Planning For Final Film: Risk assessments

For this task, we have had to create risk assessment that we are going to do when we are shooting our film. We are doing this because our films location is taking place within a multistory car park (which is private property) and we have to make sure that we have carried out the correct safety precautions in order to ensure that we are safe and that the people that could (potentially) be in the background of our film are safe too. We have also decide to do this just to be able to identify the dangers that could take place when we are filming and how we can manage these risks if they do occur.

Risk 1: Traffic/ cars/ public - we are at risk of coming into contact with other members of the public, also because we are filming in a parking lot we have to be careful of the cars. We will prevent this from happening by keeping alert of the environment around us and ensuring that we are filming in an area where there is much going on . As well as that, we have chosen to film on a Sunday when it will be much less busy because there will be less shoppers and cars.

Risk 2: We will also need to be careful of where are filming and what is in the frame, because we might accidentally capture someone's number plate. This is something we need to be especially careful of considering we are filming in a parking lot. We will manage this by looking over the clips after we film and making sure that no one/nothing is in the frame that could cause problems. 

Risk 3: Because we are filming late at night in a area which we don't know very well there is a slight risk of being faced with people who might interrupt what we are doing. In order to prevent this we will make sure one person is at least with another at all times to make sure if anything does happen they will have back up. We will try and stick together, however for some shots it might require the actor to be in a completely different place to the person with the camera. We will make sure we look out for one another.


RISK 4: We are filming at a local multi-storey car park which is private property. This could mean that we could get in trouble if we were taught filming there. To avoid getting caught we contacted the owner/manager of the car park and we have negotiated with them about filming on the property. They wanted to support us in our final film and therefore they are allowing us to film there. Contacting them was a positive step and this has allowed us to gain experience in the wider world and conversing with other people in order to be able to achieve what we want. 

Planning For Final Film: Song change

For our film, we have decided to make alterations to our song (non - digetic sound) that will be playing within the background. Our lead actor (Burt Cope) has decided to make alterations to our song so that it helps to fit our films intended genre better, the new song that will be being featured in our film has a lot more bass in it - thus, helping to keep the film suspenseful and original and also helping to make the audience immerse themselves in our film even more and to keep them on edge. The new song being featured in our film also helps to exude a sense of eeriness - thus, helping to make our film fit into our intended genre (psychological thriller) even better.

Because we are using music made by our lead actor (Burt Cope), we don't have to worrying about copyright issues arising within our film. Also, by making the alternations that we have made to our song (non - digetic sound) this will help to add more depth to our characters that will be starring within our film and to the setting /environment in which the film will be taking place in, which is good as it will help to make our film more gripping and engaging to the audience that are immersing themselves within it.

Planning For Final Film: Opening Credits

For our opening credits we have decided to base them on the opening credits shown in the film 'Drive'. Drive is a 2011 American neo-noir arthouse crime thriller film, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, starring Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Oscar Issac and Albert Brooks. Drive is about an unnamed Hollywood stunt performer who moonlights as a getaway driver.

The opening credits for our film may be seen as being random, disjointed and 'all over the place' but we wanted it to reflect a similar order of the credits shown in 'Drive' because this film covered and portrayed similar themes that are apparent throughout our film and we also felt that the order of the credits shown in 'Drive' was different, authentic, original and not conventional, thus helping to reflect the themes shown throughout our film. The order of our credits was intentional, even though it may not appear that way.

Although we have had a lot of inspiration and direction from the opening scene of 'Drive', there are some differences in our order of the credits compared to theirs. For example, we have decided to have the title of our film at the very end of our opening credits, we did this to help create suspense for the audience as more and more is revealed about the situation of the protagonist.



The order of our credits....(thus, similarly reflecting the opening credits of 'Drive)

Order of our credits -

Actor: Burt Cope
Casting: Milly Cope
Costume: Marco Milković
Music: Burt Cope
Editing: Sophie Hodgson
Director of photography: Milly Cope
Sound by: Sophie Hodgson
Produced by: Milly Cope & Sophie Hodgson
Screenplay by: Sophie Hodgson
Directed by: Milly Cope and Sophie Hodgson

Planning For Final Film: Storyboard(s)

For this task we have had to make a storyboard for our final preliminary film. We have decided to do this to further our understanding of what is going to happen within our film and to make sure that the story and plot make sense and to make sure that there is nothing that we need to add to the film e.g a prop to make the film more gripping and original and to make sure that there is also nothing that we have to take away from the film.

Planning For Final Film: Actors

For this task we have had to decide what actors that we want to be starring in our final preliminary film, actors serve a very crucial role to a film because the right actor can really help to make an opening scene a more gripping and suspenseful experience for the audience and to make that the opening scene flows and has the correct effect that we intended it to have on the audience. 

