Alongside the antagonist villain for our short film is a character called Zeb, who is a high ranking employee of Igor from Syndicate International. Together, him and Zeb were able to track down Jack Morgan to hold him for interrogation, with the help of Crimson. Zeb acts as Igor's sidekick in this short film and just like with most protagonist and character's sidekicks in many common Action/Adventure genre films I have researched such as Batman and James Bond. His rank in the Syndicate makes him extremely worthy and important to Igor as he can be trusted to complete a mission set by Igor by himself without the help of any of the other agents. His matching physical build to Igor makes him appear more threatening and brutal whenever he approaches his victims.
The image above is of a moodboard I created which denotes images of what Alex and I imagine as being Zeb for this short film. He will wear a similar suit to what the character for Igor will be wearing in the short film which will help the audience identify that these two men work for the same organisation. He will be forced to obey every order given by Igor which will be seen when Igor takes control of the interrogation when he finally arrives.
Alex and I had decided that a close friend of Harry and Morgan called Luke Dix should take on the role of acting as Zeb. Harry and Luke both have similar physical builds and already perfectly match the typical stereotype of strong athletic agents in most Action/Adventure films. Luke also has some experience in drama so he will hopefully be able to play his role perfectly for this short film.
On 22nd December, Alex and I attempted filming our next lot of footage for the city scene. Since the last shooting day of the city scene back in November, Alex and I were certain that we need to re shoot some additional shots for this scene due to the poor weather conditions during the first day and also the lack of experimentation with camera shots. The next attempt of re shooting this scene would allow Alex and I to get another chance at shooting this scene and improve on the mistakes we made last time.
First of all, the weather was significantly better than last time. There was no rain at all and the cloud cover was just perfect with some sunlight eventually breaking through as the morning progressed. We were very fortunate with the weather this time round as this meant that there were not as many disruptions from the weather, such as rain, whilst we were filming. In addition, Alex and I arrived on set with our actor Harry 2 hours earlier than last time on set as this gave us both plenty of time to re shoot the footage we needed without also being disrupted by other members of the public since this was an issue we faced last time too.
The filming itself was a real success and we have now gathered enough footage from this scene to begin editing the first scene to our short film. We experimented more with different shots and have decided to stick with the shot of the camera pulling over Harry's shoulder as we had discovered from last time. This time around, we used both the DSLR camera as well as Alex's iPhone 6s which surprisingly captured amazing video footage despite it having only one lens inside the camera. The image stabilisation really improved the fluidity of the over the shoulder shot and tracking shot of Harry. On the downside however, the iPhone camera has no setting on removing the auto-saturation, which leaves me more work in post production to edit the footage in a more cinematic look.
As always on set, there were occasionally mistakes made whilst filming that disrupted the overall quality of our footage. The first example is of Alex walking right in front in frame, which was very amusing in the beginning. Another common error which occurred was when my finger was accidentally covering up the lens of the camera and therefore caused an inconsistent look to the footage.
Due to a lack of experimenting during the first film day, we wanted to take advantage of the extra time we had and beautiful weather too to experiment more with different camera shots. Here are two examples of experiment shots we played around with which might or might not make it into the final cut.
After several hours of filming, Harry eventually had to make his way over to work on that day. However Alex and I were very pleased with the overall success of this film day and we are both excited to begin editing our first batch of footage for our short film.
In preparation for the 2nd retake shoot of the city scene in Exeter, Alex and I have made sure that we inform Harry once again for the 2nd retake and make sure that we prepare the filming equipment/props just like we did last time. We are aware however that we are planning to experiment more on the shots this time since we were sticking very closely to the storyboard, but we completely forgot to try out different shot techniques when on set. This was due to the fact that we were disrupted by the harsh weather conditions on the day as well as the limited time we had due to Harry's college lesson at 12:00 o'clock.
Below is a checklist I drew which finalises the equipment we are planning to take for tomorrow.
The weather forecast for tomorrow is looking a lot better than the previous film day, which is a major bonus in comparison to the weather disaster we all faced from the last film day.
After creating a first detailed design draft to Crimson's costume, Alex and I decided there were elements to the original design we wanted to change up a bit after several discussions. We firstly agreed the gas mask was an iconic image of Crimson's character and personality, so we decided to keep the mask for that purpose. We were both a little unsure however on the clothes of Crimson since his costume is fairly complex and would be very difficult to replicate when on set. We decided therefore to draw up more ideas on the cloth which he wore and began to change things up a bit.
