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.