Storyboard Animatic

Script/shot list

Link to script:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Kv0NJggObmoZld_mYM4VzTL8uIK6EGQN8Q0_a6pnX9c/edit?hl=en_US#

Filming diary three

Day 3


Today we decided to film our final yet dramatic graveyard scene. After we met up, we went to the harrow rd grave yard and waited for the rain to stop as our camera isn’t water proof. After the rain stopped we filmed the part where our main character runs towards the grave yard. We took many shots from the back and front. We then filmed the part where she stops running and walks towards the grave stone. We shot this scene from many angles such as high angles, low angles, side shots, long shots and mid shots. Over all we where happy with our footage.

Day 4


Today we decided to film the scene of Liverpool station.  The group met up at Maidavale station and we took the central line to Liverpool station. We set up the camera were we wanted to shoot our scene and started filming.  As we were filming we got stopped as we weren’t allowed to film in that station. Luckily we had shot some footage that was useful. We then packed away and went outside the station where we were allowed to film and finished the scene off. We decided the film the taxi scenes on the same day as there was a taxi rank outside the station. We kindly asked a few drivera if they would let us use 5 minutes of his time but not everyone seem interested. We finally found someone who was kind enough and let us use his taxi. We quickly filmed the parts we needed and thanked the driver.

Day 5

We started by filming the rest of our footage. We tried filming in Paddington station to improve our opening sequence. At first we were stopped by security and told we cannot film without permission. We headed to the station office and sign a few papers after explaining our filming was for coursework purpose. We were given badges and we headed straight to our filming. On the next day we filmed our ending and the rest of our missing parts.

Filming diary two

Day 2

Today we returned to film the footage of Cecile walking around central London. We couldn’t do this on day one as she wasn’t wearing the correct costume. We filmed her mainly walking along the bridge and looking up, having her flashbacks. We also filmed part of the underground scene.

London Eye Photo

We took a image of our media group while we was filming at the famous 'London Eye'. we thought we could blog this image as a additon to our research & planning.

Filming dirary one

Day 1

Today we decided to start filming; we started filming the flashback scenes as they were located the furthest away. We left school and caught the underground that took us all the way to our location, Embankment. We arrived at the first scene we wanted to film in and set up the camera. After shooting the first scene to our video, we packed away the camera and went to the London eye as we were scheduled for 2:30pm. At the entrance of the London Eye, we had to go through security procedures where we were stopped due to the camera and tripod we had with us. As we kindly requested permission we were allowed to film but under basic rules they had set. We were only aloud to film capsule and avoided filming any staff. Lucky enough the pod that we were in was empty. This allowed us to film freely, as we didn’t have to worry about special issues. We set up the camera and started filming.

Filming

A picture of shalimur filming while Duha acting in the grave yard.

Poster inspirations

All three posters inspired us through the great composition, lighting and contrasted colours used in each poster. Each of these posters has a picture of a male and female but there all portrayed differently. In the poster ‘You kill me’; the girl is represented with a high status. This is suited to our film as the female protagonist has more power than the male. Also the girl is hiding behind the male, this is a great inspiration to our poster draft as the audience are left to question what role she plays in the film.

In addition, we were also inspired of the poster ‘Death defying acts’. What inspired us mostly was the innocent look on both characters faces. The bright strong colours used is contrasted by the weak red used, hence signifying that the film poster may contain a twist.

The poster ‘Match point’ portrays the aspect, secretive and devious. This is a great way of creating a mysterious and vague effect, leaving the audience intrigued.

  Our overall poster draft will be developed through combining different main aspects of each poster making an overall great poster.

Film plan

 

After creating the story board we started to realise that our planning was nearly complete and we can start filming soon. We decided to have three separate days of filming for costume and geographical reasons. Here is a rough idea:

1.      On the first day we are planning to film all the scenes of our female protagonist around central London when she is grieving.

2.     n the second day we will film all the flash backs

3.     On the third day we will film the grave yard scene as it’s too far from central London and we won’t have time to do it on the same day.

