Time managment

Time management was always a constraint towards when we had to film however we worked around this by communicating with the other group in our media class when each group was filming as they was only one camera to use. Due to this, this enabled our group to stay on schedule during some circumstances whilst shooting which benefited the coverage we had for the shots that we took.

Major setbacks: Location issues

Setbacks concerning location became apparent on many occasions, due to filming restrictions certain places have in place. For instance Victoria Station was our initial location and what we thought to be our ideal location, upon filming we soon found out that we were not permitted to film/photograph in the station.

This was also the case when filming in and around the area called Cardinal Place, also in Victoria. From this Miles and I quickly learnt that to successfully film in these locations advanced preparation must be done in the form of possibly gaining permission from these establishments.

Initial location in Victoria Station

Due to this we quickly reconsidered how and where we would shoot the scene. After location recce's and discussions we soon reached an agreement and overcame the set backs surrounding locations. With a slightly altered shot list in lieu of the location change we still managed to shoot the scene to our satisfaction.

Script

Dialogue within our media production had to be well thought out, as we wanted the conversation between our characters to give the audience insight into the plans our protagonist has with the stolen money. This dialogue comes in after the flashback showing our protagonist stealing the money. The conversation between the protagonist and his girlfriend should reveal to the audience that they plan to squander this money on leisurely activities.


This conversations introduces the audience to the couple and how they interact with one another, like an actual couple. It shows how the couple have plans for this money our protagonist Miles has 'come into' and plan to go to Spain. The dialogue is effective as it gives a small amount of crucial infomation which allows for the rest of the production to progress and allow the audience to piece together the incidences that amount up to the kidnapping

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This dialogue should give the audience the impression that they are infact an actual couple, the same can be said about the other script too. Our aim was to make the couple seem as believable as possible. Further more making the girlfriend seem un-assuming and unaware of the whole situation.

Location: Title sequence

These are some stills that we had taken when thinking about locations for our title sequence. We wanted to show shots all around London in an establishing shot view. Tall building and land structures helped establish the scene and show modern contemporary London in bright daylight but represents that all good things have bad intentions as the story wares on which is why we took these shots . These wide establishing stills we was able to obtain got our group thinking of where to include the names of characters and the music we wanted to include on top of this.

Shot-list for scene 1

In preparation for shooting we have devised a shot-list so that we can be prepared for the actual day of shooting and to avoid missing shots out when filming scenes.

Shot-list
1. A two-shot of Miles and Sophia walking together

2. As Miles walks away a mid shot of Sophia laying on the wall

3. A point of view shot showing Sophia looking around

4. Back to two-shot where Omed takes Sophia

5. Close-up shot transitioning into the camera being handheld following Miles run as he sees his girlfriend being taken away

6. Mid-shot as Lekan knocks out Miles

7. POV shot of Miles falling to the ground.

Planning: Costume

We had to take careful consideration into the costume that we had our characters are seen in, this is due to the connotations that go along with whatever characters are seen wearing.
As the characters within our production were to be affiliated with organised crime, we took inspiration from various Organised crime/Gangster films.

Iconic Suit and Tie Ensemble in Reservoir Dogs 

Again we were influenced by Pulp Fiction and costume choice

After looking at 'Goodfellas' we noticed a trend within films of this genre and costumes worn by their characters. This reinforced our decisions in having costumes for our characters to be suits and ties. Our understanding of connotation and denotation lead us to believe that this sort of costume suggests that our characters are at a higher level of crime and not just petty criminals.

Connotations surrounding such costume choice reinforce viewers beliefs of who the characters are.

Planning: Character Profiles

Miles Fehmi 

 

Miles Fehmi is our protagonist in this film. He is the person that gets involved in an unwanted activity which puts himself and his girlfriend in danger. We wanted to make this character act very vulnerable to represent something he has to protect, in this case his girlfriend. Therefore, the personality which Miles posses is a very conceited character who hides much of his emotion until push comes to shove. The reason we wanted to present Miles in this way was to show the dominance and power of the other characters in the production (the villains). The hero's quest in this film is for his beloved girlfriend and his fight for freedom.

