'Looking for Utopia' Audience Feedback

I'm relatively pleased with our film opening, despite the problems that I believe occurred during the filming stages. I'm not too fond on the monologue, as I believe that it sets an entirely different tone to the footage. The acting wasn't anything spectacular either, with the exception of the actress involved in the project, who portrayed the role of a cannibal very well. The shots overall were rather impressive, despite the fact that we had to film a number of shots again for improvement. Editing was the most successful, thanks to my partner, Steve. The product looks like a legitimate post apocalyptic film opening.

Audiences seem to enjoy the opening more than I do, complimenting the use of camerawork, scripting and editing. So far, audiences include three of my friends, my Media teacher, some of my peers from my Media class, and a few people working in media that my teacher shared it with. Overall, the feedback seems positive with most of the criticising coming from myself, and so I would call 'Looking for Utopia' a successful product.

Sound and Lighting Editing

Steven, with some of my input, has been working on editing our film opening project. By some miracle, much of the diegetic and non-diegetic sound fits perfectly with the opening. We thought it'd be a disaster, but it is coming together relatively well. He's also worked on some lighting making many lighter shots quite a bit darker. The lighting, sound, shots and distribution companies so far fit together quite well and I'm impressed with the step we've taken. However, we still have lots of editing to do, such as more work on the lighting and the addition of the titles, including the main title itself. While the project isn't going as well as I had hoped, it is going much better than it was a week ago.

Filming Evaluation

Our attempt at filming certain shots that we want to include and shots that went badly last time went rather well. It was a much colder day than the first time, and so we found it much harder to concentrate and do shots well. But we got what we wanted. We included the shot of the cannibals eating that our teacher suggested and reshot shots that ended up looking out of focus the first time. We had to take breaks twice due to how cold it was and tried to finish filming as early as possible, with the overall time spent on filming lasting about three hours.

We bought beef and used fake blood to add to the mise en scene as well on the hope of improving and adding realism. Another addition to filming this time was our access to equipment that allowed us to add lighting and steady the camera, something we lacked on our first attempt. Hopefully, the new footage will fit with the first day of shooting in editing.

Re-shooting

We've decided to re-shoot the footage and see if we can do it any better while keeping some shots. If the second shooting turns out worse than our first, we'll just keep the first. We're in a rush to finish now, and I'm going to have to re-write the monologue and voice it again as the previous monologue, as good as it is, does not fit the overall product. While this is a draw back, we can still finish the opening and do it well if we try our hardest.

One shot we're going to include is an extreme close up of the cannibals tearing away at some meat, possibly chicken, to establish that they are cannibals. We may additionally include an extreme wide establishing shot of the hill where the final shots are, as that was intended to be in the cut originally. We'll be re-shooting this Saturday. Here is the predicted weather:

Distribution Companies

We have made our own distribution company called 'Black Hole Productions' and plan on choosing 'Universal' as the company we're 'in association with'.

Title Sequence Names Font

We chose a separate font for the other titles called '28 Days Later'. Here are the rest of the titles:

Soundtrack and Design Research/Planning

My partner, Steven, has looked into sound design and soundtracks for our film opening. Click on the link below to be taken to his post on it.


Sound Design and Soundtracks Post

Title Font

Above is our decision for the final title and title font. We asked for audience feedback and our entire audience chose this font, so this is the one we're going to use. The cast and crew names will be a different font to this.

Title Sequence Names

Actors
Alex Hodgkinson
Oliver Cooke
Samantha Graham
Christine Cotterill
Michael Gordon
Samuel Tyler

Casting Director
Philip Michaelson

Music Composer
James Harrison

Production Designer
Lilith Mewett

Storyboard Animatic

My film opening partner, Steven, created an animatic of our storyboard and uploaded it to YouTube.



My partner's blog:

Partner's Blog

Experimentation with Cameras

My partner and I have experimented with the camera we plan on using and another camera as a test run. I tried to access the shots I took after I transferred them onto my laptop but couldn't as they had become corrupt files. However, my partner was successful in his endeavour and you can find the shots he took in the links to his blog below.

My Partner's Blog Post
My Partner's Second Blog Post

Weather Forecasts

We'll be filming our opening tomorrow, so I decided to view the predicted forecasts on BBC Weather. We are hoping for little, if not no, rain on our day of filming. So far it looks good, with no apparent rain until later in the day:

'The Road' Influences

We're now taking more influence from 'The Road', as we think it allows us to demonstrate our camera work better and can add to the story. The two protagonists will be wandering a post-apocalyptic setting with a monologue by the main protagonist over the two. Clothing will be dirty with a focus on cannibals and relying on both visuals and diegetic sound. The ending may show the main protagonist to now be alone, which is one of the few things we're not taking influence to do. 'The Road' has now became a bigger influence than 'I Am Legend' by far and we've pretty much dropped most of the 'Fallout 3' influences, which we previously heavily relied on. We're now focusing more on companionship and loss.

Photographic Documentation of Actors

The following people will be acting in our film opening:


Myself, Alex Hodgkinson, who will play the main protagonist.