     

For the grave yard scene we researched what one we could film on based on our atmosphere we want to set. We found out the Hampstead grave yard was the best.

Research and planning Diary

Week 1-


This year, there are only 5 people in our media class. Abdunour, Shallimur and I teamed up and as a group we discussed what the genre of our movie will be, we brainstormed different ideas and came with a final pitch of a romantic thriller. We spent the whole lesson working on our film idea.


During the week, in lesson two we decided to start working on our blogs. The first thing we did was divided the work between us equally. We then got onto the computers and started with analysing short films. We did this while working in silence as this was vital as it acknowledged our knowledge in discussing movies in text, rather than verbally, we did about 10 posts on this factor. We were not able to complete all analyses in that lesson.


On the last lesson of the week, we all sat together and constructed a questionnaire to gain opinions on members of our target audience; we gave them a brief synopsis of our film and asked a few questions related to our film. We then took all feedback and opinions into consideration. We tried to put in other ideas to suit the audience’s responses.

Week 2-


This week, we worked on costumes, locations and music inspirations. We started to go more into depth of our film, this made us anxious and excited as we are all looking forward to our overall film. It took us one whole lesson to gain music inspirations as we had to listen to different types of music and try visualising the music playing with our film.

Our locations are all iconic places in London. We Google mapped where we wanted to film and uploaded the images onto our blog.

Our teacher also showed us all the equipments we will be using during filming, we got to try and play around with the camera. This benefited us as we are now familiar with everything and where all really looking forward to use them.


Week 3-

We brainstormed ideas for our film, conducting a questionnaire to get feedback on what genre is wanted the most.

By gathering our results, we chose a Romantic / Thriller Genre

Week 4-

We then had to choose several Location to film our idea, firstly we was going to film it in the Premises of our school, but our brand identity had its reputation of being unique so we chose a famous tourist attraction in London, Which was the London eye . Also to add, we chose to film in a busy trainstation such as 'Waterloo' and 'Victoria' and also we decided to add a graveyard scene to keep the theme of sinister consistant.

Week 5-

The logo of our group was yet to be confirmed, so we sat around a table and came up with a simple but effective logo that emphasised the genre behind our film. We draw drafts of the logo and then practised the outline until we was satisfied with our creation. And then we discussed our branding, to why our production label was called ‘Heartbeat Productions’ and why we chose a romantic thriller film to work on.


This week, we completed our storyboard and script. These where the two last things we needed to have up on our blogs. The story board took us more time to do then we planned. This was because we needed to discuss the beginning, middle and ending of our film. The script was easier for us to do as there is no dialogue in our film.


We are nearly the end of completing our blog.



Week 6- We began to visit our chosen locations, we walked around looking for specific areas were are chosen camera shots will be most effective in, and then started to film, we filmed 2/4 scenes this week. The locations we have chosen today was the London Eye and the Kensal Green Cemetary. These locations was unique, as we was the first group in our Sixform to choose these locations.


Week 7 - We started to take images for our poster, it didnt take us long to think of the perfect image for a romantic thriller ; which was a image of the two lovers looking towards the skyline of London city. Our workrate was fast, we then immediatly started to edit the photo on Photoshop CS5.


Week 8 - We went back to filming our scenes, we visited the graveyard chose a specific area and began filming, we bought flowers for the scene to add the extra sentimental effects and also we filmed the Knife scene directly after in a safe and secure enviroment.


Week 9 - Our Poster had yet to be finished, so it was our main priority, we used various editing techniques such as blending in a background image to our original. After this had been finished, we started our magazine Review.


Week 10- we began using photoshop again to create our magazine review, with help from other students, we finished this in one night, and we uploaded it into the blog directly after, now our evaluation was all that was left. We yet had to finish our work on our Blog, so we went through all the missing we work we had to upload and started finishing it to a outstanding quality.


Week 11- our main task was now the evaluation, as a group we split up the work into 3, so the Pace of the completion would be quick, it wasnt long before we finished the scripts and the powerpoint presentation. As a group, we knew that completing the evaluation was very time consuming, so we finished all our tasks and saved the evaluation for our last peice.

