chase scene

looking for inspiration for our chase scene, I've come across the videos below. i chose these videos as last year i wanted to have a chase scene in my film opening, and it proved harder than i had thought. I think one of the biggest reasons for this, wasn't because of the lack of equipment or inexperienced filming, but rather because of lack of planning, which is why i will be looking closely at inspirational scenes. the videos below are much above what i believe we can achieve, but we can still make a more basic version by studying the way they are done:










here is the final story board for our chase which was developed by harley

locations shots for modified chase scene

okay, to sum up, we have now been told twice that we cannot use the police equipment outside of school and it's becoming clear that there is only one way were going to be able to do this, which is in school. Even though Aidan suggested that thereis no way we can film in school, me and harley took the liberty in our frees yesterday to try and figure out how we could maybe make it work, and to do so we need the least academic looking area of the school. we took a camera and photographed areas that had the potential to be apart of the scene:

prop problems!

For two separate scenes of our music video we needed some very specific costume and props, namely police riot gear. the gear which we need is mentioned in a previous post, with pictures. i went to a friend of mine who is in the police and said he would attempt to get me the equipment we needed or the closest to it that was available. he realised that all of the equipment he would take out would have the number on it registered to him when he took it out, and he wanted to check that we were okay to use the equipment for filming without breaking any of his job rules, so he spoke to the boss at professional standards department, and they told him that we would not be able to film this in a public place with professional equipment, especially if it was going onto the Internet, even for educational purposes. faced with this problem we all together cancelled the filming for Tuesday and started to think about how we were going to make shift a police uniform. Me and Harley tried to arrange make shifting a uniform out of common pieces of clothing, but we didn't think it would look good enough, and we wanted to meet a better standard. I told Mr Smith about the problem and possible hiring a costume from a costume hire shop, and he said he might be able to find a nightstick and a stab vest for us, which was a big relief. Earlier today Mr Smith told us he will get us the equipment asked for by tomorrow, which will be a big help. we intend to film the scenes from yesterday tomorrow in the same area as the subway scene. The scenes we need to film are: Jack running into the officer, the officer arresting/beating Jack, the officer beating another man (for the mind erase video).

Police costume

for some scenes which are currently unfilmed, we need specific costume if we are going to get the correct feel for it. this consists of riot gear, or as it stands, the closest we can get to riot gear. i have volunteered to retrieve this equipment, as i know a police officer who said he could provide equipment for me last year in media AS. hopefully, we can get some form of riot gear such as stab vests, batons and possibly a riot helmet. the helmet isn't promised but hopefully we may get one. i think a helmet would really polish off the look quite Nicley, and it would give the impression that officer isn't just your average copper, showing he is more important and more exceeding in ability, however it also shows with the rest of the equipment that the police and therefore government are on the side of or subordinated to the Illuminati/agents. here is a picture of the general kind of equipment we are hoping to use to create the look of our agent:

even though we are not referencing it, a look which we would like to include with the general attributes of the police officer is that of the riot officers in foo fighters video of the record "the pretender" giving us a look to fashion our police officer around.

Walking shots and potential argument scene

this is a shot from The Verve's bittersweet symphony promotional video. the protagonist is walking down the street bumping into people and vacantly ignoring them whilst they look in disgust.

in that scene, a woman follows and shouts to him, but he continues to walk and blatantly ignore her, not even looking to acknowledge her. this is an idea we could use for our video, since the protagonist knows something is so wrong but has had his memory erased, meaning he cannot identify the problem. the idea that he is so disturbed by a missing piece of information is what drives the protagonists characteristics, and he is so confused he refuses to acknowledge anything outside of his thoughts. the problem with a shot like this is that we are already on a tight schedule, and it would be harder to film in many respects. However, we are intent on having someone turn around and shout and make a fuss when the protagonist bumps into them, but they will just fade into the background rather than play a larger part like the woman in the clip.

