props, setting and equipment needed

Props List

Props used in the Addict shots:
Syringe
Tea (Heroin substitute)
Spoon
Rolling eqiupment (Papers, tobacco, roach)
Oregano (Cannabis substitute)
DVD cases (for rolling and snorting from)
White sugar mixed with water (cocaine substitute)
Lighter

Props used in Smart Guy shots:
Alarm clock
Kitchen Utensils (frying pan, plates, mugs, spatulas, cutlery)
Bacon
Butter
Bread
Ketchup
Toaster
Coffee
Toothbrush
Glasses

Set Design
Our set designs were simple and were pretty much exactly as each house was led out in the first place. In the squat we added the matress into the middle of the floor and put rubbish through out the room, but the place, being a squat, was pretty dirty in the first place.
At my house we kept the layout the same. A standard, normal looking house, bedroom, kitchen, living room and bathroom. This was perfect because it helped tho show that he is just a normal, every-man at the start.


Equipment
We used just one Handycam and one tripod through out filming. For editing we are using Adobe Premier Pro.

Costumes

Costume design was an easy way we could really focus on character contrast; something we really wanted to show was the two characters lifestyles and how they are different, despite being the same person, we wanted to show the change that had taken place, from respected lawyer down to lowly drug addict.
we put the lawyer in a suit, black trousers, white shirt, red tie and a jacket. Black socks and polished black shoes.we found that this costume showed class and wealth. We had him wearing thick rimmed glasses to show that he is smarter than his future self(drug addict) and further contrast between the two. The smart guy's hair had a side parting, combed back and out of the face. this made him look cleaner and more respectable.

For the addicts appearance we had him wearing grey, half hemp, half cotton trousers which look like pyjama bottoms, he was wearing just a plain, white t-shirt on top. This gave the addict a scruffy and unclean appearence. His hair was greasy and messy, all over the place. this showed that he has hardly any class and didnt really care about how he looked aslong as he got his hit. this conformed to the streotype associated with drug addiction. The addict wasn't even wearing any socks. We also splashed alex's face and hair with water to give the impression of sweating.

Having filmed all of our footage for the main task and edited the clips into our desired order, we looked at how the opening titles for our film should look like. we did this by researching how other films set out their opening credits. One of the film introductions that was relevant to our film opening was Se7en starring Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt and Kevin Spacey. Directed by David Fincher, this film tells the story of two police detectives(Freeman and Pitt) persuing a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as his motive.

we found most useful from this is the composition is how the titles appear across the screen. doing this technique would be difficult because we do not have the software but it's given us a good starting point and shown us how well timed credits are needed.

this clip from the famous Michael Cimino film 'The Deer Hunter' from 1978 as it is a very powerful scene which has a great affect . The film won 5 oscars including best supporting role (Christopher Walken), Best Picture, Best Director and Best Film Editing. This is a great film to take inspiration from and observe how certain techniques can be used in their best possible way. What I think is most striking about this scene is the superb acting from Robert De Niro (Michael) and Christopher Walken (Nick) as they play the Russian Roulette game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqakCa-MysE

What i like most about this scene is the level of tension and frustration caused between the characters as Robert De Niro laughs and jokes to hide his fear. he shows a great performance as he takes a dominant role in the scene, over coming the Vietnam officers by making them lose their concentration.

Editing

We have been editing our film for a week or so now and we finished the pre edit yesterday. I am really pleased with our footage, i think we really captured the imagry and pace that we wanted to achieve. There were a few glitches with our shots for example the cameraman (chet) being visible in the reflection of the car windows but we overcame this by chopping and cutting the shots. We made the enitial shots fairly long to start with and put few cuts to the drug addict in the first 20 seconds. We slowly made the shots of the addict more frequent, thus quickening the pace. At the we chopped in several shots of the addict every other second adding in shots of the fast head shaking which i think looks really effective.
Our next aim is to start post production and find some suitable music from one of the copyright free music sites.
For post production we will add grain and blur to the addict shots and sharpen the others.
We want to find music which contrasts the footage so for example a simple piano piece which could maybe sound innocent or even happy to contrast with the grittiness and dark images shown in the footage.

bibliography

as i had missed some media lessons i was not available to chip in with all the sections but i needed a full blog so Alex allowed me to use some of his material to help make my blog up to date.

Music selection

For the music in our film we have chosen is a piano/guitar instrumental called 'New Cats In Town' . We downloaded it from a free site so as we would not clash with any copyright laws. The music sounds really innocent and put along with the music the film feels more sinister and creepy which is exactly the effect we wanted to create. Through out the course of the film we fade in three different 'drone' songs which are basically low bass frequency noises which brings an ominous, doom-like feel the music and the film as a hole, these drone tracks were by a French artist from CreativeCommons.com. In the last few seconds of the film we fade out the piano but keep the drone noises as the footage fades to black and the title appears the music at the end helps to bring attention to the fact that the characters future looks bleak at best.

Titles and Credits

Cedric Tailby
Melissa Baggley
Thomas Rackshaw
Jane Simmons

Casting By: Trent Banfield
Music: Benjamin White
Costume: Yvette Biggins
D of P: David Dawnsey
Co-producer: Helen Austin


Executive Producer: Harold Goodwin
Written By: Reynold Xu
Director: Donny M. Macklesfield

We decided to use the font 'Helvetica' because it is bold and fit in with our production. We incorporated it into our footage using fades and slants so we could put the titles where we wanted. With the help of our production software we managed to fit all the credits were we wanted rather than having to fit our shots round the titles.