Call Sheet - 13th December

Selected Film and Magazine title

Film title : Skrilla
Magazine title : Follow Up

Possible film titles

During class our group brainstormed different ideas for film titles. We thought each of these would be good for the type of film that we were doing, but not all of them would work effectively as some others we came up with.

Risk Assessment - Location 3

Risk Assessment - Location 2

Risk Assessment - Location 1

Risk Assesment

Here is are risk assessment sheet for when we come to start shooting our trailer:

	Location filming risk assessment:
Activity	Hazard?	Likelihood	Risk Factor
Audiences	Possibly	Likely	Low
Access to location	No	x	x
Camera /	No	x	x
camera movements
Cables - elecricity, mics,	Yes	Not likely	Low
extra lighting etc..
Night Filming	Yes	Likely	Moderate
Stunts	Yes	Likely	Moderate
Traffic/Car shot	Yes	Likely	High
Props: guns, etc..	Yes	Likely	Moderate

Action to prevent risk

Take precaution of the location of filming

and the public in this area

x

x

x

Need to choose a safe location, with

some form of lighting

Different action required - not

many stunts needed for filming anyway

Especially take precaution when driving

car and shooting around highly populated

areas with lots of traffic

Depending on the prop different action

required (list below)

List of possible hazards:

Props:
   - Gun: ensure its safe to use, only used as a prop and not aimed towards anyones face etc..
     may need to contact the police so that they know what will be happening and no one is alarmed by our            scenes    
   - Baby doll: (no action required)
   - Iphone4: handle with care! (Expensive prop)
   - Car: driven by licensed actor only! Make space and any stunts made have to be made when there are no people are around as not to harm anyone, be wary of location too!

Final Locations

George Ready's House
This is where Steon lives. We will shoot the scenes of Steon and his girlfriend, Steon getting the gun, and scenes of Steon walking out into his car. We chose this location because it was in a suitable area and was close to Monskpath park which is the second location we used for our filming. His house also had good features that we could use for our filming.

Monkspath park
This is where the drug swap between Boss and Steon happens, as well as the deal between Steon and another character. This is also where Steon gets mugged. We chose this location as it had a good alleyway that was appropriate for the drug deal, and also when it had got darker was a good setting to use for the mugging. It was quite and closed off so we weren't disturbing any of the public either.

Possible Locations

Because we have chosen Social realist Drama as our genre we need to shot around built up areas to follow these conventions. Below are the main locations and some possible locations for our trailer:


Location One: 48 Warwick Street, Leamington Spa
We will be shooting the last scene of the teaser in an alleyway next to 'Hobdays Pet Shop' down this road because it is a prime location for shooting. The alleyway creates the perfect atmosphere for a drug swap because it is in the centre of the town but looks dodgy because the connotation of two people swapping packages in a small alleyway or corner of a road creates the impression that they are trying to hide something which in this case is the drugs. The old pet shop also makes it look out of date and the high street fits in with the locations used in similar youth culture films.


Location Two: Shottery park
This is our back up for 'location one', we can easily access the alley leading to the park which would also be ideal for the meeting and swapping of packages. We could also use this as a possible location for other filming because with the graffiti on the walls could add effect to our film, chase scenes if we choose to use them would also work well in this location.


Location Three: Bishops Ichington
This is were we will be filming the car scene and the shot of inside the empty house. We will be using a different location and front of house for the outside shot because the we need a more built up area to fit in with our storyline and to keep in with the connotation of the character being portrayed. 

Location Four: Shirley/Monkspath
We would use George Ready's house for the in house shots where Steon would be living. In monkspath we would shoot the drug deal and also the mugging of Steon

Props for the trailer

Fake Gun

This gun will be used by Steon as he is holding it in his hand in one of the scenes and then hides it in his jeans when he his going to pick up the drugs that Boss has hidden away for him. this is to show that he carries a weapon on him showing what type of character he is.
Using this gun could cause a problem as we will be using this outside. The gun will only be shown for 5 seconds but we may have to contact the local police and let them know that we will be filming and the gun will be involved so that if any calls are made they know that everything is safe.

Grey Corsa


This is the car that Steon drives. It isn't in the scenes that often but will be used in the car chase scene and also the scene of Steon walking out of his house into his car and reversing off the drive.

Bag

This bag is what Boss uses to cary the drugs for Steon in. He hides this behind a wall in an alleyway, which is when Steon comes to pick it up.

Fake Drugs

We will make these with cling film and flour. These are the drugs that Boss gives to Steon and Steon sells off to another person.

Money

Money is used when Steon sells the drugs to someone else.


All of these are our own possesions and won't need to go out and purchase any of these items.

Treatment

Working Title: 
'Skrilla' 

Estimated Duration:
1 minute.

Intended Audience:
18 - 26 year old males, with cinematic interest and of the working class.

