Filming - 11th Dec 09

Tonight we finished our filming. We had to complete our series of murders in which we had to reschedule because some of the actors were unavailable. We had to film one scene again due to continuity as one of the actors forgot to bring an item of clothing. This scene was the shop scene where James Dillan purchases a packet of cigarettes. I'm glad we reshot this because the first time I wasn't present so didn't have much knowledge of what the shot would look like. I looked at the previous footage and analysed it to see if anything needed to be altered, and I believed it did. I thought that the dialogue should have been slightly different as when it as first filmed, when the actors ended the conversation, it wasn’t realistic because the discussion ended quickly and the tones of voice did not fit the scene. This was the only change that was made.

We then went onto shooting our fight scene. We knew this would be the hardest one to do and we had over 20 shots to do and we had to work outside in the cold. We got straight into setting up for the first shot, although we did change our location due to lighting complications. The first shot was where James Dillan is being followed and he drops the cigarette and notices Li behind, this is where the fight starts. For the group to remember the fighting and camera angles we printed each shot, which we put into a visual storyboard, so we could keep referring back to it. This helped a lot as we didn’t have to stop, think and possibly rein act some of the moves. Whilst filming we added some extra shots in that we believed were significant to out film. For example, in our visual storyboard you will notice it shows no images or signs of a close up of James dropping the cigarette and it hitting the floor, however we thought this would be effective on screen. One thing that occurred, not necessarily a problem, was that while we were directing and focusing on filming the cigarettes were burning out which meant if we were to be analysed deeply on continuity, it would show different lengths of the cigarette.

The next couple of shots went well and steady as they were easy to direct. The fight scene was filmed on a concrete surface which means we had to consider our risk assessment because we had a couple of falls and rolls in our film and wanted to avoid any injuries so took extra precaution when directing the actors during these parts. During the filming, because we took turns in taking the role of director and director of photography is caused the group to interfere as they had ideas which they thought would be more effective however it wasn’t up to them because it wasn’t their role.

I like how we vary our camera angles from long shots, mid shots, close medium shots, close ups and the camera from high angles, low angles and

Coverwork - 3rd Dec 09

This is the clip i analysed.

Fight Scene Choreography.

Today Luke and Denzi arranged with Mr Lawes (who is playing James Dillan) and Miss Johnson (who is playing Li a date to practice the fight scene. We needed to rehearse this and show the actors what exactly they will be doing so they can learn it especially as they will be performing it in the dark. So Luke and Denzi met Mr Lawes and Miss Johnson in the dance studio and begun to demonstrate the choreography. I joined the boys for the last 15 minutes as I had other arrangements with another subject. When I joined them the actors were running through the scene. They seemed to have a clear understanding of what the group wanted and performed it well.
We needed to take pictures on the fight scene in order to complete our storyboard as it would be very difficult and take a long while to visualise and draw each shot. Luke took photos of each shot we would be taking, some of the shots we took in different positions to see what would look better when we film. This created disjecta membra which Luke then had to rearrange to produce a visual storyboard of our fight scene.


This is the sequence our fight scene will look like.
Unless we add shots to enhance the scene further.

Storyboard

This is our storyboard of the opening sequence of 'FATAL SCORN'.

Screenplay - Draft Two

Title -- DIRECTOR, DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

EXT. STREET -- NIGHT

MURDER 1 takes place (LI strangles using CHAIN)

TITLE -- Actor... (JAMES DILLAN)

INT. House, RECORDING STUDIO -- NIGHT

Each murder will be about 7 seconds long.MURDER 2 takes place (LI turns off lights OFF suddenly kills agent with a GUN)
TITLE—Actor... (LI)

EXT. ALLEYWAY -- NIGHT

MURDER 3 takes place in an ALLEY. LI impersonating a PROSTITUTE, walks up to car talks to agent. BOTH MOUTH to each other. LI leans into car and STABS JAMES)

TITLE -- FATAL SCORN

INT. CORNER SHOP -- NIGHT

JAMES walks into SHOP, picks up carton of milk and sugar.

INT. EVA’S OFFICE -- NIGHT



EVA
Where is he?

EXT. OUTSIDE CORNER SHOP -- NIGHT



LI
In a shop.

INT. CORNER SHOP -- NIGHT



SHOP KEEPER
That will be 80p.

JAMES DILLAN
Here you go, how’s the family?

SHOP KEEPER
There good thanks.

SHOP KEEPER hands over change.

JAMES DILLAN
Cheers mate.

JAMES EXITS.

INT. EVA’S OFFICE -- NIGHT

EVA’S office is her study at home. She is clenching a PHOTO of all her colleges in her hand looking at her next target. (JAMES DILLAN)



EVA
Make it quick

EVA hangs up and sits on chair in SILENCE.

EXT. PARK -- NIGHT

LI back into some bushes, JAMES crosses road and notices LI in BUSHES. DISCRETLY and SLOWLY reaches for his GUN and continues walking. LI creeps up from behind and attacks.

