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Shot List

GROUP 4 SHOT LIST

This shot list is a sample of one of many. We constructed one before everyshoot to make the most use of the time available to us on shoot (Shot lists save time. We ticked off shots as we went along so as not to miss anything out and sometimes added spontanous ones.

Editing Schedule

IMG_0014 THE WITNESS EDITING TIMETABLE

This is an example of the editing schedules we drew up for the editing process. Overall i think our schedules were very efficient, as they gave other group members insight into who they'd be working with and allowed the teachers to stay up to grips with what we were continuing to do. Not only this but they allowed us to set targets for each week to hopefully keep. We made sure each of us had an equal amount of editing for that week, so we all felt involved. Not only did we make sure we had enough individual editing sessions, but also whole group ones, as these allowed us to feedback all together and decide as a whole what we needed to change- which we could then continue to do individually.

Female Character Costume

For our female character who is a prostitute we have decided as a costume to give her:

•  A bright red strapless top, as red is very lustful and provocative.
• Ripped black tights- to show she has been through some kind of struggle and also the dragging across the forest floor would have realistically made some of these rips too.
• A short black skirt- making her seem promiscuous and eager to flaunt her body (as a prostitute would)
• Black leather high heels- these emphasise the femininity and add to the 'dolled up' look, showing us that she has been somewhere, or in the prostitutes case, been to work.
• Hair untied, messy- can show the struggle she has obviously had wit the men and also through the dragging can emphasise she is dead- cannot fix her hair- it is left messy, and clearly out of the ordinary compared to the rest of her attire.

Inspiration For Our Opening Sequence

Eden Lake is a big inspiration to our opening sequence as it is of the same genre (action thriller) and enables to encapsulate gang culture into a rural environment, much like what we intend to do with our opening sequence.

Not only this but it also uses the youth music and relatable characters to everyday life in order to attract and address its audience and also give it a realism, adding to the drama.

We aim to film at night as seen in the poster of Eden Lake above, but as we are only a small media group, we do not feel we will have enough lighting equipment a crew, therefore, as with the actual film of Eden Lake, our opening sequence will be shot in the daytime. However this seems to still work in Eden Lake, as the denseness of the forest acts as a cover rather than the dark lighting, so we do not feel the lighting will be a problem.

Again drawing parallels from Eden Lake to our intended project, in Eden Lake the 'hero' is unlikely, as it is a woman, someone who the audience would probably believe would be overpowered by the young predominantly male gang- breaking the stereotype. In our piece the unlikely hero is the young boy, facing the older male gang.

Unlike Eden Lake, we intend to have a happy ending to our film, as we feel for a young audience a sad ending can be a bit hard going. Also as it is so relatable, we feel it could even evoke hope to the audience in real life situations (at an extreme measure). 

Screening

We organised a premier of our film so that we could get feedback on our sequence and identify how we attracted our target audience by each member to fill out a questionnaire. The event was well publicised, with announcements in a whole school assembly, a Facebook page was set up by Philippa and a poster was put up around the school leading to a turnout well surpassing the 35 we expected.

Event page

Film Poster

Earlier this day I held a test screening to ensure all sound was working.

Our screening is shown below, it features the audience reactions alongside the sequence.

Also, after our preview screening, we messaged people on the event with a YouTube link to our opening sequence, enabling those who could not attend the screening to watch it and leave feedback as well as encouraging them to repost it show friends and family.

Event message

As well as this I posted our sequence on the social network site Twitter to widen our range of feedback and spread the word.

My posts

Feedback and example of people sharing our film

Character Sketches

These sketches are what we wanted our characters to look like. We followed steroetpyes when creating them, and when gathering costumes for shoots, we tried to reflect our sketches as much as possible.

Sketch of the thugs.

Character Sketch


Sketch of Jack

Character Sketch of Lewis

Feedback

We had a screening of our opening sequence with 50 members of our target audience, both male and female. We gave them all a questionnaire to answer:

IMG_0018 THE WITNESS QUESTIONAIRE

Our feedback was mostly good, and everyone rated our film between 6-10 out of 10. However, in general the boys rated our film higher than the girls with an average rating of 9/10, whereas the girls had an average rating of 7/10. This reflected our original plans, because males were a more prominent portion of our target audience, and females were only a secondary audience.

