Proposal:
My film summarised
in a single sentence would be: A zombie apocalypse survival, characters individual stories, intertwine to one.
The target
audience for my film will obviously have to have an interest in films; it would
mainly be aimed towards young males. These young males would be classed as
teenagers to young adults, aging between 15-25. Teenagers/young adults mostly
consist of students, part time workers, or even both. They are the sort of
people I believe would be most interested in my film. This is because generally,
it’s young males that enjoy zombie films and have the time to enjoy them. My
target audience would have access to the internet, probably be up to date with
technology and the media. Also likely to be gamers like myself. I think my film
would be most enjoyed by small groups of friends, typically guys as mentioned
above.
- · The main character is played by me (as well as directing the film).
- · This main character will be portrayed as a somewhat geeky student, more or less me as myself.
- · Early on in the film my character will jump off a height to attempt to save someone, but end up breaking a leg.
- · I will use something as a walking stick (this would most likely end up being a cricket bat).
- · There will be a scene of me being chased by zombies through a narrow alley way.
- · There will be a time where I have to use the walking stick as a weapon to defend myself.
- · At least once during the film, the camera will be acting as my eyes. So the camera is getting my point of view, just like a first person video game.
- · When the camera becomes my point of view, I might have everything pause, like time has stopped as it shifts to my perspective. Not 100% sure yet though, it’s currently an idea that may be implemented.
- · There may be scenes of dialogue.
- · Possible use of the quote “run you fools” as said by the famous, Gandalf the Grey.
- · There are a couple of different ideas for the ending, but it will definitely include more characters, including myself of course.
- · The film is likely to end as a ‘cliff hanger’.
Notes:
Research:
The first thing we did before anything else, was scout for locations. This was before we even knew we could do a zombie film for the college task. Here are some of the pictures we had taken, in search of filming locations:
Here are a few pictures of our zombie design. As students, we couldn't afford proper make-up, nor did we have anyone really experienced with make-up design. But this is what we ended up with, I think it mainly comes down to how well you can act like a zombie (unfortunately none of us are good at acting).
Filming plan:
Story board:
Evaluation:
Between my friends and I, we had 5 scenes in total in our film. We directed a scene each, which was technically our own films (our project was to make a film individually) and then we all decided together how the final scene would play out. It ended up being a sort of 'bonus' scene. My part was the first scene, called "Break a leg". Each clip lasted from about 2-4 minutes. In total, with all the credits included, our film was about 15 mins long.
I've learnt a number of things doing this filming project. The main thing being, I can't act. But then I've always known that I can't act and always known that it's not for me. If it were possible, it would have been much better to have actors/drama students rather than doing the acting ourselves. This isn't just for the acting ability but also so, as the director, I could be more focused on seeing how the filming was going. Also it would have been better if we had more experienced camera men, although I guess that is something that we were all to learn from doing this task. I learnt that I can plan a film better than I had originally thought when set this task, I'm happy with my ability to be able to produce a detailed story board. I'm pleasantly surprised with the amount of enthusiasm and effort I was able to put in for this project, I didn't think I had it in me. After watching the film back, I realised it was actually very bad, it was amateur hour at it's finest. I made a big mistake when it came to filming, and that was that I didn't have my story board on me, with all the locations, shots and dialogue that I had intended to use. My tutor wanted to see all of our work, and stupidly I gave in the story board with everything else. I've learned from my mistake. I'm not a very good cameraman, my skills with technology seem to be rather poor, but then I didn't have that many opportunities to be a cameraman on this project, I didn't really want to be using my friends films as practice for my camera abilities in case I did a bad job of it. Maybe it is a skill I will learn in the future. I don't think I make a great director, especially for a serious film such as this (as it was supposed to be). Horror films have never really been for me either, so maybe doing a horror film for this wasn't a great idea. But then, my friends wanted to do a zombie film and they did invite me into the group so I was happy to do whatever the majority wanted. After realising how bad the film was, I thought it could be made a lot better as a sort of comedy, a humorous film. When it came to editing, I tried to make it as fun and funny as I could, without making it seem too out of place when put with my friends clips. Overall, I've learned that I could be a lot better prepared for filming; I'm no good at acting; not a great camera man; not great at directing, either. However, I've also learned that I can plan a film well and can put in the effort for it. I think I'd be able to make a good comedy sort of film, that will probably be what I try to do next.
Of course the whole point of this was for college. But this experience will benefit me in the future. I now have an understanding of camera work and directing, which I know will pay off later on in this course as I'm sure there will be more filming to come. I'm thinking I could probably use some of the planning from this project some other time because I'm very happy with how it was all planned, but disappointed with how it was poorly executed. Maybe in the future, I could give this another go.
Everything was good other than the filming itself. The actors were all bad, but then that's to be expected. Still, I'm happy with everyone that was willing to help and who gave it a go. There may not be too much proof of planning here, but many hours were spent on it. I had made a decent amount of notes, just jotting down any ideas I might of had. I'm sure there would have been more ideas if I were allowed to have everything go my way, but because my group wanted my character to get injured and form a relationship with one of the other characters, I was some what limited. My story board has a good amount of detail of exactly what I wanted to have happen. There was also a lot of discussion and lots of time spent meeting up with the others to work on this project, constantly jumping ideas off one another. One thing that wasn't planned, was the soundtrack. Only myself and one other group member had actually created the music ourselves (Although I did copy music, it was still my own as it wasn't exactly the same because I played it myself), I'm quite proud of that because I'm no musician and I can't play an instruments, but I was able to get something out of a synthesizer. One soundtrack was made by an actual musician for one of my friends, the other was a soundtrack taken off the web and reversed, possibly with slight alterations of speed also. A lot of our music didn't fit the scenes at all and created the wrong atmosphere. I think when it came to sound, it seemed we were trying too hard and ended up with what could be classed as dance music. We didn't have a microphone when we were out filming, so that was all done back at the college, creating noises for footsteps and many other things, then trying to sync them up with the visuals. Of course, that didn't turn out perfectly, but we did a decent job of it. The editing was pretty good in places, too. Could have done with more footage to use though, we seemed to have just done one take for each bit. Also, we had quite a few pedestrians about which were inevitably going to get caught in some of our footage, they were unavoidable.
It could have turned out better if we had more experience with filming; If we had the right environment i.e no pedestrians; actors instead of acting ourselves; the rights to using existing music and we had been a bit better prepared.
My friends and I had prepared a small form for our colleagues to fill out as part of our evaluation. Here are some of them:
