The Filming Process!

Recently our group have embarked on what is arguably the most important part of the film-making process: the filming. Our group (with the addition of our actor, Callum) got together at our location, Jacobs bedroom; this would act as the setting for the crazed-teachers room in which he is plotting to kill the prime-minister. This part of the process was one of the biggest learning curves thus far, and, regardless of how much you prepare, unexpected predicament arise whereby you have to act spontaneously in order to overcome the problem. For instance, zooming out of the TV interview into the teachers room, although looking good on the animatic, was an impossible task in the flesh. Its incredibly difficult to zoom out at a consistent pace, making the shot distracting and unprofessional. Therefore, we had to look at other ways in which we could do this; we would often try out several different ways of doing it before consulting one another on what looks best. And so, although we could have planned more meticulously, I'm glad in a sense that mistakes were made in order to allow us as a group to improve upon our skills.

'Can we try this another way?'



As you can see, filming was very much a collaborative experience, in which we would all discuss whether we liked the shot. The enthusiasm for what we were doing definitely rubbed off on all of us, and this focus allowed us to be more efficient and more effective as a group. And so there wasn't much arguing per se; it was a relaxed environment without becoming unfocused, and that was an essential balance to strike.

Preparing to film


Although filming was a collaborative experience, we actually took on roles within the group, working to our strengths, ensuring that we could work effectively as a unit. For instance, Melissa, as seen in the image above, worked effectively as chief camerawomen, preparing shots, sorting out the tripod and recording the various different takes. This designation of roles within our group made the process a lot smoother, and although there wasn't a dictator-like figure so to speak, it was good to know my place within the group and the role I had to take on to ensure we were effective as a whole.
Below are a couple more behind-the-scenes shots of our filming over the past few weeks:

'Thats a good take!'

'Concentration' face

And so filming wasn't exactly the brawl-like debacle it could have been. I should also mention the acting of our teacher, Callum, who did a great job as our psycho teacher, who was willing to try anything we asked of him and approached the role in a way that was better than I could have envisioned months before. I was happy with the 'messiness' of the room and the amount of props (beer cans, etc.) we had, which will hopefully make our opening a more authentic, gritty and real experience. We also used naturalistic lighting, which I thought worked really well, and the 'lets try one more take' ethos from my peers showed a willingness to create the best production we could, and perhaps an opening that lived up to the promise of our animatic. Despite this, there were shots and angles that didn't quite work but, hey, if you can find a suitlable altenative to our initial thinking then thats all that counts. Overall, I was really pleased with how these filming sessions went; we'll have to edit our raw footage before we can determine whether or not we need to reshoot. But, from my experience, I was happy with what we did shoot and I'm confident that from what we have shot we can make an impressive thriller opening...     

Casting Our Prime-Minister!

Our 'news interview' segment of the opening is a relatively short part of our piece. In fact, it's around a few seconds long, if that. Having said that, it's fundamental in the sense that it highlights our teachers intentions and his motive for plotting to assassinate said prime-minister. Pretty important; and so casting this right was key. Actually, casting was relatively easy, and having shot these scenes already, I believe we made the right decisions. Let me explain in further detail who we cast and why we chose these talented people...

*Drum roll* Our news interviewer is played by ... Millie Warren!

Journalist played by Millie Warren

For our journalist we needed someone who seemed enthusiastic and endearing, someone who seemed really enthused to be interviewing the prime-minister. Because of the nature of the interview (about making schools more modern) and the fact the interview was taking place outside a school, I envisioned the news programme to be along the lines of Newsround for the MTV-audience. A  fictional news programme for teenagers, so to speak. Therefore, we weren't looking for a Jeremy Paxman lookalike. That's why I think Millie was such a good choice; whilst looking smart in a casual way, I felt that she wouldn't come across so formal that it was some kind of BBC news bulletin. Millie definitely portrayed that enthusiasm in a way that seemed charming and the delivery of her single line was clear and professional-sounding (in other words, she created that illusion that she wasn't just reading off a script, it seemed natural and flowing).

Next up is our prime-minister who was played by none other than... Reece Garside!

Prime-Minister played by Reece Garside

Don't worry, no one was injured on set! Here is our bloodied prime-minister; it will make greater sense in the finished piece, but the make-up is used to emphasise the sadistic internal thoughts of our psychopath teacher. In other words, its part of a surreal scene that will heighten the intensity of the opening. Reece was unquestionably our first-choice for prime-minister. Although it wasn't practical to have an adult as our prime-minister, we thought Reece could portray the sense of intelligence and firmness of our PM in way that I don't think anyone else could have pulled off. Again, the nature of the interview and setting meant that we didn't necessarily want our PM in a suit and tie but, like Millie, Reece dresses smart enough so that he could pass for a casually-dressed prime-minister. His line delivery carried off that firm, controlled tone that the script demanded; in the script, he's trying to justify for the umpteenth time that the country isn't entering a triple-dip recession (again this will become clear in the end).

