Pre-Production: Planning

Introduction:

Before we even start on our production itself, we have been doing some extensive planning that will hopefully help us save time and effort when it comes to actually producing our portfolio of work. We felt as a group that we need to work on 4 different areas of planning; we first need to create an idea for our movie; some kind of vague plot/story line that we could use for our trailer, this would also have to include key characters and themes . We also need to find a suitable location/locations to shoot our teaser trailer locally if possible. As well as this, we need to think about the equipment we would need for our shoot (camera, props etc.), and finally the way in which we would edit our filming, posters and magazine cover (the software we would use, images and scenes we want and format). I will present the planning process below:

Initial Trailer Planning and Plot Ideas:

We have first decided to focus on the story/plot of the action movie. After researching the genre, we have already had a few ideas on what the trailer should have in general, this includes:

• Action Scenes (fighting, guns etc).
• An intriguing plot line that would attract our target audience.
• A male protagonist.
• Some kind of antagonist to the story.
• An interesting setting.

After a long time discussing plot ideas, we have finally settled on having a story that includes a strong male protagonist, that has some kind of precognitive power, in which he can see into the future to prevent or help in situations. We got the idea from other films in the action genre, such as ‘Knowing’, ‘premonition’, ‘memento’ and ‘next’. The ideas is not exactly original, but it is a popular and interesting plot idea that could attract our target audience (being in the target audience we are aiming for, we felt that it would interest us!). Although the idea isn’t very original, we felt that we could introduce a change to the typical conventions of this type of film; and because we are only making a teaser trailer, we would not have to go into to much plot detail.

We have now thought about some more detailed plot and teaser trailer ideas. We have decided that the teaser trailer needs to be around 2 minutes long, but no longer; this is because we felt that if the trailer was any longer than this, it would no longer be a teaser trailer, but a full blown movie trailer. We have been thinking about the construction of the trailer itself, deciding that we want to have some kind of situation in which the protagonist cannot escape from, but at the end of the trailer, his future has been changed by his precognition. In other words, at some point in the trailer, the protagonist will have a vision of the future and the ending of the trailer will be changed by this vision.

Movie Title:

In this process we have also made a decision on the title of the action movie itself; since the protagonist will be having ‘precognitions’, we have decided on the title “Precognition”. We felt that this has sums up the film in one word, and is an effective and interesting title that would draw in an audience.

Voice Over and Script:

We knew that we would want a voice over to add to the teaser trailer from the beginning of our planning, we have decided that a voice over narration from the male protagonist would be a lot more effective than dialogue itself. We felt that it would help to give the audience some clues about the character and possibly help the character relate or become more intimate with the audience. Planning script for this voice over has become one of priorities for the trailer. After discussing the script, here is a list of what we thought it would need to include:

• Some kind of introduction to the protagonist.
• Information on his power and what he believes.
• A deep, interesting and drawing voice for the audience.

We felt that these were the most important factors to have for the voice over narration.

We have now written the script for the protagonist’s voice over narration, and will later cast somebody to actually record the voice over itself. We felt we needed to get this done early on in the planning of the trailer so that we would know how long we wanted the filming itself to be; we would be able to judge how much filming and editing we need to do when the time comes to do it.

Trailer Setting:
We have now started to plan and find a suitable setting for our trailer. We have decided that the trailer needs to be set locally (in and around the Bristol area), this is for superficial reasons; we can only travel so far with equipment and props!

We have been thinking about a city setting for our trailer, we thought that this would be a more interesting setting for an action trailer and would also follow some of the conventions set by other action movies; an action movie set in the country would just not be realistic or interesting! We felt that a city setting would make a much more seedy and believable setting for our action teaser trailer. We also felt that a night time setting would be important, not only to give the trailer a seedy, dark feeling that we wanted, but also because it would be easier to film as night time, with less filming distractions.

