Alex Muir's A2 Level Media Blog!

Wednesday, 30 November 2016

Costume Designs | Jack Morgan

Unknown 06:32:00

Jack Morgan, is the name for our main protagonist character. His character background includes being a worker for a secret organisation called 'Syndicate International'. He was an ex-moilitary soldier before he joined Syndicate International and then left to 'seek peace'. Jack has been tracked down by the main antagonist and his men. Jack has experienced the worst in his past, after the death defying 'Crimson' murdered Jacks family. Jack now fights to gain revenge from the main antagonists gang including Crimson.

This mood board above was created by myself and Robert which expresses our thoughts on what we want Jacks character to look like. He will wear a pair of green combat trousers, boots, a fleece and a bomber jacket. This style of clothing is from a similar character form a television series called '24'. His name is 'Jack Bauer' which dresses very similar due to his military background. This clothing choice is also very iconic and will give easy give aways to the audience of his characteristics.

Robert and I have decided who is now going to play the character for our short film, his name is 'Morgan Taverner' who is going to play Jack Morgan as our previous actor who was going to play this role 'James McCullin' is unable to give up his time to play the character. Morgan is determined to do a good job of the role and is very excited to get on with the filming.

Tuesday, 29 November 2016

Costume Design

Costume Design - Crimson

Unknown 11:25:00

After sketching out Crimsons initial costume designs throughout the first two storyboards, Robert and I have decided there were a couple of features to the design that we wanted to change. We kept the gas mask as it is incredibly iconic part of Crimsons character design visuals. One thing that we were both very unsure on was the clothing look for our character. So we decided to attempt at some brief photo shoots of Robert dressing up in what we wanted Crimson to look like:

The two existing characters that Robert and I have taken inspirations from include Darth Vader from Star Wars due to his deathly darkened threatening costume and voice, and Bane from The Dark Knight due to his life support mask that gives him his iconic look. Images of these two inspirational villain characters are shown above.

The render below follows the same basic design that the original detailed illustration we have made includes. We have taken a lot of influences from Star Wars and how many of the characters wear robes to enhance their characters features as well as their abilities.

Overall, we are very happy with the renders outcome that we have created, however there is one change we are going to make and that is to do with the colour of the clothes Crimson is wearing. We are going to change the colour of white clothing to black as this will illustrate the characters dark/bad side even more as he is indeed a villain in our short film after all.

Finally, we then devoted our idea of Crimsons costume further and added darker colours and longer robes/cloaks to make him look more sinister. This is exactly what we wanted to create and we will use this to model our Crimson villain character in our short film.

The role of Crimson will be played by myself (Alex Muir) as acting is not an issue with this character as all that is needed for myself to do with this character is to 'move about' on set as the speech of this character will be digitally edited.

Thursday, 24 November 2016

Workshops

BBC Correspondant - Simon Hall visit

Unknown 13:36:00

To give our media class an insight of what it is like to work in the media itself as a correspondant, Simon Hall gave our class a visit to give a very valuable presentation talk.

During the lesson, Simon gave us some little tasks to complete which involved putting some vital news headlines in order of consumer importance. This task is a typical situation which the media have to tackle by putting the most important media headline up front.

From this lesson, I leant how highly demanding the media is during this present decade and how media headlines change at any time depending on what happens all over the world.

Planning

Location shots

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Last week, Robert and I went to visit two similar locations (East Hill and Harpford) where we thought they would be good places to shoot our car chase scene. These two locations are both very natural, sparsely populated and are fortified in trees. This is what we had planned in our storyboard. Harpford is a lot more difficult to access compared to East Hill as there are many trespass gates obstructing the back road , also the road is quite a narrow and hazardous which won't be good for our risk assessment. East hill is incredibly easy access which makes it easier for us to film as the long main road here is much wider and safer than Harpfords. Also the area where we plan to have the hostage scene in our film will take place at East Hill so the car chase here will link in successfully.

