Blue Haven Project Evaluation

Blue Haven started as an idea stemming from George Orwell’s 1984. My initial idea was based around the Horror genre, not the Political Psychological Thiller. The genre of Horror did still appeal to me even going through to the latter stages of planning, but I persisted with the baseline idea of 1984.
Once I had sorted what genre I was going to do my project around I started throwing some ideas around for a storyline. I then drafted up these idea in an earlier blog post as bullet points and rough background information. Once I had completed the draft I then finalised the idea of a Film Trailer, this then sparked up immediate interest in looking into other Film Trailers. In most cased this was a very useful task to undertake as this gave me some knowledge on standards used in the majority of Trailers. Obviously I wouldn’t be able to make anything like the Trailers that Warner Bros., Sony and Disney bring out as on the whole they have enormous budgets to spend on their filming thus being able to take scenes from a multi-million dollar movie. My budget however was zero. With having no budget I was unable to employ anyone so I was highly reliant on volunteers as actors and extras. This works well until you want to shoot a big scene, and then because you are relying on the kindness of people hearts, can lead to a bad scene being shot, or a complete change of camera angles. A situation of this type happened within my filming, but I will go into that a bit later on.

Propaganda had to influence my film in some way with it being about a political take over. I spent a few of my Media sessions looking at communist propaganda through the years. Surprise surprise it hasn’t really changed. The only way it has changed is the way it looks, with increased access to better facilities to create more extravagent imaging/design being a big help to this. I had got some ideas from Chinese and Russian Posters both old and new. The general concensus I got from these is that the majority of the posters were very simple but yet 100% (in most cases) effective. I drafted 5 posters of varying design but still very simple, mostly because the resources available weren’t overly extravagent, Microsoft Publisher was as far as I could go. But this was all I needed, a quick simple method of designing effective propaganda to add effect and realism to some of my scenes. These didn’t necessarily have to go in, but in order to attempt to immerse the viewer within the world of the movie; attention to detail can always pay off.

Once all the intial ideas of the movie were written down and I had a rather solid framework to build on I then started to look into how to ‘build’ a trailer. Now, under normal circumstances this would be a straightforward task, as the filming has already been completed and all there is left to do is selected good clips and put together a trailer that is in a sequence that is logical and able to keep the end viewer captivated. In regards to length there was no ‘real’ standard practice. Trailer lengths seemed to changed completely whether they were Theatrical Trailers i.e. shown in a cinema, or whethere they were just Trailers i.e. shown on TV adverts. They could vary from anywhere in the region of 10-15 seconds all the way to 3-4 minutes. My aim from this research was to create a Theatrical Trailer lasting around 2 minutes but under if necessary.
As for sequence within these trailers it varied dramatically there was never really any particular sequence, it all seemed to depend very much on the film. But, one thing that was always the same was the information contained within the trailer. There appeared to be the title of the film, in most cases a tag line, key actors, who the film was directed by, who produced the film, which company produced the film and last but not least when to expect the film to be released. To keep in common practices of creating movie trailers, surely within my trailer these had to be found. So within my script I added in a narration with these key points in, and also created titles for each point within the trailer itself as to emphasise them.



The next task was to create create a radio advertisement. When I put together my final trailer I imported the video and audio into Pro Tools (by Digidesign), as my background is with audio I thought I would be able to get better results using a professional standard medium rather than edit audio in iMovie, which is where all the video editing was done. As I had a full audio track from the trailer I thought it would be easier to take sections out of that to compile an advert together. I decided to make it shorter as in my personal opinion it is easier to keep someones attention with sound and picture rather than just sound. So I edited the advert in Pro Tools as in my own experience of audio editing you can get better results using a programme like Pro Tools than using a cheaper or less complex programme like iMovie.


We were then asked to create a homepage for our movie. I have had previous experience in web design using HTML and CSS to create websites, in this instance I didn't use this method. I decided to try using iWeb on a mac. Surprisingly I produced something effective and to the point in a very short space of time. I didn't make it too complex and cluttered as I thought doing this would be appealing on the eye at all. My page is very simple to navigate around, well contrasted, has the video trailer inbuilt in the website, a brief summary of the film and has links to facebook, twitter and youtube pages for the movie. (None of these links work as I only created the homepage). All these things can generally be found within other movies websites.


