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:

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:

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.

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.

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

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:

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.

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











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.

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: