Closing Post

This blog is now closed.

We really enjoyed this project, and hope our finished opening sequence reflects all the hard work that we've put in to it!

Paperwork Evidence

Please click to enlarge any of the scans.

Here is a sample page from our shot log. The capture list was combined with the shot log to save time as we were able to just tick the shots off once we had captured them




Here is our production schedule.




Here is a sample page from our shot list. At our shooting sessions we ticked the shots once we had filmed them to stay organised.




Here is a sample page from our edit suite schedule. It allowed us to communicate with our teachers as they could always see when we would be editing.



To Do List

• Scan in shot list and shot log samples
• Equipment release and shooting arrangement forms?
• Upload cut scene to youtube and blog about it
• Upload test shoot in music block
• Pie chart
• Make original idea posts clear that they are no longer relevant

Audience Feedback: Charts

We produced a bar chart of the ratings we recieved from our questionnaire for our opening sequence, and displayed them via gender.
From the bar chart we can see that everyone gave us a rating of 6-10, with the majority of females giving us a 7, and the majority of males giving us a 8. So from this, we can see that our aim to target both genders was accomplished.

This shows us that we got our target audience of teenagers right, as everyone surveyed in our questionnaire was between 16-18, and the majority gave us a very high rating.

From these two pie charts, we can see that the majority of males and females would both want to watch the rest of our film if it were to be released in cinemas, again showing us that we got our target audience right. However, it seems as though our film and opening sequence was slightly targeted more at girls, with less females answering 'no, they wouldn't watch the film' than the boys.

Audience Feedback: Questionnaires

After showing a screening of our film opening at school, we asked all of the audience to fill in our questionnaire, so we could get an idea of what went well, and what needs improving.
We used pupils aged 15-17 so they were part of our target audience.

Here are a few of the questionnaires we recieved:

Mute - Filled In Questionnaires

On the whole, we were incredibly happy with our feedback, as everyone gave us a rating of 6-10, with the majority giving us an 8.

Our Preview Screening

We decided to film our preview screening at school to try and capture some of our friends' reactions.

Here is the video we created:

Getting our audience to watch our opening sequence

To attract our audience to come and watch our opening sequence at our preview screening, we stuck a few posters up around the school (especially in areas where we knew our target audience would go on a daily basis).

We also created an event on Facebook, a social networking site a large percentage of our target audience uses.

Also, after our preview screening, we sent a message to everyone giving them a YouTube link to our opening sequence, so all of the people who could not attend the screening could watch it, and so that they could show friends and family, preferably ones who fit in our core audience.

Audience Questionnaire

This is our audience questionnaire which we will present when screening our film to our test audience.

Mute Audience Questionnaire

We will publish feedback once it has been recieved.

Colour Grading

Before deciding on our final colour grading, we tried out a few different syles of lighting and colour using ProcAmp and Three-Way Colour Corrector.

Here is a video to show the different versions we made before our final sequence:

Shoot Number 2

On Sunday 6th March we arranged an extra shoot, again at Robbie's house. We met there at 11am and this time only required Anjelica to act, as the scene we were adding only involved her.

Here is a short behind the scenes video for our second shoot:

Colour Grading Research

As we have completed editing our footage (including editing in our revised footage from our second shoot) we are looking to colour grade our sequence. We are going for a low saturation 'gritty' british feel, similar to Misfits and dystopian film 1984. We are swaying towards greeny and blue hues which are synonymous with action/dramatic/edgy films which our sequence falls into.

We are currently researching into techniques and are predominantly using the Three-Way Color Corrector tool on Adobe Premiere. Below is a selection of useful and inspirational sources we have collected whilst colour grading:

http://www.crowboy.com/evilgenius/videoarticle_premiere.html

We found this website particularly helpful, as it features lots of video tutorials specific for Adobe Premiere Pro:
http://library.creativecow.net/tutorials/adobeaftereffects

Second shoot walkthrough

We decided to add an extra scene involving Ava sitting at the top of the stairs looking stressed. She then receives a text from her friend telling her to go online and check the news. This leads her to go into her bedroom and open her laptop, so we felt the extra scene helped the overall narrative make sense.

