We had to change our time plan as we lost the actress and a grooup member decided to take the acting place. we then had to plan the time that only the three of us were avaliable on two consecutive weeks, 15/2/10 - 21/02/10 and 22/02/10 - 26/02/10. This is because these are the two weeks that we decided we would film, which are delayed dates to the last time plan.
Edited Weather
Most of our opening scene to our film will be shot inside however there are certain parts that will be shot our side which we planned to film on Sunday 21st February. This means that we needed the right weather for the setting that we wanted.
As we were always going to use the media technique known as; 'retroscripting' for our opening scene for a media product that we are going to produce, no revisions for our script were made or needed.
However the name of the character needed to be changed as we changed our actress to an actor.
Due to our actress being unavaliable we have had to re-think our casting choices. As we couldnt think of anyone else who would be serious enough to take on the role and make it hard hitting for our audience we turned to our own A* GCSE drama group member Hayden Simmons to take on the role.
Editing the character at the last minuite means that we need to change many things, we need to change the character profile and the plot synopsis as we are changing it from an actress to and actor.
Below there is some information about copyright I found to help me understand more about the law and stipulations about this area of media protection and also there is information about the choices we made involving copyrighting and using a soundtrack.
'Copyright is the exclusive right granted to the author of an original work, including the right to authorise or ban the publication, distribution and adaptation of that work. Copyright only lasts for a certain time period after which the work is said to enter the public domain. Copyright applies to any expressible form of an idea or information that is substantive and discrete and fixed in a medium. Some jurisdictions also recognize "moral rights" of the creator of a work, such as the right to be credited for the work. Copyright is described under the umbrella term intellectual property along with patents and trademarks.' - Wikipedia
'Document granting exclusive right to publish and sell literary or musical or artistic work' - Google Definitions
Obtaining Copyright:
'It is normal to request permission via the publisher of the work. The publisher will often have a permissions department to deal with such requests, or may use the services of a copyright clearance or licensing service. If the publisher cannot give permission directly, they will certainly know who you should contact, (as they will have obtained permission themselves in order to use the work in the first place).
If for example, the copyright owner is personally known to you, it may be possible to obtain permission via a private agreement. In such cases you should ensure you get an agreement in writing to avoid any future disagreements.
For website content, it is normal to contact the webmaster of the site. The webmaster may either give permission directly or refer your request to someone in the company who can deal with your request.
For photographs, (i.e. wedding pictures), it is normally to contact the photographer, (or company), that took the images. As they will normally control the rights to the photos, and will have their own reproduction or duplication charges.' - Copyrightservice
Information about the soundtrack, copyright and the outcome of our decisions:
For our scene we thought we should incorporate a soundtrack, this is because in our questionnaires we received information telling us that we should use a soundtrack, especially mine where 39 people said that they would like to hear some type of sound.
This influenced us and basically made us decide we definitely need a song in our scene as it is obviously what the audience like to have incorporated into there idea of a 'perfect' film beginning.
To do this we thought about the ways we could obtain a sound track; our options were to either create our own or use an existing piece of work. Thinking about time constraints and levels of skill you need to create an original piece that sounds sophisticated and sounds 'the part' we decided it would be best to use an already existing piece.
The major problem with using an existing piece of material is that most will be copyrighted and have protection to use these, this is when a piece of work is protected from use of people that do not have permission and to obtain the right to use this you would need the owner/s to agree to you using the material and they would specify under what conditions you can use this.
We thought about this thoroughly and researched all about copyright which led us to writing a letter to the company we want to use the sound from, as this is for educational use and will not ever be publicly presented or used for any commercial purposes we did not see any reason why we couldn't.
Below is the letter we wrote to Overture Films to obtain copyright use of the soundtrack we decided we wanted to use:
All of the health and safety factors we considered during our first filming process remained exactly the same. However we have changed and edited anything that we needed to due to our previous circumstances:
The locations we are using at the school had certain health and safety procedures that we had to go through before we are allowed to film. Underneath the stage and the school basement are both out of bounds for students due to health and safety. This meant we had to get permission from the head teacher as well as the school caretakers. We were each taken through health and safety risks we had to take into account whilst filming in these areas, some of these factors were:
-Removing the trap doors that lead to underneath the stage -Walking down the stairs leading to the school basement carefully -Entering and Exiting underneath the stage safely.
