Shoot day reflection

 Our day of filming our opening title sequence was Friday 7th May. After writing up our roles on set which included how I planned and prepared before the shooting day. In the morning, we all met early at 8:50 and gathered together the camera equipment such as the camera and charger and lens box, the tripod, the microphone, as well as the costumes and makeup which we had previously ordered off amazon and brought in the week before. We handed the costumes over to the actors before getting the car which we had planned to use and parked it in a good position outside the main school building. Originally, we had planned for the location to be outside Ewhurst boarding house, however it was easier and more practical to park the porche outside Hurtwood main House. We then set up the camera, lens and tripod and checked it was working and also connected the microphone. 

The first scenes we shot was not in order of the sequence as some of the teachers which were acting were not available at some of the times. In this case, we then positioned the camera at the drivers window to begin shooting with Mike Niland. We would first get the basic wide, mid and close up shots which have had planned to on our shot list, before experimenting with new positions, angles and compositions in order to get the best shots possible. Here are evidence photos taken on the day, as you can see the set up of our set on location. To film the first few shots in which we introduce the character, the bodyguard. our actor is in his costume, however we did not end up using the fake tattoos as we all agreed it looked tacky. This was a last minuet change however it didn't effect the outcome. We shot scenes of the bodyguard in his seat, looking through his mirror, adjusting it to his eyes and then we see the character of Jason walking towards the car in the side mirror. It took us a while to re shoot this as we kept changing which side the actor Dave entered from. In the end we changed it and he entered from the main building up to the back door of the car. In order to take the shots of Dave walking out from the building, it took many attempts. At first our cameraman Fred tried steadily walking, doing a hand held shot which we had no planned, however it was too shaky, so then our teacher Matt suggested that Fred sits in the boot, with a low hand held shot of dave walking, as the car moved forward in-front of dave, we got a very good shot. To get a good diegetic sound of Dave walking, we took another take of just the microphone recording his footsteps on the gravel to put over the clip. We took shots from inside the car during the action scene with Mike and Dave, this was very fun to film and our fake blood came in handy. We took the shooting scenes a few times from inside the car, and outside so that the audience can witness the bodyguard getting out of the car, walking round and finishing Jason off. The simple dialog used in this sequence was the bodyguard dialling the number of the Mafia Boss and saying 'it's done'. At this shot the audience can see the gun and the brick phone, implying that this man is double sided and scary. 

The second location was inside of Hurtwood House, in the headmasters office. We kept the actor, James, anonymous to the audience. This scene was quick to shoot, it concluded of a long shot of the back of the mafia boss's body on the sofa in his office, answering the phone and receiving the information from the bodyguard. This shot had to be a quick, sooth pan from the phone being answered, to it being held up to his ear. 

I thought overall what went well was our cameraman’s creative ways of taking interesting shots and not just sticking to the basic shot list. This worked well as it will keep the audience enaged and also keeps the action interesting. However, next time I would like to try out the cameraman role on set as  it looked fun and interesting. 

I learnt new technical skills such as a using a Polaroid lens to deflect the reflection and give a darker, less saturated tint to the camera lens. We used this when we were filming the outside of the car, as well as the close up hand held shots of the details of the car which I tried shooting to include in our title sequence. When I filmed these stills I did a focus pull which was new to me and made the scene look cinematic and professional. Another piece of equipment we used in order to get the right natural lighting from the sun to hit the actors faces throughout the day of filming was a light shield reflector, this was advised by Mike and Matt to keep a consistent lighting on our set outside.

From attending the camera skill workshops, I had learnt how to set up the cameras with the battery, lens and tripod, as well as the right language to use when handling the cameras, such as the ‘yours’ and ‘mine’ technique. This allowed us as a group to all handle the camera carefully. 

My favourite part of our filming day was filming the main action scene where Mike swerves around and shoots Dave in the back before walking round to check he is dead before phoning his boss. This allowed us to be creative as a group and add the fake blood for effect.

I am looking forward to take the role as editor in my group which I will begin editing our scenes this week in the editing suit on Adobe Premiere. I am excited to watch the end result once I have put together all of the best footage and added cool effects when we are editing it in post production.

As I have only had two workshops in the edit suit, the software is all still new to me so I think it will be a challenge at first but after adapting to using it and learning how to use the editing tools then it should be manageable. 

When I looked back at the footage on the folder on the computer, it was not in order as we had to film different scenes at different timings but from what I could see we managed to get all the shots.

After this first experience of filming I have learnt for next time to volunteer for a better role on the set and also to plan in advance around the timings in which the actors are free in. 

Research into filming role

 These are the main roles on the day and what they include

Camera Man, Director and Editor. As we are a group of three we are all assigned to a role, Perdy will be in charge of Directing, Fred is in charge of Camera Man and I will be doing the editing. 

Director - Perdy will be responsible for organising and instructing the actors, camera positioning and instructing the cast as to what to say and act. Perdy will be bringing the makeup for the actors and the shot lists and story board.

Camera man - Fred will be in charge for setting up the cameras, tripods and microphones and taking the shots. He will be responsible for overseeing the best looking filming shots possible. Fred will bring the shot list and storyboard in order to know which basic shoots we need to shoot. 

Editor - Georgie will be in charge of the role as the editor. This role will use Adobe Premiere to edit the scenes in post production. As well as ensuring that the characters, props and other objects are all in the same position in each shot to make it look like each shot are all continuing as one. 

When films are being made, it is very important that everyone works together with good communication to ensure that the film is successful. Each role in the film industry on set are important as this makes up as above the line costs on set. 

When I arrive to school on the day, I will help gather with my group all the equipment, props, makeup and costumes and take them up to the set outside Hurtwood House. We will check that the actors know when they are needed for filming and give them their costumes. Then I will set up the microphone and assist anyone who needs help. My role on the day will be to make sure the setting is right, and that everything in each shot is the same and not noticeable to the audience when they watch our sequence. Once the filming is done and successful I will take responsibility to watch back all the shots and then put the best ones into the editing software. 

Conclusion

Following my last blog post of analysing similar film, tv and game products in relation to our final sequence I will draw it to a conclusion. 

The similar products I researched all have the same themes/genre of thriller, crime thriller and themes including illegal organisations, blackmail, good vs enemy, gun sales. A large majority of the characters from these products are dressed in sophisticated suits which inspired our costumes for our sequence.  

The overall occurring plot of these tv shows, films and games are mysterious business men dealing with illegal gangs for money or gun weapons. Most of them are all set in similar settings of London offices or they are running from different countries. 

These conventions of gun violence, money laundering, gangs and going against the law all are apart of crime/thriller genre. The point of this is to keep the audience interested as to what shocking thing is to come next. Crime/thriller genre aim is to include a sense of mystery as well as violence. Our occurring themes in our sequence follow the conventions of the thriller/crime genre, this appeals to our target audience because they are attracted to almost murders and crimes put together into a modern day, crime thriller sequence. 

We added our own elements to our sequence such as this double agent, undercover bodyguard character. This is unexpected and will shock the audience in the beginning of this sequence. The aim of this is to hook them in to continue to watch the rest of our film as they will want to understand why the bodyguard has disobeyed his passenger boss, perhaps it is for revenge? 

Research into similar products

 I'm looking at these two products for similar TV shows which are under the same genre of our sequence which is Thriller and Sub genre is Crime/Thriller:

• The Bodygaurd:

 

Studio - World Productions, BBC

Director - Thomas Vincent, John Strickland

Cast - Richard Madden, Keeley Hawes, Gina McKee, Sophie Rundle and Vincdeent Franklin

Year - 26th August 2016

In the Bodygaurd, the characters which feature in the sequence are similar to my characters in my sequence due to the part as the bodygaurd. He is the main role in this series and his costume is similar to the one played by Mike Niland in our sequence. The Bodygaurd character plays the role of a PPO for the metrapoitain police, in which his duty is to protecrt the MP. 
The theme incthe bodygaurd is dark and mysterious which suportrs its genre of crime, political thriller  and a drama. It's fast action, dramatic and slightly violent theme is similar to our theme which is shown on my mood board which I created when I was planning our costumes, props and overall dark and mysterious theme. 

The narrative of Bodygaurd is about a ex veterinarian soilder who's duty is to now to work for the Royalist and Specialist Protection Force for London's Metrapoloitain police. He is assigned to vprotect this Polition who is a target for terror attacks throughotut the season. 

The setting and location within this 6 part series varies between smart offices and buisness hotels. This office setting is similar to our final scene in our sequence of the mafia boss's office which is dark, moody and sofisticated. 

