CONSTRUCTION: HOT SEATING USING SOUNDCLOUD

'Hot seating' is an effective exercise in which an actor is asked specific questions as their character's background, behaviour and motivation. We were inspired by an article written by Charlie Sierra about building the back story to film characters in which he quoted from Riding the Alligator, a book written by Pen Densham, an Academy Award nominated filmmaker. One of the chapters in the book gives an outline of the questions that an actor should ask themselves about the character that they are playing, in order to have a greater understanding of the character for both the actor and the director.

To prepare for this exercise we wrote a script comprising of questions to ask the protagonist (diplomats son) and his responses. This made the video more fluid and professional. For our interview we asked questions such as: 
• What do you know about your father’s involvement with Japanese priceless artefacts? 
• How far do you think he is willing to go to protects these artefacts? would he put your life at risk? 
• How do you feel about your father disappearing for days with no explanation of where he is?

PLANNING: CASTING

CONSTRUCTION: CREATING OUR IDENT

A production company ident creates a brand image for a company and is found at the start of a production. In less than 10 seconds, it offers a brand's visual identity to the world. As a group, we decided that a simplistic, fast ident was effective as it clearly presents our production company with little confusion. This was matched with the two simple 'whoosh' sound effects which I used to give the ident some audio effect. The 'whoosh' sound effects are in time with movements of the text and shapes.

For our production, we decided to create our own production company ident. In order to do so, we sourced a template off youtube which we thought fit our film opening well. After downloading the template, we downloaded the software Blender so we could edit the text to display our own production company "MNC Films".

After editing the text, we rendered the ident in order to add sounds and edit timings on Final Cut Pro. In Final Cut Pro we added "whoosh" sound effects. Using the transitions built into FCP, we used the 'fade out to colour' to make the ident fade out to a black screen. We increased the volume of the whoosh sound effects also to increase their impact (by changing it fro 0dB to 6dB).  We changed the pitch and speed of the first sound effect to differentiate the sound effects and create atmosphere.

Here is the final ident:

PLANNING: MAKING PROPS

In order to make our film exactly how we wanted, we not only focused on the shots, lighting and framing, we also wanted to ensure the finer details were also taken into account. So, one of the tasks we found ourselves doing is making our own props to enhance the meaning. In this instance, we found a dirty old chair we wanted to use to seat the protagonist once he's been kidnapped. In order to make is seem as realistic as possible we stained the seat and ripped the fabric at the back.

PLANNING: LOCATIONS

In preparation for my film opening, I decided it would be a good idea to visit the sites we were planning on filming at. Below you can see some images of the brewery we decided was perfect for what we wanted. Ensuring this planning stage is done effectively is so vital for a production company as they want to make sure all visuals are up to scratch. For our own production, we visited numerous different locations but due to various different reasons we chose this brewery to act as the unknown location our captured protagonist had been taken to.

RESEARCH: MEDIA THEORIES COMIC

I used a software named Comic Life in order to make a comic which explains and presents some of the media theories which i have learnt this term.

The comic has helped me summarise the media theories. I have then used the voice of characters in order to further explain these theories.

The theorists that I research are: Vladimir Propp, Levi-Strauss, Roland Barthes and Todorov.

PLANNING: STORYBOARD