Markos Markou - Q&A

Markos Markou, the director of 'Papadopoulos and Sons' an independent UK film came in to speak to us about his film and the film industry in general, more the independent film industry. Here are some things that I picked out as being interesting:

• Firstly, the motive of his film was quite different from those we see in Hollywood. Larger film are made for the purpose of making a profit for the producers. However for Markos this was not the case. He did not want to make a huge profit on the film, but wanted to tell a story of something personal to him.

• This personal aspect rubbed off on his crew and cast very strongly. He treated the whole production process like a "family business," put in his own words. For example, in the lunch queue every day he would line up from the back and not jump to the front of the queue as many producers would do. He was, therefore getting lunch after small crew members such as electricians. He also made an effort to learn the names of all of his crew on the first day. This made them feel like a more important cog in this system, allowing Markos to get the most out of all of his crew. 

• This family feel also allowed him to get the actors of his choice. He originally went after Stephen Dillane to play Harry Papadopoulos, however he could not do this film as the shooting dates clashed with those of 'Game of Thrones' which Dillane was also starring in. Markos decided, however, to go after Stephen's son, Frank to play James Papadopoulos, Harry's son. After seeing this, Stephen realised how much he wanted to do this film with his son and so forced 'Game of Thrones' to move their dates so he could be a part of 'Papadopoulos and Sons.'

• Although the sole purpose of Markos' film was not to make a profit, since he was using his own money for the whole process, he still wanted to make a profit. For this reason he made sure he kept within his budget and put maximum effort into ensuring that his film got into cinemas and was seen be as many people as possible.

• Finally, the marketing aspect of this film was very interesting. Since he knew he would not make a return if his film was taken on by sales agents he decided to do this whole process, again, on his own. He took his film to festivals and markets all over the world in order to raise publicity. Also, he targeted the Greek community as he knew they would be the main audience of his film. He asked Greek priest to promote his films during their services throughout London and eventually managed to get his film into Cineworld branches all over England.

Papadopoulos and Sons - Research

"Following his ruin in the latest banking crisis, a self-made millionaire reluctantly re-unites with his estranged freewheeling brother to re-open the abandoned fish and chip shop they shared in their youth."

Producer

The film is produced by Marcus Markou, an actor turned play-write turned movie producer. From a young age Marcus wanted to pursue a career in acting however, in order to live up to the expectations of his parents he became an internet business owner with his brother, doing acting on the side. He also wrote some stage productions through this time. However, he decided to follow his dream and wrote a film, 'Papadopoulos and Sons.' He took a loan from his business and went ahead with the film.

Crew

Marcus Markou - Writer / director

Sara Butler - Producer

Andrew Markou - Executive Producer

James Friend - Director of Photography

Sebastien Morrison - Editor

Anji Carrol - Casting

Julian Fullalove - Production Designer

Stephen Warbeck - Composer

Cast

Stephen Dillane - Harry Papadopoulos

Georges Corraface - Spiros Papadopoulos

Ed Stoppard - Rob

Georgia Groome - Katie Papadopoulos

Selina Cadell - Mrs. Parrington

Cosima Shaw - Sophie

Frank Dillane - James Papadopoulos

Paranormal Activity Sweded

For this task we were told to create a Sweded version of a well known film. I was in a group with Juliette Wileman, Enya Phillips and Josh Steveson.

We used 5 different marketing techniques in order to promote the film. These were:

Facebook

Twitter

The poster:

The trailer:

The Blooper Reel:

You can watch the film here

I enjoyed this activity as we had a lot of fun making a horror blockbuster into a short, funny parody. I also learnt a lot while shooting and editing and gained a lot of experience that I can use in the future.

Dexter Title - Re-edit

Summarise the conventions of title sequences that were most important to this task.
The purpose of the title sequence is to tell the audience the cast and producers of the film and to credit everyone involved. This must be done by law.
Font is very important as it must reflect the genre of the show.

Colour is also important for the same reason.