Charley and Jess did a walkthrough of the stair scene we intended to film during our second shoot the following weekend. We filmed it to practice shot types and filming techniques and flag up any possible issues, then edited it into our sequence temporarily to check that it made sense.

Original Josh Sequence

Our original sequence involved a short scene where Ava dropped her purse and a man at the busstop texted her to tell her to pick it up.

Here is the extra footage:



This lead us to remove the footage so we decided to film another short scene in Ava's house.

We decided the scene was a bit irrelevant to the film opening and it was a bit of a red herring.

Colour Grading Inspiration

We really liked the colouring and editing of this scene from The Social Network (2010). It has bluey hues, like our opening sequence, and the contrast is high with low saturation to make it look dramatic and create suspense, especially with the grey storm clouds and the dark green trees in the background. We tried to create a similar effect for Mute.

Inspiration: I Am Number Four

During half term a couple of us saw I Am Number Four at the cinema and noticed that it would be a good film to compare ours with.
It is an Action movie with Sci-Fi elements, just like ours.
The main characters are teenagers, and the protagonist has a secret and is on the run from someone who wants to hunt him down, just like Ava and her friends are on the run from the government. The protagonist meets a girl and falls in love along the way, just like Ava falls in love with Benjamin.
The extreme special effects and fast, action-packed pacing was exactly how Mute would be if we were to make the whole film.
There is also the character of Number 6 who breaks stereotypical action movie conventions by being a female action hero who saves the day. This is similar to Mute in the way that the protagonist for our action movie is a female and she is fiesty, strong and independent.

 By watching the film's trailer, you can see that the style of the film is dark and shadowy with a blue tint, which is exactly how we wanted our sequence to look.

Behind-The-Scenes Video Diary

We created a short video made up of behind-the-scenes footage from our first shoot:

Note: Sorry about the sound, please turn your volume up for this video.

Shoot Number 1

Our first shoot went very successfully and we shot every scene we wanted to which was great. We know have all our shots ready for editing, although by the end of this week we may have decided we need to re-shoot or any some extra scenes.
We of course took lots of photos to document our day!

Upon arrival we took pictures of our main actors:

Anjelica Barbe who was play Ava. We dressed her in dark, neutral clothing and black Doc Martens to make her look tough and edgy without being too tomboy-ish.

Jess's younger brother James Wilson was to play Ava's brother.

Charley's mum Liz Packham was to play Ava's mother.

We dressed Robbie's bedroom to make it look more like a girl's bedroom, but didn't make it too girly to match Ava's character (click to enlarge):

Here is a slideshow of some other pictures from the day:

 

Location Scouting: The Bus Stop

Possible locations to shoot:

1. Cannon Road

2. Southgate High Street



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As we planned to film the house scenes at Robbie's house, we decided to find a bus stop nearby, and with Robbie's knowledge of the area, we found two bus stops that we could use.

The first bus stop we thought of was a bus stop on Cannon Road, as that is only a five minute walk from Robbie's house, meaning travel times are minimal, meaning time can be saved.

The second stop we thought of was on High Street, which is the next road down, and this is the bus stop which we used to film our opening sequence.

So although it was a slightly longer walk, we decided to film there because we really liked the background: the trees in the background created a nicer environment, unlike the first which was in front of someone's house.

Final Storyboard and Shot Lists

In our final lesson before the first shoot date, we finalised our storyboard and wrote out the shot list so we are now fully prepared for Sunday.

(Click to enlarge):

Props & Equipment List for Shooting Day

Odelia
iPad
iPod touch + headphones
Props to dress the room
Tripod
Clapperboard

Jess (& brother)
Phone
iPod touch
Props to dress the room
Digital Camera
Video Camera

Charley
iphone
Props to dress the room
Admin folder
Storyboard
Pag light

Robbie
iPod
Laptop

Everyone has also agreed to bring one pizza each to share amongst us and our actors!


Equipment collection times:
Odelia 3.45pm (tripod)
Jess 2.25pm (camera)
Charley 2.25pm (admin)
Robbie will not be taking any equipment this weekend

Actor Contract

Here is an example of the contracts we gave our actors to sign. We also signed them ourselves to ensure everyone agreed on shooting arrangements.

