Risk Assessment in Action

We decided that, as we were filming parts of our opening sequence in the dark, we needed to take certain safety precautions whilst filming and that we needed to wear high-visability jackets and carry torches to ensure that we were safe whilst filming.

Having put this on our Risk Assessment we then needed to carry these ideas out- here is a photo of Brogan, Tiffany and myself wearing our reflective jackets during a session of filming in the dark.

We also used the car lights to inform any oncoming cars that we were there and we had one person standing at each end of the area in which we were filming and because there was only three of us, we were accompanied by our parents to help supervise and carry out our risk assessment.

Changes

Unfortunately, due to various reasons, some of our roles, responsibilities, locations and filming schedules were required to change. 

Alterations have been made and all current arrangements are as follows:

Actors: Brogan Adams (16 year old female)

            Jeff Leyland (17 year old male)

Locations:

Street Scene:

Birmingham Bull Ring

Carousel Scene:

Birmingham New Street (Christmas Market)

Car Crash Scene:

Deep Hayes Country Park/Park Lane, Denford

Return to car Scene:

Derby Street/ Broad Street leading to Aldi Car Park, Leek

Isolation Scene:

Birmingam Bull Ring/ Birmingham New Street

Hospital Scene:

Westwood College

Dates and Times:

Birmingham Bull Ring: (Street and Isolation Scenes)

Wednesday 21^st December 2011 (most of the day)

Birmingham New Street: (Carousel Scene)

Wednesday 21st December 2011

Deep Hayes Country Park, Denford: (Car Crash Scene)

Sunday 8th January 2012

Car Park: (Return to car Scene)

Tuesday 3rd January 2012

Bed: (Hospital Scene)

Tuesday 10th January 2012

Why the changes?

A few of the roles, responsibilities and actors were changed due to prior responsibilities and unavailability.

We were required to change the date for our 'Hospital Scene' as we changed the location to school and therefore had to wait until we had an appropriate lesson to get the equipment and be able to film it.

We were required to change the date for the 'Car Crash' scene due to weather conditions; it was icy and therefore would have been unsafe to film the false crash due to creating risks of a real one.

We were therefore required to change the location for the 'Car Crash' scene due to timing as the road would be too busy for when we re-scheduled our filming.

Risk Assessment.

These are the risk assessment sheets for the filming and creation of our thriller film opening sequence.

Roles and Responsibilities

In order to be as time-efficiant as possible, whilst getting the most from our individual strengths, we decided to split up all of the roles and responsibilities involved whilst creating our opening sequence.

Camera Work:  All three of us.
This is for a number of reasons; firstly due to availability as it is highly unlikely that any one of us will be 100% available for all filming sessions and therefore this allows us to always have someone on hand to film. Also, it enables us to share the workload fairly as filming is the main task in creating our product. And finally, due to our own strengths and weaknesses with cinematography, sharing the shot-types between us will allow the best possible filming to be achieved


Director: All three of us.
Again, this is mainly due to our personal strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, if one/more of us are unavailable for filming, this allows plans to go ahead regardless. Also, being a group production we are all as knowledgeable on our plans as one another- having all come up with some of the ideas-  therefore not one of us  was more suited for this role than the others, but if we were to split up the directing responsibilities, we would be able to direct the sections of the film that we came up with to enable maximum effectiveness. 

Props: Tiffany Pickford/ Maisie Hesketh
Tiffany was put in charge of props because of accessibility and availabilities she had. Also, because the sections of the opening sequence she had come up with the ideas for, were those containing props and therefore we felt that she was most appropriate for this role. I, Maisie, had also come up with ideas containing props and therefore would be suitable for organising and coordinating these. Additionally, I have contacts at the wardrobe/props department in a local theatre and therefore would be able to borrow them if anything abstract was required.

Costumes: Maisie Hesketh.
As with my 'props' responsibilities, we felt that it was appropriate for me to have charge of the costumes due to my contacts at the wardrobe/props department in a local theatre (hence able to borrow them if anything abstract was required). Additionally, I am able to accurately match the costumes with the mise-en-scene of the scene, and the conventions of the characters within the genre. However, with the isolation scene, I simply asked Brogan (as she played our female protagonist) to wear casual clothing, and, henceforth, she was responsible for costumes in this scene.


Location: Brogan Adams
Brogan was best suited to being responsible for locations largely due to accessibility; she lives near to the location for the car-crash scene, and the hospital scene was to be filmed at her house. Additionally, playing the role of our female protagonist, she needed to feel comfortable acting in our chosen locations, therefore, her being responsible for locations was how we felt that this would work most efficiently.

