Production Research

Human resources: for this assignment we would be looking for people from the expressive arts department with creative, passionate acting skills as this would help them and us for our final grade. We would be looking for people with some production experience as this helps up keep up to time as they would have done some sort of acting behind a camera before. As a group we had also decided that not all the acting should be done by expressive arts students, but by us additionally as this would give us the chance the experience of the acting role.

Resources: the cost of this production would be around £10-£50 as this includes travel to the different locations around our local borough and central London. We would also eventually by some props such as fake guns and knives, we would also have to put some money towards the petrol of the vehicles we would be using in our short film. The locations we would be using are a house in South Woodford, a house in Leyton, a house in Ilford, A shop in Manor Park, the streets of East London for example: Leyton, Leytonstone. The equipment we shall be using are the following: Canon 650 DSLR, a shoulder rig, a tripod. We have also decided that we would also bring in some of our own cameras as this would help us get many different varieties of shots and angles.

Once all of the filming is done we would use an apple mac to edit our short film, the two piece of software we would use are going to be Final Cut Pro and Adobe After Effects as these are the two applications I am comfortable with. The props we shall use are the usual props you would see in an action and crime based film such as guns, knives, cars, bikes and drugs. In our case it would be fake dugs.

Placement: Since we are not working at a professional level for our final piece to be placed at the cinema or live TV we would have picked the easy choice and upload our work on to the web as it is the best way to get some recognition for what we have done. Websites such as YouTube and Viemo are most useful as the have many viewers worldwide, I believe that this would help us get the recognition needed for our work as we would also have some audience feedback from people we would have never met before.

Everyone who will detract us from our profits is a competitor, no matter how large or small they are, they are still part of our competition. In this case we believe that other student in the class who are creating short films are our competitors as they have the same objective as us and that is to create the best short film in the class and win the LSC Oscars. The most important thing about our competitors is to find out how they are promoting and branding themselves, whether its on social sites such as Facebook and Twitter or if it is up on advertising boards and TV’s around the college. Below is a short checklist about our competitors:

·         Use competitor information to determine where your product should be placed

·         Borrow ideas to help you to come up with a marketing strategy

·         Use competitors as a springboard for innovation

·         Everyone who will detract from your profits is a competitor

·         Find out what competitors' viewers think of them

·         Look at how they are promoting and branding themselves

·         Find out how they price their offerings

·         Find out who their actors are and whether they are good or not then try to arrange a meeting with them

Inspiration:

Research: for our research we watched some narrative music videos and movies in order to get some inspiration from them so we could come up with a story of our own. Most of the tracks we chose had similar storylines with gun and crime in common. We focused on each to get bits of them to put into our production, we had to keep in mind that we needed to make it easy to follow because adding too much into the production could make the linear structure of the story disordered and untidy. Keeping it simple but also producing an appealing and enjoyable story was our target. We also wanted twists to it so it wasn’t too predictable for the viewers. This was so they would stay attached because if it got too predictable there wouldn’t be anything exciting to look forward to so something that didn’t already happen was what we needed to come up with. We had to keep in mind what makes a good story for viewers to enjoy, things like an exciting and original idea that people have not seen before and a strong script. Good acting, a strong beginning and avoiding repetition are other things that we as a group were looking for in our short. We had to have a strong script because this would then mean that the story would have a good structure to it having something strong to guide it to its success. A strong beginning would grip the viewer’s attention for example in the film ‘City of God’ the opening scene is very fast paced with a lot of things happening from kids playing to chickens being killed and cooked and knives being sharpened. The scene carries on with a chicken escaping and kids running after it with guns, this is a sight that viewers would not be expecting so it still keeps hold of their attention. While this is happening all the main characters are being introduced and the pace of the film which is fast is kept going. Our target audience for our film is mainly males aged from 16-35 who enjoy watching crime action movies so researching what makes a good crime action movie was our main goal. The lighting for crime thriller movies are hues grey and blue, this is so to set the mood but to also have the bloody scenes really pop when it happens. Another genre of film that inspired was ‘Hood Film’, this genre originating in the United States which features aspects of urban African-American culture such as hip hop music, street gangs, racial discrimination, poverty, and the problems of young black men coming of age or struggling in a predominantly white society. Two films that are well known that fall under this genre are ‘Boyz in the Hood’ and ‘Menace to Society’ and these are one of the films that inspired us. The story of life in South Central Los Angeles, following the fortunes or otherwise of a group of young blacks. Struggling to escape the violence and drugs, some of them opt for education, pinning their hopes on college, others are caught up in the violence that is endemic to the neighbourhood. This is a short synopsis of the film. Menace to Society is very similar to this film with African American youngster trying to or attempting to escape the temptations of the ghetto. The main tracks that we focused was one called ‘Rico Story’ which is about individual that goes by the name Rico who is struggling to pay rent and ends up losing his house and gets into all sorts of trouble with the Law and meets people while getting into trouble. This is also a true story that’s what made this a gripping story.

