Shot References: James Bond

2.40 - Jump cut editing

0.25 - Rear view mirror shot

0.29 - Car track/pan shot - hugh getting out of car, ends with close up of gun

1.03 - Reverse track

1.14 - Running pan to CU

1.46 - LA running pan

3.17 - Reverse track MCU

0.14 - CU of hand

2.17 - MLS of character hiding

These shot references are some examples of shots we wish to mimic in our opening sequence. Having thse will be very useful because it will allow us to have a guide while storyboarding and shooting our sequence.

Industry Film Crew

This is an example of an filming crew in an industrial context (filming for an advert on Glasslyn Road N8, 28/01/10).

As you can see they have masses of personnel and equipment, with roughly 30 people in or outside the house, and 5 large van-loads of equipment. Obviously, we only have a camera, a light, and and mic plus whatever else we can get our hands on, and a production team of 3, so filming all of our sequence in 2 days will be a real challenge for us.

There have been 2 or 3 other instances in the past year or so when film crews have been to shoot on this road, and many films have used nearby roads as locations, such as Shaun's house in  Shaun of the Dead and the driving instruction scenes in Happy Go Lucky.

Its kind of cool to think that houses and streets very similar to the one we are using for our shoot are used by the advertising, television and film industries.

Proposal Feedback

• Great presentation
• Good Idea
• Strong conventional features
• Clear target audience
• Strong Actors
• Will we be able to sustain the visual look of the action-thriller genre?
• Second half of narrative is not working.
• Keep 'Matt' on the first floor until the guy enters the house.
• Then cross-cuts between guy walking up stairs and 'Matt' running upstairs and trying to hide.
• This avoids issue of having 'Matt' looking scared in the upstairs of his own house!
• Develop chronological sequence. 

We were given the green light to move onto pre-production.
We received an A grade for our Planning.
We received an A grade for our Presentation.

Proposal Handout

Proposal Toms and Hugh

Our Actors:

MATTEO BRAGOLI 

Cast in our main role is an experienced actor of eleven years with two oscar nominations under his belt. Since acting from a very young age he has been very successful on stage. Known for his musical talents he finds time to play regularly with a band as well as appearing in sell-out performances popular plays and musicals. Matteo has gained many acheivements over the years, winning the hit childrens reality show 'Tiger's Wood', and most recently securing a distinction in his grade 8 drama. Nearly selected for the role as Alex Rider in the 2006 film, Matteo is still striving to win his first oscar.     

HUGH DONNELLY
Hugh has had a long and lucrative acting career.

He began aged just 10, with a brief stint on hit childrens reality show 'Tiger's Wood', but was quickly eliminated from the competition. 


He has been the star of many high grossing feature films and popular TV shows.

He appeared for a few seconds on 'The Football League Show' on the BBC late last year.

He has dabbled briefly in the modeling industry, appearing on the cover of the 2008 game 'Agent Recall'.

He has also become an internet sensation following appearences in many short films on YouTube.


He truly is a living legend, with many awards and accolades. He looks forward to being able to put something back into industry that has given him so much, as the executive producer of this film.

He will be wearing a balaclava.

Brief Film Synopsis:

Matthew Lockwood is 19. He doens't know it, but his father works for MI5. Taken hostage by a mysterious armed man, Matt learns of his fathers job and of how he is wanted by terrorists for the capturing of one of their leaders. Faced with his only sons life in one hand, and the freedom of a terrorist leader responsible for the death of thousands of innocent people in another, Agent Lockwood must make the choice between the two, even if means breaking the law to save his sons life...       

Practicalities of our Idea

• We have one good location that we can definately use fo our project, which allows for good lighting, and is the the only location we are shooting at

• We have two good, reliable actors, one of which is in our group

• We do not have any explosions, car chases etc and dont need any CGI: we have kept thing as simple as possible

• We have access to a car, and access to a fully licenced driver

• We all enjoy the genre, which means that we all know the conventions have a good idea of what our sequence should look like

• Our sequence will be filmed during the daytime, so lighting will not be as much of an issue

• Due to the location, we will easily be able to film in one weekend

• There is no dialogue in our sequence, so as to keep things as simple as possible, and because we don't want to reveal much information about character at this point

Revised Proposal:

The narrative centres around an innocent young man whom at the start we see running into his house through the back. He has a few minor injuries and is frightened. He enters his house and makes his way upstairs in a hurry. He enters one of the front-facing rooms on the upper floor and cautiously looks out of the window.


At this moment we see a car pull up outside his house and a man steps out. He is carrying a gun and quickly puts on a balaclava. He carefully scans the street for activity (of which there is none). From the window the innocent man tries to get a closer look, but as a result the armed man notices him and stares straight up at the window.

Alarmed, the innocent man makes his way to the top of the house, desperate for an escape route. He reaches the top of the house and on inspection realises he cannot escape through the window on the roof. Suddenly he hears the sound of the door closing, telling him that the armed man is in the house. There is no way out.

We then follow the armed man through his search of the house and gradually up the several flights of stairs. The house is silent as neither of the men are eager to give away their position. The armed man then enters the room of the innocent man.

Ending:

As the armed man enters the room, the innocent man is hiding and jumps at him in an attempt to disarm and overpower him. This however fails, and in a few quick movements the armed man is holding the innocent man against the wall with a gun to his head. He then knocks the innocent man out.