The acting isn't going to gain us marks. I get that. But casting reveals to the examiner that we have considered every aspect of filming and our desire to produce something that seems professional as opposed to a poorly made student film. I suppose its important to me personally, to pay the original concept justice, by casting people who could portray these characters in a way that really brought to life what was once just a throwaway idea and has since developed into something I really believe in. Even if said actors may only be on screen for a matter of seconds. Hopefully we've succeeded in that but ultimately its you, the viewer, who will decide on that. 

Creating An Animatic...

As a group we have been working to create our animatic; this would allow us to envision accurately what is to happen when it comes to actually shooting the final piece. It acted as a 'moving storyboard' of sorts. It was of paramount importance that our animatic looked like the real deal, as if we had really put our efforts behind it. In retrospect, this has helped us as a group as we now have a united vision of what it is we are producing, as opposed to a mash-up of four different peoples version of the same thing. The animatic allowed us to sort out our sound, both diegetic and non-diegetic. For instance, we recorded our dialogue and put our soundtrack over the top of the piece. The following is our animatic...



How did we go about making our animatic? :-
Having created our storyboard (with the appropriate detailed notes), we then took shots of each frame on a camera. Next, we uploaded our images to Adobe Premiere Pro- which suffice to say I feel a lot more comfortable using- and then we put these in chronological order and gave each 'shot' the appropraite time length that it would have in the final finished piece, if that makes sense. Next we recorded our script on a recording device, and then this was dubbed over the top of the images. We also put Massive Attack's 'Teardrops' into the montage sequence, and the tone and atmosphere of that song worked really well with our animatic. Finally, we added in effects such as the zooming on shots etc. and added the necessary transitions. This took a lot of time to make but its given us so much more confidence moving into filming.

What have I learnt from our animatic? :-
The animatic has been an important stepping stone in the film-making process; its the first time our thriller-opening has actually felt real and fully-formed. Also, the animatic has helped us to identify mistakes, mistakes that we hadn't identified at the storyboarding 'step'. For instance, we were aiming to have a shot-reverse-shot between the news interviewer and the prime-minister, but then we realised this wouldn't maintain a sense of realism that was necessary to this section of the opening. The animatic has also reinforced our confidence in our ideas; for instance, I was really pleased with the ambient music selection as opposed to the more cliched, pounding dubstep we were thinking of using. Moreover, we felt the montage sequence in the animatic worked well, and the script was precise yet also realistic-sounding.

Overall, I'm really pleased with how our animatic has gone. The final step before shooting, we now have a clear picture of what we're doing, and it feels as though we only now have to translate what we've made in the animatic into real life, rather than having to be spontaneous and make most of it up on the day. In fact we've already done part of our shooting (the PM's scenes, and of course I'll make a post on that), with the bulk of our work to come on Saturday. With the animatic now done, I now feel confident and ready to shoot...

Shooting Schedule!

Ready to film? Hell Yeah...

Our initial shooting schedule is nothing too exciting. We're aiming to shoot the 'Prime Minister' scenes in school tomorrow afternoon, and then on Saturday spend the day filming the interior shots for the 'teacher's' scenes. To summarise we'll be shooting on the following days and times:-

- Prime Minister Interview scenes, 16th January, periods 6 and 7. Our actors needed will be:

Reece Garside (Prime Minister)

Beth Eley (News Interviewer)

The interviewer needs to be wearing smart dress and our PM needs to be wearing a suit and tie. Make-up for the 'bloodied prime-minister' will be provided by Molly Page.
Location: Outside of the school by the Chalfonts sculpture.
Directors: Melissa Kerisson and Finley Harnett (other members of our group won't be available due to lessons).
Time at which filming will start: Makeup will begin at 2pm with the intention to start filming at 2.30 (times are approximate).

- The 'Mad Teacher' scenes, 19th January, 11am-5pm. Our actor will be:

Callum Caroll (Mad Teacher)

Our teacher needs to wear typically teacher-like clothing (eg. checkered shirt, tie) but needs to look ruffled and withered; for instance, his tie  should be messy and shirt untucked, trousers stained). The colour palette for his clothing should be dark green, reflecting his mood as character (I know I'm being picky but it all adds up!)

