Death of the Shoot

We have come to the conclusion not to shoot tonight, Tuesday the 6th January. It is our last chance to re-shoot in our basement location but once again we have experienced problems in communication with our actors, and one of them is unfortunately unavailable. However, since our decision last term to re-shoot on this date we have made some successful changes to our current sequence of footage and we believe this has come together nicely and would be fine for our final piece. We are beginning to sort out the problems with lighting and sound that we originally intended to change by re-shooting, so for this reason the failure to re-shoot tonight is not such a disaster.

We are now making decent progress with the footage we have. We have learnt many lessons about communication and actor problems along the way, some which could have been dealt with such as phone numbers, and some which could not have been dealt with such as illness and unattendance. Now, we are officially not shooting again for this project.

Re-Re-Shoot (problems and resolvements)

Once again illness managed to spoil the party today, with Matt our actor not turning up at school (probably due to illness - although he could have told us or at least turned his phone on!). As media students we are aware that by recruiting two actors outside of media who may not have the same commitment in the project as us that these problems may arise, as well as the possibility of illness and all other silly things.

We have resolved to give shooting a break until after christmas. We have organised so many and we are now very tired. The idea this week is to try and edit our old footage. We have already sequenced it together and there are a few editing techniques we think we could possibly use such as turning up the lighting or brightness on a few shots and blanking out a visible background studio light which ruins one particular shot. At the end of the day, if this fails or is not quite good enough for a final copy as it may be quite patchy, we are likely to hold ONE MORE SHOOT on Tuesday 6th January (first Tuesday back after christmas). Actors are confirmed for this date and hopefully everyone will have recovered from all colds by fattening themselves up over the festive season so they are nice and protected from these Arctic winds. By shooting on this date, we will be left with just 3 days to edit the sequence, but seeing as we have already placed a structure of how the sequence will run using the old footage, we already have done the titles, soundtrack and sounds and will only need to simply replace the footage and neaten it up. Some solid editing from Wednesday until Friday 9th January should see us through!

Let this be the last big problem pleeeease (I know we can't help illness).

Kris

Problems with the re-shoot (resolved)

As well as Rob not able to make it on Tuesday, Matt unfortunately fell ill and was not present at school - big problem! We had a stand-in actor (Ben Tucker) for the killer and Kris (me) to play the victim, but we decided that the actors we had already were perfect and to change this would be mad. We were also happy with some of the shots involving these 2 actors from the previous shoot and had worked had to edit these together in sequence for the time-being. Therefore we were able to change the shoot night to Thursday night thanks to the fantastic cooperation and consideration of Miss Blackborow and the media department, as well as the caretakers. Rob Demont is a definate for Thursday night, as is Matt Doyle unless he is still ill-striken (fingers crossed he won't be). If this is the case we will have to work around this either by using stand in actor Ben Tucker who is still being notified about the case, to change the shoot date again, or simply shoot Matt's scenes during lunchtimes and free periods. This would obviously not be ideal due to the time taken clearing out space in the basement to shoot, so we are desperately hoping Matt will get better quickly!

Things we have learnt through this series of unfortunate events:

- Notify actors of ALL shoot dates including re-shoots so we know when they are definately free and can book these slots in advance.

- Communicate better with the media department about problems that arise by notifying them of any stresses upon a shoot so they can be resolved within plenty of time.

- Always make sure you have backup actors and backup shoot times.

- Look after your actors as best you can and do your best to keep them immune from all forms of disease!

Kris

Problems with the re-shoot

Due to Rob being incredibly unreliable, we now have to find another actor to play the victim in this sequence. Kris has said that he will do it if we can't find anyone else.

Note: Rob is unreliable!

Jack

Actors

Playing the part of the victim...

Name: Robert Demont

Age: 16

Gender: male

Size: short-ish

Hair Colour: blonde (short)

Eye Colour: blue

Acting Experience: 'Mickey' in Latymer School production of 'Blood Brothers', 'Magwich' in Latymer School production of 'Great Expectations', drama student.

