Writer's Block Finished

Writer's Block Storyboard

Red Five Storyboard

I digitised the original storyboard created by Ciaran Hines.

RED FIVE- Creating the Logo

-Creating the Logo-

I was tasked with creating the fictional logo for Red Five, we decided that making a logo for the group would make the world of the film more believable. It was obvious that Red Five would have a logo as they would want to be recognised on the web.

Thought Process- I looked at other logos of hacking groups and noticed that many of them didn't have much colour and they were mostly serious in terms of tone. They conveyed a sophisticated nature, something that teenagers aren't known for. 

Originally the logo was just going to be the text "Red Five" but it looked empty and lacked personality. The name "Red Five" is a reference to Star Wars so I wanted to incorporate something relating to that film franchise and so I added a minimalist version of the infamous Death Star. The Death Star symbolises the power of mega corporations that steal data and information from others. I made the V the same shade of red as the background which makes the Death Star look like it's been pierced by the V showing that Red Five aim to take down these real life Death Stars. I didn't want to make the Death Star look like it was too intrusive as it is only a subtle reference.

After the basic concept of the logo was created we went into photoshop and added effects to make the logo more authentic. these effects included adding a crumpled paper-like texture to the background and pixelation.

 This is the final logo

RED FIVE: Our Idea and How it Came to Be

-R E D   F I V E-

A film by Eoin McCoy, Aaron Esteban and Ciaran Hines

-Defying Conventions of The Hacker-

When we came to an agreement on creating a hacking film, we didn't want to make it stereotypical or cliché when creating the characters and their dialogue. We wanted to tackle a style of film that hacking has never really been implemented into. This is the adolescent action adventure genre, these films were very popular in the 1980s and they showed the ambitious and somewhat unrealistic adventure of a group of kids. We wanted to bring back and modernise this genre as we feel that these films are very fun to watch.

When using the hacking theme we wanted to defy the clichés and conventions of the hacker, we started by focusing on making believable characters, being the age of these characters I was able to understand how they would talk to each other naturally. I wrote the first draft of the screenplay which you can read here. I showed this screenplay to the rest of the group for feedback and we drastically changed the tone and ending of the film. With this feedback we realised that it was too dialogue heavy and needed more action so I took away unnecessary dialogue and added a chase scene to give this opening scene more of a purpose. You can read this updated screenplay to see the differences here

Noah, Ben and Ava are the main protagonists of this film, each are brilliant with computers but very different when it comes to personality. Having vastly different personalities within the friend group allows friction between characters when in disagreement, it also allows them to point out each others flaws. 

We hope to create a believable and relatable film that will excite the audience.

Red Five Shooting

RED FIVE PRODUCTION

DAY 1

The first day of filming was when we did most of the external shots in our opening. It was Saturday the 25th of March, and we started to film at around 1:00pm. The weather was really good, as we got a lot of sun and virtually no clouds. Before we started filming, we had to get our props and actors ready to film. The only prop we needed was a Thinkpad, but we had to make sure Eoin remembered his headphones and his beanie, which were important parts of his costume. Eoin was the only actor we needed for this part, even though a security guard (John) also features in this scene. For a camera, we used a Samsung Galaxy S6, which was Eoin's phone. We are filming in 1080p, so his camera is very capable of that. To stabilise the shot, we used a gorilla pod, which is a small tripod that holds a phone. For all of the scenes we were filming, Eoin would be seated on a rock at our film location, on a hill overlooking Belfast. When we began filming, there was only one big problem we faced. The hill we were filming on was quite steep, so completing moving shots was a struggle. However to overcome this, we kept movement to a minimum and used zoom-ins instead of some moving shots. There was also some wind problems, but despite these complications we overcame them and finished a productive day of filming.

DAY 2

"A Successful Shoot."

On Sunday the 26th of March we filmed the rest of the external shots and some of the internal shots. The weather matched the previous day of filming so there were no continuity errors, we were finally able to film the security guard part with our actor John Campbell. John is an 18 year old but with his facial hair and deep gruff voice he looks and sounds older. This chase scene came with some challenges, the camera had to run with John which was difficult as we did not want the footage to be too unstable fortunately the camera we are using comes with OIS (Optical Image Stablisation) which helped stabilise the image. Another challenge with filming the chase scene was with John's clothing, due to complications John had to wear black shorts and couldn't wear the required black trousers we planned for. This meant that we would have to film John from the waist up and cut out parts that showed his lower half. We were able to overcome all of these challenges and we finally finished filming the external scenes. We started to film the indoor part of the film but we ran out of time and couldn't finish filming. Overall we had a successful shoot.

Red Five Screenplay