Progression from Storyboard

Progression from Storyboard

In the initial idea stage of our project, I drafted a storyboard depicting the shots and angles we wanted to use when filming our teaser trailer. Prior to drawing the storyboard, we visited the various locations in order to grasp the aesthetic and cinematic effect of each said location. Now that we have filmed and edited our teaser trailer we are able to review our media text against the initial storyboard to reflect on the changes we made.

Above is the storyboard I created before we starting filming our teaser trailer. Listed below are the changes we made to each shot.

• Shot #1: We decided to keep this shot as our establishing shot as we felt it served as an apt initiation of the teaser trailer's urban setting. Upon arrival at the pier, we came across a pair of young boys on bicycles. We asked permission for them to appear in our film, and instructed them to cycle towards the camera. We timed the shot against a backdrop of fleeting birds as we felt they acted as a symbol of freedom as well as adding an aesthetic quality to our trailer opening.
• Shot #2: We filmed this shot, however placed it later on in the teaser trailer to adhere better to the narrative. We filmed this shot in a gym where we were able to change the lighting - we wanted to experiment with gender and colour thus we lit the shot with florescent pink lighting to contrast the feminine colouring with the masculine image of boxing. Furthermore, whereas the storyboard noted that we should capture the diegetic sound of boxing gloves impacting on the punchbag, when we arrived at the gym there was loud music which obscured our microphone and interfered with the sound. To resolve this we actually found a boxing sound online and layered over the video footage carefully in order to make it seem diegetic rather than non-diegetic.
• Shot #3: We liked the prospect of having a montage of backwards tracking shots to reflect the longevity of our protagonist's run. We filmed this by mounting the camera onto the dashboard of a car and slowly reversing with our actor running towards us with a blank expression.
• Shot #4: In our storyboard we didn't specify which locations we would use for the graphic match of our protagonist's head in his hands. We ended up filming him both at the gym and at home in the bath. We did this to reflect our character's inner struggle: the first shot of his head in hands appears to be an action driven by exhaustion after boxing - a masculine stereotype - and the second shot of his head in his hands in the bathtub appears to be driven more by emotional exhausted and trauma. This epitomises the characterisation of our protagonist as we wanted to depict how he presents himself to society in comparison to how he feels internally. The graphic match blurs the lines between expressions of 'masculine' exhaustion and 'emotional' exhaustion.
• Shot #5: We included a vertical panning shot of the view from the pier but we removed the star rating as felt this did not sit well with our genre of social realism. Instead, we included a simple review.
• Shot #6: We kept this shot intact, shooting the running feet against a graffiti-covered wall
• Shots #9 and #10: We shot these indoors, using an underwater camera to film the blood droplets. We also included a very brief shot of a bloodied razor blade. Although subtle, when coupled together these shots are reminiscent of self-harm.
• Shot #11: We travelled to Margate, Kent to film this shot.
• Shot #12: We chose to shoot our protagonist in a shopping centre using a time lapse. We kept our protagonist still while people moved around him. We wanted to depict the sense of isolation felt by our character as even when he is in a busy setting he feels alone.
• Shot #13: We decided to frame our protagonist sitting on a bench, through the metal bars to symbolise entrapment.
• Shot #15: We filmed this scene in Margate with our protagonist running towards the camera. We kept the symmetry intact.
• Shot #16: We actually chose to remove this shot as we felt we could focus more on subtle symbolism rather than explicit symbols of archetypal masculinity.
• Shot #18: We did shoot this scene, however we didn't end the sequence with it. We chose to end the sequence with a shot of our protagonist against the sea.