Actor Contract

Practicing Focus Pulls

We booked an after school session with the media technician Chris so we could learn how to use the manual settings on the video camera. As well as learning focus pulls, we also learnt how to change the exposure, aperture and adjust the depth of field for interesting and more advanced cinematography in our sequence. Here is a short video of us experimenting with focus:

Storyboarding

Here are some photos of us working on our storyboard:

New Audience for 'Mute'

We recieved feedback for our proposed target audience for 'Mute' from our teachers.

Our original rating for the film was 12A -

http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/12a12

Our intended audience being similar to other drama / action 12A films; such as The Dark Knight (Nolan, 2008), or I, Robot (Proyas, 2004). It was aimed at 12 - 25 year olds, and fans of the drama / action genre.


However, after recieving feedback from our teachers, we decided it would be more successful if we matured our film slightly, raising the rating from a 12A to a 15 -

http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/15-2

This involved creating a darker storyline for our film, involving more deaths of major characters and more threat, graphic violence and language.

Our target audience changed from being 12 - 25 to more like 16 - 25, closer to other 15 rated movies such as Taken (Morel, 2008) or The Book of Eli (Hughes, 2010).

Inspiration: I, Robot (2004)

We thought that we should look at the film 'I, Robot' (Proyas) for inspiration, as it too is in action film set in the future, and the story revolves around technology, and technology taking over.

Here is the storyline of the film, taken from IMDB:
It's 2035 A.D., where robots are everyday objects and are programmed to live alongside humans. Detective Del Spooner is called out to investigate the apparent suicide of the scientist behind these robots, Dr. Alfred Lanning. Spooner suspects that the death might not be a suicide, but the result of one of the robots. All robots are programmed by three laws, but Spooner starts to wonder if a robot can in fact feel emotions, and possibly murder. But if Spooner's suspicions are true, he is going to have a hard time convincing everyone.

Filming Permission on the Tube

We looked up tfl's policy for filming on the tube on their official website.

Unfortunately, it could take us 2-3 weeks to receive a permit, and we don't have that kind of time so it would be too risky to rely on this permit. Also, it would cost the group £40 even though we are students and we don't have a budget for this so we've decided it would be much easier and safer to film at a bus stop or similar location.

Breaking down our opening sequence

This is our sequence, broken down into rough ten second segments of what happens.

All is subject to change, but this will give us a rough idea of the direction we are heading in.

Mother Tongue Opening Sequence

0 - 10 sec: We see a girl sitting at a busstop, headphones in. Music is playing.

10 - 20 sec: She gets a buzz on her 'communicator': 'You dropped your purse :-)', it's from a man standing nearby. She picks up her purse, and smiles at him.

20 - 30 sec: She stays at the busstop and looks around. Groups of people are clustered together, all staring at their 'communicators' and typing frantically. The bus arrives.

30 - 40 sec: We cut to the girl arriving home. She opens her door and takes her headphones out- the house is silent.

40 - 50 sec: She moves into her house and goes into front room- her younger brother is sitting with his back to her, playing a games console, and as she enters, he pulls out his 'communicator' and begins to text while simultaneously playing - he doesn't look at her the whole time.

50 - 60 sec: She gets a text from him: 'Mum wants to talk to you'. She sighs and exits the room, to the kitchen.

60 - 70 sec: She goes into the kitchen and we see her Mum. Her Mum has an iPad, and they have a small conversation.

70 - 80 sec: Conversation continues.

80 - 90 sec: She leaves the room and heads upstairs.

90 - 100 sec: She enters her room, opens her laptop and goes onto the internet.

100 - 110 sec: Her homepage is BBC News, and she surfs momentarily, before getting another text: 'Dinner's ready.' She sighs and exits the room.

110 - 120 sec: We end with a slow zoom on the computer screen, where there is a news article about a scientist who claims that the long extinct human voices may still exist.

2nd Treatment Feedback

- Possibly scrap the tube location. Might be easier at the busstop - try to contact TFL to sort out locations.

- Girl keeps headphones in at busstop / tube, the reveal of silence can be when she arrives home.

- Change the rating to a 15. Make the synopsis slightly darker, really hard hitting and gritty in this world gone quiet. Explicit violence, sex, political commentary- tackly some tough issues. Possibly scary.

