Planning: Shot List

Although we will follow this shot list as closely as we can, there might be angles and movements we cannot have work in our shooting location, so some last-minute adjustments may have to be made.

Planning: Considering Mise-En-Scene

Costume


For the Killer, we wanted to create a look that would distinguish him from the other characters, but still kept a sense of simplicity, and didn't distract from the props, location, and other aspects of mies-en-scene that contribute to the film's story. Because we wanted his face to be concealed at all times, we chose a gas mask and ski goggles, both linking in to his use of chemicals and keeping his face hidden from the audience. In terms of clothing, we chose for him to safety gloves (as he will be handling chemicals) and a tracksuit (as it is time-neutral; we didn't want to adhere to fashion of the 2010s and distract from the fact that our film is set in the future). We chose to keep the tracksuit black to signify both evil and darkness, and suggest that he is the threat to watch out for.



The Killer

Killer mood board

The character of the victim will be planned in less detail, as most shots will be close-ups on certain aspects of his body and, as a dying victim, he will not need to portray as much exposition or personality through his choice of dress. However, he will need to indicate that he is of a high class, and so we will keep this in mind whilst choosing his costume.

Victim mood board, but also how the future generation would dress in everyday future life.

Props

Our props include;

• A pig sticker (most likely with an animal pack of stickers) as at the end of the opening, the killer sticks a pig sticker onto his mask, representing that he has taken his first victim. 
• Scattered paper, receipts, newspaper clippings, etc.
• Schweppes to replicate a chemical, as it glows in UV light (we will also need to buy a UV lamp), food colouring, artificial foam.
• One iPhone, headphones.
• Bowl, fortune cookies, scientific flasks and equipment, conspiracy-theory-looking cork board, neon-coloured highlighter, animal photos of the zodiacs, a long mirror.
• The 'TOXIC' sign. 

To track down some scientific equipment, we looked in the store room for our school's science department; they have allowed us to borrow some of their flasks, and given us suggestions for safe, yet convincing 'chemical reactions' to experiment with.

For scientific equipment, the science department are willing to let us borrow various things, and even suggested some experiments for us to use in the opening. We will also be using a smoke machine to help with mies-en-scene in certain scenes.

Planning: Location Planning

Knowing we needed a gritty secluded area, I found a warehouse which Emma managed to get keys for (all legal). The warehouse has a perfect atmosphere, with a floor that will be easy to clean up our chemicals afterwards. The cars will also be gone for when we film, so there'll be a lot of space to set up lighting as well as good room for the scenes we make. Although we were initially going to use the outside of the warehouse to use for the victims scenes, there it only a thin pavement, so we have considered other places to use such as Keystone or the industrial area.

Planning - Casting

Our opening only consists of two characters - the Killer and the victim - so as the Killer has the most focus and the victim's full body won't be shown we decided to only do casting for the villain. Our only requirements for him were being able to walk intimidatingly and casually - plus being able to bust out some sick dad dancing. We didn't need to judge facial expressions as our killer will be masked, however we did need to consider the overall feel of danger the actor would project. We auditioned Ashley and Sam (who both take drama and are very skilled actors) and ultimately decided that Sam should be our killer. 

Producing A Storyboard For Your Opening

To visualise what our shots would look like and help us know what camera angles/movements/shots we would need, we have created a storyboard (with pictures taken from shots in the animatic I produced). Of course, the final product won't look exactly like the storyboards planned (as we might make last minute decisions to change a camera angle, for example), but working from the storyboards will give us a fairly solid idea. 

Along our storyboards, I also created an animatic - with very simple drawings using FireAlpaca (even though emailing the storyboards to myself lessened to quality) - which would help us visualise the shots in time to the music, most of the time having the scene change with every bar. Obviously the animatic will not be an exact parallel to the finished product, but gives us an idea for how much content we need to film to try and fit the shots into bars as best as we can (though the time may go over the bars at some points).

Markers put onto Danse Macabre to fit with the music.