Revised Script

After our test shoot we decided to write a new script in order to increase the time the characters spend inside the house, as well as make the action more interesting for the audience to watch. This is what we came up with between the group, based on our original script:

Lucy:     What the hell Dan!?

(Dan pushes into Lucy and slams into the wall.)

Dan:      Shut the damn door!

(Lucy, closes the door and turns to Dan, worried)

Lucy:     What is wrong with you?

Dan:      This is so messed up.

Lucy:     Dan?

Dan:      Oh crap.

(Dan walks off into the living room, Lucy stands in the doorway for a second, yelling at him)

Lucy:     DAN!

Dan:      Lucy, I screwed up.

(Lucy sits down next to him)

Lucy:     Calm down you idiot.  What happened?

Dan:      You know I went off with the boys last night?

Lucy:     ...yeah

Dan:      Ah god.  Jamie.  He took things too far this time.

Lucy:     Dan?

Dan:      Someone got hurt.

Lucy:     Hurt?  Dan, what the hell did you do?

Dan:      I don’t think he got up.

Lucy:     Christ Dan!  Why did you come here?

(Lucy slaps Dan and stands up, pointing to the door)

Lucy:     Get out!  Just get out!

(Dan stands up and grabs Lucy by the shoulders)

Dan:      It was Ryan. 

Lucy:     Ryan?

Dan:      Your bloody brother turned up.  Your stupid little brother just showed up.

(There is a loud knock at the door)

Decisions made in our group meeting

• In our group meeting we decided that we are going to cut down the distance covered by 'Dan' during the running part of our opening sequence.
• We have cut down the distance by about 1/2 however the route which 'Dan' takes is still the same - just shorter.
• We have also planned to spend a lot more time shooting the indoor part of the opening sequence as we feel that our test shoot contains little to no interesting shots.
• When 'Lucy' hears the bang at the door, she will take a second or two to decide whether to rush to the door or hold back and then she will edge towards the door rather than running straight away.
• The dialogue in our test shoot is mostly successful however we have made a few alterations to the script in order to fit in with the drama genre better.
• The props and costumes will stay the same as those which were used in our test shoot.
• We will also take more time to work on the continuity of the sequence during the shots taken inside.

Styling of 'Lucy'

• Lucy's clothing is casual and could be worn by a boy. We chose to style Lucy in this way to reflect how she is a challenge to the stereotypes of women in the media. Lucy's style fits in well with her personality which is far from girly.
• The styling of Lucy's outfit was inspired by Cady's wardrobe towards the beginning of 'Mean Girls'.

• 
  
  Lucy's hair is loose and slightly wavy and appears to be natural with little effort having gone into it to reflect her personality which does not fit into the 'girly' stereotypes e.g. she is strong willed and almost aggressive in her tone whereas girls in media are often represented as weak and extremely looks conscious.
  
• The look we were trying to recreate is similar to that of Savannah's in 'Dear John' as her hair seems natural and she does not seem like she has put a lot of effort into it. 

• Lucy wears little make up to once again show that she is not particularly looks conscious unlike the stereotype of the typical teenage girl. 
• Like Hermione in 'Harry Potter: The Deathly Hallows', Lucy wears little skin make up (foundation etc.) however appears to be wearing some make up on her eyes

• Her make up is also similar to Effy's in the British drama, Skins.

Costume - Matt (Dan)

Dan will dress like an average London teenager; quite casual, wearing jeans, a jumper and high topped shoes in colours that do not distract or draw attention. Dan's clothing is supposed to appear effortless yet stylish among teenagers. The costume can be compared with the clothes of Freddie in Skins;

We will use the same costume as in our test shoot to allow the possibility of including successful shots from the it, but also to keep consistency. There were no costume issues in the previous shoots and the costume is easily accessible as the clothes are the actors own.

His hair will not have to be styled in a particular way, just to look similar throughout our shoots. It is a short/medium length male hairstyle which does not require product.

No make up will be necessary for Dan's character.

Location

This is our chosen outdoor location for shooting our film opening:

     

 

 

It is meant to look like a typical street in London.

The street usually isn't too busy which is ideal for filming.

It is also right next to our indoor location which is convenient as it will waste less time for moving between locations, and this also provides a place to keep our equipment protected from theft or rain while we're outside.