Almost all of the people questioned understood what was happening in the sequence, which meant our continuity was good. However there was a fundemental error in the opening which alot of the questionees brought up. We don't actually show Jack spotting the girl being dragged, which meant that he ran for no reason. This was something that we realised quite late in the editting process and therefore couldn't fix it.

Voiceover

During the final week of editing we realised a few of our shots were lacking neccesary audio to anchor our storyline. To get around this we decided to film a voice over for these tracks using Lewis and a friend as actors.

To make the voiceover realistic we decided we would have to record the audio within a similar enviroment to where the video took place so we headed to the far corner of the school field to get the same ambient wind and bird song in the background. We also filmed the shot from different distances CU, MCU and LS as these were the distances within the video were we wanted the audio to cut in. These varying distances would hopefully make the audio, when coupled with the video recording, sound realistic.




Lewis and Chris reading 'The Witness' voiceover script.

 We decided to act out what we were doing when reading the script as to help get a sense of place and realism within our voices.

Sign Off

Thanks to the hard work and efforts of James and Lewis during deadline week we have been signed off.
The final week saw:

• Minor shot re-arrangements
• New music for both halves off the opening sequence
• New titles created on the mac book
• Sound effects, including police sirens
• Dubbing the reactions of the bad guys
• Adjusting the contrast on shots to ensure they all match

These minor adjustments were still significant and enhanced our sequence. We have enjoyed the production part of this project and will now move on to the evaluation in Mondays Lesson

Final Shoot - Proper

Friday the 11th of March sees our final shoot. We reviewed our footage and were more than pleased with everything but the ending, the 'Cheyne Walk' shots which involve Lewis running into an open field whilst being chased by the baddies did not make the cut. This was because the shot itself was not perfect and it gave the impression Lewis escapes (an event we do not wish to reveal to the viewer in our opening)


We therefore needed to film a new ending after deciding our unused, existing footage was not suitable. Instead, Lewis came up with a POV shot of him backed up against a tree before turning into an onrushing James. This shot would be followed by a blackout and subsequently the title 'The Witness'.
He was inspired by a shot he created in a previous media project. We were all very excited with his idea and the teachers signed off our equipment during todays lesson. Filming will take place tomorrow morning and then we will capture and fit in the shots to our sequence.

Lewis' idea was inspired by the shot on 47-49 seconds.

Editing in the run up to the deadline.

This week is the last week (excluding monday) before Philippa and myself leave for a geography field trip. This date has been long in the pipeline so we have been working towards our deadline by Monday the 14th February.  We understand however that there may be 'snagging' following this date seeing as the deadline is not to a later date.
To compensate for this Philippa and I have been doing lots of editing this week to allow us still be level with James and Lewis in terms of commitment to Editing.

This weeks editing achievements include-

• Adding Titles
• Dropping the contrast on all the shots to an ideal level
• The near completion of our sequence- we are the advanced edit stage.
• A titles session using the Mac with the media technician ( although we decided to use titles that come with adobe premier)

Our titles session with the technician

Penultimate Shoot

Friday the 4th of March saw what we planned to be our final shoot. We met at Lewis's at 7 and the first shots were captured at 7.30; all the shots on our shot list as well as some added chase sequence shots.
These included some of the smoking shots which we deemed missing, such as the close up of Lewis reaching for the lighter.

After these were filmed we shot the dragging shots and the baddies overhearing Lewis and then walking towards him. These shots consisted of a variety of POV, long shots and close ups.
Once these were filmed, we moved on to the confrontation between Lewis and the baddies before capturing yet another epic chase sequence. We stuck to the same path as we felt this worked well the first time round (these could not be used due to a colour problem we had no control over) and filmed the sequence with a point of view of every character.

The sun came out and this time it was welcomed, as it meant that come editing where we could drop the contrast and brightness we can create lots of different shades and colors. Editing took began later that day, we returned to school at the end of break and between us had 5 periods worth of editing time plus lunch (4hours 20minutes) This gave us substantial time to capture our footage, log it and put it in a rough order amongst some of our old footage.

Second Shoot

On monday the 21st we had another shoot, unfortunatley we did not finish all of the shots planned on our shot list. However, we are not too dissapointed about this as we filmed substantial shots for the walking,smoking and chase parts of the sequence.


Lewis films most of the shots that do not involve him to ensure we all have an equal amount of filming oppertunities.

 

Our chase sequence shots are of a very high quality and we think that they have great potential, this is because we spent so much time trying to master them and it was very enjoyable to film.

