Production 1: Brainstorming/Content Creation
Planning for Production – Idea generation and brainstorming
This week we have been divided up into our coursework groups and have begun to explore possible themes, narratives and ideas for our film opening. So far, we are considering creating a film within the action genre about a bomb squad doing a defusal mission. During our brainstorming process it was hard to be original as this trope has been ran through over the years and we didn’t want to be similar the very cliche “do I cut the red wire or the green wire?” styled films. But we eventually decided that we wanted our bomb to be concealed within a briefcase.
Planning for Production – Mood Board
This is Ben’s mood board, we liked the dull or colder colour tones over the warm ones. This aims to create a moodier atmosphere and will be clearly visible in our film. We decided to go for an office setting as it complemented our briefcase bomb prop. The setting we chose works well for us as I own a lot of suits and office-y stuff that we theorized could help make our characters costumes more detailed and realistic. Thankfully, my Mums office gave us permission to come in for 4 hours on the weekend and film.
Planning for Production – roles and responsibilities.
Today in class within our groups we discussed and delegated some key roles and responsibilities as we prepare to produce our film opening. It was decided that I would be in charge of Creating the Briefcase bomb prop, the production logo, finding the setting, editing the final product, acting as office worker 1, creating the storyboard, directing the film, bringing/suppling all of the costumes, keeping track of the filming equipment, and most of the filming/camera work. This is because I am good at being a leader and video editing as I have prior experience in Adobe After Effects. My first step towards these jobs is to finish the storyboard and draft ideas to create the bomb prop. To be successful I will need to be proactive.
Creation of the bomb prop:
The bomb prop is the most important item as our whole movie wouldn’t make sense without it. Making sure it looked realistic and convincing was a must. Me and my dad ended up making this in one night out of a metal briefcase used to hold the barbeques equipment
We removed all the tools from the case and started brainstorming. My dads a mechanic so we have quite the workshop at my house. Using that, Dad found two cylinders of Bromine I think to use as the explosive charge of the bomb. After wrapping them together with paper and duct taping them to the case, we added a bunch of multi-coloured wires from an old electronics kit and strapped them in and around the Bromine payload. I had the idea to add an “on/off” switch to start a timer. Dad liked this and we ended up implementing it. Another idea I had was to add an old Nokia 3310 as to mimic actual terrorist bombs used in Afghanistan or Iraq. Dad also approved of this. A lot of duct tape, stickers, and connecting fake wires later the briefcase bomb was completed. here are some photos of the finished product:
The Script
Benjamin was in charge of creating the script, he worked on this for approximately 5~6 periods. Much like the storyboard, we didn’t end up exactly following it.
Setting choice
For the setting, we all agreed to choose an office location as it would match the theme of the briefcase bomb prop. Thankfully, my Mums office ended up being perfect for this. So I asked my Mum who then asked her boss if we could use the office to film one weekend. Thankfully they said yes and gave us four hours to film on a Sunday (if I remember correctly). This office setting actually worked really well for me since it made costumes easy. I own a lot of suits, I enjoy that sort of stuff. So when the day came I had prepared two nice suits for me and Sean (who stepped in to act as the terrorist) as well as two all black outfits for the Bomb defusal squad members (Ben & Liam).
As for casting, we had all long since agreed on the roles – even Sean.
Here they were:
Malachy: Office worker 1
Sean: Terrorist
Ben: Bomb squad member 1
Liam: Bomb squad member 2
Production Process – Storyboard
Here is my groups production preparation to date. The highlights of our project so far have been the script and mood board However, some aspects have been challenging such as the storyboard. Spoiler, we didn’t really end up following this anyway.
We used to have a sheet of paper that clearly showed each group members roles and responsibilities but unfortunately its been lost to time. Below is my attempt to recreate it from memory.
Roles and Responsibilities:
Ben: Creation of mood board, creation of script, analyzing other similar movies/market research, acting (bomb squad member one), and thinking of the movie title (Indistinguishable).
Malachy: Location organizer, Editor, Director, Creation of storyboard, creation of production logo, equipment manager, actor (office worker one), Creation of bomb prop, and supplying costumes/Mise-en-Scene.
Liam: Acting (Bomb squad member two), helping Ben with most of the stuff he was doing, and honestly nothing else comes to mind at the minute. That doesn’t mean that he wasn’t helpful or anything, I just have a poor memory. Without a doubt Liam was an integral member of the group and we couldn’t have done it without him.
Production Process
As we get closer and closer to our filming week, we are focusing on the availability of everyone and trying to make sure that we all arrive at a similar time as to not waste precious time. We have now finished everything we need for the day. As an individual, my next steps are to make sure filming goes smoothly. We had decided that our first and only filming session will be on a Sunday at my Mums office. Our biggest challenge so far as been organizing.
Filming
Filming went really well surprisingly. We were in and out in a span of 3 hours with all of the main footage we needed and a bit of extra scenes which I actually ended up using in the final edit. The most challenging thing to me was trying to get the other actors to put passion into the acting as I think it makes the movie feel more real. Thankfully, Liam Podmore who acted as one of the Bomb squad defusal members is a Drama student. Since he has a lot of acting experience it made things go a lot smoother. We did have a couple issues with camera battery life but it was nothing a charger and a long cable couldn’t fix. Overall, the footage we got was, for the most part, acceptable to my standards. A couple things stand out to me as improvable acting wise – I won’t tell you what they are as that may lower our grade if you didn’t notice them in the first place :).
Photos:
Rough Cuts Review
In class this week we were given the opportunity to perform some market research on our class as an audience. We showed key scenes from the film as separate clips/in a rough edit and also explained our general plot/theme/characters to the audience. As a group we decided we wanted feedback on the acting and editing because we wanted to know if it added or removed from the atmosphere and watchability of the film. We didn’t end up creating a Microsoft form to gather this information on this due to a very late submission of the final edit (this was my fault – had other priorities which ended up delaying any progress on the edit until about a day or two before the deadline) this means that all the feedback we received was from the first rough cuts review we did as a class.
The audience said that (using our first rough cuts review) we needed to fix the sound issue and change the colour correction. The sound issue was not a problem with my edit but more of a screen sharing thing so that was resolved pretty quick – the colour correction on the other hand took me a while to change but I’m fairly happy with the new look seen in the Final edit. Based on the feedback, I think we weren’t doing to bad for ourselves at the time.
Teacher Feedback: “no sound to comment on due to edit issues. Smooth shots and interesting location. Acting is believable. A range of camera angles which adds to interest and shows different elements of the scene. ‘Bomb’ prop is effective. At a good length of time with space to add title card etc. Narrative is understandable. need to hear dialogue to see if this adds to narrative/characters etc.”
Student feedback:
(I found this on Benjamins blog and apparently we did have a form? I have absolutely no recollection of this though so maybe disregard the part about not having a form above?)