Fight scenes takes place. As LI RETREATS, a NOTE FALLS out of her pocket. JAMES notices this and picks it up.
The piece of paper says --

” John Samuels - 41
21 Marlborough Road,
Walthamstow,
E17 6UN

Pedro Gurrearo - 39
13 Victoria Road,
Westminster,
SW1 7LB

Carlton Robertson – 47
319 Angleton Street,
Soho,
W1 5RD

James Dillan - 39
64 Talbot Road,
Brixton,
SE5 3TG”

The first three address' will have a cross through them and possibly a photo stuck down.

Genre Research.

The group settled on an action genre and chose three well known films that share the same genre. These were, Mission Impossible 3, Watchmen and Next. I can only find a link to the opening scene of Watchmen that we viewed - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e-CQtsc_go

Extra Genre Research.

After doing research in school with my group members and talking about what genre we should use i decided to do some of my own research. I was looking into action genres. I looked at two opening sequences from, and Die Hard in comparison to Mission Impossible.

I found that both opening sequences create enigma. Mission Impossible opens with a man watching a small screen which appears to display a possible film clip or action from a hidden camera. This immediately causes the audience to question who the character watching and characters in the behind the screen are and whether they are important to the film. As the sequence goes on it is clear that what is happening on the screen is a murder or a woman, whether it's real or just a film clip. The man watching the screen then looks at his watch and says "C’mon c'mon, she’s been doing it too long". To me this makes me think whether there is a secret assignment taking place.

Die Hard opens with a plane landing then a hand clenching a seats armrest while the title "BRUCE WILLIS" appears. This may give viewers the idea that 'Bruce Willis' is the main character and that may be his hand. It is revealed that the hand is his. However another passenger who is the first person to be shown in the film may appear to be 'Bruce' as he was introduced after the title was shown.

Both of these openings create enigma because it questions identity. Has the man characters been introduced? Yes. As I watched the next few seconds it was very clear to see who the main characters were. Mission Impossible reveals the antagonist in screen to be the protagonist in real life and also the main character, Tom Cruise. This may cause confusion as the good guy was taking the role of the bad guy. But clearly gives him the authoritative, main role.

This has inspired me for when the group and I produce our film to cause some suspense and enigma when introducing our main characters.

Screenplay - Draft One.

Title -- DIRECTOR, DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

EXT. STREET -- NIGHT

MURDER 1 takes place (LI strangles using CHAIN)

TITLE -- Actor... (JAMES DILLAN)

INT. House, RECORDING STUDIO -- NIGHT

Each murder will be about 7 seconds long.MURDER 2 takes place (LI turns off lights OFF suddenly kills agent with a GUN)
TITLE—Actor... (LI)

EXT. ALLEYWAY -- NIGHT

MURDER 3 takes place (in ALLEY, LI impersonates a PROSTITUTE walks up to car talks to agent. They mouth. She enters car. She leans over and STABS him)

TITLE -- FATAL SCORN

INT. CORNER SHOP -- NIGHT

JAMES walks into SHOP, picks up carton of milk and sugar.

INT. EVA’S OFFICE -- NIGHT

EVA
Where is he?

EXT. OUTSIDE CORNER SHOP -- NIGHT

LI
In a shop.

INT. CORNER SHOP -- NIGHT

SHOP KEEPER
That will be 80p.

JAMES DILLAN
Here you go, how’s the family?

SHOP KEEPER
There good thanks.

SHOP KEEPER hands over change.

JAMES DILLAN
Cheers mate.

JAMES EXITS.

INT. EVA’S OFFICE -- NIGHT

EVA’S office is her study at home. She is clenching a PHOTO of all her colleges in her hand looking at her next target. (JAMES DILLAN)

EVA
Make it quick

EVA hangs up and sits on chair in SILENCE.

EXT. PARK -- NIGHT

LI back into some bushes, JAMES crosses road and notices LI in BUSHES. DISCRETLY and SLOWLY reaches for his GUN and continues walking. LI creeps up from behind and attacks.

Fight scenes takes place, LI RETREATS and leaves behind a note. James notices note. A piece of paper FALLS OUT of LI’S pocket. JAMES DILLION picks it up.

The piece of paper says --

” John Samuels - 41
21 Marlborough Road,
Walthamstow,
E17 6UN

Pedro Gurrearo - 39
13 Victoria Road,
Westminster,
SW1 7LB

Carlton Robertson – 47
319 Angleton Street,
Soho,
W1 5RD

James Dillan - 39
64 Talbot Road,
Brixton,
SE5 3TG”

Treatment.

As a group we had a genre we all agreed on. The next step was the one we knew would take us some time to do. We had so many ideas of what we could possibly do and how we could add other genres to it. After debating on the ideas we finally found our film plot.