Location: Jacob Smith's house, Beaconsfield.

Directors: All of the members of our group will be in attendance.

Time at which filming will start: We'll arrive at 11am but after setting up equipment and after a quick briefing amongst ourselves we should be ready to film at 11.30 until 5pm

This is just a rough schedule for our filming; it means that in next weeks lesson we can work on putting a rough cut together. Also, if we feel we need to reshoot anything, we'll have sufficient time to do this before the next deadline, the 28th January (whereby all filming should be done). I feel we've scheduled this well and have taken into consideration our time constraints. We as a group are focused and ready to film now...

Continuity Task: Locations

Having planned extensively for our continuity task, we set out to film the short. As a group we had decided upon the locations for the piece, which I forgot to mention in my previous post regarding the continuity task. Firstly, we decided upon the exterior of the Chikara building; the building looked typically school-like and isn't too busy, so therefore we felt this would be a suitable location:-


Chikara Building

This setting would be used for the scenes in which Person A - played by myself - walks towards the classroom aggressively. Next, we chose to have a scene in which my character would look around the corridors, searching for the classroom where Person B was; we decided on the Chikara corridor as this was close to our first location and again, looked like your typical school corridor:-

Chikara Corridor

Our final location was the classroom where the standoff would take place. We decided on the Chikara Drama studios as this was a suitably dramatic location given its black walls and stage-lights; we felt this would act as a sort of 'pathetic fallacy' that would metaphorically reflect the emotionally unstable Person A.

You may have seen my post on location scouting for our final task; thie practice attempt you've seen in this post really helped us as a group in terms of making us appreciate the importance of location. In all honesty, the setting really becomes its own character, and it was important as a group to discuss which locations to use and how this contribute to the final edit...
Next I'll be doing an evaluation of the shooting of our continuity task...

Survey (This took a while to get round to, oops)

Right, so having been on a bit of a blogging frenzy of late, I figured I would go back to our research, which involved creating a survey based around thrillers (and in particular thriller openings). The survey was really our market research, and what with the technological awesomeness of the internet, reaching out to our audience could be done with the click of a button. Having not really decided on our idea at the time (this survey was done a long time ago), we went asked questions that were vague, trying to see what specific thing cropped up the most and work from there. Which was fine. This was only the first stage of our research, and in retrospect getting the feedback from the public was, at the time, invaluable. We achieved 56 responses, and going into the survey I thought a realistic target of 50 replies would be a large enough result to make our survey widespread, with a range of different answers and demographics. Obviously, if I were to evaluate, I would say that we could have got more responses. How did we get our answers? Well, social media is certainly a powerful force: sharing our survey link on Facebook, Twitter etc. (as well as the age-old 'Ask-the-parents-to-do-it' tactic), this was how we got the bulk of our responses...

Are you male or female?

So, first question was the classic 'male/female' tick-box, and I can exclusively reveal that 64% of all responses came from the ladies. The lack of balance between male-female could have been worse, but I definitely think a females attitude to thrillers is definitely different to that of a male. Maybe I'm just being stereotypical, but the archetypal 'lads' idea of a thriller would be more violence,gore, nudity based as opposed to a girls idea of a thriller, which would be more Midsummer murders than Die Hard. Boy, did that sound sexist. Moving swiftly on....

How many years young are you?

Next was a classic questionnaire Q and A: How old are you? Actually, 35 of our 58 responses were from the 16-30 category; in other words, over half. I'm happy with this: if I had to select one of the above age brackets for our target audience, I would have probably have said '16-30' because, in essence, their the bulk of the thriller-going audience (as I found out other bits of research). Having said that, it is good to have other demographics to balance out the opinions gleaned from our survey. For instance, the five golden-oldies in our survey may have had an insight into the sub-genres of times gone by, such as neo-noir as well as the Hitchcock-era of 'classy' thrillers. So, on balance, I think we got a good range of ages...

Next up was 'what do you like about thrillers?' Here are just a small range of answers to that question:

Pace; psychological plot twists; action; extraordinary characters - or ordinary characters forced to make extraordinary decisions; the odd red herring to make you question;

Suspense 
Car chases, intricate plots, twists in the tail, paranoia and psychological tricks, fear of or actual violence and torture
Character development, suspense, plot twists...
A lot of interesting answers, albeit nothing that I didn't expect to be brutally honest. Although it didn't interest me how much that 'suspense' cropped up time and time again, and whilst I think the idea of suspense is quite a clichéd notion associated with thrillers, clearly there's a demand for pulse-pounding, edge-of-your-seat action. Interesting...

