Progress Update - Pitch

We have now completed our pitch and delivered it to the class; backed up with the powerpoint presentation we provided commentary about each aspect of our final production. These aspects included the audience, who we are going to aim our film at and also the BBFC rating that it will receive. The plot, which Rory has written a detailed explanation to that below already. The stars that we will use in our film, why we would use them, what they would bring to the production. What film studio we would have our film produced by and why, what would they offer, making our production better. What inspired us to come up with the ideas, this is also helped by the mood board with pictures and words. We also had the 5 photos from the concept board that I took of Rory at the end of the powerpoint, we made these photos black and white, as we would like to do our film in black and white. As well as being on the powerpoint, we placed the 5 photos onto a sheet and analysed them, showing why we picked these shots and what they connote.

Below is this information, and also how well we feel that we communicated our message.

-Laurence

The Presentation - As A Whole

You can view our presentation and visual aids here.

Audience

Our film will have a BBFC rating of 15 because whilst it will contain infrequent use of strong language, there will be scenes of moderate to strong violence. Our main plot is based on MI5 planning to overthrow the government so there is lots of force, terrorisation and torture of targets and victims. Also the themes within our film are fairly current and hard-hitting – terrorism in the form of Christian extremism. So, for these reasons our film will be rated as a 15.

Our film will be aimed at a broad range of people. The main character is in his mid 30s and is male so people, especially men, in this age group are likely to be one type of audience for our film. The film is based around MI5 and the main character (an MI5 agent on the run) could be compared to the likes of Jason Bourne/modern James Bond in his role in the film. This would appeal to most groups of people because the subject of MI5 is mysterious and a world that people are curious about. That is why films of this nature are usually very popular and successful. However, there is a lot of violence and sinister themes in our film so it would be most likely that males will be the main audience rather than females. However, our film also focuses on the relationship between a father and his young daughter so this will most probably increase the female audience too.

As well as this our film contains a strong religious theme so religious groups of people may also be a possible audience for our film.
- Kim

Plots

I have already detailed my plot below; and I felt that the explanation of this to the group went well; because our plot was fairly complicated I felt that reading the plot synopsis to the group would be a good way to introduce them to the plot. I complimented this with a deeper explanation of the intricacies of our opening sequence.

-Rory

Stars
In our film there are several main characters. Below is a list of the actors we would ideally want to play each character and why:

CLIVE OWEN: To play the main character Tom Scott – an MI5 agent on the run. He is a British actor which enforces the setting of our film in England. He is currently a very popular and successful actor so this would be likely to increase our films chances of success at the Box Office! There was a lot of talk about him becoming the next James Bond and seeing as this character has many similarities to the modern James Bond we feel that our audience would enjoy seeing him in this role. He is not particularly associated with violent films which will also make it easier for our audience to believe the fatherly role he would play in this film.

MADS MIKKELSEN: To play the sinister mastermind behind the Christian extremist plot to overthrow the British Government and impose Christianity on the masses. Whilst he is not a British actor he is widely renowned for his sinister and threatening portrayal of Le Chiffre – James Bond’s main rival in Casino Royale. We wanted a very convincing and sinister ‘baddy’ and we felt he would most definitely do the job.

ELLE FANNING: To play Katie Scott – Tom Scott’s daughter who is kidnapped and used to buy James’ silence about the national secret he uncovers. We wanted a young actress as the daughter in our film is only going to be 7 years old. Elle has already starred in several Hollywood films: Déjà Vu, Babel and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. This will mean she is quite well known even though she is not a British actress.
- Kim

Inspiration & Mood Board

In the presentation of our task I created a mood board (picture above) to show our inspiration for our film and the general elements that are present in other thriller films. In the mood board I have added some darker images with horror elements in to show different types of thriller and that the darkness in thrillers adds suspense because it hides information; which is what we want in our thriller. So we have thought of presenting it in black and white to show the sinister subject and to make it similar to film noir, with shadowing. Our film was inspired by the Bourne films, Hitchcock films, Bond films, Da Vinci Code, Life of David Gale and Steven Spielberg films which are action thrillers. The title of our film was inspired by the saying "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter".

- Charlotte Matthews

Concept Board

At the end of the presentation I showed the 5 photos that I took of Rory playing our character, and of teh setting that we think that we will use. Converting these photos to black and white as this is our desired medium for our final production, attatching these to the final slides of pur presentation as well as printing them out and sticking them to a sheet allowing us to analyse them. Listing the connotations of the images, I will attatch an image of the concept board later.

Photos of The Concept Board are at the beginning of this blog post.

- Laurence

- Laurence, Charlotte, Kim & Rory

Progress Update

Today we put together our pitch for our main task, collating all of the documents using the website Sky-drive allowing us to store the documents on the internet, and this lets all of us access the same files.

Yesterday Rory, Kim and I went into the High Street armed with a camera, we took around 80 photos, all linking to our final production, the full 80 photos can be viewed on our Sky-drive.

Today we chose 5 of the best of these photos that we will present in our pitch tomorrow on our concept board. These photos show Rory running through a graveyard, a crowded street and through fields. I took these photos using a DSLR camera, allowing me to take quick shots of Rory as he runs.

We met up during the half term holidays to discuss our final production, we came up with the story line, we discussed how we would prepare for our pitch, i would produce the concept board, looking into the different film studios, and creating the general powerpoint presentation that would run in the background while we are delivering our pitch.

Charlotte was to produce the storyboard, Kim was looking into actors and audience, while Rory was typing up the full story line, as he has written below.


- Laurence