Driving Routes

Today we planned the driving routes in preparation for our filming on Sunday as we have a lot of shots within the car. 

Ally's route: 

As it is too busy to film the cars by Lambeth Town Hall, we decided to just film the car parking on Wandsworth Road which looks very similar to Brixton Hill.

Jaspers Route:

We're starting Jaspers route outside the Clapham Fire Station because it looks very similar to a police station and similarly we will have him pulling up on a busy road (North Street) which is similar to Brixton Hill.

W.H. B.M.

Film Construction - Day 6

Today we completely finished our ident. After uploading all of the photos of our drawings, we cut them together in Final Cut Pro to create a fluid, yet obviously homemade (so relating to our arthouse audience) movement. However, we decided that we didnt like the white background as we thought it looked too homemade and so put a negative effect on which made the background black and the symbol white. This would look better when leading straight into our credits which starts with a blackout. We decided to repeat the rolling out of the film roll but reverse it after holding for a couple of seconds so that the viewers could see the production company name.

After this, we looked on the website 'SoundFX Now' to find an effect that sounded like a film roll ticking which was successful. However after we downloaded it, we edited it to sound more recognisable as at first it sounded slightly like rain. We also cut it to end with the roll closing so it was more rounded and satisfactory.

W.H. B.M. 

Opening Credits

Today we worked on putting the opening credits together and the positioning of the text on the screen. We first looked at the website, 'Art of the Title' to see what credits we will need to include, and decided on the following headings and order:

'A Silver De Courcy Film' 

'A Film by Bea Hope'

Brittany Johnston

Luke Forryan

Roz Marston

Cecy Bullard

Ranya El-Refaey

Looking back at our pre-proposals we reminded ourselves of how we wanted the text to be positioned and the font of the text. We trialled lots of different fonts within Final Cut Pro and finally decided on the simplistic font, 'Designer Thin.' We originally wanted all of the text to be white and to appear separately but we encountered problems of seeing the text on shots with white skies and so had to change some of the titles to black. We also wanted all the names to appear before the flashaback so we overlapped some of the titles so they appeared staggered but in the same frame. For the 'A Silver De Courcy Film' we followed the style of many other films with having a blackout which we will add a soundbridge to later. 

W.H. B.M.

Film Construction - Day 5

Today we constructed a newspaper article based on the court case within our film which is needed for shot 20. The shot is necessary in showing the audience what the relationship between Jasper and Ally is based on and also what the court case is about. We constructed the newspaper article with a basic headline and subtitle with a picture of Jasper just to put the idea of what is going on in the plot. We then cut and pasted different newspaper articles  to give the body of a newspaper after writing some text at the top of the article following the story of our film, and added simple adverts to make it look more realistic. We plan to stick it into a newspaper after messing it up to look more natural. The shot will only last a couple of seconds and from a distance meaning that the audience won't be able to read too much detail into the article.

W.H. B.M.

Ident Planning and Construction

Today we paused filming and editing whilst we began our ident. For the title of our production company, we decided to use a collaboration of our friends names Sylvie and Felix De Courcy Ireland, resulting in the title 'Silver De Courcy Films.' As we wanted to make it clear that our production company was low budget and so our film was more targeted for Arthouse and Indie cinemas, we wanted to use a simplistic symbol such as a classic film roll: 

We noticed similarities of the sections of the film roll with the 'BBC FILMS' logo and so decided to follow our ident in a similar manner with the initials 'SDC' printed inside the film roll with 'Silver De Courcy Films' written underneath. Our idea is to have four or five images of the film roll unravelling to reveal the SDC and then the full name appearing underneath.

We then started to construct the drawing taking photos of each section so that we could run them together in Final Cut Pro as one movement. We then looked through the transformation effects on Final Cut Pro and we really liked the mosaic movement and also the ripple effect. Looking at the BBC films logo, we noticed they used a similar mosaic effect and so decided to make ours more original we decided the ripple effect would be better and would also work better with the genre of the film.

W.H. B.M.

