Magik

Alright then, this is Sibley posting our first blog on here...

We've basically had the idea for our film from the very start. So right now we're going over all the details and storyboarding. As well as deciding on shots, music and who's actually going to act in it.

I'll go through where we stand on everything then...

The Plot

Briefly:

• Man wakes up.
• His character and appearance is slowly revealed as he gets ready around his house.
• After hearing a mysterious answering machine message about "the package being ready" he drives (there's the standard 17 year old "what can we do that we couldn't do before?" moment for Mr. M) to a wood.
• He then gets out and walks to a clearing in the wood where he meets his female contact. The package is then handed over.
• Then, both of them are surrounded by mysterious people who come out of the shadows of the trees.
• The men ruthlessley kill the (unarmed) female contact immediately (something about "we don't need her" blah blah).
• The man makes his escape, (not through brute force but through wit - influence from The Odyssey. Havin glavin) although we're undecided on what act he does to escape, meh.
• Then we have our chase sequence through the woods, with plenty of weaving camera movement between the trees, over and through the long grass etc. thrown in.
• Man escapes, for now. Main titles come up.

Locations

We'll be filming the house shots over Jake's house. - Certainty.
We'll be filming the woods shots in one of three places:

1. The Perfect Location - a while ago we went paintballing in this place on the outskirts of Thetford forest, on the dirt track that led to the place we skirted some forest that I think would be perfect for our film. Straight, strong, vertically parallel lines formed by the tall Scot's Pines, long grass and the sun shining piercing through the canopy. The only problems are how we film there without being arrested/shot/killed by felled trees and finding out who we'd call about it.
2. The Second Choice - there are wooded copses around Thurston that would be suitable, they have the right trees and ground cover. The problems that I can see are that the copses are quite small, meaning you could see vast tracts of Suffolk through the trees which wouldn't be very atmospheric, the other problem is that I have a feeling this places are owned by farmers, who in my experience aren't the most teenager friendly people on this world.
3. Third Option - Bradfield Wood. It would be easy to get to from both Jake's house and mine. The problem is I seem to remember the trees in the woods being tiny, both in height and trunk diameter. Which isn't that impressive. But then I might be imagining things.

- We'll be getting pictures of the 3 locations (me hopes) up here soon.

Actors

Looks like we'll be using our 'muse' Zal again. He'll add that certain Johnny Depp sex appeal factor as well...

HAHA

Still deciding on the other roles: heavies and contact.

Sound

We're thinking of using Mogwai - We're No Here (link to a dodgy live video of the song on YouTube here) for the main bulk of our film, it was used in Miami Vice, and quite annoyingly in Top Gear last Sunday as well, so it looks highly original. Cheers Clarkson.

But I had an idea about using the ending 90 seconds or so of The Beatles - A Day in the Life for the ending part of our opening. In which the orchestra spaz out into a a crescendo culminating in about a second of silence, then there's this huge piano chord played on about 3 pianos (me thinks) which lasts forever. My plan is to slowly fade up the orchestral spaz out, then as Zal rests with his back to a tree, the camera will track around him to face him and when it rests fully on his panting body the silence will come in. Then the piano chord and an incredibly fast fade to black will bring in the red titles on a black background. Opinions?


I also had an idea of recording an original score, with Zal doing some tribal drumming for us. The problem is the sound quality would be abysmal. But it's not out of the picture completely; we could still resort to recording him in Tom Frankson's basement...

Shots

Well, any interesting ones anyway...

• The opening shot we have is a Extreme close up of the numbers on a digital alarm clock. We'll then gradually draw out to reveal what this thing is, as to begin with it will looks like blurry lights. Between each reveal we'll put in a title (with a straight cut leading into each one). Then the alarm will go and our main character will hit it to stop. Fitting in the conventional countdown, ticking clock thing there. Might even hint at 24. Oh and before you say, we thought of this whole CU, MS, WS thing before we watched Memento, so drop those thoughts...

• Another shot we plan to use is the mirror shot, a la Shaun of the Dead, in which our main character closes the mirror to reveal the flashing light of the answering machine.

• Another shot we'll use is the "trunk shot" - nod to Jake's obsession, Quentin Tarrintino there (examples of Tarrintino's use of trunk shots here, in Pulp Fiction, and here, Reservoir Dogs). But instead of a trunk we'll put the camera in a fridge, when Zal opens the fridge this will be the first time we see his face. Part of the whole "Concealment" thing Mr. M drills into our brains, leaving the audience to wonder what the main character looks like for about a long time...

• Right, last shot I'll bother to talk about... We plan to have a long sequence of shots in a chase scene. With the camera weaving between the trees and the long grass tracking Zal as he is chased, all edgy and tense like. The only reason I mention it is because there's apparently a similar shot in M:I3 according to Jake as I've never seen it.

Anyway, now I'm gonna stop cos I'm tired and my brain is eating itself. I'll upload the storyboard when I finish it, it'll help yous to understand what I'm on about. Comments most welcome.