Feasibility:
The lack of special effects and equipment will work alongside the realistic genre of the film which will make it easier to film in comparison with the action, horror or science-fiction genres.

Format:
DV
 
Budget:
Our budget is low so we require actors to work for free  

The Equipment/Resources Required:
- Camera (Sony A1E)
- Computer (iMac)
- Editing Software (iMovie)
- Tripod
- Photoshop


Genre:
My group and I have  selected Social Realist Drama (youth/gang culture) as our genre. 


Synopsis
The story follows a central character called Steon who is a drug dealer in a local community. He has a criminal record so therefore cannot get an established job, so drug dealing his way of looking after his sick girlfriend. He "ticks" (loans) 1kg Cocaine off his dealer Boss and has a week to pay him for it. However, he gets robbed in his neighborhood, and has his money stolen. He has two days to get the money, after which Boss will find him and kill him. The rest of the film follows the story of Steon trying to escape the clutches of Boss and managing to find a way to get Boss off his back.

Target Audience

After doing our primary and secondary research, we have all decided that our target audience for our film will be young adults aged 15-21. From the questionnaire it showed the genre had more males as fans of this genre, although there wasn’t much difference between the two. This means that our film will follow the conventions of other films to try and attract the same type of audience, but won’t show any gender bias.

Target Audience Interviews

To find out more about our target audience, Grace and I interviewed 5 people to find out their views on Social Realist Genre, and what type of conventions they expect to see within this style of film.
The questions asked were:
1) Name?
2) Age?
3) Are you familiar with the genre social realist drama?
4) What are your views on social realist drama as a genre?
5) What are your views on the use of gun crime and drug use in films today?
6) Is this a genre you would normally choose to watch, if so/not, why?
7) What typical conventions do you expect to see in within the storylines of this genre?
8) What previous films have you seen that fall under this or a similar genre?

http://audioboo.fm/boos/301925-maria-target-audience
http://audioboo.fm/boos/301928-liz-target-audience
http://audioboo.fm/boos/301930-melody-target-audience
http://audioboo.fm/boos/301935-greg-target-audience
http://audioboo.fm/boos/301941-charlotte-target-audience

Doing these interviews helped me to find out what people thought of this genre. Some thought that the use of gun crime and drug abuse was slightly exaggerated, whereas some thought it was effective to see as it is more natural these days to see gangs and violence. The people that enjoyed this genre had most commonly seen Kidulthood, Adulthood and Shank. These are films that we have researched into to find certain conventions that we can use to challenge and develop into our own work.

Questionnaire Analysis

Questionnaire

1. Gender?
Male        Female
2. Age?
16-18      19-21      22+
3. Do you like watching films?
Yes     No
4. If yes, what is your favourite film?

5. How often do you watch films?
Very often       Often      Not much
6. Do you like youth culture/gang films?
Yes      No
7. If yes, what one is your favourite?

8. What information do you expect to get from a trailer?

9. How much information would you expect to find on a film poster?

10. What type of story lines do you expect to find in a youth culture film?

11. Are teaser trailers ever enough to excite you enough into going to watch a film?
Yes       No

I used facebook, google mail and also handed out these questionnaires to get my results.

These graphs are answers to question 5 'How often do you watch films?'. As you can see there aren't many responses to the not much option, but as the age group gets higher there are more responses.

These next set of graphs are results from question 6, 'Do you like youth culture films?'. In the 16-18 age group, more males said yes than the females, and there were more females that said no than males. This pattern also continues in the age groups of 19-21. This shows that this genre has more of an appeal to male viewers. People in the age group 22+ all responded with no, showing that the target audience would be lower age groups as older people don't have much interest in this kind of genre.

These graphs are results for question 11, 'Are teaser trailers ever enough to excite you enough into going to watch a film?'. There were very little responses to the answer no, showing that teaser trailers do give off enough excitement and information, that makes the viewers want to go and see the film even though they don't get enough information to understand the film.

From doing this questionnaire I found that the youth culture genre is more popular with younger people from ages 16-21 than older adults. The majority of the people who took part in this questionnaire watched films on a regular basis and all thought that teaser trailers gave off enough information and excitement to make them go and see the film.
Many responses to question 8 & 9 were similar, saying that they would expect to understand the story line, know who the characters were and know the release date from a trailer, and for a poster just to see the title, cast names and release date.
The story line expectations of a youth culture film was very similar as well, as many people said they expected to see drug and alcohol abuse, sex, violence and some story about gangs. The majority's favourite youth culture film was Kidulthood or Adulthood.

New Media - Facebook

To research into our target audience, I sent out our questionnaire to some friends on facebook through a message where they replied with their answers. This is a good way of getting to our target audience as most people who like youth culture films tend to be younger ages. But also facebook has many different age ranges so it is easy to find your target audience. I also used googlemail to get some of my results.