Joe Black – Johnny: the main character in this story was working with a drug lord and then betrays him to start up his own drug business. The story is about gun and knife crime, drugs, betrayal etc. When thinking about our genre these are some of the ideas that we will be putting into the production. So like a story of an inner city drug dealer who turns away to pursue his passion which is making money, a lot of it.

Meek Mill – Tony Story: this story is similar to the Johnny by Joe Black. It is also about an individual who has the dream about making money. Unlike the Johnny track there is a video for the Meek Mill track

Paid in full: it’s about a young man from Harlem, forced to cope with the 1980s drug scene, builds an illegal empire, only to have a crisis of conscience.

Menace to society: this is about a young street hustler attempts to escape the rigors and temptations of the ghetto in a quest for a better life.

Boyz in the hood: this movie is a saga of a group of childhood friends growing up in a Los Angeles ghetto.

City of God: this story is about two boys growing up in a violent neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro take different paths: one becomes a photographer, the other a drug dealer.

Research

Research: for our research we watched some narrative music videos, we watched these in order to get some inspiration from them so we could come up with a story of our own.

Joe Black – Johnny: the main character in this story was working with a drug lord and then betrays him to start up his own drug business. The story is about gun and knife crime, drugs, betrayal etc. When thinking about our genre these are some of the ideas that we will be putting into the production. So like a story of an inner city drug dealer who turns away to pursue his passion which is making money, a lot of it.

Meek Mill – Tony Story: this story is similar to the Johnny by Joe Black. It is also about an individual who has the dream about making money. Unlike the Johnny track there is a video for the Meek Mill track

We also had looked at some movies with drama crime and action genres

Movies like ‘paid in full’ ‘8mile’    

Week 2: In the second week we carried on with task 1, we still had equipment, sound lighting etc, and locations to carry on with. We also all had to come up with a proposal, our proposal basically explained what our idea was and what the story will be based on. 'We had decided that we would go on with the first idea which was to create a short video. We had decided to go on with this idea as we have been inspired by other films and videos available on the web, an example of this is the movie Paid In Full and the Meek Mill Story: Toni. Also, since we haven’t done a short film for any of our other assignments before we thought we would try something new.' this was the start to the proposal, after this was explained a synopsis of the main scenes were done to give a brief outline of what will be hopefully happening. After this was done we focused on locations, we had to be realistic with the locations because there are scenes where the actors are in Brazil but that is not something that can be done so we would need to compromise. There is an airport scene, this would be accomplishable we would go the closest airport to film. We would be using houses for our production as well as ghetto areas around Leyton. For the filming of our short film we decided we would be using HD canon DSLR camera which would be supplied by the college as well as our personal cameras. Boom mics and artificial lights were equipment that we planned on getting. The hardware and software: an apple mac that is supplied by the college for our editing, software for our editing would be Final Cut pro and Adobe After Effects. We would use Final Cut to cut and combine all of our footage, whilst we use After Effects to colour grade and add any other special effects such as gun shots, bullet holes and any green screen use we decide to have.

Props

As our short film is gang related, we decided to involve some sort of transport in it, for example, a train, bus or even a car that a friend would sort out for us. We would also bring in some toy guns from the £1 shop that we would then have to spray paint with the colour black. We would also use one of our houses to record some of the scenes in.

Locations

We have decided that we are going to film in many different locations in East London as there are many ghetto areas that would suit our short film. The locations would be a house located in South Woodford, a shop in Manor Park, Estate flat in South Woodford and the rest of the filming would be done on the streets.

Equipment

For the filming of our short film we would be using HD canon DSLR camera which would be supplied by the college as well as our personal cameras. We would be using boom sticks so that the sound of our filming would be crisp and clear. We would also be using a rig and a tripod so that our filming would be as steady as possible. We would also be using artificial lights because some of our filming will be done at night.

The hardware we shall be using will be an apple mac that is supplied by the college for our editing. The software for our editing would be Final Cut pro and Adobe After Effects. We would use Final Cut to cut and combine all of our footage, whilst we use After Effects to colour grade and add any other special effects such as gun shots, bullet holes and any green screen use we decide to have.

Team / Talent

Cameraman – Omar / Sohaib

Director – Danillo

Sound operator – Kadar

Editor – Sohaib

Talent – Abdul and Islam (expressive arts students) as well as some acting from Danillo, Kadar and Sohaib.

idea

We had decided that we would go on with the first idea which was to create a short video. We had decided to go on with this idea as we have been inspired by my other films and videos available on the web, an example of this is the movie Paid In Full and the Meek Mill Story: Toni. Also, since we haven’t done a short film for any of our other assignments before we thought we would try something new.

Below is synopsis of all the scenes of our short film 

Scene 1

The story starts off in an office and Rico gets fired from his job. He then has no money to get by so he starts to rob people on the streets. He then sleeps with a girl and find out that she is pregnant and moves in with her as he can’t afford to pay the bills in his house and gets kicked out. Now both of them do not have enough money to get by so Rico tells his baby mom that they are going to Rob a bank. So she said alright then they got in the car and went to the shop. Rico prepared to go in the shop and his baby mom said she will wait outside and acted as the getaway driver.  He put on his mask and loaded his guns. Prayed to god and ran in the shop.

