Second shoot

The second shoot went well. We managed to find an actor that was willing to help us in our scenes. This helped with the ambiance of the scene as the scene was meant to be fast paced and action packed which it definitely was. We had some difficulty with the public walking in some of our shots which took a while for the mto clear and stop watching what we were doing and we had issues with the weather as it was bitter and cold which restricted some movement as the actors were quite cold to do much.
Sarah

Photographs on set

Whilst we were filming on the 15/12/09 I took some photographs to show how we are working together as a group and all helping whether it is deciding on an angle or what should happen next in the clip:

Holly

Photos of making the fake blood

I did not follow the previous recipe which I found on the internet as I could not find the ingredients so instead I created the fake blood by using golden syrup, red food colouring and a little bit of water. Here are some pictures of the process:

Holly

casting of actor/actresses

Finding people to star in our teaser trailer was preety easy to find exept finding a male role. Chloe ended up roping her brother in to play the male role which worked pretty well. He worked well with the female role and this worked well to show the anger between them, this also helped in the fighting scenes as they kept pretty much straight faces.

Sarah

Poster Ideas

I started looking at posters of films similar to our trailer. I looked at posters of social realism films such as Love and Hate, This Is England and Kidulthood as this is what we want our own trailer and ancillary tasks to be based around. I also looked at the Hollywood film Kill Bill as revenge is the main theme of the film just as it is in ours.

From these posters we can see the common connotations for the social realism genre which are shown through the editing, mise-en-scene and character appearance which are used within these posters. For example, the use of the dark colour grading is used here to give a darker, moody look to the poster which attracts the audience who enjoys the social realism genre. In the 'This Is England' and the 'Love+Hate' posters, there are the use of colour which makes the poster stand out to the audience. This is something that we are going to try and use when we create our posters and use that colour when creating our magazine cover. Another film poster which did this was the film 'Trainspotting', they used the colour orange to stand out more to the audience as orange is quite a bright, happy colour which is very ironic as the film is not.

       












Holly

Costumes and Makeup pictures during shoots - Chloe

The costume we decided on for our female protagonist was an all black outfit. The colour black was chosen for a number of reasons, the first was that she was a dark character seeking revenge and so white would have been inappropriate as it gives connotations of purity whereas black gives connotations of evil and is often used on dark characters.

This colour also seemed fit as the character is morning her sister- the reason for her revenge and so the colour black shows this.

The mood of our film, and a typical mood of a social realism film is dark and violent- never cheerful and so black is the best colour to reflect this mood.

The costume above consists of a leather jacket, leggins, a lace body suit and black heeled boots.

We incorporated the heeled shoes and lace body as we wanted to make our protagonist glamorous and sexually appealing so it would attract our secondary audience which is males. Just as female action protagonists are presented in films we researched such as Kill Bill and Charlie's Angels.

However, as we did a number of shoots the costume changed slighty as it was not always possible to have the same costume and it wasn't always practical due to the weather as we shot most of our trailer outdoors.

For example in one shoot our protagonist it wearing a black hoody. We kept the colours the same, but we felt the hoody worked well especially in the close up shots of our protagonist's face. The hoody is a classic fashion associated with the working class criminal and so it fitted our genre and character perfectly and also helped the audience to realise that our character is infact, quite sinister.

As the trailer is cut into lots of small scenes and shows events from different points of the film, we felt the change of costume worked, especially because the colours were the same.

In the home video clips, the protagonist is wearing a pink hoody. This creates a clear contrast between the home footage, where she is happy and her sister is alive compared to the footage where she is out seeking revenge for her dead sister. It also helps the audience to realise it is a totally different part of the film.

In the fight scenes the male character fighting our protagonist is wearing a hoody. We didnt want the audience to see much of the male character's face as it creates mystery and teases the audience as it isn't clear who she is fighting with, we also wanted our protagonist's face to be the focus of the trailer as this establishes the fact that she is the protagonist and the film revolves around her actions. Also as the hoody gives connotations of a criminal, it gives clues that the male character may have done something wrong, as well as hiding his face.

1st Shoot Information

On our first shoot me (Rebecca) Chloe and Sarah travelled to Burnley to capture various different shots using the equipment of the video camera, tripod and also using a stills camera.
The main shots we wanted to gain was to establish the main character that was the girl Leah. She was portraying a rebellious girl who wanted revenge. We also wanted to produce a home movie with footage of two sisters having fun in the past. The sister of Leah was Sarah.
In our group we all took on roles, whilst Sarah acted, i directed the camera and gathered all the footage, and Chloe directed what both Leah and Sarah needed to do when acting also she gathered realistic props such as alcoholic bottles.
Eventually we managed to get some footage we were able to edit on final cut. This footage was what we initailly set out to capture. But we were unable to film everything we needed for our film so another shoot will be needed.

