Planning

Our Plan

         In our last media lesson our group got together and individually came up with different ideas to use as our thriller opening sequence. We all came up with different ideas then came together at the end of the lesson to put them together and come up with one final idea. I suggested that a murder had happened in my local area. Another innocent person then discovers the murderer is after him. Instead of running, with the help of three of his friends, they go after the murderer. However it is a race against time. Can they get to the murderer before the murderer gets to him? I suggested this because after looking at the conventions of thriller films i belived that this meet them all. It would be full of suspense and also has the themes and characters of a typical thriller film.

       This final idea had to suit the purpose of the task as much as possible. The main concept of it is that a burgurlar breaks into a house to see another person has already broke in and are holding the family hostage. As he walks into the kitchen he sees the criminal torturing one member of the family. He turns round and stares into his eyes. Does he run, or try to help the family? The target audience is definatley adults (16+). This is because of the violence and gore in the film. The main issues and themes murder and suspense. It will be set in one of our own houses. This will make it easier so we dont have to seek permission to use another location.

       Idea Summary

Before we could do anything as a group we had to generate some ideas for our opening sequence. We did this bybrainstorming ideas and jotting them down onto a piece of paper. Once we had done this as it wasnt very neat i made a spider diagram online to show all of our ideas neatly.

 

 

I created this spider diagram to show our ideas.

Idea summary:

·         A burglar breaks into a house, to find a man has already broken in and tied up the occupants. Burglar is caught by killer inside. Cut to black policeman looking at the scene.  

Group roles:

·         Will: Cameraman, co-director, head of cinematography

·         Ben:  Actor, location director

·         Aaron: Actor, writer

·         Josh: Actor (main actor)

Characters:

·         Detective: Josh

·         Murderer: Aaron

·         Burglar: Ben

·         Victim #1:

·         Victim #2:

·         Policeman:

Locations:

·         Ben’s house

Costumes/props:

·         Detective: white shirt, tie, long coat,

·         Murderer: boiler suit, mask, signature weapon

·         Burglar: balaclava, hoodie, dark clothing

·         Victim’s 1 & 2: normal clothing

·         Fake blood

·         Signature weapon

·         Police car

·         Siren

Soundtrack:

·         Royalty free music

·         Sirens

Effects:

·         Sound bridge

·         Cut to black

Shot list

Outside - house

1.       e/s of house

2.       p/o/v of burglar walking to house

3.       o/t/s of burglar

4.       e/c/u of burglar picking lock

 

 Inside - house

5.       m/o/a shot of door opening

6.       m/s of door opening and burglar entering

7.       c/u of burglar

8.       m/s of burglar walking down corridor

9.       e/c/u of feet walking

10.   c/u and focus pull from burglar to people tied up in other room

11.   h/a shot of burglar walking up stairs

12.   o/t/s shot of burglar turn as he hears music

13.   o/t/s of burglar entering office

14.   c/u shot of burglar looking at box as door behind him slams

15.   m/s of detective getting out of car

16.   2/s of detective and policeman talking

17.   o/t/s shot of the two looking at the covered bodies

18.   c/u of detective as he crouches down

19.   2/s of detective asking policeman question

20.   c/u of piece of paper (h/a)

21.   2/s of detective and policeman talking

22.   2/s of policeman handing phone to detective

23.   c/u of detective talking

Aaron created this shot list

Script

Scene 1

EXT. DARK HOUSEHOLD. NIGHT

BURGLAR walks up path towards house, picks the lock on the front door and enters.

INT. HOUSEHOLD. NIGHT-

Walk down the corridor, unaware of a slightly ajar door to his left. Quietly sneak upstairs and hear quiet music in the room to his left. As the music finishes the door behind him slams shut. Cuts to black.

Sound bridge of sirens in background.

INT. HOUSEHOLD. DAY

Police are at the scene. DETECTIVE arrives in his car and enters the house.

POLICEMAn

(Professionally)

Three Victims estimated time of death 12:00 – 2:00 am. Cause of death repetitive stab wounds to face and neck area.