This is our chosen indoor location:

We chose it because the space is suited to the shots we want, and it is an average living room that doesn't necessarily have to belong to a certain type of person, so it fits well for the character of Lucy as she is an ordinary girl from a middle class family background.

Props

We don't need to bring in any extra props as the only props we need are a remote and the TV, which are already in the house and so ready for us to use.

Music

These are the two possible music tracks that we chose for our opening sequence;

"grindy"

"the siren"

We decided not to use 'Grindy' because it was too calm for our fast paced style of editing and did not have he range in sound hat we needed for he different sections of the sequence. In addition, we felt that 'The Siren' was more suited to our genre and would appeal to the target audience better due to its dance-like feeling. 

Shoot Board

We made the shoot board for our test shoot based on our animatic. This meant that we took the stills from our animatic and placed them on the shoot board to represent each shot in our sequence. Therefore we could test out whether these shots would actually translate well to moving image.

After having done our test shoot and creating our test sequence, we had a much better idea of what worked and what didn't. This meant that we could create a new shoot board based on our test sequence, using the original shoot board to aid us.

As can be seen on the updated shoot board, we decided to cross cut to the female inside the house in order to create a more well established character, as well as prolong the amount of time spent inside the house. In addition to this, our shoot board for the real shoot was much more precise as we had a much better idea of our intentions for filming before the shoot. The animatic and test shoot were incredibly helpful in helping us make decisions for our real shoot.

The shoot boards became an essential part of pre-production as well as an incredibly useful tool for production. They allowed us to visualize our ideas within a sequence while carefully planning each shot and making decisions in pre-production rather than during the shoot. This made our shoots increasingly efficient with very few unanticipated difficulties.

Test Shoot Reflections

Test Shoot Reflections

What went well:

The wealth of running shots is good for a test shoot and allowed us some room for error with continuity, particularly with the running where each few metres was captured from a variety of angles, distances and movements.

Lighting was very little of an issue for us, with rain solely present towards the end of the running section being the only real issue. Because of consistent cloud cover our outdoor lighting up until the end had little noticeable problems, being quite grey and implementing the gritty, urban feel we desired. For a first try the indoor lighting was particularly successful in not looking unnatural but keeping to a relatively high standard.

With limited direction the acting was reasonably convincing, and although there is room for improvement, seeing what worked well and what in terms of dialogue, expression and movement will aid our progress valuably. Our script improved drastically from the animatic stage and provided significant, impacting narrative without being too repetitive or allowing the audience too much information.



Criticisms/things to change:

From teacher feedback we decided to shorten the amount of time our protagonist is running at the beginning of the sequence would need to be decreased as many of the shots are fairly repetitive. While editing I (Matt) tried to incorporate too many shots in the last stretch of running. Because at the time I was editing on my own I chose not to make the decision of which shots to use, instead using all of them available, meaning even with decent continuity this part of our edited test sequence looked jumpy.

Actor body positions need to be under more scrutiny in the next shoot in order to avoid continuity errors. Our protagonist did not make the exact same movements in the conversation shots we took from 3 different angles, so matching the action upon reversing the shot to follow the dialogue, due to limited takes the actor had jumped to a different position. To avoid and improve on this our movement directions will be more specific and scripted on our real shoots. Running speed needs more consistency throughout, also.

In a small number of shots the lighting equipment is just in frame. We edited quite successfully to avoid it featuring on screen by cutting to different angles but some footage could not avoid part of a lighting stand being visible in a corner.

On two occasions with shots we took there were very slight breakages of the 180 degree rule, e.g. where the camera shoots from a windowsill facing our actor from the opposite side to the rest of the running shots. We did not select any of these for our edit because of these reasons, however they were intelligent shots with a creativity we should try to incorporate in further shoots without breaking continuity rules.

Despite being good early in the shoot, our use of the clapperboard decreased as our filming progressed. Being prepared and professional before each take from start to finish and keeping good track of progress and takes, and record this information onto our shoot board to know exactly who did what and any specific issues we noticed at the time with each take in order to speed up editing.

Although it is less evident on camera, the fact that we began shooting around 10:30am rather than slightly earlier meant that earlier into our filming we encountered obstacles such as traffic and pedestrians coming past, which we had to wait for, with obvious reasons of continuity in mind. We did spend time assessing our setting before recording, however, which helped, so for coming shoots we can begin earlier with more confidence and without obstruction, and record more takes while staying in schedule.



