monday 2nd march- editing

Today we continued to edit our introduction to betrayal. We discovered whilst editing that we needed to continue to re-film certain shots as the continuity did not match. We re did the close up shots and created new scenes for the fight scene. We decided to re-film the next day and continue editing next lesson.

Tuesday 24th February

Today we did some more editing for the film, adding more footage to the final piece. A great deal of work was done until the computer had an unexpected error and crashed in the middle of working on the project. This was very unfortunate because the project had not been saved for a while so all the progression that had been made was lost. The project included new footage as well as the addition of credits/titles. It was very hard to get back to the same position we left in a small amount of time and this has left us very behind in our schedule.
Rachael from our group was also away today.

Thursday 26th Feb 09

Today we prodominatly edited, however we decide we needed a few more shots, especially close-ups of john and steve prior the fight scene. in the editing process we worked on continutive errors to enable a cleaner flow, the main continuitive errors occoured around the point of the 'fight scene build-up'. this was fixed by the insertion of our new shots.
After we got the shots we needed, we captured the footage onto FinalCut Express for editing and added it to our current footage.

12th February- filming

Today we completed the filming process by filming all of our shots that we will use. these shots included filming from Reigate high street and castle grounds. We used friends from our college to play the main characters in our film. We used, Ash, Scott, Andy as the teenagers that owe the money, Steve and Jon as the gangsters. After we gathered our film, we uploaded the onto the Mac's are cut them into shots, many times there were many takes on each shot, we then labelled them to make later editing easier.

Tuesday 10th February 09 - Planning

Today we made plans on how to shoot the rest of the film. This is because the scenes contain fast moving sequences involving a chase scene. This requires more actors and more time preparing each shot. Of course we have a storyboard of what we want to do but it is still quite difficult.
In addition, Steve and Jon from our group began thinking up a logo for our production company name for when we start making out credits which will be quite soon because we have the footage for the titles.
We will also start uploading and capturing the beginning of our film so it is ready for editing.

Monday 9th February 09 - First Filming Day

Today we began filming our film. We did the first few shots at Reigate College because we needed a large, dark, empty room. In addition we only needed 3 people so we could get started pretty quickly. The filming went well and we discusses each shot before we filmed it to make sure everyone was happy and that it would be the best shot we could produce. We did each shot a couple of times in different ways so when we edit it we have a wider choice in terms of what shots we could use for the final piece. One problem we might have had was the audio on the camera. Because we were unable to playback the footage we filmed straight away, we were unable to see if our voices were clearly audible.
The roles of the first few scenes are as follows:
Steven: Gang thug
Jon: Gang thug
Rachael: Gang leader
Jess: Camera
Although Jess was on camera, we all looked at the shot before we filmed it to make sure we could all decide as a group what looked best and what would be most effective for our film. We managed to get all the scenes we wanted to film completed and at the moment we should be on schedule for the rest of the filming.

5th Feb 2009 re-creating shots

today we imitated shots from the movie adulthood.  this was to practise different methods of filming for our upcoming production betrayal. we found it fairly difficult as we were the only group without a tripod. however we managed  to successfully create these shots which will be of great use to us for our production betrayal which is also a gangster/ crime film set in the UK. 

29th january - Storyboard.

Today, with analysis from the readily excising synopsis and script we compiled our initial story- board. we considerer this to be a draft.

The synopsis reminded us of the plot, with addition to the stage direction from the script we were able to construct a storyboard, including camera work, like pans and zooms. 

27th january, 2009 - script analysis

Today all the groups assessed each others work, to acknowledge the flaws in the scripts. Us, group 44 decides that group 43's script was too long for the two minute criteria, whilst group 45's was too long.
The criticisms we encountered were that our script could involve more detailed stage directions, we made the rectifications to the script and saved.

this is the script:
Betrayal
Opening scene – gangsters hide out

Calvin and Dean enter a room with black walls, no windows and two thick doors inside the room is Tina sitting on a chair waiting for the two of them.

Tina
(Ordering)
I need you two to take care of something for me. There’s this group of kids who owe me a lot of money. They shouldn’t be a problem for you two.

Dean
(In a deep rough voice)
What would you want us to do?

Tina
I want you to bring them to me unharmed if possible.

Calvin
Consider it done.

Tina Smirks in acknowledgement

Next scene – Reigate just outside Martins co-op store it’s a mildly warm sunny day in the middle of Spring Max, Laura and mark exit the shop with snacks heading towards the castle grounds.

Max
Hey Laura you going to Chris’s party tonight?

(Max says this whilst eating a chocolate bar)

Laura
Yeah i'm going but I’ll be a bit late, got work first

(Laura converses with Max whilst crossing the road)

Max
Cool, what about you Mark, you goanna come tonight?

Mark
Haven’t been invited don’t really know Chris. I’ll probably end up going anyway.

Scene changes to Castle ground alley entrance as the three of them approach the grounds Calvin and Dean confront them.

Dean
How’d you buy them snacks? Tina said you couldn’t afford to pay her back the money you owe

Calvin
I’m sure they have our money. Come on, cough up

Max
(In a worrying tone)
I’m sorry mate we haven’t got it on us, we need more time.

