Planning: Call sheets

When we were delegating the jobs Harry created the call sheets and informed us of the plans so that we could be prepared for the days with the correct resources.

Planning: Classification

The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) is a non-governmental body for classifying cinema films was set up in 1912. All decisions on the classification of a film are based on the guidelines from BBFC, they are regularly updated which is based on the current views of different films.

Our group has decided to rate our film a 12A, this is because we want to allow the widest range possible to view our film. Teenagers are at the stage when they are understanding what they want to have as a career so we thought by opening the film up to all teenagers it will allow those teenagers that are aspiring to be motor-sport drivers to understand the industry and its consequences clearly. There is nothing in our film that will make it a 15 as we knew not to add these elements as it would mean our target audience would be even more specific and this is what we were trying to avoid.

Below is an image found on the BBFC website, it is all of the ratings that films can be given:

Planning: coming up with the title

As a group we had a meeting to decide on the name for our film, everyone came up with a few ideas each some of them are list below:

• The drive
• If I drive
• Indicator
• Don't look back
• HeartBrake

From this list we decided on the title of Don't look back, we chose this title because it hints at the narrative of the film but without giving too much away, this is what I had in mind when I came up with this idea to pitch to the group.

Planning: Sourcing race suit

Thu 10/12/2015 14:42

I wouldn't call it a race jacket, its more like a protective jacket and trousers but if you want to borrow them yeah that's fine �� how much are you paying me??

Sent from Windows Mail

HS

Harry Squire

Harry Squire

|

To: Jacob Gregory

Jacob Gregory;

  

Thu 10/12/2015 14:25

Sent Items

Hi Jacob, 

For our media project we need to use a race suit and as you bring your bike in to school we were wondering if we could use yours. All the shots with the suit in will be in school and all filming will be done in January. 

Let us know ASAP if this is ok with you? 

Thanks, Harry.

For our race suit costume we needed something that looked professional and Jacobs biking suit was perfect so we emailed him making sure we were able to use it. 

Above is the conversation between Harry and his friend to borrow his race suit.

Planning: Legislation of the workshop

These images below are all screenshots of our emails to teachers making sure we have our location booked so that there is no confusion, and everyone knows who is where and when.

Planning: Test shots

Shot 2
 This shot will be part of our short montage; it could also be called an establishing shot. This will be quite a long take to signify that nothing much is happening. There is the conventional iconography here of the race track and the red and white stripes which denotes that this is a serious racing circuit.

Shot 3

Unfortunately, we cannot get a test shot of the angle we will use in our film; we are planning to get a shot tracking up from the track to a LA shot of the lights. This again will be a long take as it is also signifying that there are no events on and we are trying to create a sad and emotional atmosphere. Again, we have conventional iconography here of the lights which denote the professionalism of the location.

Shot 7/8/9
This is the location where we will shoot the shots of the driver getting ready for the race. They will be short, close ups which create a frantic, fast paced atmosphere. I think this a good location as it is a simple workshop which connotes a professional place. All of these shots being CUs, there will not be much visual iconography.




These are the only shots we have been able to get test shots of so far because... 
- Shot 1+6 are XCU so the location doesn't matter so much. As long as we have bright lighting.
- Shot 4+5 we have been unable to get the camera we are using to my house so as soon as we are able to do that, those test shots will be taken.
- Shots 10 to 16 are all going to be shot on the track which we can only access on the day of filming.

Planning: Storyboard

This is a picture copy of our story board:

Planning: Make-up

Another element of the opening I given to look at was the make-up of the characters. Below is what I came up with:

Girlfriend:

When deciding on the idea for the opening of the film we decided on the idea of the girlfriend having an argument with the racer. We wanted the idea of her being stressed to be showcased to the audience, from this we want them to read that she is stressed because of the dangers in his career. I will be acting the girlfriend in the film opening and her make will be messy, so her makeup will be smudged to show she's upset and her hair will be messy, we don't want her character to seem that she is too interested in her appearance at this stressful time for her.

Racer getting ready:

The character has a professional career so his hair will be neat and he will look very clean and well presented. The audience will hopefully read his character as a professional racer that is passionate about his career.

Racer in hospital:

In the opening we are aiming to hint that a crash has occurred and it could be career ending and so we have decided to film a scene in a hospital where the character will have bandages and bruises on his face. The bruises will be created with face paint, I have done a practice on my hand with the face paint to see how realistic it looks and as a group we have decided that we do want to use the face paint to create these special FX. We have also decided that the bruises will be on the actors cheekbones to signify pain and trauma.
 Below is a picture of the practice:

Planning: casting, props, costumes and lighting

When we were delegating the jobs Harry was given the role of looking at how we will tackle Casting, Props, Costumes and lighting. Below is what he concluded:

Casting

We have decided that we will cast members of our group. There are a number of reasons why we did this. 

