How To Create Convincing Bruises And Cuts

We looked around the internet for instructions of how to make a convincing bruise or cut and instead found a video tutorial on YouTube which give a really convincing effect and uses materials which we have easy access to.

Learn How to get a beaten and bruised makeup look for Halloween. For more Makeup How-To Videos & Articles, visit WonderHowTo.

Finding Our Music

Whilst browsing Youtube as a group we came across an artist named Ed Sheeran, we knew of him through a friend. We listened to a few tracks 'The City' 'You Need Me, I Don't Need You' and 'Firefly' we thought they were good as they had a strong beat to them, we thought 'You Need Me, I Don't Need You' was our best option as the lyrics fit well into our film's storyline. We then contacted the artist through Facebook and explained that we would like to use his music for our A Level media project. He replied to us to say that he was not signed and giving us his permission to use his music, he also let us know the music was not copy write. Once he informed us of this we edited the track through IMovieHD to make it fit the length of our opening sequence and to cut out any irrelevant aspects to it.


Below are the 3 songs we considered for our music.

Proof of Ed Sheeran giving us permission to use his music and stating that it is not labelled

Changes In Our Plans

In class today we evaluated previous opening sequences and have decided against the idea of having a heartbeat as our soundtrack as this has been generally used in the horror genre and if it is not used effectively then it can ruin the hard work put into the opening sequence.


Also we have decided we no longer need a four way split screen from '4321' to link our characters together as we feel our characters are now linked through our establishing shot on a sofa and so the split screen would no longer be necessary.

Casting Roles

Cut Loose consists of four main characters; Mel, Sarah, Rian, and Tyrone. Casting these roles was a more difficult task than we had anticipated as our storyline deals with sensitive issues, so we needed actors who felt comfortable with their characters background and would also be able to perform to a good naturalistic standard.


After auditioning a variety of actors we have settled on four whom we feel will be strongly capable of fore filling their role.


Sarah will be played by Lara Edwards, a calm and collected actress who is also a dancer. She will be able to perform the choreographed dance scenes with ease and has experience in playing characters from a violent background.

Rian will be played by Rian Formon, a strong and competent actor. With his acting experience Rian will be more than capable of fore filling the needs of his character. He will not struggle with the physical demands of his character as he regularly deals with roles which require high levels of fitness.

Tyrone will be played by Tyrone Mijberg, an actor whom is familiar with playing homosexual characters. With his past experience he will be fully capable of taking this part in his stride comfortably.

 Mel will be played by Melina John, a relatively new actress with a lot to offer. Melina can easily adapt to a variety of roles and after auditioning we felt she fit the role perfectly she feels passionately about her character and this passion is shown in her acting.

We feel that these actors are more than capable of fitting their characters personas and will perform well to produce a good end result.



Finding Filming Locations

Once we had decided on our plot we had to find locations where we could film to get the desired outcomes for our film.

 We decided that the first location in a living room should be in a realistic environment. We sampled two environments, the 6 form common room and Lara's Lounge. We settled on Lara's Lounge as it was more realistic and we would be able to control the surroundings, mainly noise level.

6 Form Common Room

Lara's Living Room

The second location needed was a dark alley, instantly we all agreed on an alley at the back of school as it is dingy and isolated and will serve its purpose well.

Alley Behind School

Our third location is a library; again we considered 2 locations, the dalo and the library. We finally decided the school library would be better as it is a quieter and more realistic environment.

School Dalo

School Library

Our fourth location is a male teenage bedroom, we eventually settled on using Lara's back room as it is spacious and basic and ideal for us to film in.

Lara's Back Room

Our fifth location was a dance studio. For this we wanted to use the dance studio at Shirley High, however this was not available for us to use so we will be using the school gymnasium as it has a mirrored wall, which is slightly distorted to reinforce Sarah’s instability.

School Gymnasium

Our sixth location is a female teenage bedroom. We agreed that the room should have purple in it to indicate the gender; we chose to use Lara's bedroom.