We also had to consider other health and safety factors involved with the filming for our opening scene. Screaming, crying, shouting and blood are all being used in our shots that will be filmed at the nature reserve. We realised that a passing citizen may assume someone could possibly be in trouble or hurt and contact our local police service not knowing what is going on. To overcome this problem that may occur we wrote a letter to the local police station indicating filming dates and where we will be filming just in case, as well as creating signs which we would place around the nature reserve whilst we are filming for any passing citizens to indicate that filming is going on. The letter we wrote to the police station and the signs we created are shown below: click to enlarge.
Poster
As a group we decided to put these posters at all of the entrances of the nature reserve we were filming at so that the public were aware of what was happening and wouldnt call the police if they saw our group member Hayden Simmons with fake blood and cuts on him or heard screaming, we also put them at various locations through out the nature reserve.
As a group we needed to carefully plan our time and the dates and times that we could all get together as a group and film our opening. the time plan also includes the free time of the actressm as well.
For the time plan we choose the four consecutive days that we were all free - Sunday 7th February - Monday 8th february - Tuesday 9th february - Wednesday 10th February
This is our time plan:
This is the weather conditions on Sunday 7th February 2010 as we have decided we want to film, at dusk and a dim day for our shot; as it is outside and we want an eerie atmosphere without lighting as we are on a low budget.
Now that we figured out the dates we were all available and free to film we needed to book out the equipment that we intended on using. The equipment we have booked out are:
-Digital Camcorder -And a tripod
We booked both pieces of equipment out on Wednesday 3rd February which we are allowed to keep until we have finished filming.
Budget:
Our budget is quite low as we are making a home made film opening and we are student so we dont have alot of money. We have spend about £20 on props and equiptment including the fake blood.
We need to consider many things before we can film. These are elements such as props, makeup, costume,set and equipment.
To produce the film we will need a - camcorder - tripod
Below is a list of props that we need to produce the film. We looked at the storyboard and the plot synopsis and decided form this what we would need to help us create the opening scene that we wanted. All of the props and equiptment have come under our budget, the things we havent paid for are borrowed from either the school or each others houses. However the fake blood was bought for £5.95 from a shop in Peterborough City Centre called Harlequin
-Fake Blood -Kitchen Knife -Oil/Petrol Can -Water -Rope -A Chair
However we had to go out and buy fake the blood from a shop called; 'Harlequins' so that our opening scene would be more visually believable.
Some of the scenes that our main actress will be shooting involves getting incredibly dirty. This is because a lot of dirt, water, fake blood and even the possibility of tearing some of her clothes will be used in our shots to create a more visually effective opening scene. We understood that it was too much to ask our actress to supply these clothes that we are intentionally going to ruin and therefore we measured Vicky, taking down all her sizes, went to a cheap clothes shop called; 'George' and bought some plain tops and a pair of trousers for Vicky to wear during filming.
The Make Up will be applied by a professional/qualified media make up artist, who happened to be a member of our group, Hayden Simmons' mother. His mother happily volunteered to do all the media makeup, consisting of; scars, cuts, burns, bruises and wounds. We felt this was a huge advantage for our group because we don't have the funds or technology available in order to produce the special effects that we needed in order to compare with existing media products out there with the same genre. Therefore this will visually improve our shots, creating a more realistic, believable opening scene for an audience that we will be able to relate to existing media products out there.
We felt as a group that we needed to create a plot/storyline for a whole film in order to create a more meaningful, successful opening scene. Therefore underneath is a short Plot synopsis for our whole film.
Plot synopsis: Michelle is a young woman with a disorder unknown to others as well as herself. Michelle has a split personality disorder where she possesses two very different personalities and wakes up thinking that she has just encountered another nightmare, when in fact she has enacted it. Furious families from Michelle's unkown vitcims plot for their revenge leaving michelle fighting for survival whilst discovering the truth behind there actions.
Below is a synopsis for the opening scene that we are going to produce with an included summary for why we made our decisions.
Opening scene synopsis:
A series of flashbacks combined with premonitions(Which will reveal parts from scenes that will come later on in the film.)visually inform the audience by showcasing short snips of Michelle captivated, running and tortured portraying a 'damsel in distress.'(This will force the audience to sympathise with Michelle creating a false sense of security, making Michelle the last person the audience pinpoint to be the killer, creating further mystery and curiosity and leaving the audience in a trance wanting to know who? Why? Captivated in the film from the very start. This will create a bigger impact on the audience for the climax of the film when they finally realise the truth.)Michelle's other personality will also have her turn in the spotlight, as the audience will see short snips of this side of her taking action.(The audience do not know about Michelle's personality disorder and therefore will be mislead from the opening scene thinking that they are seeing Michele getting some sort of revenge, not realising that Michelle is in fact the hunter; not the prey.)The opening scene will finish with Michelle waking up thinking that she has just encountered another nightmare.(Again misleading the audience in order to create a bigger impact on the audience for the climax of the film when they finally realise the truth.)