- Shoot more than we need then cut back.

- Different ages of people at busstop / tube if possible, adds realism to the scene.

After this feedback, and discussing possible changes, we finally got the GREEN LIGHT!

News Article

We created a faux news article that we can use at the end of the opening sequence with Adobe Photoshop. Ava will open up her laptop and glance at the article before going back downstairs to "talk" to her mother.

Film Theory

Todorov's theory of equilibrium:Equilibrium: Ava is living in a speechless world, unhappy but unsure of what to do about it.

Disruption: Ava meets two boys (one named Benjamin) who can talk and gets herself caught up in their rebellious, illegal quest to find the scientists who are developing voiceboxes.

New Equilibrium: Ava and the boys reach the scientists and the DNA completes the voicebox. Before the government can stop them, the media have caught hold of the story and the news spreads worldwide. The government has no choice but to pretend that they have been supporting this development all along and are forced to allow voiceboxes to be made available to everyone worldwide. Despite the death of one of the boys during the struggle to escape the government and reach the scientists, the ending is relatively happy as Ava and Benjamin have fallen in love and get to return home. However, the audience are left guessing at the end as we see two government officials discussing how they will invent a disease to kill off Ava and Benjamin and subsequently scare the rest of the world into removing their voiceboxes, leaving the film open for a possible sequel.


Propp's Character Theory
We were able to apply some of Propp's stock characters to our film.

1. The villain (struggles against the hero) - The Government
2. The donor (prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object)
3. The (magical) helper (helps the hero in the quest) - The other boy who dies on the quest
4. The princess (person the hero marries, often sought for during the narrative) - Actually the boy, Benjamin, as the protagonist is a female
5. Her father
6. The dispatcher (character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off)
7. The hero or victim/seeker hero, reacts to the donor, weds the princess - Ava

Our New Final Treatment

new treatment

Target Audience

Our target audience is teenagers, fans of action and drama. The film will be rated a 12A for mild violence and language. Our headstrong female protagonist will appeals to teenage girls as she is a positive role model, and there is a love story element between Ava and one of the boys. Boys will also enjoy it because of the action and the attractive female lead.

Teenagers are the most frequent cinema goers with 40% going at least once a month (source: UK Film Council) and the most popular genres with 15-24 year-olds are youth-themed drama, crime, action-led films and comedies (source: Office for National Statistics). Both genders go almost equally as much, which is why we want our film to appeal to both boys and girls.

The film would also be suitable to a slightly younger audience, as long as they are accompanied by adults of course. These adults, older than our target audience would hopefully also enjoy the film because of the action and drama elements.

Practicalities

We have the two actors confirmed and will definitely be able to use ourselves and friends to use as extras in the tube scenes. At least one of our mums will be able to play the mum in the scene and Jess has a little brother who will be able to play the brother. We plan to get on the tube at Cockfosters on a Sunday when it will be relatively empty. Robbie has volunteered his house for filming. We all have phones, laptops and iPod touches to use as vital props, and Odelia has an iPad. We will easily be able to make a fake website for the last part of the scene on Photoshop or even create a free website.



Anjelica Barbe







James Wilson



Josh Pedro











Research: News Article, Voicebox Transplants

A woman in the US is able to speak for the first time in 11 years after a pioneering voicebox transplant.

Brenda Jensen said the operation, which took place in California, was a miracle which had restored her life.
Thirteen days after the surgery she said her first words: "Good morning, I want to go home."
It is the first time a voicebox and windpipe have been transplanted at the same time and only the second time a voice box has ever been transplanted.





-----------------------------------------------

When discussing ideas, we remembered a news article from the week before about a woman who recently recieved a voicebox transplant, and decided to add this to our plot.

