Unit 9 Reflective Journal

Reflective Journal 1

I started the week with planing the idea for my film. I know that I wanted to do a coming of age film as I like the genre so it will interest me whilst I make the film. I began by looking at some existing films, both feature length and shorts on YouTube and Vimeo. I watched three films on YouTube and Vimeo that really stood out.

I decided that I liked the second film (Viewfinder) allot and thought telling the story of there meeting from the male characters perspective would be interesting. I began to map out a story line of events leading up to there meeting and then remembered a film I watched (500 days of summer) which has a non-linear story line and thought that would be a cool feature I could use in my film to engage the audience. I decided that starting with a breakup scene and then going on to tell the events leading up to there first meeting would be best.

I looked into writing story’s and found this website which helped me a little, it taught me to keep it short so I will keep my scenes short and too the point. http://www.raindance.org/7-rules-for-writing-short-films/. I then Googled best screenplay writing programs and eventually found Adobe story which was good, cloud based and free so I decided to use this as the program for writing the script. I started by learning how to use the program to properly write a script. I looked at google images of scripts from films. After I had an Idea of how too set out the page I started writing the initial action for the first scene and giving the characters names (Harry and Leah).

 

 

Reflective Journal 2

I started this week by completing the first draft of the 1st scene f my film which would be the scene I will film for my proof of concept. Here is the script. Its not very long, only about 1 minute of screen time but I don’t think that I need that long for the first introduction scene. I showed the script to some people and they all thought that it could do with some work, I also thought that it could be better. They all said that people don’t speak how I had wrote so it needed to all be re-worded. I then decided to start from scratch and properly think about the scene and how the dialogue will work with the action in the scene.

As the location was key to the scene I started to have a think about where I was going to shoot the scene, I had always pictured it in a kitchen but I couldn’t think of any kitchens that I could use that would be suitable to the scene. I then thought that as he was developing film why doesn’t it be set in a darkroom? I asked my lecturer and he said that there was a darkroom in college that I may be able to use. I went to go and check if it was suitable to film in. I think that the red light could allow mew to do some interesting experimental cinematography. After looking at the location I decided that its the look that I wasn’t for the scene, it has the space for the lights and the angles I want and it has plenty of power sockets so the location was suitable. I then completed a risk assessment sheet for the location. dark-room-risk-assesment.

We would be shooting at the end of next week so I needed to sort actors this week. As this is a proof of concept I have no budget for actors or crew so I asked around my friends. I found two friends Leah Bradbury and Alastair Littlewood who were perfect for the roles and said that they would do it. For the crew I asked my friend Jake Bennit-Young to assist with camera who would bring his easy rig and camera cage and Sony XLR to hotshoe adaptor to help with audio on the shoot. I also recruited two class mates, Tiarnnin Meely-Clarke as audio and Dylan Hickman as Lighting and grip.

Reflective Journal 3

I will be filming at the end of the week so I needed to start finish all the pre-production work. I began with completing the script. I rewrote the script for the location being the darkroom and I considered the action of the characters whilst writing the script which makes it work allot better. The script portrait-film-ii-script-2. Next I worked on the Storyboard. This wasn’t too difficult because I had been picturing the shots in my head as I was writing the script, making sure that it would all cut together properly.

For the shot list and running order I considered the lighting arrangements and the shot angles to minimise moving equipment around the set on the day. shot-list-and-running-order. The last bit of pre-production work to do was the call sheets. I completed the call sheets and then emailed them to all the cast and crew so that they know what they were doing on the shoot day and when we would be starting and finishing.

the shoot day went quite smoothly. We all arrived on time. We all set up the lighting and camera equipment in an hour whilst the actors rehearsed lines and we were ready to shoot by 10:30. on issue that we came across when lighting was that we only had one large red gel. to get enough light we required two large flood lights, and because we only had one large red gel that we couldn’t cut up I had to place the lights right next too each other and span the gel across the two lights. The filming went smoothly from then on until around 12 o’clock when there was a charity karaoke being held in the building so we had to stop filming for an hour until they had stopped because we kept picking up the music through the microphones. this filming break was one of the reasons that we didn’t get completely finished that day. I didn’t manage to film the entire scene again in portrait orientation like I had originally planed. I did however manage to get it all filmed in landscape.

Reflective Journal 4

I started the week out with file organisation. I went through the log sheet and renamed all the clips to the shot number and take to make the edit process easier and quicker. I then opened the edit program (adobe premier pro) and organised the editing suite. 

Once I had imported all the clips into the edit suite and selected all the takes I wanted to use, I brought them into the timeline and ordered them. it was at this point that I realised I had forgotten to get Foley sound and missed one cut away clip. The next day I took a light into the darkroom and got the cut away shot I needed. At home I then recorded all the Foley sound that I needed, theses included footsteps, water and a tap sound so they were easy to get. I then completed the first cut of the film, it was very simple because I logged all the clips and stuck to the storyboard so it was simple to drop the clips into place and trim them down. I showed the first cut and I found that there were a few cuts that felt a bit off. I then went back to the edit and tweaked some of the cuts and adjusted the audio. Now the edit was sorted i went over too the colour tab and adjusted all the exposure and shadow levels to match all the other clips and to make it the correct exposure for what I wanted. Last I exported the film in H.264 with a target bitrate of 100Mb/s, this is to maintain as much detail in the image without the file size being too large as the only place this will be seen is on YouTube and Facebook and they will take a while to upload too. Here is the film

reflective journal 5

I started the week by posting the film on the films Facebook page. I received all around good responses but with some criticisms. I found some people thought that it was a bit short and it made it feel rushed. After this I then reedited the film but in french new wave style using the other clips I had shot. The aspects of french new wave that I adopted is quirky camera movement (panning for a conversation) and a long continuous take for a conversation. I then posted it to the films Facebook page and asked for feedback on it.