Playing the part of the killer:

Name: Matthew Doyle

Age: 16
Gender: male
Size: massive

Hair Colour: dark brown (long)

Eye Colour: blue
Acting Experience: part of the chorus in Latymer School production of 'Great Expectations', drama student.

Character Appearances

Victim 1
Plain white t, jeans, trainers, black eye using make up, messy hair, water on face for tears/sweat

Victim 2
White shirt, jeans, trainers, covered in fake blood

Victim 3
Doesn't matter just dark clothing

Killer
Dark trench coat, black boots, black jeans/trousers, gloves?

Jack

Characters

Victim 1
Possible Names: Mike, Pete, Jack, Matt, Tim, Tom.
Role: Victim, tied up in chair, struggles, uncertain conclusion.
Appearance: Bruised, battered, fake cuts, black eye, messy hair, sweating, tears?
Clothes: Suit or shirt/tie, ragged trousers or smart trousers, shoes or trainers.
Needed Acting Traits: male, fairly well built, can act really scared/confused/dazed, can produce fake tears.

Victim 2
Possible Names: Mark, Mike, Dan, Pete, Joe, Jack, Nick, Matt, Tim, Tom, Chris.
Role: Friend of victim 1, has been lead to victims location, find location to find noone there, is killed by killer.
Appearance: Bruised and battered, sweating, fake cuts, ripped clothes, out of breath.
Clothes: Plain white t splattered in blood, jeans (ripped), trainers.
Needed Acting Traits: Male, athletic, can act scared/confused/angry.

Killer
Possible Names: Unnamed or has a nickname to do with the title.
Role: Walks about victim 1 possibly assembling torture tools, follows victim 2 into basement, kills victim 2. Very childish, he never grew up. So murder ways are very strange and have child-like signifiers.
Appearance: Ambiguous, tall, in the shadows, masked or face shadowed, threatening/menacing.
Clothes: Black boots, black hoodie/jacket/cloak, black fingerless gloves, mask?
Needed Acting Traits: Can look powerful/menacing, tall, physical, well-built, can speek in deep/threatening voice.

Kris

Group Meetings

Group Meeting 1 - Notes

Genres
- horror (slasher or supernatural)
- thriller (gangster or crime)

Possible Locations
- school (latymer great hall or basement)
- graveyard (chingford cemetary)
- woods (epping forest, pole hill, high beach or ponds near butlers retreat)
- canal (waterhouse by 'halfords' at outer chingford retail or 'boat club' by chingford resevoirs)
- abandoned house (unused house next door to a friends)
- lonely bar (Jack's dads bar or a bar near to latymer school)
- old fashioned historic buildings (tudor museum, 'the harvester', a pub or 'butlers retreat' - all leading onto chingford plains)
- alleyway covered in forest (organ lane near Kris/Jack's house)
- car park and backstreet alleyways (sainsburys car park at chingford mount)
- abandoned littered streets and warehouses (near lea valley odeon and picketts lock)
- church (st peters and chingford green)

Possible Characters
- a female teenage victim (with loud scream)
- a small friendship group of either girls or mixed gender from a posh public school
- a couple of hard-looking italian or cockney gangsters
- a confident teenage boy who can run fast
- a teenage male or grown up to act as the villain (not necessarily ever seen in shot)
- a group of youngsters our age who can sing!

Available Actors
- ourselves and other media students
- sixth formers who do drama, are past media students or are willing to make themselves available to act
- Jack's cousin and his friends

Ideas
- a murder
- a past event (either a murder or supernatural happening in the 1950's or tudor times)
- a secret gangster meeting or confrontation (leading to a murder, shooting or bust-up)
- a monster/unseen creature attack
- a vampire musical (probably not going to happen!)