Lara's Bedroom

Our final location needed to be a field and we decided it should be close to our other locations and so we will be using the relatively deserted Millers Pond.

Millers Pond

Whilst choosing out locations we had to consider keeping them as close to life as possible, using locations which were easily accessible and that could be returner to if necessary.

Cut Loose - Storyboard

Below is a Prezi displaying our shots and the camera movement that will go with them, we then decided to go on and created a less interactive and more straight forward storyboard as this one can become confusing as it jumps from shot to shot, however it is a good way of displaying our camera movements and angles.

Storyboard on Prezi

Below is our finished storyboard without the camera movement. We did try to add the camera movement into this presentation using title screens, however we found that when we reviewed the end product the titles affected the storyboard's flow with the music and they also affected the viewers understanding of the storyboard.

Making Our Title Screen

After playing around with the effect in IMovieHD we decided that we wanted to use the wipe effect to present our title sequence. We decided that it would fit our genre and opening sequence well as it has a more adult look and goes well with the desired font.

Designing the Title Text and Font

After a while of playing around with Imovie on the macs we came up with our final idea of the title font of our opening sequence. We tried out a selection of different fonts and decided on a font titled 'The Battle Continuez'. We then played around with different colours and came to the decision of the colour tangerine, because we felt the font and the colour stood out and reflected the theme of our opening sequence well. Below shows the process we went through to come up with our final idea:

Font: Tekton Pro

Colour: Snow

Font: Kokonor

Colour: Snow

Font: Bank Gothic

Colour: Snow

Font: They're Coming To Get Me

Colour: Snow

Font: The Battle Continuez

Colour: Snow

Font: The Battle Continuez

Colour: Flora

Font: The Battle Continuez

Colour: Ice

Font: The Battle Continuez

Colour: Steel

Font: The Battle Continuez

Colour: Cayenne

Font: The Battle Continuez

Colour: Tangerine

Cut Loose - Screenplay

INT. COSY LIVING ROOM. DAY.
ESTABLISHING SHOT of MEL, RIAN, TYRONE, and SARAH are sitting on a sofa chatting.

MEL

(CLOSE UP of MEL turning away from the group to the camera)

It didn't used to be like this.

EXT. DARK ALLEY. DAY

MID SHOT of MEL is smoking a joint.

MEL
(voice-over)

I just can't give up my addiction.

INT. COSY LIVING ROOM. DAY.

ESTABLISHING SHOT of MEL, RIAN, TYRONE, and SARAH are sitting on a sofa chatting.

TYRONE

(CLOSE UP of TYRONE turning away from the group to the camera)

I used to be alone.

INT. LIBRARY. DAY.

MID SHOT of TYRONE is sitting at a desk surrounded by books.

TYRONE
(voice-over)

I can't help it if I'm gay.

INT. COSY LIVING ROOM. DAY.

ESTABLISHING SHOT of MEL, RIAN, TYRONE, and SARAH are sitting on a sofa chatting.

RIAN

(CLOSE UP of RIAN turning away from the group to the camera)

I had no-one to turn to.

INT. UTILITY ROOM. DAY.

MID SHOT of RIAN is standing up doing weights.

RIAN
(voice-over)

I can't stop and I can't eat.

INT. COSY LIVING ROOM. DAY.

ESTABLISHING SHOT of MEL, RIAN, TYRONE, and SARAH are sitting on a sofa chatting.

SARAH

(CLOSE UP of SARAH turning away from the group to the camera)

And no-one would listen.

INT. DANCE STUDIO. DAY.

MID SHOT of SARAH tying up her shoes to practice,

SARAH
(voice-over)

It's my fault for loving him too much.

INT. COSY LIVING ROOM. DAY.

ESTABLISHING SHOT of MEL, RIAN, TYRONE, and SARAH are sitting on a sofa chatting.

EXT. BACKSTREET. DAY.

MID SHOT of MEL walking up to HOODED MAN CLOSE UP of exchange of money for drugs.