Week 12 - We reverted back to our evaluation task, as a group we consumed a few hours in our personal time to record and make a presentation for our evaluation, after a few times recording, we mastered our scripts and completed the task which has now enabled us to uplaod our full evaluation onto our Blog.

Draft Poster

Our poster was designed like his to keep the moral of the story hidden; it doesnt potray the whole storyline of the movie right away, it keeps the appereanceof the movie stable, making audiences believe that our film is a nomal romantic movie. we used  one main very large image of the two main protagonists posing for the camera with a blended background of two tourist attractions in London, we used the large image so the audiences attraction is focused on the main protagonists. we also added a small caption "Theres is no such thing as a happy ever after" below the image to emphesise the twist of the movie, this font was smaller than usual because we wanted the audience to look at the main image directly, rather than making them look at the caption right away; without haveing any sense of why the poster looks like this.

Film review draft

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We decided to use this as a draft of our film review. This is due to the simple layout that enhances the readers to pay attention to the main image which is based on the right side of the page. The textual content covers 3/4 of the review, this is becuase the information we will be publishing describes the film. The title is a bold heading with a filtered colour within it, the title will blendin with the image, to create a visual enlightment to the readers. In terms of using fonts, ours is yet to be decided as this is just a draft.

Tagline Ideas

Before producing our film, we needed to decide on a tagline for our film. We came up with many ideas but simply couldn’t choose. We decided to ask 20 people after explaining the initial idea to them so they can decide whether it suits the film.  We also gained individual feedback.

For "who ever really knows anyone" we got 2 votes.

For "there’s no such thing as happy ever after" we got 12 votes.

For "she’s dangerously innocent" we got 6 votes

Not everyone liked the second one as they said it’s too basic and romantic having no relation to half our genre; thriller. The reason why most agreed on the last because it shows the oxymoron in our female protagonist and the words "danger" and "innocent" contrast, like her behaviour.

We will use this tagline in our film and poster.

Second interview

This is our second improved interview to the previous as it had bad sound and was really quite. However, the sound wasn’t the only thing that we improved. We improved on who we interviewed. We decided to film at least one couple, female and male characters as couples could also watch these films together and we wanted to introduce this genre to the male audience. the interview asked generakl questions to find out weather our uncommon genre would be accepted and whether wheres and audience out there for it. we also wanted to see if couples would be intrested in the genre, and they agreed as long it has a good realistic story line that makes sense. however, when it came to asking about twists not many agreed as they said it could end up all worng and could be risky to do. we agreed to take the risk and make sure our story line is realistic.

Changing the synopsis!

Throughout analysing short films and posters, we were inspired by many ideas and expanded our own. As my partner and I came together in lesson we decided to recap back on our based idea for our film, we then discussed and suggested new ideas which improved our original idea.

Our finial idea is : A woman arrives at the train station, coming from abroad. She is wearing dark clothes and doesn’t look like she bothered about her looks. We see her visit many iconic places and have flashbacks of when she last came. Each time she has a flash back we see her happy with another man visiting the same places. She then has a flash back of her finding a photo of her boyfriend with another woman. We then see her visit his grave yard and she drops a knife on top of his grave yard.

Production Logo- Creative Process

In order to create a successful production logo, like the ones that we have looked at and analysed, we thought about what images would fit with our production company and our brand identity. We came up with using a heart shape, simply becuase we are called heartbeat productions, and then having an animated heart-rate monitor added to this.


As well as this, we wanted to use an iconic London setting, as this was another important aspect of company's brand identity and a key part of our film.



Using Photoshop we firstly found a background image of London and settled on one from teh riverbank looking at Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. This is probably one of the most iconic images of London and one that we thought would signify our brand identity as London-based production company best. We chose to have an image with an orange tone to it, connoting ideas of dusk and romance. We then added a heart shape, which we made into an inverted mask, so that all the image around the heart could then be made black & white, whilst keeping the inside coloured. This idea was important to us as we wanted to show how our production company offered a vibrance apart from the outisde world. After searching for a variety of fonts, we narrowed it down to 5, which we then asked our media class which they thought was best. They chose ADD FONT NAME IN HERE and we also felt that it suited our film and brand identity. Finally, we added a heart rate monitor-style line, using the paint brush tool.