Social Realist Conventions

This genre involves social issues within poverty and contemporary culture. It represents the youth of today and is very real to how they act today. It is closely based on youth from a working class or lower who live in the inner city, following the lives they live and social problems they face and how they deal with it. this type of genre is portrayed in films such as Adulthood, Kidulthood, This is England, Shank, 4.3.2.1 etc. Many of them involve gun crime, sex, drugs and alcohol abuse and gangs. Some may think that it is exaggerated but it is the story of the unseen side of teens coping with social problems. For our film to be successful we will need to follow these conventions of gun crime, drugs etc. but also costumes, languages, accents etc. For example you will find that in many of these films, the characters tend to wear their hoods up, and have an accent where they use slang, portraying the type of character they are.

Adobe Photoshop CS3

For our magazine cover and film poster we will be using Adobe Photoshop CS3 to edit our images and produce our cover and poster. We all have easy access to it at college, and we all have used it before so have some skills in using the software. Photoshop is a good software for us to use as it has many features that we can use. There are the basic features for editing the images such as brightness and contrast, levels and curves, hue and saturation etc. It then also has features like layers which will be helpful for us when we are using different layers like texts and backgrounds. The brush tools will help us to put on certain images. They are many effects that we can use on images to manipulate them and edit them and make our covers more effective and creative.

All of us are happy to use Photoshop and are comfortable with the software.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/software/review/2007/05/22/Adobe-Photoshop-CS3/p2

Final Cut Pro

Final Cut is the software that we will be using to edit and create our trailer. This software has many effects that we can use to improve our media. It has features such as ‘SmoothCam’, which will make any of our scenes that are slightly shaky more smooth and straight. This feature works while you also work on editing other parts of the filming, so that helps make it less time consuming.  It also has transition effects that we can use for our shots. They will make our scenes look more effective and powerful and we can also use them to speed up or slow down the pace of the trailer so that the genre is portrayed more effectively.

As we have title cards in the trailer, Final cut has special features for these where you can add motion graphics and animations to the title cards. This will help to make our trailer more exciting and stronger in the production.

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/finalcutpro/effects-transitions.html

Sony HVR-V1E

HVR-V1E
We were giving permisson by one of the BTECH media students that were included in our filming to use his camera. This was a Sony HVR-V1E, which is better than the A1E. It still shoots in 1080i but also lets you shoot in 26p giving it a more cinematic look and feel. It has a wider dynamic range which gives more colour and less noise making our final product look more professional.

Sony A1E

The Sony A1E is the camera we will be using to film our trailer. It is a small handheld camera which is ideal for us media students to be using. It is quite compact and with the touch screen all the menu options you can find through that.

Controls

There is a zoom button with you slide left to right to either zoom in or out. As we will be using this frequently it is helpful that it slides so that we can get smooth movement in our filming. The record button is placed where your thumb falls so it is easy for us for when we are using the camera handheld.  There is also the option of changing it into night mode, which would be a good effect for any scenes that we are filming in the dark.

Settings

To get to the settings you have to use the LCD touch screen. One of the options we will be changing most often is white balance. As our locations change from inside to outside, and there will also be times where there is more shade than other scenes, we will have to keep checking on the white balance to make sure the colours are right. We also need to adjust the exposure settings so that we don’t over or under expose our shots and ruin our filming.

When using this camera we will attach a microphone to the top of so that we record the sounds at the same time as recording. When we are using this in our recording we will have record each shot several times so that we can pick which shot worked best.

http://www.dvuser.co.uk/content.php?CID=34

http://www.sony.co.uk/biz/product/hdvcamcorders/hvr-a1e/overview

Use of new media

This is group work that we did in class. We brainstormed different ideas on how we can use new media in our research to find out how people feel about films and to our specific genre. We came up with the idea of getting people to watch trailers of a horror film and recording their reactions and analysing this. Also using our phones to text links to our friends, or some people with Blackberry's can 'BBM' their friends, and those with iPhone's can use 'Pingchat'

Adulthood - Audience Ratings

Votes Average Males  3,373  6.7 Females  312  6.6 Aged under 18  65  7.7 Males under 18  52  7.6 Females under 18  13  8.2 Aged 18-29  2,630  7.0 Males Aged 18-29  2,391  7.0 Females Aged 18-29  235  6.7 Aged 30-44  827  6.2 Males Aged 30-44  779  6.2 Females Aged 30-44  48  6.2 Aged 45+  152  5.7 Males Aged 45+  135  5.6 Females Aged 45+  16  6.4
This shows me that this film has a wide range audience, but the audience ratings get higher as the age gets lower. There isn’t much difference between the ratings of females and males, showing that there isn’t much of a gender bias as it attracts both genders. This is helpful to me as my first thoughts for this film genre were that it would appeal to more boys than girls, even though I like the genre of film myself.