Overall I think my project went well, I had researched well looking at what other trailers/websites for films had in them, if I thought more about it I would of researched radio advertisement for film. I could of started it a bit quicker leaving more time for planning, filming etc, as previously explained there was a couple of occasions where camera angles had to be re-thought on shoot as not enough extras were present to make it as effective, but I managed to get something shot that gave the overall impression that I wanted. I probably could of spent more time on the website and given more time in utilising my prior knowledge of web design in order to make a more effective website, with possibly more pages rather than just a Homepage I also could of spent a little longer on the radio advertisement possibly adding in some more narration and editing slightly more carefully.
All parts to my project all appear to work well with continuity of titling and fonts used in both the trailer and the website, also there is all relevant information with all three that compliment each other.

Advanced Media Portfolio - Filming Plan (draft)

Filming Plan

Scene 1: Flags, crossfade between 2 JPG files in iMovie

Time: Any

Place: Any

Cast: N/A

Equipment: iMovie, Flag JPGs

Scene 2: Press Conference

Time:

Place: Dance Studio?

Cast: GW, MH, JB, CS, PG, room of people?

Equipment: Camcorder, Party Posters, desk, micorphones, Dictaphones?

Scene 3, 5 & 6: Inside the institute

Time:

Place: Cage outside music tech,

Cast: LM, PG, CS

Equipment: Camcorder, Desk, papers, Colin in army gear, chair,

Scene 4:

Time:

Place: College corridors

Cast: CS

Equipment: Camcorder

Scene 7:

Time:

Place: Cage? Dimly lit room?

Cast: LM

Equipment: Camcorder

PG – Paul Green

GW – Graham Wilde

CS – Colin Spurling

LM – Luke Mitchell

JB – Jack Blackmore

MH – Matthew Horspool

Advanced Media Portfolio - Script

Blue Haven: Script

A constant struggle for sanity

Cast List:

Harry: Luke

Stanislav: Graham Wilde

Party Officials:

Psychiatrist: Paul Green

Army Guard: Colin Spurling

Extras: Jack, Matthew

Scene 1, interior.

Party Demonstration:

Union Jack ripped down and replaced with Party Emblem. Fast cutting. A hand reaches towards the Union Flag poster and quickly rips it down and replaces it with ECP Flag poster.

Scene 2, interior, dance studio possibilty.

Press conference:

Journalists with paper and pens, microphones and Dictaphones sit waiting in expectation to what Stanislav has to say after his glorious (yet illigitamate) rise to power. Questions are asked about why such a small party have been elected. Cameras flash on the backdrop behind them with the Flag of the Party behind.

Journalist 1: How has the ECP won when it is obviously such a small party?

Journalist 2: There have been allogations of vote rigging what do you have to say about this?

Journalist 3: What are going to be your policies on Human Rights?

Stanislav: (very powerfully)­ No questions!

The Institute

Scene 3, interior, plain room with a desk, and papers.

Shots of a psychiatrist sitting behind a desk, with harry slumped sitting in a chair opposite. The psychitrist is looking very forward and intimidating.

Paul: You’re ill Harry. You think you’re a freedom fighter but you’re just a paranoid skitsophrenic. I think we need to up your dose of Largactil. We need to fix you Harry. Recovery is a long road to go down. Sanity may come. Here at Blue Haven, we can get you there. We’re here to help you Harry. (Dialogue to be dubbed over trailer.)

Scene 4, interior, corridors.

Guard patroling corridors at night. (Ask Colin about using him and his army uniform).

Scene 5, interior, plain room, (same as scene 3)

Harry is sat in a chair tied up, the psychiatrist and the guard are standing over him, interrogating him, guard is shouting abuse, and psychiatrist is examining him, talking to him, telling him he is insane, kicking and flailing on the chair harry falls over and gets dragged up and taken to solitary.

Paul: What are we going to do with you harry?

Harry: There’s nothing wrong with me!

Paul: Take him to The Cage.

Guard: Ahh, The Cage, that’ll fuckin’ sort you out, state hatin’ piece of shit. (said dragging harry to his feet and forcing him forward)

Scene 6, interior follow exterior.

