Our group story board

My story board contribution

These are the 11 story boards I did for our title sequence, I left out some of the deatailes in the description such  as timing and edit transitions as these are things we have not set yet or properly disscussed about as a group yet.

Making a story board

We all came together and made a new step by step outline making sure all the shots are in the right order and added in extra ones to lengthen the sequence but also cause further suspicion and tenstion, we then gave our selfs roughly 10 each to do.

This list below is the division we did for each of us, Tiggy did the first 10, I did the middle 11 and Grace did the last 9.

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For mine i decided to hand draw them and add colour to make it more obvious of what everything is and whats going on to whoever is reading it. 

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What is story boarding?

In our groups we are going to make a story board for our opening title sequence to help us progress and develop our sequence, In this post i explain story boards and what they are used for.

Story boards are an important thing to create before filming as it helps to visually show the intent it has and how it will be presented to other people such as directors and the rest of the crew, it is not common but could also be helpful for actors to invision it such as character placement. 

They also have benefits such as reducing production cost as less time is spent on set trying to decide on things if they have alwready been decided on the whole.

They allow for experimentation in terms of what order the shots go in allowing for the best possible outcome showing a clear progression and making sure it connects to the next shot.

On a story board is primarily the type of shot, dialouge ,key props, transitions, shot number, movement, characters and timing which is all then described on the right hand side to make it easier to explain making it very clear to whoever uses it.

Key Things that must be considered when making a story board are:

-camera composition and framing

- editing 

- how one shot follows the next 

Here is a youtube video I found explaining two different methods of story boarding depending on how artsy you are which i watched before making my story board.

New step by step outline

As a group we finalised our outline to the sequence changing orders of shots and adding in extra ones, we did this so when we do our story board it is all in the correct order.

• Bike in left corner 
• Police tape being put on 
• Cones being put down 
• Forensic putting gloves on 
• Follow ecu of tape 
• Forensic unzipping the bag 
• Police talking
• Police shoes walking away
• Women walking out
• Shoes of her walking out

• Tape
• Forensic putting bell into a bag
• Blood on hand and shaking 
• Bike again
• Woman crying
• Handcuffing women 
• Police taking her away
• Police taking her away
• Police taking her away
• Shot of car
• Opening car

• Ducking her head into the car 
• Blood on floor and hands shaking
• Bike lights smashed on floor 
• Forensics putting evidence in van
• Ecu of Childs helmet 
• Ecu rucksack of Childs bag with stiff coming out blood everywhere
• Bike again
• Women being driven away in car
• Blood dripping off bike ( long and slow) kids bike 

Review of test shoot

 Overall I think that our idea has translated well onto film, I think some parts could be improved to make it less generic such as when the woman has her head in her hands and instead have a close up shot of her emotionless face implying the shock she is in. 

I think the first half of our opening sequence is sucsessful in engagaing the audience as it includes a wide varaity of shots, shot duration and what is being filmed but becomes less as it goes on due to similar things being shot and/or same types of shots which can be changed easily.

Our finished practise sequence is 1min and 0.2 seconds long which is pretty much a min too short meaning we need to either extend the length of our current clips and/or film more scenes to extend the length of it.

The genreally i think the pase is good throughout exept slows slightly after the shot of the white car i think this could be changed by taking out some of the modified speed shots which come after this and put them in normal time. 

The narrative is fairly clear but not too clear to the point where the audience why its happned so leaves a good amount of suspense making the audience want to carry on watching. I think the only factor making it seem abit confusing is the lack of mise-en-scene specifically the costumes as its tricky to sus out who is who and what their role is. 

Tenstion has been created in some parts such as when the wheel is slowing down and when she is being taken away by the police and put into the car. The ambient sound of the police sirens also have a huge factor in adding to the tention. I also think that the use of modified could be very effective in terms of adding tention but i think we overused it afew too many times taking away the suspense which could potentionally very effective.

