Changes in Idea

As we experienced much difficulty with our actor that we originally planned to use, we decided to change this. We were extremely disappointed that we wouldn’t use our original actor as he was aesthetically perfect for the part; however he could not deliver the kind of acting we wanted so we decided that we would change our actor to someone who we knew could defiantly act. We needed this person to also be reliable and comfortable with acting in front of the camera too. We finally came to the decision as a group that Gabi would be the new actor in the sequence, as we spent a long time trying to think of a male actor; though none of us knew one who would defiantly be able to deliver good acting. Due to our schedule running tight we decided this would also be the most practice idea too.
We realised that changing the gender of the character could cause a big change in the overall outcome of the film but we thought that maybe this could show a different side to the film and could break conventions. We realized this could be too far in the fact that it is very un likely that there are quite a few female ex boxers but we wanted to portray our film clearly through aesthetics of location and through costume too. We still felt that our idea would work even if the character is changed to a female.
We then had to consider costume for Gabi to be dressed in; however we found this easy as we wanted it to be very similar to the costume of which our original character had worn. In the end we decided for the main part of the sequence, she would be dressed in a black hoodie and grey trackies and then also black trainers all of a typical work out style. We also had to consider hair and make-up and we decided obviously no make-up as we wanted Gabi to look quite tom boy-esque. We also decided for her to have her hair up and back off her face. We felt that these changes were appropriate and would still fit very well with the sequence aesthetics and idea we wanted to create.
We also had to consider the music in the opening too in the end we decided not to use Shakespeare - Akala as we felt this was suited to a male actor. When we tried the sequence with the original song and Gabi we decided that it didn't work. we then did some more research into songs that could suit it, searching songs from Adulthood. in the end we came to the conclusion of using Reach by Skrein as this was more suited to the aesthetics and to our character and what she's doing.
We then thought about the fight scene of which before it would be two males having a fight. When we decided to have Gabi as our main actor, we also as a group agreed that Katie was to be the other actor in the fight scene as it would be odd having a female and a male fighting. This change was able to tie the film in and presented us with a sense of relief as we had been struggling all along to find two new characters. This way we all knew each of the characters were reliable and what we wanted to achieve. This was extremely beneficial to us as we would then be able to carry out the filming whenever we wanted and go back to re-filming at any time instead of having to organise and hassle other actors.

Difficulties and problems when filming

When we went to film our opening sequence we were very optimistic as the weather was exactly how we wanted it to be, the lighting outside and the colour effect this gave was prefect for filming. Luckily this did not change or rain throughout the duration of filming the whole opening sequence. Whilst we were there we managed to get all of the footage we wanted to film in the location we had chosen and our actor was willing to do the shots that we had planned to do.
We did find it difficult when filming the smoking scenes as the cigarette would go down and we realized there would be continuity issues with having the cigarette at different points for each shots so we had to keep lighting more.
However, our opening sequence heavily relies on really good acting, as we progressed to the scenes where this good acting was needed we were less confident with the outcome of the shots. We felt that we would give directions of what to do to the actor but he couldn't really give us the overall result and look of how we wanted the shot to look. Nevertheless we carried on encouraging the actor and got all the shots filmed as we didn't want the whole day of filming to be wasted.
Once we had finished we were able to watch the footage back, overall we were not very happy with what we had ended up with due to the acting that the actor had presented. We felt quite let down with this and we very worried as we had a time schedule to stick to as we wanted to make sure that we filmed our footage before we got back to school from the half term. We finally came to the conclusion that we would import the footage and watch it back properly on the macs to see whether or not it was any different on a bigger screen.
When we had watched the footage on the bigger screen we decided then and there that we had not produced a sequence that any of us were happy with and we felt as if we had missed quite a few opportunities for some better shots to be included in our opening two minutes. We then made the decision to go back to re-storyboarding and changing our idea in order to make sure we could have an actor that we could rely on to really show the emotions that are needed to be portrayed in the sequence.

Testing The Smoking Shot

Here we have shot a short sequence of Gabi practising the shot where our character blows smoke into the camera lens and then it rewinds again. We tested this out as we wanted to make sure that it worked well before we filmed the next day. When we tried it out on the Monday it was quite windy where as on the Tuesday we were lucky to have little to no wind to effect the smoke going into the camera lens.

We think that shot will be one of our most important shots as it shows the audience the character ability to rewind time.

Dates Organised For Filming

As a group, we decided to film the main parts of our 2 minute opening on Monday 21st Feb and Tuesday 22nd Feb as it allowed us to have the rest of the half term to include more shots if we felt we needed to and make any corrections. On the Monday all 3 of us went to the location and filmed various establishing shots being featured at the beginning of the sequence. We also were able to test any other shots that we would be filming the following day. On Tuesday we were able to film our entire sequence as the weather stayed the same which was fortunate.