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.

Southbank Recce

This was some of the tester shots we tried out at the Southbank Centre. We then did a voiceover over the shots so that we could remember what type of shot we were going for and so we had a clear idea of what the shots would look like when we got round to filming it.

W.H.

Shooting Schedule

Shots that need to be done in same day:

DAY ONE: 

All shots of Ally running outside - shots 2-6, 19-21

All shots of Tunnel - shots 8-10

Actors necessary: Ally 

DAY TWO:
All shots of Ally's room/house - shots 17, 18, 22-25
All shots of Flashback 1 and 2 (Hand over mouth and crying) (NIGHT) - shots 12, 14

All shots of Flashback 3 (Jasper's arrest) - shots 16 (17+18)

Actors necessary: Ally, Mum, Man, Jasper, Policemen 

DAY THREE:

All shots of Jasper and ally car scenes - shots 26-33

All shots of Court scene - 34-35

Actors necessary: Ally, Mum, Jasper, Lawyer, Policemen 


18/12: DAY TWO

30/12: DAY THREE

05/01: DAY ONE

B.M W.H

Sound

The two main sounds we will be using in our sequence are diegetic atmospheric sounds and a melancholy piano melody. The music we use has to be quite soft so that we can fade it in and out of scenes that need to be silent/just have diegetic sounds for effect.

As we cannot use copyrighted music, we will be using music from the website www.freeplaymusic.com which has simple piano pieces that we can adapt to our film. 

Examples of music that we may have used if we could use copyrighted music are:

Point of Disgust - Low

Black Flies - Ben Howard

Where is my Mind (the Pixies piano cover)

Hand Covers Bruise - The Social Network

Trying to find replicas of these songs was difficult but so far we are interested in the slow, very simple piano music such as:

'Through Thick and Thin'
'Music Box' 
'Autumn Nights'

W.H B.M

Storyboard

W.H B.M

Graphics Research

For our opening credits and title, we would like to use very simple graphics that don't intrude onto the actual images on the screen. For this we would like to use simple font such as 'Arial' but in white so as to be highlighted against the background. 

Example of Arial font:

Willa Hope

Bea Marston

Luke Forryan

Sabby Coates

We would like the names and credits to be playing throughout the sequence on the left and right hand sides of the screen towards the bottom so as not to distract from the filming. This way the scene becomes less of a title sequence and more of an opening scene containing opening credits. We  have planned to not have the title right until the end after the screen has blacked out and to appear in the middle of the screen in bold font (title is still undecided).

Similar examples of these credits that I found on the website 'Watch the Titles' are:

'Wimbledon'

The font and positioning of the credits in this clip is very similar to what we would like to accomplish in our opening sequence - the credits do not interrupt the film and are in a very simple but bold font. However, if you actually watch the opening it is clear that the sound and imaging revolves around the credits which is something that we would like to avoid as it makes them too obvious.

'The Invasion'

Similar to Wimbledon, this clip also has a similar font and positioning (if slightly high up) to what we would like to achieve. However, due to the computerised images, it becomes more obviously a title sequence rather than actually playing the film.

'30 Days of Night'

I really like the positioning of the graphics within this clip and the font is very clear and bold yet simple. However, in our sequence we plan to use more action in the actual filming during the credits compared to the still photos in this scene.

'Kid Svensk'

Due to the way the credits work with the actual filming and imaging within this sequence, overall it is the most similar to what we want to achieve. The sequence contains dialogue and movement while the credits are going on as well as advertising the credits without making them too obvious. The sequence also ends with a black out to the title which is the same effect we want to replicate. 

W.H

Ident Research

For our film opening, we are going for a low budget, indie film sort of vibe. We will hopefully achieve this by creating an ident which is now too showy and bright.

Some examples of the 'big six' big budget idents from Hollywood studios are:

Twentieth Century Fox

Paramount

Universal

Warner Bros

Columbia Pictures

Walt Disney Pictures

To avoid looking too mainstream and high budget, we can avoid using big showy and elaborate idents. Some examples of lower budget and perhaps more arthouse-like idents are ones such as:

Svensk Filmindustri

Mosfilm

Les films du lonsange

Cuba Pictures

BBC films

UK film council

We are going to aim to make our ident more similar to these ones, because we are going for a deliberately gritty and low budget feel, also it is set in largely grey areas of London, similar to films such as 'fishtank' and 'shifty'.

B.M