Shooting Schedule

A shooting schedule is given to everyone within a crew and every cat member so they know the exact location and time. It is an organisational tool to a successful film. Below is our shooting schedule.

Animatic

An animatic is a series of still images taken from the storyboard and placed in the correct order. Dialogue and sound are normally added to the animatic, however these may be changed by the final cut. It allows film makers to plan the timing of each shot, investigate different camera shots and angles and the effect sound would have on the audience. An animatic is supposed to represent the full film so therefore should last as long as the final cut will last.

Here is our animatic, including dialogue and sound effects:

Storyboard

A storyboard is used to organise a motion picture or animation. Each shot is included within each scene in the correct order which displays illustrations or images that represent a character or object. A storyboard allows a motion picture or animation to be pre visualised before the animatic and rough cut is made. 

Here is our groups storyboard. This is where we have roughly planned out or 5 minute film, shot by shot, showing the positioning of characters and the locations that they are in. This will not be an exact representation of our final product but we are going to use it as a guideline so that we do not miss out any crucial shots and so our narrative is clear. 

storyboard new by

Props List

Here are our chosen props for within the film.

Props Research

We have used prezi to present our props research.

The following post will be our final props list containing the prop with he scene and character.

Costume Research

We have been researching a great deal of things for this project, and in this post we will be displaying what we have learned about costumes within thriller shorts.

Somewhat surprisingly, there doesn't seem to be any special types of costume worn in thriller films. Almost always, the characters will be wearing plain everyday clothing, no brands, no overly bright colours, etc. However, this is deliberate. The reason being that in a thriller, the on-screen action is fast paced and very important to the completion of the plot. Therefore, the director's do not want anything to distract from said action - so the costumes should be as bland/non-interesting as possible. This can be seen in the screenshots below:

Evan Treborn (The Butterfly Effect)


















Kale Brecht (Disturbia)




James Dalton (Road House)

These shots support my point that the on-screen action in thrillers is much more important than the character development (encompassing costumes). Costume is not something intended to be focused on, hence the unremarkable features of them.

FOR OUR FILM:

Despite Hollywood conventions, we are choosing at least somewhat specific costumes for our characters, purely for the fact we believe them to be relevant for our short. The drunken MAN who assaults our protagonist, Penny, will be wearing dark clothes, to signify him as being a shady and villainous character. In contrast, Penny will be wearing lighter coloured clothes or school uniform, to signify innocence and vulnerability. Examples are posted below.

Dark clothes

School clothes

We have also had to explore the use of colour within our film. As we know, different colours can connote different emotions and foreshadow the character itself. For example the colour red, can connote danger but also lust and even strength. We may include the colour red in Penny's costume to foreshadow danger. However, the colours black and white are binary opposites and would help us exemplify the theme religion to represent heaven and hell, good and evil. For example, in present day Penny could be wearing lighter clothes to show she is asking for forgiveness for her sins and suggest that she is the angel from the film title " Angel Born in Hell." In the flashbacks however, we may use black and red, to suggest danger and evil. 

Location research

For our film we only need a handful of locations. these are a church, a hospital, a house and a long wooded path.

Here we will compare the locations that we have chosen with similar locations in existing products. We have created a key frame document to exemplify our chosen locations. Then below are a few examples of similar locations used in existing films. 

Church 

This location is usually shown in horror and thriller films, and is usually set at night and probably with low lying fog which makes the whole place more creepy. The low lit areas also suggest the dark, thriller themed location and suggest a sense of mystery and the gravestones suggest hiding places for the villain within the story. 

Outside (1,2,3,7)

For our film we wanted a church that had the conventions of a thriller film, this means that we wanted a church with not too many wide open areas and we wanted a graveyard with a lot of graves, this will give it more of a thriller look but it will also foreshadow the fact that our protagonist kills her father.

Inside (4,5,6)

The interior of the Church, is grand and open with high lit areas around the large windows. However, we will be able to manipulate the light within the location because there are multiple lights within the church also. 
We want a church that has a lot of light, this is so it will show forgiveness. The wide open areas will also mean that the film will move away from the idea of repression.

Hospital (8)

This location makes you instantly think of bad news, and this is the message that we are trying to get across to the audience when they see the establishing shot.
We needed a hospital that looked like a  traditional hospital.  The hospital is a place of heeling which is the opposite t the church which is also seen by some people as a place of healing.

