Pre-Production: Storyboard

Storyboard Art by Fi, Shot concepts by Oscar

Pre-Production: Character Profiles

The Protagonist:

Referred to in the credits as "The Artist", she is a woman who has suffered at the hand of the law in horrific ways. Not so long ago, she was expected to give birth to a child. However, the government forced her to have an abortion and forcefully removed the child from her leading to a miscarriage.

Ever since that happened, she has laid low from the outside world due to the law against creativity. She has chosen to become an extremist of sorts and actively goes to an abandoned garage where she has set up her own secret art studio.  It's here that she is working on her masterpiece; a painting of the fetus that could have been her living child.

To show the commitment she has to this work, she paints on a large sheet with her own blood; extracting more of it when she needs more to paint. This has resulted in her entire body being covered with scars, cuts and bruises as well as extreme blood loss. It's only a matter of time before these wounds take hold of her health.

For her costume design, we've decided to make her wear a tank top so that her arms are permanently exposed for her to extract blood. Upon arriving at the garage, she wears a blue shirt. This is because; in accordance with visual components theory, blue is  the extraction of red; literally what she's doing with her own blood.


The Antagonist:

The three "police" represent the true antagonist in the film: the governing authority of the story's world. It's their job to hunt down and arrest anyone known to be breaking the law and creating illegally. At face, they seem to show no mercy beating their targets and hauling them away into prison. However, when they break in to find the work of the protagonist, we're reminded that they are still human as they express shock and almost fear; as if they begin to question if what they are doing is morally right.

Lecture: The Treachery of Images

Summary:
This lecture focused on the more experimental versions of art and photography and the movement of surrealism from the 1900's. This being that artist began to take a more bizarre/dreamlike approach to their work to convey messages. More contemporary artist in actuality use this idea of surrealism in the sense that they use new and unusual methods to create art such as 'glitch art'; taking glitches from google earth and turning them into surreal versions of landscapes. The idea of this is to play into things like the uncanny valley; this being to create a response into the viewer that makes the art seem almost like the real but at the same time, slightly and possibly disturbingly off by a little.

Research: Non-diegetic sound for ending

This piece of music is a song that did not get published with the Mylo Xyloto album by Coldplay in 2011 but was used in their "Live 2012" film. It's a song that has a theme of reflection and self awareness as demonstrated in the "Live 2012" film. Listening to this made me picture a sense of tragedy or sadness; based on the slow rhythm and basic form of the piano notes.

 In my opinion, it could go really well for the ending when the police break in and see the painting and the protagonist unconscious. The music would make the audience think that combined with their shocked performance; they question if what they are doing is morally right. As a group, we aim to create a piece of music similar to this to use in our film.

Music is used in "Live 2012" film (starts from 1:10)

Pre-Production: Location Confirmed!

Location  was one of our hardest choices to  make. We needed something ideally run down, confine and cut off. Our first choice was down by the locks next to City Locks accommodation. However, we crossed that off as being too unsafe to get equipment and crew down there. We had considered using the film & animation classroom as there is a lot of white which is what we wanted to represent bland and no colour. But there was also the option to use my grandmother's garage which is not too far away in Mosley.

I have enquired and that location has been confirmed for us to  use. It appears fairly run down, is sealed off and has white walls. It ticks all the boxes and it allows us to set up our own set without the need for permissions or hassle. We shall commence filming there on 04/03/17.

Applying Theory to our short film

As a group, we have spit the visual components between us to further develop our film based on each one. I have been assigned line, shape, rhythm, space and movement:

Production Roles

Director - Alex
Story and Screenplay - Alex, Ellie, Fi, Oscar
Director of Photography - Oscar
Storyboard Artist - Fi, Oscar
Production Design - Fi
Visual Effects Artist - Ellie
Grip - Alex
Sound Design - Fi, Oscar
Script Supervisor - Ellie
Editing - Alex, Ellie