Post 8: Pre Production

Synopsis of the Whole Film

The film follows Nick, starring Liam McGuigan, through an emotional journey in which he attempts to save the life of his dying daughter,  by funding a lifesaving operation. He is a successful businessman and this financial goal is easily achievable for him, until he allows the stress of his daughter’s illness to interfere with the quality of his work and he is fired from his role in the company.

From this, his life begins to spiral out of control as he uses the controversial drug trade and other illegal methods to fund his daughters operation but after becoming addicted to the substances he formerly sold, he was incapable of prioritizing his savings. His daughter ultimately passes away which results in a prolonged battle with schizophrenia and eventually the dramatic ending.

Synopsis of the Title Sequence

The main character, Nick, starring Liam McGuigan, will be shown running in various locations. He will also be shown panickingm being followed by Raoul, played by Ian Pickering. As Nick is running, there will be scenes which reveal the titles and will be superimposed in the editing process. At the end of the title sequence, Nick is shown contemplating shooting himself as Raoul enters the shot, and the audience feel obliged to watch the whole film to discover which character dies. At this moment, the screen will black out and the title of the film will appear on a black screen.  

Shot List

Location	Scene No.	Shot No.	Description
Kings Langley Blackwell road	1	1	Establishing shot of the path where NICK is going to be running
Kings Langley Blackwell road	1	2	CU of feet seen running over and away from the camera. Non-Diegetic music starts as foot plants
Kings Langley Blackwell road	1	3	MCU of NICK seen running past the camera with RAOUL following.
Kings Langley Blackwell road	1	4	LS  tracking the two character from a high angle shot
Kings Langley Blackwell road	1	5	LS NICK followed by RAOUL round a corner, panning from right to left.
Kings Langley Blackwell road	1	6	MS Follow feet of running characters
Kings Langley Blackwell road	1	7	CU Shot of faces whilst running
Kings Langley Blackwell road	1	8	MS Shot of feet whilst running
Kings Langley Blackwell road	1	9	CU Shot of faces whilst running
Kings Langley Blackwell road	1	10	POV shot from NICK running
Kings Langley Blackwell road	1	11	LS Tracking shot of NICK running then stops and watches him running away
Kings Langley Blackwell road	1	12	NICK stops running and seen in CU deciding route
Kings Langley Common Lane	1	13	LS Panning of NICK running down road into woods
Kings Langley Common Lane  (woods)	1	14	Music fades out. MS NICK sits down, takes out picture and gun
Kings Langley Common Lane (Woods)	1	15	CU of NICK’s face, looking very emotional at the picture.
Kings Langley Common Lane (Woods)	1	16	MS of NICK sitting down contemplating, whilst RAOUL rounds the corner, NICK looks.
Black Out with a Gunshot followed by Title

Treatment



Story Board

Risk Assessment


Mise en Scene


Crew and Cast List

Locational and Technical Reece

In order to prepare for the filming process we photographed the locations which we were going to use as our set and later analyzed various aspects of that location and the effects that it could have on the film. This is the conclusions that we made:

Post 7: Focus Group

We assembled our focus group which consisted of students and a teacher varying in age and genders to expand our range of responces and improvements that could be made. We assessed the feedback given and made some changes to our piece. Such as the ending, we have focused more on the chasing element. and instead of making the main character, Nick shoot himself at the end with a blackout, we create a cliff hanger to whether he shoots himself or someone else.

Post 6: The History of Crime Films

 Most popular genres have a history. The crime film has none—or rather, it has so many that it is impossible to give a straightforward account of the genre's evolution without getting lost in innumerable byways as different crime formulas arise, evolve, compete, mutate, and cross-pollinate. Crime films arise from a radical ambivalence toward the romance of crime. That romance gave heroic detectives like Sherlock Holmes—burlesqued onscreen as early as 1900 or 1903 (the exact date is uncertain), in the thirty-second Sherlock Holmes Baffled —a matchless opportunity to make the life of the mind melodramatic and glamorous, and it made silent criminals like Fantômas ( Fantômas and four sequels, France, 1913–1914) and Bull Weed ( Underworld , 1927) both villain and hero. The arrival of synchronized sound in 1927 and the Great Depression in 1929 created an enormous appetite for escapist entertainment and a form of mass entertainment, the talkies, capable of reaching even the most unsophisticated audiences, including the millions of lower-class immigrants who had flocked to America. The great gangster films of the 1930s and the long series of detective films that flourished alongside them, their detectives now increasingly ethnic ( Charlie Chan Carries On , 1931, and forty-one sequels; Think Fast, Mr. Moto , 1937, and seven sequels; Mr. Wong, Detective , 1938, and four sequels), were nominally based on novels. But crime films did not seek anything like the literary cachet of establishment culture until the rise of film noir —atmospheric tales of heroes most often doomed by passion—named and analyzed by French journalists but produced in America throughout the decade beginning in 1944.

Postwar crime films, whatever formula they adopted, were shaped in America by cultural anxiety about the nuclear bomb ( Kiss Me Deadly , 1955) and the nuclear family ( The Desperate Hours , 1955). The decline of film noir after Touch of Evil (1958) was offset by a notable series of crime comedies at England's Ealing Studios (such as The Lavender Hill Mob , 1951) and a masterly series of psychological thrillers directed by Alfred Hitchcock ( Strangers on a Train , 1951; Rear Window , 1954; Vertigo , 1958; North by Northwest , 1959; Psycho , 1960). The 1960s was the decade of the international spy hero James Bond, who headlined history's most lucrative movie franchise in a long series beginning with Dr. No (1962). But it was left to a quartet of ironic valentines to retro genres, Bonnie and Clyde (1967), The Godfather (1972), The Godfather: Part II (1974), and Chinatown (1974), to reinvent the crime film for a hip young audience. The replacement of the 1930 Production Code by the 1969 ratings system allowed niche films to be successfully marketed even if they were as graphically violent as Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1990) or as bleak in their view of American politics as The Parallax View (1974) or JFK (1991). The closing years of the century, marked by a heightened public fear of crime, a fascination with the public-justice system, and a deep ambivalence toward lawyers, allowed a thousand poisoned flowers to bloom around the globe, from the sociological sweep of the British television miniseries Traffik (1989), remade and softened for American audiences as Traffic (2000), to the ritualistic Hong Kong crime films of John Woo ( Die xue shuang xiong [The Killer], 1989) and Johnny To ( Dung fong saam hap [The Heroic Trio], 1993) and their American progeny ( Pulp Fiction , 1994), to the steamy eroticism of the all-American Basic Instinct (1992) and its direct-to-video cousins. Perhaps the most distinctive new strain in the genre has been the deadpan crime comedy of Joel (b. 1954) and Ethan (b. 1957) Coen, whose films, from Blood Simple (1985) to The Ladykillers (2004), left some viewers laughing and others bewildered or disgusted.

It is important to realise that crime films have evolved with the times, as new technolagy and ideas have entered the real world, film directors and writers have attempted to incorperate crime within them. Some films such as Inception have broken through to the future of crime to give the audience an idea of what crime could be capable of. Films like public enemy try to recapture events in history to show the audience what crime was like. It is safe to say that a very large array of crime is out for the audience to experiance, which also draws in different audicnes, such as action fans, history fans and sci fi fans, crime is able to cover a vast audience easily with the right plot.

Post 5: Title Timeline and Post 5a: Macro/Micro analysis of an opening sequence from your genre.

Our group each wrote a time line of a different crime film's opening. Our films include Goodfella's, Se7en, The Dark Knight and Pulp Fiction

Goodfella's

Se7en 



The Dark Knight

Pulp Fiction

From this evidence, I can see that the titles on all the crime title sequences are very quick with about five seconds between each but they all give enough time for the audience to read and look at. They also all have very little storyline, with very little to no dialogue.

As a group, we decided to focus on the specific macro and micro elements of the title sequences for the films ‘Pulp Fiction’ and ‘Se7en’ as these films also shared the crime genre, similarly to the genre that our group was attempting to generate through our title sequence.

Post 4: Group Meeting

Time	Name	Comment
Tuesday 11th January
2:40	James	Personally preferred to create a film with a horror genre.
2:41	Kelly	Thought the creative way that the titles were presented in the film ‘Kill your friends’ could be incorporated into our project.
2:42	James	Explained his idea for a horror genre film which consisted of a character running down a street with different camera angles. Character then runs into a building and exchanges the following dialogue “Were you seen?” “No” with another character who is already in the building.
2:46	Alex	Has no preference on genre, but agreed with James’ idea. He created an additional idea based on James’ idea with the titles appearing during the running scene on objects within the street, such as posters and billboards.
2:47	Elly	Character could be stumbling whilst running to suggest that the character is frantic about arriving at the destination and occasionally heard breathing heavily as this is a common feature of a horror genre.
2:49	Alex	Radio clip could be added as a voice over whilst the character is running explaining the zombie apocalypse that will be depicted during the film.
2:55	Kelly	Suggested gathering inspiration from existing zombie films.
2:58	Alex	Films which revolve around zombie’s consist of: ‘Dawn of the Dead’, ’28 Days Later’, ‘Night of the Living Dead’.
2:59	Elly	Fast-paced music would be more suitable for the action.
3:01	James	However, the news could interrupt the existing audio when the visuals cut out.
3:12	Alex	The horror genre could be difficult to portray in a title sequence. Action would be easier but the character could still be running.
3:15	Elly	The character could be carrying a suit case to add an element of mystery.
3:18	Alex	At the end, the character could breakdown and pretend to shoot himself and as the gun shot sounds, the screen could blackout and the title could appear.
Friday 14th January
10:28	Alex	The title sequence is depicting the ending. It’s a flash forward.
10:29	Kelly	The build up and events which lead to the title sequence is described in the film.
10:34	Alex	Follows the story of the main character battle to cope with the loss of his daughter who had died. He becomes schizophrenic and can’t come to terms with the death of his daughter.
10:36	James	At the end of title sequence, the main character could still shoot himself in the head, as Alex suggested, but be holding a picture of his daughter.
10:38	Elly	It could be shot in black and white to emphasize the fact that this incident hasn’t happened yet and it’s foreshadowing future events.
10:40	Kelly	The genre is more crime than action now.