Props

Let's take a closer look at the props we are plannig to use and why:

1. Get-away car

The purpose of the car is to connote that the robbers just came from a heist, and the following scenes are the moments immediately after the crime was committed. This helps to set the scene for the narrative. We also found that featuring a car in our movie would make it look more professional and set it apart from other student's work as many young people won't have access to a vehicle.

The options we had in terms of what car to feature in our film were limited.

Renting a car was not an option due to budget constraints and none of us has his own car, so we had to turn to our familys and ask them for help.

What we needed was a dark coloured car, preferebly black, medium sized (at least four seats) and not too high or low end so to fit our middle-class characters and appeal to the target audience that we identified.

Here are the three options:

My (Adrian's) family owns a silver Ford S Max – a typical family car: Not very suitable for a bunch of hard-line robbers. While the size of the car was good, the colour and overall look of the car were unsuitable.

Although offereing space for up to seven passengers,

we ruled out the S Max straight from the beginning

The second option was Jamal's family's car: A Toyota Avensis. We very much liked the look of this car, as well as the size. It would have been a perfect fit if not for its colour – grey/ivory.

We came to the conclusion that if all else fails, we would use this car, but if at all possible we wanted a darker colour vehicle.

While otherwise fitting our requirements,

it was the colour that  made us rule out this car

Finally, Oli's dad owns a dark grey Audi Allroad. We found that this was the most suitable of the three options as it fulfills best the requirements of colour, class and size.

Fulfilling best our requirements:

The Audi was our top choice for the get-away car

2. Bag

While being an essential part of the narrative, the bag was probably the easiest of the props to get our hand on as we all have one at home.

We were looking for a bag, big enough to fit a camera inside, so that we could film the bag being opened from the inside.

We also wanted the bag to be black as we are planning to use a simmilar effect to the one in Pulp Fiction where there is a glowing light coming from inside the briefcase. A black bag would stand in a stark contrast to the light, making for a visually appealing prop.

We found that the bag that is shown below fit all those requirements.

Black, and spacious enough to fit a camera into it – perfect

3. Gun

Each of the robbers carries a gun.

One option we had was to use realistic looking guns to create realism. Fortunately, I still have the plastic gun that we used for last year's project, so no money would have had to be spent on this prop.

The fake gun from last year's project

However. as a group we then decided that, keeping in mind suspension of disbelieve, we should take a different approach at this prop.

We decided on using 'invisible' guns, instead of a physical prop. We got the idea from one of the short films that we analysed: 2 + 2. The way it was used in this film was truely impressive, which made  us consider using a similar effect.

Frame from the short film 2 + 2

4. Loot (Sweets)

Having the purpose of mocking generic conventions of action crime thrillers as well as creating suspension of disbelief, we decided as a group that instead of money, diamonds or other valuable loot, the robbers would be stealing sweets.

We found that 'Quality Street' chocolates were a great choice, for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, We could buy them easier in bulk, as they come in a big box.

Secondly, they are wrapped in shiny paper, connoting there value and reinforcing there role as loot.

Box of 'Quality Street'

Look how shiny they are!

5. Blood

Whilst technically not being a prop, blood plays an important role in the narrative of our movie.

Since we are not using realistic looking guns, blood will be what connotes the death of a character rather than e.g. the muzzle flash.

The fake blood that we are going to use has to be ordered from Amazon.

Fake blood from Amazon

We decided to purchase a large amount of blood, giving us a lot of freedom in terms of how much blood we can use. This is also important in case we need to reshoot scenes.