Props

To film our scene we will need a number of props; we have decided to use flour wrapped in cling film so it looks like a large quantity of Class A drugs, a bank note and a credit card for our main character ro use whilst snorting a line, herbal tablets to look like illegal pills, tobacco and papers to make something that looks like a joint of cannabis and lastly an unbranded plastic bag which will be used to suffocate the main character at the end of the scene.

Costume and Image

We have decided to all three of our actors dressed in current, casual sportswear to fit the conventions of the British gangster genre as in the genre, characters usually wear costume that is typical of what young people at the time are wearing. This will be relatively easy to do as the actors will be able to wear clothes that they already have. We plan to have Ned and Sam L dressed in hoodies with their hoods up which we hope will make them look more intimidating and then have Sam S wearing a windebreaker with his hood down, making him look vulnerable.

As for each of the character's hair styles; we plan to have Sam S with quite scruffy, greasy looking hair to connote to the audience that he is a very poor, rough and ready type of character. We then plan to show Sam L and Ned with their normal hair as the effect is not as important as with Sam S' hair as they will both be wearing hoods which will conceal a lot of it.

Scripting

In our film we plan to have minimal amounts of dialog, partly due to the limitations we face in regard to equipment such as microphones and also because we do not feel that dialog is very necessary in creating the feel that we want our opening sequence to have. Therefore we have decided to let the actors ad lib at certain points in the piece and then when it comes to editing we can choose which points we want to be audible and which points will be covered by music, which will be the dominant sound in our opening.

Storyboard

This is the storyboard that Danny has made for our opening scene; it outlines the main shots that will appear in our opening scene and roughly what happens in each clip. It will help us enormously when we come to film our piece as we will have a detailed plan of the shots we need to do and the action that needs to happen in them to refer to. It will also help us when we come to edit our opening as we will be able to refer to it when we are putting the different shots into the timeline.

List of Titles

One of the main things that we are required to include in our film opening are titles; title sequences are important in a film as they are the method by which films usually present the actual title of the film, key character names and key actor names. Recently however, films have started to use a minimal amount of titling in their openings, with some not even showing the main title of the film. As it is a key assessment point I have decided to include a reasonable amount of titles but not go completely overboard so that my film retains a current feel. I have decided that the titles I will include are the names of the three main characters and the actors that play them at different points throughout my opening sequence and the main title of the film, at the end.

The titles will be as follows:
-Darren (Sam Sawtell)
-Curtis (Sam Luszczack)
-Omar (Ned Harvey)
-Dead Man Walking

I believe that the titles I have decided to use are entirely sufficient and in using a minimal amount of titles I hope to keep the audience interested throughout the opening scene as they will not have to sit through a load of boring titles.

Titles - style and font

As I have previously discussed, we plan on using a similar titling technique for the opening of our film as the one that can be seen at the beginning of Trainspotting; the scene uses titles to identify the main characters, showing them doing something, then freezing the frame and showing their name. This method is very effective as it clearly identifies each character and we just generally like the effect that is given. The font used is a bold font that may well be Arial, however we will experiment with a range of similar fonts when it actually comes to making the titles.

Target Audience

Because our final piece will be of the British Gangster genre our target audience will predominantly be young males so we asked a number of young males what they would want to see in the opening of a British Gangster film so we could begin to think about what we needed to include in our final piece. We asked questions to do with what they thought the conventional props, costumes, locations, music and ideology were in British Gangster films. The results we came out with were largely what we expected; the target audience expected a British Gangster film to have money as an important ideology in it, as well as the idea of each individual character striving to be respected. In terms of costume, largely the target audience expected characters to be dress in a sort of 'terrace' style and typical locations that came up were industrial buildings and areas and pubs.

  

Actors

To shoot our scene we need three actors to play the parts of Darren, Omar and Curtis. Sam Sawtell will play the main role in our film as Darren, with Ned Harvey and Sam Luszczack playing Omar and Curtis respectively. These actors are all friends of ours and have comitted to the dates that we plan to film on so we should have no problems with them.

Film Name Discussion

We have decided to name our film 'Dead Man Walking'; we have chosen to call it this as it fits very well with the plot of our film, in the sense that the two gangsters try and murder the boy and leave, thinking him to be dead when in fact he is shown to be alive and this is a theme that will recur throughout the film. This will allow the potential audience to form a rough idea of what the film is about before they see it and therefore may well attract our target audience.

Music Research

In our film we plan to use current, underground music to conform to the conventions of the British Gangster genre. The genre of music that we therefore have decided to use is Dubstep which is very current at the moment. We have also decided that the music we use has to be reasonably fast paced to create tension. Below are a few potential tracks that we might use:

Location Research

This is the location where we plan to film the majority of our final piece. It is a huge, empty warehouse which we have managed to get permission to film in and it's the perfect setting for the scene that will make up the majority of our piece. It is also located on the outskirts of Saffron Walden and so is relatively easy for us to get to.

Synopsis

Our film follows the story of a teenage orphan who is struggling with a drug addiction and turns to crime to fund his habit. After being found stealing drugs from one of his dealers he is beaten and left for dead. However he survives and goes on to pursue and ultimately kill the two people who attempted to murder him. In the opening of the film we see the boy stealing the drugs and consequently being caught by the two dealers who then go on to beat him up and finally suffocate him with a plastic bag, we then go on to see that after they have walked away, assuming that he is dead, he does in fact survive.