DETECTIVE

(Curiously)

Any motive or evidence?

POLICEMAN

(Gravely)

Not much, except this.

POLICEMAN hands the DETECTIVE a piece of paper with a phone number on it.

We all started the script together but Aaron finalised it whilst the rest of us finished other jobs.

As a group we got together and created a script combining all of our ideas. Below is our final script. As you can see we have also anotated with the different shots we will use throughout the script. Before we got into the group we each annotated the script individually. By doing this when we got together we had lots of ideas to put into consideration. The key shows what colour stands for each shot:

-Red= Close up

-Blue= Mid shot

-Green= Long shot

-Yellow= Over the shoulder

-Pink= POV

-Orange= Birds eye veiw 

 

I edited this script to show the different camera angles

 

Poll for title

I have created a poll on my blog in order to find the best/suitable name for our film. Please vote by the 22nd November.

Location Ideas

Before we chose our location we had to know what our requirements were. We needed a building that we could have full control of. For example a house where the occupants could maybe leave while we were shooting. We also needed somewhere that would be easy enough to get permission to film. Obviously filming in a street in London for example may be quite difficult to get hold of the council and get their permission to film there. This would also be time consuming. We had two location ideas before we decided to film at Bens house. Obviously the first, was his house. This would be the easiest location as we could all just walk there from school and we could use it when we want. So for example if we didnt get it all filmed in time we could easily just use his house on an extra day. Another idea was to use The White Lion Pub in Dunstable. Bens and his Sister work there and his sisters boyfriend is the manager so we could have used this. However the times would have been difficult as we would have had to organise it to film when it was closed. Overall, Bens house would be the easiest location to use. Getting there for everyone would be easy and permission would be easy to get. It also fits the storyline to our script of a burglar breaking into a house. The pub on the other hand although it would look good and would be something different is not in walking distance from the school so would be more difficult to get there. It is also on a main road so would be very noisy which may interfer with some of our shots outside. And lastly it may prove to be difficult to get to find a time suitable for all of us to film there when the pub is shut and there is no one else there. This is why we used Bens house.

 

Location Recce

I created a location reece to ensure that there would be no problems on the day with our filming location. Because we are only filming in one of our houses we have thought and come to the conclusion that the worst could happen would be for Bens parents to accidently get in the way of some shooting. However this doesnt matter as we can just shoot the scene again. Even if it is heavily raining on the shots when we are outside it will not matter, infact it would probably help us making it look good. I created a slideshow on Location Reece.

Location from mcgeoghann

 

 

Risk Assessment

Risks when making a film may include:

Tripping hazards, as we will be filming in a house setting there objects such as furniture and cables from the filming equipment which may be a potential tripping hazard. To minimalise this risk we will move or gaffa tape down cables and objects that could be tripped over by the cast or crew.

Lifting hazards, this is not a direct risk but moving the furniture could lead to injury if performed in an unsafe manner.

Camera risks, when a camera operator or cast member is walking during a shot, make sure there is nothing that could cause problems and if the cameraman who needs to walk backwards for a shot should have someone guiding them and clear the route.

There will be no serious risk of the weather causing a potential risk as most of the film is filmed inside (shots outside are in a very limited time space).

Hazard	Person or persons at risk	Likelihood of hazard (1=low risk, 5=high risk	Severity of hazard (1=low risk, 5=high risk	Risk level likelihood + severity /2	Measures taken to reduce risk.
Tripping	All cast and crew	3	1-3	2-3	Move potential trip hazards.
Lifting	All cast and crew	1	1	1	Do not lift objects which are too heavy for you and lift safely.
Weather	All cast and crew	1	1	2	Do not film in dangerous weather conditions
Camera risks	Camera operator	3	3	3	have someone guiding them and clear the route

This risk assessment was created by Aaron Flemons

Permission and Talent Release

Below is a picture of Bens dad talent release film. We needed this as we are filming in his house and therefore need permission for this:

In order to film our film we need permision from all the actors involved. Below is a copy of my talent realease form. Myself, Ben, Aaron and Will all signed a copy of this. We use this form to obtain permission to use photographs or audio/video recordings of people:

 

I createated the talent release forms and the permission forms.

