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.