The positioning of the credits is very important as it must not cover certain images on screen and should be placed in specific space.

How did your group plan to edit the title sequence?( consider timings, industry requirements etc).
We began by watching the title sequence and deciding which points would be best to use for credits and noted these down. We then chose our favourites and inserted our credits after deciding the names that would be involved. Finally we edited the fonts and colours and made them match the genre and style of the opening sequence.

Explain the creative decisions made by your group.
We had to chose a font that reflected the genre and themes of Dexter. He was a serial killer taking part in normal everyday activities. For this reason we chose a normal looking font with a sinister red look in places to highlight the sinister side of his life.

How does your re-edit compare to the original?
The original looked much more full and complete as they obviously had more time and more professional designers and software. However I feel that we did better in that our fonts only filled empty space whereas their credits did go over the important images which I feel did not look as good

Sweded Film

A sweded film is a film, normally around 4 minutes long, that is a remake of a popular film, made with a low budget and a camcorder. They are normally done with only one take per shot and there is little or no editing involved, they are almost purely camera work. For this reason, audio and credits are normally done in shot.

The term originated from the 2008 comedy "Be Kind Rewind" in which Jerry (Jack Black) destroys all of the films in his friend Mike's (Mos Def) video rental store. The pair must remake all of the films, and these low budget remakes become popular amongst customers. Customers are told that the films come from Sweden and this is the reason for the high rental cost and long waiting time. This is also the reason for the term Sweding.

Here are some examples of Swedes that I liked:


I really enjoyed this Swede as it had a very professional feel to it. The actors appeared to take it very seriously which added to the comedy. Also, they did well to use all of the resources around them.


This one had less of a professional feel to it, however this worked in its favour as it appeared as more of a sweded film than the Inception one. Also no sound was added in during editing so it made it a more genuine Sweded film.

One possible sweded film we could make is Scarface as there are a lot of famous scenes and lines in it and the action could work well.

Art of the Title Grid Activity

The Film Idea
Three best friends fight for the attention of the school's new heartthrob. The three friends all catch sight of the new guy which leads to them fighting over him. But who will win?

Information Included
In this opening we establishes the setting, a high school; the main characters; the relationship between them all, namely the three girls being friends; the genre of the film, which is obviously a teen rom-com; the title of the film, "The Competition"; and finally the credits, the names of each actor/actress as they appear.

Titles
We used a high school or college type font throughout the opening in order to establish the teen rom-com genre, as well as creating the setting of a high school.

Audience Reaction
Immediately the audience should feel curious about who this boy is. The slow reveal builds up tension of the introduction of the character and makes the audience more curious about his character.

The should also think about, of the three girls, who will win the competition, and the love of the new boy. But more importantly they will also be thinking whether or not fighting for the love of the new boy will destroy the relationship between the three girls.

Overall our opening is very clear as it introduces all of the characters and their relationship between each other, as well as establishing genre and setting.

3 Important Things Included
The master shot at the beginning immediately introduces the setting and character to the audience.

The slow reveal builds up tension within the audience as well as making them more curious of who this character is. It also shows the importance that he will have throughout the film.

The close ups give more depth to the characters and give the audience a quick but clear idea of each of their personalities.

Effectiveness
I feel that our opening was very effective. We establishes the teen rom-com genre well through a number of methods, namely through the comedy created by the reactions of the three girls, the vibrant colours and the college style titles.

We also introduced the characters well. They all had very stereotypical costumes which allowed the audience to see exactly who they were. Also the individual close ups of the girls and the slow reveal of the boy gave more of an insight into each character and highlighted their importance.

Finally, we established the setting well. We began with a master shot in which you could see a corridor full of lockers, which clearly showed a high school or college.

With more time and a larger cast we could have improved the opening sequence by having a corridor full of students to create a more realistic scene.

Preliminary Task - Evaluation

The Brief:

Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character with who she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree rule.

