripod. We used a tripod to make sure there was no shakey hand movements when filming to make the whole video look more professional. The microphone was really useful by getting much more better sound quality than if we had used the built in one to the video camera.


Overall, i think we did an excellent job of improvising at the last minute and finishing everything to deadline when we were working to such a tight deadline. Because we did everything in one go, we had no clothing continuity problems, but a couple of times we had shadows moving which ment that we had to shoot that bit again. We worked well as a team, and we worked well under pressure to finish our tasks set. We made surre we returned to the story board to make sure we were going it well.


Post-Production Process
Once we had finished with all our filming, we captured all the footage onto the computer. We then opened all the footage on a program called Adobe Premier Pro. We then all took turns to have a go at editing the footage. I had never used Premier Pro before, but i caught on pretty quickly as all the basic functions were much like Imovie which i use in my leisure at home. Premier Pro is a very good editing program, and i like how easy it is to edit each clip and put it into the larger video editing box.


The match-on-action shots were really hard to edit because the way you have to make the first shot fit next to the next one is so precise that you have to make sure it looks right. We had a lot of editing to do, but we got it all done well within an hour and a half. 


Overall, i think our video is very good, and i think our team worked very well to produce a very good video. The video has some light humour and it worked really well, and i'm very happy with it! Here is the video:

Joining Media Studies!

I Have recently joined media studies slightly late. I originally chose to take Graphic design, but i decided that media studies would be much more interesting and would go with my photography Alevel as well. I am really excited to get started!!