Pitch for my ideas

Title: SOLO BUSINESS (translated directly Italian to English "JUST BUSINESS") 
genre: MOB gangster
Time period: Maximum of 2 weeks 
Demographic focus: Male adults aged 17 - 21+

When a 'thug' is caught guilty of 'snitching' by a gang of mobs leading the heaviest drug trafficking and most dangerous organised crime in 'L.A,' business becomes serious and so the 'BOSS' is called to personally lead out the killing and questioning of this suspected 'snitch.' 

A suspected 'snitch' is detained and held by the bosses main man, "BIG ZEE" and new rookie, "Pete" while the boss makes his way through the dark, corrupt streets of L.A. The boss never walks alone and so brings his two biggest henchmen, "old timer Richie' and "Rusty Tony" also known as "Rusty T." The mood suddenly gets a hole lot more intense and pete is told to shoot the snitch in front of the boss. Pete unlike the others has a fear of killing and acts as if he hasn't killed an innocent before which raises suspicion and creates humour for big Zee while making the Boss and followers angry. big Zee later sees the anger in the 'Boss' with the untrusted rookie Pete and makes a move to teach Pete a lesson. Zee slaps Pete while grabbing the gun and shooting the snitch a number of times, while keeping direct eye contact with Pete to show power and seems to show no sign of uncomfortability towards the killing of the snitch. Further dialogue and time for Zee to think, leads to big Zee suspecting of Pete being and member of the police. This raises confusion between the group and leads to anger of the mob. Zee gives the signal to have rookie Pete grabbed up and shoots him a number of times to assure his death towards the boss.    

Actors:

• Zheenyar Karim as 'BIG ZEE'
• Dean Tamagno as 'Rookie Pete' 
• Neil Collins as 'The Snitch' 
• George Tucker as 'Old timer Richie' 
• Tom Phipps as 'Rusty Tony' 
• Commie Miller as 'The Boss' 

backup actors: 

• Kane McEvoy 
• Dadyr Zalme 

Similar films: 

• American Gangster 
• The Godfather Part: 1

other information

This film will be:

• Extremely low budget (almost free of costs) 
• Guerilla filmed 
• independently produced 

Test shots

Below are two videos of my test shots and experimentation's with Adobe After effects CS6

Testing blood hits



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbtWIxiomSs


Testing the Muzzle flash and debris hits




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2LpUQFA5_U

Conventions of a Gangster film

What makes a gangster film?

- Guns?

- A crime family?

- A movie plot that has violence at every corner? 

- Organised crime? 

- Or just a bunch of hoodlums acting tough? 

It is important to remember that all these elements add to a gangster film are alone and do not constitute a good gangster film.

• A gangster film, when looked at from an American perspective, is the warped idea of the "American dream." 

- To be rich and successful with the most power, one can obtain. 

- It speaks to the American public, the evidence being the huge popularity of gangster films in the American film industry. 

• Films from across the Atlantic, namely from Britain have made themselves necessary to Mafia movie junkies. 
• Of course not to forget that our own country has made some notable gangster films too. 

Diegetic Sound

We will be planning to use the built in microphone on a Nikon D3100.

Furthermore, we will also be using a boom microphone but due to high cost and extremely low budget, we have created our own using equipment such as a dynamic microphone that we borrowed from our home academy's music department. We also managed to gather up bits of scrap and a microphone pole from the music department that we used to create a boom microphone, with isolation tape.

These bits of material/equipment included:

• Insulation tape

• Stagg microphone

• microphone stand pole

• microphone head cover

• big jack to small jack converter

• XLR to big jack cable

• sound exorbing sponge

• Popper Stopper (wasn't really required but somehow useful).

Below you can see the outcome of these different equipment/material with the aim of creating a boom mic).

Risk assessment

This is a systematic process of evaluating the potential risks that may be involved in a projected activity or undertaking.

This is helpful because safety comes before everything and until we know that the risks do not out way, we cannot start filming.

Planning of music - soundtrack

For the audio side of my production, I have used my current knowledge of diegetic and non-diegetic sounds of media, and have expanded that with my knowledge of Music technology.

My current knowledge of music technology will allow me to create my own track and produce exactly what I want, which is a slow, quite, instrumental piece. To produce this, I will be using a Apple Mac machine and a special software with the name of 'Logic Pro.' 

 

This software will not only allow me to produce and include violin, guitar, etc. with just a keyboard but also allow me to edit and modify diegetic sound which may already be on their, including dialogue to possibly make the sound a little wet (echo).

I will be choosing to use a slow, instrumental and somehow quite piece of music because this is what I thought stood out most from my researching of audio, of MOB gangster openings that I looked at. For example, 'The Godfathers' instrumental piece went on to be extremely famous and successful with the ratings of the film.

 Furthermore, using this 'Logic Pro' software, I will be possibly using some already recorded effects such as 'city noise' or possibly creating my own, in my school studio. 

Mixing the audio tracks can also be done Logic, and can be linked with the video with my chosen editing software. 

Planning of titles

For my opening titles, I hope to stick with the mainstream MOB font titles which is usually, big and simple fonts. Below you can see some examples:

For my main movie title, i plan to use two different fonts for two different words. My title for this movie will be 'Solo BUSINESS' translated to 'just business from Italian. I plan to make the Solo a big chunky font, while having the 'BUSINESS' as a more stylish, funky font. The intended effect of this, is to make the 'Solo' give the impression to the viewer that this is serious while showing the actual business as dirty and bloody as I also plan to add animated blood splatter with adobe after effects to this main title giving the viewer a feeling and clue to a professional and intense film.

During the titles, I plan on adding instrumental music which will increase in volume while reaching the final title 'Solo BUSINESS.' Furthermore, I plan on creating a 'PAN' effect which is basically weather the sound is coming from the left or the right. I plan to create a cinematic effect with this technique and give the viewer the feeling to a staircase, to an intense gangster movie. This will be explained further on the 'Planning of music - soundtrack' post. 

I would like to make this film opening feel like a gangster opening and not, for example an action film opening by avoiding, associating titles with the moving image. An example of this title on top of a moving image is shown below:  

I hope to avoid this and just use plain colors for the background, of the titles.  

Further-on, the company/organisation titles will be a mixture of animated or plain titles with again a plain solid background, with the exception of maybe one title which may fade out towards the start of the moving image.