Reshoot List

1. Gallery (?)
2. Stairs (?)
3. Guard checking Delta's pulse
4. Delta disappearing OR Delta punching Guard
5. Sierra choking Guard
6. Sierra: "Naptime's over, Delta" then Delta getting up (only if Delta doesn't punch Guard beforehand)
7. Taking Guard's gun and keycard
8. Guard coughing
9. Delta closing the door
10. Echo walking in
11. Echo talking
12. Conversation between 3 girls
13. Walking into place
14. Handing gun to Delta
15. Crab track across girls
16. Opening the door
17. Delta getting out of the lift

Stunt Practice

Updated Shot List

After the feedback we received from Ms Blackborow, Ms Dymioti and Mr Bayliss (Chris), we changed the overall sequence of events in our opening, and changed the shot list almost entirely:

Summary:

The beginning is more drawn out, so to build suspense. This also focuses more on one character, therefore establishing that she is the protagonist, and does not overload the audience with information. Furthermore, there is more dialogue between the minor character and the protagonist. Our teachers thought that this would add some depth to the character himself as well ass emphasising the location i.e. the high security building.

Location 2

The location we intend to use for our project, after Delta comes up the lift, where most of the action will take place.

Location 1

1 of the locations we plan on using for our film opening.

Storyboard

This is the storyboard for our opening sequence; each colour represents a different shot type.

Key: 

Bright blue - Medium close up

Light blue - Close up

Pink - Mid shot

Green - Long shot

Orange - Very long shot (Wide shot)

The storyboard was our main source of information making the animatic. It took multiple re-draws and shuffling to finally match it to the shot list, however we can now visualise the sequence. This will be helpful in setting up the shoots, in terms of framing and order.

Behind The Scenes - Writing The Shot List

During our group meetings, we revised and rewrote the shot list repeatedly, acting on the feedback from  our teachers as well as any mistakes we'd spotted ourselves. Here is a snap behind the scenes of one of our group sessions.

Mila and Anjana discussing the shots - Photography by Shobnam

Fake Blood

For our project, we decided on having the guard being shot in the head, so we needed to have fake blood that looked realistic. I made fake blood using golden syrup, water, flour and red food colouring and this was the final product:

I got the recipe from here: http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Fake-Blood#Realistic_Syrup_Blood_.28edible.29

Music

In our brief, it stated "...music or audio effects from a copyright-free source." So we did a lot of investigation into copyright-free music that we could use for our opening.

We found a website called freeplaymusic.com which you could browse by feeling, so we clicked on "Adventure/Action" and looked through several tracks and narrowed it down to "All Da Bass Rockin Da Club", "Darkness Awaits" and "Maneater".

We chose "Maneater" because it conveyed the ambience and genre of our film effectively and when we put it into our animatic, we knew that it would work in our final product.

Costumes

A first glance at our costumes!

Mila and Anjana a.k.a Delta + Sierra

Anjana and Shobnam a.k.e Sierra + Echo

Lighting (in opening sequences)

In the opening scene of Kill Bill, the lighting is high key, and is being lit from the side rather than above, creating harsh shadows on The Bride's face. When Bill starts to wipe her face, he also creates a shadow, which could be indicative of his power over her, especially as we only see The Bride and we only know that it is Bill because of the name on the handkerchief. 

In the opening of Sin City, the lighting is also placed in a way to create shadows on the two characters. The lighting is especially interesting after he shoots the girl, and there is only a silhouette of the two characters, and only the silver gun is completely visible. This creates the sense of moral ambiguity and signifies the genre and style of the film.

These are the techniques that we intend on using for our film opening.

Presentation Handout 2

Presentation Handout 1

Presentation

MAS Decadence Presentation from latymermedia

Opening Sequence Titles Count

Titles are a legal requirement in films, however some appear more often than others, as well as appearing in a specific order. Below are some of the opening sequences we looked at as examples:

Zombieland:

1.       Columbia Pictures presents

2.       In association with Relativity Media

3.       A Pariah Production

4.       Woody Harrelson

5.       Jesse Eisenberg

6.       Emma Stone

7.       And Abigail Breslin

8.       Zombieland

9.       Casting by

10.   Costume designer

11.   Music By

12.   Edited by

13.   Production Designer

14.   Director of Photography

15.   Executive Producers

16.   Produced by

17.   Written by

18.   Directed by

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo:

1.       Columbia Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Presents

2.       Production company

3.       A David Fincher film

4.       Daniel Craig

5.       Rooney Mara

6.       The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

7.       Christopher Plummer

8.       Stellan Skarsgard

9.       Steven Berkoff

10.   Robin Wright

11.   Yorick Van Wageningen

12.   Joely Richardson

13.   Geraldine James

14.   Goran Visnjic

15.   Donald Sumpter

16.   Ulf Friberg

17.   Casting By

18.   Costume Designer

19.   Co-Producers

20.   Sound Design By

21.   Music By

22.   Editors

23.   Production Designer

24.   Director of Photography

25.   Executive Producers

26.   Produced By

27.   Based On The Book By – Originally Published By

28.   Screenplay By

29.   Directed By

Sin City:

1.       Sin City

2.       Jessica Alba

3.       Devon Aoki

4.       Alexis Bledel

5.       Powers Boothe

6.       Rosario Dawson

7.       Benicio del Toro

8.       Michael Clarke Duncan

9.       Carla Gugino

10.   Josh Hartnett

11.   Rutger Hauer

12.   Jaime King

13.   Michael Madsen

14.   Brittany Murphy

15.   Clive Owen

16.   Mickey Rourke

17.   Nick Stahl

18.   Bruce Willis

19.   Elijah Wood

20.   Based on the Sin City Graphic Novels

21.   Casting Director

22.   Line Producer

23.   Shot and Cut by

24.   Music

25.   Executive Producer

26.   Produced By

27.   Special Guest Director

28.   Directed By

Charlie's Angels:

1. Columbia pictures presents...

2. In association with...

3. In association with (2nd company)

4.   A film by...

5. Cameron Diaz

6. Drew Barrymore

7. Lucy Liu

8. Bernie Mac

9. Justin Theroux

10. Robert Patrick

11. Demi Moore

12. Other cast members (2nd billing)

13. Casting by...

14. Visual effects

15. Costume designer

16. Music supervision

17. Music by

18. Edited by

19. Produvction designer

20. Director of photography

21. Executive producers

22. Producer

23. Story by

24. Scrrenplay by

25. Director

26. Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle

We see from all the above that the production and distibution companies came first, followed by cast, then all other crew, and finally producer and directors. Using this basic order, we were able to finalise our own.

Opening title sequences research

In a lot of action films, there are opening scenes, and then a title sequence afterward, including the title card with the name of the film. 

Zombieland uses titles very effectively, in the title sequence and throughout the movie, by using the characters' movements to move the titles. For example, in the picture above, when the character is smashing a window, the title disintegrate with the window, almost as though they were physically there. Zombieland establishes clear branding with the titles all being in a red, sans serif font, and all in capitals. 
(Title sequence)

Sin City also has very clear branding, using only red, black and white, which is consistent with the opening scene. The titles for each character are in a red, sans serif font, all in capitals, but more comic book-esque than the Zombieland ones. Each title of the actor's name is in front of a comic book style drawing of the character, symbolising the fact that the film is an adaptation of a graphic novel.

(Title sequence)

Kill Bill has comparatively simple titles, using only black and white, with a serif font for the first 3 titles, including the title card of the film name, mostly in capitals. The titles fade in and out, and after the title card of the film, the names are capitalised normally. Then a picture of a woman's silhouette fades in as the titles fade in and out. The black and white titles tie in with the opening scene, which is entirely black and white.

The conventions of branding that are used in these titles sequence we hope to apply to our titles, and we intend on using titles as effectively as we can.

Institutions (Potential Distributors)

Screen Gems:

• American
• A subdivision of Sony Pictures Entertainment's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group
• Has distributed the Resident Evil and Underworld franchises, both action movies with strong, female protagonists.
• Has distributed British films like Attack The Block (2011) and Outpost (2008).
• Has distributed films with ethnic minorities as the main characters: Lakeview Terrace (2008), Not Easily Broken (2009), Obsessed (2009) and Death at a Funeral (2010).

We feel like this distributor would be best to distribute our film.

Columbia Pictures:

• American
• Owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment
• Has also distributed action films with strong female characters, like Charlie's Angels (2000), Salt (2010), and Zombieland (2009).

Although Columbia Pictures has distributed films similar to ours, we feel as though it does not fit our film as well as Screen Gems.

Momentum Pictures: 

• One of the leading UK film distributors
• Distributed films with strong female characters, such as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011) and House at the End of the Street (2012).

Momentum is a good British distributor, but has not distributed many films to ours, so again, does not fit our film as well as Screen Gems.

Cornucopia Films (Our Production Company)

• Founded in 1994 in London, by Dylan Gaskarth, Eddie Hudson and Jenna Pope (names we made up).
• Formed a partnership with Screen Gems in 2008 to distribute British films in the US (real distributor, fake partnership).
• In association with ‘Almost Human’ since 2009, creating make-up and visual special effects (real special FX company, did the make-up and prosthetics for Teen Wolf and Grimm, fake partnership).
• Headquarters in Soho, London (most big British institutions are based here).
• Produces motion pictures – such as Resist (2009) (fake film), Saviour (2011)(also a fake film) and Outpost (2008) (co-production with Newmarket films)(real film, fake co-production).

Film Idea

Title:

DECADENCE

Genre: 
Action-Adventure, Espionage

Sub-genre:
Girls With Guns, Sci-Fi

Synopsis: 
After realising that the government plans to redesign society, 3 special agents break off from a top-secret government programme in the hopes of preventing social segregation. Once they understand that they cannot perform this task alone, they try to appeal to their former comrades, giving them only one choice:

Kill or be killed.

Logline: 

3 rogue female ex-government agents embark on a vengeful journey, but will they be able to handle the consequences?

Gender Representation

A lot of female protagonists in action films are quite sexualised, like in Sucker Punch (2011), Resident Evil (2002) and Salt (2010).

For example, the costumes in Sucker Punch are quite revealing and seem impractical for their mission:

In Resident Evil, the posters show the main character Alice wearing a small red dress (which again, seems impractical for combat) and posing seductively with a gun:

We wanted to go against these conventions and not have stereotypical female protagonists, so we decided to have our characters:

• With a variety of personalities and strengths 
• Each one excels in their own field of expertise
• Not Damsels-in-Distress
• Can take care of themselves
• Feminine but doesn't deduct from their strength and dominance
• They do what needs to be done - not cowardly