Dean
Yeah, yeah heard it all before now give us it!

(Dean cracks his knuckles)

Mark
(In an annoyed tone)
Oi didn’t you hear him he said we don’t have it on us.

Dean
(Smirks)
Well your goanna have to pay someway, somehow.

(Dean grabs the scruff of Marks hoodie and slams him into the wall)

Mark
(In an angry and nervous tone)
Piss off!

(Mark punches dean in the side of the face knocking him to the ground then looks at Max as if asking what to do now)

Max
(Nervous and excited tone)
Fuck it run!

(Max and Laura run in one direction and Mark runs in the other. Dean gets up rubbing his cheek where he was hit looking at Mark running away, he then looks at Calvin

Dean
You go after those two this ones mine

(Dean sprints after Mark)


Calvin
All right meet back here when you’re done

(Calvin sprints after Max and Laura)

Monday, 26th january.

Today we have started to compile the final script, this script will include stage directions and any additional information about the setting. we have two days to complete the script, we plan to get a significant amount done today.

We also watched the final pitch presentation and gave constructive criticism on their budget floors - they didn't account for traveling costs.  

presenting the pitch 23rd january 09

today we are presenting our film idea to the class treating them as film investors.we talked about how we would make our film and a little bit about the plot. After we gave our pitch the rest of the class had the opportunity to ask questions. We then watched other groups presentations and wrote constructive criticism on their presentations. We can now start making our film.

Monday 19th Jan 09 - Continuing with the pitch

Today we continued with our presentation pitch for our film production. We also decided a production company name "GEFS" which compounds the initials of the groups last names. All members of the group were present today, so we made good progress and co-operation with our presentation. We are about half way through our presentation and should be ready for the pitch deadline on Thursday 22nd January. 

today we are watching various opening title sequences that are related to the film we are planning to make and writing an analyse for it. We looked a various title sequences such as Snatch, The Warriors, Casino Royale, Clockwork Orange and a few more. All these films have scenes involving some sort of high speed chase or gang activity. This is because it relates to the sort of material that we want to include in our title sequence. We found the warriors was the best one to take a reference from because our idea for the title sequence is based on street gangs and this is prominent in the title sequence of The Warriors.
The good think about The Warriors is that it included many establishing shots to really exaggerate the personality and image of the different gangs. After an establishing shot of each gang, close up shots were used to bring the audience into the individuals of the gangs.

We also continued with working on our pitch for our title sequence.

Tuesday 13th Jan 09 - Deciding a plot line

Today we discussed various ideas for our film plot. Unfortunately, we could not discuss our ideas with the whole group because one member of the group, Steven was absent doing an exam. We will put forward our ideas to Steven when he next returns.
This was our initial idea for the film:
A street gang is owed money for a particular cause that is unknown to the audience. They are walking down a street one day when they are faced against their rival gang. A chase begins between the gang and their opposition which leads them through a public area such as a park or a forest. Eventually the opposition get cornered and are captured and take them into their custody. The gang give the victims a choice between paying them back by the following day, joining their gang or losing their life. Two of the victims disagree and are given 24 hours to escape. One however, decides to stay and join. The new member is sent by the gang on various jobs like debt collecting or beating up who causes problems for the gang members. One particular job the gang member is sent on is a hit-man job on one person who owes the gang a lot of money. This is much more serious than anything the member has done before and is faced with the biggest decision of his/her life. Will the well respected new gang member fulfill the task? Or will he/she see sense before its too late.

Now we have the initial plot idea, we can now start working on the actual title sequence of the film.

Tuesday 6th Jan 09- creating the script

After forming our group our next task was to create a story line. To create our plot we all came up with different plot ideas and then discussed which ideas we felt were the best. We came up with two main ideas. One was an adventure story set in the brazilian jungle about teenagers searching for inherited treasure. We liked this idea but we felt conveying the jungle to the audience would prove too challenging and may ruin the story. We then came up with another idea but still keeping the first one in mind as a back up story. The second plot line we came up with was based on a gangster/mafia idea about a gang/mob collecting some sort of debt from a couple of victims. After this we started thinking of locations for the title sequence. We wanted dark, ominous locations to match the them of the title sequence. We thought of locations such as alleyways and a forest, quiet streets. A forest may be optimum for a chase scene as well.
We also thought about characters. We wanted at least two to three gangster characters with two to three victims. We decided it would be good to have more gangsters than victims.

We looked at a few opening sequences of films to use as reference for our title sequence. Ones that we liked and felt would be good to use for ideas was The Dark Knight and The Warriors. The links for these clips can be found below:

monday 5th jan 09: - creating production company

On the first day we selected the members of our group based on the skills they have and the fact that we all work well together and make a good team. three of us had already worked together on our prelim task and we made a successful team producing a good production. we brought Rachael into group because she possesses the skills required and is great to work with. Then we acknowledged the roles required and allocated them according to groups members regarding their skills, all the roles are joint due to the size of the group. the roles include: director (Rachael and Jess), producer(Steve and Jon), camera(group) and sound(group).