26/02/09 - Where to Go From Here

After watcing each group's rough-cut of thier thriller opening, and giving / recieving feedback on each, we were able to judge the quality of our own work and how others percieve it. Our teacher also gave us some feedback that my group will take on board when we go on to complete our opening

We were asked to rank each opening in order of best to worst. This is mine:

1. Next - Emily Prescott, Sehb Hundal and Amber Stubbings
2. Reflections - Andy Johnson, Georgia Sheppard, Charli Casey and Jade Stevenson
3. Money - Lewis Yates, Clare Martin and Lawrence Rayment
4. Disturbance of the Un-Woken - Amber Gamble, Jamie Winter, Huw Harris and Gemma Bicknell
5. Tracker - Sophie Hogan, Helen Skipworth, Charlotte Looney and Myself


Our opening consistently ranked bottom amongst the class, and with good reason. By watching the other group's openings, it was evident that our rough-cut was nowhere near the standard it needed to be. Our opening needs a lot of improvement to reach the standard it needs to be to obtain a high grade, but I feel that as a group, with more dedication and time we can easily accomplish this.

Grade: D
Mark: 30
Level: 2

Improvements:
1. The titles are too big- they need to be more subtle.
2. An establishing shot is needed, with the cafe in view, a slow pan would also help to build tension.
3. Get rid of the mid shot/close up of sehb, instead just get the brief case and torso in shot.
4. Hold the shot of sehb sitting down- tension.
5. Slow the pace down.
6. Do not cut before the character leaves the screen- hold the shot.
7. Cut straight into Andy at the fence watching Sehb escape- editing.
8. More emotional reactions.
9. Instead of loads use just one good shot of Andy running off screen- cut to Sehb walking through the entrance of the train station.
10. Finish with Sehb on the train, get a shot of Andys reaction, last shot will be the train pulling away.

Overall, I think that the narrative needs a lot of work so it flows and becomes more engaging, Additionally, the editing needs to be much more concise to help build the tension of the extract and help quicken / slow pace where appropriate. By doing this I feel the entire quality of our opening will be increased vastly.

23/02/09 - Rough Cut Finally Up

ERROR - Trouble Uploading Our Rough Cut

For some reason or another, a problem must have occured when copying our rough cut onto my USB flash drive, as it now will not upload onto youtube or google video due to an unknown error. This a major inconvienience for my group as our deadline for posting our rough cut was: 13/02/09.

I will persist and keep on trying to upload the footage, however if it still doesn't work, I have no choice but to postpone it until 23/02/09 as I am currently on my half-term break from school.

13/02/09 - Capturing the Establishing Shot

This morning, I decided to go out early, before school, to capture the establishing shot of Gerrards Cross. Due to availability, I filmed alone but as it was only a single shot it wasn't really an issue.

At the moment, the tripods in school are hard to come by as they are either booked out or in some cases, broken. Luckily however  I have my own one which I bought along to the shoot in order to capture a steady shot.

The only problem I encountered was the level of traffic in Gerrards Cross due to it being rush hour. But I persisted and waited until the traffic died down in order to get the best shot of the different shops. After I captured the shot, I walked to school and immediately uploaded it on to the Mac and imported it into Adobe Premier an edited it with our other footage.

Woah! A Lot More is Needed...

After we began editing the footage we have, it became evident that we need to go out and shoot a lot more in order to be able to produce 2 full minutes off high quality footage. There are also gaps in the current footage meaning the narrative loses a lot of flow, thus become confusing for the audience making our opening less engaging to watch.

By going through the footage we currently have, the other members of the group and myself will put together a list of the shots still needed and then produce a schedule of when we plan to go out and get the shots.

Getting Down to Business - Editing What We Have

Even though we still needed more footage to be able to prouduce a full 2 minutes, the deadline for our rough-cut was approaching so we had to start editing whatever we had to try and make a decent first minute. This howvere, proved very diffficult. The camera was very shakey as majority of the filming had been done withouth a tripod. This made the footade look amateurish and reduced the overall quality of the piece. Additionally, there were gaps in the footage meaning gaps in the narrative, making the story hard to follow.

With all this in mind, we still tried our hardest and managed to produce a minutes wort of footage for our rough-cut. We were to show this to our teacher in order to gain his opinion and feedback on how we could approve it in preperation for our final deadline.

