Location

As a group we have thought of many different churches that we could use for our main filming location. We first looked at our local Church Of England in Wootton Bassett and have spoken with the Reverend, who has agreed to us film there when we wish to if the church is not in use. All there is left to do is to find a date that we are able to film with our leading actor, however he is a busy man and it s hard to find time, meaning that we may have to change our lead role. I researched other locations such as; Oxford Cathedral, Lacock Abbey and Lyneham Church however we believed that Bassett was our best location for filming.

For the outside locations we will make use of our local high street, which is shown in our concept board images, however we may have issues with filming pedestrians in the street because we do not gain permission from the people in the street and have not get warmed the police that we are filming in the high street. Also we plan for our protagonist to run in front of a car, however we may need to change this shot because it may not be safe.

-Charlotte Matthews

Planning Stage - Script

Daytime, Cloudy, Open Field. A disheveled suited man running, worriedly, towards trees and the outskirts of an unknown town.

As we follow him, he runs through the streets, worried; panicky & confused.

Making his way to the church, he stumbles in, exhausted.

Tom runs into the Church. Stops and looks around. Sees his daughter Elle and starts running towards her.

TOM:
(Half whispering and out of breath)
Elle?

He runs to her and cradles her.

TOM:
What have they done to you?
(In horror and angry)

A figure steps out of the shadows behind Tom – we don’t see his face.

BAD GUY:
So this is the secret you are going to die for…

Church door slams shut.

Analysis
We feel the above script is very effective because it incorporates very few small lines of punch and energetic dialogue that serve to both reveal and explain some the preceding action as well as throw up yet more questions about the plot and setting itself.

We felt that it would be best to keep dialogue to a minimum if we were to maximize the potential of our film and its plot; too much dialogue would ruin the tense atmosphere that the opening sequence has worked hard to build up, and giving away too much vital narrative information this earlier on (chronologically not by narrative) or revealing too much about the conservative Christian cult.

We also felt that the symbolic act of running toward his child and cradling her is a very powerful storytelling tool which shows immediately to the audience the strong relationship between the two characters and moves to bring them closer together within in the audience’s minds.
Finally, we felt that the script is the best way to break the “musical silence” that had so far occupied the non-diegetic music slot. This diegetic speech allows a transition to the more traditional feel of a movie.

-Rory

Progress Update - Planning Stage

As our production planning continues, we continue to work to towards producing scripts, storyboards and other guides to help us film our production smoothly, and with as few problems as possible.

In our 2 hour lesson today, we finalised our script and worked on a rough version of our storyboard (0verall responsibility for which rests with Laurence) because we felt panning such as this was important enough to be planned as a group as then passed to laurence for finalisation and tidying-up.

We also delegated costume ideas to Laurence, and location scouting and approval to Charlotte. Kim was to be responsible for storyboarding input and actor scouting.

As we continue to develop our ideas we will update the blog with further information regarding the following key areas.

• Script
• Storyboard
• Costumes
• Actors
• Scouting

We have already completed our preliminary scouting for locations, and have settled on our local church as the preliminary location for our opening sequence and the surrounding streets of the town. More information will be forthcoming.

- Rory