Storyboard

This is the storyboard for the opening. It was drawn by Joe Cockburn

Preliminary task review

Specification

The task was to film a scene where a person enters a room, walks across it and has a conversation with another person. We took this and interpreted it to be a horror. We had to show examples of match on action, shot/reverse shot, and the 180 degree rule.

Planning 

The planning for our scene involved several pieces of research. This included research into our target audience and into the horror genre. We also had to create the storyboard, script and risk assessment.

Here is our storyboard for "The Locker Room" 

 

I was  in control of the risk assessment, storyboard, acting and editing.

Shot list

Shot list

1 - Dollys in to the alarm clock

2 - Crane shot shows Glen falling out of bed

3 - Close up of glasses

4 - Glen walks down stairs and hit head

5 - Toast pops out of toaster and close up of buttering

6 - Toast falls on floor and Glen picks it up to leave name made of mise-en-scene

7 - mirror shot of shirt

8 - Close up of books

9 - Glen leaves the house and can't find keys

10 - Close up of stepping in puddle

11 - Back shot of him going into the school

12 - Walks past a girl and trips

13 - Close up of drawing

14 - Long shot of him getting cutlery

15 - shot of sky

16 - close up of clock

17 - Steps in puddle

18 - Long shot of going in house

19 - trips over door

20 - close up inside cupboard

21 - Close up of phone

22 - Back shot on laptop

23 - close up of computer screen

24 - Back shot of Glen

25 - close up of sleeve

26 - close up of shoes

27 - Back shot of Glen walking down corridor

(taken from http://adam-mediacoursework.blogspot.co.uk/)

Shooting Schedule

The filming of our opening is going to take place over 2 sessions.

One of these will be from 9:45-12:30 on Wednesday 30th of January where we will film the majority of our shots. These all take place at Adam Lewis' house. These are for the scenes in the house before and after school. This is also the time when we will take shots of the protagonist walking too and from school.

The second session will take place from 3:00-4:00 on Friday the 1st of February where we will film all the scenes that take place in school. This is a small amount of our shots and require a few extras to act as students so after school is a good time to find these extras

Narrative

The opening title sequence gives background to the protagonist and builds up his character, showing him to have a normal life of a teenager going through college. At the end of the opening sequence the protagonist receives a message on his laptop. The protagonist then suits up and leaves his house. The protagonist signs up to become a British secret agent and in the early scenes of the film he is shown to go through training. He is then given a partner that is more experienced and capable than the protagonist. Just as he finishes his training MI6 is under attack. It is revealed that a number of MI6 agents were double agents. The protagonist and his partner must find out who did this.


Script
(Glen walks down the hallway confidently)
Mum - Put a coat on love it's chilly outside


(adapted from http://adam-mediacoursework.blogspot.co.uk/)

Roles of the group

At the beginning of the process this is how the roles were split:

Me: Research in target audience, timeline, risk assessment, sound
Adam: Genre, script, narrative, shotlist, finding location of filming
Joe: Storyboard, research into other areas

However in the end the roles changed slightly so that we all did the research into other areas and target audience and we all did the shooting schedule

Time line

Our timeline for the film is split into which shot it is (the numbers are from the storyboard) and how many seconds are spent on each clip.

Opening Scene Reviews

This opening i chose mainly due to its panning and in general camera techniques used in the opening sequence. This effect is one that i would like to replicate as it gives a more immersible feeling when the camera is moving. It also uses the very topical music in a coordination with the action to make the two combine. Due to our small choice of music this is an effect we cannot use, however i would like to try and create the pan effect on a dolly if we can. However the effect of the camera moving could also be recreated by editing. Another idea we could use is that of starting on a focused image of something and then having the action cut into it. In Beetlejuice this is done by a spider crawling onto the stationary house.

Another comedy film that has an effect we could use is "Zoolander". 

