Week 1
I began this week by discussing the project brief and the FMP proposal. On Tuesday I began writing the FMP proposal and discussed strategies for timetabling and scheduling. Later on in the week I completed writing the proposal and began writing the project action plan. I feel that my proposal was written well as I put in a lot of detail to the project concept. This means that I now know my own project a lot better and I will be able to plan for it easier. It also means I now know what character I will need, so I can start casting the parts. Discussing as a class the different timetabling and scheduling strategies was a very good idea as when it came to starting to write the project action plan it was easier, and the final action plan will be more detailed and accurate making it more useful to the production. I could have sped up this week and completed the action plan, this would have sped up the entire production leaving more time at the end for contingency. The only problem I encountered this week was trying to plan the post production process this far in advance. I found it hard to approximate how much time would be needed to spend on the different parts of the post production process and when it would start after the filming completed. I overcame this problem by thinking back to previous projects of a similar size and used the same timeframe as I did for them. I also left a 3 days contingency after the allocated time for any issues I may encounter in production that might set the project back. From this week I have learned that the more detailed and accurate an action plan is, the smoother and better prepared the project will run. Next week I will need to start by completing the action plan then begin with creating an casting call for actors for the film.
Week 2
This week I began by completing the projects action plan. After this I went on to create a casting call for actors. I decided to use the website Star Now as several people in the class had already used and had success with the site to find actors. This is the casting advert.
This is all I did this week as I was filming on a college run 48 hour film challenge for the second half of the week. I’m very happy with my casting call, its short, to the point yet informative enough for people to make a decision about applying. I also added a picture to the project advert to try and attract more applicants. Everything I did this week will have a very positive impact on the end result. The action plan will help the project run smoothly and on schedule, the casting call will hopefully mean that people who can act and have experience will play the roles in my film. This will have a direct impact with the end result as the film will be better with better acting. The 48 hour film challenge although not associated with this project was actually helpful to the production process. I learned new lighting techniques whilst filming which will help in production and I got a chance to see how everyone in the class works on set so I now know who I will want to choose to work on my film as crew. To improve the applicants for the casting call I could have shared the page on the social media page to try and ensure that more people are aware that I am looking for actors. The main things that I have learned from this week is how to work better as a team and whom in my class is good at certain roles on set. Both of these were learned during the 48 hour film challenge. Next week I will start by sharing the casting call on the Facebook page and my personal page to try and get the call out to as many potential applicants as possible.I will then proceed to writing the storyline and beginning writing the script.
Week 3
The first thing I did this week was post on the film Facebook page a link to the casting call for people to share, this is to hopefully attract more actors to apply.
I then began with working on the storyline. I came up with all the scenes that I would need and began to think about the locations that these would be shot in, one of which probably wouldn’t have power and would be shot at night so battery powered lighting was key. I did a quick test with the lights I had available to check that they would be powerful enough to light a scene at night, I found that they were, so renting lights wouldn’t be needed. Once the storyline, scenes and the actions were decided on I began with the script. I didn’t get as far as I had hoped with it this week though, as I struggled with writing dialogue alot more than I had anticipated. Due to my lack of experience in writing dialogue I found it difficult, but I got around this by rewriting one of the most dialogue heavy scenes to show the audience the story through visuals and mood instead of telling them though dialogue. I’m happy with the idea to share the casting call online as I think that it will bring more people to apply for the roles. Im also glad that I did the initial lighting test as I’m now more clear on how I will produce the film. This week I was a bit slow with working out the story of the film so I didn’t get time to complete the first draft of the script and conduct a focus group to get feedback on it. I could improve on this by looking at the project action plan and sticking to it in order to keep on top of work easier. This week I have learned that its sometimes better to show the audience something rather than tell them through character dialogue. I’ve also learned that I need more experience in writing scripts. Next week I need to complete the script then conduct a focus group and then adjust the script according to the feedback. Then I should decide on the actors and send them a copy of the script to get their opinion. Lastly, I will go location scouting and write it up in my research portfolio.