Proposed New Opening Sequence

The scene starts on the tube. A girl is sitting down, alone, with her headphones in, loud music blaring out. We see clusters of people on the tube, all with their phones out, texting and showing each other things excitedly. A man approaches her and taps her on the shoulder. She takes out both her earphones to look at the man, and we hear the tube is in total silence. He stands, staring at her, his phone out, when we hear her phone buzz, piercing the silence. She looks around at all the other groups of kids, they are texting each other frantically and yet none of them speak. She pulls her phone out of her pocket; she has a text. 'You dropped your purse :-)' The man points to the floor, at her purse, then moves away. She picks it up, and steps off the tube, as her voiceover comes in. For the remainder of the scene, we hear an intermittent voiceover from the girl. She speaks slowly, bleakly. We cut to her arriving home to a silent house. She walks into the front room, her younger brother is playing on a games console. He pulls out his phone as she watches, and simultaneously texts her with one hand while playing the game with the other hand. She reads the text: 'Mum wants to talks to you'. She leaves the room and moves to the kitchen. We expect her to greet her mum and maybe talk about how their days have been, but instead she gets out her phone and types away in silence. This serves as an anticlimax for the whole sequence and leaves the audience wanting to know why nobody communicates vocally. Her mother types back on an ipad, and we see a closeup of the phone with her response, something like 'Hard day at work. How was your day?' The girl texts back then goes upstairs and immediately logs onto her laptop. On her homepage, there is a news article about a scientist who has been arrested on suspicion of developing voiceboxes in a lab. Before she has a chance to read it, her phone buzzes again: dinner is ready. She gets up and leaves her room, leaving the camera to zoom in on the article so it is the last thing the audience sees. As this is a very simple idea, a chronological narrative which just sets the scene for the rest of the film we can be really elaborate and artistic with our shots, with lots of focus pulls and titled frames and whip pans to demonstrate our technical ability and accompany a creative storyline (written and adapted by group members).

Possible Character Names

Lexis (meaning 'word' in Latin)
Ava (meaning 'voice' or 'sound' in Persian)
Tacey (from Latin meaning 'be silent')

New Synopsis

Living in a speechless world where evolution has led humans to be born without voice boxes, Ava meets two rebellious boys who have somehow managed to keep their voices.
Together, immersed in a world of revolution and secrets, they flee the country to locate a team of rebel scientists developing their own manmade voiceboxes. The only thing they need is the DNA of a human who can speak, but the government is on the team's trail and what began as a journey of hope turns into one with only the tiniest chance of success, even if they do make it in time.
A thrilling, fast-paced Action-Drama from Binary Studios™, Mute is far from the average rebellion story and certainly doesn't end in fairytale perfection, yet audiences are guaranteed to be glued to the screen from the first second to the last.

Research: Inspirational Films and Genres

Some of IMDB's Best Action Feature Films:

Inception (2010)

The Dark Knight (2008)

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)   

Die Hard (1988)

Avatar (2009)

District 9 (2009)

Some of IMDB's Best Drama Feature Films:

Forrest Gump (1994)

Black Swan (2010)

The King's Speech (2010)

127 Hours (2010)

Pulp Fiction (1994)  

Se7en (1995)

Memento (2000)

Films based on/including technology:

The Social Network (2010)

Iron Man (2008) 

Transformers (2007) 

TRON: Legacy (2010)
The Net (1995) 

The Matrix (1999)
WALL·E (2008)

Films including an alternate/dystopian world:
Children of Men (2006)
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)

TV Programmes that include a lot of technology: 

Gossip Girl (2007)

Pretty Little Liars (2010)

Blog design change

Because of our genre switch from Psychological Thriller to Action/Drama, we thought it would be appropriate to change our blog's design to fit more with our film.

Here is evidence of the work we had done on the original design: (click to enlarge)

We also created a list of our favourite Psychological Thrillers that influenced us:

New Film Plot

Here is the short story we are basing our film opening on, by Jessica Wilson.

Voice

To be done over the weekend (29th/30th Jan)

Charley: 

• Blog new treatment
• Practicalities - confirm actors and locations

  Jess: 

• Post new film idea
• Re-do blog design

Odelia & Robbie:

• Research new genre
• Research similar films and influences

Change of idea

After much discussion with our teachers, we decided that the idea for our opening sequence just didn't fit with the rest of the film, mainly because we thought of the idea before we thought of the film's plot.
The standalone opening sequence would not have made sense to viewers and therefore to the examiners until they had watched the rest of the film, which of course we are not going to make, so as a coursework project the idea didn't really work.

