Research and Planning: Air Raid Shelter Response

On Friday, Adam and I got a phone call from Stockport Air Raid Shelters. They agreed to let us film in the tunnels free of charge because we're students and have set us up with a member of staff who is experienced in dealing with camera crews, and knows all of the best places to film and how to have the lights etc!
We have agreed on filming these parts on Sunday 8th December, when the tunnels will be practically closed while we film! This is an amazing opportunity for us.

Research and Planning: Sunrise vs. Sunset

Adam and I have recently been discussing in great detail whether to do our shooting for the underground army first invading 'the surface' at sunrise or sunset. The reason we need to film at one of these two times is that our subway tunnels aren't especially long, so we will need it to be quite dark to get the desired effect for the last few moments whilst underground, but also light enough for audience members to be able to recognise that the underground characters are on 'the surface' when they are.
So..sunrise or sunset?
Sunrise:
- More correct time of day. The sky will be getting gradually lighter, as desired for our filming

Sunset:
- We can do all of our filming at once, meaning less messing about for us and cast.

Research and Planning: Actor Release Forms

Above are two of the completed actor release forms from actors in our trailer.

Research and Planning: Social Network Feedback

Last night I posted all three of my poster ideas on Facebook to see what my Facebook friends thought of them. This is shown below:

Most people have said that they most prefer the third one, which I posted on here about yesterday. I will bear this in mind when deciding which poster to make.

Research and Planning: New Film Poster Idea

Recently, I have noticed billboard posters for the new Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol:

 Every time I see this poster, I become more and more convinced that it is a good style for my poster. I have checked it over with Angela, my Media tutor to make sure that I am allowed to make my poster another shape than the conventional international paper (A4, A3 etc.). If I were to do a poster in this style, it would look like this:

 I will put the pictures up on Facebook tonight and ask for feedback.

Research and Planning: Plan for the Week

This week, Adam and I plan to work a little more independently, focusing on our posters and magazines.

We will however continue to audition for cast members with a plan to start filming next week and over the Christmas period, as well as individual research into our roles as part of the film trailer production

Research and Planning: Audition Videos and Head Shots

Below are some headshots for potential cast members in the teaser trailer.

Keisha (above) and Lucy (below) were suitable for our teaser trailer as extras due to their ability to look scared on demand, and they had a good understanding of what was being asked of them during auditions.

The following video is a video audition for the part of William.

We thought Ryan was well suited for a the speaking part of William because he used emotion and was able to act out genuine fear, after being given a rough overview of the plot and the character.

Research and Planning: Two Worlds: Battle For the Sun – Scripted Parts

Below is our first draft of our scripted parts for our trailer:

Main Character- Underworld:

Charles

Main Character- Real World:

Robbie

Character Raising Alarm:

William

Upon realising the underground is running out of energy:

William: s-s-sir? I’m … um… Sorry.

Charles: (looks at William knowingly) Its time to prepare the troops. We’ve been training for this day for a long time. Its now time to attack the surface..!

Real world characters talking strategy:

Robbie: They’re holding us prisoners in our own homes, wrecking our neighbourhoods and scaring our children but we can’t let them have our light! There’s only one thing for it: FIGHT!

Research and Planning: How to make pretend fighting look real!

As we have elements of fighting in our trailer, we need to make sure that we can pull the scenes off without actors actually getting hurt!

We thought it'd be a good idea to research how to make pretend fighting look real, as they do in so many real films, such as The Matrix:



Below is a screen grab of some of the information I found.

This information was found at http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Fake-Fighting-Scene-for-a-Movie

Research and Planning: Location Recces Videos

Here are some location recces videos from last week when we visited our locations. The top one is a video of Johnson Brook Road, where we are going to be doing most of our underground world filming. The bottom one is a video taken in one of the underground subways in Ashton.

Research and Planning: Audition Poster

 

Above is mine and Adam's audition poster. We have posted it around college.

Research and Planning: Plan for the Week

This week, Adam and I are going to audition people for parts in our trailer.
In preparation for this, we are going to write the script.
This will also help us to finalise the plot and order of the entire trailer.

Research and Planning: Location Images

Below are the images from our location visits on Friday

Research and Planning: Letter to Air Raid Shelter

Above is the letter we are sending to Stockport Air Raid Shelter. The college have allowed us to have a piece of letterhead paper, so we will send the letter on that.

Research and Planning: Location Recces Plan

Below is a rough plan of the order we are going to visit our locations later today.

Research and Planning: Location Recces

Below are three of the location recces Adam has done ahead of our visits to the sites later today.

Research and Planning: Location Update

After discussion, Adam and I have decided not to film on Market Street in Manchester. This is due to the fact that the street is cobbled, and cobbles is something we have decided to associate with the underworld, rather than the real one.

Instead, we will do our filming in Dukinfield and Hyde.

Research and Planning: Plan for the Week

This week, Adam and I are going to finalise our locations. On Friday, we both have a free lesson, so will visit the locations from our list that we think are best and make sure that they are suitable, as well as doing location recces. Adam also had a strike of genius today when he thought of another possible location for our filming - Stockport Air Raid Shelters!

The shelters are located under Stockport Town Centre, about 6/7 miles away from our college, and are real life shelters used in WW2 - no pretending tunnels are underground - these actually are!

The tunnels are now owned by a company that sells tours to members of the public, so if we wanted to film there, we'd have to get in touch with them. We will see what we can do this week.

Meanwhile, we'll look further into props, particularly the badges and energy cylinder for the underworld, as we are having a few issues with how real they will look.