Padd Solutions

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I have compiled in Windows Movie Maker an animatic of the storyboard to attempt to show how the film will play out and to discern an approximate running time of my short film.



Because I cannot tell how long each shot will last for until I have filmed my actors performing it, I set each shot to last five seconds although I know the average shot length will be less than this. I also set the first shot to be twenty seconds long as I knew that the news report will be a longer lasting shot. Therefore I imagine my film will be shorter than six and a half minutes and if it isn't then I will be prepared to make cuts where necessary.

All in all, I wouldn't say that making a storyboard and an animatic has benefited my creative process personally. I will still most likely only refer to my script, screenplay and shot list when filming my short film.

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These 19 storyboard sheets make up the 98 shots that will feature in my music video. Below is an example. I had to darken them a little in Photoshop as my drawing is very light. I used a college scanner to scan them in and didn't notice until afterwards that the scanner had specks of paint and dirt on the glass and therefore some of the sheets look a little dirty.

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For shooting my short film, I will be using my own Canon EOS 550D. I will be shooting at 720p HD quality and at 50fps (frames per second). I could shoot in Full HD (1080p) but that would restrict me to using 25fps and because I want to use slow motion in my short film, the 50fps allows a much smoother look inppost-production.

I will also be editing on my home computer using Adobe Premiere Pro as I have done this many times before with footage from my camera. The only downside is before I can work with my footage I have to transcode it first and then render it before editing in APP which can be time consuming, however it will be worth it because working on my home computer is easier than having to share the editing suites at college and will mean I spend a lot more time on my production than I feasibly could at college. I plan on encoding rough cuts at the end of each editing week to show to my tutors.

Due to the fact that the deadline for this short film is not until April 2011, whereas the Media Studies deadline for my music video is in a few weeks, Christmas 2010, I am going to be putting all my focus on the music video to make sure it is completed within the deadline. I will start shooting this short film in January 2011 (in my own time with no scheduled lesson time for the project) and I intend to have it completed by March 2011, at the very latest.

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I intend to shoot the news report scene before I shoot the rest of the short film as this will need to be playing in the scene (presumably live but really on a DVD, of course). I intend to shoot the news reporter reading the script in a Medium Close Up in front of my college's green screen. I will then add an edited backdrop of The Humber Bridge, as this is a conventional backdrop for Yorkshire news reports. I was originally going to emulate the look of BBC's main news reports by including a scrolling news bulletins at the bottom of the screen however emulating the look of ITV's Calendar news will be much easier as they use backdrops often and are a regional news report so an office type backdrop is not necessary.

The backdrop I will be using a high resolution picture I have found on the Humber Bridge's wikipedia page, uploaded (and presumably taken) by a user called "Uncool Eddie" which can be freely used under a Creative Commons License.



I have then edited the image to look like a picture taken at sunset, it is clearly edited but this is also conventional for a regional news broadcast.



I will also create a logo, entitling the broadcast as "Chronicle News," which will be displayed during the broadcast.

Shot 76: CU, ROSELYN sips from the cup, savours it, then looks directly in the camera and smiles.

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A short imagined film entitled “Rat” in the style of a suspense thriller to appeal to my target audience of 18-30 year old, middle class females with an intellectual leaning and feministic views.

My aim will be to create tension in the audience using cinematography, editing and sound, using the film language skills I learnt in FM1 to do so. I am also aiming for my female audience to feel empowered by Roselyn’s actions within the film even though they are immoral. Another film device I aim to use is the effect of foreshadowing combined with intertexuality, the films Smith chances upon seeing when he changes the channel all have significant meaning within the narrative and I am hoping my intellectual audience will be able to understand.

As this is a suspense thriller I have looked at Alfred Hitchcock’s films and have, therefore, been influenced by his use of cinematography, particularly in a number of scenes from ‘Psycho’ (1960, US) in which Marion Crane and Norman Bates have tea together and the final scene in which Norman is alone in his jail cell.

The story type is the story of The Spider & The Fly, otherwise known as Circe, in which a character (protagonist or antagonist) is lured into a trap, the trap in “Rat” being Roselyn luring Smith into drinking the poisoned tea.

Excepting the acting, of course, I will be undertaking all aspects of my short film’s production myself.

Roselyn and Smith are two criminals who have just returned home after pulling off a fourth successful bank robbery. Roselyn offers to make them some tea and goes to the kitchen. In the kitchen she notices one of Smith's mobile phones has a new voicemail message. She plays it and discovers it is a message from Smith's ex-girlfriend and that he is planning to ditch Roselyn and take the money for the two of them. Upset, she drops the phone and upon retrieving it she notices a box of rat poison. She decides to poison him and take the money for herself. Roselyn takes the poisoned tea through to Smith and begins acting very suspiciously. Smith notices and immediately deduces something is strange about the tea and asks for some biscuits too. Roselyn leaves to get some and Smith and switches the tea cups. When she returns and drinks from her switched cup she begins violently coughing. Smith then laughs at her and gulps from his own cup in triumph. Roselyn then stops coughing and stares at him. He begins spluttering and falls to his knees. As he dies Roselyn resolutely explains to him that she originally gave him the non-poisoned cup and he killed himself by switching the cups. She then sits back down in her seat, puts her legs up on Smith’s dead body and gazes into the camera, giving a slight smile to the audience.

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Prop List

• Television set & DVD player (needed for playing a pre-recorded news broadcast)
• Bag full of money (money is implied)
• Balaclava (both characters will wear the same balaclava in two different shots)
  
• Kettle, two cups, tea bags, sugar pot, two spoons and milk
• Mobile phone
• Box of rat poison & rat poison pellets/cubes
• Sofas/chairs and table
• Newspaper
• Packet of biscuits
• Vase of roses

Costume
Roselyn: Black jeans, black jumper, black balaclava. Wearing red lipstick underneath balaclava.
Smith: Black jeans, black jumper, black balaclava.
Reporter: White shirt, black jacket and burgundy tie.


Location
I have decided to use my friend Leann's kitchen and living room as locations for shooting as my house is too brightly lit, whereas hers are darker lit and more cramped. She also has black leather sofas which connotate wealth, but not extravagant wealth (Smith & Roselyn aren't foolish with their stolen money).


Actors
I have asked two of my friends, Leann and Scott, to play Roselyn and Smith. They are younger than I would like Roselyn and Smith to actually be but I will work with what I have. Neither consider themselves terrific actors either but I will try my best with them as afterall it is the filming that counts and not so much the acting performance.