Who did you work with and how did you manage the task between you?
I worked with with Juliette Wileman, Abirami Logeswaran and Josh Stevenson. Juliette pitched a potential idea for the short sequence and we immediately chose to adopt this raw idea and built on it as a group. We had 40 minutes in which we decided on our idea and drew up a storyboard and shotlist, as well as deciding on who would act and their costumes. We chose Josh to act because he does AS Level drama and so had the most experience. We also chose Juliette as we wanted a female antagonist and she was most comfortable with the task.

How did you plan your sequence? What process did you use? What theories did you try and take into account?
To plan our sequence we began with a group discussion in which we discussed and finalised our idea by incorperating the elements of the breif into the idea. We then began to develop our idea into real shots before putting them onto a story board. This was followed by a shotlist in which we decided on the order, as well as the setups, for each of our shots. We followed this by having a walkthrough of the scene and exactly what would happen where. These 2 factors helped us hugely throughout the planning and shooting due to the fact we knew exactly what was going to happen, as well as when, allowing us to complete the task with very little stress and well within the allocated 80 minute time slot. During this whole process we had to keep a number of techniques into account in order to keep continuity. These included: narrative flow, making sure the sequence made sense; match on action, ensuring that as the shot changed the action remained continuous and did not jump and the 180 degree rule, making sure all shots were taken from the same side of the characters.

One problem that we had to overcome was the issue of lighting. In order to create mystery and a dark atmosphere in order to match our genre (which was a crime thriller) we wanted to use minimal lighting, with a blacked out room with only a small spotlight to create a small amount of light. However we did not have the time or means to do this in the short amount time we had to shoot and our limited resources. Instead of this we opted to fully light the room and instead create mystery by cutting off the top of our antagonists face throughout the scene.

What technology did you use to complete the task, and how did you use it?
In the shooting stage we used a Canon HV30 camera in order to capture our shots, along with a mini DV tape which would record and save the footage. All of our audio was captured using a shotgun microphone on top of the camera and we used Sennheiser HD201 headphones in order to check what sound was being picked up.

During editing we use Adobe Premiere Pro. We used this to select which shots we wanted to use before cutting them down and inserting them into the timeline. Once this was done we further edited them in order to match up the audio and ensure that we had seamless transitions between each shot.

What factors did you have to take into account when planning shooting and editing?
In planning we had to decide on many factors as this was the basis of our whole sequence. Once we had our idea we had to decide on the time and means that we had. For example we knew that we had a very short time in which to shoot, as well as very limited space, so we knew that anything extreme would not work and we, therefore, decided to keep our shots reasonably simple and short and stick to ideas that we knew would be feasible. We also had to consider where we would shoot and once decided, had to arrange necessary permissions from teachers and clashes with other groups.

In shooting we constantly had to keep an eye on how long we had and how long we would allow for each shot in order to be able to complete the task on time. We also had to follow many rules such as the 180 degree rule and 30 degree rule in order to ensure we had continuity. Another way in which we achieved this was to record more footage than we needed, so we would be able to cut it down to what we needed and would not be left with any gaps.

In editing we had to ensure we had match on action and make sure the audio was synced.

How successful was your sequence? Please identify what worked well, and in hindsight, what would you improve/do differently?
I feel that, in terms of the task given to us, our sequence was quite successful. The story of the sequence was exactly as it was in the brief so we followed this well. We also demonstrated match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree rule throughout the scene.

One problem, however, was that as Josh walked through the door, in order for the audio to match up we could not have match on action and his position jumped backwards, it did not create much of a problem but may be noticeable for some viewers. However, we could not change this as we had no more shots that we could use. In hindsight we could have focused on this transition more and taken more shots in order to have enough for our sequence to make sense.

What have you learnt from completing this task? Looking ahead, how will this learning be significant when completing the rest of your foundation coursework, do you think?
This task has taught me a number of vital things that will play a huge part in my future development in media studies. I learnt how to plan, shoot, edit, and, possibly most importantly, manage a shoot within the time and means available. It has also taught me about many rules and techniques that must be followed in order to have continuity in a sequence and ensure that it makes sense.