Wooded Path (9)

This shows a path covered by dead trees. It suggest that the subject that would walk along the path is suppressed and can not escape. Our photograph is similar to this, relating our film with the conventions of a thriller.
This is a location that is also associated with thrillers. The low key lit areas suggest darkness and the connotations that comes with the word "dark." 

Script

We have used Final Draft AV to write our script. It includes the scene in which the dialogue takes place and which character the dialogue belongs to. We have also included a rough idea of how the lines should be said- also known as stage directions. This script will be used when making the animatic and the final cut.

Script 1

Final Treatment

Embedded below is the final treatment for our 5 minute short film, combining elements from both of the original film ideas we drafted.
110997061 A2 Film Treatment

Ideas for film title/tagline

Whilst in lesson we had a discussion about names and tag lines. We have presented this discussion in the form of a mind map.

Treatment Research

A treatment is a piece of writing that explains in depth the story line of the motion picture or animation and is used to sell the idea to the film company. Descriptions of each scene help the screenwriters to pitch the idea to the film companies. The treatment is in depth and is told like a story. There are two types of treatments, the first been the original draft treatment which is created during the writing period and then the other is a presentation treatment created for presentation material. Both types of treatments have certain conventions to follow such as:

• Written in present tense.
• Courier font is used- if any other font is used it will not be read as it is not acceptable or professional.
• Treatment is always written in size 12 text. 
• Generally 40 pages long for a feature length film. 

The next post will be of our treatment that will follow all of these conventions. 

Treatment Feedback: Dangers/Risks/Barriers to Success

After looking through the suggested narrative, we have come across some potential barriers to do with use of locations, continuity, and making our narrative clear to the audience.

The use of a church:

This location may cause us 2 issues, the first being that we need to ask permission from the local Vicar to use the church for filming. We understand that this may be turned down due to the church being a holy place and should be respectes and also that there might be other events happening in the church at the time of filming that are priority. However, we will visit a couple of churches within our local area to widen the chance of been allowed to use one. The second problem of using a church is the lighting. It is hard to manipulate the lighting of the shot with our budget so we will depend on mostly natural lighting and lights that are already fitted in the church, which may effect the quality of the scene if the lighting is not correct.

The use of a hospital:

As a group we have thought about using a hospital bed within our short. However, it is difficult to dress a set to look like a hospital bed with the budget we are on and also to make it look realistic. We have considered using an actual hospital bed but this to provides us with the issue that we will need permission off the sister of a ward to use the bed, and we also have to understand that there might be patients on the ward that do not want to be disturbed by us filming.

The continuity of a shot within the short:

We have decided to have our female character run in through the front door of her home but not quite shut the door. This presents us with the problem because every shot we film will have to have the open door in exactly the same postion as the shot before it. We are going to have to think of method to ensure there are no continuity errors.

Broad Outline of Final Narrative

Having considered the points raised in discussion and following further development, this flowchart represents a broad outline of our final narrative. 

Blood drips

Fade – organ playing/church bells

Girl with flowers /photo/crucifix

Lights the candle

Flashback

Party – she leaves

Man hanging round drunk

Follows her

Present day

Blesses the flowers/crucifix

Flashback

Assaults her

Present day

Leaves the church heading for the graveyard

Flashback

Dad walks in from work

Shes sat on stairs shaking etc

Kills dad

Present day

Lays flowers/crucifix down on grave 

This stage will enable us to construct our storyboard for the final film as it has clear narrative steps for us to follow.

Film Ideas/Treatments

Posted below are the physical copies of our ideas that we discuss the pros and cons of in the video. The first idea is written in the form of a treatment and the second a detailed, descriptive outline of an idea.
dljmedia idea

dljmedia idea 2

Target Audience

As a group we have come up with the idea of a  is a religious thriller, it has been necessary to research what type of audience we are going to attract. Using examples from successful films of that genre (The Last Exorcism, The Devil's Advocate, The Rapture) it would seem as though our audience would be almost anybody between the ages of 18 to 55, due to the high action/suspense of thriller films drawing in the younger audience (18 - 25), and same goes for the over 25's, except for religious members of the community, the obvious pull would be for the theme.

A model member of our target audience is "Shelly." Shelly is 21 years old, an adrenaline-junkie, and enjoys watching movies with her boyfriend. She recently began work as a banking and financing accountant at a HSBC branch, nearby her small rented apartment where she lives with her boyfriend, who also works standard hours. Having recently graduated from the University of Bristol, Shelly has quite a lot of student loans to pay, and can therefore not afford to regularly go to the cinema to see box office hits. Instead, she watches B movies and online Shorts, which she can either watch for little or no cost. She is a regular to sites like YouTube, Vimeo, and Dailymotion, where she often comes across Short movies not unlike those by Gamble Studios (our group).

