My name is Jerom Thambipillai (8692). I am part of Group 2 consisting of Olamide Ajisafe (8010) and Matthew Davies(8511). I have completed Brief 1: Film. To see my portfolio evidence please click on the labels on the right named "A2 research and planning plan, A2 construction A2 evaluation"
music video
Below is our finished music video
Group 3 Music Video Layla Obi- Blue Lights
digipak
Below is the outside panel of my Digipak Album cover
Group 3 DIGIPAK FRONT COVER
Album cover
Below is the inside panels of my album cover
GROUP 3 DIGIPAK INSIDE COVER
Click on the picture below to be redirected to our website
In our sequence we had many characters with a relatively big total of 7. This meant having 8 actors. Although this seemed like a lot it was essential that we had this many in order to make our "conspiracy organisation" seem big enough to actually pass off as one. Our actors are a follows...
David Sagna- The main character and our hacker.
Danya Bavetta- Our main member of the conspiracy organisation
Elliot Roberts- Member of conspiracy organisation
Christian- Member of conspiracy organisation
Matt Davies- Member of conspiracy organisation at HQ
Jerom Thambipillai- Member of conspiracy organisation at HQ
Matt Rogers- Hackers friend
David is a good friend of Alex. He was cast as the main character as he is extremely reliable as well as flexible. Reliability was extremely important in the casting process as if the actor pulled out before or during the filming process this would out our project at risk. Flexibility is also really helpful as we often needed to reshoot certain scenes, this meant that we would need the actors quickly and at short notice.
David Sagna in charchter
Danya Bavetta, Elliot Roberts,Christian and Matt Rogers are friends of Matt Davies. They were cast as they were reliable as well as we felt they added diversity to the conspiracy group but still managed to sustain the intimidating image we were going for. Danya was cast as the main member of the conspiracy organisation as he had extensive previous acting experience. His acting skills were easily the strongest out of all of our actors. He nailed the role and looked really intimidating on camera.
Danya Bavetta
Elliot and Christian
Me and Matt Davies were cast as the members of the conspiracy organisation at HQ as we attend the school. This was essential as we filmed theHQ scenes in the steward studio in school. Since we go to the school it meant we were always at hand to film when the studio was free. Gathering external actors to come to our school could've proved troublesome.
Although having this many locations was difficult it was essential that we kept the story going which involved changing locations.
We chose Alex' room in order to film the hacking scenes as we wanted the hacker to be doing his work from his bedroom alone. Alex's room had access to a laptop as well as enough space to light the scene thus it proved perfect to shoot in. We decided our set design for Alex' room would be quite plain and bland. Having posters, toys and clothes around the room would make our character seem like an ordinary teenager. We did not want that, instead we went for a more professional sleek approach with just a table, laptop and wardrobe in the room.
We chose the train stations as it screams the London setting and thus connotes to our audience really well that our sequence is based in London. Also we felt that having some of our sequence in our train station would add to the dark/tense vibes we were going for. Train stations also heavily indicated that our character was travelling somewhere which was essential to our plot. Arnos grove train station was also easily accessible to the whole group as well as in close proximity to both Alex' house as well as Arnos Grove Park. This made the whole shooting process easier especially in the early morning. Set design for the train station was not really an option as all train stations have a universal theme. This was good as it allowed our set to become instantly recognisable to the audience.
Arnos grove park was another location. It was easily accessible and only a few minutes walk away from our previous locations, Alex' house and Arnos Grove station. This park was also a nice setting to shoot in especially in the arches. The arches allowed us to have an aesthetic to our sequence that wasnt present anywhere else. Also since we were outside filming in London the arches provided shelter if it rained. This was a big deal as we were carrying around very expensive equipment. Set design for the park was fixed as we couldn't really change the park. However we chose to stay in the area where the arches where as they gave a really nice look with the camera. We were able to film a few "arty" shots with arches which was amazing.
Our last location was the Seward Studio located in our school. The back of the steward studio has a lot of sound equipment and screens which allowed us to use it as our "conspiracy organisation base" It allowed us to imitate a high tech vibe perfectly. Lighting was also good here as we could play around with the blinds and use whatever lighting we wanted be it artificial or natural. For set design We closed all the blinds and used artificial lighting to really create a dark atmosphere.
Seward studio set
In terms of props we didn't really need anything other than the actors and outfits. The only two props we needed were two toy pistols and two phones. The phones were easy to obtain as we just used the actors own ones. This helped establish connections between the characters when needed. The pistols were given to use by the media department. We had to be especially careful when using these in order not to spark any confusion or hysteria with the public.
For our main shoot we decided that a full on shoot board was unnecessary. Instead a call sheet was developed.
Our Call Sheet
The call sheet was essentially a list of everyone who was involved in the production. They're numbers and what times they needed to be called were also included. This helped us make the shoot efficient by telling the actors what exact time we needed them on set. This avoided any misunderstandings and thus everyone.
Shot List
We followed this call sheet with a shot list. This was a less cluttered version of the storyboard. We no longer needed pictures of each shot as at this point we all had become extremely familiar with each shot. It included rough timing to give us a guide if we were on track as well as a prop list, which was essential as without the props our scene would fall apart.