general research

quite sometime ago Harley and Aiden suggested i looked more deeply into the conspiracy theories on which our video is being created, since they seem to know more on the subject than me. since I've finally found some time to do this I'm going to search through the web to find the various strands of Illuminati beliefs to give the team some solid ground to work from, and hopefully we can refer to this post for any information needed. i intend to source a lot of my information from the following website, since it seems the best around: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread20281/pg1
Like any conspiracy theory, Illuminati are highly speculated upon and the idea of a potential new world order is ridiculed by the vast majority. The website above is a timeline, listing all events to do with the Illuminati/ Freemasons. starting from the very bottom of the list, the organisation supposedly started in the 1700's, and is put on the web page as "Illuminati/Freemasons", the two have been supposedly linked in conspiracy theories for a long time. the name of the Illuminati is derived from bearers of the light, and supposedly the name also came from "Lucifer". the organisation was supposedly started by Adam Weishaupt and Jesuit Priest, along with the Freemasons.



Through the 1700 and 1800's the Freemasons and Illuminati spread their routes and adopted many other organisations such as the Rothschild's, aside from this there is very little activity or development up to the early 1900's where most events are relatively unimportant to our video. events such as the wall street crash of 1929 was supposedly caused by the Illuminati along with other worldwide economic depressions, showing how the Illuminati are linked to famous events taking place since their supposed creation.

The Illuminati are then blamed for financially backing Hitler for his invasion into Poland in 1939. At this stage the Illuminati are looking like a scapegoat for all bad things since the 1700's onwards. nothing of importance to our video then takes place until 1989 when George bush is elected president of the USA, and he is supposedly a free mason, who are still strongly associated with the Illuminati. before 1989, the Illuminati are Incorporated into many theories about assassinations of world leaders, such as only one man being arrested for the assassination of president Kennedy is found with 5 bullets from separate guns in his body. Also a prime example is the crash of flight KAL 007, the flight which Larry McDonald is on board. the plane supposedly flown over a shortcut which commonly used with low fueled planes, however the flight was high on fuel. it flown into restricted air space, at which point fighter pilots shot warning shots past the cockpit, which went un- acknowledged, so the flight was shot down. all bodies were recovered except for the pilot and co pilot. eye witnesses saw 2 parachutes from the plane. this is a fantastic example of how our video will be portraid as the Illuminati carrying top secret operations without any of the general public being aware.



In 1990, around the start of the gulf war, George bush publically announced the new world order. weather the context of this was twisted or not is constantly debated by believers and sceptics, even though he clearly says the words "new world order".

The new world order is a plan by the Illuminati for a small group of leaders to rule the world, the details of which are vague and irrelevant but may come into play at some point in our video if necessary. several other ideas which come back to the Illuminati are listed and briefly described below:

9/11 conspiracy:

the falling of the twin towers was ten years to the day after George bush publicly said "a new world order" which theorists have obviously picked up on and claimed that is more than just a coincidence. the idea that the towers were actually blown up by the government (controlled by the Illuminati) has many different pieces of evidence, such as the pillars at the bottom of the towers: they were cut at a perfect angle which is usually used in controlled demolition. Another piece of evidence is that supposedly British television announced the falling of one of the buildings 7 minutes before it fell. some people even go as far to say that no plane ever hit the pentagon, and that it disappeared. this because there was only actually one shot that captured the very tip of the plane hitting the pentagon despite it being the most protected building in the entire world. when some plane experts were consulted on the conditions of the crash into the pentagon they said that it would have been impossible for reasons such as: the plane was moving too fast at the time of the crash for it to have come close enough to the ground to hit the building, and because the terrorists who hijacked the plane had been training in a very basic bi plane, and it would be incredibly difficult to fly a Boeing with such accuracy having only trained in a small bi plane, stating that not only would the controls be completely different and massively complex in comparison, and one pilot that was interviewed said that after all his experience flying the Boeing he would not be able to be so accurate. the 9/11 conspiracy also links in with modern day Illuminati signs in commercial areas below.

Illuminati symbols in everyday culture:
despite the Illuminati supposedly being extremely intelligent, there are claimed to be symbols left by them in almost any place you look. a good example to start with is the American dollar bill: the bill has the all seeing eye atop a pyramid, the Illuminati symbol. the dollar bill is also supposed to represent "the order of new ages", alarmingly close to Bushes publicly announced "new world order", obviously setting conspiracy theorists up with a link. also on the 20 dollar bill even more alarmingly and less likely to be a coincidence are pictures of the twin towers on fire, the pentagon on fire. at first this is rejected by almost everyone, but you don't have to look hard to see these pictures, and if the 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 dollar bill are all folded in the seems to be like some sort of prediction or prophecy, since the notes were produced in 1996.

