Foundation Production - Extra Club Shots

When we filmed Jack's band at the Albermarle centre there wasn't a lot of crowd so we weren't able to get crowd shots. This was a big issue as a club scene without crowd shots completely looses the environment and vibe of it. The position and height of the stage were also factors of this, as it was visually unrealistic for a club. To overcome the problem, i asked a friend who's band were luckily supporting quite a popular band at Digital in Brighton before our filming deadline. I was given permission to film there so i went along and managed to get some pretty successful shots of the crowd. I got right in the crowd and filmed quite close to people; they were jumping and dancing, which keeps the energy up in the film, after it follows from the chase scene. The footage was quite blurry, which i thought would be a problem at first but it actually worked well as it meant you can't tell it's a different gig. They used lots of coloured lighting, which is what was used at the Albermarle gig as well.

Foundation production; Interviews on our production

In this video we interviewed a few randomly selected people and told them about our film. We asked them to give us some feedback on our film and this is what they said.

Foundation Production: What we'll be doing during the club scene.

As we are going to be filming at an actual gig, we only get one chance to film these particular scenes. We've made a list of where we're going to be and what we're going to be doing at all times, so that we can film these scenes successfully.

-We will arrive at the Albemarle Centre slightly early so we can figure out where we will position the camera and how we're going to shoot the drink scene between Jake and Dani.
-We will film Jack playing first and get different shots of people dancing in front of the stage.
-We may film and record several songs, so that we have extra footage if we need it.
-After this Dom will film the drink scene between Jake and Dani, with Jack's help when he comes off stage.

This is our basic plan but as we can't see the set up off the gig yet, certain things will probably change.

Foundation Production: Inspiration

Within our group we came up with ideas, in the end we decided to mix two of them one was a chase scene in the woods and another was a club scene.

The inspiration for this came from the film 'Rock'n'Roller' specificly the club scene.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20DN9wDhbAo

This was the main inspiration that we used, this clip helped us to see how we could make the club scene work we then based the chase scene around that. Specifically, we liked the way you could here the music from the band inside, playing whilst the fight went on outside the club. It then switched onto the band inside, where they were playing that same song. It forms a sound bridge that links between scenes really nicely.

We also decided to to do the opening ion non-cronological order similarly to 'Memento'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z87iY8rPJF8&feature=related

Foundation Production Lighting

When we film the bands for the club scene we won't need to set up any lighting. There will be stage lighting, including band blinders and strobes; these will really light up the stage and give a sense of  realism for a club environment.

Again, for the chase scene we won't set up any of our own artificial lighting. For the realism of the forest environment we will shoot the scene in day light and have just natural lighting. Also it would probably be to difficult to set up lighting, as the characters will be running through the forest at quite a fast speed. We want the scene to flow as naturally as possible to build the tension and chilling atmosphere in the film. 

As we are filming in natural light we will have to make sure that we set the white balance in between every shot we take. This is very important as it will affect our overall grade if we do not consider using it.

Foundation Production Filming Dates

We are going to film on the 17th feburury which is going to be the club scene, we have been given permission by the organiser of the event to film the bands. Also we will film through half term specifically the 19th 20th and 21st for the chase scene; we dont need permision to film here, as it is public land. However we are going to put up notices to let any bystanders know that we are filming.  

Foundation Production Plot Animatic

This is the animatic for our thriller opening, it is in a very simple form, but this is the layout for our plot through out the opening. it is a very basic animatic and it is likely that we will add or get rid of shots depending on whether we come up with new ideas or better ways to shoot specific shots for example a shot revers shot in the club is essential because the audience needs to see and hear both characters however when the pretagonist is begining to feel the effects of the spiked drink, we don't see Dani's character do anything to the drink so we may add a shot of her adding something to it.  

Synopsis for Thriller Opening

We are going to call our thriller 4 Days and it'll be in non-chronological order; it will open with a scene very close to the ending. This technique is quite often used in thriller movies (for example Inception) to raise enigma, confusion and to allow the audience to leap straight into the correct mood for a thriller. We're not going to give away our ending completely however; a gun shot will be heard before the fade out of this scene but nothing will be seen. This will keep the audience wondering until the end of the completed version of this thriller idea, what has happened to the man in this scene.

