Access to locations

Research and Planning: Access to locations

(This was written by Amelia)

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.

Risk assessment and legality

Planning and Development: Risk assessment and legality

(Dan wrote this post)

Risk	Level of risk	How to avoid it
Someone could receive an illness from the cold	Medium	Wear appropriate clothing when filming on the track
Getting hit by the car we are filming in whilst it is going round the track	Low	Be conscious of the car going round the track at all times
Our main actor could have an allergic reaction to the make-up we put on his face	Low	Make sure we plan ahead and try this out before the day of filming
Our driver could crash the car whilst filming	Low	Don’t drive too quickly
Falling over whilst carrying equipment	Medium	Be sensible

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. 

Props, Costume, Casting and Lighting

Planning and Development: Props, Costume, Casting and Lighting

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
s-   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. We looked into what real race drivers wear when not in a race suit and most would wear a shirt and jeans so that is what we will go for

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.

Delegation of roles

Planning and Development: 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. 

Meeting with target audience

Planning and Development: Meeting with target audience 

After having a few ideas for our two minute introduction, our group has discussed some ideas with people who are interested in motor-sport films. Here are the main points we discussed...

- There was definitely an interest in having some dramatic event such as a crash
- This then led us on to discussing if they would enjoy an emotional motor-sport film. The response to this idea was mostly positive. 
- We discussed the pace of cuts and everyone said a mixture of slow and long takes would be most appealing
- Some kind of soundtrack was essential to keep it interesting- no conclusion was made as to whether it should be slow and sad or upbeat and happy so we will need to discuss that as a group
- The female audience definitely liked the idea of a love interest and the male audience didn't seem to mind it
- Everyone said they preferred believable films so that is definitely something we need to think about 
- Our group likes the idea of flash backs/flash forwards so we discussed this and the target audience thought it was a really good idea too

Things we should try to include following this meeting...
- A soundtrack (necessary) 
- Some kind of crash (if possible)
- A love interest (if possible)
- Flash backs/flash forwards (necessary)
- A believable narrative (necessary)

Third idea

Planning and Development: Third idea

Amelia has taken our second idea and has simplified it, I think she was worried that the last idea was too complicated.

The narrative for her idea is... 

...First we see the protagonist getting ready for a race- putting on a race suit, walking to his car, and getting in it- whilst there is the non-diagetic voice over of his girlfriend talking about an argument they had; something like “I told him I had a bad feeling”, and that she feels that everything is her fault- On screen is past tense. We then see his eyes lose focus as the race starts, the screen goes black and the name of the film fades in.

This idea may be more simple to do than the last because it doesn't involve a flashback. However, I think that there will be some problems with this idea; there is not much to fill a 2 minute clip, so the idea would need developing. Also, by simplifying the narrative, I think that the target audience would find it less exciting. 

These two ideas are good, so we are going to pitch them to a group of our target audience so we know which is best. 

Second idea

Planning and development: Second idea

Since the last idea our group had, I have been thinking of how it could be improved because I liked some of the ideas Dan came up with. The basic narrative for my idea that I have discussed with the group is it starts off with the protagonist in a hospital bed- we could do a close up of him if we cannot get a suitable location- with non-diagetic sound of voice overs of news reporters talking about a terrible crash with a sad, slow soundtrack playing in the background. 

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.

First idea

Planning + Developing: First idea!We briefly talked about our ideas for our two minute opening. Our first idea came from Dan; he suggested the start should be a voice over from the protagonist's girlfriend speaking of her boyfriend's passion for racing. Before a race they have an argument about how worried she is, which leads him to be distracted during the race. The opening ends with the protagonist crashing and being in a coma for 12 months. 

Unfortunately we came up with quite a few problems logistically with this idea:
- This is a lot to fit in a 2 minute opening, it could almost be a whole film on it's own!
- There is no way we are going to be able to finance the filming of a crash!
Both of these problems are pretty big so the idea is probably not going to be taken much further. However, personally I like the idea of the coma and the worried girlfriend- maybe we could fit this into another idea- I'll discuss this with the group next time we meet.

First thoughts on our project

Planning + Development: First thoughts on the project...

Before we come up with any ideas for the 2 minute opening of our film, our group thought it would be a good idea to think first, about what locations we could use and what atmosphere we would like to create. 

Location: 

There was not much thinking involved with this, as the conventional location for a motor-sport film is on a race track and we have a race track we are able to film on, but for other scenes we thought that run-down areas were quite common in the motor-sport sub-genre. 

Atmosphere

As a group we decided that in the opening 2 minutes of our film we wanted to create a sad and tense atmosphere which could include a crash. We could also do this through editing in non-diagetic sounds such as a sad sound track or diagetic sounds being emphasized such as the breathing of the protagonist to create tension.

Character

We did not have too many thoughts on the characters apart from the obvious; the protagonist being male and having lots of close-ups of him.

My group

Planning and development: My Group

Amelia Brandon: Amelia studied Drama at GCSE, this could be useful for the filming of our 2 minute scene as she would be good at acting out the scenes. 

Dan Strain: Dan on the other hand studied Media which is very useful as he is already quite comfortable with the subject and is good at recognising which shots to use at the right times. 

Me: I got an A in my Media GCSE which should mean I have good ideas for our film and can keep up with the deadlines set.