Which is your favourite sub-genre of thriller?

This was an interesting one. Probably the most insightful set of responses from the whole survey, actually. I thought action thriller would be at the top given the Jason Bourne/Bond-era we live in. But no, gangster thriller (which I thought would be right at the bottom given that it's not the most type of film out there) but it was actually in second place with a quarter of all votes. I think of crime films much in the same way as Westerns: a bygone era of film, no longer of interest. I think of the sort of Scorsese, De Palma classics amongst others: Goodfellas, The Godfather, Carlito's Way, The Untouchables, Scarface. All of these films were made ages ago, a genre we could all look back on wistfully and say 'that was a great era of film', but otherwise that was that. So I found the interest in that sub-genre quite surprising. Otherwise I wasn't surprised with our top dog 'Psychological thriller'; in a Daily-mail era of fear-mongering I think there is this internal fear of mental-illness, and the power of the mind to cause havoc with ourselves. Often I find that cinema reflects the time period, and so in that respect it wasn't a surprising 1st place winner.

Next we asked 'based on your last answer, what is it about this sub-genre you like so much?' Responses included things such as:

It makes you think and it's not just all blood and gore

Sci-fi I like the use of special effects and that it can be anywhere that the film is made and any thing can really happen Crime thiller because you can try to solve the mystery throughout the film and its not usually the one you expect 

Complexity

Plausibility

Interestingly, I think the general consensus was that audiences do not like to be patronised, with dumbed down plots etc. And I agree in a way, we all want to feel intelligent when we see a film, although I guess its probably best not to just make up an incoherent plot and claim that its a 'masterpiece' like Inception. People like twists, they want to actively keep guessing what's going to happen next, it's all a part of the movie-going experience. And so maybe that's something we should integrate into our opening...

And then finally, we asked what you would want to see in the opening of a thriller? We got answers such as:

Instant setting of the scene. Don't need massive build up, you want to know instantly what's occurring! Titles with dramatic music, some form of montage followed by intro to either antagonist or protagonista scene that either develops the main characters or the crime itselfenough information to get me interested.

Something I learnt from this question was that people didn't necessarily want to know the in's and out's of what's going on; I suppose this allows the opening to be more exciting and suspenseful. Also, the idea of a montage stood out for me, because montages are harder than they seem; I know this is film-buff sacrilege but I find the opening of 'Se7en' quite dull really, a load of scary stuff in a dark, fast-paced montage... CLICHÉ ALERT! So montages are cool, but hard to pull off in an original, engaging way.

So before I conclude, I just want to say that a link to the survey can be found below:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHdsVlBCZEZIaDJuc1VlNng1RjNicWc6MQ#gid=0

So overall, I've learnt a lot about what people like and dislike about thrillers. The non-specific questions allowed our group to really get to grips with the genre, and therefore its been the catalyst for everything we've done since. We've since taken this knowledge and used it to inspire our very own thriller opening which, very soon, we are about to film!

Storyboarding! Developing! Drawing!

Acclaimed author F. Scott Fitzgerald once said 'Show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy'- well, in the case of A-Level student Finley Harnett, it's a matter of 'show me a badass evil teacher, and I'll write you an awesome two-minute thriller opening.' Well, that's the plan. I'll stop referring to myself in the third person. The past couple of weeks our group has been working on storyboarding our final task; this was a pretty strenuous, time-consuming challenge, and there was a lot of experimentation in terms of changing the frames around and seeing what worked best. We used a wall to stick up our shots; it was strange to actually see an idea coming together and to see the shot-by-shot chronology of the piece. Also, there was no fixed 'order' per se, so this part of the process was very much open to change:

Storyboarding Image 

Close-Up of Storyboard (Left)

Close-Up of Storyboard (Right)

As you can see its a lot of work: not only have we tried to make our sketches detailed and visually impressive ('cos stickmen are just naff) we've also aimed to include more detailed information such as transitions, sound, dialogue, clothing, colour palettes, camera angle, in short the list just goes on... I can't stress how important storyboarding has been for us as a group, for several reasons. Firstly, theres no better way to explain an idea or concept than by sketching it out (although I'm hardly an artist extraordinaire). Second of all, the way we've been able to use the 'wall' format (I don't know how to describe it any other way) has allowed us to make changes and see what order works well. And finally, I feel as though for the first time, our whole group is now on the same page in terms of what we're trying to achieve, and what we're trying to achieve is essentially to bring that storyboard to life. And so, with just a few weeks before filming, I now feel confident that we can film in a more efficient, focused way...

