Meeting 3rd of February- Casting and Dialogue

 At todays meeting we talked abut casting and we came up with a list of student we think would fit the role:

 

The Killer:

James Hartman

Tom Wichelow

Stuart Butcher 

 

 

Murder victim:

Zoe Case 

Iside Montaldo 

 

Villager:

Adam Grant 

 

 

Villager 2:

Clare Crossley  

 

Priest

Lee Johnson

Simon Powwer

 

 

I also thought about what bits need dialogue and what kind of dialogue they need: 

 

 

The ‘Moring’ bit. 

 

Villager: ‘Mornin’

 

Murder: ‘Morning’

 

 

The ‘Quick chat in the church’ bit:

 

Oh James lovely to see ya

 

The ‘Epic confession’ bit:

 

Murder: Forgive Father, me for I have sinned!

 

Priest: "May the almighty and merciful Lord grant you indulgence, absolution, and remission of your sins. Amen. Thank you for your service James."

 

 

For the dialogue I did some research on what the common phrases for confessions are. 

 

Meeting 2nd of February- Planning Locations, casting and working on the characters

 At todays meeting I started redoing the character list: 

 

-Killer 

 -Murder victim

 

-Villager with dog 

 

-Villager in church 

 

-Priest 

We also discussed the locations we need: a church, a house/ a door that leads to a living space, and some form of street. Our teacher is still in contact with churches of previous opening sequences. There is a on campus boarding-house called the lodge which has looks like a small cottage which would be perfect for the house scene. It doesn’t really matter where we film the road scene so we decided to just film at a road near the church location. 

In terms of casting started sharing our ideas on who in the school fits the best each role. We decided to only work with people from school as this is the most doable option

Meeting 1st of February- Action list 2.0

 Today after having a chat with our teacher and a professional camera operator about our idea we restructured it and then Bert and I started writing an action list for our sequence which I then continued and finished writing afterwards.

 

ACTION LIST:

-Black void with title card

-Sound of signal Knock 

-Cut to medium low angle shot of murder standing Infront of the door 

-He knocks a second time 

-door slowly opens

-He forcefully kicks the door and enters the apartment the person in the living space backs away 

-the camera follows them as they move into the room

-He kills her and she falls on the ground 

-He knells down and says some final words to her

-Black void with title card

- wide shot of empty rural road 

-The killer walks into frame still holding his bloody knife 

-he walks around a corner

-close up of dogs eyes 

-sounds of dog growling 

-Cut to the eyes of the killer

-wide shit of villager with dog walking towards the killer

-cut to medium shot of villager 

-the villager greets the killer

-they walk past each other 

-Extreme wide shot of church in a Dutch angle

-murder walking down towards church

-he puts down his weapon  

-cut to closeup of cross

-cut to wide shot showing the seating area and the altar the sunlight spotlights a bible 

-cut to wide shot of priest and someone who confesses to him

-cut to wide shot of the church entrance 

-cut to medium shot of church entrance

-slow motion

-the door opens and beacons of lights shine through the room as the camera moves in to a low angle 

-The killer enters 

-normal motion

-cut to medium shot of Villager who confesses (she seems frightened)

-the villager looks at the killer 

-the villager stands up

-cut to medium shot of the villager and the murder 

-they have a nice little chat 

-the villager leaves 

-cut to over the shoulder shot as the killer walks towards the altar and kneels down 

-the camera moves around him and closes in on his face

-he looks up

-eyeline match and cut to Jesus’s face 

-The killer starts confessing 

-cut to close up of the killers face 

-cut to low angle close up of the priest who forgives and thanks him for his sins 

-cut to medium shot that slowly moves into a extreme wide shot of them standing/kneeling Infront of the altar

-cut to title card 

 

In general terms our idea, which was developed based on our work from the previous weeks, is now about a small town and their designated Killer who kills everyone that brakes the peace of the town. But everyone living in the town including the Priest is okay with this. In the rest of the movie tow people would move to the local town that brake the peace but survive the assassination attempt and then have to try and stop the tyranny.  

 

During our chat with our teacher and the professional camera operator we amongst things like structure, and themes we talked about do-ability of our idea. A important part of our idea is when the killer walks into the church soaked in blood as he just killed someone. The problem here might be that the people in charge of the church wouldn’t favour us shooting a scene with blood and knifes inside of a church. Therefore, I suggested that he simply takes of his apron and lays down his knife. We then came up with the idea that the reasoning for his actions would be that he respects the church.

Meeting 31th of January- Character sheet

At todays meeting we recapped what we had decided on so far and I started creating a character sheet:

The priest:

--Man, mid 50s to 60s white male bowled 

 

The local village idiot: 

--Man, 70s Bold white hair dressed like a dad on holidays at the beach 

 

-stereotypical school girl 

-Woman, 16-17, blond hair, school uniform  

 

- Fearsome and faithful villager 

Woman, Mid 45-60, dressed in fur 

 

-The murderer 

Man, 30-40 skinny wears mantel and cylinder hat

-Mother 

Woman, brown long hair in her 40s 

-child number one

-between the age 0f 7-10

 

-chilled number tow  

-between the age 0f 7-15

I also started a mood bard for the church scene:

 

Weekend update 30th of January- Key learnings from this week

 

Meeting 28th of January- Developing an idea

At today’s meeting we tried to develop the sequence into something that we all liked. The first setback was that Pablo got covid and we had to call him on Teams. We all wanted different things Pablo wanted to make a thriller, Bert wanted to make a action sequence and I wanted to make a comedy sequence. So I came up with a structure for a sequence with elements that we all liked. Bert and I then developed this structurer and wrote a short discerption of what we were imagining: 

The sequence opens on a mysterious man who has just killed a Family. We then cut to a confession booth where a stereotypical village idiot confesses to hideous sins. In the next minute the scene cuts between the mysterious murderer and the weird villagers confessing to sins. The sequence climaxes when the murder walks past the villagers into the church and enters the confession booth saying, ‘forgive me father for I have sinned’.

 

With this sequence we are going for a Hot Fuzz vibe. Hot Fuzz is an action comedy written and directed by Edgar Wright. The film combines the setting of a action film with a small British village and is in my and critics opinion incredibly funny. 

We pitched our idea to Pablo who seemed to like it, so Bert started developing the opening where the mysterious man murders a Family while I started thinking of the villager scenes. Bert came up with a rough plan for the first 30 seconds of the sequence:

 

Low camera angle of a hallway. The door is being knocked violently. The mother walks to the door and opens it. Few seconds of silence then you hear a knife stab into her and you see the low angle view of her falling to the ground. The man walks into the room, still only seeing his feet.  There is a small boy in the corner of the room sobbing. There’s a low angle shot looking up at the hooded figure looking down. And a high angle shot looking down of at the boy. Then you see the shadow of the man bringing down his knife. He picks up his bag at a low angle shot of just lower body and walks out. 

 

This new idea drastically increases our cast. Due to the size of our production, we must try and minimalize the cast again. The style of Film we are going for if done correctly can be really entertaining but its also hard to pull of. We therefore all have to be on the same page and really work together as a team. 

Meeting 27th of January- Deciding

 Today we decided on one idea. ‘The local Priest’ won the vote. We spend the rest of the lesson trying to develope the original idea into something we could all get excited about.