Production Planning

Initial Ideas:

Our initial ideas of creating an opening is to do a mix between the genres of adventure and also a crime like biography. These three genres offer different uses in terms of conventions as adventure offers a sense of unrealism and the focus in on groups. But we do not like the idea of having the media product based upon a group and would prefer to focus in on one or two characters to build a sense where the audience can relate or sympathise. Also the Biography genre in terms of conventions allows a sense of 1 main character and also the use of voice overs are also a convention of the genre, which is the something me and Daniel would like to use in our movie opening. But the main genre we would like to portray is crime in the sense of telling a crime story and in the sense of the actual movie itself being categorised as a crime movie.

Main Ideas:

We have decided on the plot that the main character will be a villain sharing his side of the crime. Where we will hear a voice over of the villain throughout of how and why he is doing this specific crime and how he is going to do it without getting caught. We are hopefully going to create the right the sound for the villain’s voice in trying to make his voice sound like a bit of a rough edge to it to give it the sound of a stereotypical villain in also the ways he speaks. There will be two characters the villain is the main character and the investigator as the second character. We will only see the investigator in the interrogation room, in the interrogation room is where the dialogue for the voice over will take place. We decide on this after we rejected the idea of the style of The Hobbit as in it’s a voice over from a story a character has wrote, we turned this down due to the difficulty of recreating this as a fantasy genre for such a small production team.

We then went on to create a storyboard of the plot and even shot to shot of what we think we will film for our movie opening. We tried to make as close as possible to what we think our movie opening will be. However we may make changes as we go along but we will use the storyboard as a template.

Animatic storyboard

Actors:

We have already decided on the two people chosen to be in our movie opening, they’re Jack Blurton and Freddie Hancock. We have chosen these two because we think they can portray the appropriate image we are trying to portray in the way they act and look.

Jack Blurton (The Investigator)



Freddie Hancock (The Villain)



Props and Costume and Test Shots:

We have chosen to include a smart coat for the investigator that is a long grey blazer, which gives the appropriate image of the investigator as smart and well dressed. However we have not chosen on how to appropriately dress the villain as we don’t know whether it would be better for him to be dressed as smart as scruffy for the appropriate effect to look like a stereotypical view of a villain.

These are the costumes on to best fit the characters of a villain and a investigator.

We thought we could use this microphone to film the narrative and use it as a prop for a police interrogation room recorder.

Many of the props we want to use are normal household items. We decided to use these props as they were easily accessible, at Freddie's house where we wanted to film the interrogation room setting. The light here was good for the interrogation room as it means there is artificial lighting in the shot but also limits the light shown making it a tense setting.

This is an overview of the setting of the interrogation room and the props we decide to use. This is also a test shot of the interrogation room as this is where the camera is at high angle therefore this would connote the character on screen to look inferior.


This is the bag that the props such as hammer and a screwdriver will be inside. Also we decided on using a bag that is easily recognisable and maybe stereotypical to  a bag a criminal from an rundown estate may have.-A old bag that has been used a lot before, connoting the crime he is about to commit maybe he has done before.

Props like the hammer or screwdriver are ordinary household items, therefore we knew access to props like these would be easy, so we decided on using these props from Freddie's house where we wanted to film all of the inside scenes to our opening.
These three props: bag, hammer, screwdriver are all test shots of POV shots where we would see the protagonist taking the props at the beginning of the movie opening, before we actually see the protagonist himself.

Potential Locations:

We have not fully decided on the location, except the need for it be in a urban location, therefore we may be looking at the town centre in Leicester.
{edit} We have now decided on the what we want our location to be like, that is we want to create the image of a council estate look to the setting of the movie opening, as this will look more of an unpredictable environment and will look more of a dangerous environment to be, this will make our movie opening seem to be more realistic, as it stereotypically viewed as warn down council estates to be a typical setting for crime genres.

This next location would be good for creating a low class look on a rough estate kind of picture which will give a movie opening a stereotypical view of where the villain may permit certain crimes.

This will also be good if the setting of this location was at night to create more of a crime setting that will look more tense.

Risk Assessment

Props: Some props that we may use may be a hazard for example the uses of a varieties of tools e.g. hammers, screwdrivers and nails. These can be deemed dangerous if used incorrectly.  However we will only let these props to be used in a safe inside environment.

Timing: The time of day, as if it is filmed at night on the streets it needs to be a safe environment for the actors and me and Daniel, therefore we might film before night.

Roads: We need to be careful due to cars and motorbikes that may travel on the road, so if we are filming may be keep to the pavements or film at an appropriate time on an un busy road to minimise accidents. As the actors may not be looking at the road when acting and the same for when we are filming.

Location: Difficult to film in certain places for reasons like the nightlife in the area may deem it dangerous to film at night.

Shooting Schedule

We will start filming during the February half term (Friday 13th and onwards to the 22nd of February). This is so we have time to arrange locations and a meet up of the actors as well. Also this will give us time to film if someone is ill or cant make it on the day. Also we plan to set up the setting inside so we have decide to get at Freddie's at 12 midday giving us enough time to film before it gets dark. We plan on filming all the scenes in the interrogation room first as we can later edit in where they're are supposed to be in the movie opening. After making sure that all the clips we film are satisfactory and that we don't need to film any parts again we will film all of the scenes in the small room/ bed room where we will see the first few shots of the opening of the props the protagonist is going to use to commit a crime. Then after filming this we will film the protagonist plotting the crime that will come after the interrogation room scene. After all filming in the house the actors will have a break whilst me and Daniel decide what shots we are going to use in the outside setting, therefore when the actors go outside will mean we can get the filming done quickly without any distractions and problems to solve.

Music Test

This is a test for the beginning of the movie of a sound we made that we want to carry on for the majority of the opening of the movie as the rest of the opening will be the sound of police sirens as we see the protagonist panic as he has committed a crime and now plans on evading the police officers by getting away uncaught. On top of this background music we plan on making a narrative for the protagonist.