1.      People who are not in our group will be less motivated and committed to filming on weekends 

2.      Also people not in our group may not be able to get out of lessons

3.      Amelia took drama at GCSE so she should be good at acting 
-   For the voice over, we will probably use Dan. We will try and find some online software or an app which changes your voice so he sounds more like an F1 commentator. This will make our film feel much more professional.

So we thought it would be a much more reliable way of doing it if we just acted it ourselves.
Out of the two male members of our team, we have chosen the taller of the two, which will represent that character as being powerful and important. 

 Props

1.      Bandage- easily sourced, Amelia has this at home. 

2.      Car- The car is being sourced for us by the school, unfortunately this means that we don’t know exactly what car we will be using.

Costumes

1.      Smart-casual clothing- This is for the protagonist when his girlfriend is telling him not to race, representing him as respectable. I have smart-casual clothing at home.

2.      Scruffy casual- For the girlfriend, this will represent her as being stressed. The preferred reading here is that the audience will feel sorry for her. Amelia has track-suits and baggy clothes that she can wear.

3.      Full race suit- Protagonist on race day. Preferred reading here is that this is a serious race. We need to be careful with the CU shots of the helmet as to not get a reflection of the camera. A friend from outside the group has a race suit, so sourcing this is not an issue.

We don’t need a costume for the hospital scene because we only have an XCU of protagonists face.

Lighting

1.      We need hard, bright lighting on the protagonists face in the two hospital scenes because hospitals are generally well lit environments so it will look more realistic.

2.      When we are filming the deserted track, hopefully it will be a dull grey day, because we want this to be a sad opening, but if it is a sunny, bright day then we may have to put a dark filter on in post-production editing.

We are not filming any scenes at night, so lighting shouldn’t be too much of an issue for us.

Planning: Access to locations

When we were delegating jobs I was given the role of assessing the accessibility we have to the areas we are planning to shoot at. Below is what I concluded.


On the Track:

We are lucky to be attending a school in such a fortunate place which allows us to use the Silverstone race track for filming, however due to the popularity of the track we have only been given access to the track for one school day (9am-5pm), which means that we will need to get a lot filmed in that day for us to have choice when we are editing. This also means that we won't have access before hand to do the test shots so we will to do those on the day and constantly be checking our shots because we won't be able to re shoot if anything goes wrong.

School premises:

As we will be filming in the school for some of the scenes we will need to do some test shots and we might also need to re film some shots after if they go wrong or we need to focus more on different elements. These decisions will be made after we have filmed the shots. We will have access to film in the school from 9am until 5pm on weekdays, this allows us to take test shots before the filming days so that we can look at the options of the angles before the actual filming.

Harry's house and street:

We will be filming quite a lot in this location as we will be filming inside and outside the house, we will have access to this location after 5pm every weekday and then weekends, this is good as it allows to film at this location whenever we need to as there are any restrictions.

Planning: Risk assessment and legality

Media risk assessment and legality:

In our team we delegated different tasks for each of us to do and Dan Strain was in charge of creating a risk assessment and looking at the legality of the places we will be shooting at and also what we will be doing at these places. Below is what Dan has created:

Legality: 
For our filming we are probably going to take most of our shots on the Silverstone track, the head of the school has arranged with the leaders of Silverstone about letting us use the track for filming so we don’t need direct permission from Silverstone themselves. 
For one of our shots we will use a residential area, this will involve capturing shots of people’s housing. To ensure that they don’t think anything suspicious is going on we will inform the neighbours beforehand.

Planning: delegation of roles

For the next part of our project we have divided up the roles between our group. This is what each of us has been given to do...
Dan
- Health and safety
- Legality
Amelia
- Make-Up
- Access to locations
Harry
- Mise en scene
- Casting
- Lighting
We all worked together on the test shots.

Planning: Meeting with the target audience

After each of us within the group came up with an idea we decided to get a group together that represented our target audience and ask them about their opinions on our ideas below is what responses we got to the questions we asked:

- When we discussed cuts the audience said they would prefer a mixture of long and short takes.

- This then led to a discussion on whether they would enjoy an emotional motor-sport film, the response to this idea was mainly positive.

- We talked about the idea of the crash and they were definitely interested in that idea as it would interest them into what happens in the rest of the film.

- The audience said that some kind of soundtrack was essential to keep the opening interesting, however no decision was made as to whether the soundtrack should be slow or fast paced and sad or uplifting so as a group we will need to discuss that.

- The female audience really liked the idea of the love interest and the male audience didn't seem to mind it as it meant it would add another element.