We have now looked at some possible locations for our trailer in and around Bristol City Centre, we have used Google maps to present these in our blog, you can click on any of these images to view them in more detail, or just look them up on google maps yourself! They have each been flagged on the map:

http://maps.google.co.uk/

Location 1: Prince Street/The Grove, Bristol.

We have chosen Prince Street as one of the possible locations of our teaser trailer. It is a city setting, surrounded by large work buildings, set right by the river. It is a quite place at night, and lit well with street lights. This could be a good place for our trailer to be set, although there are a few problems with it; it may still have some people at night, it is not an amazingly attractive setting (there is nothing special about it) and it is often full of traffic. This could be a problem when going to film there, especially with props like fake guns!

Here are some more images of the same location, taken from google maps again. This time, we have used the street view in google maps to show you the location up close and from street level.

Location 2: Cannon's Way, Bristol.

We have also chosen the canons way area because of its interesting city setting. It has plenty of large work and living buildings surrounding, and also has a large Lloyd's Bank in the centre of the street. The buildings here are unusual and could be great for filming, including one very large rounded bank building. The streets are often quite empty here, but at night time, it is quite busy. It has a taxi bay where taxis wait for customers.

Again i have included images of the location from street view:

 Location 3: Pipe Lane/ Temple Back, Bristol.

The last location we looked at (Pipe Lane/Temple Back) would also work well for our teaser trailer. It includes large government owned buildings set in a very isolated street. The buildings have a pathway in between them that can only be accessed by foot. Although this path is not very well lit, it would also be a great location as it is set right next to the city's main railway station Temple Mead's.

Again i have included the location in street view:

 Location Choice:

We have decided to use our third location, Pipe Lane/ Temple Back, Bristol as our teaser trailer setting. We have found this to be the perfect location not only for our initial plot ideas, but also for filming. The area has a long path way that is spot lit the whole way down. It is surrounded by large government buildings that would be interesting on film, and can be shot from many different vantage points for effect. The area we have chosen is right next to the railway line and rail station, so we could possibly incorporate this into our trailer. The location is also extremely quiet, both in the day and at night; it would be a great location for our trailer.

Filming Equipment and Props:

Filming Equipment:
We have also been thinking about the equipment we would need for shooting our action trailer. We decided to start with, we have made a decision on which type of camera we should use for filming; we had the choice between a lower resolution cameras with easy access, or a higher resolution HD video camera that would be harder to get our hands on. We decided that it would be worth while to use the HD camera, not only for its higher resolution video, but the high resolution still shots that it is able to produce as well (obviously we would need a decent selection of still images to use for the posters and magazine cover as well). We also decided that we would do most of the video shots using a tripod as this would give us much more consistent, steady shots that would look more professional. Obviously we also needed to make sure we had sufficient film or memory on the camera to shoot the trailer and extra batteries!

This is the camera we are going to use for filming, it is the Fugifilm Finepix S2500 HD Camera. It shoots HD film and saves it onto an SD card. It also shoots incredible still shots in HD.

Props:

 The props we needed would also make a difference to the finish quality of the trailer; if we used fake looking props, then the trailer would be a lot less believable and this could not really be edited later on. We decided that we would need prop guns for the teaser trailer, as we already had some idea that the action story would need guns (after all, what action movie doesn’t have guns?!?). We knew a friend that we could borrow several realistic looking BB guns as well as costumes that we may need for the trailer. Other than that, we decided that it would be easiest to keep props to a minimum.

Editing Software:

Thinking about the later stages in the trailer making process, we knew that we would need access to some decent editing software, not only to create the trailer, but to create the posters and magazine cover as well.

We had an easy choice when it came to the software we would need to help create the movie posters and the magazine cover; deciding to use Adobe’s Photoshop. This decision was made because of the ease of use of the software itself, it is easy to create something we needed; with the right still images of course! We also had extensive use of this software on the previous AS level course, creating a music magazine, so that we knew it would be perfect for creating our magazine cover.