The camera angles work well especilly the ones which are in level with what is being filmed such as the womens feet walkimg out her house and the bycicle wheel with the blood on. Ones which i think should be changed or altered slightly are the one where the firensic puts on their blue gloves, which i think should change to a pan left to right of the crime scene to then the gloves being close up of the gloves being put on to then carry across back to the other side of the scene. I also think that the shot of the police's shoes walking away should change to a low shot of the back of their feet with no movement. 

I think that one of the shots of the tape needs to be taken out as its alwready being showed twice so becomes abit repetative, we also decided to add 6 more shots to extend our sequence and add abit more tenstion these include:

- the child's helmet 

- the forensics putting the cones around the scene 

-the camera following the women as she drives away in the back of the police car 

-the police man ducking her head into the police car 

-forensics putting the evidence they collected into the back of their van

-blood dripping from the handle of the bike

I think overall it was a sucsessful shoot and helped us to determine what needs to be changed and developed, which i have talked about above. We as a group will be making these changes for our story board that we will be making next. 

Test shoot (edited)

This is ur group final test shoot edited by Grace and filmed by all of us.

Planning our test shoot

As a group we planned a test shoot for our opening title sequence as this will help us to plan what our final outcome will be, any problems we bump into and how long all of our shots will be and how they are filmed.

To plan in prep for this shoot we all got together and wrote a list of the props we each needed to bring in, the clips we are going to shoot, what type of shot, location and who is going to substitute as the characters. 

These are the notes and planning we made the day we got together and planned our shoot.

We had to substitute some props: 

fake blood - ketchup

police tape - neon orange tape

handcuffs - tape 

bike bell - print off photo

This was for two reasons one in which is that we could not get it in time  for that day or we forgot to bring it into school. 

For our actors we used our selfs and also asked one of our friends Sofia to act out as the woman, as shown on our planning sheet above we each played a part or two as substitutes for the characters. 

In terms of location we used to top car park at school and the main building which luckily is the exact type of 'house' and drive way we wanted for our real sequence making it much easier and more realistic to shoot. 

In general our shoot went fairly well, we took lots of shots of the same scenes so that we have a range of options when editing it, We also tried out different scenes which we thought of whilst shooting.

I think that the close up shots went well and majority of our shots were accurate to how in which we imagined it which helped us to clearly vision what our final one will turn out like, We were time efficent and got what we wanted in time for the end of our lesson.

We struggled with the lack of Mise-En-Scene such as costumes and acting the emotions of the characters but these are things we will have planned properly for our final sequence. Another struggle we had was filming inside a car/police van as we did not have acsess to one so instead we had Sofia stand round the other side of it and look through the window giving the effect as if she was inside it.

I think that we could have taken a wider variety of shots so that our sequence was longer as so far its looking at around 1min and should be 2 or just over. 

Developing ideas 3

 In our lesson today we made our final decision on our opening title sequence and discussed it with mike. We came to the conclusion that it would be a murder mystery concept, we have also made a new outline for this sequence. 

We decided to follow through with a title sequence instead of an opening scene as we think it will add a further layer of mystery and makes the overall sequence look cleaner and more to the point.

Our overall idea is that it will follow a young boy being murderded whilst on a bike and an unidentified women being blamed getting handcuffed whilst firensics investigate the scene at the same time. 

The rest of the film would be about this woman trying to clear her name and become innocent whilst mourning her childs death 

Actor: middle aged women, police and furrensics 

location:A rich large house, subverting from the steriotype 

We have come up with the sort of shots we would like to include:

-Bicycle wheel spinning slowly using and ECU

-Firensics number plates and tape around the scene 

-ECU of the handcuffs gtting placed on the women 

-The police's reactions 

-The women crying in shock with no expressions facialy 

-Helmet broken in half with blood on 

-Blue police lights flashing 

-The flash of a camera taking photos of the scene which goes into another shot 

-Picking up the bell of the bike and putting it into an investigation bag 

The titles of the film are going to be carefully placed in places you would not expect them to be, for example the directors name writtern in blood on the floor of the scene and another title when the police car door slams shut. 

