Dystopian 'Scanner' Test Shots

• Below is the test shot that we did of the pupils scanning their wrists while walking into assembly, to present futuristic technology.
• We found a copyright free video of a slow heartbeat that would make it look like when people scanned their wrist a heartbeat came up.

Production Company Name & Logo

Theories behind Contact

Mise en Scene, Editing, Cinematography and Sound

Updated Cast Analysis

Model Release Forms

Evaluation 4

Evaluation 3

Soundtrack Analysis

Poster Genre Research

Dystopian film posters often feature the protagonist(s) in the foreground. Often the camera is angled looking up at the protagonist to give them a heroic look. The background of the poster is sometimes of the Dystopian setting, usually a wide angle shot of the city showing the destruction that has been caused to it.

The colour palette of the posters are usually consisting of cold blues, greys and blacks. However red is also a common colour to be seen in the posters. 

The film title is almost always in capital letters with a sharp looking font that spaces out the letters.

Theory behind our film

Evaluation 2

Evaluation 1

Website Deconstruction

Dystopian Genre Websites

After looking a a number of dystopian film websites including the hunger games and maze runner I found that they all had a lot of similar aspects. One of the major things you first notice when you look at the websites is that they all have a dark colour scheme, the darkness of all the websites could be to create a sense of fear and mystery about the films. Some of the websites I looked at also had eerie music playing in the background while you look through the website, this could be to give the audience a feel of what the atmosphere in the film is like. Another aspect that I noticed all the websites have is a gallery page and/or on the home page a sequence of moving images that give a snippet of some of the shots in the film. After researching many different websites we decided that we would try to incorporate many of the aspect we found on other websites onto our own so we could make it look as professional as possible and to makes sure it suitably conformed to the genre of our film.

Evaluation Q1 Planning

Website

Poster Analysis

Poster Creation

Trailer Message

The virus in our film may be seem as symbolism of the internet. The amount of time that teenagers spend online has resulted in them being anti-social which is related to the allergic reaction that teenagers have, when in contact with another person. This is relevant to todays society as we are the 'social media generation'. This is our twist on the unknown effects of spending large amounts of time online has on people. I have also intended the virus to be a symbolism of terrorism - people being scared of one another is a social norm in society due to the many terror attacks that have taken place in the last year. 

Poster

"Contact" Trailer

Shooting Day 3 & 4

Day 3
For filming on day 3 we filmed the first montage scene which is showing what life used to be like before the disease struck. All the shots are either filmed outside or in a house, which were for the intimate shots of the 2 protagonists. The shots we filmed were all less than 5 seconds long so we had to make sure that they showed what we wanted them too, because they were all relatively short shots it meant that they were quick to film so we were able to get everything shot that we wanted. Some of the shots we first filmed didn't look right and they were overexposed, this meant that we had to re-film some of the shots. Luckily we allowed time to re-shoot things incase we didn't like any of them or wanted to change them.

Day 4

On the 4th day we didn't have much left to film, on this day we were just filming the shots that we were still missing were a few shots in a park from the second montage and the shots of people looking scared and frightened. We started off at a house which was the location for the shots of people and as these were relatively quick shots to film it didn't take very long. Once we were happy with these shots we drove to a park that was near the house. We knew where in the park we wanted to film as we had already recede it, this meant that we didn't waste any time a got on with filming straight away. For the shots in the park we had to make sure that there were no people in the backs of the shots as we wouldn't have permission to film them.

We filmed at 9am in Tonbridge Park. It was a cold morning and we spent the first hour shooting for our montage - we filmed scenes of the skate park, the graphiti, the playground and swings. This was quite straightforward and we overshot in order to find the perfect shot in post production. The audio was also not a problem as it was being removed.

We then shot the skate shot, this was quite tricky and required the camera being leaned onto the grass bank, as Charlotte skateboarded past. We had to shoot this over and over again to get the right angle of skateboard. Our cast arrived and we shot the child sliding down the slide and the mothers acting. We had to overshoot this part as if the footage was wrong, it would result in an entire re-shoot (not just a partial reshoot, as the continuity had to be correct). We had difficulty in getting the child to slide down the slide, but other than this, the shooting day went very well.

We filmed in the kitchen / dining room of one of our casts' house. The building was not modern, and it was quite old, which helped create a dystopian future feel. We microwaved three ready-meals from Sainsbury's and laid them out onto the table, with cutlery. For this shot, if there were any continuity errors, we would have had to re-shoot the entire scene, and therefore, we decided to get as much footage as possible.