08/02/09 - Second Day of Filming - This is Fast Becoming a Habit...

Much like the first day of filming, I was unable to be present at filming again today due to job conflictions. In the future, we will need to organise a day where I can actually make it to the shoot as it is vital for the director (me) to be there for all aspects of production to offer my input.

I asked the members of my group who could make it to the shoot exactly hwo it went, and they assured me that the footage they obtained was of good quality and we'd definately be able to use it fr our opening.

For further details regarding the shoot, click on the link to Sophie Hogan's (group member) blog post:

http://sophiehogan.blogspot.com/2009/02/filming-8th-february.html

Change of Plan... Bring on Sehb Hundal

After looking over the footage from the first day of filming, we made a group decision to change the main actor. Originally, we had cast Jacob Grimshaw, a tall, slim Caucasian male. However, we believe that he doesn't possess the right look that we need. So in order to rectify this, we decided to cast an all new actor, called Sehb Hundal, a shorted, Asian male. The heavy contrast will also help add a sense of diversity to our opening as well, giving a unique factor that most other action-thrillers do not have.

25/01/09 - First Day of Filming - Disaster!

Today was the first day of filming after weeks of preperation, but uinfortunately, as it was a sunday I had to work and therefore couldn't make it. This was a huge drawback to my group as I am the director and should therefre be present in order to actually direct the shoot. However, the other members of my group still managed to go out and film some shots, which they found an enriching new experiecence, providing them with an insight into what its actually like to produce films.

For further details regarding the first day of filming, click on the link to Sophie Hogan's (group member) blog past:

http://sophiehogan.blogspot.com/2009/01/25th-january-filming-in-gerrards-cross.html

Bringing the Story to Life - Animatic and Evaluation

[Animatic still to be uploaded]

My group's animatic, although it was finished late, turned out fairly well in my opinion. The reason it was overdue was mainly because of group conflicts, in terms of ideas on what our animatic should include. However, we eventually were able to produce a piece of work that every member of the group was satisfied with. After this task, its evident that our communication and organizational skills as a group need to be improved to enable us to complete work on time and to a high standard.

After showing our final animatic to our teacher, he offered us some imporvements to consider in order to increase the quality of the animatic as a whole:

1. We missed the 'Directed By' text in the opening.
2. An 'Establishing Shot' needs to be included.
3. Edit the dialogue to not give too mush away too soon.
4. Include an 'Establishing Shot' of the train leaving at the end of the opening.
5. More diagetic sound in the animatic e.g. footsteps.

Additionally, we discussed each member of the group's class / personal schedule in order to find dates that we could film, and drafted a shooting schedule to tell us when we will be filing and exactkly what we need whilst out on location. However, because it's still early in the year and we are filming outside, the weather has to be taken into consideration and the forecast must be checked on the day of the shoot to see if its still possible. If shooting is not possible due to weather, it should be re-scheduled for the nearest possible date.

We have also begun to think about possible actors to featur ein our opening. We have many friends / class mates that study drama at out school, making them a wise choice to cast as they having acting ability making our film more realistic and convincing.

Shot by Shot - Storyboarding the 2 Minutes

Once my group had collectively decided on the final narrative, we started to storyboard our opening shot by shot, in able to plan what will happen / how it will look (shot types). A sketch of each shot was drawn along with a description of what is happening along with key details we need to know when we take the storyboard out to film (shot type, duration, etc...).

By storyboarding our entire opening, and digitalizing it in the form of an animatic we are able to gain a rough idea of what our final opening will look like. So we each took it in turns to draw a shot in order to spread the work load amongst us all.

Upon completion, we will take still photographs of each sketch and upload them onto the Mac and start putting them into an animatic.

Managing My Time: Important Dates for the Calender and Things That Need to Be Sorted...

Order of tasks:
1. Animatic (requires storyboard)
2. 1 Minute Rough Cut
3. Final Cut

After storyboarding our opening and producing an animatic, a shooting schedule must be produced including such information as the date of shooting, the shots that are to be filmed, the actors that will be present, props needed, etc...

The storyboard should be taken to every shoot so we can film in running order to prevent any shots being left out.

Dates:
30th January - Initial footage deadline
27th February - No more filming
27th March - Finished film, evaluation, shown presentation of opening.

Que the Music

For our Thriller opening, we decided upon the song 'Sinnerman' by Nina Simone. The other members of my group weren't familiar with the song, but as I played it to them we all agreed that it worked very well.