- The whole of the group said that they prefer believable films so we need to think about that.

- As a group we liked the idea of flash backs / flash forwards so we discussed this and the target audience said that they thought this was a really good idea too.

Things that are necessary to include:

- A soundtrack

- Flash backs / Flash forwards

- A believable narrative

This to include if possible:

- Some kind of crash

- A love interest

Planning: Initial Ideas Part 3

This is the third idea that we have discussed as a group, this idea was created by me and when thinking it I was trying to include all of the elements from the others ideas while keeping it quite simple.

The whole of the 2 minutes opening will only be showing the racer getting ready for his race - putting his race suit on and walking to the car, getting in and putting his helmet on - for this we will use a range of shot types and editing to capture every element of the racing world in a unique way. In post production we will put a voice over on top of the footage, in this voice over it will be the racers girlfriend talking about her hate for racing and about an argument they had before the race - she will be talking in present tense whereas the footage on screen will be past tense - as she is talking about the argument his eyes start to lose focus and he is getting distracted by the thought of the argument. She will then say something along the lines of "it's all my fault" and this will be heard as we see the race start and him start racing, the screen will then go black as we hear the sound of a crash and then the title of the film will come up onto the screen. Throughout the clip we will also be able to hear the diegetic ambient sounds of an engine revving and other sounds linked to racing.

Issues that we might face with this idea is picking up the sound for the voice over and the sounds of the engine, this is because the cameras we have access to don't have the best sound pick up so we might have to emphasise these elements in post production.

Planning: Initial Ideas Part 2

As a group we have been thinking of ways to adapt the first idea, one of the team members came up with an idea of how to improve it. The simple narrative for this second idea that has been discussed with the group is that it starts off with the protagonist in a hospital be - this would most likely be a close up of him if there is no location that looks suitable - with non-diegetic sounds of voice overs of news reporters talking about a crash with a sympathetic, slow soundtrack place over the top in post production.

We could then cut to the scene which Dan explained about the girlfriend saying how worried she is about him racing and them having an argument about it. Then it could fade out to an extreme close up of his eyes looking very concentrated at the start of the race but his eyes lose that concentration and there are flash-back voices in his head of the argument between him and his girlfriend. 

The race starts and we see him speed off around the corner. The screen goes blank and the title fades in.

Some problems we might encounter with this idea include the capturing of the dialogue between the two characters arguing- the cameras we may have to use do not have the best sound quality- along with this, the flash-back voices might be hard to make clear in the editing. Also some of the shots would need good acting for the audience to understand the narrative easily.

I have discussed this idea with the group and the feed-back was good, we agreed that the development from the first idea was good as it takes the problems from the first and solves them, however there are a couple of problems which are smaller that have been born with this new idea.

Planning: Initial Ideas

This post will include the basics of the first initial idea.


In todays first meeting as a group we started thinking about ideas for our 2 minute film opening that will be based on the motorsport sub-genre.

This first idea was created by Dan Strain and the idea is...
The clip starts off with the narrative of the girlfriend talking about how much she hates her boyfriend's passion of racing. They have an argument before the race, this then leads to him being distracted. As he goes out for his race she is very stressed, we then see the race start and him crashing which it is then mentioned that he goes into a coma.

With this idea i think that we might need to change it slightly as it is a lot to pack into the first 2 minutes of a film.

Planning: Introducing My Group

My Group:

Harry Squire: 
He studied media at GCSE and got an A, this will be useful for the project as he will good suggestions for editing and filming.

Daniel Strain:
He also did media studies at GCSE and got a B, so he will also be able to give good advise to create the best end product we can.

Amelia Brandon (Me):
I studied graphics and drama  at GCSE so that would be useful for proxemics, MES and creating our own ident.

Consolidation post:

From all of the film openings I have looked at I have come to the conclusion that most motorsport film openings include an introduction to the racing world whether it is professional or street racing. They also include the conventional characters which includes a protagonist, antagonist, friends, and a love interest. The opening sequences also include brief titles introducing the key cast and crew and also includes the dents of the production and distribution company.

All of these elements will be shown within the film opening that me and my group will create later on in the course.

Genre: Analysis of Rush

Analysis for Rush film opening:

Director: Ron Howard

Awards: 7 wins and 53 nominations

Box office: Gross Worldwide $90,247,624

In the opening scene of Rush are introduced to the conventional location in motorsport sub-genre in action adventure films, the conventional location is the race track, the whole of the opening is set in grounds of the race track, it is in the pits where the audience is introduced to the costumes used in the opening; those costumes that are used are the conventional costumes used in this genre and they are race suits, this is the professional race ware and bearing in mind this film is a true story it needs to follow the truth and not just the conventional elements used in this genre.