Sam reviews some footage and decides that we should move on to the next shot.

We are not worried about not getting every shot filmed, in our one day back at school we captured 1 hours worth of tape so are still on schedual for our mid march deadline.  We aim to have a rough edit of our footage completed by Tuesday the 1st March. (Today), after this we will analyse the sequence and discuss re shoot plans for what should be on Friday 5th March but potentially earlier. An earlier shoot would leave us able to edit in Friday's triple allowing us a whole week for snagging and brushing up which is appealing.
We will discuss as a group and with our teachers what is the best plan of action, but all is looking well for group 4.


Re-Shoot Day 1

Philippa And James

This afternoon we had our re-shoot, filming just over half of our sequence with lots of angles on each shot. We stuck to our teachers advice on the walking shots not needing to be a continuous process and instead suggest time has passed. We reached shot 18 on our shot list completing all the shots that involve only Lewis and tomorrow will film the dragging and chasing shots.

The Den

As for the smoking shots, we stumbled across a den which we believed fitted our storyline.

 Lewis sat in here instead of on a log, this was more interesting for the narrative and allowed us to film through branches creating frame in a frame shots that are very effective.  Next shoot is tomorrow, Monday 21st February.

Second Shoot

Today we had our second shoot, unfortunately with about an hour left of our planned shooting period the sun came out from the clouds casting shadows over our actors and changing the lighting. We decided it was best to abandon shooting so as not to film footage that would break continuity rules.
 Instead we ran through the remaining shots practicing them with the intention to re-shoot them next Friday morning at the same time as our first shoot.

James the reaction shot

 This shoot was still successful however, we are 80 percent completed in terms of the shots we want to take.

James capturing the reaction shot

Today we took all of the dragging shots, again from a variety of angles.
We then filmed the reaction shots of Jack as well as part of the chase sequence.

Philippa films part of the chase sequence

We have Sunday off and on Monday we shall capture this footage during are frees, lunch and our lesson.
During this lesson we shall seek teacher advice on whether any shots need to be re-taken however we are confident that are current shots are of a high quality.

First Shoot

Today we had our first shoot. We shot at our planned location from dawn right the way up to 10 o clock, capturing some excellent footage including establishing shots of the forest and shots of our main character Jack walking through the forest. These were a variety of shots including tracking shots and hand held shots all abiding to our storyboard as well as adding in the odd shot when one of us had a moment of creativity.

We also managed to get shots of Jack smoking and reacting to the sounds of the murderers. We made sure to take at least 2 takes of every shot in case we discovered problems at the editing stage and take the same shot from different angles to give us a better choice come editing.

Our next shoot is Saturday 12th 13.15 at Grange Park Orchard.

Script

Working Script - to be used with storyboard

Storyboard shot(s) 16-18
1: Hurry the hell up!
2: Lift her legs up!
1: Screw you, I'm doing all the work.
2: Fine. Leave them then.
1: Just hurry up.

Storyboard shot(s) 19Jack gasps, slight mutter/swears
Storyboard shot(s) 21-221: (Whispered) Did you hear that?
2: You're bloody paranoid!
1: (Whispered) Shut up, listen!

Storyboard shot(s) 23Jack steps backwards, twig snaps.
Storyboard shot(s) 24
Reaction shot. Muted tracks, no sound.

Storyboard shot(s) 25-26
Everything goes silent. Jack sprints away.
Series of shouts from 1 & 2
'Music starts'

Storyboarding

Group Story Boarding 4.2.11

We have got our actors, location and story line all set. We are now working on our storyboard, after this we shall colour code each shots i.e blue post it notes for Close ups or pink for Long Shots.

7.2.11

Today we continued work on our group storyboard making a few changes to some shots, as well as colour coding.

During this meeting, we colour coded our shots to make it easier to quickly identify them.

Medium shots - Pink

Extreme Close Ups - Yellow

Long shots - Blue

Close ups - Orange

During this meeting we decided to withdraw some shots from our sequence, however we created 'recycling bin' where unwanted shots are placed. If we have time on shoots we will shoot these shots because as a group we feel that it is better to have too many shots rather than too little.

Tomorrow we will present our storyboard to our teachers with the aim of getting singed off ready for filming this coming weekend.

