Sound on Location

JL

Location Mood and Tone

The tone and mood of the trailer will be paramount to its overall feel and success, so here I have used images found online, screen grabs from trailers, and our own pictures, to try and demonstrate some of the key ideas of our mood and tone.

As in many of our key influences for the trailer, the tone we would like to capture is invariably dark and thrilling - as comes with the crime thriller genre - with vibrant colours to capture the metropolitan setting and mark the film out as almost neo-noir in it's bold imagery and use of lighting. The use of location and setting will allow us, in part, to achieve these tonal ideas and images. The idea of the city is a central one to our trailer, specifically the city at night; an image that can be presented in a few different ways.

The light and dark contrast that comes with the city at night is a great thing to try and capture, and this is especially dramatic and vibrant in the Leicester Square, Chinatown, and Piccadilly Circus locations that are available to us. Influences on this thrilling and bright, yet subtly ominous mood  are primarily Welcome To The Punch and Only God Forgives. Vibrancy of colour abounds in London, and it would be great to capture this.

For more dramatic and darker/gritty scenes, London is awash in alleyways and street corners that can provide us with lower key lighting in soft yellows and whites. Hummingbird demonstrates that this can work well with the high key and multi-coloured lighting from other scenes and Drive depicts the city at night in a similar manner.

Inevitably given the genre, we will be inputting a chase scene of some description, and this can be given pace and drama by setting it on either the banks of the Thames, likely the south bank, or along the A4 between Piccadilly and Leicester Square. Similarly fast paced scenes from other trailers also include gunfights, however to attempt one of these would be unfeasible for us.

The mood we would like to create in our film is one typical of our genre; fast pacing and thrills, but with a serious and dramatic edge. The way in which our tone would be set apart however, is through the use of London locations and the scenery, lighting, and mood, that they can provide us with. We are not the high-octane City of London glamour of Welcome To The Punch, but neither are we the gritty, seedy feel of Hummingbird. However these films are great influences on us and hopefully we will be able to capture some of both of their moods to produce a trailer that showcases excitement and thrill as well as the seedier, grittier side of the criminal world.

CM

Locations Planning and Research

CM

Analysis of Recce

MT

Bar Recce

 This was our Recce for the bar location. I talk a lot about the different lighting in the bar and how we have used different gels/filters to create different atmospheres and tones in the location itself. Below are a few pictures of my partner and I playing with the different angles behind the bar itself:

MT

Lighting on Recce

There will be a recce performed this week, in which the plan is to use various colours of gels/filters on the larger light and test out the colouring and lighting in our bar location in Act 2. I have chosen a few lights, mostly blue, but some red, tested one with the lights to make sure we know what we are doing, and packed the back for the recce.

CM

Location Recce

These are a few pictures taken from multiple locations (namely Chinatown and Leicester Square), which is where we are interested in filming a few of our scenes. Due to the fact that we have been strongly influenced by Welcome To the Punch, especially the blue florescent colours that dominate the shots in it's trailer, we decided to aim our focus around taking pictures that not only highlighted the buildings around the filming area but also the buildings that were interestingly lit. The outside of the Aquarium building is of particular note here as it was completely covered in a blue 'neon' style light that made it stand out in comparison to the buildings around it. Chinatown was a location we wanted to use before we even began to think about the trailer itself, due to the colourful lights and winding streets. We undoubtedly wanted to make full use of the locations available to us living in the city and Chinatown is a relatively un-tapped filming source in most, if not all crime/thriller films we have seen. We would like to create an interesting effect using the lanterns above and fluorescent red and blue lights running alongside the previously mentioned, winding streets.     



We would also like to use some darker, more sinister alleyways as seen above to create a contrast between the beaming lights of London's city, giving our trailer a sense of glamour and the darker alleyway's, highlighting the other end of the crime spectrum. This is contrasted well in Hummingbird (dark alleyway compared to bright lights of Soho etc), which has been one of the biggest influences to us when deciding upon our trailers tone and general aesthetic.

These are good examples of some of the streets in Chinatown - perhaps a chase scene through the winding streets would be effective. 

We would also like to create a blur effect similar to the one in the above picture, with all the people walking as they would normally in the background. We would like to create this sense of 'hustle and bustle' in the city but still with the central focus on our main character. This would again create an interesting contrast between our clearly troubled main character and the normal civilians getting on with their everyday lives. 

This is another interesting alleyway that could be used to highlight that contrast between the glamorous world of crime and the dirtier, more sinister side. 



The fluorescent red in the photo above was particularly interesting for us as we would like to use different colours to create our desired effect (glamorous city)

The bridge would be also be an excellent location for a chase scene perhaps? or even a conversation between two important people? I am particularly fond of the picture with the man dressed rather 'suspiciously' above.

The blue fluorescent building in the background is also similar to the kind of shots seen in Welcome to The Punch. 

This is yet another example of an alleyway that could be used to show the previously mentioned contrast or even a private conversation/meeting between two people. 

The above is a voice over explains how lighting, setting, shot type and tone will be used/utilised in our media trailer - The Recce was done by myself and my partners with the voice over my own input.

MT

JL