Sophia Abbassy

Sophia is the girlfriend of Miles and is shown in this film as very sweet, innocent and vulnerable who is always at danger no matter where she turns. However Sophia does have a nature to love being treated and going out to places to eat and having money. This type of personality Sophia has causes the story have a equilibruim to it which can change at any second because the audience are believed to think shes trustworthy but is she? This type of character adds a twist to our storyline which adds to the story and will make paudiences think more about the storyline.

Lekan Akako

Even though Lekan's role isn't as substantial to the other roles in this production his influence in the short movie is vital for the way things flow within the way the story unfolds. Lekan is a character who is very devious and sneaky, he works alongside the main gangster (Omed) and assists him in the pursuit of capturing Miles. Lekan works under the rador and monitors on the streets every move that Miles makes and reports this to Omed. His personality is very unpredictable and has violent nature, but also can be manipulated by the main gangster.

Omed Popal

Omed is the main gangster who has a vendetta against the protagonist. A truly methodical character who plans his every move Omed's personality and nature helps add to the effect of the production. His personality is a bit like Lekans unpredictable however with Omed he can snap at any second no matter the circumstances. We needed a character like this in our production to present a dominance and power over the other characters in our film. Without this role in our film the story would have no substance and edge to it.



Location Problems

Whilst searching for locations around our school our group encounter several issues. Firstly when our group went to DT rooms to check for there availability we found that the rooms may not be available every time when we seek to shoot. This constraint 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 hostage 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, maximizing our chances of shooting this scene.

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 I would have lessons.

To over come this problem we agreed that during times when all of us or at least 1 of us have a free period  we can shoot or edit our footage as tasks where delegated between the group. This was an effective way to keep the progression of our media work constant instead of waiting for opportunities when all of us are available.

Also times when we need to shoot 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.

Alternatives where also arranged in spite of this and shooting after school was another way  for the group to overcome the restraint of times available to shoot. This also solved the problem of pupils or teachers disrupting production as many of them would have gone home.

Group members timetable

 

Above is our timetables within our group. Our group decided it will be suitable to print off timetables to see when we are free to shoot when we needed to shoot and when we needed to edit. For us this was useful because we can create an official schedule which we can stick to whilst during the course of creating the short media production, enhancing our time management skills. 



Schedule

Today we have created schedule because it will help outline what we can do 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.

Second storyboard

 

 

 

This is the storyboard that we are going to use in our production we need to look at some shots at the end of this storyboard and may need to adjust some of them such as removing the skeleton and the virus part at the start as we may just use establishing shots but nonetheless this is relatively close to what we are going to be shooting.

Decision on storyline

Down to a long and hard discussion the group have decided to go with a storyline that differs from the ideas in other posts. We have decided to go with a storyline where two main gangsters are present and there quest is to find the protagonist who has taken a prized possession from them. The hero has a quest for freedom however he keeps getting hassled by these gangsters as they have found out that he has taken the money from a room where he used to work for them. The protagonist also has a girlfriend who he needs to protect from these gangsters due to the fact that if they don't get what they want they are going to kidnap his girlfriend. Then, one day we whiles on their way out his girlfriend gets taken away while the protagonist has forgotten something. He then travels around the city in his quest to find his girlfriend, until he bumps in to one of these gangsters and gets beaten up and taken away. He gets battered and bruised while his girlfriend watches in a private areas but gets away when the gangster gets a phone call and takes his girlfriend with him. The protagonist still has the package from the gangsters .... until one day he wakes up and finds that the money and his girlfriend are gone. The reason why we have used this storyline is because it is very broad and we can use various amounts of shots to show power,status and meaning with a storyline like this.

Ideas for shooting

These are some of the stills that we took which we possibly plan to use for our production

Storyboard first draft

 

This is the first draft of our story board for the first scene, where we had all gathered bits of our ideas put together but we plan to do many alterations in the process till we are satisfied.

Alternative idea

During our brainstorm activity inside class and discussion outside school we came up an alternative 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.

Storyline idea 2

During our brainstorm activity inside class and discussion outside school we came up with a second 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 scenes to make this film effective, this is why we didn't move forward with this storyline.

Storyline idea 1

Our first idea which the group 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 realize 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 coincidentally 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.

Brainstorm

Here we have just briefly brainstormed any ideas we could think off in lessons. If any alterations we will mainly hold a discussion and blog rather than writing it.