Props

For scenes within our movie such as the scene where the montage occurs and the apocalypse scene, our group needed various elements of mise en scene and props in order to make this affective. To present the audience with a clear depiction of who the characters are we needed to add books and make the environment look like a classroom to present to give the audience the idea that these are students. Furthermore to make the apocalypse scene look more realistic we needed props like wood, bottles, rubbish and black cloth to present the idea that something catastrophic has occurred. We obtained these props from the D.T department as they had various scrap pieces of equipment that where very useful during our film production. 

Wood

Black Cloth

Bottles

Rubbish

In addition to this, to solve light issues we decided to use a big black board that was available in class. This black board was handy as it covered any parts of light that we didn't want the camera being exposed to, which could affect the effect of the scene. 

Our group has intending to make a making of the film to present the props we used during the development of this movie. In this, we will show you some other props that where also included in our film such as guns, cut up jeans and skeletons.

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Testing

 When testing the use of the monopod during on of our media lessons we found some issues and benefits when using this piece of kit. Firstly, we found that at times without the monopd the camera became very unsteady and shakey handheld, which isn't something we need for some shots in our media film. However, we thought that this kind of unsteady and staggery movements could create a great affect in presenting someone that is unstable or present an event like an earthquake of such.

When we used the monopod we found better results in obtaining a more stabel image. We found this useful especially when performing an over the shoulder shot and following any movements of Miles in this testing video as the camera movements was smooth when moving from different angles. Furthermore, we know that this would benefit us in certain situations during our filming for events where we need to move the camera from side to side.

Storyboard

Location problems

Whilst searching for locations around our school our group encounter several issues. Firstly when our group went to science rooms to check for there avaliablilty we found that the rooms may not be avaliable everytime when we seek to shoot. This constrain is going to affect our schedule, so we have come up with an alternative method that will overcome this, which is to film at lunch times and after school. This way our group is avoiding lessons as students will be on their way home, meaning we can film. However the group realizes that are schedule will be affected either way. Our group also anticipated the corridors are likely to become noisy during certain intervals during the day, with addition of students and teachers walking around the corridors from time to time. Our filming routine will be affected as students and teachers may look at the camera distracting our focus and progress. Our group understands that there isn't a way to uphold this as its something unavoidable; our group will have to therefore shoot scenes efficiently to aviod disruption during the production of our film. Moving on from this, the apocolypse scene will have to be shot when the school is empty, this will be something hard to achieve as the school is hardly empty as its contained with teachers and students. The best way to uphold this is to film in the half term as there is a minimal amount of people in the school, maximasing our chances of shooting this scene.

STILLS (Location)

Scouting

When we was given this task to create a 5 minutes short film we had to scout for potentail candidates that would be suitable for our movie. As we had to change our storyline we had to scout for a whole new set of actors that fitted the conventions of our movie. As our short media film has a hybrid of genres we needed all-round characters that where enabled to fit the conventions of what we are trying to portray.

The Protagonist

We need a reliable main character for our film who was always readily available when we needed him. We needed the actor to be male because the male needed to be involved in a commotion with a gang he used to be in. The main character needed to have a hard inside but soft exterior, and had to look relatively frail and vulnerable in comparison to the villian. Luckily within our group we noticed that we had a male that suited all these conventions and would be suitable for this movie (Miles). Miles is also a relatively short person, if you compare him to the other actors, making it easier to portray who is in control in certain shots in the movie and who power shifts in certain relationships. We where lucky to find a person that suited these conventions for our film. Moreover we knew that he had the same timetable as us and was always available to film as he was within our group, not hindering our planning and schedule.

The girlfriend of the protagonist

Finding a actress for our short film was harder to find than finding our protagonist. This was because within our school environment there are only a handfull of girls and the majority are boys. At first we asked one girl within our school who we thought would play the part well as we needed a actress who was obsessed with being pampered and was in constant concentration about how she looked. We was soon to realise the she wasn't willing to participate in our film due to other committments and a clashing timetable. For this reason, me and my partner had to look for an actress externally outside the school environment. We where able to find one and her name is Sophia. Sophia is a friend of Kingsley's my media partner and she has had experience in filming and using the Canon camera which was a boost towards creative decisions being made whilst filiming. She also has acting skills which can adapt to certain roles we want the audience to believe whilst watching our short film, making her perfect for this role.

The villian (Gangsta)

Our group needed a very serious looking male for this role to give the audience the impression of feeling threatened just like the protagonist would feel in the movie to engage them into the movie more. We scouted a potential candidates accross the school for this role and we quickly found a person that had the characteristics of the role of a villan. Omed is the name of the person that will be playing the villian in our production he follows what a gangsta villian would portray as he has a very serious gleam in his eye that would threaten most people. He also has the build of a gangsta and has his hair slicked back like the traditional gangsta's you would see in movies like Scarface. His timetable was very much like our groups timetable avoiding any conflicts and being useful for his availbility of when he can film.

Schedule problems

Problems between us group members and our timetables:

Some problems we had faced was the difficulty of shooting times, as our timetables were not completely the same, there would be times where Kingsley would have free periods, where Miles would have lessons.
To over come this problem we agreed that during times when all of us or atleast 2 of us have a free period  we can shoot or edit our footage. This was an effective way to keep the progession of our media work constant instead of waiting for opportunities when all 3 of us are availiable.