The props are the cars themselves  and the helmets, these props foreshadow that the cars will be used for racing and that the races will probably be dangerous which is why the racers are using the helmets, this also emphasises how professional and important these races and racers are in the motorsport world. As the film is a true story it have to show all of the key elements and include all the key facts, this is shown to the audience through a post production non-diegetic voice over performed by Niki Lauda himself to tell his own life changing story.

The narrative and characters aren't as conventional as other films in this genre as this film is also a true story so it can't be changed to fit the rest of the genre so the film shows the usual conventional elements through the props, costume, and location; they only use these three as they can't change the characters in it because if they did that it wouldn't create the same effect for the viewers that already know the story and are passionate about it as it would come across the way that most movies that were books were changed which wasn't a popular choice by most viewers, the narrative also needed to follow the story of Niki Lauda and James Hunt to the facts and we are first shown that it sticks to the facts by in the opening being introduced to Niki Lauda's character getting into the car and putting his helmet on which signifies that the viewers are about to watch a reenactment of the moment his life would be changed forever.

Genre: Analysis of Need For Speed

Analysis of Need for Speed film opening:

Director: Scott Waugh

Awards: 1 nomination

Box office: Gross worldwide $203,277,636

In the opening of Need for Speed the audience are introduced to many different costumes but the conventional costumes the film opening uses are mechanic wear, informal clothes and formal clothes, we are shown these costumes on the characters that are highlighted to show some characters that have a different status in the motorsport world. For example we are shown a man in informal clothing making a podcast, he is shown to be the man who is of a very high importance racing world, we are then shown a man in a suit talking to a mechanic this shows that the conventional clothing is used to connote that the man in the suit is important but to to the racing and the mechanic used to be important to the racing world but isn't anymore.

It is signified to us that the mechanic is the protagonist as he looks at his trophy collection which reveals that he used to be a good racer, probably the best however is now just a mechanic, this links to the conventional narrative that a former racer or underdog goes up against the current star to win something or someone back. 

The conventional props shown to the audience in the opening scene are cars, trophies, car memorabilia, this connotes that winning is important to the protagonist and to the narrative. During the opening we are also introduce to the protagonists stock character which in the opening is just the friends, and maybe the sidekick, however if the film follows a conventional list of stock characters we will at some point be introduce to the love interest and antagonist.

As the film is based on cars and racing the conventional locations shown in the opening include a mechanic's garage, office, old fashioned unused home office, this connotes that someone in the opening was one very fond of racing and everything that came with it, however following the conventional narrative they were probably injured which made them lose their love and interest in the sport.

Overall the opening includes the conventional costumes, character, props, locations and narrative - these conventional elements are in the interest of the viewers as it means they know what they're in for when thy pay to consume the film.

Genre: Analysis of Days of Thunder

Analysis of the Days of Thunder film opening:

Director: Tony Scott

Awards: 1 win and 1 nomination

Box Office: Gross Worldwide $165,900,000

In the opening of Days of Thunder the audience are introduced to close ups of some of the characters, these shots reveal the iconographic costumes of race suits, these are the commonly found costumes found in the motorsport sub-genre in action adventure films.

We as the audience are also introduced to many shots of the race cars themselves and they are iconographic prop as they are used to win or save the specific person or thing, during these shots we are also shown the conventional set and location which will be used in the races, chases, fights between the protagonist and antagonist, the conventional location is the Daytona race track and it is common knowledge that Daytona is a bi race in america so it also reveals the importance of racing to the narrative.

The audience are constantly being brought back to shots of a specific racer and the crowds reaction to him, this reveals that the film will most likely follow the conventional narrative of an underdog going up again the star to win something or someone, and in the process the audience are introduced to the stock characters (love interest, professional friends and a side kick). These stock characters will be shown in the narrative to help influence the protagonists decisions. These decisions will most likely lead to final race or fight which will end the ongoing feud between the two characters.

In the opening we aren't introduced to any characters by name, however we are introduced to shots of specific racers while we hear the voice over of the commentators, this reveals to us that these characters are either going to play the role of antagonist or protagonist in the narrative, in these motorsport films the protagonist is normally an underdog that used to be a really good racer but endured a career ending injury, the protagonist 'good' will go up against the antagonist who is possibly going to harm the sports reputation or their own reputation so the protagonist will try and save them.

Overall the opening credits contain the conventional props, costumes, locations and hints of the narrative. This will interest a wider audience as they will know what they're in for so  know they will enjoy it if these are the films they are into.

Genre: Sub-genres

Genre: Poster Annotations

Avengers Movie Poster Annotation: