Script For Our Opening

Scene One

Rakim is sleeping in his bed when he receives an unexpected text message from one of his friends, Ahmed. The Text message is explaining how he should get to Ahmed’s house as soon as possible to pick up something important. Rakim gets up, freshens himself and heads out.

Scene Two

In this scene, Rakim is boarding buses and trains to get to Ahmed’s house. Once he is at Ahmed’s House he knocks on Ahmed’s door. Ahmed answers.

Ahmed: Wait here, I’ll be out in a minute.

Scene Three

Once Ahmed is out he takes Rakim to a secret place where there is a bag with important “tools” in them

Rakim: What’s in there?

Ahmed: Don’t worry what’s in there, jus deliver this to a friend of mine named Saeed

Rakim: Litsen, I don’t wanna get myself involved with your dirty stuf—(cut off)

Ahmed: Do you wanna get paid or not?

Rakim hesitates to answer

Ahmed: (Assertively) Do you or not?

Rakim: Yes

Ahmed: Cool, then deliver this to saeed buy subway in Beckenham, got it?

Rakim nods his head. As he leaves, a smartlty dressed man is seen from across the road observing the scene.

Scene Four

Rakim reaches the destination and is scoping around looking for Saeed. A figure from the alley way appears and calls Rakim in.

Saeed: Is that the bag yeah?

Rakim: Yeah it is, but what is it for?

Saeed: (Rudely) Listen, your job isn’t to ask questions, it’s to deliver the damn bag, don’t be asking questions that don’t concern you.

Saeed makes a swift exit. Rakim receives a phone call from another friend asking him to come to meet some girls with him; as Rakim has found something to do for the day, he makes his way to the train station to meet his friend. Again. A man from across the road is seen observing the scene.

Scene Five

Rakim has just woken up and makes himself some cereal. He switches on the television onto the news, only to see the scene of an explosion and a picture of him as a wanted individual. As he is shocked he rings Ahmed. It goes to voicemail.

Rakim: Ahmed, as soon as you get this, ring me back! I don’t know what you got me into but whatever you got me into you best get me out of it.

As Rakim is stressing, he freshens up and makes his way to Ahmed’s house.

Scene Six

Rakim reaches Ahmed’s house, only to find the door half open. He is hesitant to go in but proceeds to anyway, making sure that he is quiet.

Rakim: Ahmed? Are you here?

There is no answer. However he does notice something weird which is a bloody knife. As he notices the seriousness of the situation he is hit from the back and black out as he falls to the floor. He vaguely sees the image of boots and looks up to see the man who has been following him.

Scene Seven

Rakim is in the police station, and is being interrogated by the man who has been observing his movements.

Detective Victor: My name is detective Victor, this interview will be recorded.

Detective Victor: At the moment you're facing a ten year stretch... But you can drop that...

Saeed: I'm not a terrorist

Detective Victor: That's a lie

Detective Victor: What did you do at Albert Square with your friends Ahmed and Saeed?

Saeed: We were chilling

Detective Victor: Chilling doing what?

Saeed: We were just chilling.

Detective Victor: Is chilling killing a hundred people heinously, unmercifully is that what chilling is to you?

Saeed: What do you mean killing people I don't know what you're talking about.

Detective Victor: You know exactly what I'm talking about.

Detective Victor: You and your friends Ahmed and Iqbal, went to the festival in Albert Square, planted a couple bombs and killed hundreds of people.

Saeed: Do you have evidence of this?

Detective Victor: We have so much evidence... Fingerprints, CCTV, DNA. We even have eye witnesses.

Detective Victor: So here's what you're going to do. You're going to infiltrate your little friends gang and get evidence for us.

Saeed: I can't do that!

Detective Victor: On the contrary you may just.

Saeed: And if I don't?

Detective Victor: If you choose to disobey us, we can make you disappear...

Posters For 'Londons Burning'

Casper, as the designer, created posters on Adobe Photoshop as he is and expert and the most experienced at using the software's in our group.

He created posters that would give a negative look upon the world today. He used pictures from the London Riots and altered them to highlight certain aspects of what our movie is trying to point out. For example; in the picture below, he used an image from the London riots and duplicated the file (CTRL + J). He then put the copied layer on to the blending option of 'multiply' which would make the layer transparent/semi-transparent in some areas of the picture. Before this is put a purple tint over both the picture; we used purple as its a very dark and sinister colour (which the viewer would know subliminally). After this was done all that had to be done to get the final outcome is to slightly move the copied layer out of its original position which gave the distorted look. He then put the phrase 'If a threat was standing at your door, what would you do?'. 

In this image, Casper got another image from the London riots and used the lasso tool to carefully highlight the front entity. He then used the 'Hue and Saturation' tool (CTRL + U) to tint the selection a luminous yellow; this could connote to the viewer that the hooded individual could be the reason for the catastrophic site. The fire in the background is also not its normal 'orangy' colour, instead its also been tinted to match the front entity which again can connote the same point.

In this poster, Casper used an ordinary block font to to put the images of the riot inside of it; sounds complicated but I will try to explain it to the best of my ability!

Firstly Casper got the block font and sized it so that it almost filled the whole canvas, at this point the text was in black. He had written our movies title 'London's Burning' And this rasterised the layer (Rasterisation is just a simple effortless process which just makes the layer into a simple object with no particular settings, this makes it easier for edits to take place on the layer)

He then got a picture from the riots which shows the police riots squad lined up. Now obviously, that one image alone could not be stretched to fit the text without the image becoming pixilated (we know......-_-!). So what Casper did was duplicate the image a number of times until the width of all the duplications (including the original) roughly matched the width of the text. So that there where no OBVIOUS (again we know -_-'!) seems in the duplications, Our boffin Casper used the gradient tool to fade the duplications in and out; to do this the gradient setting must be on black to transparent and also the images must slightly be overlapping.

Once this was done, Casper merged the layers into one whole layer and walla! the image was ready to be put inside the text. How this was done was simple; the image would be put on the top (above all layer). We MADE sure that the next layer from the duplications was the text, otherwise this would not have worked. Once we made sure of that Casper held on to 'ALT' and pointed the cursor in-between the text layer and the duplications layer and a box-like symbol should appear. He clicked this and walla! the image is within the text. This gave a bright 'Orange-Fiery' Colour which set his colour scheme.

Logo such as 'BBC' 'Metropolitan Police' and 'Crime watch' were put on the poster, to give a sense of seriousness to the movement which links it back to the storyline being based on real events and issues (as terrorism is a crime and the UK are currently fighting it). Finally the logo was put onto the poster below the title.

Same process as the first 

Pitch - Londons Burning

Developmet Of Production Logos

The first thing i did was apply a solid black background; I did this by going to layer>new>solid (the short-cut for this is CTRL+Y). I then applied a gradient and altered the the shape of the gradient. I also edited the lighting of the gradient so it looked like light is coming from a lamp. This was done to imply that my productions are started from a black canvas.

I then used the text tool to write out 'nerodavninci'. I made 'Nero' bold (as Nero is Italian for black) which is highlighting my trait (because I am from an African decent). Davinci is a well known inventor who invented a ranged of machines and tools. Essentially I am stating that I am the black Davinci, implying that my productions are of the level of Leonardo Davinci. I made all the text white so its contrasting with the background. I then centred the text.

I then applied an effect on After Effects called 'CC Pixels'; I applied this to the text. What this done was fragment all the text into little pieces. I had to go into the time line of this effect and reverse the timeline as the effect is set to fragment out, I wanted it to fragment into a single entity. I also altered the amount of fragments there was, the speed at which they where colliding at ,how congested the fragments where and the movement of the fragment. By doing this I was implying that a range of ideas and hard work can create a masterpiece. 

After I did that I edited the scale time frame and made the text slowly zoom in and get larger. As its getting larger and closer I also added a quick blur.

I then implemented by name 'Casper J.Viriri' on top of 'nerodavinci' so that the audience will know who the owner of the company is; I also put 'production' underneath 'nerodavinci'. I made the other text blue because blue is my favourite colour (don't ask why :D!). As 'nerodavinci' is zooming in, I made my name fade in by altering the opacity time-frame by setting the beginning at 0%, then after 7 seconds it would be at 100%.

I then went back to when the fragments where jumbled up and incorporated the use of a flare by using an external plugin known as optical flares. I edited the flare so that the flare as a blue outer glow to match the text. The use of a flare can imply that my productions are explosive and monumental.

Final Production Logo

If we analyse the logo opening for Warner Brothers in this case we are able to identify that the film is likely to either be of a dark or tense nature.   For example in the clip attached the use of dark clouds may indicate dark times and or a foreshadowing event which is likely to occur.

When considering foreshadowing events it is imperative that we consider the mise en scene of thriller films, thus which includes tension building and foreshadowing, both of which are shown in the crime thriller Training day.

So when creating our production logo we believed it was imperative that it would automatically give the audience an insight into the type of film in which they are about to view.

Director and Editors Interview

Character - Detective Victor Interview

Shots Used In Our Interrogation Shoot

High Angle Shot

The reasoning for us using a high angle shot was to create the idea that the interrogation was being watched, almost as if there was CCTV in the room. Thus helping us to follow the mise en scene of a crime thriller which props may include a tape recorder, table, chair and also cameras watching the on going procedure. This helped us to capture the true atmosphere of an interrogation.

Over The Shoulder

An over the shoulder shot can show the dominance of one character against another, in this case that would be the detective over the culprit. Over the shoulder shots are used allot in these situations, because in the shot the other character is usually smaller than the other.

Point Of View

In this shot we used a point of view shot (POV) in order to capture the true seriousness and tension in this scene. The point of view shot allowed us to capture Kasper's (detective Victor) emotion and anger, underlining the gravity and magnitude of the situation. We continued to use lighting within the scene even though it was low key and low lit, in order to allow us to carry on the darkness within the area.

Experimenting: Interrogation Shoot

Script For Interrogation Scene Experimentation

Detective Victor: My name is detective Victor, this interview will be recorded.

Detective Victor: At the moment you're facing a ten year stretch... But you can drop that...
Saeed: I'm not a terrorist

Detective Victor: That's a lie

Detective Victor: What did you do at Albert Square with your friends Ahmed and Iqbal?

Saeed: We were chilling
Detective Victor: Chilling doing what?

Saeed: We were just chilling.
Detective Victor: Is chilling killing a hundred people heinously, unmercifully is that what chilling is to you?

Saeed: What do you mean killing people I don't know what you're talking about.

Detective Victor: You know exactly what I'm talking about.

Detective Victor: You and your friends Ahmed and Iqbal, went to the festival in Albert Square, planted a couple bombs and killed hundreds of people.

Saeed: Do you have evidence of this?

Detective Victor: We have so much evidence... Fingerprints, CCTV, DNA. We even have eye witnesses.

Detective Victor: So here's what you're going to do. You're going to infiltrate your little friends gang and get evidence for us.

Saeed: I can't do that!

Detective Victor: On the contrary you may just.

Saeed: And if I don't?

Detective Victor: If you choose to disobey us, we can make you disappear...

Research: Thriller Background Music

Background music can make a massive difference to your a thriller movie. This is what brings the correct atmosphere to your thriller. Thriller music can be described in many ways. I am going to explain them.

Thriller music tends to be fast paced (Formal term would be 'at a high tempo'), with random sudden bursts of loudness. this can tend to shock and disorientate the viewer. Thriller music can sometimes start of slow (to set an equilibrium). If synchronised correctly with a specific scene, this can build up tension and suspense.

Most thriller music tends to be contrapuntal, this can cause disorientation to the viewer as there will be allot of things all happening at once. some thriller music uses musical technique, created by Schoenberg, known as klanfarbenmelodie (this is when large 'clusters' of random notes are played at the same time, the sound can often be discomforting but contributes well to a thriller film as it catches you off guard).

In some thrillers, music is hardly played, it may only be played, suddenly, at significant points of the film, e.g. If a character is attempting to escape from an enemy and the believe they have got away, when they really have not.

Example: 

Freddy VS Jason

The opening of Freddy Vs Jason opens with an monologue of Freddy explaining how he kidnapped young children and murdered them. Freddy is heard to be speaking in a low tone, demonic tone which sounds very sinister and malevolent. This opening voice over sets the tone for the film as it mirrors a terrifying scene where Freddy is sharpening his blades and towers over a young girl, and is clearly about to cause harm to. Within the tone of his voice Freddy seems remorseless in all of his heinous actions. The effect of this opening is extremely effective as the audience gets an insight into Freddy's character without even seeing Freddy being violent, from this we get that he is sinister and demoniacally evil.Summary - Only when i figure out what my story, can i decide what music i want on my opening.

Batman Begins Soundtrack - Antrozous

In this soundtrack, the music start of slow and is quite, but then there is a sudden burst of instruments playing; these instruments would be a trumpet, cello, violin, most orchestral instruments. They are all being played in a contrapuntal texture, meaning that they are all playing different melodies at the same time, however there are essences of homo phonic texture, where some of the instruments are playing the same melody in synchronisation. This soundtrack sounds as if it would fit well with a sequence of events sped up. This is a soundtrack that would fit on an action thriller as opposed to a horror thriller or psychological thriller as the music is being played at a faster tempo, meaning this soundtrack would better off being used on an action scene. The  majority of the notes that are being played are minor, which could suggest that the soundtrack is being played over a scene which is more serious that fun and joyful.

X-Men: First Class Super Theme Song

This thriller background music is similar to the previous one, using orchestral instruments, however this soundtrack sounds as if its should go over something which seems more 'monumental' and/or 'astonishing', something that expresses awe. Furthermore, the whole mood of this soundtrack is uplifted, more major keys are being played which gives it a joyful and charismatic feel to the soundtrack. The soundtrack starts of at a fast tempo and maintains its fast tempo through out the whole piece. The soundtrack is also being played loud and gradually begins to get louder as the piece carries on. The whole piece is being played mostly in a homophonic texture (meaning all the melodies are the same and are being played at the same time by different instruments), however there are parts where the piece begins to be played in a contrapuntal texture. The piece almost sounds angelic as it gets to the end as the key is then heightened as if its reached a new 'level'. Furthermore, at the end of the piece the use of a female soprano choir is used which increase the whole angelic and awe feeling.

Hanz Zimmer - Time

This soundtrack was used in the movie inception, and is more of a 'goal achieving' soundtrack. The soundtrack starts of mellow and slow paced, and gradually begins to get louder and begins to speed up as well. Again, most of the instruments used in this piece are orchestral except the use of the guitar. This has a sad feeling to the movie, which would go better of on a psychological movie (which is what inception is). The texture of this piece is mainly homophonic.

What We Did In Our Preliminary

What Shots Did We Use?

This shot established to the audience that the character seemed to be running in order to save or look for someone, with the audience beginning to question who is he looking for?

Wide Shot

We used a medium shot, to get a glimpse of the character running at a fast pace. We did this to connote that there is some sort of problem. The medium shot, also helps the viewer take not of the body posture and/or language of the character, in order to denote any sort of emotional communication. furthermore, the use of using a long shot, benefited the sound effects, as you can hear the character yelling 'Jordan'; the fact that he is yelling can heavily connote that the character is communicating to the person the character is trying to find, is in a very difficult or scary predicament (this is highly emphasised as the character is running through a public place).

Medium Shot

We then used a medium shot, in order to get a glimpse of the character walking up the stair. The reason we used the medium shot, is because this was footage, was running at a fast pace. The use of a medium shot at a fast pace, can really engage the viewer as they will be able to analyse the body language of the character, which will allow them to connote and/or denote any other body language which can make further implications. Also, using a medium shot, can add the effect of  'shaking the camera'. This can add the effect of building up tension, and the shaking of the camera can denote the feeling of the character e.i hesitant to enter the room.

Low Angle Shot

The use of a low angled shot, allows us to exclude part of the body, in this case we excluded the upper body. The exclusion of  body parts can exclude certain body language; in this case, it excludes the way the character is walking, due to the fact different people have different walking sequences and/or posture, which can denote what type of person they are. Using low angled shots allows to see other things that may be on the character. For example, in the feet of the character could be drops of blood, which can denote that they are a violent and gory type of person, which can thus suggest to the viewer what role they play in the movie. Another thing we could of done, is have a low angled shot of the character walking, while the camera is moving back with the character, and seconds later the character could have dropped a weapon, which can denote the intentions he has.

These shots allowed us to further increase the tension as the audience is still unaware of who the character is and what their intentions are. its almost a small sequence of the journey the antagonist took to go and murder the protagonist.

Extreme Close Up

Here we used an extreme close up of the character pulling on their gloves, signalling that they apparently are up to something sinister.

Wide Shot

In this shot the character's figure can be witnessed however they remain hooded. Due to the previous shots only showing different parts of the character's body we decided to finally reveal the character's full frame to the audience, still retaining a sense of tension without revealing the character's true identity.

Blurred Close Up Shot

 In our final shot we used a blurred close up shot in order to retain mystic and tension as the character's face is not completely revealed and the music also begins to increase in instrumentation thus leading to the climax of the film.

Preliminary Task

Our Props For the Interrogation Shoot

This is a tape recorder, which is a very stereotypical prop that is used in most interrogation scenes. tape recorders are a very significant part of an interrogation, the tape recorder is used to record evidence and quotes given by the prosecuted. The use of a tape recorder can emphasise the seriousness of the situation at hand.

A simple chair will be used for the prosecuted to be prosecuted in. The use of a chair alone can allow the character to be tied up and tortured, which is a typical trait for thrillers.

Character Profile - Ahmed

Character Profile - Detective Victor

One of the main protagonists in the opening detective Victor is the chief inquirer during the investigation. From the beginning it quite apparent to the audience that Victor is quite aggressive and forward towards the character Saeed, in some circumstances showing brief flashes of ignorance, making brief references to Saeed’s character. Throughout the interrogation he appears to be biased in his questioning towards Saeed, almost forcing him into confessing a crime he merely didn’t commit. Numerous times during the investigation Victor claims to have the power and influence to put Saeed into jail, even though he had not committed to any crime. Although he is subtle with his aggression, the audience is aware that he is corrupt and wants to convict Saeed without a proper trial.

We used the crime thriller ‘Training Day’ as inspiration for Ahmed’s character. For example in the film the two main characters were hardly dressed in smart attire, so we followed suit by allowing one of our characters to fulfill this  role.

Whilst the detective’s counterpart appealing to more of an urban demographic here we have detective Victor seemingly adhering to an older age demographic due to being seemingly quite mature and smartly dressed. We believe  that in all this will help to contribute to the mise en scene as of the opening as the costume adds to the authenticity of the character.

For the interrogation we needed a detective who seemed to be dominant and in control of the situation so was able to remain calm but still frustrate and pressure Ahmed whilst questioning. Following convention we gave him a smart look with trousers, shirt and a tie. However we decided not to give him a blazer, although it seems like a small aspect it in fact can have a large effect on how the audience now see the character. by not wearing one it shows he is different and does not follow convention in the way in which he interrogated his suspect.

The detective is not only different in his costume aspect but also he is very honest and harsh towards his suspect. He is a patriot so is eager for information that can protect his country which explains his anger although it is controlled. He is also very unaccepting of any other people for there racial type or beliefs which is shown in his  speech.