"Shelly"

Our actual target audience encompasses the above, though more specifically the 20 - 25 year olds, as they represent the main bulk of cinema-goers and YouTube users (the site from which we will launch our short, due to it being the most used video sharing site worldwide). This is proved in the report below:

http://www.sysomos.com/reports/video/  

Pearl & Dean 

Pearl and Dean is a advertising company linked with cinema companies across the UK and Ireland. They are a contractor that advertise specific products with certain films. For example they would advertise make up brands or hair products before a traditional chick flick. For our film they could advertise new technology, gadgets, phone companies and cinema deals.

We have researched into the company of Pearl and Dean to help guide us to assign an appropriate target audience range for our main product. We will look closely at age, gender and class to do this. 

Classifications of social class normally uses this scale: 

Doubt: 

As you an see from the table, there was a higher percent of people aged between 15-24 years old, closely followed by 25-34 year olds. This shows that this film is more appropriate for that specific age range. Secondly, we have the percent for gender, for the film Doubt just over half of the audience we re women, however there wasn't a large difference in gender therefore this film could be gender neutral. A for class, it was more likely for people within the lower middle class. 

Carrie: 

Again we can see that the most popular age group that is attracted to the genre or theme of the film. Here over 50% o the audience was aged between 15 and 24. The gender percent was equal and lower working class people were most likely to go and see the film. This information is an estimate of who the target audience will be for the new film of Carrie that is been released in November 2013. 

After looking closely at the target audience profiles from these existing films we have decided that we have chosen a suitable target audience for our film. 

Genre Investigation

As a group we have decided to make the genre of our short film a thriller with a sub genre of religion. A thriller has an exciting, suspenseful plot, and the use of religion will add another element throughout our short. The sub genre will provide us with ideas for a setting, suggest certain props we could use within our short, and also help us to create a tagline for our ancillary products.

We have investigated different films that have been classed as religious thrillers, and they include; The Devils Advocate and Invitation to Hell. (The full list can be seen at: IMDb) All of the titles of these films have religious connotations and as a group we will have to decide whether we shall use this when choosing a title for our film.

Religious films tend to have certain settings and or props, however the way they are used or portrayed to the audience depends on the main genre of the film. For example in a religious horror, they may decide to use a graveyard at night, and have many links to the devil. However, in a religious thriller, producers may choose to use props to exemplify the sub genre, for example the journey of a crucifix carried by the protagonist, or even the narrative may start in a religious setting like a church.

Here are two examples of existing films with a theme of religion:

• Doubt
• The Rite 

 We will be using these examples to help us with further research in other aspects of the course.

Initial Ideas

We had a discussion in class to share our ideas for our main product. Here is a video of this discussion. 

Potential issues were identified along with aspects of the treatment we all liked;

Summary of Potential Issues

• The number of potential extras required for the party scene.
• We weren't sure if we could find appropriate/convincing locations.
• Lighting requirements e.g filming a candle in the dark.
• Making narrative clear to the audience (Relationship between the daughter and the father)
• Length of treatment (Could it be made into a 5 minute short?)

Summary of Elements We Wish to Keep

• Dripping blood shot.
• The church location.
• The element of misdirection.
• The use of non-linear narrative.
• The clear theme (Religious connotations)

Shorts,Titles/Credits Research

After watching and researching shorts, in the previous post, we have began to look into the use of titles and credits. We have noted that the credits are shorter and do not follow the traditional conventions of a feature length film credits. However, the shorter credits are traditional in short films. The reason for this is because there are less people in the production team and acting department. The credits used were presented as stills and subverted the convention of rolling credits found in feature length films. The credits in the shorts we have watched fade in and fade out, and they are presented in two columns, the role and then the person who played the role.

We have also noticed that the production Ident is at the end before the credits, which subverts the conventions followed in a feature length film.

The titles of the short "The Black Hole" are incorporated in the film sequence itself, by adding an effect to the words.

For our short film we have decided to follow the conventions of the short films we watched. This conventions include having still credits that fade in and out, that are presented in two columns and follow the production ident.

Short Films

What is a short ?