Location Scouting...

Part of our opening centres around a television interview concerning the prime minister outside a school environment. The scene, albeit short, is key in the sense that it reveals our teachers evil motives. As part of our planning, we've looked at possible locations whereby this scene can be filmed:

Reception

Option one (school reception). The most 'obvious' option (given the large logo and the fact that it's just in front of the school), we believed that this would be a suitable place to shoot. However, the fact the place is busy with people entering etc. doesn't make this a practical location. Also, the camera wouldn't be at a natural angle as the logo/motto is high up. Option one is ruled out...

Would you look at that ugly wall? Ugh

Option two (the school gates). This location certainly seems more viable; the logo would fit in at a natural angle (Yippee!) but again, it would probably still be quite busy and loud from the cars by the nearby street. Also, the interview with the prime minister is supposed to be about a fictional initiative about 'modernising' schools and the wall just looks erm... dull, shall I say? I don't think this location would be relevant to the content matter.  

The 'thingy'- so cool...

Onto option three (the sculpture 'thingy'). Our group is pretty happy with this as our location. It fits the content nicely (given the unique, contemporary, Turner-prize-ish style). Also, it won't be so loud/busy. Although the setting doesn't exactly scream 'SCHOOL!' (metaphorically of course, if it started talking that would be just plain weird), there's the school logo present in the setting, and I doubt whether it would be particularly confusing. So there's a good chance you'll be seeing this location at a theater near you...

Overall, I'm happy with the progress our group is making in terms of trying to actively plan for our thriller-opening. We've come up with several considerations for our setting and have reached a unanimous decision regarding which one we want to use. So, thankfully, part of our location-scouting is done... 

Meeting Our Deadlines...

Recently we've taken it upon ourselves in our group to get organised; i.e., taking note of when each deadline is, as well as working efficiently as a team to meet these deadlines. Firstly, we made note of when the deadlines are up until Easter 2013; these can be found below:-

-Storyboard and Animatic Presentation to be ready for our teachers to look at: January 15th
We must analyse the following things to make our presentation worthwhile:
1) Are you meeting the codes/conventions of your genre?
2) Have you got an idea of the technical aspects of you're opening? For instance:
Mise-en-scene, editing, sound, camera work.

-All raw footage should be filmed: January28th

-Post production rough-cut: February 15th (At this point it will be half-term)

-Final deadline: March 8th

-Individual Evaluations: March 29th

Seems like a doddle, right? Okay, so maybe not. Next, we as a group decided that in the immediate future we needed to delegate roles and responsibilities within the group. We decided that...

...Myself and Melissa would be in charge of finishing off the storyboarding and would create the animatic...

...which would therefore leave Hannah and Jacob to sort out locations, shot list, filming schedules etc.

I now feel slightly more relieved knowing what we have in front us and therefore what we have to do to achieve our goals and objectives. I've learnt that it's good to take a step back and look at the bigger picture, to see where we are and where, in several months time, we should be. Now to crack on with the work!

Editing Recreation Task (Practice)

Recently, our class has been practicing editing in preparation for our continuity task and, ultimately, our final finished film. Therefore, I used this opportunity to fine tune my ability to edit, something that admittedly I don't think is my strongest skill. To start the task, we looked at an opening to a thriller previously completed by past students. Then, we were given all the raw clips for the film which, to make it even harder, were in the wrong order. For the task, we had to put the raw files in the correct order and then make identical cuts to those seen in the final piece. The cuts needed to be clean and the footage had to flow; moreover, we needed to add the sound and the titles to the clip. All this was done using Adobe Premiere Pro, a software program that I was wary of given that I hadn't used the program before and technology isn't my strong suit.
Our work can be seen in the video below:-



My Stengths:-
-The editing appeared smooth and was sufficently accurate, helping the extract run efficiently.
-The titles were the same font, colour and were positioned in the same place.

My Weaknesses:-
-The timing of our cuts was longer than the original, making the clip longer than necessary and this was dull.
-The sound was out of time with the original, and so the sound was out of time with the action.
-Lastly, we didn't use all the raw files, and so therefore din't get to complete the task.

Overall, I felt this task was a learning curve; I became more comfortable with the software as the task went on, and now I feel more confident going into the filming of the continuity task. It has also highighted mistakes and flaws before the 'real thing', and so therefore I feel more aware of what I now need to do to improve. I now  understand the importance of editing well, and I feel more confident in my ability to edit.

Continuity Task Final Piece

By the way, I literally can't stop laughing at this atrocious piece of acting. Evaluation to come!