Also times when the team was able to shoot, as we are in a school other school pupils would be walking around going about their business. This posed the problem of them disrupting the scene either by making noise or walking on to the set. To get passed this we decided to shoot during lesson time, this was when the school was at its most quiet as pupils would be in their classrooms.
Although this meant we had an extremely limited amount of time to shoot, this proved to be a learning curve as we are learning to shoot very efficiently in any given amount of time.

AlternativesShooting after school Other ways for the group to overcome the restraint of times available to shoot was to use our time after school to shoot. This also solved the problem of pupils or teachers disrupting production as many of them would have gone home.

Schedule (Group members)

SCHEDULE (Whole group)

Today we have created schedule because it will help outline what we would everyday each week so that when a group member is not in the other member will have a secure idea of what they could do instead of wasting that time. We have currently only planned up to until half term because objectives may vary depending on how much we can get done within this time period. Drawing towards half term, on the last day before we break up we plan to discuss our next schedule for after half term.

Storyline Research (IamLegend & Taxi Driver)

I am Legend

This post-apocolyptic horror formed the basis of our inspiriration. As it follows a survivor who tries to find a cure after a plague has wiped humanity turning people into monsters.

This inspired us in the sense that we decided to produce a post apocolytic science fiction pyschological thriller. We thought that
the post-apocolyptic factor would really drive our story forward of the protagonist being almost unstable pyschologically.

Taxi Driver

how it relates and the kind of shots/sound/lighting we could us

-The camera was follows and is completely fixed on the main character

In terms of using Taxi driver as inspiration, we're using aspects of its cinematography to implement into our production. The way the camera is mainly fixed on the main character engrossing the audience in the characters world, we found this an interesting element that would make our production more captivating to the audience.

Also small parts of the storyline contributed to our idea as in Taxi Driver the character is under some sort of elusion about the world. We used this as a platform for our idea in making the character confused about what is going on around him.

STORYLINE

Our final idea is a demented story about a boy who has been living out a worldwide apocalypse (something like a deadly virus outbreak that made all life cease to exist. Of course with some survivors, for example him)

The film starts of with a (romantic) montage where a guy has developed a close relationship with a girl within science lessons, (the boy could throw a paper ball at her saying something cheeky, this shows the main character and the girl's relationship.) The montage ends when the boy and girl are at the back of the class getting along when she leans in to kiss the main character's cheek.

Just before her lips reaches his cheek the scene changes, the next scene begins with the same person, in worn out clothing, more roughed up waking up. He doesn't realise it was a dream so goes in search of the girl in his dream, we know this because in his hand he has a scrunched up photo of the girl that was in the dream. (The back story of that is she was his high school lover)

Whist the main protagonist is searching different classes another survivor was coincidently exploring the school and runs into a classroom with the main character hugging his lover.
The survivor asks: 'Are you okay sir?? Are you alive?'
The main character turns around and the girl he was hugging was actually a skeleton. He stands there guarding the skeleton who he still things is his sweetheart.

The survivor with gun pointing at the main character asks him again:
'Sir, are you alive or are you one of them?!'
The main character grabs the weapon still guarding the skeleton
He charges at the survivor, and the film ends with a shot of the survivor closing his eyes
And then a gunshot sound.

Idea 3 - The Virus

During our brainstorm activity inside class and discussion outside school we came up with a third idea. This idea was a virus that affects reality, the arises from a social networking site. This virus activates when a 

young school boy decides to disobey orders and browse social networking sites when he wasn't supposed to, which have severe implications towards the school. The virus then goes on the dominate the school infrastructure and affects the boys livelihood as he cannot escape this virus which haunts everything he browses, with the addition of affecting the way the school is run in the process. The student has to therefore destroy the computer to save the school and most of save himself. We had a problem pursuing this storyline because when we tried to explain it to others like our media teacher it was very typical. Furthermore, we wanted to make this storyline more darker so we could add more effects during the process of editing the media production to eye catch the audience that will be attracted towards a storyline like this. Moreover, making this story more darker means we can expand on the types of shots we want to include in this storyline and create weird angles which will keep the viewers watching our film. During our groups discussion we found it very complex of how to make this story darker and create effective scences to make this film effective, this is why we didn't move forward with this storyline.

Idea 3 (Development)

BRIEF NOTES:
A hacker trying hack into school's computing system to attain answers for an upcoming exam because he feels intimidated by a top student always achieving much higher grades.
Or
A Smart student persuades a hacker known to be his friend to hack into school's computing system to attain answers for an upcoming exam because the smart student cannot afford to be caught as he is a hacker in secret and afraid he will be caught because he almost had before.
Or
A average student is attracted to his classmate and wants to impress her by beating the top student, however is not academically clever so results to trying to hack into the schools system to obtain answers to the test.
Or
Two students, one a computer nerd and the other a lucrative pupil that is bored of his small time buying and selling of other pupils goods. They both realize there is money to be made in selling exam answers, so they both utilize their skills of being a business man and being IT smart. A big exam is coming up and students are willing to pay large amounts for the answer,the computer nerd hacks into the school system and obtains the exam answers....We could try to include some sort of conflict and/or possibly add a twist to the story.