Wednesday, 9 January 2013

Shooting Schedule

9am - 10pm - preparing set and collecting props

10am - 1pm - tracking shot/establishing shot

1pm - 2pm - lunch

2pm - 4pm - close up shots and slider shots

4pm - 5pm - tracking shot across the desk

New Storyboard of 'Solo' Thriller



Changes to Thriller

After a lot of preparation, blog posts and note taking of details to our thriller we have incidentally decided to change aspects of our thriller.

1) LOCATION: At first, we planned our thriller in a boarding house bedroom but we have since decided that we do not need the detail of the boy getting out of bed in his bedroom. Plus, the lighting of the room would have been a difficulty as we wanted dim lighting as the thriller is meant to be in the middle of the night. Therefore, we decided to film in the media studio, setting up the boys desk and locating him under it on his laptop.

2)SHOTS: We also exchanged the potential aerial shot at the start of the thriller of the boys bedroom to a tracking shot which acts as an establishing shot of the boys bedroom, introducing the viewers to his workspace.

3)DIRECTION OF ACTOR: We also changed the position of the actor. At first, we wanted the boy to be sat at his computer, typing and hacking the FBI but we decided to change this around so the boy is hunched over under the desk so his activity seems more secretive and intrigues the audience into wanting to find out what the boy is doing.

4)PROPS: We changed around the position of the props as we decided to place the airfix models on the boys desk rather than set up the airfix on a second desk away from his computer desk. We also decided against having shots of the pyramid of rubix cubes and the filament of the light bulb brightening up. Instead we concentrated on the boy's activity and typing to heighten the mystery.

Our changed set:


 
 


Thursday, 13 December 2012

The Set of 'Solo'

This is a birdseye view of the set we intend to build for our thriller in the studio at school:
 

Wednesday, 12 December 2012

Research into Casting

Once our group casted Nick we found certain similarties with the character of Mark Zuckerberg in 'The Social Network' drama film, however, sharing conventions with various other thrillers. Also it has been said that Mark Zuckerberg has a slight tendency of autism, sharing similarities with our character in 'Solo'. Additionally, Zuckerberg obviously has technology skills as a result of creating the billionaire business of Facebook, whilst our character in 'Solo' is responsible for hacking into the FBI mainframe as a consequence of his autism. We wanted to show that in fact aspergers could affect anybody and should not detract from what you can achieve in life. By link Facebook and aspergers as well as social networking we can widen our target audience as everyone has heard of Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg


 
 

Casting

The character of the autistic boy should be played by an actor who is:
  • Able to act vulnerable yet mature
  • Good Actor
  • Appealing to a young audience
  • Able to be tried in America for an adult
We decided on the actor, Nick Lyasovsky.



We decided he was right for the role as he is acclaimed as a talented actor therefore he could easily act with the symptoms of autism, which may be quite challenging for other potential actors. Therefore he will also be able to act in a vulnerable yet mature way. He may appeal to a younger audience which may attract younger viewers to want to see the film as the storyline may not necessarily attract them to want to see the film. Nick also looks the right age for the role and he could also be tried for an adult in America.

The young character we have incorporated into our thriller is consequently similar to other thrillers such as the child actors in Terminator 2, Omen, Shining, Sixth Sense. Our actor in 'Solo' could also be seen as a male version of the child actor in 'Hanna' as a result of her extraordinary defence skills and similarly the boy's technology skills in our thriller, deriving from his autism, allows him to subconsciously hack into the FBI mainframe.

 




Saturday, 8 December 2012

Research for Mise-en-Scene of 'Solo'

In our thriller our group will attempt to recreate a teenaged boy's bedroom. Since the boy in our thriller is obsessed with gadgets and technology this means the room will consequently have computers and iPads on display. But the pictures below give a rough idea of the desired mise-en-scene. The colour scheme is also key as this signifies the male character of our thriller, with blues and greens as the dominant colour. We need to research this as we wanted to gather as much information as possible in order to recreate the room as realistically as possible, for the audience to believe that the boy's actions could be a true occurence in reality, all by maintaining a well designed set and thoroughly thought through mise-en-scene.