Shot List

This is the list of shots for our production. The next stage is to turn this list into a storyboard which visually represents each shot.

Risk Assessment

Now that we have secured our location, I have completed a risk assessment to allow us to conduct the shoot in a safe manner.

Sound Research

Genre Research: Dystopia

Our Location Choice

We chose this location because toilets have connotations of dirt and grime plus, it is also small and claustrophobic and this is the sort of environment we imagined our character would be living in. From a logistical point of view the small space makes it easier for us to dress the set because there is less space for us to 'cover' so it is easier to prevent out of place objects from appearing in any shots and we will not have to worry about random people appearing in the background of our shots because we will have the area to ourselves.


We had originally decided to use another set of toilets but we were denied permission but we were offered use of this room as an alternative and upon inspecting it we are confident that it will still suit our needs.

Final Pitch

Production Log: 04/12/15

Today I finished off my equipment planning and uploaded it to the blog. Me and Hayden then started to plan out the shot list for the production. We are planning on completing the preliminary on tuesday next week.

Equipment Planning

Focus Group

Yesterday We conducted a focus group with a small group of 4 people. Hubert and Hayden were responsible for leading the session while I was mostly responsible for ensuring that the session was properly recorded so that we can refer back to it as we plan our production.

Below you can listen to the recording of the session

Carrying out a focus group has helped us during the planning for our production. Firstly, it confirmed our beliefs that our target audience would like the idea of our production. The group also strongly supported our idea of setting the opening in a grimy set of toilets, they particularly liked the fact that the toilets are going to look dirty and abandoned and so we will place particular attention on making the set look good and also using colour correction during the editing stage to give everything a yellow-y-green appearance. Our idea of having "lively" music while the character is washing blood off his hands was not so well received and so we have decided that we might not use this idea, we will wait until we edit this section to make the final decision though. The group has led us to decide to use the "radio announcement" idea over the plain monologue because the group said that it would be more realistic, offering an overview of the backstory for the audience.

Transcript:

Production Log: 01/12/15

Today we conducted a focus group at lunchtime with a small group of 4 people. We had originally planned to film this but the cameras were unavailable so we decided to record the audio using one of the handheld audio recorders. I cannot post the audio yet because I did not get the opportunity to retrieve the audio file from the recorder today but tomorrow I have a lesson in which I will be able to retrieve the file so that we can discuss the results of the focus group in detail. Overall, it seemed to go well!

Target Audience Age

We have decided to aim our Dystopian Thriller towards this demographic because even though our opening will not include much violence, we feel that due to the action that we plan to incorporate within the flashback and the overall concept of our idea this age rating is best suited. Despite males being our main audience gender as they are stereotyped to prefer violence we will still try to attract female audiences through the use of mise-en-scene and our idea. Furthermore, we vision the main character to be quite confident and to use derogatory terms to connote that he is not a true hero which will allow our production to be against the normal conventions.

Representation Theory

Hayden has looked at representation theory

Focus Group Email

Now that Hayden has been able to confirm the details of the focus group I have sent this email out to our participants.

Audience Survey Analysis

I have analysed the results of our audience survey

Production Log: 27/11/15

Today Hayden made a mind map of costume and prop ideas and we discussed how we are going to organise a focus group. I wrote an email draft which is ready to be sent out to our participants once the arrangements are confirmed and Hayden emailed Jenny to organise a room for one lunchtime to conduct the focus group. We also looked over what other research tasks we would like to complete and assigned them to members of our team.

Costume and prop ideas

Hayden has made a mind map of our ideas for props and costumes in our production.

Production Log: 24/11/15

Today I continued with the survey analysis for part of the lesson. We also decided to look at a possible filming location. We surveyed the location and the problems that it could present to us while filming and we tried to come up with solutions to these problems as well as deciding how we could make the location look as we wanted it to with lighting and props. This led us on to beginning to plan out the beginning of our production in a little more detail than we had previously gone in to. I am feeling fairly confident about the deadline at this point because effectively splitting the research work has allowed us to complete it in good time and now that the research phase is beginning to draw to a close we will soon start to draw up our final plans (including storyboards, scripts, etc...) and then we will (hopefully) start recording the first takes of our production before the Christmas break.

Production Log: 23/11/15

Today I completed the form research and uploaded it and then I closed the audience survey and started to analyse the results. We also discussed possible filming locations but we are concerned over the logistics of filming in many of the locations suggested by members of the group.

Form Research

I have completed some research on the moving image format

Audience theories

Hayden has completed some research on audience theories

Filming Research

Hubert has completed some technical research on filming skills.

Production Log: 17/11/15

Today I continued work on my form research. Everyone in our group is currently working on separate tasks.

Production Log: 16/11/15

Today, I started my form research and our teacher gave us a guide on doing genre research, which Hayden has started to work on now.

Editing Research

I have completed some research on different types of editing. Below is what I have learnt

Analysis: Mad Max: Fury Road (By Hubert Osinski)

Mad Max: Fury Road (Textual Analysis)

The opening of the film is a plain black screen with the main protagonist, Max is narrating some of his past, telling the audience who he was and what the world has come to with cuts between his voice and the news. We some footage of a strong wind breaking trees edited in with a fade effect whilst the radio says “We have become half-life” (non-diegetic), this connotes that the destruction was from a natural cause which was most likely influenced by humans. We realise that it’s the protagonist speaking because he says “My name is Max” during the narration. The audience can only hear Max’s dialogue with the purpose of the audience creating their own picture of what the world looks like. Beginning a film with a black screen builds suspension and makes the audience more curious and eager as for what they’re going to be presented with. Diegetic sound is used to create the effect of loneliness and emptiness. This is shown through the whistling of the wind which connotes the lack of human activity else we would hear very human sounds like chatter, footsteps, and cars.