There are other references to the Illuminati in public culture, particularly the media and it's productions. below are just a few examples of Illuminati reference in Hollywood:



obviously the biggest question amongst this is, why would such a clever organisation give themselves away like this? that question does not seemed to have been addressed yet, but its almost certain that if they were responsible for the fall of the twin towers or such an event they would not openly admit or even hint that they were behind it. however, before starting this post i was very sceptical about the possibility of this secret organisation like Aiden, but i have now come to see that Harley did have a point when he mentioned the amount of evidence suggesting this and i firmly believe, mainly due to the dollar bills that there is something going on and there is far to much evidence for it to be a coincidence.
This post has allowed me to carry out my own research to establish and gain deeper understanding on the foundations behind our video, which will be important for me to help in it's production. my knowledge of the subject has now become intensely clearer and it should help with getting a real feel for our video. this post can also help the team for reference to any needed knowledge of the history of the Illuminati. Last minute plot changes could be made in reference to this post, e.g. small references to Illuminati events such as assassinations, disappearances etc.

Video introduction

In the our video there is going to be a brief introduction before the music actually starts, to break the ice and introduce the narrative of the video. I've posted some videos below to show the way in which this is done professionally:


I inserted the entire video instead of tube chopping it because this way you can see how it works and relates to the rest of the video.

Risk assesment

the following scenes and events in our storyboard are ones that carry a risk and i have evaluated and created a soloution to:



Holding the proagnist's eye open: in this scene one of our agents will be holding the main character's eye open, which could cause damage to the eye or the skin around it. Soloution: feedback between the two actors should prevent overdoing the scene.

Strapping the protagnist down: in this scene the main character is tied to a bed/chair and forced to watch a clip. if the actor is tied to tightly he may struggle to breathe of suffer damage to his ribs. Soloution: feedback between the actor and the people setting the scene up should prevent this by not tieing the rope to tightly.

Police attack scene: Thre is a police officer shown beating a man with a batton (on the tv screne in the hypnotize room). we will need to film this ourselves otherwise we will lose marks for someone elses footage, which means we have to have someone pretending to hit someone else with a batton. Soloution: For this we found a technique called depth of feild, which, with cetain camera angles, will allow us to make a realistic looking beating without endangering anyone.





Black cat scene: the cat is going to walk across infront of the camera, and this may require several shots and a lot of persuasion. if the cat becomes violent it could attack someone, having serious impacts.

Bath scene: our protagnist wakes up in a bath after the memory erasing scene as an intertextual reference to inception. this could be dangerous for him if he was to hold his breath for to long and pass out before acting his waking up, causing extreme danger. Soloution: he could have his mouth and nose faced upwards not in the bath to prevent the need of holding breath.

the chase and underpass scenes: these scenes require running in the road , we will have to be extra careful here, using quiet roads and being extra vigilent by looking out for cars to ensure that noone is standing around on the road and the amount of time spent on the road is very little.

Progress

I've completed the rough storyboard, which was designed to very briefly sum up the more complex shots/ideas in the video (i.e. the start and end) and later today will begin the official polished final storyboard which will be the basis for the animatic and will include every single shot intended for the final video.

Some changes we have already made due to logistics are:
Relocating the action to a suburban environment (as getting an urban environment would be difficult baring in mind where we live and also getting one that was not going to be interupted by passers by was verging on the impossible.

Removing the woman in the red dress character, due to not being able to find someone old enough or as obviously attractive as the woman from The Matrix in order to use the whole male gaze idea.

We're currently discussing the age and apperance of the male characters, and how they should be represented, for maximum effect on the audience.

We're using the theory of binary opposition for the protaganist and the "agent" characters, presenting the agents as slick, sharply-dressed professionals, who never break their deadpan expressions, and the protaganist as scruffy, deshevelled and constantly paranoid and twitchy.