Filming

The filming spanned over 3 weekends due to school and other engagements of our crew. We each took turns in being the camera man as a lot of our goup had to be acting at different times. the way that we filmed was in a logical order so that we got the shots from the first scene and films the story from begining to the end. This allowed us to keep track of what shot we had got and still needed to get.

After the first day of filming we edited a rough story together so that we could see where shots were needed to complete the film, allowing our other days of filming to be more focused.

Mise-en-Scene

Props such as clothing changed for every character, so that we could anchor the personalities of the characters making it easier for the audience to decode themselves.

Me = Wore a black t-shirt with black jeans. Also using a hoodywith the hood up, which connotes a chav or yob.

Andrew = wore a t-shirt and jeans.

Emma = To connote her young age we got her to dress up in her PJ's.

Others props which we used was a knife (which was blunt for health and safty reasons) and olli's van which was used in the first and last scene.

The location for our films was in Beaconsfield as it was a safe area where we could film in public with out the risk of our equitment being stolen. It was also the location of Andrews house, which was where we films the breaking sequence and the murder. The filming took placfe on a number of days, which was a risky tactic because the weather could be different on each day of filming. luckily they were the same on all the days.

Scripts

As the acting in any film is the most impressionable part of a movie, if the acting is bad the film is bad, So we kept the speech down to a minimum as we did not have an screen actors that we could use. this allowed us to focus on the more important aspects of the technical filming and editting side. The only main speech in the film is a radio news report that is a non-diogetic noise that is played over the top of the last scene to give the film some context.

Police Report Script

Beep beep……

A 14-year old girl has been murdered as part of a robbery last night in Buckinghamshire. This is one of a string of recent break-in’s in the area, but this is the first to result in a murder.

Police say that they have increased their presence in the area and now have patrol vehicles travelling through the area regularly. Mr Simons, the father of the recently deceased, came into close contact with the intruder before being incapacitated, he has made a statement expressing his anger and disappointment with the neighbourhood watch and local police. He also makes reference to the inmates that have been recently released from nearby Farnham Common Prison, he said: “It is clear that with the recently released inmates there is a rising correlation of burglaries”

Beep beep….

Police are now investigating a reported kidnapping in Buckinghamshire on Monday. The man, having recently been released for Farnham Common Prison, was being monitored as a part of rising crime rates in the area has suddenly gone missing and police are saying they fear the worst. The man who was said to be connected with local gangs could have been subject to an honour killing, police are asking for anyone with any information to come forward. Search parties are scouring the area but have yet to find the body

Story Board + Synopsis

Here is the initial story board that we are using. it will inevitable change once we get to filming as we did this before discussing where and when we are going to film not allowing us to take pictures of shots that we are going to use. However, it was good to use it so that it could show the plot of the story more clearly so that other members of our group could visualise the directions that this film is taking.

Open publication - Free publishing - More a2

Synopsis

“Mr Simmons is a family man whose daughter is brutally murdered during a house robbery. Andrew, who is bound and gagged, can do nothing to stop the killer and it is him who finds his daughter lying in a pool of blood. When the killer is missing, on the run, Andrew is forced to hunt him down himself due to the incapable police work. Months later when the man who got away with murder is located, seeking revenge, Simmons kidnaps him”.

Audience Research

To help us choose which type of genre that we wanted to use we decided to ask people in our year group as they were the type of target audience that we wanted to aim for. So we asked 20 people which film they liked best from an array of different genre films.the films were Psycho (Thriller), Saw 6(Horror) and Law Abiding Citizen (Action).

The Results:

Psycho = 2

Saw 6 = 4

Law Abiding Citizen =14

this showed us that to get the greatest intrest from the public from an age group of 17-18 the best genre to use would be a action film. We realise that by using material that is reated above 18 year olds will greately reduce the veiw range. If our product was shown at an exhibitor it would result in a reduced income because of the reduced audience.

Research

To get ideas about our 5 min film we looked a several professional film including "Law Abiding Citizen" where we got more of the ideas for the plot.




Crash was another film that we looked into because it had an interesting film technique that we wanted to use called unconvertional non-liniar narrative where the film loops around so that the into can be played an again halfway though the film it can be shown again an the audience can decode the text with a new understanding.




we also looked at other amateur short films to see what other people did in this task. This included online films such and films that had been previously be produced at Berkhamsted School such as the "Vicious Cycle" which was created for an A2 project by Nick Chang. We decided to make our film an Action film so as to not repeat what we did in our AS which was a Thriller 2 min open sequence. Because this is a 5 min film the plot will obviously have to be more complected so we dedicated almost a week to figuring out what the rough plot was but we still did not have the final product idea.

Conventions of Action film Narrative

The narrative normally follows Todarovs equailibrium theory, which followed a simple five stages.

> A state of equalibrium
> A disruption of that order by an event
> A recognition that the disorder has occrred
> An attempt to repair the damage of the disruption
> A return to a new equilibrium.

An example of such a narrative is 'Die Hard' and Action film staring Bruce Willis that was brought out on 1988. The hero John McClane comes to an office party to see his wife when terrorists take over the building. Discovering this John moves around the building trying to stop the terrorists, he finally succeeds and is reunited with his wife. There is a clear example of a Todorov's Equiibrium theory.

Rough plot:

Scene 1: Man gets kidnapped on street and thrown into a back of a van.

Scene 2: man shown robbing house and killing girl.

scene 3:news report and interview of father.

scene 4: go back to first scene but with added bit in which we see the father driving the car.

Scene5: body dumped in field.

The Plan

My AS course work was a 2 min film opening of a film (http://martinjoeaberson.blogspot.com/). For my A2 course work i have decided to create a 5 min long film. I am in a four person group which includes me, Olli Cannon, Andrew Gilbert and Emma Eves, it is the largest group that i have worked in but is quiet useful because of the amount of ideas that we can get from this amount of people. Also as my AS project was similar it allowed me to further dovelope my skills of filming a peice o f drama.

The Beginning!!!!

Who's in our crew.

This is Andrew Gilbert

Olli Cannon

Emma Eaves

Me (Martin Aberson)