The main effect in this opening scene is a montage effect. We see all the aspects of his life which seem professional and serious, for example using real life celebrity fashion designers (something we cannot possibly do). This seriousness though is only used as a juxtaposition to the humor and thus emphasizes it. We may be able to do this but it would require some planning as to what they may be. However i do think that the idea of a montage is a good one. We could use this to cut time down on the editing as we would not require transition shots. 

Opening to a Knight's tale

This is another example of film where the randomness of the opening credits adds humour and sets the scene at the same time. It involves a jousting tournament with medieval jousters and audience apart from they are all singing "we will rock you" by Queen. This contrast emphasises the comic values of the film. The mise-en-scene is effectively used. The costumes mainly, they are tattered and bland for the peasants yet colourfull and bright for the lords. The font of the title and the names are all topical to the time of the film. This is something we could use in our opening.

Opening to 21 Jump street

I chose this as it is very similar to our openings story line. Both involve a member of the law in a high school. I like the use of music and also like it how it cuts when the protagonist talks to emphasise the awkwardness. This is something we could adapt for our opening scene as we too have an awkward line that adds humour. the mise-en-scene is used well as the girl is wearing red (a sign of danger) as the protagonist is made really embarrassed by her. This is something our group needs to work on as we have very little mise-en-scene planned, this could help.

Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy opening review

I have chosen this film as inspiration as it has come from the same genre as the film we plan to make. In it we see dolphins jumping and singing in a pool. This itself adds humor to the film as it is obviously a sci-fi. This effect of using the random factor as humor is something we could use in our video. Also something we could use from this is the idea of matching the contents of the video to the tempo of the music. I also like the idea of the montage that begins in the morning and ends at night. The main idea i would take from this is incorporating the text into the screen. The opening itself is great due to the fact it is not an opening at all, in fact it is just a small irrelevant piece of footage placed at the begging of the film. The shot at the end of the opening is effective as it is an effect that is not pulled off well. This may sound like a flaw but it adds to the humor as it shows the mistakes in filming and editing. Whether by purpose or accident, i'm sure our opening will have many of these.  

Feed back from our target audience

When i had the chance to ask a group of teenagers (age 14-18) I told them our idea for our film and they gave me their responses.

From all the girls there was negative feedback. This was in the form of people saying it was too cheesy and unrealistic. However from the boys there was a positive response. They said that the film sounded intresting and one laughed because he found the idea of it relateable.

 

The Genre of our film

After much debate, my team decided that we are going to do a comedy. I believe that this will be difficult as it requires a lot of work, but we can pull it off.

New music

We have decided to change our music to that off "Chasin it" from the site Audionautix

This is the link to the page where "Chasin it" can be found http://audionautix.com/html/country_jazz.html

Our first storyboard

This is our first trial storyboard (practically just a list of the shots in order) another version will be added once it has been made.

Trial Cloud Writing

For one of our names in our film we plan on having the writing in the clouds. This is an example of how it will look like

Risk Assessment

Here is a table displaying our risk assessment

Music for the opening

When i showed all the songs that i had gathered to my team mates, we chose the song "Boxcar Rag" from audionautix as a song for our opening.

Also we discussed the story line more and more and gave the ending the twist we were looking for. However after reviewing it i had spotted a problem which we identified in earlier pieces. The beginning became too eventful and had a large story line in it. This made it less of an opening and more of a film, thus we edited it to be shorter.

Finally i have found a site from which we can collect our sound effects http://www.grsites.com

Tuesday 22nd January

After we had decided our team roles in the previous lesson, i was left with sound and editing for my roles

In the weekend i asked various ex media students about music. I was directed to a site called audionautix and also told i could use any music from the band small words.

However the music from small words did not suit the genre of the scene and the website would not work at school. This afternoon i have searched through the site and found several possible pieces of music.

In the lesson we decided that we would have a voiceover on the video. This means that the music i choose must not be too aggressive as it might ruin the voiceover