Rebecca

Props -chloe

Below are images of the making of props needed in the first shoot. Our film genre is british socail realism and a main theme of this genre is drugs and alcohol abuse and money issues. We wanted to show this in the trailer without making a direct reference to it such as through speech, so we decided that props in the background of a shoot would just as effectively portray these themes.

We wanted to show the audience that the protagonist and her sister are involved in drugs and so we decided the perfect scene to show the drugs, money etc was in the home video scenes.

Looking at the location shots we decided that the props could be set out on the table in the room we had chosen to film in and so we decided that we wanted rolls of money on the table- to suggest drug dealing or stealing, alcohol and varies types of drugs so it would be very clear to the audience that these characters were involved in crime or drugs.

We planned to get an image of money from http://www.google.com/ using the images search section then print off, then cut out the printed off images of money for example a fifty pound note. However when we tried to print off the image it didn't work and through further investigation we discovered that images of money couldnt be printed due to legal reasons.

In order to get the stacks of money we had planned, we decided to bulk up the stacks by cutting out newspaper in the shape of money notes as shown below and then put a real twenty pound or ten pound note and covered the stack of newspaper in order to make it look like money.

Finally we rolled up the stacks so the newspaper was hidden even more before finally securing them with an elastic band. The money eventually looked really realistic and was cheap and easy to make.

We also wanted drugs on the table such as cocaine which is a very recognisable drug as it is commonly shown in films and TV dramas for example the TV drama 'skins' and the film 'Pulp Fiction'. We knew the audience would recognise this drug easily.

We tried white powdery foods such as salt and flower however they didnt look realistic enough, after more trial and error, we discovered that caster sugar looked good and so we decided to use this. We also gathered alcoholic bottles to put on the table and cigarettes. The final picture of the tablel with all the completed props on is below:

Casting Shots - Beki

Here above is our main protaganist Leah Sumner

Here is Sarah Fowler, The role Sarah will take is Leah's sister within the film.

2nd Location Shots - Chloe

We decided to look for more locations in order to get the best shots for our trailer. We needed a deserted looking waste land for the fight scenes and scruffy looking urban streets that would fit into the socail realism genre criteria and also make our trailer look as realistic as possible. We also needed a living room that didnt look to high class as the characters are working class drug-users with little money. These are some locations we found on the second location shoot.

Recipe for fake blood

Non-Toxic Blood

1. Combine 1 part water with 3 parts corn syrup (glucose syrup in the UK).
2. Add red food coloring and mix gently by stirring. Continue adding drops until the shade resembles that of real blood. Add a small amount of blue food coloring to achieve a more realistic shade.
   
3. Add a thickener. Dry thickener - Add sifted flour or corn starch to your mixture, and gently mix it all again. You may get small lumps forming at the top of the mixture. Wait about a minute and they will float to the top where you can remove them.
4. Let the mixture sit for ten minutes in a warm environment. This will give it some time to thicken. And then you can freak people out with it, it is a lot of fun. Note: this recipe yields blood that is very sticky initially, especially in hair.

Holly

Moodboards

We created two mood boards to get a general image of what our trailer will look like and the mood boards helped to see if our ideas worked well together and fitted our genre. We created a protagonist costume mood board and a props mood board.

Chloe and Holly

Risk Assessment for shoot

We had to consider all the risks during filming and what we would do when we were put in one of the situations.

We did a risk assessment form for the shoot.

Chloe

Feedback 4/12/09

Good group! Good research and analysis- well chosen case studies and extracts- well done!

Remember to outline what your films brand image is that you are pushing through your products.

Planning to add...
- target audience questionnaire results - some graphs are good.
- Storyboard and animatic with comments
- shooting schedule and call sheets
- health and safety form
- props list
- cast list
- location shots
- costume shots/ideas etc...

- keep blogging on your ideas and progress!

Miss McNulty

Call Sheet

We created a call sheet in order to be as organised at possible during the shoot. We created a props list, equipment list, location, time and date of the shoot so we wouldn't forget anything and could film and as much as possible.

Chloe

Storyboard

Here is our groups intial ideas on the storyboard for our film teaser trailer.








Rebecca

Photographs of Locations

Although it is a high possibility that we will not use these location shots i went out and photographed, we needed ideas for initial location shots.
We thought wooded areas would be appropriate to our genre of film, and maybe some shots of the protaganist walking and that is why i included steps in the images.
I think these initial shots could be quite effective if filmed correctly, although yet we are still looking for location shots and may find different ones further into our project.

Rebecca