Film Opening Planning Continued

Hello! Today, I will be continuing and resuming the conversation from yesterday.

How will this really work?

Blake getting shot and being transported to the hospital

Now, this idea would turn out AWESOME in a real movie with a reasonable budget. However, this isn't a real movie and I don't have a budget greater than like $4. Therefore, I must be creative. I know from experience, that movies nowadays use a lot of flashing lights, dim lighting, and sound to really show the idea of an ambulance, emergency, or hospital trip, and I intend to do the same. This way, I won't need an actual ambulance or anything major like that to convey the idea. 

FLASH FORWARD TO NOW.

I had a great conversation with my teacher about this idea, where we talked a lot about the actual plot of the story and how this idea would affect/not affect the plot. The conclusion was that this whole idea really wasn't going to progress the plot in the way that I needed it to, and therefore is a bad idea for a shot. Since the main storyline isn't focused entirely on the actual shooting and more on how Blake recovers from the shooting and he goes to progress and improves, it is essential to show immense character development, and showing the trip to the hospital doesn't really do that. Therefore, I think it's best that I just put a black screen and have some radio chatter talking about the event, and then the next scene would be Blake waking up at the hospital, and how he progresses with his daily life. Thus, the new plan for the film opening would be

-NBA draft

-Shooting, quick radio

-Blake wakes up in a hospital bed

-Blake trying to stand and works through injuries (if time permits). 

So, to continue what I was doing yesterday, I will not be working to reasonably see how the proposed scenes would actually play out. We already covered the NBA draft scene.

As stated a little bit before, after the NBA draft scene, I would probably want a fade-to-black transition to a black screen with radio chatter talking about the shooting, either some police chatter or the news speaking briefly. It also might be cool to have the TV in the hospital playing the news stories about the shooting, with the camera panning to blake in the bed but that might be a little hard to do because I don't really have a hospital bed. Therefore the police or news chatter without video might be the best instance. 

This is a great example of how the camera panning would work after the news is played, but it would be unrealistic since I don't have a real hospital bed. 

I think I would want to do something like this, but with the black screen instead of video, leading to the character waking up to find out what happened and being in shock. 

Waking up at the hospital scene

This scene will be quite difficult to film because I don't really have a hospital bed or hospital room that I can feasibly film in. I think that the best scenario is to use my guest room, because of its super bright white walls, and white decor, which mostly resembles a hospital. Also, because of my mom's job, I have IV tubes I can "insert" into Blake to give more of an idea of a hospital. I could probably create a makeshift heart rate monitor and definitely include the heart rate monitor beeping to give the allusion to a hospital bed. The key to making this really is the lighting, and mise-en-scene, so I will have the actor dress in hospital clothes as well. Additionally, I will be very careful with the shots and angles I use so that I don't reveal too much about the scene (Lots of close-up shots). I will also be able to put some bandages on the bullet wounds and more, and maybe use some make-up to make all of this seem a lot more realistic. 

This is a great example of using many close-ups to hide the actual set or location that this is filmed in. Additionally, when the actor wakes up, it would be neat to have his girlfriend or his mom being the first thing he sees, to kind of let him relax and break the hard truth to him. 

The start of this scene is also great, with the camera facing the roof, and I could definitely incorporate this feature to not reveal too much about the actual room being filmed in. 

Sound

In terms of sound, the film opening will start out with the sound of the NBA draft, which I will record separately from the actual video, and there will be no actual sound from Blake celebrating with his family, it will mostly be the commentator talking and giving details about his highlights. The scene using real sound will be the hospital scene, where I will be forced to record the sound using a high-quality microphone, to ensure that the sound quality is crisp and that there are no distractions. All of the audio in the film I will be making or using sound effects are found freely online. I might borrow a good microphone from my school's TV program. 

The scenes of Blake working through the injuries will occur in the same room, or on the basketball courts, but will be using the same filming techniques as mentioned above.

Well, I finished up what I wanted to do today! LET's GOOOO! I have thought and discussed my plans for the storyline with others, gotten advice, and figured out how everything would realistically work. Things are going great so far! I will catch you all tomorrow on my next blog post where I will continue my story/plot/shot list, or TBD. Will take a break for the next few hours.