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