 Costumes and Props

Beneath are my powerpoint presentation to show the costumes and propswe will be using while producing the opening sequence. I produced this so we were organised and we all knew what we had to wear. The props powerpoint is also useful so so that we do not forget to buy any props we need. It also shows who is responsible for each prop so everyone is clear who needs to bring what. I created the costumes powerpoint myself and Aaron created the props powerpoint.

 

Storyboard

Most people just want to get on with the filming. They sometimes have good idea of what they want; they know what's going to happen and where it will happen. So why not just get on with it?

Because the one thing they haven't done, usually, is think of their film as a film. What makes your work good or bad is not usually the acting, the locations or the story; it's the camera angles, positions and movements, the editing, the sound and so on, and usually, this is what people haven't thought about. So, for most people, planning of some sort - storyboarding, usually - is a very good idea.

It's so that everyone knows what they are doing - the sound engineer, the actors, the director. If everyone knows what they should be doing, filming goes easily. If they don't, it can be a disaster.

There are different ways of doing it, but there are certain things you need. Firstly, you need an idea of what camera shots you want. Note, this should be as close as possible to the actual shot you want.

 

Ben and Will created this storyboard

Animatic

 

 This anamatic is very similar to our storyboard.  In animation and special effects work, the storyboarding stage may be followed by simplified mock-ups called animatics to give a better idea of how the scene will look and feel with motion and timing. An animatic is a series of still images edited together and displayed in sequence with a rough dialouge and/or rough sound track added to the sequence of still images (usually taken from a storyboard) to test whether the sound and images are working effectively together.

We all created the images but me and Aaron used premiere to put them together.

 

 

 Soundtrack for our opening sequence

Unless we have produced the music ourselves we are intending to use for our opening sequence our self, we will need to secure permission from the owner. This is particularly important because we are submitting our coursework via my blog which means it can be seen by anyone. The worst case scenario would be that we were accused of copyright infringement and ordered our work to be removed from our blog. To avoid this our group have decided to use music of a royalty free website. This means we can use it without having to ask permission for it and we don’t need to agree a licence agreement which can take time that we don’t really have. We also needed a soundtrack that would work with our continuity editing. Therefore we decided we wanted a slow piece of music. Here is the link for the piece we are using:

                  Create a copy               

"Day of Chaos" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

We are allowed to use this piece of music as long as we credit them at the end of our media text.

http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1300040

 

 

Shot Schedule

 This is our shot schedule that Will created. I suggested we had two filming days instead of just one. The main reason for this was because i had work on the saturday night so it would be quite hard for me to be there, and although i wasnt in any of the night time scences I still wanted to be there to help where i could. Also, it would save us from filming in the morning then having to wait around all day untill it got dark. We plan to film on two days this week, Saturday and Monday. We are hopeing to have everything filmed by then by we will still have four days after this if we need extra time. We plan to meet at Bens house at 11am on saturday to start the filming in the day, then we will walk backto his house after school on Monday to film in the dark to make it look more realistic.

Call Sheets

 

Our daily call sheet is a filmmaking term for a sheet of paper created by an Will, the director, that is issued to the cast and crew of a film production to inform them of where and when they should report for a particular day of filming. Our Call sheet was quite simple because we only had to go to Bens house two days in the week of filming. Will created these call sheets.

 

Test Shots

Before we started shooting at our location we needed to take some test shots so we had an idea of what the location looked like and where we going to be filming. As all of our shots are at Bens house Ben took these pictures.    

Test shots from mcgeoghann

Technical Diagrams

 

These two tachnical diagrams were drawn out by Will. They show us where all the props, characters and lights have to be in our location whilst filming. This helps because we dont have to watse any time whilst filming trying to find out where the best place for the lights are, or trying to figuire out where the crew should be standing.