Planning: Location Planning

We needed an industrial looking location, so we considered using a warehouse for our workshop and bathroom scene. Immy found a local warehouse and her and Emma managed to get the keys to it from the owner. The floor is exactly what we were looking for (polished concrete will reflect the lighting in a great way) and the main hall is very spacious, so we can easily set up the workshop. The vehicles will be gone by the time we film and we already know that there won't be any time restrictions when it comes to the day of filming; thus we will probably end up using that warehouse as our final location for the opening. 

   

   

  

  

   

   

 

Since we will have to use special lighting as a part of our setting (which kind of counts as location as well), we have also looked at various sources of coloured light available to us. There is a lamp with coloured filters available for us in school and we are also looking at purchasing a UV lamp, so that we can use it for the glowing Schweppes shots and to make the scene more eerie and futuristic looking in general. 

Planning: Casting

Technically, our opening contains two characters. However, because the face of our victim will never be shown to the audience (and only certain parts of their body will be used in the shots), we decided that it was only necessary to cast the killer.

The character is mysterious and calculating: he lacks empathy for his victims. However, he is not completely emotionless. There is an element of sympathy to him, as he lost his parents at a young age (which is a part of his motif). A defining character trait of his is his love for classical music - thus why Danse Macabre will be playing in our opening. Additionally, he does have an element of quirkiness and humour to him - that's why some of the scenes in our opening will not be as dark and eerie as the rest.

Below is the footage of the auditions we held for the role of the killer (courtesy of Emma's iPhone). Because there will be no dialogue in our opening, it was purely a physical test; after only two auditions, though, we felt that we had found our killer. Although Ashley was very enthusiastic and  enjoyed the role, we as the directors felt that he was too 'happy' and didn't fit the image of a toxin murderer, even by just the way he walked. Sam, however, seemed to get into the role immediately, and understood his character from a very brief description. His dancing was also awkward and goofy, exactly what we were looking for, but not to the point of being over the top, and taking away from the sinister nature of the production. Additionally, it was clear that he felt comfortable in front of a camera, what was an important aspect of our decision.

     

Planning: Storyboard

Here is the storyboard we created for the opening of our film (all of the slides are drawn by Immy). Although the shots will probably not look the same in the finished opening (since this is just a basic concept and we will probably have to change bits and pieces to make the most of the environment and circumstances, and adapt to our abilities), this has helped us to solidify our ideas for the sequence. 

Immy also decided, in her own time, to compile these slides (plus some additional ones) into an animatic to illustrate how our opening will look like with music. It is not perfect (she had to cut the music slightly too soon due to the limitations of hand drawn slides - they are not 100% representative of our planned shots, so the score will be adapted slightly differently and the originally placed markers and duration of the music - picture of which I have attached - will be suitable for the filmed footage; additionally, filmed footage gives more opportunities to be adjusted via editing), but it gives a great idea of how the music composes with the overall nature of the opening.

Planning: Treatment For Our Film Opening

Once again, we made a Google Docs document to keep a track of all our ideas for the opening. 

Below are the screenshots of our notes and conversations.

My contribution is written in blue, Immy's - yellow and Emma's - purple.

 

 

Now, we can confidently say we know what we're doing (the overall idea, at least). Our plan for the opening two minutes is to show the killer, whose face is never actually shown to the audience, preparing for the first murder cross cutting to shots of the act being carried out. We're planning to use a series of mysterious close ups and match on action to add intensity to the scene and to never actually reveal the face of the killer or their victim. 

In terms of sound, we are considering non-diegetic piece by Camille Saint-Saens: Danse Macabre (which is a composition from the XIX century, so there won't be any copyright issues) playing during the scene after the killer puts on headphones. When it comes to diegetic sound, we won't have almost any during the playing of Danse Macabre, but before the killer equips headphones we want to use sounds such as very loud footsteps and heavy breathing through a gas mask. 

For the titles, we want to overlay them over the shots, since we will have a lot of footage (or at least we want to have a lot of different footage) to fit into the two minutes. For the actual title of the film, we want to make it a part of the environment. We were considering a wall neon that spells 'Toxic' (or something similar to a neon, since they're so expensive) and filming it flickering as the killer walks past it, to later put it at the end of our opening sequence. 

Planning: Target Audience and Potential Openings

After presenting our 60-second pitch, we (Emma in particular) wrote the synopsis for our film:

Far into the future, in the year 2XXX, twelve influential families dominate the city in which they live. Each one is designated with its own crest, deriving from the Chinese Zodiac Calendar; their adolescent heirs, all close friends, carry their family legacies. However, things quickly take a turn for the worst. One of the friends is discovered as a decomposing corpse in a pool of mysterious glowing toxin, and the only clue to the killer’s identity comes in the form of a fortune cookie. After that, it becomes a race against time. Isolated from any outside help, the friends must put the pieces together and stop the murderer – both their own lives, and that of the next generation, is at stake.

We then realised that feedback from our target audience would be necessary in order to make our piece of the highest possible quality and create an opening the audience would truly enjoy. In order to collect the data we created an online survey using SurveyMonkey and sent it to a group of fellow students from our school. Below is the data we have collected: 

We had a very good ratio of the two genders, meaning we were able
to compare two different points of view. 

Majority of our target audience does enjoy horror, meaning our film
would gain enough attention if it came out. 

Psychological and science-fiction were definitely the most popular
subgenre - good for us, because we planned 'Toxic' to fit
into both of these. 

Some of the suggestions we got were actually very creative
and would make for a good opening. 

The average was about 8.5!