Auditioning the Actresses

Auditioning the actresses.

To reach a high level of professionalism we wanted to hold out some auditions for the person playing the protagonist to ensure that we were using someone who would look the part on camera and would act it well enough that the didn't look staged. We also wanted to ensure that Mel and I had a strong team behind us. Here is a list of the pros and cons for both of the actresses we had in mind to choose the actress for Georgia Murphy/Topaz Spectre.

Bella:
Pros Cons
Attended the New York Conservatory for Holidaying at time of shooting
Dramatic Arts (NYCDA)
More available for shooting
Studied GCSE Drama
Studying Performing Arts  A LevelEloise:
Pros Cons
On the Island throughout shooting process More outside commitments.
Studied GCSE Drama
Has gained lead roles within may school performances over the years.

When viewing the small CV we asked the two of them to hand in we asked them to perform a small section of text and Mel and I had no trouble choosing between the two when we saw who would be able to provide more dedication and commitment to the team we're creating for our film so Bella McCrimmon got the part. Also she had done alot more work in the field of performing.

Calender

Mel and I created this calender at the very beginning of our project, we decided to research all the way through the shooting to keep on top of fresh ideas and make sure that everything we we're doing was linking in well with the chosen genre and theme. We soon found that keeping up with set deadlines was quite difficult, the first month of time keeping worked really well but as we progressed on we realised that some shoots we were going to have to re-film which meant that we had to jumble around our calender slightly resulting in us not making our personal deadline. This wasn't too bad as it was only a deadline we had given ourselves to work towards and we still had a good 3 months after this which we could re-film shoots we didn't like and piece our trailer together.
The time keeping also meant that we never managed to get our shot with the business man we were hoping to include as the trained actor who was with us at the school at that given time had left come December. Because of this we decided to drop this shoot to keep up with our time keeping. I was slightly disappointed as this was going to be the one section of the trailer where we wanted to include script and narrative, just so we could tick off another box in the different codes and conventions we could have included. Instead we stuck with the voice over we had recorded and personalised soundtrack Mel and I worked extremely hard on to fit precisely to the action we included.

Story Board

It is a little hard to understand the story board becasue I drew it out on A3 paper scaning it in to fit on the blog was a little difficult and this was the

Normal Name.

We wanted our protagonist to first be introduced outside of her Superhero form which means that we had to come up with a decent name. As we're female British filmmakers we wanted a stereotypically British name and the only way we saw fit to do this was research.

We came across a website which allowed us to see the most popular British girls names since 2007. From here we chose at random one we both liked which ranked in the middle of the 100 - Georgia. We did the same for the Surname and once again chose a decent one that fitted with Georgia - Murphy. I'm really impressed with the research we put into creating a stereotypical British name and it's also extremely ordinary which fits with our British film making style.

Character Names

Generic well famous superheros

Deciding on the names required many vital steps, one of our first moves was the Internet and our already common knowledge. e.g. Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Wonderwoman, Catwoman, The green lantern, The Hulk.Most Super Hero names tend to include gender specific pronouns: Man, Woman, Boy, Girl. Another common feature is the use of adjectives. e.g. Wonder, super. green. Lastly the most obvious one is to relate the name to the character name to their given superpower. Standing out is something the name needs to do the moment it's mentioned, something like a Buzz Word.
In all honesty using Internet name generators wasn't much help as a lot for them created extremely cheesy names which didn't fit our genre or didn't work well as a Buzz word. These are some of the websites we looked through:

http://www.superheronames.net/superhero-name-generator
http://www.namesmade.com/villain-name-generator.php

http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=superheronameorg 


-This last generator suggested the word Topaz to us a number of times, we felt it had quite a ring to it which encouraged us to  look further into the meaning behind it and what use it could be for us.


Dictionary Definition:

-Topaz: a transparent or translucent aluminium silicate mineral. Yellow, used as a gem.

After deciding we were quite fond of the word topaz and the characteristics of the word we brainstormed our own ideas for name which we could use for out Protagonist. Most of these incuded words which symbolise ivisibility to fit with the super power of the character, our favorite was:

Dictionary Definition:
-Spectre: Ghost. Menacing mental image, a haunting presentiment or preoccupation used in the names of some animals because of there thinness/transparency.


We finally came to the concussion that these together represented the characteristics of our superhero, bearing the power of invisibility -Spectre, and gave us a good grounding for a colour scheme of which we can relate our character to -Yellow.

TOPAZ SPECTRE

Next we had to decide on our villains name, we wanted something quite threatening and menacing. 

 Creating our superhero name took quite a while, we wanted to base it around the superpower to begin with like we had done with our antaganist, this made it obvious for our audience to understand what we're atempting to create in our antaganist character. Our fist though for something that would clearly demonstrate mind reading was a 'Magic 8 Ball'

Dictionary Definition:
-The Magic 8 Ball: is a toy used for fortune-telling or seeking advice, manufactured by Mattel.

from here we were ghappy with our findings and started on designing the costume, including a large silver 8 on the back of a black cape to represeant the 'Magic 8 Ball' and also the black symbolises evil within the villian. Once we had done this we had a masive brain wave as we saw the number 8 also creats the infinity sign, I loved the idea of this as it makes it seem on going (forever) Mel and I both agreed this is a great idea and something threatening for evil villian character to hold, repreenting eternal life. We then looked this up in the dictonary and slightly changed the word to make it sound more like a name to 'The Infinitice'

Dictionary Definition:

-Infinite: Without any limit or end

THE INFINITIVE

Characters

As Mel and I have decided to do a superhero film it seemed quite obvious who will hold which titles from Props theory. Our Superhero will be the protagonist and will also hole the hero title who is sent on a quest (the main plot of the story) they will be accompanied by a helper which we hare yet to decide. Our Protagonist character will be her arch nemesis which clearly holds the Villain title from Props theory.
This is really clear to understand and will work successfully that we have the two main featuring characters from Props theory. This will help our film trailer to work and flow successfully if we follow his stereotyped fairy tale theme.

Superhero film theory