The Bodygaurd character is dressed similar to 'James Bond' style costume. His costume was usually a skinny tie, and button down shirts with a black suit and trousers. The earpeice he wore is vitial to portraying his character as a bodygaurd as it is steroptypical to see a security charavter wearing the earpeice. The alround lighting seems to be dark and dimed to highlight the srious and sceptical tone. 

• The Night Manager: 

Studio - The Ink Factory, BBC

Director - Susanne Bier

Cast - Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie, Olivia Colman, Tom Hollander and more

Year - The six part series was released by BBC on 21st Feb 2016

The main character in this tv series plays a double agent. His chacater begins as working in a hotel before getting recruited to work for the British MI5 but hpwever goes undercover to seek revenge on an illegal arms sale billionare. This is similar to our sequence as our characters are both working for the mafia as well as their own gang. The bodygaurd in our sequence is working for his boss who he drives around as well as his own boss who is head of a large mafia gang.

The themes in The Night Manager are corruption, money laundaring, rule breaking and most prominently the moral equivalence between those suposedly on 'our side' and the enemy. The themes of good vs bad is the most obvious similarity between this series and our opening title sequence. 

The narrative in this series is about agent Jonathan Pine, a former British soldier, is the night manager. The novel is about Pine's preoccupation with undoing Roper's criminal enterprise, which began earlier, in Cairo, where Pine was working as the night manager at the luxurious Queen Nefertiti hotel.

There were three main filming locations for The Night Manager, from Egypt, Monaco, London, Devon, Mallorca and Marakech and Switszerland. 

One similar movie product under the same genre is:

• The Gentleman 

Studio- Mirmax

Director - Guy Ritchie 

Cast - Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Henry Golding, Michelle Dockery, Jermery Strong, Eddie Marsan, Colin Farrell, Hugh Grant.

Year - December 1st 2019

The characters in The Gentlemen are similar to our characters in our final sequence. Their job role of working undercover is similar to our style of characters as they An American expat tries to sell off his highly profitable marijuana empire in London, triggering plots, schemes, bribery and blackmail in an attempt to steal his domain out from under him.

The similarities in themes follow a criminal empire and deals with themes of class seperation and media representation. this is similar to our final sequence which deals with themes of illeghal activity, weapon sales, and most liely drug sales insude of the mafia gang.

The general narrative in this film by Guy Ritchie follows the plot of an American expatriate who became rich by building a highly profitable marijuana empire in London. When word gets out that he's looking to cash out of the business, it soon triggers an array of plots and schemes -- including bribery and blackmail -- from shady characters who want to steal his domain.

The filming locations for this film was The Gentlemen was shot at West London Film Studios. Filming also took place at Princess Victoria located on 217 Uxbridge Road, Shepherd's Bush, London. Emirates Stadium.

One particular costume worn in The Gentlemen is very similar to our style of costumes in our sequence. These two costumes inspired our choice in costumes for our final sequence. Our bodygaurd/driver character worse a similar costume to this one. 

The waistcoat and tie and shirt give an important, smart adn formal feel. We also wanted the boss in the backseat to wear a similar outfit to this green one worn in The Gentlemen. We had the idea of the tweed cap and double breasted suit for the boss who gets shot. 

One video game which is similar genre and theme to our sequence is: 

• Mafia 

Studio - Illusion Softworks

Directors - Petr Vochozka and Daniel Vavra

Year - Released to Microsoft Windows, Xbox and Playstation in 2002 - 2004

One of the characters played in Mafia which is most similar to our Bodygaurd character was Tommy Angelo. His character started as a taxi driver on the streets of Lost Heaven during the probation. His character was gratefulv tohave his small paid job during the time of the Great Depression. He also gets into situations with gang members and end up helping them in return for money. This character's costume is most similar to our characters, the smart, sufisticated suit and tie resep

Another character similar to the role of the bodygaurd in our sequence from the game Mafia is Lucas Bertone. He provides service for the mafia. He gets players to carry put his requests in return for information on how to steal luxury cars. 

The most similar character to our mafia boss in this game is the Boss, also known as the Don in Mafia families. He is the leader of criminal organisations within his gang. This is like our Mafia boss in our sequence. He is the leader of his criminal gang and who the Bodygaurd receives order from. 

The themes in Mafia are pretty much the exact same as our sequence. Themes including gun violence, illegal organisations, blakcmailing, and good vs evil.