From our initial Photoshop tests, we then set about trying to animate our logo using Motion. We knew that we wanted the heart to fade in and the background to gradually fade out, and that we wnated the heart-rate monitor to move across the screen. We used a variety of masks and animated outlines to achieve the right effect, and used an animated paint-brush to achieve the heart-rate monitor. What was most tricky was animating the mask's opacity, so that the heart retained it's colour over the back ground, and the background faded to black. Finally we added sound effects of a heart-beat and then a sound effect that sounded like a failed heart, to add an element of mystery and a certain sinister feel to our logo.


You can see our finished production logo below here:

Finished Production Logo

Analyses of previous students Production Logo

In this production logo, there is an image of 2 pyramids a sun and the logo name ‘Mirage pictures’. The Logo name ‘Mirage’ is set in the centre of the screen and does not move throughout the opening. The sun is animated to move behind the pyramids while the ‘pictures ‘slowly appears.

The overall colour scheme used is black and white. They chose the colour of the background to be black and contrasted it with a bold white logo name. The animated sun has a lens flare which gives the logo an added sense of drama and is also contrasted with the background. The lens flare also helps give a reflection to the logo name, making the logo more effective and exciting.  

They called themselves ‘Mirage pictures’ which foreshadows the narrative of the film were the main character is a ‘mirage’ himself, due to his double personality.

Prodoction Logo Ideas

Our previous production logo had was a city landscape with our old title in. we also kept the heartbeat monitor shaped as a heart and pink. We added shooting stars around the title to express imagination and new ideas to the film company.


After looking at another film company’s logo (Mirage Pictures), we understood that we have the same film genre and our logo doesn’t suit it. Our logo looks very sci-fi based on the feedback we have gained and we need to follow the aspect that 'Mirage Pictures' has where the logo is simple but effective.


'Mirage Pictures' has a light orb, suggesting the sun, setting between the two pyramids and creating a lens flare. They have the title of the film company beneath and the whole logo fadly mirrored, as if it were a mirage or oasis. This is what makes the logo effective as it reflection the film. The mirage represents the male protagonist who at first looks like the perfect boyfriend but is actually a serial killer, which is how an oasis is encountered.


The things that influenced us are the fact the reflection of the logo, looking like an oasis which foreshadows a hidden personality. We will use this idea to create a logo that symbolises a double personality. We will also keep the logo simple and less colourful, making sure we use the correct colour scheme.

Production Logo - Previous student analysis

In terms of reasearching material for our production logo, we had to look at previous productions of logos made by other students in their films. we used the logo production from 'Mirage Pictures' as a backbone to our logo creation; due to the similarities of our film genres.

The logo used by the students links to its products as they consistantly throughout the whole film production, in their blog, poster and actual film.

The design of the logo links to the brand identity of the film, the colour scheme of the film poster was a fading of black and red, which was used in the logo aswell, the design was basic but widely effective, they used 2 pyramids with a moving lens flare going towards the centre of the the pyramids effect that was red, what make sthis logo effective is that they didnt make it complex, they kept a basic idea and used it effectivly for brand identity. 

The font used in the logo was a large, and bold, with a mirror effect that faded into the black background, it goes well with the theme of the logo as it didnt collide with any colours used.

Inspiration of the flashbacks

In this music video "Break even" by the script, the singer has flashback of when he was with his partner. The whole music video is in black and white except for the flashbacks or when he's with her. We will use this idea by having the flash backs in colour and the rest in black and white.

Questionnaire

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wATDRBRL5NTtqkpwgOvMAc6c8aRrh_mu1e7i31iggIc/edit?hl=en_US#

Equipment

Sony HDV HVR-A1E Camera – we will use this to film our work.

Libel TH-650DV Tripod – this will support our camera in making sure we have smooth shots.

Libel DL-2 Dolly – this will be attached to the tripod and will help us move the camera smoothly to create atmospheric shots.