The fade will then rewind back in time to four days before where there will be a club/gig setting. The two scenes will be linked with a sound bridge; the music will  be an original from Jack's band, that will be heard during the chase scene and then seen playing live, as his band will appear in this club/gig scene. Jake will order a drink from the waitress, who will be played by Dani and a shot reverse shot conversation will be shown here. When the waitress comes back with the drink, Jake won't know that it has actually been spiked. He will drink the drink as normal and a sudden blur out from the scene will take place from Jake's point of view, as he passes out.

There will be a blur back in, still from Jake's point of view and showing him regaining concoiusness. The opening to the scene will raise enigma as Jake wakes up in an unknown place (possibly an office interior which will show connotations of an antagonist). There may be a short shot reverse shot conversation that will heighten the enigma at the end of the video; however not give to much away though as it's just the opening of our thriller.

Pre-Production Planning: Our ideas

We had two ideas for our thriller opening to start off with. These ideas were;

• A forest chase scene in which Jake is running from a hitman and he trips as the hitman catches up he talks to Jake and then shoots him.
• Our other was a scene that would be shot in a club or at a gig venue where a band will be playing and Jake is there hanging out until he served a drink that was spiked.

We ended up merging the two ideas in the end. Our new idea is going to be in a non-chronological order as Jake is running through a forest trying to escape from a hitman, this then flashes back to the gig scene where Jake is served up a spiked drink. We thought that this would work well and would give the audience many questions to ask.

180 Degree Rule in Premlinary Video

We used the 180 degree rule when Jake met Dom in the room for the dialogue scene. We made sure that Dom and Jake were on one side of the camera the whole time, ensuring  that it didn't confuse the audience in the dialogue and continuity of the scene. We set the camera up in the correct position before we took each shot to make sure we didn't break the 180 degree rule.
However we bent the rule during the filming of this scene, when jake moved past the camera to collect the bag and phone. He walked to the other side of the camera, where we then had to film from the other side. We did follow Jake over to the bag though so the audience didn't get confused and knew exactly where he was walking to and once he was on the otherside, we kept the camera to one side of them. This is why we didn't quite break the rule but did slightly bend it.   

Premlinary Storyboard

As a group we discussed the story for our preliminary thriller and then assigned roles so we could all individually get on with what we had to do. Jack was in charge of selecting and drawing the most important images from each scene. Dom then annotated the images to make the story easier to follow and to show their significance to the film.

Preliminary final edited video.

This is our final edited film.

Music

Our choice of music for our short film is - Hard to find: Lock stock bass.
It's a movie theme tune from Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels. The song is quite simple sounding but it's very effective for our film, with it's dark, dangerous and eerie qualities.

feedback on completed product

Cameron Williams-Hill:

"I thought the film was really good, the camera work looked good but the lighting needed work. I'm not sure wether it was white balance or lighting but the shots with dialogue needed work."

George Burtenshaw:

"I thought the video was really good, i like the music it goes well with the sequence of shots used. I thought the walls looked a bit different in some shots?" 

Both these people don't do media but they managed to spot the certain aspects of our video that were wrong, for our main assessment the main issue we need to pay attention to is lighting and white balance. 

Initial locations for shots

These images are of the locations that we will be using in our production.



Establishing shot, introducing setting and character




This is where the bad character (Jake) will enter the college




Possible different angle of the establishing shot




Possible different angle of where Jake will enter




Jake will walk in through here (this angle may not be used in the final edit though)





Jake will walk over the bridge to get to where Dom is waiting.



Possible different angle.

Possible different angle on the bridge










Group roles

We have decided on our group roles:
Dom will handle the locations, times and general organisation when to shoot there.
Dani is in charge of props and casting, she will organise actors and extras if needed.
Jake is in charge of directing and filming and will start and end the shots.
Jack is an all round member of the group, he will be focasing on the blog, storyboard and e-mails but will also be helping in all aspects of the group in some way.

We will all be taking part in the film.

Our Group, our blog

This is our group Dom Graham, Dani Bruton, Jack Leonard-tidy and finally Jake Annison. here's our media thriller blog.