However, to be able to use this song in our Thriller opening we first need to gain the permisson of the distribution label that own the copyrights to the song - Decca and Phillips Classics. I took sole responsibility to directly contact the label to try and get the permission we needed.

I e-mailed them through the link on their website with the hope that they'd be able to get back to me as soon as possible, but unfortunately I am still waiting for a response. We have no choice no but to wait and see if they reply. If not, the hunt for a new song begins.

Inspiration

Our teacher, Mr Michie, told us of a film that also uses 'Sinnerman' in a chase scene not too different from our idea. We decided to find the clip and use if for inspiration.

Shot List - Everything We Need to Know Whilst Filming

Today we found out about producing shot lists, and how they benefit us in creating a high quality piece of work. A shot list is essentially a table, including all the information required for a successfull shoot.

Things to include:
- Date of shoot
- Time
- Shoot duration
- Shot Number (in relation to storyboard)
- Location
- Who will be there? (group members, actors, etc...)
- Props / Equipment
- Additional notes - things to be taken into consideration whilst filming. E.g. weather forecast

Thriller Title - Vague Is Good...

'Tracker'

For our thriller title, we have decided to go with 'Tracker' as it coincides with our narrative (a male agent that is being tracked) but is also vague enough to not give too much away. I find the title top bit bold, simple, eand easy to say, which is all a good movie title needs. If at any time the narrative changes, we may have to re-think the movie title but at the moment I am happy with the title my group has chosen.

Out and About - Potential Places to Film in Gerrads Cross

As we have decided upon our location (Gerrards Cross), we now need to decide on the places that we could possibly film. As there are quite a lot of shops and cafes in Gerrards Cross, there is no shortage for places to film that you would see in everyday, real life. However, before we go out and film, we need to inform the appropriate people where and what we are filming in order to gain their permission to film there. Hopefully, they will say yes and allow us to film, but in the circumstance that they may say no we need to have alternate locations within Gerrards Cross so shooting doesn't get delayed.

Potential Places to Film:
- Train Station / Car park
- High Street
- Odeon Cinema
- Costa Coffee
- Gerrards Cross common
- Gerrards Cross woods
- Barclays car park

Location - Where and why?

For our Thriller opening we decided to film in Gerrards Cross as we deemed it the most suitable. This is because the train provides a direct route to London, meaning many business-types are regularly walking around the streets which is good as the suit-and-briefcase look is something that we were aiming for as our protagonist won't appear out of place. There are also many good places to shoot and most of the shops if not all have glass fronts, which could be effective for point-of-view shots. The fairly high buildings also provide quite a city-like environment with many streets making it easier to shoot our chase scene.

Gerrards Cross is also convenient as it is easy for all of us to get to, meaning filming should not be too hard to schedule.

Development of Idea

Our film is going be spy / espionage based, full of mystery in order to keep the audience engaged throughout the 2 minutes. We've decided to have our protagonist, who is renound for his tracking abilities, to be chased by 3 dark-suited villians though a city. At this moment, we've chosen to keep the opening full of mystery, with no details about the characters being revealed (as the openings in most action-thrilllers tend to do, as it keeps the audience intrigued).

The basic plot is that our protagonist is walking down the street with a briefcase, although he doesn't stand out because of the business-like atmosphere of the city, whereby many people carry briefcases. The contents of the briefcase remains unknown throughout the opening. As he walks down the street, he is stalked by 3 villians, who watch him from inside shops / around corners, whilst slowly surrounding him from all sides.

Intial Thriller Opening Idea

At first, we considered having our opening purely title based, without any actors, much like the film 'Se7en' (mostly computer generated titles, with only a small number of shots like CU's of hands, etc...), as when we watched the opening of that particular film as a group, we found it to be very engaging and thought that we should go for something of the same style.

As our skills with software that would allow us to create such an opening was very limited, we knew it would be hard to accomplish. With this in mind, we made the group decision of not using this particular idea, and going for one that is more footage based.

After much deliberation, we've decided upon a chase scene, whereby a main character is being followed / chased by a number of villains through a city (a scene common with thrillers). Additionally, we've decided to produce an action-thriller (much like James Bond and The Bourne Trilogy), as its a genre that every member of my group enjoys, meaning that we all know what films of that sub-genre typically include so we can try and incorporate such things in our own film.