Inderpendant research (makeup)

 For my second research page I decided to look into fake blood and how to make it as this will be included as details in our title sequence for example on the floor where we write the titles and on the handcuffs. 

(skip to 0.11), This youtube clip shows a quick and easy way to make realistic fake blood. The recipie consists of: 

-1 teaspoon of flower

-1/2 teaspoon of red food colouring 

-1 tablespoon of corn syrup 

-1 drop of blue food colouring to darken it 

-whisk together

I decided to try out this recipie to see if it works well and has a realistic effect to it. 

      

  

 

I think overall it worked very well, I had to make a few a-justments such as using glyserin instead of corn syrup as I did not have this, I also added more glyserin than recommended so it was not too thick. 

The blue food colouring helped alot to darken the colour and add to the realism. 

If we were to use this recepie for the blood in our title sequence we would probably have to make a bigger batch my doubling it or even more depending on how much we need but it is easily done.

Independent research (concept)

To help us with our title sequence I decided to research into what sort of things police do when they arrest someone and how they behave at a crime scene to create an effective and realistic shot in the sequence.

This is a screenshot I have taken off of the uk government website stating how the police should correctly arrest someone and when it's sutable to arrest someone. These bullet points will all be things we will need to take into consideration when the arrest occurs in our title sequence. 

“You do not have to say anything. But, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”- https://www.gov.uk/arrested-your-rights

This is also taken from the same website quoting what every police officer must say when arresting someone and is called a police caution. So when the woman in our sequence we need to make sure the policeman arresting her says this. 

This is a youtube video I found explaining rights when arrested. The main points I gathered from this are: 

- The police caution given on arrest (quote above)

- The lack of co-operation with police upon arrest can have an impact on in court, as it could mean you are lying 

- police may not write down straight away your words, they may do it later on a note pad or recorded. 

- You are allowed to contact someone (guardian) of what is happening 

-You can ask for a solicitor (legal advice)

                        

This is another youtube video in which shows how to correctly use handcuffs in a safe way, taking them on and off. The steps include:

1.They go around the persons wrist and are double locked 

2.The locking part of the handcuffs should be on the back of their wrists with palms facing out 

3.You should have a space of at least 2 fingers between the cuffs and the persons wrists and not digging in

4.To double lock you use the key and slide it in the gap so the handcuffs cant get any tighter and makes it harder to take them off

5.To un-do this you turn the key the opposite way undoing the double lock

This will help us to instruct the actor who is handcuffing the woman how to safely do it without hurting her or getting her stuck in them whilst also making it look realistic.

Mood board

We created a mood board to help us vision what our opening title sequence will look like, I used a range of different images and texts to help demon Straight this. 

The genre of my concept is drama\mystery, I have shown this through the use of text clearly saying 'drama' and 'detective', this is also further shown by the images of police and furrensics as these are characters that are steriotypically in these types of films. 

Our title sequence has a suspensful, dark and questioning tone which is shown by the image of the girl crying with no emotion due to so much shock, the blood on the floor and handcuffs, the innocent looking girl in the bottom of the image. I also added a colour pallette to further emphasise this tone and what sort of colour scheme the overall sequence would have.

The narrative is expressed by:

- The house on the bottom right, Showing the setting which would the outside of an expensive large house. 

-The character on bottom left, an innocent looking young woman (20 ish). Another image of an emotionless girl crying would be that same girl and her reaction to what is happening

- A child's bycicle which has fallen over and the wheel is spinning and a broken in half helmet which clips of this would be shown suggesting that it has something to do with the event that just occured.

 

-The police and furrensics trying to work out what has happend and also arresting the girl who would be in the back of the police car.