CRALEX - Opening Sequence (Final Cut)

Production Diary

This is an overall diary of what happened over the two weeks it took to film and the week it took to edit.


The first week of filming was a major problem since there was a major lack of teamwork. Some members of the team didn't show up on set while others brought friends who weren't required or needed on set. This caused a lot of problems on set and among the team.
Another problem that we encountered was that some team members where unhappy about the Director's choice of cast and method of going about filming, at one point during the first week alone the team split into two  , with the director doing his own project while the rest of us started to re-film everything we had done so far.
At the end of week one we discussed the problems and decided to change one of the actors with Dafz after we discovered his acting abilities during the re-filming of what we had already done.
Week 2 there wasn't any major problems expect the relocation of set from the television studies to the boiler room, this wasn't a problem for any of us as it suited the film better. Filming was done quickly and successfully with the only problem being audio wasn't recorded properly but we managed to fix this problem by rerecording the actors saying their lines so we could place it over on the edit.
Week 3 was the editing week, it was a bit of a complex week since again some team members refused to show up when they were meant to. We all took it in turns editing and tried a number of different effects out to make the film better, in the end we managed to edit the film so it looked smooth and flowing and it all worked together perfectly. The only other minor problem we faced was sharing the editing computer with other groups so we had to split editing time during classes evenly but this just forced us to work harder so that we finished are work on time.

The Pitch

We all pitched our idea for our opening sequence to our class. We created a powerpoint with pages detailing individual parts of our idea such as;

• Costume
• Location
• Overall Idea
• Props
• Audience Research
• Mood Board/Story Board
• Script

We each took it in turn to speak about selected slides on the powerpoint, each of us preparing something small to speak about. I spoke about the overall idea of the project and the script, revealing to the class what our plans were for the sequence and what we were hoping to create, as well as thanking everyone for listening to our powerpoint. 

Dylan spoke about costume, location and props explaining our reasoning behind our choices such as why we wanted a certain character to wear a certain article of clothing or why we wanted to use that particular location.

Dafz spoke about the Audience Research since it was his job to compile all the information and to make into graphs. He presented the research in the format of pie charts since they are simple enough to follow and have a very professional vibe to them, the amount of information we gathered seemed to genuinely surprise the class.

Jake, the artist of our group, created the mood board and story board and presented both to the class. The mood board was a collection of images and words to represent the Detective/Interrogation sub-genre of crime that we were going for, it also represented the good and bad sides of the law. The Story board tied in with my part discussing the overall idea of the sequence, it detailed what we were planning would take place.

We recieved generally positive feedback for our work, some of the better feedback includes;

"Good original idea, like the sounds of flashbacks"

"Well presented, unique idea"

The class seemed interested in our idea and happy with our presentation and we were pleased with the feedback we had received.

The Script

I wrote the script for our project, I decided to keep it short and sweet and I wanted to avoid giving away huge plot elements since it is only a open sequence to a film.

Here is a picture of the script.

Props

The main prop we had trouble getting hold of was a car and someone to drive it. Pippa the actress who plays Harriet had to double up as her original character and that of the other henchman who drove the car for us, this wasn't a problem for anyone and it fitted perfectly into our filming.

Other props we used was a fake gun for the henchman that escorts the character of Cralex into the interrogation room and also we need a table, two chairs a folder and picture of Pippa. All of these were easy to get hold of, the only problem we had was before we moved the shooting to the boiler room we were filming in the television studio, we had a miniture challenge of getting a low hanging light in the shot to fit a small convention we had noticed. But after moving to the boiler room this issue was soon forgotten.

Costume

We had to think of fitting costumes for three characters, though we focused mainly on the two lead character costumes of the Detective and of Cralex.


For the Detective we wanted to settle for something simple and professional looking, we went for a basic shirt and trousers accompanied by a tie, which we wanted to hang loosely around the characters neck to show that the character isn't as professional as he should be.

An example of the costume for the Detective

For Cralex we tossed about a few ideas such as leather jackets, baseball caps, jumpers, blazers and other clothing. But we wanted to character to appear simple and weak and to have an air of defenselessness about him. With this in mind we settled for a very simple white t-shirt which was made to look a bit dirty and sweaty and some plain black trousers. The actor playing Cralex (Joe) is small and skinny so we thought combined with the plain outfit the audience wouldn't believe him to be a bad guy since he has such a weak appeal.

Locations

Finding locations was also a simple task, the opening sequence only required two different areas for us to shoot in. One area was a car park while the other was a room we needed to make look like a interrogation room.


We used the college car park for the car park scene, it was a simple enough shoot where a car pulled up and someone was removed from the boot of the car.


The interrogation room was also easy to get hold of but due to a mix up of shooting schedules we had to change from the television studio to the boiler room. We found that the boiler room provided a much better atmosphere to the shot so the mix up worked to our favor.