For actors, we needed people to fill 3 roles: we decided to have a young male lead role, a older male as a speaking part only to depict a telephone conversation and someone who would have a small part of retrieving the bag in the elevator when our protagonists gives it to him. For the lead part it meant we had to find someone who would be able to adapt easily to playing the part of someone who was both doing something severely wrong as well as wanting to only do good. Someone who was struggling to find out the truth about his current situation, We wanted him to be interesting looking with a natural sense of good style and confidence this was more important than having someone who was full of experience in performing. We decided it would be best to find someone who at least one of us knew well, this meant that it would be more easy for them to perform in front of our small team and in front of cameras and would mean they didn't have any reluctance throughout the filming process, We also needed someone who was going to add a unique and strange sense of dislocation to the opening scene.

Planning For Final Film: Props

For this task we have had to decide what props we want to show within our final preliminary film. We have decided to do this because it will give us a rough idea of things that we have to purchase and/or borrow before we start filming our preliminary film. Also because props will be needed to add to the drama and climax of the scene or to amplify the tension or atmosphere of a section from within the film.

What props will we need for our "15" film -

• Fake severed hand
• Large black duffel bag 
• Two mobile phones

Where will we get our props from? - 

• Large black duffel bag - Milly
• Mobile phone - Sophie 
• Fake severed hand - Amazon (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Smiffys-12-inch-Hand-Severed-Rubber/dp/B003BGIN3G) 

 How will they confirm your genre or show the representation of your characters?

They add to the threat of violence and add to the sense of a 'murder mystery' surrounding the main character's twin brother and the mystery around the disappearance of his girlfriend.

Planning For Final Film: Location shots

For this task we have had to determine where the location of our film is going to take place and to take some pictures of the location where the film is going to be set. We have decided to do this because a film's location can have a dramatic effect on the audience and can make a film seem a lot more dramatic and suspenseful and can really help to grip the audiences attention.

For the location of our final preliminary task film we had many group discussions about what we wanted the film to be like within the opening scene and what effect we wanted it to give to the audience viewing the film, both aesthetically and artistically. We have decided that we want our film to have a very dark feel throughout it with an underwhelming sense of eeriness, maliciousness and spite. Even if their was nothing explicitly on the screen which depicted a sense of evil, we wanted it to be inferred through aesthetic elements within the background such as lighting, the location and camera shots/angles. We decided that we are going to shoot our opening scene at night time as this would depict a sense of vulnerability  for the protagonist who is in danger because of what the situation he is in and the people that he is dealing with. Also, because the film will be filmed and at night time this helps refer back to the protagonist and helps to depict his "inner evil" that is usually characterized and exemplified by the protagonist within common psychological thrillers. We decided to shoot our film in a multistory car park and we will also be including a few shots of within town throughout the film. 

The multistory car park was an appropriate location for our film as it tends to exude a sense of dark and danger within the night time hours, thus helping to emit a sense of eeriness to the audience to help build up suspense and tension throughout our film. This location is also a very practical place to shoot our film because as most of the filming we do will be within the car park, it doesn't matter what the weather conditions are like outside. Within my childhood, I always felt of multistory are very interesting, complex and dynamic places. I always remember the overwhelming smell of a very strong chemical disinfectant (such as bleach) and human urine wafting throughout the dark, dismal and desolate environment that is the multistory car park. This smell was never was never comforting and always made me feel a bit nervous and on edge. What I also found very fascinating about this location was the fact that they have a sense of enclosure and interior while being partially unprotected and exposed to environmental exposure (there is a ceiling for the most parts, yet their is no door, no windows...this says something about the place if we looked into it in more depth rather than just capturing a location). Multistory car parks are also often very old, dank, grimy and dilapidated places that seem to have an essence of art ridden within them which would be able to be recognized within our film and would help to add another dimension of corruption and malfeasance to it as well as enabling us to capture something using composition, placement and the use of colour from within the building. 


The lighting within multistory car parks is also something which would add to the atmospheric effect - the lights are often covered within a thick layer of dust and cobwebs and are sporadically flickering. The fact that a multistory car park is a place which is used every day and not seen as a place which embodies a lot of character and uniqueness makes it even more fascinating and intriguing. I also liked the idea of shooting in a multistory car park because of the myriad of levels that it has. Thus, allowing us to be very experimental with our camera angles and shots because we could test on being on different floors and by using its different features such as the stairs and the elevators this would allow us to engage in a sense of in between (both of which would be a key part in showing the storyline and showing transition within the protagonists placement within the environment - the stair cases and elevators in particular admit a sense of insecurity, lack of instability, complexity and entrapment. The levels will also enable us to shoot in the same place however meaning that we could explore how different elements looked and if these elements would look better on another level/part within the multistory car park etc. It would also be interesting to see how a different sense of emotion and feeling is created when we shoot on different levels. (For example, what effect is created on the top level in which is fully exposed and how is this different to a level which is in between two others?) In addition to this the overall environment of the multistory car park feels perfect for what we are attempting to create within the few moments captured for the opening sequence and would allow us to use the complex and fascinating environment to our advantage and would create the effect needed for the underlying psychological themes which will be heavily induced throughout our film.