Equipment: Tiffany Pickford
Tiffany was allocated the responsibility of the equipment mainly because of the 'swiping-out' system at college, we have to present the technician with our media card before any equipment can be checked out, and Tiffany was the one in our group who did this. In doing this, Tiffany was confirming that should any of the equipment be lost or damaged, she could be held responsible. In addition to this, she was the best suited to controlling the more advanced equipment, such as the steady-cam. 

Organisation/Time Management: All three of us.
All three of us needed to be responsible for organisation and time management; due to it being a group production, if one of us failed to be organised or on time, the whole group would be let down. Therefore, each of us having these responsibilities would encourage us to remain committed and work best as part of the team.

Co-ordination: All three of us
Like with organisation and time management responsibilities, we decided mainly for all three of us to be responsible for coordination due to it being a group piece of work. Moreover, in order for it all to be coordinated, we will be needing to work as a team anyway, so it simply made most sense for us all to be responsible for coordination.

Actors: Brogan Adams (16 year old female) and Ryan Murrell (18 year old male)
We chose to have Brogan and Ryan playing our two protagonists as they best fitted the stereotypes of the characters we were aiming to create.

Filming Schedule

Dates and Times:

Birmingham Bull Ring Shopping Centre: (Street and Isolation Scenes)

Wednesday 21^st December 2011 (most of the day)

Birmingham New Street: (Carousel Scene)

Wednesday 21st December 2011

Folly Lance Cheddleton: (Car Crash Scene)

Monday 2nd January 2012 (evening)

Deep Hayes Country Park, Denford (Car Crash Scene)
Monday 2nd January 2012 (evening)

Car Park: (Return to car Scene)

Tuesday 3rd January 2012

Bed: (Hospital Scene)

Tuesday 3rd January 2012

Filming Locations

Locations:

Carousel Scene: Birmingham New Street (Christmas Market)

Car Crash Scene: Folly Lane, Cheddleton

Return to car Scene: Derby Street/ Broad Street and Aldi Car Park, Leek

Isolation Scene: Birmingam Bull Ring Shopping Centre

Hospital Scene: Brogan Adams' house

Street Scene: Birmingham Bull Ring Shopping Centre

Shooting Script

Here is the Shooting Script for our opening sequence.

Storyboards

Together, as a group we have created a storyboard of the final ideas for the opening sequence of our thriller film. We planned our storyboards together but decided to split up the final creation of them in order to save time.

    

Mise-en-Scene

Here are some images which we have found in order to help explain our ideas in terms of mise-en-scene for our opening sequence.

We are going to travel to the BullRing shopping centre in Birmingham. We wanted to use a busy place so that it isolates the young girl; we will use the moving crowd and the girl standing still to create a time lapse.

We are going to go to Birmingham around Christmastime for a number of reasons. Firstly, simply due to the business of this area at this time of year, it will make our time lapse even more effective. Secondly, because we know that there is a carousel there at this time of year, this links with the theme of circles but is also associated with childhoo and happiness- relating to the feelings of the characters and the flashbacks of the girl in her younger days.

In the car crash scene we will use a red car; the colour red is associated with danger, hence why the red car is going to be the car hitting the protagonist's car.

The protagonist's car will be white; the colour white is associated with innocence. Therefore, to show that the protagonist is innocent in the crash.

In our opening sequence, the protagonist is going to wake up in a hospital bed, open her eyes and see bright lights. We decided to use a hospital scene so it would fit to the conventions of thriller, and show that something bad happened in the car crash.

We are going to use one street in Birmingham (a big, busy city) and another in Leek (a quiet, small town) to show the girl and boy walking down the road, happy and singing to each other. Birmingham is going to be very busy, whereas Leek isn’t to suggest they have been walking for quite a long time to get back to the car.

We are going to use a car park to, again, contrast against the busy town, also you will see the black figure here. Which links to conventions of the genre and will create mystery and tension.

What did we learn from our Audience Feedback?

So, what did our audience feedback teach us?

Our audience feedback was generally positive, with the majority of the group supporting our ideas. The most favourable ideas seemed to be the car crash -for various reasons including ‘dramatic’, ‘realistic’ and ‘dynamic’-, the singling out of one person in a crowd – our audience said that this would be dramatic and effective if it was pulled off well. Camera shots including focus pull were also mentioned positively as this was said to effectively show emotion and isolation. Therefore, we will be keeping these ideas in our opening sequence.