Production Log: 11/11/15

Today I finished the technical research and showed the rest of the team v2 of the ident. We also sent out some emails asking for feedback on the new ident.

Ident v2

I have made another version of the Ident based on feedback from my team. It shares many similarities to v1 but we have made the text smaller and placed it all below the box because we think that it is much tidier. We also removed the glow from around the text because it is flatter and cleaner which is in keeping with current design trends where designers are favouring flat design over "Skeuomorphic Design" (as shown in the picture below)

(Click for larger)

I would welcome any feedback on v2 and which design you prefer!

(Click here to see my post about v1)

Credit for the music:
"The Curtain Rises" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Production Log: 10/11/15

Today I continued with my technical research in the lesson after adding some more explanation to my ident blog post in response to teacher feedback. I also made some improvements to my textual analysis of the Saw II opening in my own time.

Production Log: 9/11/15

Today I started by checking the responses to the audience survey and showing the responses so far to my team. Then I started some technical research into editing. My team members are also doing technical research into other technical elements of our production

Audience Survey Update

Last Friday (06/11/15) I sent out the main audience survey after the feedback on our pilot survey that I posted earlier in the week had been applied to it.

I am currently in a study period, so I decided to check on the responses so far and I am happy to report that we have had 11 responses over the weekend and I am hoping that now people are back in school, more responses will come in soon.

Pilot Survey Evaluation

Initial ideas

Throughout the production process so far we have been keeping a document where we list our ideas as they come to us. Below you can see some of our groups ideas so far.

Dystopia Conventions

We have decided that our protagonist will follow stereotypes, for example he will be an anti-hero, having been forced or not having a choice about his position. Also, he will be more bothered about his survival, than the survival of the human race. Therefore, our protagonist would be identify with the selfishness element of the first conventional group while also meeting the conventions of characters in the second group

Nevertheless, we have also decided to subvert the convention of sci-fi elements as we do not have the budget to build the futuristic looking sets and special effects needed to connote a sci-fi setting to the audience.

Green Box Productions ident

This is my idea for the ident for our production company. I made the box animation in blender and the spotlight was created using a bump map effect in Sony Vegas.

We choose to use the colour green because it is gender neutral so nobody feels excluded from our productions. Green also has positive connotations with words such as 'go' and 'good' which are words we would like to be associated with our productions. The typography is a large sans serif font which makes it easy to read, this establishes a clear brand identity. The box motion makes it appear to grow, which connotes that we are growing and successful as a production company.

I would welcome any feedback!

Credit for the music:
"The Curtain Rises" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Thriller conventions research

We have decided that we will try to use fast paced editing and close-up shots of the protagonist to show his expressions and to connote his feelings. This would also follow the typical conventions because the audience will consider how they would react if the events shown in the film occurred in real life and this would be thrilling for them, creating audience pleasure


However, we have chosen to subvert the convention of black and white shots because we want to use yellow and green colours to connote the unhygienic nature of the opening setting.

Copyrighted music

Hubert has been listening to different music recently to try to think of something to use as the "radio music" in the production. He wants to use Like a Prayer by Madonna. This song is obviously subject to copyright restrictions so he tried to contact someone to get permission. We are not realistically expecting to be granted these rights but we decided that it was worth a try!

The Hunger Games (2012)

I have linked The Hunger Games official trailer because it is a successful Dystopian film and the concept behind it will be useful towards our moving image. In my opinion i love the idea of hunger and the fact that the plot goes against innocent children. Also, i like the way they have introduced the concept behind what has happened through the use of simple sentences on a black screen, so i think that we will do something like this in order to educate the audience, but it will be more entertaining instead of simple description on a screen for the audience to read. So as an example, we will either do a monologue or record radio takings to retrieve all of the information related to the context of our production ideas.

Analysis: I am Legend

Textual analysis of ‘I am Legend’

(By Hayden Woodcock, Green Box Productions)

Genre:

‘I am Legend’ is a hybrid Sci-fi, Thriller and Drama genre connoting that it uses a mix of conventions to suit each genre. This is proved through the use of: futuristic settings, guns, suspense,

Influential Figures

Analysis: Saw II

In my production I intend to make particular use of the mise-en-scene that was used in this text. Particularly the yellow and green colours and 'grimey' sets. This will fit with the conventions of a dystopian thriller because the setting is supposed to look abandoned and the mise-en-scene in the Saw II opening connotes this well. On the other hand, I would like to make the pace of my production slower than that of Saw because Saw is Horror movie and I am planning to create a thriller which is a genre that is quite closely related to horror but is conventionally slower paced and I plan to follow this convention

My response to the brief

Video Experiment

This is a quick experiment video, shot at home on my phone and edited on my PC

Credits:
"Evening of Chaos" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Film Projector Eumig 614 D.mp3" Franq (freesound.org)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Ambiance-Eerie_Wind-002.wav" D W (freesound.org)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"highVoltage.wav" yasser (freesound.org)
Licensed under Creative Commons: Zero License 1.0
http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

Jurassic World Summer Research

This is my summer research project on Jurassic World