London Spy

I have been enjoying the new BBC2 spy thriller London Spy and we can use it in addition to the case of the death of MI6 agent Gareth Williams (an article about the case can be found here) as inspiration for our film opening, in which a girl stumbles across a suspicious suitcase in a wood. London Spy further shows that the thriller is a popular genre as it pulled in 2.5 million viewers on its first episode.

We may be able to use some of the shots of the main character, Danny, discovering a suspicious chest in the attic as inspiration for shots in our film opening.

A slightly high angle, almost POV, shot of the chest

A mid shot of Danny's reaction

Close up of Danny reaching to open the chest

Most of the shots in this part of London Spy have a long duration, which really effectively builds suspense and tension, so this is something else we would want to make sure we included in our film opening.

Filming Day 1

Today we had our first day of filming. Here is a vlog of that. We got all the internal shots we needed and plan to film in the wood next weekend.


 

New Filming Dates

We have figured out our new filming dates. They are as follows:

Saturday 28th November- internal shots at my house
Saturday 5th December- external shots at our location at Hilly Fields

Storyboards

Here are the storyboards we created on Monday for our new idea.

Change of plan

As our original group wasn't working out, we decided to split so now Group 4 consists of myself and Kirti. We have also changed our idea, but maintained that the genre will be thriller.

In concise terms, our idea is that a young woman is walking through a wood and she discovers an abandoned suitcase.

This idea is much simpler and so will be easier to shoot, which allows us more time to think about how we will reflect the genre in the way it is shot and edited and through sound design. We have also established which location we will be using and I will post the photos of the storyboards we created today in my next post.

Saul Bass

Saul Bass was a designer who pioneered the opening title sequence. He is a good source of inspiration for opening titles but tended to create stand alone title sequences, rather than title sequences within the action, which is what we are looking to create with our film opening. An example of his work is below.

BFI Day

Yesterday we went to the British Film Institute to an AS Media study day during which we were able to analyse the content of film openings such as 'Casino Royale', 'Napoleon Dynamite' and 'Donnie Brasco'. We also took part in a Q&A with the director of horror film 'The Hallow', Corin Hardy. The whole day was very useful in highlighting what we needed to focus on from now on in terms of our film openings. All of the content from the day can be found on this website.

Location Scouting

A vlog from today when we went location scouting in central London.

Filming Dates

We have established which days we will be filming on and they are as follows:

• Saturday 14th November- we will film some establishing shots of Central London
• Saturday 21st November- we will film all external Central London shots such as by St. Paul's Cathedral, Parliament, the Millenium Bridge, the London Eye and the Shard as well as the shot on the train into London. 
• Sunday 22nd November- we will film all internal shots from the start of the film opening as our protagonist gets ready for her job interview, the location for this will be my house.
• Monday 23rd November- we will film the final few shots including an external of Enfield Civic Centre to establish that the location of the interview is a professional building. We will also film inside our school on Monday for the final few internal shots.

Shot Ideas

Last week we were thinking about the shots we would use in our film opening and wrote them down, which is shown here:

Some of these need refining but this is our initial list. The next step will be to storyboard these ideas. 

Gogglebox Task

Here is a version of Gogglebox that we made, which has helped to improve our editing skills.

Update Vlog

Here's an update on our film opening and locations we are thinking of using.