It was much harder to choose editing software we could use when it came to editing the filming into our final trailer. We thought about using the Apple iMovie software that comes as standard on the Apple Macs, but this software is very basic and when creating a teaser trailer, we knew that we would probably need to at least add some basic effects that this software doesn’t have ( it isn’t the best software available!). We also had the choice of using a program called Sony Vegas; this software could help us edit the filming with more detail and precision, also making effects that we needed accessible to us. The only problem with using this software was that it wasn’t accessible in our sixth form, so we would have to do all of the editing at home. We have decided that this won’t be a problem, and have gone with the Sony software.

Poster and Movie Magazine Planning:

Although the trailer itself is a very important part of this media projects, we also felt that both the movie posters and the magazine cover would be just as important when it came to the project in general; without authentic looking versions of these, then the whole realism of the trailer may be at risk. We want to make the posters and magazine cover as detailed and highly finished as possible.

Poster:

We have been thinking about ideas for the posters we are going to create, deciding that a series of 3 similarly themed posters would be perfect for our project. This would be perfect for our group of three; we could each work on 1 poster separately, and work as a group to create the movie magazine cover. We felt that these posters need to be ‘edgy’ and dark. Action movie posters often focus on one character or group of characters that star in the action movie itself, we also felt that we need to follow this convention and have our main male protagonist as the focus of the posters. We have looked at many examples of posters in the research we did for this project, and have got a good idea in our heads of what we want the posters to look like, and represent. We also decided that these posters need a recognizable branded font for the ‘Precognition Title’, as well as the font used for the small credits shown on most, if not all movie posters. This needs to be very recognizable, and similarly placed and colored on each poster; we can then also use this text for the title clip for the teaser trailer itself. Here is a vague plan of what we want the posters to look like; I have used Microsoft Office Publisher to create a general outline:

Movie Magazine Cover:

Creating a movie magazine cover as a group should be easy, as last year we focused our project on creating a number of music magazine issues including 2 front covers. Movie and Music magazines have very similar ‘looks’ and can be easily recognized in shops. We feel we need to make our movie magazine cover look similar to other magazines currently available on the market. We have looked at a number of example movie magazines including ‘Film Magazine’ and ‘Empire Magazine’ and taken our own visual tips and styles from these to apply to our own magazine cover. Here is a vague plan of what we want the magazine cover to look like; I have used Microsoft office publisher to create a general outline:

Final Plot and Basic Story Board/Scene List:

Now we have finalised the plot as a group, and we have designed an outline of the trailer storyboard. We wanted something that was quite less action based, but still had elements of action embedded in it. We felt that we would keep the use of props to a minimum, but at the same time, when these props were used (mainly fake guns); they would at least be authentic looking replicas. We made a decision that our story needed some kind of action scene early on in the planning process, and finally now we have decided that this action sequence needed to be no longer than around 20 seconds to actually draw in the attention of the viewer. The trailer itself needed to be around 2 minutes in length (including the titles and credits etc). Here is the basic plan of the different scenes that we have now planned:

• Scene 1: The male protagonist is walking along the main pathway of our location whilst voice over plays. Different shots and angles can be used to give the scene interest.
• Scene 2: The male protagonist stops briefly, acting almost as if he has some kind of head ache. (This is where we will cut back to in scene 5)
• Scene 3: The male carries on walking until he reaches his car. Going to get in, he is attacked by two men (their identities are hidden in some way).
• Scene 4: The men beat the protagonist to the ground, and shoot him (the protagonist is killed). At this point the screen goes blank (white or black?).
• Scene 5: This blank screen reverts to the end of scene 2, scenes 3 and 4 were a vision of some kind. The future is now different as the male protagonist walks away after pulling out a weapon that he didn't have before. The trailer is left on a cliffhanger, after the male walks in the same direction; we presume this time he is not killed.

We will base our trailer mainly on these scenes.

Conclusion:

In planning this project thoroughly, we have been able to make essential decisions and obviously plans we will need when creating our project. All of this planning has pointed us in the direction we want to go, now all we need to do is follow it!