Further research - Adulthood film poster analysis

This film is a sequel to the previous film ‘Kidulthood’. The layout for the film poster is very similar to Kidulthood, and i think they have kept similar to make the film recognisable to fans of the previous film.  All the actors are dressed in tracksuits, which is what they all mainly wear during the film as it shows the viewers the type of characters they are. There is a bat also lying on the floor next to the main character, where as in the other film poster, the main character is holding it in his hands as if he is about to swing it.  The main character is standing in front, and each character is posing in different stances and levels, showing the status of each character. With the main character standing up in front of the rest you can tell that he has the highest status in the film. They are all stood on a roof top, where the skyline behind shows an orange sky, which is different to the Kidulthood poster as it is a lot darker.

Not far above their heads, the title of the film is written in a bold black font that stands out from the orange sky. In a smaller font to the top left of the title, the tagline is written ‘after Kidulthood comes…’. This is like the tagline used for Kidult hood where that one says ‘before adulthood comes…’. Underneath they have put the producer’s name: Noel Clarke. This is good for viewers that are fans of his work as it will make them want to go see this film, or also those that know he produced Kidult hood. Above all of this they have put reviews and ratings in a big white font. This is a persuasion technique to try and sell the film even more by using good reviews.

Across the bottom, they have given a number for people to text to receive a free trailer of the film . This works for people that have seen a poster of the film out and about and are wondering what it’s about. If they can receive a free trailer then they can decide on whether they want to see the film, it also is more advertising because more people will have seen the trailer.

Further research - Adulthood trailer analysis

Adulthood is a sequel to the previous film Kidulthood. This trailer begins with a girl and a boy lying in bed. The girl is facing upwards with the camera above her, and she is talking with no music playing the background. You can’t see the boys face until she asks him a question and the camera moves over to show his face as he responds. It is the first shot of the main character of this film. It then fades out and the music begins with an establishing shot, where the production company logo comes up. The music is fast paced rap music which corresponding to the genre and style of the film. The first shot automatically shows violence so you can tell what type of film it is within the first 20 seconds. The way he talks as well also portrays the character with his use of slang ‘blood’.  The next series of shots are fast paced and have fading transitions between each. The camera does a freeze frame on the character holding a bat up with his hood up. The background is changed around him with text in the background saying ‘Six years locked up’. This text tells you what kind of character he is if he has been in prison for six years. There is then another series of fast paced shots and then another freeze frame with more text. The next series of shots aren’t as face paced as the previous ones but show the main characters of the film so each of them are introduced. It also shows you how they have changed from the previous film Kidulthood.

There is a shot where someone punches through a car window, and as that smashes the music drops and changes to a slower and softer soundtrack but still rap music so it sticks with the theme. The next text slides say ‘After Kidulthood  ... comes  ... Adulthood’ showing the link between the two films.

From this trailer you know that the genre is crime, violence and youth culture. It is easy to understand that from this trailer from the shots of fights, language used, shots of guns and the title cards used. Also the use of signals such as hoodies and dark colours also portray the crime and violence.

It is easy to understand the storyline from the title cards and the scenes showed. You can tell that the main character was in prison and now that he is out, people are seeking revenge on him for the crime he committed.

My Initial Idea

At the beginning of this assignment our group decided to choose horror as our genre as it had a low budget which made it easier for us to recreate. We then changed our ideas to a Social Realist Drama (youth culture/gang) genre. We decided to change to this because is involves our age group therefore we can relate to it and understand the media and society today. We are also able to understand more of the typical stories involved in this type of genre as we get involved in mild conditions of the story lines for example drinking, parties and also know of people involved in drugs and crime. This helps us to make our story more realistic and is easier for us to create and produce better results. 

Group Schedule

We have come up with a group schedule for the planning stage:


Me

- storyboard: 3rd November 2010
- shot list: 3rd November 2010
- possible cast list: 4th November 2010 
- finalised cast list: 5th November 2010
- font list: 8th November 2010
- script: 11th November 2010

Grace

- possible and finalised cast list: 5th November 2010
- possible locations: 5th November 2010
- risk assessment sheet: 5th November 2010
- shooting schedule: 10th November 2010
- mock up of film poster: 26th November 2010
- magazine font test: 30th November 2010
- gun convention: 30th November 2010
Sophie

- prop list: 3rd November 2010
- call sheet: 10th November 2010
- in charge of contacting Warwickshire police about filming with toy gun: 16th November 2010
Tim

- costume design: 5th November 2010

- anamatics and finalised music for trailer (cut and edited): 15th November 2010
- putting trailer structure together on final cut pro: 15th November 2010

Group

- film and magazine title: 21st October 2010
- possible cast: 21st October 2010
- costume ideas: 1st November 2010
- final cut pro: 9th November 2010
- storyboard structure and music
- script: 12th November 2010