One problem we faced was that the child continued to laugh through the filming, this slowed things down, but we eventually managed to get a shot we were happy with. After this, the family put on a different jumper each and we filmed our "throwback" shot, which disappeared into the past. The colourful clothing that they were wearing and the difference in lighting was very effective in creating a flashback.

Another problem we faced was the lighting and the shadows that my body created when leaning over to grab the salt - we fixed this by having an iPhone light as the key light during the shot. This worked well.

Shooting Day 2

On our second day of filming we filmed all the shots that included the family in. These shots included the scene where the family are sat at the table in a house and the shot of the children in the park. 

We started off by arranging a meeting point in the park to meet the family so we knew where they were going to be and didn't have to waste time trying to find each other. Once we had met the family we set up the camera by the slide that we had previously recede and decided was suitable for our trailer. As it started raining on our filming day, which it wasn't supposed to we had to try and get all the shots filmed as quickly as we could. Because on the day it was colder than we though it would be we made sure that we kept our actors warm by buying them a coffee. 

After finishing filming at the park we moved on to filming the house scene. We drove from the park to the house we were shooting at as it was only a 10 minute drive. Once we got to the house we went to the room where we already knew we were filming the shot, so we didn't waste any time. As we were in someone else's house we had to make sure that we were respectful and grateful that they were letting us use their house. Once we had filmed everything we needed to we make sure that we tidied everything away and left the house as it was when we arrived. 

Shooting Day 1

On our first day shooting we filmed the technology shot of the pupils walking into the the hall and the shots of a distressed female in the hospital. To film the hospital shot we asked Rida's dad, who is a doctor at Pembury hospital, to ask if it would be possible for us to film in one of the hospital rooms. One we knew we were allowed to film, we arranged a date with Rida's dad and he made sure there was empty room we could use. As we were filming in the hospital we had to make sure we were quite and respectful to the people around us. 

The pupils walking into the hall we filmed in our schools hall, we thought this was an ideal place to film as it is easy to access. We found a place that we thought would look good in our film and that wouldn't get any other people in it. At the time we filmed it there was a lesson going on in the hall so we had to makes sure that we weren't getting in the way and were being respectful and not making too much noise as a teacher was trying to teach a lesson.

Editing

Assembly Shot

Our first difficulty that we faced was that everyone in the shot looked too happy. This was not what we wanted and we had to re-shoot - we played an emotional clip from YouTube before shooting this time, which resulted in a more depressed and emotional audience. 

However, when we shot for the second time, we did not have enough people in the audience and therefore the shot, again, did not work. So we had to plan again to re-shoot. For the last re-shoot, we used a real assembly from school in order to get enough people, we filmed around two minutes of footage and asked certain people to leave in the middle of the shot. The reduction of people gave the idea that the school attendance was getting lower and lower. 

Emotional clip used;

Storyboards

BBFC Rating

Under the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification), I would rate this film a 15. We decided this after reading the guidelines set by the BBFC and our trailer did not conform to the expectations of a rating 12. This is justified by the BBFC guidelines that state:

• The work as a whole must not endorse discriminatory language or behaviour, although there may be racist, homophobic or other discriminatory themes and language. 
• Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury.
•  There may be strong threat and horror. 
• Sexual activity may be portrayed, but usually without strong detail.
• There may be strong language. Very strong language may be permitted, depending on the manner in which it is used
•  Dangerous behaviour (for example, hanging, suicide and self-harming) should not dwell on detail which could be copied. 
• Drug taking may be shown but the work as a whole must not promote or encourage drug misuse. 

Under the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), our film would be rated R which means Restricted. This requires that anyone under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian. Parents are urged to learn more about the film before taking their young children with them. This is justified by the MPAA guidelines that state:

• Violence can be both intense and persistent.
• Multiple occurrences of bad language may be used.
• Drug use content is restricted to PG-13 and above.
• Nudity is restricted to PG and above, and anything that constitutes more than brief nudity will require at least a PG-13 rating. Nudity that is sexually oriented will generally require an R rating.
• Not have any explicit criteria for sexual content other than excluding sex scenes from G rated films.

Trailer Animatic

This is the storyboard animation of my trailer.

Demographic