RESIT-Initial Prop Ideas (Kierann)

Initial Prop Ideas

To make sure that our film opening looks professional and is more entertaining to watch we need to make sure that we have come up with a set list of props that we need in our piece. These props would be used to further help tell our story and to add cool effects to the video, but most importantly needs to be absolutely relevant to our film opening. 

The first prop that we came up with was the business man’s laptop. We want to make it clear to our audience that the man at the start of the film opening is a business man. We are thinking about setting the film opening in the business man’s house. To show that he is in his house we are thinking about putting photos of the man in the background. This should be a strong enough hint that he is. We want another laptop for the female character so she can hack the bank account. We can probably use the same laptop, however we may need to do something to it to make it look different. We also require a phone for the male character. This will be where he finds out that his money has gone out of his bank account. This will justify why he looks at his bank account in the first place. To make him look like he is hard at work, he will be drinking coffee. This is because it is usual for adults working to always have a caffeine drink nearby them. Either it being a coffee, tea or an energy drink. We thought that for him to drink coffee makes him look like he is hard at work. That’s what we are trying to present. We believe that tea represents a more of a relaxing vibe and energy drinks bring out a less professional vibe.

By doing this activity it has allowed the group to think in depth about all the little things in our film opening. This activity will help us out in the near future with our organisation skills.

RESIT-Casting the film opening (Kierann)

Our Cast

Our first consideration about casting was finding actors who were in the same demographic as our target audience which was someone from Caucasian ethnicity and someone young looking. This is because our film is mainstream and is located in the UK and the major ethnicity of the UK is Caucasian and we require actors of similar age group to our target audience to make the film opening relatable and enjoyable for our target audience as they can relate from characters similar to their age.

We require one male actor who looks hansom and he has to look as if he is in his 20's. We do not require a specific colour of hair but we want the hair style to be in fashion. We require for the other character a Female actress who looks pretty. She has at least look as if she is in her 20's as well. The reason why they have to be good looking is because the majority of lead roles in mainstream films are considered good looking. To find these actors we advertised it to our year group, specifically to those who have a background in acting. This is, because we wanted to make sure that our actors in our film opening knew how to act and therefore making sure our film opening doesn’t look too amateur, we want it to look as professional as possible. 

We auditioned three girls and three boys. We auctioned three people for each role so that we had a variable choice to choose from. The way we auditioned both female character and the male character was quite hard. This is due to the little dialogue included in our film opening. So what we did is we asked them to act out one of the scenes. 

For the females we asked them to act as if they were a hacker stealing money and for the males we asked them to pretend that they were a business man who had just lost a lot of money, while considering that this was a comedy film. The people we auditioned for the female role was: Harriet, Ellie and Gabby. The person who go the role was Harriet. This was because we thought her looks fitted our character’s personality better; confident in front of the camera and pretty. 

For the male character we auditioned: Chris, Joe, and James. We chose Chris out of the three, because he was the most charming of the three as well as performing the question in pretending he was a business man who had lost a lot of money. As well as this, he is in a relationship with Harriet, the female character. We chose them together as their reactions to each other would be more realistic and true for later on in the film.

RESIT CHRIS - New shotlist

RESIT CHRIS - Analysis of film opening -

Our Final Film

Our final film

Rough Cut 2 (Chris)

Add Phone calls, Check positioning of titles, add more scenes like the shaving to match other films.

Rough Cut 1 (Adam)

Making a film opening with Jelly Babies (Chris)

For a task we got set to make a film opening with Jelly Babies. This was done so that we could get a feel with how our film opening should look like and how the titles should run. When we have a look at what we created, it was about a terrorist who manages to take the White House. From this we created the characters and how we would frame each scene. After this underneath we added the sort of tiles that we would use. At the very beginning we added the title of the film including how we would frame the characters. After this we added the main actors and what role they played in the film. From this we could then start to try to implement this into what our film should have. Overall i think that this has really helped us in how we are using titles in our film opening as we are sort of following the same sort of titles and the order that they are in.

Final Mise Decision (Chris)

Final Mise Decision

When it came to the final mise decision we decided to change a few things. We wanted to make sure that the outfits that the actors were wearing suited the location that they were in, and that the props also worked well with the location.

On the table we had red and black napkins which we thought were effective in showing the contrast between the two couple and that of their jobs. We thought that black and red really did effectively show the two characters personalities and that's why we wanted it to continue throughout the piece. also on the table we had ketchup. This we thought represented blood in quite a good way. Again like the napkins it has the connotations of blood and death, and also looked a little like blood - which is why we wanted it to be in the centre of the table.

When we were ordering the food we wanted there to be meat, we also wanted there to be a lot of red on the dish - which is why we had things like bacon and tomato's. These we thought would make the piece look a little more colourful.

When we have a look at the male when he is shaking pepper onto his food we decided that a black tub would have been the best thing for him to be using. We thought that it looked like he was shaking death onto his plate - with the connotations of black - which suited the characters style.

