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.

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). 

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.