EXT. OPEN FIELD. DAY

MATCH ON ACTION of TYRONE is walking away from the camera with a note on his back

INT. UTILITY ROOM. DAY

MID SHOT of RIAN doing sit ups alone.

INT. GIRLS BEDROOM. DAY.

MID SHOT SARAH is looking at her bruises in the mirror.

INT. COSY LIVING ROOM. DAY.

ESTABLISHING SHOT of MEL, RIAN, TYRONE, and SARAH are sitting on a sofa chatting.

CUT TO black screen with CUT LOOSE appearing in The Battle Continuez font in Tangerine colour with a wipe style.

Cut Loose - Screenplay Draft

Cut Loose - Final Idea

The four characters will be sitting together on a sofa as a group having a good time. The camera will zoom in on Mel and freeze-frame, at which point her character name will appear and she will voiceover 'It didn't used to be like this' at which point a flashback will begin with Mel rolling up a joint. We will then cut back to the group on the sofa and zoom in on Tyrone and freeze-frame, at which point his character name will appear. He will immediately have a flashback where he is sitting alone in a room, his voiceover will say 'I used to be alone'. Once more we will cut back to the group on the sofa and we will zoom in on Rian, he will have a freeze-frame in which his character name will appear, his voiceover will say 'I had no-one to turn to' and he will then have a flashback of pumping weights at home. We will have another cut back to the group on the sofa and will zoom in to Sarah and during her freeze-frame her characters name will appear, she will then have a flash back of looking in a mirror with bruises over her body, her voiceover will say 'And no-one would listen'. We will then have one final cut to the group on the sofa and there will be a series of flashbacks to various point in the film. As this happens there will be a soundtrack of a heartbeat and each flash back will appear in sync with each beat, it will get faster until we finally hear a deadline then the title of the film appears on a black screen.

Target Audience

Below is a link to a Prezi i have created about our target audience

Target Audience on Prezi

	Votes	Average
Males	5,466	6.5
Females	866	6.2
Aged under 18	132	5.5
Males under 18	86	6.3
Females under 18	44	3.8
Aged 18-29	4,588	6.7
Males Aged 18-29	3,937	6.7
Females Aged 18-29	643	6.6
Aged 30-44	1,375	6.2
Males Aged 30-44	1,232	6.2
Females Aged 30-44	139	6.0
Aged 45+	221	5.7
Males Aged 45+	184	5.7
Females Aged 45+	33	5.7
Top 1000 voters	118	4.8
US users	495	5.7
Non-US users	5,354	6.6

These statistics are from 'Kidulthood' it has a storyline simular to ours and so we have based our target audience partly on this. We have found that it was watched mainly by males aged 18 - 29, closely folowed by males under 18. Overall we have learnt that it was viewed mainly by men.

Film Synopsis

As Melina becomes wrapped up in her drug addiction her boyfriend leaves her, making prostitution the only way to feed her addiction. Meanwhile Tyrone is struggling to come to terms with his sexuality after the abuse he received from his peers, for being different. To pursue her dancing dream Sarah decides it time to finally tell someone the truth about whats been happening behind closed doors. Rian becomes so weight conscious that he turn to bulimia in order to fit in. Four normal teenagers, four abnormal lives, one thing in common.

Our Influences

Skins is our main influence as the storyline for our opening sequence from the Skins series as it deals with teenagers personal issues as well as a variety of modern day issues. Like our opening scene it deals with sensitive issues like domestic violence. It deals with a variety of teenagers individual issues from a variety of perspectives.

Train spotting influenced us to use a freeze-frame of the characters during which the characters name would appear on the screen whilst there was a voiceover describing the character in the freeze-frame from the main characters point of view.

4321 encouraged us to use a four way split screen at the end of our sequence to link the four characters together as in 4321 they use it to follow the characters stories through the same day, showing that it has all happened at the same point in time.

 

In Her Shoes used short clips and voiceover to introduce the audience to surroundings and the main characters. We decided that we would use short clips to introduce the characters and their background.