Preliminary Task - Storyboard

In this scene two Mobsters confront each other.

We had quite a few initial ideas for this task, we all agreed that we wanted a confrontational scene with the mob as our main focus. We came up with lots of ideas for settings such as park benches, a church confession box, stepping into a pulled up black car, but we decided that we would use an office building as our location.

We knew we wanted a confrontational scene, but we had to decide what the confrontation was about, topics that we considered were drugs, a drugs raid gone wrong, or drug smuggling; mob leaders, arguing about who will become the the leader in charge of the mob organisation; murder, members of the organisation committing very serious crimes such as murder. For our final idea we almost merged most of our ideas together. With the synopsis being shown in charlottes post.

I have attached images of the storyboard that i have produced, outlining camera shots, angles and movements; sound, dialogue, diagetic and non diagetic and ambient sounds; mise-en-scene showing objects around the locations, and the costumes of the characters. we followed the storyboard today whilst filming and will continue to do so tomorrow.
Using high angle shots to connote Bates' feelings, showing he is powerless, towering over him; Bates' confused and muddled mind is amplified through the mixture of shot types and constant cuts during the first clip showing he is in distress and worried.

Whereas Johnson is shown as a very powerful figure, not seeing his face until the end, using low angles shots, showing how in control he is, slamming the photos down on Baits' desk, threatening him.

However the break of the 360 degree rule in shot 9 shows Baits turning the situation around, threatening Johnson's authority as he pulls a gun out. This switches the two characters positions on the screen putting Baits on the left hand of the screen confusing the viewer. This breaking of the rule amplifies Baits being the protagonist of the scene, with protagonists typically approaching from the left.

Using a typical film Noir convention, with the antagonist breaking a lamp as he dies, amplifying his face, but i have turned this around in the storyboard, breaking the lamp to remove the light from Baits' face, creating a silhouette of his face, as though he doesn't know who he is, not being a killer.

During filming the location of the scene was very important, as we wanted our scene to be in the style of film Noir we were looking for venetian blinds, but we had to settle with vertical blinds, although this would give us the same effect. We found the perfect office, with the setup almost identical to what we had in mind, but the office was only approachable from then right, whereas in the storyboard Johnson approached from the left, but this created a good effect, as typically antagonists approach from the right.

Filming the over the shoulder shots did cause complications as the desk was fixed, and there wasn't a lot of space behind, but we got around this by holding the camera by hand, this created quite a shakey effect, not being fixed, which amplifies Baits' distress as Johnson walks in which created a look that we found effective.

But other than these minor setbacks the storyboard was followed very closely and filming was successful.

- Laurence Sturla