Shot List

20th December 2015

I have been doing a lot of work towards the storyboard and have been hcnaging my mind about a lot of things and having to re-draw most of it. We have a rough idea of the beginning, middle and end of our opening it's just filling in the gaps in between however, we are close to sorting them out and I am currently working on the shot list however, i am finding coming up with ideas is difficult. To help me I am watching fight scenes from other action films, chase scenes, dialogue scene etc. This is helping slightly as it has inspired some ideas it's just the struggle of turning that scene into a low budget scene but still making it look good.

The Final Survey

Our Final Survey: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6GYWZ6D

The first question we asked was "Do you think it's better for the Antagonist's identity to be:
Completely Hidden
Shown Slightly
Completely On Show
Other
The option that was the most popular was 'shown slightly.' This hasn't surprised me as this is what we intend to do within our production and looking at some other action films you can see that they do the same.
These responses have definitely encouraged us the stick to what we have planned to do for our production .

In this next question we asked "Do you think it will be more effective to hear the gunshot rather then see the death?" We asked this question as we ourselves were unsure but we know that we wanted a death in our production to add tension. The most popular response was 'maybe' and some comments that went with that response are: "Deaths can be hard to fake, so it would be easier to just use a gunshot but it is also important that the audience can infer that the character has die." and "In a film everyone likes to see the aftermath of the fight scene... However if you are going for suspense and mystery, then hearing it will work just as well" The second most voted was "yes." Through the responses and the most voted options we decided that we would only the death scene so that you can only hear the gunshot and not that actual death as this would help the opening it self but more realistic because it can be hard to to portray on a low budget but also, by hearing the gunshot it causes a lot more mystery and suspense.  

We asked them what they thought of the costume we were thinking of using for our Antagonist. Some repsonses we got were: " Yes- stereotypical for a villain to be dressed in black so works well", " No, although the costume has a black dark element to it, it does not fit the normal codes and conventions of an antagonists costume! There costume should be easily identified and not relatable to the audience", " No. It looks like somthing an everyday teenager would wear... But then again i don't really know the plot so maybe thats what you're going for? Its a good colour choice" and " Yes because it is dark colours which connotes that they will be the antagonist, it also means they can be hidden in dark lighting which adds effect." There was a mixture of yes and no responses. Looking at the responses me and my group decided that we would keep the colour of black being the main colour in the costumes but instead having it as hoodie and jeans we have a more formal coat/jacket to make thr Antagonist seem more professional and in some ways intimidating.

Risk Assessment

Now that we finally have all of our locations we decided it was time that we did the Risk Asessment. For all the locations the risk assesment was the same:

Signed:

(Madison Flaherty)
Name of person responsible at the shoot: Madison Flaherty

Props

For our production we decided that we would use a fake gun as it is very typical for a gun to be in an action film and definitely in fight scenes. While in the process of our storyboards we decided that a gun would help protray the action genre by also help make the scenes more like a professional action scene.

A big thing that influenced us to use a gun within out production was analysing aome action films themselves. Going through them I noticed that most of them all had a weapon of some kind within the opening, so we took that idea and put it into our production. 

Location Pictures

Location One:

Location Two:

Today I went out to our filming locations to take some pictures. I tried to take some of the camera angles we already knew we would be using to see how they would look. Going down to the locations also let me see what time of the day we should film, these pictures were taken around 10am and there was natural lighting, not too many people walking around that would get in the way of filming and it was slightly foggy which would help add to our suspense and mystery side of our production.

Roles

We have finally decided the roles in the production within our group:

We have sorted out the roles of cameras and editing:

Action Adventure in the Box office

I used http://www.imdb.com/ to get some information of Action Adventure films in box office. It was no surprise when seeing the Top 5. Looking at their budgets i found that they all had massively large budgets and comparing them to the others it was common that the larger the budget the film had the bigger Gross it had in the end. This is mainly because those films have high tech special effects in their films which just all round makes the film better and want people to go and spend the money to watch it even more and can afford to have the most popular actors in their films, bringing in all their fans.

Antagonist Costume

The first costume I came up with for our Antagonist is a simple black hoodie, black jeans, black shoes. I thought the black hoodie would be good as the Antagonist can have the hood up hiding their identity. Also, having the Antagonist dressed in full black would help to connote their "Darkness." This outfit could also be seen as the typical thing for someone like a burglar to wear connoting that this Antagonist probably shares some traits with a burglar. I also thought that the outfit doesn't give away anything anyway as the audience wouldn't be able to tell the gender, race, age, class.

I made a second option for the Antagonist's outfit as I was unsure which would fit. This out is more smart which would show that the Antagonist is a professional. Also, as our production would be based partly in a forest area, seeming as he is dressed smartly it would be as if they knew they wouldn't get dirty or anything because they knew he would win the fight, as if mocking their victim. Even though this doesn't hide their identity as well as the hoodie we could keep their face in the shadows, adding tension within the audience as the face of the Antagonist is right in front of them but they can't fully see them.

9th December 2015

Sadly, my other group members were not here today and I found it hard as I wasn't able to consult them in some ideas for the costume/props and storyboard.
I have completed 2/4 things on my to do list, I have almost finished the storyboard and once that is done we will begin on the bilinary task so that we are able to get ready to film. Filming itself will be done over Christmas as I have my own camera and are able to film at any time, hoping that the weather is on our side.

Locations for filming:
 We decided that we will film partly in the local park which isn't fall of playground equipment but trees and fields and has a woodland area. We will also be filming in an old abandoned area to keep the shots exciting because I thought that if it was all just trees the audience would eventually get bored of it.