For our shoot we had to make our shoot board. Our shoot board was key to the organisation of the shoot. Our shoot had all the shots in order, the shots were then sorted into locations. This meant for each location we could easily see all the shots we needed to shoot at a glance. It also acted as a tick list to make sure that we filmed each shot.
A shot image was made from a quick sketch using a post it note. This helped us remember the shots we had thought of. It also helped us remember the framing which is essential to every shot. We also had a "Actors/Props" section which made sure we knew exactly what we needed for each shot before the camera even began rolling. This was extremely useful as it made the whole shooting process much more efficient as we could plan the shoot day and call the actors accordingly. We had also planned the Director and Camera-man for each shot in advance, this increased the efficiency of the shoot drastically. Without this we would have to think of who would direct and shoot each shot as it was happening. It potentially saved us hours of valuable time.
A typing shot from our Shootboard
The same typing shot in our final sequence
The shot timings column also helped us see if we were either behind schedule or ahead. During the shoot I learnt that each shot consumes a lot of time despite how long the duration of the shot is. for example a shot that lasts only a few seconds could take up to half an hour due to retakes, setting up and other unforeseen problems. In the future I would overestimate how long a shot will take rather than underestimate.
An extract from our Shootboard
The final two sections were the "Takes" section and "Identify good takes" section. This allowed us to see how many takes we took of each shot and which out of those takes were the best ones. This was extremely useful later in editing as we didn't have to look through every take to find the desired one.
Overall the shoot board was a useful tool in the shooting process. It helped us heavily in terms of organisation and efficiency. However by the time of our main shoot we were very familiar with each shot. Due to this we instead made a shot list. This was essentially a list of shots that we could cross off as we shot them. This was much quicker than the shoot board and was easier to produce short notice as we had made some changes to our sequence after the Test shoot.
After making our storyboard we swiftly moved on to make our animatic. Our animatic consisted of real photographs of the shots we had previously planned in our storyboard. The animatic allowed us to create the desired atmosphere for the very first time. The right atmosphere was essential to our film opening as it not only connoted the genre well but it was what made our opening unique. By adding sound effects and music we managed to partially create the atmosphere we were looking for however we felt the music didn't fit as well as we hoped.
The animatic was an extremely useful tool in pre-production as it was the first time we saw our idea in video form. Overlaying the music and sound effects over the pictures gave us a rough idea of what our sequence would look like. We were glad to see that the sound effects worked well for example the non-digetic sound of typing created a tense atmosphere. however some aspects of the animatic weren't as successful. Some parts of the music simply did not work with the pictures. The lengths of some shots were over-estimated and created an awkward atmosphere. We were able to fix this instantly by simply shortening the shot. However in doing this our sequence fell short and did not fit the time frame. This had to be fixed by making other shots longer.
To kick off pre-production we first needed to put our main idea into chronological order as well as to see if our idea would fit into the 2-minute time limit we were given. In order to do this we drafted a time-line. This would help us organise our idea and make storyboarding much easier as we could clearly see the sequence of events that would take place. Putting our idea into an order was crucial as it prompted us to finalise ideas and make decisions quickly.
A section from our timeline
In order to make our time time line we used three A3 sheets of paper attached in order to form a large strip of paper. This gave us enough space to put all the events onto the timeline. Overall the time-line was an extremely useful tool as it helped put our ideas onto paper for the first time. This allowed us to see what would work and what wouldn't within the sequence. For example some ideas when explained verbally sounded good however once put on the time-line we could immediately see it wouldn't work on film.
After our timeline was finished and finalised we progressed to make our storyboard. A storyboard allowed us to plan each individual shot in great detail. In this stage we decided our framing, duration and overall look for each shot. This was extremely useful as it yet again helped us better imagine what our ideas would look like on camera.
Our story board
Our storyboard was made out of sticky notes, to represent shots, and a large piece of bright pink sugar paper. The key for our storyboard was as follows
Yellow sticky note- Close up shot
Green Sticky note-Medium shot
Blue sticky note- Long shot
Using a colour code to signify each shot type we were easily able to imagine the variety shots. The storyboard was really useful as it helped us visualise our shots accurately. Using the storyboard we were immediately able to assess what ideas would work and what didn't. This helped us finalise our idea as a whole before our test shoot. We used many close-ups and medium shots in our storyboard as it helped us connote the action-thriller genre quite well, placing the audience very close to the action. We drew inspiration from the Mr.Robot series trailer as it created the very atmosphere we wanted to replicate.
At first it was quite hard to make an idea that we all agreed on. This was due to us all being fans of completely different genres and thus had contrasting views. We immediately comedy would be too hard and would take too much time to make the sequence funny. After a lot of research into already existing film openings we decided on the action-thriller genre as it was something we were all a fan of and could thus replicate in our sequence. We were a little behind with our storyboard due to so much time being spent on making a solid idea. However we used our group meetings to catch up and get back on track. We were able to finish our animatic shortly after and meet the deadline with time to spare.
Looking ahead we are happy with how our sequence will look on camera. After combining the stills, sound effects and music on our animatic we were able to see clearly what type of atmosphere our sequence will create and what shots to include/discard. For example we initially thought tat cutting back and forth between shots of London traffic would be a good idea. After we put the traffic shots on the animatic we immediately discarded the idea. In terms of project work we are all caught up and I am looking forward to shoots.