The opening scene that we are going to produce, we can highly compare and relate to existing media products that involved extremely low budgets, (if there was any budget at all) and minimal technology.
Existing media products, some more successful than others, that used this technique are listed below: -Summer Heights High -Trailer Park Boys -The Blair Witch Project series -Paranormal Activity
These films used a technique where the directors 'attempted to focus on believability rather than action and gore,' In these films they believed that; 'a "higher degree of plausibility" was created for an audience as they were "more invested in the story and the characters."' And therefore technique called 'Retro scripting' was used.
To help us learn about Rectro Scripting we used the following websites to provide us with the knowledge we need:
Whilst looking at how to convey the script and what type to use, through research and lots of thought we thought due to our circumstances we should use something we researched called retro scripting.
A retro scripted script contains a plot outline and leaves dialogue deliberately vague for interpretation by the actors/actresses through improvisation. This technique can add strong realism and characterization to dialogue making the film come across believable and natural to an audience. This technique is commonly used in low budgeted films and sometimes the use of this technique causes the film to be incredibly successful: for example; 'Paranormal Activity.'
The technique of 'retro scripting' is used mainly in 'home made films' with low budgets that cant afford special effects and high-tech equipment. Because we are producing a 'home made' media product with no budget and the use of one hand held digital camera, we want to try our best to relate our media product to some type of existing products already out there. Therefore we are going to use this technique for our opening scene that we are going to produce. We feel the use of this technique may help us to achieve and produce a more successful opening scene because we will be able to create strong realism and characterization to dialogue making the film come across believable and natural to an audience.
We have decided to have a few filming locations around Whittlesey. Following this are still shots of our different filming locations we have decided to have our opening to our film.
These two pictures are of Whittlesey nature reserve.
This is a shot of under our stage at Sir Harry Smith Community College.
These are pictures of our boiler room under the school where we also plan to film part of our opening.
These are four shots of Hayden simmons house, a member of our group, where we also plan to film.
Our opening scene is going to be based on one main character whom the storyline and plot is going to be based around. The main character is going to be female and acted out by the actress: Victoria Thurston.
Another anomalous character may be used in our opening scene. This character would be male and be portrayed as the killer to the audience. His face would not be seen and he would be a complete mystery to the audience, therefore we dont really need to develop this character in more depth.
We decided that a female main character would be best for our storyline and plot. This is because we felt that females are stereotypically portrayed as the victim's in horror films. This would enable us to easily mislead an audience in our opening scene, creating a bigger impact for the climax later on in the film where an audience will find out the truth; that the main character was the killer all along.
In our initial ideas we discussed suitable actresses that we thought we be able to successfully act the role out for our main character. We decided that Vicky was the best suited actress for the part. This is because she is a very talented, experienced actress, who is a quick learner, takes good direction and is extremely versatile. Versatility is an important asset for our actress to posses as our main character has a split personality disorder and therefore the actress has to convey two very different people on screen. Vicky is also visually perfect for our role, who looks good on camera, that an audience consisting of both genders will easily relate to and want to watch.
We felt as a group that we needed to create a character profile for the main character whom Vicky will be playing. This is so we can create a fully crafted, three dimensional character in order for Vicky to have a better understanding of the role she is going to be acting out. In theory we are hoping this will produce a more realistic, believable character on screen that an audience can build a close relationship to, sympathising with thje character and therefore interacting with the film more. We hope that this chemistry between an audience and the main character will produce a more successful opening scene as ther audience will interact more with the main character, letting their guard down and making it easier to create atmosphere and tension that relates to the nature of our opening scene.
Below is a simple character profile that we have produced. There is a picture of the actress in the middle so you can visualise what the character is going to look like as well as being able to understand some of the main characters personality.
It starts off with a landscape and then red bold writing appears over the action of the opening. The film is a journey of a man on the way to his work place but the writing appears throughout with the titles on. The title of the film appears in a neon appearance slanted across the whole screen.