Social Media #2 [Twitter Poll]

Due to our recent development of our production in wanting to give the antagonist the power of telekinesis I decided to conduct a twitter poll to see what our audience thought about that idea.
Looking at the other polls and surveys we'd done, where most people would vote yes to the 'protagonist' having powers. We instead asked what they thought about the antagonist having powers. The results came back as 50/50 I was slightly surprised. We have decided to keep the idea in our production but may have a back up plan if the footage doesn't come out looking good. I think that the results came our 50/50 as people were tore between giving the antagonist the advantage on the protagonist of having powers but at the same time they wanted almost a supernatural feel to it.

Lighting Research On A Chase Scene - Inception

The scene starts off with two of the main protagonist having a conversation about what seems to be the antagonist. They are inside and the lighting is very dark, there is small amounts coming from open windows which also indicates that it's daytime outside.  

As the protagonist jumps out a windows from a giant height, which is also a typical convention of an action film, dare devil stunts. As the protagonist jumps out, they jump out into the daylight making the lighting in the scene brighter. Which if the audience didn't already notice indicates that's they are now outside but also, can connote that the chase is about to begin as they typically take place outside in open spaces.

 

 As the protagonist goes into a crowd the lighting around them darkens and it almost emphasises how crowded it is. You can see a bright light further on in the shot, giving it the 'light at the end of the tunnel' look. As he finds his way through the crowd the shot instantly gets brighter and he gets faster, connoting the crowds are gone and everything is bright for now.

 

I noticed that s the protagonist went down a narrow corridor surrounded by tall buildings there were a lot of shadows. As you can see behind them, you have a shadow of one building on another. The left side of the frame is a lot darker compared to the right, connoting that either the buildings to his right are either very big or the light is coming from the left of him.

I chose a chase scene to analyse for lighting because we wanted to do one in our production and it would be outside and i thought that this would be the perfect fit to see what goes into making one look good.

7th December 2015

Having some trouble getting some work up as i have exams but i am doing my best. I went through some of my work to add some screen grabs and some GIFs to make it look better. I've finished the first page of the storyboard and I am currently starting some light research for preparation of the filming of the production.
I also just created a new twitter poll asking whether they think the antagonist should have the power of telekinesis, will hopefully have the results this time tomorrow.

To do List: 4th December 2015

• Do some Lighting research in prep for production.
• Some more sound research in prep for production.
• Get storyboards finished.
• Upload the location photos

Idea Development #4

Due to my social media research/polls we have decided to give the antagonist some small powers that aren't hard to work into filming as the power itself (telekinesis) can easily be betrayed. We did they due to one of the polls I did where I asked whether they would prefer the protagonist to have powers or not and they said they would want them to have powers. However, instead we have given the antagonist powers to try and mix it up. I am going to create another poll asking our target audience how they feel about this.

Social Media

As well as doing surveys I did some polls on twitter to see what people on social media thought, here are my results.

I was surprised at these results because when we did our survey and we asked a similar question to our survey, asking what people thought were important/good in an action film and in our SurveyMonkey humour got the most votes whereas, on my twitter poll it didn't even get one vote. This time it was "intense soundtrack" that people voted as what they think is important/good in an action film. The difference between the doing a Twitter poll and a survey is that they could only pick one option on Twitter whereas, they could pick three on our survey.

As we had already got a rough idea for our production I thought I would ask about what they thought about a fight scene, the majority of people voted that a fight scene should be fast paced and secondly, only 1-2 minutes long. I wasn't surprised by these results as I myself think the same think but it is also found to be typical of an action scene to be fast and not very long, if it was too long the audience would get bored.

 

Another question I asked was whether they would prefer the protagonist to have some sort of powers or not. The majority voted that they would prefer the protagonist to have powers. I was slightly surprised by these results as when I first put out the poll it was the option "no powers" that had the most votes as I thought people would be able to relate more to a normal, power free protagonist and it would be more realistic then having a superhero like protagonist. This has made me think about adding powers in however, I feel that maybe in the opening scene it would be more effective for the antagonist to have some sort of power such as telekinesis as it's not as hard to add that in. It would also give the audience some insight as to the film will be about and it would keep them wondering and wanting to watch on. I might create another poll to see how my target audience feel about this.

 

The last question I did was asking whether they thought the protagonist or the antagonist should wear a mask. I asked this question because while I was doing some research on the protagonists and antagonists I saw that there is a variety who them both who wear masks therefore, I was unsure that if we did involve a mask in the costumes who we would put it on which is why I asked that question in my social media research/poll. When I looked at the results most people had voted that the antagonist should wear the mask. I wasn't really surprised by this as I feel not knowing the true identity of the antagonist adds to their trickster behaviour. This has effected our planning for our production as we are now going to mask the antagonists face but instead of with a mask with the shot itself. We'll let the audience see part of their face but not enough for them to know who they are.

Idea Development #3

So recently we added the idea of having the text message conversation next to the character to give the audience some insight and make them feel apart of it but we have decided that when the fight/chase scene is over and the antagonist has killed the protagonist, the camera will seem the pull away from the scene and as if it's pulling out of a computer screen to then be an over-shoulder shot of someone watching what has just happened, except this time it will have the effect as though the footage is through CCTV and we will show that this is the person the antagonist is talking to but you never see their face.

1st December 2015

Firstly, it's December already which means our deadline is closing in quick, today i hope to start and get close to finishing the StoryBoard for our production. We have decided that i will be the one to edit the footage we film.