Se7en

We watched the movie Se7en in wednesdays lesson and i think we all really enjoyed the concept of the film as well as the shots included in it. It was hard to miss the shots when Foster was pointing out every good one to us!

I liked the genre of psychological/crime/mystery thriller which our group were initially thinking of doing. There were some scenes which really got me and Lucy jumping our of our seats, literally! The opening credits were very interesting as it was still telling part of the story. it had a sense of mysteriousness and the close-ups on the fingertips and notebooks were a nice addition as we saw the importance of them towards the end of the film.

Overall, great film! Bit scary for my liking but love a bit of Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt.

Filming

We have now moved onto the next part of our film opening which features me in the 'airport' toilets. We decided to use the school toilets as they look like airport toilets and would be much easier for us. Having the freedom to re-do shots as many times as we want and get as many angles as we want is definitely a plus! So far, the filming in the toilets have gone very well as we all seem to know exactly what we want and we all have the same ideas in mind. 

Here, the girls came up with a brilliant idea on how to achieve an overhead shot;semi-safely. 

Heathrow Success

I think it's clear we're all feeling very much like spies after getting through the Heathrow filming we did last week! After getting over the shock of how cheap it is to get the Heathrow, we got to filming straight away. Terminal 4 was definitely a great filming location.

We started with some shots of me walking into arrivals, then after much discussion over our teas in Costa, we started with a stationary shot of me going down the escalators. I found this particularly hard as there were many people going up and down the escalators at the same time so we had to re-do this shot an awful lot. Eventually realising the Wetherspoons diners were giving me suspicious looks we decided to make my next attempt the last. And succeed we did! phew!

The next shot we decided to do was panning which included a massive 'arrivals' sign in the background. I loved the idea of this shot but actually doing it proved to be harder than i thought. Being the only teenagers there and especially wearing the most brightly coloured clothing i definitely stood out. This is great for our film as you can clearly see the character but it was worrying having to walk past the same people so many times for our different angles!

Here's our journey to the aiport and a little memory!

The beginning!

Here's the official start to the actual filming for our two minute film opening!

Concept Update

Here is our concept update where we discuss and explain our new idea. Now a spy/action film opening and our ideas for shots ect..



Finally managed to get the RIGHT blog up. Thanks Foster :D

Inspiration

Another film inspiration we could use is 'Mr and Mrs Smith' as both characters are spies in disguise. We  decided that our protagonists 'spy-wear' will be similar to Angelina Jolie's character in the scene where she enters her spy office and the other female spies hand her information etc. This makes the character seem more important and much more of a 'top-spy'.

Filming Research

Before filming our shots in heathrow we needed to research which terminal the international arrivals would be so we ended up in the right place! This screenshot from the heathrow website tells us all the information we needed and more! 

Inspiration

So we've changed our idea/concept yet again, still quiet similar to our initial idea of someone on the run. We're now doing a 2 minute opening to an action film which features a character still on the run but not literally running. She will be shot in various iconic landmarks in London each location in which she will lose or gain something physical which adds to the build up of her real persona (a spy). In short, she starts off as a typical travelling student and ends being a top spy.
Also, we would like to add a timer/stopwatch/ effect at the bottom of our final film to add to the effect of creating suspense, mystery and spy-ness.

As we were discussing our new ideas, I thought the concept was quite similar to the film Salt. This helps us as we can get inspiration for music/shots/content from the film.

Pitch

Fridays pitch to Miss Foster went considerably well. Still torn on the subject of the wheelchair but we're thinking of alternative endings, where the film could go,what improvements we can make etc...
We've stuck to our initial thoughts and ideas for the film, just adding a few things such as the take-off footage Rachel has and the change of clothes scene in the public toilets. 
Overall, I think it will be challenging for us to film in the locations we've chosen but hopefully the outcome will be worth it!



 

Story boarding

Our first attempt at story boarding our concept for the final film. Sinead is quite the artist!

Concept Vlog

Our little vlog about our entire meeting, filmed in Starbucks!

Locations

These are the various locations we have thought about including in our film. We decided to take advantage of living in London, clearly.

Heathrow Airport-one/two shots of departures.
Southbank-we're quite fond of the bridges, think we can get a few good shots out of that.
Kings Cross St. Pancras St-great scenery and building. We can also get some shots of the Departures/Arrivals board to give the idea of someone leaving/escaping etc
River Thames-again, good shots.
London Eye-amazing view. At the moment, we're thinking of doing a birds eye view from the London eye of someone running.



These locations will be the flashback in the film and the reality scene will feature just one location. Still undecided, but being a psychiatrists office it needs to look established and a little homely.

Peugeot Advert

We really liked the idea of continuous shots flashing rapidly on the screen which we might use for the beginning of our film. A little like swish pan minus the pan...

Concept Meeting

Just returned from our group concept meeting. It went very well as we now have our general concept, different filming locations, various shot ideas and most of our casting planned out. 
Here are all of our ideas on paper!