Rico pointed his gun and said don’t nobody move. Just give me all the money and we all cool. He told the keeper please don’t try anything funny or hell start to shoot. She started co-operating and gave him the money. He then ran out the bank and saw that he was surrounded by cops and ran to the back. His baby mom had disappeared and he hears an officer telling him ‘Hands behind your back, spread your feet sir’. And as he turned around he saw that the cop was his baby mom and he was being set up all along.

Scene 2

Rico is now locked up and has no money. For him to go out he has to pay 1 million. Rico is locked in a cell with a Brazilian named Pedro and he had told Rico that he had a way for him to get money. Pedro had told Rico that he had connects who would pay his bond for him. Now Rico is out of prison and has started to sell drugs and started making a lot of money.

Couple weeks later Rico went to meet Pedro in prison and they started talking. Pedro asked Rico how he was living and Rico said that he no longer want to be part of the drug industry however he loves the fast money of the cocaine. Pedro was telling Rico how he was to get released out of prison soon and how he needed him to lend him some money and drugs. And Rico could never say no after what Pedro had done for him. Pedro then started telling Rico how he was the next tony.

As Rico had left the prison and made his way home he got pulled over by a cop. He asked what happened and she had said that he had failed to stop. After looking the officer in the eye he realised that it was his baby mom and took out his gun and shot her in the face.

Scene 3

Rico doesn’t have the best of luck right now as he just shot a cop. Rico is now on the run and was on the 6 o clock news which is a big deal for killing a cop. He started to sell drugs again to make money and has nowhere to go. He got a call from Pedro and Pedro told him he’s out of prison and he needs him to give him the drugs and money he had told him about. Rico had replied and said can’t you see me on the news and needed some help from Pedro. Pedro told him that he will fly him to Brazil and Rico said are you trying to get me killed. Pedro said just come, you got a couple mill. Rico said alright I can't turn down that deal

Rico is at the airport about to go on the plane and he meets a girl named Nicki and she tells him that she’s selling drugs. Rico replies and says that the drug game is his and they continue talking. They both decide not to go and then they leave. She tells Rico that she doesn’t have a ride and Rico offers him a ride home because she one of a kind. He pulled up to his trap house and left Nicki in the car. Couple minutes later he looked out the window and he see that cops had arrived.

Scene 4

Rico is going crazy and he pulled out he’s gun and started shooting at the cops bullets started flying everywhere and then he gets shot couple times. He ran to the back of the house and got in his car. He drove to Pedro’s house and he started panicking. Looked up at the sky and it was getting cloudy. He now has a price on his head, police put a bounty on him. He comes out the car and is covered in blood and Pedro runs outside saying what the hell happened.  He tells Pedro that he lost it and started shooting at the cops. Things were going mad and there was a whole lot of action. Pedro thought Rico how he was still alive with all the bullet wounds. Rico said he thinks he would be fine.

Pedro starting telling Rico about a girl he met named Nicki and Rico said that he knew her. Know Pedro thinks that he is working for the cops and tells Rico hold on, I'm coming back. He runs inside the house and grabbed a gun. Rico looks down to check his phone and the second he caught Rico off guard he ran out and shot him.

Rico can move or talk as he has 5 bullets in his back as well as one in the head and the doctor told him he may not be able to walk. Pedro left the country and was watching the new. Pedro thought that Rico was playing him and thought that Rico was the fed and shot him in the head. The reason he thought he was a fed was because Nicki was an agent who had interrogated him while he was in prison. During the interrogation Pedro was silent and Nicki no patience and Nicki said alright and didn’t see him since.

Week 1: In our first week we were put into groups, we decided on our own group due to the different abilities that the each of us had. There were the four of us and the first role we gave to the person we thought was best suited for this position was Omar as the leader of the group. He had the task of organising the time it took to finish each task that was set to us, he had the task of sorting out the pitch and how that was conducted and was also put in charge of the production and what each us would be doing during that stage when we eventually reach there. Since this was only the start of work we didn't set every single person tasks just yet, instead we just found a leader and worked on brainstorming an idea. We had to discuss and annotate a range of different initial ideas. We had to consider the type of content and audience research we could carry out and any constraints that could occur. We looked at some movies we watched that would like to base our production around, it was also our inspirations. Films such as 'Paid in Full', 'Boyz in the Hood', 'Menace to Society' and City of God'. We also looked at a track called 'Rico Story' which is what we decided to choose. The track tells a story of a young male going through a lot of trouble, it is a lyrical story so the story was already told but we had to come up with specific talent to choose for the roles in the story.

Final Major Project – Possible Ideas

Idea 1

For our first idea we were thinking about make a video about someone called Rico Story. our video is a true story about a person named Rico and his life.

Idea 2

Our second idea is to create a short film. The main story behind the project is two crews based in two different neighbourhoods (GMG and the The-Arabs) in London who are in a constant drug war.