Group Meeting 2 - Notes

Idea 1
Location: Latymer School Basement
A victim wakes up tied up in a chair and gagged. With only the sound of dripping water and faint echoes, he begins to hear footsteps. The scene will cross cut between shots of the man in the chair and shots suggesting someone is walking down towards the basement where he is. The sequence will provide some sort of twist, with one idea being that a climax to the scene will quickly switch to a friendlier scene from 24 hours earlier via a graphic match. A link maybe shown between the killer in the present scene and a friend the victim is with in the past (possibly showing the victim who is his friend the same knife used in the present scene, or an item of clothing, tattoo or accessory seen in the same way). This will lead to the audience already suspecting the killer in the opening sequence, but the film will lead on to reveal a different killer in a surprising twist. Another idea is that the two scenes using parallel editing (of the victim and of footsteps etc) are at different points in time, with either the footsteps being a few hours before the victim scene, or a few hours after. The first of these would make the audience think the victim was about to be attacked but would be surprised to see the killer simply setting up his trap (possibly using a knife to cut a rope or something, instead of killing the victim). The second would reveal what you think as a killer to be a friend of the victim who has apparently been lead to believe he will find his friend here (through what he says as he enters and his shocked reaction to find his friend not there). With the audience confused, the friend would face an empty chair and a wall marked with blood saying something along the lines of 'too late'. Then out of the darkness a figure would suddenly appear and grab the friend before presumably killing him. The audience would then want to know what happened to the victim in the chair but will not know until later on in the film. Themes or genres involved in this film would probably include aspects of murder, slasher horror, revenge and suspence thriller.

Idea 2
Location: Path by canal/Bridge
The sequence could be a mysterious continuity-based opening showing a teenage boy walking by a canal. He will look troubled as if in a bad way (messed up life, possibly on drugs). Sinister noises and images disturb his walk in an eery silence. The sequence will either involve someone following the boy and killing him, him witnessing a murder on the other side of the canal only to be murdered in exactly the same way moments later, or his route to be disturbed by the presence of perculiar hooded beings (possibly to look like normal youths, only to be wearing hoodies backwards to mask their faces). Another idea would be to show the boy entering onto a plain bridge to find a dead body lying in the centre. Curious, the boy could move towards the body to find it either dead, a doll or dead but with a sinister and chilling appearance such as a painted face or mask. Then two hooded figures on either side of the bridge he had entered could appear and close in on him, trapping him. They could either kill him or he could jump off the bridge into the canal (which would admittedly be dangerous to film). In each of these ideas it would be hard for the audience to distinguish imagination from reality due to the boys confusion and possibly the sight of him carrying or doing drugs that may make him see halucinations. The end of the opening may show the victim dead with scratch wounds and bruises having supposedly been attacked by the silent hooded figures (zombie-like?) but the last shot could steadily zoom out from the body to show no beings around, suggesting he was seeing things and was attacked by his own mind and ended up killing himself through the horrible images he was seeing (with the bridge scenario ending up in him being drowned in the canal because of images he had seen in his mind). The film could have a moral message against drug use and youth gang crime. I thought the rest of the film could be about a a new drug which is disguised as a standard drug such as LSD, but is actually designed to kill its victims - a possible mass murder or terrorist attack on youths of the western world. Themes or genres involved in this film would probably include aspects of murder, thriller, psycological and creep-out horror.

Idea 3
Location: Abandoned house or 'White House' at Gilwell Park
We do not have a particular idea for these locations but is simply a back up idea in case the other 2 locations are not available. This would probably involve mainly interior filming too, to be safe. One idea we have is a group of teenagers arrive to check out the haunted legends of the abandoned house. One character (a girl) stays outside on look out as she is too scared. Sinister going-ons around her unsettle her and she calls for her friends. The opening sequence could involve her entering the house upon panicing that there is no shout back from inside. She could, to her horror, discover the bodies of her friends inside and either be caught herself, or run away. In running away, the rest of the film could be centered around her trying to escape from the forested area she has entered, entirely from her point of view, or just following her character. The film could be disorientating and end up in her being trapped by her surroundings (unable to leave the park) because of this curse/legend - although this will appear as her lost and apparently going around in circles. She would eventually be killed, possibly in a twist of events. Themes or genres involved in this film would probably include aspects of murder, slasher horror, disorientation and supernatural horror.

Shaun