For the lighting in the piece we decided that we wanted it to be low-key lighting to really bring out the dominance of the male wearing all black - making him darker and more mysterious - a common theme found in openings in our chosen genre through our research. However we wanted the female to have high-key lighting on her while she was outside. This is because she shows a lot more humanity when she is eventually told that she needs to kill her husband. This then links back to the white clothing that she was wearing in the end.

Final Costumes (Kierann)

Final Costumes 

Firstly when it came to the main male character we decided to have him in all black. The reason that we decided to do this was that we wanted the connotations of death and black suited this well. Due to our location being in a more casual restaurant we decided that it would look out of place for the characters to be wearing a suit and dress. This is why we decided that it would be more appropriate for the overall look of the opening to go with black jeans and a black coat. We decided in the end that we didn't want the male to be wearing red as it would make it look too red.

For the main female in the film we decided for her to wear red shoes, with black jeans and a red, white and black top. The reason that we decided for her to go for this is because we also wanted the connotations of her to be death as well, however we wanted to show her innocence using her clothing. This is why she has a bit of white in her top. this makes her stand out as we didn't want the two characters to be wearing all black. We wanted her to wear a little more red than the male because we wanted to also show that she had a little more power - this was then backed up by her being the one to walk away. Again red has the connotations of evil which we thought suited the piece very well. We have decided that the female protagonist will have died red hair. we are doing this as it will connote that she is dangerous. this will link back to our genre action, as danger is a common generic convention of a action film.

Title: Mise consideration (chris)

When we have a look at props in our film it is essential that we can pick things that will suit our genre. With our genre it is essential that we have props that have connotations of romance. A good example of this is that it is essential that we have:

• Wine glasses
• Wine bottle
• Candles
• Fancy napkins
• A table for 2

These are just a few examples of things that we are going to need. we need to make the restaurant look as romantic and this will be achieved with the colours and backdrops that we will also be using. we need to make sure that we can achieve a sort of red looking colour for the background as well as making the scene look as soft and subtle with the lighting. 

Other things that we are going to need to do are make sure that we can get the actors costumes. As i said in the mise post we need the woman to be wearing a red dress. we are also going to need to have her wearing red heels. for the male we want him wearing a black suit and red tie. 

The last few things that we need to make sure we use are mobile phones as well as food. We need to make it seem like they have already eaten, so we are going to need to have plates with a little bit of food on to make it seem like that have been at the restaurant for a while. Then we need the phones for the call to take place.
 Christopher Phillips

Final Sound Decisions (Kierann)

Non-Diegetic sound

Music

In the end we decided to go with 'The jazz Piano'. We chose this as we believed it went well with the film. we tried all three of our suggested songs, however we really liked the smoothness and romantic atmosphere 'The Jazz Piano' brought out. The music really did set the scene for a romantic dinner. The music will convince our viewers that they are watching a romance instead of a Action. This irony will bring out the comedic side of our film when the audience see the darkness of our film opening.

Phone call

We recorded the speech on our I phones. we had the script in front of our actors so they would know what to say as well as the timing for each line. this enabled us to easily fit the audio in the final cut. We recorded the phone call separate to the scene as we wanted the audience to listen and hear clearly what the phone call was about as it is key to the narrative.

Dietetic sound

We recorded the audio of the scenes with a boom mic simultaneously while recording the scene. We did this so that the audio would fit in with the scene. when deciding what audio to use we had to make sure that it fitted in with the film clip as we added them together.

Shot-List (Kierann)

Shot Number	Details	Shot type	Approximate Length (Seconds)
1	Shot that zooms out at a window on a table	zoom out	5
2	Close up on Ellie's phone	Close up	2
3	Close up on Ellie's shoes	close up	3
4	close up on the woman drinking the wine	Close Up	5
5	Close up of Hugo putting pepper on his food	Close Up	4
6	Close up of the Ellie eating her food	Close Up	4
7	close up of Hugo eating his food	Close up	6
8	Close up revealing the bottom of Ellie's face while she is eating.	Mid Shot	6
9	shot revealing Hugo	Over the shoulder	3
10	Mid shot of the woman getting up from the table	Mid Shot	6.5
11	Mid shot of the man alone at the table, taking a sip of his drink, then answering his phone, which also rings	Mid Shot	10
12	Mid shot of him getting up from the table and leaving to answer his phone	Mid Shot	6.5
13	Long shot of the man leaving up against the railings by the river, on the phone	Long Shot	8
14	Cut to woman on the phone, standing in the same position as the male, just in the women's bathroom	Long Shot	6
15	Cut back to the man	Mid Shot	4
16	Cut back to the woman	Mid Shot	5.5
17	Cut back to the man	Mid Shot	2.5
18	Cut back to the woman	Mid Shot	2.5
19	Cut back to the man	Close Up	2.5
20	Cut back to the woman	Close Up	2.5
21	Mid shot of the two arriving back at the table simultaneously.	Mid Shot	7

Approximate length: 114.5 Seconds / 1:54.5