Harry is put in solitary confinement by the Guard forcefully as psychiartrist looks over. (Use the cage outside the side entrance of music tech, initial film taken in daylight, then night shots of him in the cage by himself).

(Cut between cage and chair room very fast cuts)

Scene 7, interior, in The Cage, dusk.

Harry is sat in a dim room on the floor with knees up to his chest crossed, and arms wrapped round the top of his knees, with his head down. Camera zoom in. Harry lifts his head looking very blank and sad.

Narration: RNC Productions Presents, a film by Dave Knowles, starring Luke Mitchell, Paul Green and Colin Spurling. Blue Haven. A constant struggle for sanity. In Cinemas, October 1^st.

Advanced Media Portfolio - Project Ideas

Media Project Ideas

· Institution for Mentally Insane

· One Party political state (communist extremists)

· Based around present day, possible infulences from Soviet Russia/Nazi Germany

· Political rebellion in progress, main character involved

· Gets caught plotting against the state, and sent to the Institution

· All inmates are political prisoners, the state say that they have “gone mad” so they can justify them being in there without causing and uproar on the outside

· Main character knows he isnt insane, but the physchiartrist trys to convince him he is in an attempt to brainwash him into the ways of the state

· Begins to question his sanity realises he needs to get out before his brain is washed completely

Background Information

In 2009 the Prime Minister called a general election in Britain, realising this needed to be done as the country was on a downward spiral. All was well in the build up, partys were busy milling around gaining public support, live debates were present on the television, and party rallys were taking place up and down the country. This just looked like any other normal British General Election.

Beneath all this normality was something that wasn’t so normal. A party had been formed, a group of communist extremists led by Edward Stanislav, who was originally russian, were figuring out a way of getting in to power. They came to the conclusion of rigging the election. They had memebers on the inside to make this possible.

The election came, the British Public voted, all not thinking that their votes wouldn’t mean anything. The communists were in power. Immediately change was noticable, as soon as they set foot in the cabinet office they were changing the way the country was run. Democracy was abolished. The Army was bought back to Britain for controlling purposes. More importantly the Institutions were opened.

Hereford was the base for one of these Institutions. Immediately there were small groups of rebels forming in and around Communist Britain. One of which were the name, led by Harry Webber.

A few months after Harrys attempted uprising he was picked up off the street and taken to The Institute. His time in Blue Haven was a constant struggle in his mind, beliefs were questioned, sanity was corrupted and torture was eventually a daily routine in order to brainwash his mind into believing that communism is the only way.

Minutes turned into hours, hours turned into days, days into months, and months turned into years. Harry had no idea what was going on in the outside world, a head full of anger and hatred for the state, then became a head full of questions, pain and suffering.

After six years of being imprisoned in Blue Haven, after the psychaiatrists attempting to crush every amount of sanity left in his mind, he eventually remembered what was going on, and why he was sent to Blue Haven in the first place. Things weren’t going well on the outside. After nearly seven years of power the uprisings against the communist state were growing by the week, chaos lurked in the streets. His own followers were starting to question his methods. Plans to overthrow the regime was completely were starting to be devised.

Harry now was giving the wrong questions for the state, but the right questions for himself, in the sense that his will power to survive and get out of Blue Haven was becoming stronger than that of the pshychiartrists mental torture. He had started to gather a few of the ‘Patients’ together that were like him before they entered the institute and began to plot a way out of Blue Haven. This was easier than expected. Due to inexpensive building materials and lack of money corners were cut in the construction on certain parts of the building. Escape eventually came after a long struggle for health. He was now back in the outside world, no longer imprisoned in Blue Haven, but still imprisoned in the state. In a matter of days of his release the secret police were after him, in hiding in Hereford he was reunited with his former rebel group who were once again plotting rebellion. On November 23^rd 2017, 8 years after the communists came to power, Jones was assassinated on live television whilst doing a press conference on education reforms. The country now was in uproar, the fight for power had begun. The ring leaders in all of the were obviosly Harry and his rebel group. His hatred for the state had built up whilst imprisoned in Blue Haven, he realised that he needed to do something to try and help preserve Old Britain.