East Hill

Harpford Images

Monday, 21 November 2016

Filming

Day 1 | Short Film

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Robert and I attempted our first scene of footage on the 18th November 2016 with our main antagonist character 'Igor' played by Harry Cockayne. This scene took place on the top floor of Princesshay Car park in the city of Exeter. This filing day was va very good 'test day' which made myself and Robert experience timing errors, equipment usage and weather changes. The footage we had got was useful for myself and Robert to group together in a rough cut and present to our class audience back at school for some audience feedback.

We were very lucky when we arrived due to there being only us in the car park and no other public shoppers. SO we weren't disturbed for the first couple of hours. We scripted the day based on the actions from our story-board which was useful. Our rough storyboard included the opening sequence of Harry walking out of a lift which we attempted to film. After several attempts, it started to get busy all around the area and we soon realised that it wasn't easy for us to capture quality footage without people walking into shot. We tried many more times, but more and more shoppers were entering the car park, so we tried some other different shots of harry walking around the floor for a short amount of time, but the weather was starting to get even worse with wind and rain showers.

This short clip is one of the few decent pieces of footage that we managed to record that shows our original opening sequence idea. Robert and I quickly decided to change the idea of using the lift for our opening sequence and introduced a smooth over the shoulder pull over shot for our opening. The weather also got sunnier as the day went on, which was not what we wanted, as it doesn't represent a British gangster film with sunny weather. We wanted gritty weather with a grey sky to illustrate darkness. Our gathered footage we made from this filming day has been presented to our class for audience feedback and has given us some tips for improving and developing our short film.

Wednesday, 16 November 2016

Filming

Day 1 | Filming Preparation

Unknown 12:44:00

From looking at myself and Roberts production schedule we have made recently. We are now organising props, costumes and filming equipment for our first filming day tomorrow starring our main antagonist character 'Igor' (Harry Cockayne) in Exeter.

I firstly made sure I could pick up Harry in the morning so we could get to Exeter to film our first scene as quick as possible before the car park we intend to film in gets too busy with members of the public. Myself and Harry would meet Robert my filming partner in the Exeter car park as it is more convenient. The car I will be driving over there will also be the car we are going to use for Harry to drive in the film which is a 'Mercedes A Class' black vehicle that shows class and wealth. Robert will bring all of the camera/filming equipment with him and I have the responsibility of getting Harry, his costume and ourselves to arrive on time.

The equipment that Robert will be bringing includes:

Canon 600D DSLR
RODE NTG3 Mic
RODE Mic Boom Pole
Audio Recorder
iPhone 6s

Harry was informed by myself and Robert to wear a black suit, tie and smart shoes. This costume choice will illustrate his wealth and sophistication to his criminal character. I also agreed with Robert that I would clean the Mercedes prop car the night before so it would be clean and shiny that will show up nicely on the footage of our short film. Also, the weather was looking slightly unpredictable as it kept changing every day, with a mixture of rain showers and sunny spells. We wanted our footage to be shot on a dry day with not too much sun, so we had to see on the day if the weather was appropriate.

Monday, 14 November 2016

Costume Design

Costume Design | Igor

Unknown 07:37:00

Igor is the character name our main superior antagonist (who is played by Harry Cockayne). Igor is a superior high ranking member of Syndicate International. Igor is on the hunt for Jack Morgan (our main protagonist character) Jack possesses a Swiss vault which Igor wants in order to conqeur. A bounty hunter called 'Crimson' is hired by Igor to hunt down Jack and to bring him to a rural location isolated from everything where Igor's sidekick 'Zeb' interrogates Jack for the Swiss Vault. Just like in most action/adventure films, Igor is played as the superior, powerful villain.

The moodboard above is made by Robert and myself that illustrates what we want our character Igor to look like. We want him to look intimidating, superior and villainous. The suit he will wear is also a typical convention/stereotype of sophisticated criminals in action films such as Agent 47.

Harry Cockayne is our actor for the role of Igor as his physical appearance is perfect for the role (large and intimidating.) He also looks older than he looks (he is currently 16) even though he looks like an 18 year old at least. Harry played a great role in our AS media studies opening sequence so we wanted to use him again for an even more key character in this years A2 media short film.

Harry Cockayne is on the left on this image above.