Planning as of 21st January

This is the result of our original planning on Friday 21st January after agreeing on our sequence First of all, we wanted to establish a storyline for our film, so started putting ideas together developing Sam's initial idea. We decided that we would have a teenage boy called Jack who is involved in a drug deal in the wood. He oversees the burial of a body but and is a witness however his drug dealing makes him an anti hero. He cannot tell anybody because he drops his phone and the killers no who he is, and blackmail him to reveal his drug dealing ways unless he keeps quiet. The story line will naturally develop and change. We brainstormed possible actors, we decided we wanted a boy who was around 6 foot tall and slim/athletic. After going through the names of people in our group we decided on Lewis Allison (A member of our group) as this is most practical and he is an experienced actor. We wanted to film in a wood, but needed somewhere close to home to maximise shooting opportunities and that was accessible during the night when we wanted to film. This made Grovelands and Trent Park difficult, where as The Orchard in Grange Park is close to both Lewis and I and is not locked at night.  We brainstormed Titles, keen on the idea of seeing or watching. This inspired titles such as Dark Witness and Fixation (from fixated). We then settled on The Witness as the film revolves around Jack and he is the witness so this seemed like a perfect title.

Our location scout

This video is a compilation of pictures from our location scout, at the Grange Park Orchard. After analysing the location and it's practicalities we have decided this where we are going to film our opening sequence.

Target Audience

Target Audience Research:

The genre of our film is mainly thriller, with elements of crime and action.

Here are some statisticts about the audience profile for thriller films:

Gender profile for people who like thriller films

Age profile for people who like thriller films

From our research we have come up with the following target audience:

Priamary target audience - 15 - 25 year olds, predominantly male. The main character in our film is a 17 year old male who we hope our audience can relate to.  The elements of action in our film should aslo be appealing to that market.

Secondary audience - 25 - 50 year olds who are fans of thrillers. There is a still a signifficant percentage of people who like thrillers that are over 25, (44%) and they are therefore our secondary audience.

Brainstorming

We decided to expand on our thriller genre idea, with an aim to establish a title, possible location and actors as well as building a story line.

The brainstorm

1. Is it practical?
     - Yes as we are shooting in a location that is a 2 minute walk from Sams house which we can use as a base. We are also using actors/actresses from within the group as it is alot more convinient as we know that we will be comitted to shooting when we want to. Only one of the roles requires some skill in acting, and this role is played by Lewi who does drama AS.

2. Is it an idea that works to the strengths of the group?
     - Yes, we have all had experience in shooting and editting before. Some of us have also had acting experience.

3. Will it show off the skills you have learnt so far on the course?
     - Yes, we will be using what we have learnt about shooting, editting and continuity from our prelim task. We will also be appllying the Todorov's theory of equillibrium, where the equillibrium is disrupted by the two men carrying the dead body.

4. Is it something you can reasonably shoot and edit in the time available?
     - Yes, it isn't a very complicated plot and dosent require any extensive editting.

5. Can you get access/ permission to shoot in the chosen location at the chosen times?
     - Yes, we are shooting in a public park open for anyone.

6. Can you organise lighting to use in that location?
     - This is our biggest problem as it will be dark when we shoot, we will have to have lots of different lights sources, or shoot when it's slightly lgihter.

7. Have you included dialogue? If so, will it work to shoot conversation in that location?
     - The only dialogue will be added in after we shoot, so you won't actually see anyone talking.

8. Do you have guaranteed high quality reliable actors to play the characters?
     - Yes, Lewi has agreed to act for us which is uselful because he does drama A-level.

Our Institution

We are 'Bite The Bullet Productions', and we specialise in  action/thriller films targeting national and international audiences (anyone who is a fan of the genre). We also have a backlog of relatively low budget and gritty/unusual films that have become big successes.

Our Final Proposal

treatment

Music research

We think, as our film would be set in East London, a way to instantly portray this would be through the music.

The music, for the chase scene especially would add to the atmosphere of the moment as this music does for this clip:


A song we like is Water Torture by Cee Why, it is from the Kidulthood soundtrack (also portraying the same part of London). We like this as it has a eery squeak to it that shows bad is going on (with the disposing of the dead body). It also has a quieter beginning which could contrast the shots of our innocent victim and then the shots of our antagonists. However, this music is not very tense for the moment when our victim is hiding, and just builds on the adrenaline for when our victim is running.




We also feel that this music would work well, as it has a gan gstyle feel to it and could also work well with a running sequence.


So, for the beginning of our sequence we think it should be very quiet with only diegetic sounds of the forest and our main character moving, and for the dialogue of our antagonists. However when the characters start running i think the music above or something similar would fit in nicely, as the bass and beat seem to represent the adrenaline heartbeat of the protagonist.