The new render above follow the same basic design principles as the original detailed illustration I made when coming up with the character for Crimson, except this time we have created a long sheath/robes for him will hide away the robotic parts of his body and mechanics which help keep him alive. This change was made since the actors arms would be shown when on set, and by covering them up with a cloth it would heighten the audiences perception that this character is hiding fake limbs underneath the sheath. Using the only cloth material we could find, we decided to use a sandy colour sheath since it helps give a contrasting effect against the black mask and black boots he would wear.
I was used as a model to see whether the sheaths I had brought it in to be used for Crimson's costume would work with new ideas we had. In the end, we both decided that this design didn't really work as well as we hoped since the sheath didn't cover the entire areas of the body and due to the heaviness and density of the material, the restricted movements made it very difficult for me to move around without tripping up. The colours of the sheath also didn't suit the Crimson's character since he is supposed to be the side villain of the narrative. Using contrasting colours would inflect connotations of him being a weak villain and not very threatening.
After this draft test out for Crimsons costume, Alex and I are going to develop our ideas for his design further before the 2nd film day.
Following up from my post about the test footage we captured during the Thursday morning of the city scenes in Exeter and the car scene in East Hill, Alex and I edited together a 1 minute sequence of the footage we captured on that day. This test footage would help us both realistically consider what the next stages of our filming could be as well as receiving critical feedback from our audiences on their thoughts about the footage we have got.
Before we showed our footage, other audience members presented to us their 1 minute footage to us all as well.
Audience member Tom Joyce presenting their 1 minute footage to the others.
Eventually, Alex and I presented the work we have to our secondary audience. We both knew that there was going to be some useful feedback we wanted to receive from our secondary audience, so I came prepared and decided to take a few notes down for what they had to say.
An image showing some of the notes I took as the audience was giving us their feedback
The list below shows a breakdown of the notes I took when we received the feedback from our secondary audience.
This exercise has really benefited Alex and me since we needed advice from our secondary audience about the aspects they enjoyed from the 1 minute sequence. Our primary audience would have similar tastes to both of us when we edit the final product together, however as I had discovered in the pitch which we delivered and the research I gathered in my slideshow about the importances of audience, it was necessary for us both to understand the tastes of our secondary audience if we want to distribute our product to multiple different audiences.
To be alert on how much Alex and I have agreed to spend on for this short film. we have made a budget table of all of the props and accessories that we have used in our short film that cost money to obtain. Below is our budget table that clearly outlines each of the individual prices of everything we have used as well as the total:
Alex and I agreed to have a maximum budget of no more than £400.00 during the initial planning stages. However, as with most high budget films, we went over estimated our original budget by almost £200.00, with our final spending total being approximately £600.00. The budgeting phase was a new learning curve for the two of us as it made us realise how important it is to effectively plan a short film without us spending too much money for the end result.
The main protagonist character for our short film is the character Jack Morgan. Jack was former worker of the Syndicate International organisation and former employee of Igor. Before he joined the Syndicate, he was an ex-military soldier in the British Army. After leaving the organisation to seek peace and to defend for his own country instead of causing terror with the Syndicate, he has been tracked down and held for interrogation by the group after his recent mission set by MI6 with the help of the bounty hunter "Crimson". Jack suffers from a traumatising past, after losing his wife and family to Crimson who murdered them. To this day, Jack continues to fight with his own drives and is determined to one day gain revenge from both his former boss and Crimson.
The image above is a moodboard I created which denotes images of what Alex and I imagine as being Jack Morgan for this short film. He will wear a pair of sturdy/desert style boots, a green pair of combat trousers, a fleece and a bomber or leather jacket over the top. This style of clothing we have chosen for our character to wear is similar to the style of clothing worn by a character we were initially inspired by, Jack Bauer. The rough, action style clothing is instant connotation of someone who is working in disguise for a secret intelligence service like MI6, but is also an iconic style of clothing for unsuspecting characters in action/adventure films.
Alex and I decided that Morgan Taverner was going to be our actor to play the role of Jack Morgan in this short film. We were prepared to give Morgan a chance at casting the role for the protagonist character in this short film since James unfortunately was unable to give up most of his weekends due to other commitments, however Morgan's excitement to be acting in this short film was what made Alex and I decide to choose Morgan for this role. His enthusiasm will hopefully reflect on his performance when on set.
Morgan Taverner (centre) will be playing the role of Jack Morgan
