Locations

There are only two locations being used in the opening 2 minutes, which are:

Car Interior

Conservatory

We decided against using the field on the advice of both Mr Smith and Ms Elger, who pointed out that the field we were going to use looked like a field - the difference between the school field and a normal field (which would have been the ideal scene to use) was startlingly obvious after comparing them.

The shot of the field is now replaced with a shot of an open sky, with it panning to land on the sun. The gunshot, title, and various other shots continue as normal from that point in.

The car interior will be used for one (or possibly two) shots, mainly to convey to the audience that the victim was being taken from one area to another.

The conservatory will be shown in two different ways - the main shots being it as a murder scene (with cling film, blood and very little in terms of furniture) and the final shots being of it as a normal room (with sofa, television, people, table, etcetera.). Similar, if not identical, shots will be used in order to express to the audience that it's the same room.

Company Name

Potential Names

Heat Wave

Red Water Films

Red Teeth Films

Media Massacre Productions

Affinity

Bloodshot Beast Productions

Brooding Beast Productions

Bloodshot Films

Burgundy Brains

Scarlet Sand Productions

Poopie Films

Ruby Buff (Tom is)

60mil Productions

Lumberyard Productions

We eventually decided on calling our "company"...

Special Effects Body Parts

Filmmaking Special Effects : How to Make Fake Body Parts

What We Need

PVC Pipe

Packing Foam

Old, discarded shirt

Duct tape / Safety Pin

Special Effects Blood

 

 

WikiHow

YouTube: 'Videomaker - Creating Fake Blood for Video'

YouTube: 'How to Make Fake Blood - Cheap, Easy, Realistic Looking'

Costumes

The uniform for the killer is meant to be fairly dark, due to the dark nature of his actual character. However, the premise of the film is that the audience shouldn't know whether or not his character is acting out of a sense of justice or revenge (and thus in some ways is morally right), or if he is acting out of madness. They shouldn't be able to tell either way, in either the way he acts or the direction any of his elements are, including the costume. Due to this, some parts of his costume should be fairly light, in order to hint at a possible just side to him.

The victim, played by Tom Cartwright, is made to be a polar opposite of the killer - his clothes are informal, consisting of jeans and a white t-shirt, but again his costume has been designed to have both light and dark elements, so that the audience isn't thrown either way as to whether or not he's actually deserving of the murder or not. Again, the costumes have been kept with the state of the audience in mind - we don't want them to have made conclusions as to the motivations of the killer through false signals.

The other people shown in it aren't of much importance, so not much thought has been given to what they'll be wearing, except that they'll be wearing informal clothing. To keep the last shot in particular fairly realistic however, we're having a party in which the film will be shot, so formal clothing is going to be avoided. A high amount of contrast should be shown between the scenes and the costumes, and it should be clearly noticeable by the audience.

Storyboard

We went through several different ideas when it came to developing the storyboard, after each of which we generally scrapped the ideas and created new ones. Eventually, we landed on a storyboard which fit the atmosphere we were going for with the film opening - dark, with a hint of humour (but not to the extent of parody films and black comedy films).

Old Storyboards

Finished (?) Storyboard:

Some of the shots are being thought over again, especially shot 12 (which has been noted to have sexual undertones that were completely unintended), so a revised storyboard will probably be posted at some point in the near future.

Recce Shots 1 - Opening Shot and Potential Shots

This shot was done on location, leading up to the field where we plan to set the opening shot (or possibly another field, but this is probably the easiest to get access to due to being at the school and essentially empty during break and lunch).

This is a closer shot of the field, with Tom making a face best described as "wise sage". I don't know why. He just did it.

Another shot of the field, but at the angle we'll potentially be using for the opening shot - though that shot will probably be a bit closer to get rid of the gravel at the bottom of this shot, and at a lighter time of the day.

A higher angle to show what the field will look like when it's lighter, and thus at the time when we'll be filming. If not, we'll just have to brighten it afterwards somehow.

A scary tree.

A nice shot overall, though probably not too relevant to the current planned storyboard. We'll have to wait and see if we need to add anything or not.

If the current storyboarded opening doesn't take up two minutes, we've decided to add bits here and there to lengthen sections, such as this area which could show the car leaving the scene (again, being fairly empty during the day). What's more likely though is that the only scene done involving the car will from within the car rather than out of it.

We still need to take shots of the car interior and the conservatory and rooms being used for the final set of shots, which I'll be doing at some point before Friday.

Research Lions Gate Entertainment

Whilst choosing a distribution/production company for our film, we looked at various companies that had dealt similar films in our genre. We eventually landed on Lions Gate Entertainment, the distribution company behind such films as Saw, Hostel and American Psycho, the latter of which has been one of the main inspirations for our own title.

The company was founded back in 1995 by Frank Giustra, a Canadian investment banker at the time who capitalized on the film industry in his home town, Ontario. They bought a variety of small production facilities as well as distributors, including Artisan Entertainment and Mandate Pictures.

The first major box office success was one of the main inspirations for our courswork, American Psycho, after which started a trend of producing/distributing films that were seen as controversial back in the day, such as Saw.

Title Redecision

After having Mr Ford and others point out the problems to do with the previous title Guy de Vere, such as the general tone of it not really matching the genre of the film, we decided to change the title to something a bit more catchy and suiting.

We decided on Generation of Vipers, an appropriate choice due to the religious conotations behind it (being from an excerpt of the Bible) that could possibly relate to the characters views, as well as it relating to his violent past involving people who he saw as nothing more than 'vipers'.

Research Language Register

Edit: Disregard this entire post

In order to decide on an appropriate language register for the opening, we decided to do some research into the appropriate uses for each of the registers and find the one that’s most fitting for the film…

Language Register	Description	Uses
Static Register	Rarely or never changes “Frozen” in time and content	Pledge of Allegiance Alma Mater Laws
Formal Register	Formal setting One-way – impersonal and formal	Speeches Sermons Announcements
Consultative Register	Standard form of communication Formal, follows societal expectations	When strangers meet  Boss to employee Teacher and student
Casual Register	Informal setting (friends, etc.) “Group” language – must be ‘member’ to engage	Talk with friends Blogs Letters to friends
Intimate Register	Private setting Reserved for close family members, etc.	Husband and wife Siblings Parent and children

Films and the like don’t have to keep to one register, they can transition between them at various points, but it’s suggested that they transition to adjacent registers as opposed to skipping between random ones – this is often considered inappropriate, or even offensive.

Seeing as our film opening doesn’t actually have much, if any, dialogue, it’d be hard to apply these registers to anything more than the way the characters interact. For the opening shot, where the victim and his friend are together, an intimate register should probably be used between them, but the interaction between the killer and the victim afterwards should probably be applying the consultative register, due to the way that the killer controls the victim as would be expected from a superior interacting with a subordinate – however, several elements that were added for comedic effect would probably fall into the casual register, such as the approach the killer takes to murdering the victim (fairly laid back).