Setting|/location planning

Settings/Location

Our actors are teenagers still attending college. However because it’s the film opening we need to build the characters profile up in the opening, so we decided to show their daily lives, what they do in the morning. So in the beginning the characters are shown in their house/location to show the contrast between the boy and girl. Poor and wealth. Me and Fabiha had many location ideas because we were just planning and imagining if they would be suitable for our characters. However we ended up chosing a different one at the end.

INITIAL LOCATION:

For the female character, we first decided that Tredegar, Bow would be the perfect location due to how clean and posh the area looks. It contains houses that look similar to the ones in Chelsea, therefore really push and white with nice flowers and plants outside each door and a really nice park which will complete the overall setting  of the girl. Tredegar rapresents a location a typical middle/ high class family would decided to live in and our female character in fact comes from a middl/ high class family background. An additional reason we thought Tredegar, Bow would be a perfect location is because it is 20 minutes away from our Sixth Form which is uote close therefore we do not waste too much time on the journey.

FINAL LOCATION:

After a few meetings with my peer, we decided the actual locations. We thought it would be better if we filmed somewhere closer and this park is literally 5 minutes away from our college. It contains same elements as Tredegar Park does such as the flowers, plants benches, trees etc... For the girl's location we decided we would choose a clean, quiet area. This is because it will further convey the message that the girl's lifestyle is a lot more different than the boy's. We chose a speficic park, Stepney Green Park. Me and Fabiha personally chose this park due to how clean it is and due to the sorroundings and elements the park has. It has clean grass, trees, benches, walking paths and flowers which will show the audience how well kept the area is, which further demonstrates how posh it is. In addition, the buildings around the park are also well kept and quite modern.  


The female character's house is in Chadwell Heath due to some restrictions. We could not film in a house in Tredegar because we needed to get into the house in order to films some scenes such the girl's bedroom. If we were to do that in someone else's house that we do not even know it would most likely not happen because someone unknown would not really let us in their house and film. That is why Fabiha used her friends house to film. That was the only place available at the time, therefore we filmed there. The hpuse is not the one in the picture but it is similar and middle class people live there. We could've rented a hpuse or apartment but due to our low budget we had to get someone to let us film in their house.

The actor's location is quite the opposite compared to the actress's. He lives in a rather poor area, in the East London estate. We filmed in Stepney.  His specific location was chosen carefully because of the charasteristics found in the area. It included dustbins, littering all over the grass/streets, clothing drying on banlconies, rusty doors/gates etc... It contains dustbins everywhere which is almost a sign of poverty and there will be shots of litter on grass to further demonstrate dirtiness and messiness. The blocks just complete the settings due to how they are classified as a poor and trashy type of housing. I think that the colour of the building is really suitable for our character and his personality because it is a dark brown colour which links with the boy's dark personality. We might add a shot of a park around hat area and we will try find a park that shows blocks at the back so tht it goes better woth the paralleledit and we can shpw a greater contrast between the male and female character.

Final Casting

We decided our final casting.

In terms of the  female character, it will be Fabiha's sister, Humayra because even though we did as other students in collee and friends, they did not want to or they were too busy to participate. Fabiha's sister is a suitable character and was chosen mainly because we cannot afford to pay a real actress to act for us, that is why we had to chose a family memeber or a friend. Humayra is 16, which is the perfect age to rapresent youth. She is asian and we alked about how our actress and actor are most likely to be asian due to that is the ethnic majority of the area we are from. Although our ideal female character was white, as the one we researched, we could not find a teenage white girl available so that was a limitation we came across.

In terms of the male character, we were intially planning and even researched a black boy because we were trying to be stereotypical due to how typical gangsters seem to be black. However, like the female character, we did not find any black teenage boy available to act for us. We ended up choosing our class mate, Umed, who is 17 years old and that is the perfect age to rapesent the boy. He was the only boy available to act for us. We thought he had the right features such as a skinny body and quite tall.

CASTING DECISION EVIDENCE

However, here is the proof that we did ask other people if they were available or not. I used whats app to ask Imran, our class mate, if he wanted to be our male charatcer for our film opening. As you can see he is busy with a levels, therefore is not available.  

Here is another proof of me asking my friend Nusharat if she would like to be the actress for our film opening but again, she is busy with a levels, therefore it was not possible for her to be available for us.

However here we have the screenshot of Fabiha asking our final actor and actress. Here she asked her sister, Humayra on Imessage and she immeditaly said yes to being our official female character.

Here, Fabiha is asking Umed if he would like to be our male character in the opening through whats app and he said yes too.

After making sure that Umed and Humayra were going to take part in our coursework as the casting we made plans and decided the dates we are going to choos to meet uo and film. This way we will complete the task in time before the deadline and everything will be more organised. 

description of characters

Description of actress

In our film we wanted to cast someone who would be able to  play the role of a young girl from an upper/ middle class background  who is insanely in love with a black boy from a lower class background.  Me and my peers have researched many films that have this similar story line and we looked into actresses and all agreed that Rachel Mcadams is one of the most popular actress in the romantic genre (in modern romantic films). She is the female protagonist in many films such as The Notebook, The Vow and About Time.

In addition, as we are forced to follow the stereotypes we wanted our actress to have red short hair (like Rachel) because we believed that red short hair symbolised passion, rebelliousness and fierceness, some of the many characteristics we want our female protagonist to have.

We would make our female protagonist wear sophisticated make up which is natural make up on the eyes with bright red lipstick. We believe that the red lipstick evokes feelings of excitement and tranquil, this is key in our character as want her to be bold and daring. We wanted our female actress to be girly and dress in a classy manner therefore we thought that colour would be essential to symbolise her femininity and class. In our storyboard we said that we wanted our actress to wake up and open the curtains, in this scene we would have her with wavy hair and pink leopard print pyjamas. The pink would emphasis her gender and the leopard print would enhance her assertive femininity. Furthermore,  later on in the opening we would have her wear a navy blue dress with black tights and pumps to show that she dresses in a mature way which connotes that she is from a higher/ middle class background.

Moreover we wanted our upper/middle class actress to be from the white ethnic group as they are stereotypically seen to have more of an advantage in society for example having economic and social capital and ascribed status  as well as valuing family tradition. What we wanted was to subvert this stereotypical idea of an upper/middle class girl by making her break traditions and fall in love with a guy who is not from a similar background.

We are aware that it is impossible for us to get an exact copy of Rachel Mcadams. We have many limitations such as finding an white girl with red/ginger hair to play this role. The actors we are going to find will be from this are. It would be difficult to find a white girl as this area has a large population of Bangladeshis therefore our actress is very likely to be Bengali. 

Description of actor

In our movie we wanted to our male protagonist to be someone from a black ethnic group because the negative stereotypes of black men are associated with criminality and social disorder. As we subverted the role of our female character we wanted to conform to the stereotypes of our male character just to balance our film opening. As a group we decided that Will Smith is someone that would fit into our genre. Even though Will Smith is known for being in comedy’s but he is also known in some action films such as ‘Men In Black’ and ‘Hancock’. By watching his action films we believe that he can be part of our movie because we want our character to be slightly ‘Gangster like’ and brave. Also, Will Smith has featured in some romantic films such as ‘7 Pounds’. Moreover, we wanted someone sleek, a person who puts on this bad boy act but is actually a warm hearted person. We want our character to be humble but submissive at the same time, almost as if he is peer pressured into acting a certain way.

We would like our chosen character to have this ‘bad boy’ personality. He should have a hood on and Bomber Jacket, dull clothing and trainers to show that he is not interested in fashion. He has got to be a laid back’ lazy boy who has a bit if an attitude and temper. We want him to speak in a colloquial form (slang) to show that he is from a deprived area and most of all, from a lower class background.  We are aware that it is impossible for us to find someone exactly like Will Smith. Me and my peers are aware that we are unable to get a black boy to play this role as therefore due to this we are very likely to cast a Bangladeshi boy.

health risk assessment

Scheduling

Schedule

Story Board

This is our first ever story board we made. I drew all the scenes we thought will be in our film opening. However as time went we had to change some of the following scenes or not include them in our opening due to how they did not blend with the rest of the scenes or were not a good idea for ur plot. It starts off with the locations of both female and male character. For the female i drew a park with flowers and trees and that was actually included in the film opening, It is in fact the first opening scene. In addition, even the male character's area was included right after the girl's locations. Because we want a back and forth kind of parallel edit we decided to have as many cuts as possible and get the girl's scenes for some seconds, quickly followed by the boy's scene. This was actually a great idea as it clearly showed the contrast between the two characters, which was the intial aim. We decided to not film certain scenes because they were not necessary or did not go with story really for example the scene where the girl is checking her phone and she is on instagram. Instead,we added a scene wherethe male characteris checking his Iphoneand calling someone by first dialling theirnumber. Also, another scene that was actually initially filmed but not recorded was the steady shot of the girl's shoe collection. The main reason we did not include that scene is because we thought it took too muh time and space whithin the opening because it has to be 2 minutes long and we exceeded that by 30 seconds, therefore had to cut some scenes. We have not even edted the titles in yet, that will take up more space therefore it was definiteley a good idea to remove some scenes.Other than that all the other scenes are edited in our video somehow, including the male character in th block smoking. We also added new scenes that were not in this story board such as close up of the boy's trainers and bag. We did this because we initially did not have enough footage of the male character. We had to film extra additional scenes to even out the amount of scenes for each of the characters.

Film Pitch

This is our initial plot of the story.We used Powtoon to make this as we thought it was a good idea to use the cartoons and text and other elements the website provides.

FEEDBACK:
After making our pitch we got feedback from our teachers to make sure the story is good enough to make a film opening about it. Mrs Georgiou said that the characters should not meet in the film opening due to how that will give too much of the story away.She saidthat that is the best thing to dowhich made us all think and we decided that we will listen to her and therefore changed the part of the pitch where they meet.