Mafia is a 2002 action-adventure video game developed by Illusion Softworks and published by Gathering of Developers. The game was released for Microsoft Windows in August 2002, and later ported to the PlayStation 2 and Xbox in 2004. It is the first installment in the Mafia series. Set within the fictional city of Lost Heaven during the 1930s, the story follows the rise and fall of taxi driver-turned-mobster Tommy Angelo within the Salieri crime family.Mafia's storyline gameplay consists of driving, mainly easy city cruises between different locations, as well as chases and races; the rest of the game is based on third-person on-foot navigation and shooting - all inter-connected with cutscenes. 

Mafia takes place between the fall of 1930 through to the end of 1938, during the later part of Prohibition, and is set in the fictional American city of Lost Heaven. However our final sequence is set in modern day.
 

Review of test shoot

 My group and I shot a test shoot in order to give a taste to the audience of our idea and camera angles. 

After watching back the test shoot I will evaluate how we can improve our idea or composition for Friday the 8th when we shoot the sequence. By doing this test shoot, it allowed us to note what works and doesn't work.

I think we managed to briefly give off an idea of dialog and setting, for instance the location of a large majority of the shots is all inside and also using imagery of props such as a tie and gun highlight the significant characters and their status or role in the sequence. 

This 50 second test shoot contains a wide, mid and close up shot when we were filming each scene based off our storyboard outline. Our main opening title sequence will last under 2-3 minuets as it will include more detail and time put into each shot. Each clip we shot was short and quick, with little sound it was quite dull to watch as the acting was not great and nothing particularly interesting caught my eye. As this was just a test shoot to get a brief outline of the storyline, we had to film this in a classroom using anything around us to also convey an idea of actor positioning.

We showed an idea of a business man getting into the back of a car, this was shown from the use of a tie and brief cases. The driver was already sat on a chair opposite to the backseat, we used a mirror to show he was a suspicious character. Once the gun was pulled out, we used a spray bottle to represent the gun action, we saw the boss clearly die and then the phone call to his boss who was drinking whiskey in a large chair, we did not reveal the face iof the mafia boss in order to show his superiority and power.

We created a build of tension by the frequent gazing in the mirror from the driving, as if he was watching and waiting to pull out the gun. 

When it comes to filming the sequence, I hope that we can use some more interesting camera angles and movement. I think trying out a hand held angle or pan/tracking would be effective and keeps the audience more interested rather than only using a wide, mid and close up based off our shot list outline as I think that it would get repetitive for the audience and also restricts us from experimenting with other shots to make the sequence flow better.

I think that to improve, the transitions between the shots and scenes could be smoother as it is quite cut/ jumpy, however our test shoot was filmed on iMovie, while when it comes to editing the opening title sequence we will be editing it on Adobe Premiere which is more accurate and precise. 

Test Shoot

 Here is Fred, Perdy and mine test shoot prior to filming our opening title sequence. This was edited by Fred and uploaded onto YouTube. 

Shoot day reflection

Shooting Dialog Sequence

 In today's lesson, I put my knowledge from the previous workshops about cameras and editing to film a short dialog sequence. I filmed this short dialog sequence with Tegan, Adriana, and Anna. 

At first we took the camera, tripod and microphone out of the bags and cases and set them up just how we had been shown to. By using a microphone it allows us to capture the vocal vibrations, we pointed this towards the speaker. We then filmed a conversation and shot this many times, each time changing the camera angle or movement in order to edit it to look like a smooth conversation just like we see on TV and films. This includes over the shoulder shots, mid shots, wide shots, extreme close up and close ups. We even attempted a tracking shot which didn't turn out very well as the stability was not good. 

During our filming of this dialog we used previous techniques that we have learnt in workshops, such as the 180 degree rule. We kept this in mind during the filming in order to give the audience a sense of direction and placing of the actors. We kept the camera filming on one side of two actors as they had their conversation so that actor 1 remained on the left at all times, and actor 2 on the right at all times. 

The only problem that we discovered was when we attempted to film a hand held, tracking shot. For this we did not use a tripod and no image stabiliser so this meant that the footage was very wobbly. In the future if we do film a hand held, we should use a gimbal to help make the shot smooth. 

I think that the acting in this sequence was not great, we rushed the script and this meant that the acting felt un natural. Perhaps next time we would use better actors and think of a better conversation to script, a topic more interesting so that we could of filmed more interesting shots in a better location. 

From this shooting workshop, I have learnt tips to help in our upcoming Opening Titles Sequence. In the future, use less dialog and more action in order to get more interesting shots and footage.