Nonetheless, our feedback seemed to suggest that the idea of graphic match through circles was our least effective idea as it was perhaps too complicated or irrelevant, therefore we decided to remove this from our sequence. Other people said that the drugs made the events of the sequence too obvious and took the enigma –which is a key convention within the genre- away from it so we also decided to remove the idea of involving drug use. Also mentioned as a weakness was the fact that our pitch didn’t mention a specific plot, so we are going to focus on creating more of a storyline.

The majority of our audience feedback suggested that our ideas did fit the genre because it conformed to many conventions through different forms including psychological, flashbacks, memories, car crashes and audience relation through drugs. Therefore we will work on making these ideas even more relevant but will keep most of these as themes within our sequence. Those who opposed it's relevance said that they could not see the connection with the ideas of childhood and they did not feel that the idea of circles had been given enough explanation for them to make a decision upon. Henceforth, we will not be using neither the idea of childhood, nor the theme of circles.

Our questionnaire simply confirmed the fact that our target audience should be from the age of fifteen to the age of thirty.

Our questionnaire also confirmed that our opening sequence will come in at the second stage of Todorov’s theory; the disruption of equilibrium.

Presentation and Audience Feedback.

Presentation and Audience Feedback.

We created a pitch for our thriller opening sequence idea, and presented it to the rest of our class on Wednesday 23rd November. We created a questionnaire and handed out copies to each person for them to fill in whilst we were presenting our pitch. We brought all of the completed questionnaires together and have made a summary of everybody’s opinions. 

What did you think of our overall pitch?

People said that our pitch was good, clear and well detailed. Also mentioned was the strength of our pitch. They also thought that it was a good idea to use pictures on the presentation and to explain them verbally instead of reading from the text on the board as it allowed the audience to connect and feel more involved. However, they said that some points could have been clearer and some points and ideas better explained as sections were slightly confusing. Nonetheless, overall, our feedback for this question was positive.

What did you think was our best idea? Why?

The main answer to this question seemed to be the car crash for various reasons including ‘dramatic’, ‘realistic’ and ‘dynamic’. Next was the singling out of one person in a crowd – our audience said that this would be dramatic and effective if it was pulled off well. Camera shots including focus pull were also mentioned positively as this was said to effectively show emotion and isolation. They also seemed to like the idea of the sparkler burning down throughout the film. Some people liked the drug use as it allowed the audience to relate to the characters effectively and others mentioned the originality of the ideas themselves.

What did you think was our worst idea? How could we improve this idea?

The feedback seemed to suggest that the idea of graphic match through circles was our least effective idea as it was perhaps too complicated or irrelevant. However, on further explanation our audience seemed to like the idea and to understand the relevancy more. Other people said that the drugs made the events of the sequence too obvious and took the enigma –which is a key convention within the genre- away from it. Also mentioned as a weakness was the fact that our pitch didn’t mention a specific plot.

Did you think our ideas matched the genre? If yes, how? If no, why?

There was an obvious split in the answers to this question; however, the majority said yes. The reasoning for answering ‘yes’ was because it conformed to many conventions through different forms including psychological, flashbacks, memories, car crashes and audience relation through drugs. Those who answered no said that they could not see the connection with the ideas of childhood. Also stated was that they could not answer as they did not feel that the idea of circles had been given enough explanation for them to make a decision upon.

Was the sub-genre/hybrid clear?

Again, the answers were split; those who said yes mentioned conventions, psychology, and flashbacks. There were again also those who were unsure, and those who found that it wasn’t mentioned or was unclear.

Target Audience

Our questionnaire simply confirmed the fact that our target audience should be from the age of fifteen to the age of thirty.

At which stage of Todorov’s theory does our sequence come in?

Our questionnaire also confirmed that our opening sequence will come in at the second stage of Todorov’s theory; the disruption of equilibrium.

Questionnaire Responses

We created a pitch for our thriller opening sequence idea, and presented it to the rest of our class. We created a questionnaire and handed out copies to each person for them to fill in whilst we were presenting our pitch.

Here, we have brought together all of the different audience responses from the questionnaires:

Pitch Questionnaire

Whilst our pitch was taking place, we thought that it would be appropriate and useful to collect some audience feedback. To begin with we planned to simply ask our audience to make notes as we presented our ideas, however we decided that in order to receive the most relevant and specific feedback to what we required, we would create a short questionnaire. We included some general questions in order for the audience to give their opinions and some more specific ones in order to see if the more technical and specific ideas used were being shown successfully.