Production Meeting

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Production Meeting (with Matt)

Today we had a production meeting where Matt (Media tech) came into to talk about how we could turn our ideas into reality. He liked our idea and thinks that it has great potential. We have decided we now have the basis of our idea as we have done a first draft of the storyboard; we now need to get to some depth into our characters. Matt said, that to create a legitimate character you need to think about their backstory. For our lead male: does he prefer using a notepad or a laptop? Is he a messy person or really neat? For our female lead: what magazines does she read – are they on her desk? Does she doodle in her notepad? These things will make the character more realistic, the audience won’t register it directly but combined with personality of the characters it will factor in.

Thinking about titles:

As a group we are in the process of deciding what kind of font we would like for our titles. So far we have narrowed it down to two (very juxtaposing) ideas.

The first idea is to have the font incredibly neat and tidy. It would be a classic computer generated font, like american typewriter for example. This fits in with his image of perfection and order which we shows on the outside.

Title Idea One (for example)

To completely contrast this, the next idea is a messy hand-written font. This would mimic the writing that he does in his secret notebooks. It could look really effective or it could just look out of character and context with the rest of the footage. 

(for example)

Script (in progress)

Extra 1: See you tomorrow mate!

Extra 2: Aright, have a good evening.

Jennifer (Lottie): Michael I’m off now. I’ve just arranged the case files you wanted and I’ll just leave them here. Oh and do you want me to get coffee for you tomorrow morning? Is there anything specific you want? (Sound of voice begins to blur out)

Michael (Paul): She’s quite a pretty girl. I’ve always thought she was pretty but nothing special. All the guys in the office are crazy about her, I don’t see it. Good body, nice hair, pretty eyes, cute smile…She’s not perfect though… and I want perfect. Pause. Those ears. I could use those.    



                                                                           -

At the moment we have drafted this VERY basic script. The words that we do eventually use will undoubtedly be different but we have this here as a starting block for us to use to begin with. The lines that Michael says at the moment are a bit vague and we will most likely tidy it up dependent on the footage we get.
Our script isn't very long because our opening title sequence consists of very little dialogue, most of which will be recorded in the studio after shooting. 

Props List:

This is our current props list. Some of these items will need to be collected by Al, others will be collected by ourselves.
The laptops we will use, will be our own. Magazines are already in my possession so we can recycle them.

First Draft of Storyboard

'Borrowing' ideas

I would love to use some sort of 'type-writer' font in the opening titles because this links with the whole idea and theme of journalism and writing. However, this is a modern day production and typewriters are no longer used, but the font style is.

I typed into google 'top 10 films on journalism' and I got some results. I then placed the names of these titles and had a look at their opening title sequences.

 'All The President's Men'

From 00:30-00:40 there is a fantastic use of a typewriting with synchronous sound. The effect of the punching sound mimics the sound of gunshots which could very well be used in a journalism/psychological thriller.












Next I had a look at the opening of 'American Psycho' and I just can't explain how perfect I think it is. Every shot and word that he says (in his head) tells us how introverted he is, and it's excellent!
My absolute favourite shot and piece of script is from the point 01:59-02:27. He peels off a facemask whilst talking about how no one knows the real him, and how what everyone else see's is all just a disguise. The impact of the physically removing a 'layer of skin' off his face while uttering these words is just so clever. Although we don't have a scene where we see our lead character talking about his daily routine, I can imagine that if we were to create a full length film, a scene like this would definitely be included. I love how they get across that he has such a strict routine, which can be seen as weird or just particular. This is the kind of sense that I would like our lead character to show when we see him sat at his desk.

Research

This lesson our task was to research similar films to our idea. As our thriller is psychological, I began by typing 'top psychological thrillers' into google and then had a look through the results.

I initially started looking at the 'Dexter' trailers as they have an excellent use of inner thoughts, and I loved the way that Dexter zones out and stares just right of the camera when his inner thoughts are being shown. I think using this in our film would work really well.

I then came across a film from 2002 called, 'May'. It is about a girl who is trying to create a friend. In this she talks about their body parts being nice. Totally coincidently, that is exactly what we want our lead male to be doing in his inner thoughts. The difference with 'May' is she tells the person that she likes their legs, for example. Whereas with ours, he will be keeping it all a secret. Left is the 'May' trailer, from 1:22-1:27 is a perfect example of a chracter lusting over body parts.