BLK FEEDBACK TO MEETING

3 Main Issues Our Meeting Raised Were:
- Was it realistic to do a night shoot? A lot of equipment needed etc.
- Should the main character be a bit more of a victim ?
- Would a woodland tracking shot in the dark be too optimistic? Maybe a different kind of shot or change the plot?

Resolutions
-Shoot not a night, but early morning, so the shots were dusky and not completely black
- Make the main character a drug user with a harsh background in comparison to a drug dealer
- We have decided to keep the tracking shot, but make it rough and handheld with a lot of CU's of body parts rather than a straight MS

Research - Chasing Sequences

Casino Royale opening:

The sequence involves lots of wide and long shots to establish the environment that they are in. There are also lots of tracking and panning shots which give a feel of movement and chaos. Editing between shots is predominantly done by cuts as this keeps up the pace of the sequence.

We plan on using some of these techniques in our opening sequence to mimic the feel of a chase.

Actor Ideas

We intend to use actors from our group instead of people who are not taking media AS as we believe it will be easier and safer to use people we know, trust and have experience in how things work at a shoot etc. 

As well as this we intend our shoot to be at night/early morning. This means it will be difficult to convince actors to turn up on time or even turn up at all. As two members of our group, Lewis and Sam, are taking Drama AS it just makes sense to utilise them and keep things simple.

Our main character, Jack, is a seventeen year old boy who comes from a rough, working class background. As we ourselves are approaching 17 this again is a perfect reason to use people within our group as actors.

Jack stumbles across two men dragging a corpse through the forest, these characters will be played again by members of our group, as it will be dark and we plan to use large coats and cover the mens' faces it will be impossible to tell that they arn't fully grown men. A bonus to this is that there is little dialogue within our opening sequence meaning that we wont hear them speak, this further supports our casting options.

Initial Research

Influences:

The Bourne series:

The idea behind Bourne, is that the main character is an anti-hero on the run, but has nobody to turn to. We want to use this idea in our film. Our main character (Jack) has witnessed a crime but can't tell anyone because he is also a criminal. He therefore has to try and find out who the people chasing him are, and put an end to their criminal business before they kill him.

Taken:

Taken is about a group of people that abduct girls on holiday, and force them into the sex trafficking business. We were thinking of using a similar back story for the main villains in our film. Jack would have to stop them before they claim their next victim, which in turn could spark up a love interest between Jack and the girl.

Kidulthood:

Our film could potentially be set in East London, and gangs, drugs and street violence would play a significant role. Kidulthood shows gang culture and the problems faced by youth in London. We could use some of their ideas in our film.

First responses to the brief

On Thursday January 20th, our group first discussed our thoughts on the brief during our lesson. We were all excited about the task and couldn't wait to get started.
To begin with we decided to choose what genre we were interested in, after a few suggestions including comedy and drama we narrowed it down to the genres of: Dark Comedy and Thriller
At the end of this meeting we decided the best thing to do was to go home and think up an initial idea (film sequence) for the next day. When planning we were advised to refer to a list of 8 questions which told us if our ideas were too complicated.
Friday 21st

We met again during a lesson and presented each other our ideas.

James - Dark Comedy. James - Dark Comedy. A boy who has phsycological issues,becomes fixated on a girl. After months of stalking one day after school he follows her and kidnapps her believing she will marry him. The film gains it comedic elements from an awkward stand off between the two in his parents garage.

Phillipa - Thriller. A male teacher at an all girls school is in fact a paedophile and obsessed with one of his students. The opening sequence featured him going home and revealing a wall full of pictures of the innocent girl.

Lewis - Dark Comedy. A young male walks down a country lane, with his voice narrating his thought process. He is obsessed with what people think about him, and in comedic fashion ends up with two people in the boot of his car. This would be the same comedic style as Sean Of The Dead.

Sam -  Thriller. A teenage boy is wondering in a forest when he overhears the conversation of two males in a hut in the forest discussing how to bury a body. They notice him eavesdropping and he runs for his life, they person him intent on keeping their crimes a secret.

After reviewing the practicalities and potential of our ideas we settled on Sam's thriller idea. We arranged to meet our teachers at lunch and present our idea for the sequence later that day during lunch, prior to this we held another group meeting on Friday lunch where we built an initial story line.