 Rotolight Stealth 45 – this will not only give us light but make sure the lighting will be correct while editing.

Mac book pro – this is the computer we will use to edit our film, magazines and other stuff. It supports all the software’s we will need to produce our film.



Final cut pro 7 / motion 4 – this software’s will help us edit our film and add any special effects.

Garage band – this software will help use create music for our film.

Adobe Photoshop CS5 – this software will help use create and edit pictures. We will use it when we create our magazine and logo.

Adobe In Design CS5 – this software will help us create our magazine.



Inspiration for props

When we came up with the storyline and made a decision of making the female protagonist a murderer, our idea escalated into making her a psychotic murderer. Our inspiration was from a successful thriller ''American psycho''. The film is about a normal man who looks very educated and well mannered, judging by his costume. The audience is then surprised to see him psychotically kill people in violent and vicious ways. The inspiration we picked up from this is the fact he looks very innocent and his actions were unexpected.

we got inspiration from the movie 'American Psycho' to use a sharp object such as this butcher knife as a main mood changer in our film, this is the vital equipment that will decide the fait of our protagonists.

The Interview

After creating the questionnaire we decided to interview and film our target audience’s answers. The questions we asked where open questions to prevent yes or no answers. Our aim was to find out if our ideas where good enough to create a twist in the film. Also, we wanted to emphasize on the feeling of oxymoron so we asked our target audience on how we should portray the protagonist. We also asked wither the film should be a silent film or not as we struggled in the decision.


Before filming, we gave a copy of the synopsis to the interviewee and continued with relevant questions. We will use the answers to improve our synopsis and will ask further questions if relevant. we decided to re film the interview as the sound was too low.

Costume

Our female protagonists will resemble her schizophrenic mental illness. in this case, two personalities meaning two diffrent costumes.

Our costume for the actress consists of an all black outfit, the choice of colour emphasises the dark, grim enviroment which our movie exploits.     

        

      

                                                                                                     



The costume for our actor was a simple, casual look. the differences of costume between the actor/actress is to show the love/hate relationship the couple have.

   

                          

Logo Production

This is our logo for our production company which is "Heartbeat Productions". the reason we have selected these colours is to show the reaction and lighting of love. we added the shooting stars as they are rare and beautiful to gaze upon. we chose to put the buildings in the background to show the plot of the story as our male and femle protagonist meet in a big and new city meaning curiosity.

London Eye

We had to book tickets to the London Eye in advance therefore we booked them online. We choose the most suitable time and date and planned our filming schedule.

Film locations

The locations we will be filming in will be places our protagonist will visit while having her flashbacks. These places are not only iconic but mean something to her as she previously visited them with a loved one. Every time she visits a place with so much memory her emotions trigger flash backs of when she was happier. However, the grave yard is a different place. It’s where our protagonist will reveal her dark secret and her oxymoron feelings.

                                                     

                               

                             

                                                            

                            

Choosing our locations

One of the most vital part of our film was to choose the correct location to film in, we brainstormed several ideas of iconic places where we could record our scenes, after several arguments, we as a group we decided that the London eye was most suitable for our film as it was easy to reach and its one of the main tourist attractions in London. It’s also located on the south bank, which meant we were able to film the river Thames and London Bridge as there all in the same perimeter as the London Eye.


We then had to think about our location to film our coffee shop scene, so we asked around and got a friend of ours that allowed us to film in his dads cafe. Our last two scenes conisted of a train station and a graveyard, so we again had to brainstorm several places were we could film. for our train station scene we chose Paddington Station as it had a higher ground level were we was able to film our acrtess who was below us.


lastly we decided on what graveyard we wanted to record our scene in, within a few minutes we found a close graveyard , which is called 'Harrow Rd Graveyard' We then had to choose the train station we were going to use for the opening scene. At first we decided to use Victoria station but then we realised there was no high area for us to be able to film from so we changed the location to Liverpool st station as it has what we want. Lastly we had to choose a grave yard for our last scene. We decided to film in Harrow Rd grave yard as it was nearby and perfect for our scene.