CHANGES:
We changed a lot from this and kept some of the things the same. We changed things such as the part where the plot says the characters meet because they do not meet. We all discussed that if they meet, it will give too much of the story away, therefore we should just introduce them and their lives, without them meeting.  However the part where the plot says they are the complete opposite is still the same, in fact that is our story. The two characters are from different backgrounds and their lifestyles are the complete opposite. The setting is partially right because they do not meet at school because that way they would have met already. Because we do not want them to meet yet we are going to film them in their own area, if not house. The target audience is also right because we are targeting our film opening to girls aged 15 and over. However we might have some males in the audience due to how couples might watch it too.

Planning Costumes and Props

Here are the exact costumes and props we arenplanning to use in full details. Since we have a low budget we asked the characters themeselves to bring what they could and it worked perfectly.

Costumes & props Research

Costumes & props

We chose costumes and props depending on the description and characteristics of our characters. This is to further represent them a certain way to so that it creates stereotype and it engages the audience to understand how they are like, what they dress like and how they act as a person. Props and costumes complete the mise en scene completely due to how viewers identify and analyse each of them to then understand the story in depth.


Female character:
The female character is a quite classy, calm girl who is from a middle/upper class background. After thinking about what elements would give the impression of a female being posh and classy we came up with the following ideas.
Make up- simple eyeliner which represents simplicity but at the same time class and elegance due to how elongated and tidy the wing is. Red lipstick, which is typically worn by females coming from a rich family due to how bold the colour is. In addition because our genre is romance we thought that by making the character wear red lipstick that would identify the concept of love throughout the film opening. In terms of costumes we are going to keep it classy, girly and clean for the female character because girls from an educated family do not typically wear casual clothes. They are expected to dress formally due to their high stardards. We are going to make the character wear classy dresses and shoes to further emphasise her background. This will not only tell the audience about her background, but also show how she is on the inside; this type of dressing symbolises sophistication which is fundamental to represent this character. Jewellery and accessories such as handbags or sunglasses will be added to complete the dress and add a girly feel to it. However, that is only when she is outside because when she is indoors in her house, we decided that she will be wearing pink leopard print pyjamas. The colour is perfect because it is a soft colour and also fits into the romantic genre. The leopard print is rather girly.

Male character:
The male character will be quite the opposite to show the contrast in class. His clothes will be more casual and "gangster" like. He will mainly be wearing sport clothes due to how they are a good representation of a boy that is always on the streets. In fact, the UK or USA has stereotypical "roadmen" which are seen as a bad influence on society as they are not into education and always do drugs, smoke or drink alcohol. They always wear hoodies or baggy clothes in general. They are always found with trainers on, such as Nike. We might also add accessories like hats, earrings or chains which reinforce the idea of him being a bad boy. He is going to be wearing dark colours, which would represent danger instead of happiness. Not going to show his hair as bad boys are always seen with hoods on, covering their head. In addition the stereotype of these boys from East London shows that they often wear baggy jeans and more lower down than usual. No make up and haircut will be needed for this character as the boys from these troubled backgrounds do not wear make up and seem to pay a lot of attention on their hair.

HOW WE GOT OUR COSTUMES AND PROPS:

For the girl we needed needed pink leopard print pyjamas which Fabiha had at home. She made her actress wear these clothes. we specifically went for the this type of clothing because we wanted her to look all comfortable. We thought that if we get her pyjamas at the very beginning shots of her then we would really portray her as a typical teenage girl who is living in her own bubble. As we have a scene of her getting out the house we knew that we had to have her wearing a dress. At first we thought that a red dress would be ideal, we wanted the colour red because we wanted to portray her as a girl who is trying to be a woman. Also, I had a red dress which would have been easy for us to get. However, we thought that if she wears a red dress then we might give the storyline away too much. We were trying to reinforce her as this innocent teenage girl with a passion for fashion. Fabiha had a stripy dress at home, I then came to a conclusion and we thought that would be our ideal dress. The dress we got our actor to wear was a white and navy blue dress. It made her look preppy which we thought would go with her image. In order to portray her fashionable side we used certain props such as the plum colour handbag, the black heels and the red lipstick. The lipstick was bright red and in our film we showed her put the lipstick on and we thought that this would give the idea of her being a girly character. I borrowed one of my friends bag and shoes and Fabiha had the lipstick at home therefore used those props.

For the boy we wanted to make him look as 'gangsta' as possible, we knew exactly what we wanted. We got our actor to wear a bomber jacket but then we were unable to get hold of that jacket therefore we settled for a black cardigan a costume which our actor already had. On the day we filmed we told our actor to wear his black cardigan. We wanted him to wear dull colours because we wanted to explicitly show the difference of her and him. It added to the whole idea of him being a 'gangsta'. We wanted our actor to wear baggy jeans, preferably dark. However, we were unable to get hold of them therefore settled with denim. We told our actor to wear those his denim jeans on the day. Moreover, we wanted his shoe to be from a high brand. Our actor had a pair of Ralph Lauren shoes. We thought that it would be good to have him wear a well known elite brand of shoes because it would give the impression of him being a drug dealer. The audience would question his shoes and it would persuade them to think this therefore it adds on the impression of him being a bad boy.