Treatment-

There is a group of ex-agents who have retired however there was only one woman; the men had treated her badly since she started the job. This caused her to become angry and want to get revenge on them and so changed her image and became vindictive. She started to kill each agent off one by one. The next murder however did not go to plan, the agent fought back and got away. He then started investigating who the assassin could be; he got the agents that were still alive to help. After a while the found who it was and created a plot to kill her. They went through with the plan to set her up and they succeeded. The Woman was killed.

We came up with two possible titles for the film, ‘Fatal Scorn’ and ‘Fatality’. We believed these tittles suited out film best.

Genre Analysis.

In order to produce our coursework film we needed to think, deeply, about what genre we could successfully do. Each group member had their own ideas and got carried away in respects to thinking too far ahead. Luke McAdams and I came up with, what we thought would create a thrilling horror, we suggested going to a heavy woodland area like Hainault Forrest and having a girl running, being chased through the trees and the camera running after them giving a point of view aspect from the person chasing the her. We then told Mr. Lawes about our plan and he advised us that doing a horror will be difficult as we do not have access to certain props and special effects that we would need to generate a good film of that genre. We took this into consideration and decided we would not work with in that field. During one of our lessons we were influenced by a presentation and started to look at a romantic comedy film. Our homework that day was to go home and collect some films of the genres we are interested in using for our coursework. The group spoke outside of the lesson and discussed that a romantic comedy was a popular choice within our class and we wanted to do something different, therefore we brought in films that fit a romantic comedy, comedy and action/adventure. These were the genres we wanted to research to help us make a final choice.

The next lesson we each brought some films in of these genres and analyzed their opening sequences. The first film we watched was ‘Shes all that’. This film was a romantic comedy which opened with a montage of a female character doing some art work, the titles we colour coded with the colours in the art work, the film title letters formed from animated paint splats on the screen. There was also loud, young, ‘beaty’ non-diagetic music playing all the way through the first few minutes, quieter in some parts of the film where there was dialogue. Out of the four films we watched this was the only one with a montage. The second film we watched, ‘The Bucket List’ made us stop and think for a while because we didn’t know what genre(s) it came under so we watched the first 10 minutes and decided that it could be a comedy as there were a few little parts of the film that made us giggle. That was the only genre we categorized this film with because it was a sad film yet funny however it had slight moments of action in it as well but we thought comedy was the main theme. What I liked about this film was that you could tell who the main character was because there was monologue at the beginning; this was the same in the third film, ‘Guess who’. ‘Guess who’ was another romantic comedy which unlike the first, ‘She all that’, had a voice over at the beginning which indicated another main, male character. After watching the first few minutes I would have thought the non-diagetic music would have been soft instead of a fast, rap style song, especially when there’s a romantic gesture in the shot. The last film we watched was just a comedy, we thought as we started to look at romantic comedies we should see how comedy is shown. However this film, ‘Bill & Ted’ opened with a strange, Sci-Fi, racy music which then made us think whether it comes under a Sci-Fi genre as well and comedy.

After watching these four films and getting a structured idea of how these genres can be shown I have come to like the idea of having a monologue at the beginning of the film because it automatically introduces a main character without you even seeing them. This then allows you to bring in other characters without them appearing to take the lead role.

Prelim Evaluation.

These are the steps we went through:

*Firstly we discussed and debated on what our prelim would be about.

*We then wrote a script.

*Scouted for locations across the s chool grounds.

*Drew up a storyboard to fit our locations.

*And ghen the group decided who woul take on each role and started filming.

Some creative ideas we had came up with was impractical and not possible to use for example, when we was filming the elevator scenes the group wanted to edit it to show the view being on CCTV but this was not allowed. However for the scenes the guards were in the office we used a real CCTV set up and images for our screen. Although if we had more time we would have made or found a moving CCTV clip instead of still images.

Im very happy with what our group produced especially as we didn't have long but of course there were things we could improve. Such as consistancy because we filmed in two weeks, one of the group members forgot to wear the same clothes so in a couple of shots he was wearing a black t-shirt and in others he is wearing a grey and orange jumper. Also i would focus on the script more, especially as we were planning for a comedy not everyone would get the jokes and lines.

What i thinkwe did well was the steadyness of the camera. We did nothave access to the tripod when we filmed the first day so we had to hold the camera. I feel that the camera was pretty steady considering although one desadvantage of this was that you didn not get a clean smooth shot when rotating or turnign the camera. The shot of the camera following the guards running came out very well and was very effective.

When we come to producing out final piece i will think further when planning the narrative and creating the storyboard. I say the becauset sometimes the group, me included, get a bit to happy and start thinking ahead when we will film. This is distracting and we waste time we needed for planning and scripting. Another thing i would change is not to used any of the group in the film because there is too much to be looking out for and not one or two people can do it all at the same time. Such as looking out for objects that will show inconsistancy and just general, obvious things such as clocks or televisions.

Skills i believe i have developed is looking at things from a more creative, media infused perspective. Wen filming i began to think about different ways to show/film things, i think about how ther films have or may do it. I don't feel i have gained or developed any physical skills such as having mroe control when using a camera because i haven't had that much experience doing it for me to improve on.