Shooting Schedule Planning - Court Scene

Actors/Characters needed: Luke, Brittany, Lawyer (Nick/Mandy), Mum (Roz), Policeman (Bill), Man (Felix)

Saturday 2nd February:

18.30-19.00: Flashbacks - Shots 12, 14
               Actors necessary: Brittany, Man

Sunday 3rd February:

9.30 - 10.00: Testing camera in the car, mapping driving route in car, fixing tripod
10.00 - 11.30: Ally driving - Shots 27, 28 (31, 33)

              Actors necessary: Brittany, Mum

11.30-12.00: Resetting of Jasper's car, mapping route and fixing tripod
12.00-13.30: Jasper driving - Shots 26, 29 (30, 32) 

              Actors necessary: Luke, Lawyer and Policeman

13.30-14.00: Lunch break (charging of camera and equipment etc.)
14.00-14.45: Lambeth Town Hall - shots 34, 35 (30-33)
              Actors necessary: Luke, Brittany, Lawyer, Mum 
15.00-15.30: Jasper's Arrest - Shots 16, 18

W.H. B.M.

Film Construction - Day 4

Yesterday was our second day of filming and was pretty easy as we just had to do some simple dialogue shots inside the house. The only problem we faced was that we found it quite hard to use the microphone as the sounds that we recorded ended up quite quiet and muffled. However, the sounds on the camera are quite loud so when we upload the sound recordings, if the volume of them fails, we can always use it on the camera. Today we uploaded yesterday's footage and edited it together with the rest of the footage from last week. By placing it together we managed to see some shots that we would need to reshoot or add in, and by doing this we also came up with the idea of a graphic match between Brittany turning on the shower and a shot of her mum stirring a cup of tea. We also had a quick talk with our friend Charlie who is helping us write the piano melody for our piece and so we worked out where we would want cut outs, crescendos and fading in/out in the music. 

W.H.

Film Construction - Day 3

Today was our first day of editing and although Bea was still ill, I managed to complete a first rough cut of the shots we took on Tuesday. I decided to cut out all of the sound so that I can rerecord any diegetic sounds rather than just having the constant noise of buses etc. in the background. 

W.H.

Film Construction - Day 2

Today was our first day of filming and was extremely successful, however not without a couple of hiccups! The day started out with Bea waking up to having the flu, making it impossible for her to get out of bed, let alone film, however because we don't have many days where we can film, we agreed that Brittany and I should still go and film, with the help of our friend Cecy. Not only this, but also we'd left all the equipment at Bea's house, completely uncharged meaning that we had to speedily charge it before I left for Southbank. 

      Once we arrived at the Southbank Centre, everything began to go a bit more smoothly but we had to remember to be sparing with the camera battery. We decided to start off with the hardest shots in the tunnel because I was worried about lighting Brittany inside it as it was quite dark. After trying out a number of different distances of the light to try and make it not look artificial, we agreed that it would look best if we just filmed closer to the ends of the tunnel with the natural light coming in as we could always edit it to make it look like the tunnel was shorter when she was running through it. This worked out great as we managed to get some really cool silhouette shapes, giving a more ominous feel to the shot. After a couple of hours in the tunnel, we finished all the difficult shots and decided to have a lunch break before we froze!

After lunch, I copied the zoom shots we tried out in our recce which was difficult as sometimes the zoom would be too fast and then sometimes it was difficult to keep up with Brittany's running. However, I noticed that by zooming further in, it looked like a bigger crowd around her, giving a better effect of her dodging around. Our last obstacle was ironically the first shot of the film, of Brittany's feet running towards the camera. This was difficult as Bea and I really wanted the opening shot to be level with her feet on the floor, but without the tripod it was hard to get the camera not looking too lopsided. After experimenting a number of different ways, with the minutes of batteries left on the camera running dangerously low, I decided it might be better to place the camera on top of one of the light boxes. This gave us a couple of really great takes before the camera ran out and we gave up battling the cold. Although I've learnt my lesson on making sure everything is charged, we ended up filming all of the shots that needed to be filmed in the Southbank Centre. A very good first day of filming!

W.H.

Film Construction - Day 1

Today we sorted out the timings and dates of scenes that we needed to film as it became impossible to film during the holidays because we didn't have the equipment we needed. We also decided it was necessary to change the lead actress due to the fact that Sabby couldn't do the dates we had to film on to meet the deadline. However, we managed to find a friend of ours, Brittany, who fits the image we wanted (similar to the look of the character 'Effy' from 'Skins' we used in our film pre-proposal.) She also lives very near to us which will make filming dates much easier.

W.H.