Script

EXT. SUBURBAN STREET. DAY

Long, low shot of a car driving through a narrow street. Car drives over the camera. We see the underneath of the car. Different shot inside and outside the car. Chicken, Pig and Horse are tense. Drive through the neighbourhood quickly. Arrive at the garages.

CHICKEN

*Gets out of car*

HORSE

*Gets out of car*

PIG

*Gets out of car*

Boot opens, we see another low shot of the characters from the POV of their loot. Connotes superiority. 

EXT. GARAGES. DAY

PIG

*Grabs bag*

Cut takes place and all the characters walk away from the car.

EXT. SITE. DAY

CHICKEN

*Opens door*

INT. SITE. DAY

The crew go into the building, and the pig places their loot onto the table.

CHICKEN

*Opens bag*

PIG

*Spills loot*

Shot List (2)

Shot List (1)

Storyboard (Summary)

So let's review this important milestone that we reached by completing the storyboards.
We accomplished this by meeting up as a group shortly after visiting the location, so that we still had everything freshly in mind.

As the narrative is to the most part based on the initial idea Jamal pitched, it only made sense for him to draw out his vision.
It was then up to Oli and me (Adrian) to determine shot lengths and describing the shots respectively.

We found it to be of huge importance that we could work on the storyboards as a group as this meant that everyone had some input and now knows exactly what the narrative of our film is.

Storyboards

Storyboards done!

I sketched and annotated the base storyboards. These are a rough guideline for Adrian and Oli who are going to make the final storyboards in respect to the location, along with some modifications that they feel is appropriate. There are highlights regarding what rough timings the shots will take (pink), and the music that we will implement into the scenes (green).

Expenses

This is where I will be keeping track of the money that we spend throughout production.

Props & Costumes
- Chicken mask – £7
- Pig mask – £7
- Horse mask – £7
- White shirt with black ties x4 – £32
- 500ml fake blood – £7.50
- Quality Street sweets – £20
- Diamonds – £7.17

Equipment
- White boards x2 – £7
- Watermelons x3 – £5
- Shower Curtain – £7.99
- Sellotape – £0.99

Total ≈ £110

Importance of Social Media and Instant Messaging

As we all live far from each other and do different subjects apart from Media, it was important to keep in contact. WhatsApp (c) was a perfect way to do this, as we could send and recieve Images, ZIPs, Music etc. We can also keep in touch with it in case of any emergencies or to keep in contact before filming or before we go to a location.

Symbolism

This post will mainly be surrounding the symbolism we decided to implement into our film. The majority of the short films, and postmodern movies that we took inspiration from had some form of symbolism in them. For example:

• The unknown bright score in Pulp Fiction, representing the importance of the briefcase.
• The noises and camera angles in The Black Hole, connoting something bad is going to happen.
• The Punisher skull in Dirty Laundry, implying to the audience that Frank Castle is still acting as a vigilante. Also the symbolic use of the bottle of alcohol to dispose of his enemies - beating his alcoholism, as well as the scum of the street.

The first symbolic gesture that we introduce is the masks. The masks are of a pig, horse and rooster. The Pig is the most important mask symbolically. Pigs are usually represented as a stereotype of greed, ostentatiousness, wealthy and gluttony in literature. What we decided to do was to implement this into our film to further this stereotype - with the Pig thus serving as the main antagonist. He gets greedy which leads to his demise and the demise of his colleagues.

The second symbolic gesture links to the loot itself. We decided to use a "Bright Light" editing effect to connote a sense of importance of what is in the bag containing the score, an intertextual reference to Pulp Fiction. However we see what is in the bag. Chocolate. We decided to include this into our film because it is a metaphor of the robbers being rich through how shiny the sweets look, and how 'rich' they are in taste.

Location Scouting

Today we visited the location again to make this video, showing you some of our ideas for the set up of props, acting and different shots.
We also wanted to show off some off the great features of the location.

As you can see, it has all been tidied up and we set up a basic scene.

Location (Getting There And Back)

For our location we had to consider with the equipment that we were carrying what route would be the safest and quickest because we had to be efficient with our time. There were many different routes that we could take from The Boys' School so we decided to take the three best ones.

Route No.1 was the most direct and efficient one for us. It took us there in a much more direct way. 2 and 3 were more out of the way. When we are lugging around heavy equipment. masks and actors who  we only have for an allotted period of time we had to take the route into consideration as we didn't want  to lose out. The lighting was also important, as if we didn't get to the house in time we would've been trying to move around a worksite in the dark which could have been potentially dangerous for us - which we'll cover in the risk assessment. 