Meeting 3

Allocation of final proposal tasks:

Tom A - Final synopsis, Music,

Hugh - Audience, Practicalities

Tom P - Influences, Genre & Themes

All to be completed for tomorrows presentation

Genre Research: Thriller

Genre in film helps both institutions and audiences. When films are grouped in Genres they are placed according to similar characteristics or features. This allows audiences to pre-empt which films they may enjoy watching and allows institutions and film makers to make films relevant to a specific genre so that it will definitely find an audience. Genre is usually broken down into 4 main categories as shown below on our brainstorm:

The aspects highlighted in a white oval are those which are present in our opening sequence. Since most of the aspects are highlighted our openign sequence does follow the normal convention of an action thriller.

Audience Profile

Here is a typical member of our target audience.

- His name is John
- He is 20
- He is a student studying at the London School of Economics
- He has a girlfrined, also 20, who is called Amanda, also studying at the London School of Economics
- He enjoys going out to bars and nightclubs with his friends
- He enjoys watching football, and is a chelsea fan
- He enjoys a wide range of pop music
- He will typically go to the cinema about once a month, and will watch a blockbuster, and particularly enjoys action, explosions, and gun-porn
- He doesn't enjoy Rom-Coms

Target Audience

 Primary Audience

• Male
• Aged 15-30
• May not necessarily be a film fanatic, but enjoys going to the cinema
• Enjoys going out with friends, partying, gaming, sport, and social networking
• May have an averagely paid job
• Or be a student

Secondary Audiences

• Girls of the same age range, either that enjoy action films themselves or are going with their boyfriends
• Older/middle aged males who still enjoys action films, gaming etc

Titles Research

For our opening sequence it is our aim to have impressive looking titles. We planned to do this by layering the titles onto our shots to make them look as if they were written on particular surfaces. An example of this is shown below taken from the film Hostage.

Although our film will not be in this cartoon style these stills clearly represent how we wish to place titles in our shots. We will be doing some test shots to see if this is possible but hopefully we will achieve a really good professional looking effect.

Meeting 2

• All production team members present with the inclusion of our main actor (Matteo)
• We ran through our concept with Matteo.
• We decided on our final proposal.
• After the meeting, we started work on the handout for our presentation:
• Tom A: Final write up
• Tom P: Handout Design + Location Photos
• Hugh: Audience + Profile

Genre: Action Thriller

Here is a small mood board that summarises how the genre of action thriller has influenced our opening sequence

This mood board shows a mix of guns, knifes and running stills. The movie Taken is prominent since it is one of my favourite action thrillers and has been a massive influence on my perception of our opening sequence. The Strangers is also shown since it is a very good movie at building tension which is what we aim to do in our sequence. 

Initial Idea - Teacher Feedback

25/01/10


We told Miss our initial idea for the first time today, and she gave us some constructive feedback. Here is a summary of what she said:

• She reminded us of the importance of the titles, and how they would fit with the images.
• She said that having the victim looking out of the second window was too much, and put in that situation the victim would have climbed out of the widow and taken his chances on the roof.
• She suggested that the victim attempts to fight back once the man has found him (an idea that we had previously discarded).
• We discussed how we could keep the sequence under the given 2 minutes.

Titles

We have decided that if possible, we are going to try to integrate the titles into the mise-en-scene, such as on walls, on the ground, etc. To find out how much we can to with the titles, we have booked a session on the mac to see exactly what we can do.

The second window

This was not really sorted during the feedback, as we began something else, and as it stands, the victim still opens the window and looks out, retreating as he sees there is no way down.

The fight scene

We originally scrapped the fight scene because we didn't believe we could do it properly and make it look good, however taking on board Miss's words, we have come up with an alternative to a full-blown brawl. When the victim is found, he attempts to disarm the man, who easily shrugs him off and then knocks him out. We think this is a great way to end the scene in a dramatic way.

Time keeping

For the scene to be effective we need at least a full minutes for the sequence in the room when the two meet, so to save the other minute, both characters will remain anonymous, there will be no or very little dialogue, and nothing will be given away as to how they got into this situation. 

Possible Opening Shots:

This short extract is from Season 6 (Episode 5) of the US drama HOUSE. I really like how the action is done in this scene but I was most inerested in the first 3 shots used. After showing this clip to the group we saw that this could be a potential way to film our character running through the metal gates around the back of his house.

Note: Interest is only in the very first 3 or so shots of this sequence. Ignore the police car and other characters. Focus on shots of man-running!

Posted By Tom A

Meeting 1: Initial Idea

(Working Title: TBD)


The narrative centres around an innocent young man whom at the start we see running into his house through the back. He has a few minor injuries and is frightened. He enters his house and makes his way upstairs in a hurry. He enters one of the front-facing rooms on the upper floor and cautiously looks out of the window. 

At this moment we see a car pull up outside his house and a man steps out. He is carrying a gun and quickly puts on a balaclava. He carefully scans the street for activity (of which there is none). From the window the innocent man tries to get a closer look, but as a result the armed man notices him and stares straight up at the window. 

Alarmed, the innocent man makes his way to the top of the house, desperate for an escape route. He reaches the top of the house and on inspection realises he cannot escape through the window on the roof. Suddenly he hears the sound of the door closing, telling him that the armed man is in the house. There is no way out.

We then follow the armed man through his search of the house and gradually up the several flights of stairs. The house is silent as neither of the men are eager to give away their position. The armed man then enters the room of the innocent man.

(Ending TBC:)

The armed man notices his target and approachs him; the gun trained on his head. However, instead of shooting him, he knocks his target out. End.  

Posted By Tom A

Initial location photography

22 Jan 2010

Here are some shots of a possible location that we could shoot at.

Meeting 1

22 Jan 2010

- Hugh had some shots of a possible location (his house and the area behind it).
- Hugh presented an initial idea to the group.
- After an hour of discussion, argument and development, we had a nearly complete idea in our minds.

Posted by Hugh and Tom A

Welcome!