After deciding this, we had a group brainstorm and decided to switch genre from Psychological Thriller, as we thought it would be best to start from scratch to avoid not getting distracted by our original idea. We also decided that we wanted to do something a bit different, as a lot of groups have made Thriller films in the past so we wanted to try something new.

The best way, we decided, to come up with an idea was to think about what story we wanted to tell, and after a few ideas we thought about a short story one of us had written earlier in the year, as it was quite unique and would have been simple to turn into a film. Everyone read the story and liked it, so we decided to go ahead with this new idea, changing our genre to Action/Drama.

Film theory

Todorov's theory of equilibrium:

Equilibrium: Maya and Tom are 'happily' dating. They seem very in love.

Disruption: Maya dumps Tom.

New equilibrium: Tom kills Maya then kills himself.



Propp's Character theory

Because of the Arthouse, unconventional feel of our film, our characters don't really fit the roles of Propp's conventional character theory.

We do have:

1. The princess (person sought for during the narrative)
2. The hero or victim/seeker hero, reacts to the donor, weds the princess

However, this "hero" turns out not to be a hero at all, but a very disturbed, unlikeable character. This shows the ways that we have gone against the conventions and therefore makes our film less mainstream and more niche.



[Please note that this planning is no longer relevant to our final idea, only our original idea, as we changed our concept: see our change of idea post]

The film plot

Opening sequence:
Tom is in a coma. He is trapped in a metaphorical white room inside his mind, hallucinating. These are hallucinations based on his memories with his ex-girlfriend, Maya. We then see the title 'Six months earlier' and the rest of the film shows the events leading up to this coma.

Rest of film:
The story starts when Tom meets Maya on a bus. They get talking and end up going on a date to cafe. They go on several more dates and it is evident that Tom is very much in love with her: infatuated. The audience can see that Maya is not as keen on him as he is on her, but Tom doesn't notice (dramatic irony?).
On one date, Maya breaks up with Tom because she doesn't feel it is working. Tom doesn't take it well. He can't accept their separation and continues to stalk her.
The film comes to a climax when Maya sees him looking into her window an confronts him. It ends in a violent fight in her kitchen, and in a moment of anger and passion, he grabs a knife and stabs her. Realising what he has done, he decides he cannot live without her, or with the guilt, and stabs himself too. Missing the fatal spot, he is taken to hospital in a coma.
The final scene shows the life support machine being switched off.
We then see Tom in his metaphorical white room in his mind again, the four walls falling down and the bright white cuts to black: he is dead.


[Please note that this planning is no longer relevant to our final idea, only our original idea, as we changed our concept: see our change of idea post]

Our Revised Final Treatment Idea

The opening scene starts in darkness. We hear a woman’s voice saying softly, “Is there no way out of the mind?”.
We then see an ECU of a man’s bloodshot, frenzied eyes.
Then we are shown a wider shot of the entire room, revealing that this man is sitting on a single chair in the middle of a tiny, white room. He is in a coma and this room is a metaphor - he is trapped in his mind. He then hallucinates various events from the past 6 months that appear in the room with him. One hallucination is a woman sitting on a bus seat next to him, reading a poetry book. Another is the same woman sitting opposite him at a café table, eating a sandwich. Throughout these visions, the man sits completely still and does not speak; only the woman speaks. The editing between shots will be very jumpy, and continuity rules will purposely be broken to reflect the confusion in his mind. The lighting will be very bright, giving the scene a sterile look.
A title will come up at the end of the sequence saying ‘6 months earlier’, then the clip will end. The rest of the film shows the events leading up to how he got into a coma. The scenes he hallucinated in his head at the beginning happen in real life, so the audience will recognise these scenes, for example the bus seat, then when he meets her on a bus in real life they will make the connection and feel satisfied.


[Please note that this planning is no longer relevant to our final idea, only our original idea, as we changed our concept: see our change of idea post]

Confirmed Actors for 'Our Empty Rooms'

Academy Award ™ Nominated

Josh Pedro

Anjelica Barbe, winner of the Orange Rising Star ™ award after her performance as Courtney Love in the biopic masterpiece ‘Cobain’ (2009, Scorsese)



[Please note that this planning is no longer relevant to our final idea, only our original idea, as we changed our concept: see our change of idea post]