In the end however we decided to get a taxi to take us there. It was safe, cheap and we could split the cost between us. We also made sure that we directed the cab driver ourselves so that we didn't get overcharged because he may have taken route 2 or 3 which would eat into our budget more. Getting back was the same, with the same taxi company we booked a return to the Boys' School, dropped the cameras off and made our ways back home from there.

No.1 

No.2

No.3

Location (Risk Assessment)

There are a number of risks involved in the shooting of our film.

As a group we went to the location, identifying potential risks.

This is the list of risks that I identified and what we will do in order to guard against them.

Building site

Firstly, we will always have to keep in mind that the location we are shooting at is in fact an active building site. Although there won't be any actual building going on at the time we film, there are still a few things that we need to keep in mind in order to stay save:

We need to consider rubble, building material and tools that are lying around everywhere. These are  tripping hazards and need to be removed before the shoot as much as possible.

Road

With the first scene being set outside of the house, we need to keep in mind the risks involved in shooting on the street such as cars and cyclists. Furthermore, we are shooting at night so road users might have trouble spotting us. In order to guard against this, the crew will be wearing hi-vis.

Heights

The opening shot is a high angle shot which we are planning to shoot from on top of the building. We will have to be very careful though as there is a risk of falling or dropping equipment off the roof. We talked to the owner of the building (Oli's dad) and he suggested to us that as a precaution we should stand back from the edge of the roof and make sure that we hold on to the equipment.

Risk of falling! 

The ladders are slippery, so we will need somebody
to hold them whilst we clim up or down.

We will have to move the fridge and crates.

There is a lot of rubble and wood
lying around.

We will have to keep in mind that this is an active
building site.

Location

Outside

The location for our film will be Oli’s house in central Windsor. The whole of our short film will be shot in this one location. It offers a realistic gritty environment for our robbers to escape to after their burglary.The two story concrete building is currently a messy building site however we plan to tidy out one of the rooms to film in. The house doesn't have any lights so we will use an extension lead and a couple of external lights to light the scene. We also have the opportunity to film from a first floor flat adjacent to the main building. From here we can obtain some nice high angle shots to set the scene as the car enters the scene.

The first floor provides a naturally well lit location. The massive gaping hole at the back of the site which you can see in the picture bellow could be a serious health and safety hazard.

Pano shot of the first floor

1st floor

1st floor looking down onto ground floor

Ground floor

A room on the 1st floor

With the location being a working building site its a constantly changing environment. A month or so ago when we first envisioned this location the 1st floor was completely open plan. Now however walls have been constructed meaning there are 3 separate rooms. They all lacked the room to be able to perform the shots we wanted therefore we concluded along with some other factors (health and safety), that downstairs would be the best option.

Ground floor

Ground floor

Outside the front

Outside the front (side view)

Front of the site pano

Possible opening sequence shot as the car drives into the scene 

More Research Into Lighting

After our initial test shooting one problem that we encountered was the lighting. The shadows created by the table reflected onto the walls to create unnatural shots. Also when Adrian came into the scene to film close ups his shadow was always getting in the way. After discussing and researching the problem we found a solution. Three point lighting. The diagram on the left shows the positioning of each light

Another aspect of lighting that we were not happy with was the atmosphere created. All our shots were flooded with bright, saturated, white light that doesn't create the dark, mysterious aura that we wanted to capture. Theses two (1) (2) YouTube videos provided a load of tips, tricks and advice when it comes to lighting within a scene. The colours looked to playplay a big part in creating the dramatic atmosphere that we are looking for

Research in progress

Soft boxes would be perfect to disperse the light however at they cost of £50+ its not worth the money. A £5 shower curtain has been said to work basically the same way.

Location (Lighting)

One issue that we identified during our research into location is that the building we are filming in does not have any cealing lamps. Since we are filming at night we had to think of alternatives in order to light our scenes.

The first thing to consider were light sources.

Key light
Many great filmmakers live and shoot by the rule of "Switch on ONE light and then go from there."
It was therefore essential that we found a suitable source for our key light.
Luckily, Oli's dad owns a pair of bright lamps which fit the purpose very well.
---Add pics---

Filler lights
We all had a look at home and these are the lamps that we found and are now planning to use:

These desk lamps are great as filler lights as they are small, mobile and each one has a different brightness.

The second thing to consider was how to control the light.

Whilst doing some research on the topic of lighting a scene I found this video.
It inspired us to use bounce boards when filming our movie. Bounce boards are brilliant for reflecting light onto the actors faces, or in the case of a coloured board, create a certain mood.
I found these white A1 foam boards at Hobbycraft, and we decided that they were a great alternative to a professional (and more expensive) reflector board.

White foam board from Hobbycraft