A short film is any film that is not long enough to be classed as a feature length film. A short film can be any length of time but commonly they last between 5 and 15 minutes. Like any film, a short film takes a lengthy time to plan, film and edit but are normally made on a very low budget . Both amateurs and professionals make short films that are often screened at film festivals across the nation. The production companies are normally small unlike a feature length film that have large and in some cases famous production companies who have marketing and distribution companies working alongside them to advertise and distribute the film. YouTube and Future Shorts are famous websites that allows non-profit film makers to upload their short films to enable a wider audience to view them rather than just those who are at a film festival.

We have decided to make a short film as we have no budget and a short amount of time to prepare, write, film, edit and publish our short film.

Here are three examples of short films.

December

The first impression the audience gets from this short film is that the genre of the short to follow is of the thriller kind; however within the last 30 seconds the actual theme throughout the film is revealed -  Christmas. This is the use of misleading the audience and puts them in an uncomfortable position and unstable state of mind only for it to be changed to the complete opposite. The connotations of a wooded area, a man wearing dark clothing and the time of day all suggest that the short will be a thriller. However when it is revealed that it is Christmas time the low key lighting changes to high key lighting to give the impression that the mood has changed.  There are 46 edits throughout this short, but it is difficult to count them exactly because of the point of view shot that is used to narrate the story. 

The Black Hole

When you first play this short you feel like it wont be very interesting or gripping because it starts in a boring setting and you cant really tell what genre the short is going to fall into. This perception then changes after around 40 seconds it changes the feel of the short and the genre becomes clear. As the short progresses you get drawn in by the abstract style and and interesting plot. This short is a good example of how the length of the cuts and the frequency of them can change the feel of the film, towards the end the cuts become more frequent and shorter which shows the excitement of the character in the short. throughout the whole short there were around 70 cuts, but it got hard to count them towards the end because the pace picked up so much.

What Light

This short begins with slow editing between cuts, as the light from the sun moves along a bare bedroom wall and out over into a garden and a house. This movement continues until the light on the wall, taking the shape of a window, falls and 'breaks'. This is when the editing picks up pace. Cuts happen every 1 or 2 seconds, as the light comes 'alive' and bounces around the room, wreaking havoc. As the light becomes almost sinister, a diagetic throb noise accompanies the light, like the type associated with the paranormal. Eventually, the light retreats out of the bedroom window and back to the source, cueing the end credits.

In total, this short cuts about 45 times (excluding end credits). The video is embedded below.

Planning for Sucess

As a group we made a mind map to guide us through the criteria. We will use this a tool to help us to plan opportunities to allow us to meet all of the success criteria. It will also help visitors to navigate our blog. The mind map includes all stages from research and planning, through construction and concluding with the evaluation questions. 

Film Ident

Last year we researched Film Ident's, and this can be found on Jess' AS blog. However, the construction of our film ident will differ from that of last year, although the principle of using an ident is the same. In certain short films there is no company ident at the beginning but one popular short company, Future Shorts, use an ident before the short film. As a group we have decided to have an ident before our film and will use software on the apple macs to create one. We intend to represent our company name "Gamble Studios" within our ident, as well as showing the company name.

We created our Ident using the program LiveType. We used a 'Live Font' called Chance and edited it (colours, size, motion) until we were all happy with the way it looks. We used Chance because it the concept of luck and chance walks hand in hand with gambling. As our company name is GAMBLE, we felt this was very appropriate.

Posted below is the finished piece:

Production Company Name

We have decided on a name for our production company. 

We started with a brainstorming session that produced a great deal of name ideas, as well as logos, etc, that popped into our heads. Eventually we settled on this: 

"GAMBLE"

We have plans to create a company ident, that will feature at the start of all our film projects. We intend to be themed on things you would expect to fins in a casino, such as slot machines, dice, cards, etc.

"GAMBLE Studios" is underway!

Welcome Post

Welcome to our A2 Media Studies blog. Our group consists of; Dean Turner, Lewis Evans and Jess Boagey. We will be using this blog to present our:

• Research and Planning
• Construction of Media Product
• Evaluation
• 2 Ancillary Products

We have decided to construct a film short lasting around 5 minutes (Brief 10 of the specification) supported by a magazine review and a film poster. To complete the print projects we will have to develop our skills within Photoshop and QuarkXpress; software we did not use last year in our AS course.

We chose to use a blog to present our work to enable us to use different techniques to present our work such as; embeded videos, hyperlinks and prezi. This will hopefully make our blog interesting and have user interaction.

Here is the link to take you to the OCR specification page.