Test Shoot- Edited Opening Sequence

Storyboard

Here is our original storyboard from before our test shoot. We drew shots on post-it notes and stuck them onto a large sheet of sugar paper, allowing us to rearrange the order. Colour coding the shot ideas into distance meant that we could visually see if we were being too repetitive in shot types, using too many of a certain shot overall or just consecutively/in a short part of the sequence.


Many elements of our final sequence were taken directly from this, such as the knock on the door at the end with our characters looking up in fear. Other shots were used in our test shoot, some even working successfully but not making the final cut due to the running taking up too much time, like the start of the test shoot's edited sequence where the protagonist runs around the corner. We removed many of the facial close ups because we found them extremely difficult to shoot while running and the results of our attempts were ineffective. 

Animatic Evaluation - Teacher Feedback

    Animatic Evaluation - Teacher Feedback


One issue the department had with our animatic sequence was the number and pace of shots; despite the images being photos and not moving, there were too few and they lasted too long on screen. This was unrealistic to what we would expect from a similar sequence in real media, or our envisaged final piece. Our shots also did not illustrate much movement, as our actor did not seem to be in a dynamic pose and instead looked static, which slightly confused the animatic amongst high tempo music. Although we did not have the location at hand for this part of our planning much of the action shots were taken in a straight corridor. It was difficult to work with the environment available in a school but changes in shot and direction may have needed implementing in order to be more like what we aim to achieve when we shoot our film intro. When discussing this it was made clear that mapping out a route to film in the actual location was something we needed to do, to plan more thoroughly in order to have a greater confidence in our shots.


Another imperfection fed back to us was the brief lapse in continuity between a small number of shots, such as where the protagonist opened the door - but this issue was very small as our experience of shooting and editing continuity is sufficient to make the sequence flow in film, as we worked hard on this during preliminary work. It was well pointed out that our dialogue requires some development as it appears to be filling the time fairly repetitively rather than contributing significantly enough to the narrative and establishing characterisation - but this is something not too difficult to appease as a group. More titles of accreditation were needed, for example one or two more actors' names and an executive producer included in order to be closer and more realistic to convention in films. As well as this, a working title of the film yet to be in place was a small issue, to which we added on 'Deception' at the end of the sequence to appreciate the potential impact a title has, regardless of whether we have to confirm ours at this stage in development. The teachers also felt that a second style of music may be needed for the latter part of our sequence (inside the house) as they felt the track's pace did not quite match anymore after the protagonist's running ends.

Overall the feedback we received from our teachers was constructive, and invaluable in helping us to move forward with our project. They fed back on technical and practical aspects that we may not have picked up on, but were happy with the animatic as a whole as it showed them our ideas could potentially work if we responded sensibly to their comments.

Animatic Evaluation - Thoughts as a Group

Animatic Evaluation

Constructing an animatic was a useful and enlightening experience in the process of changing our production plans and deciding what could work well in the final piece. Creating a rough, basic storyboard prior to the animatic was helpful in that it gave us a variety of shot ideas to try out and lay out how much time we might spend on each of the two main parts in our sequence - following the protagonist running, and the conversation in the girlfriend's house.


Music and SFX
Adding our proposed music to a sequence of shots proved that the conveyed mood of the film intro would be effective and as imagined; thrilling, tense and suspenseful. The two main parts of the song fitted well with the structure we had planned, retaining a feel despite changes in pace and sound levels; potentially we would not have to edit the levels and volume in the music to a huge extent. We did not have the time to add on the hammering effect on the door being knocked right at the end of the sequence, but the lacking of it certainly worked less effectively that how we imagine it can with the added sound.

Titles
As we could not create the dynamic titles at this stage of our project, titles were not something we could take forward a huge amount from this stage, however as a group we felt there were not enough titles when looking back on our animatic, providing us with constructive hindsight. An impacting final film title is something for us to work on as it can prove effective in connoting the genre.

DialogueOur dialogue needs further development in order to contribute more to narrative and characterisation. The acting itself in terms of the dialogue was not as effective as it could be from the protagonist, but acting on set may make it easier to perform more realistically than in a classroom into a microphone as we did in our animatic.


Shots
These could be made more compelling and creative with a little thought and work once we know our final location more thoroughly but generally showed us that a little variety goes a long way in making footage far more exciting and interesting to watch. In terms of being realistic in our ideas, the latter half of the sequence was definitely more effective and taught us what it would be like to shoot within a small physical space.