Week 4
This week I began by going location scouting. I found all the locations I needed that were suitable for my production. I initially wanted to shoot scene 3 in an amphitheatre in the City Centre, but when scouting the location I found that as it’s on a steep hill I couldn’t film from the front because I wouldn’t have a tripod high enough to reach the level and I couldn’t film from behind because there is only 1.5 meters of room behind the actors. Later on though I went to look at a Meersbrook park after a friend suggested it as a location, it turned out to be almost perfect for my needs. It looks over the city like I wanted it too and it has a whole field of space around the filming spot, the only problem is there is alot less light in this location so I will have to bring LED lights to brighten the image and highlight the areas where the actors are to allow me to film at a lower ISO. I found that the location scouting and the research write up took alot longer than originally anticipated so I didn’t complete the first draft of the script this week. That will be first priority for next weeks work. This week I also messaged two of the males actors who applied for my film. I sent to Ross Cawton and Jack Midgley :
Hi, My name is Henry i’m the director of the short film. Thanks very much for applying for the lead role, you are exactly who I need. Production will take place in the first week of May. It would be great to know if your available or still interested, if you are we can talk about the details. Thanks. Henry Rees. I’m just awaiting a response and for a few more actresses to apply. This is who applied for my film
With finding my actors I didn’t have much luck with the casting agency I used (Star Now). I had 12 people apply for the two roles (see figure 1). Out of the 12 that applied there were 2 males that would fit the role, Ross Cawton and Jack Midgley (figure 2 & 3) .I messaged them but found out that they weren’t available when I was planning to film so I couldn’t use either of them. I found my actress by looking on the suggested page on Star Now and finding people that would be suitable for the role, I then found them on Facebook and sent them a message. Out of the 3 actresses that I contacted on Facebook one replied. She’s called Isabella Wood and she’s primarily a stage actor but is interested in expanding to screen. Figure 4 is her Star Now page. I found my actor through asking around friends and people at college if they knew anyone suitable for the role. Someone got back to me with a man who studies performing arts at my college called Michael Simpson. I met up with him and he was perfect for the role so I gave him the part.
From the work I’ve done this week I’m happy with my location recce, I found a much more suitable location that will greatly improve the aesthetic of my film and the practicalities of the production day. It also helped me solve the problem of filming the public because I found a much quieter area that will work just as well as one of the locations for scene 1. Because of this I think the most important thing I have learnt from this week is that location recces can help alot more that I initially thought and that I shouldn’t always choose the first location that comes to mind. The main point I could have improved on for this week is my time management skills, I underestimated in my action plan at the beginning of the project how long it would take to complete each task so I’m now behind schedule. Next week I will need to complete the first draft of my script then conduct a focus group or get one to one feedback on the script and start making revisions to the script to make the second draft. I will also need to begin the storyboard.
Week 5
This week I Completed the first draft of the script. It can be found here –Portrait People (WT) . I was happy with the script because it’s my first time writing a larger amount of dialogue and stage direction and I think that I made the characters seem realistic and the dialogue suited the genre of the film. Once I had completed the first draft of my script I drew up the storyboard. This was really helpful to the production as I could now plan out the shot list and shooting order meaning I could then sort out the schedule and all the other pre-production documents. The main problem that I had over the past two weeks was the matter of writing a script with large dialogue sections because I had never done this before and so had little experience or knowledge in scriptwriting. I overcame this by speaking to a family friend who’s a script writer, she gave me some points on how to write dialogue which really helped because it gave me a good start. I then watched The Social Network written by Aaron Sorkin (a film renowned for its brilliant dialogue) and Submarine written and directed by Richard Ayoade, a quirky coming of age film, a very similar style to mine. I watched these two films because they would be the best for helping me solve my problem. Whilst watching I listened carefully to how the conversations were constructed and found that the subject of conversation needed to tell the audience something about the characters current mood and emphasise that particular section of the story. This exercise was extremely helpful as I could then complete a successful first draft. I think that next time I could have looked at more films to see how their dialogue compares to give me a more in depth understanding of some other genres. I could have also probably looked at some video essays on dialogue which could have given me some more ideas. Next week I will need to conduct focus groups on and finalise the script along with writing up a schedule to give to the cast and crew.
Week 6
Now that I had the first draft of the script I had to finalise it so I could send it to my actors, for this I printed out several copies and gave them too 4 people studying film and also my tutor in order to give me their opinions and some constructive criticism. The general trend of the feedback was that the first scene with the argument is brilliant and that I shouldn’t change it but the third scene where they are having a heartwarming conversation makes them seem like they’re arguing too much which doesn’t tell the audience that they’re in a happy stage of the relationship like it is meant too. To resolve this I sat down with each person and discussed what they thought would be a better conversation topic and then altered the script and asked what they thought about the revised script. I did this 3 times, each time I improved the script, making the story make more sense by making it clearer to the audience what the emotion in the scene is at that point. I’m happy that I conducted these one to one focus groups because they will greatly improve the final product as the script will be much better. Conducting the focus groups has made me learn that listening to other people’s opinions can be very useful as they can provide some great points and tips that will improve the final product. I think that I could have got a better script if I had asked more people to give me feedback and made a focus group of people who are the correct audience demographic for the film. This would have meant I got the opinion of people who would actually watch the film so they would enjoy it more.
Towards the end of the week I wrote up a schedule. I worked this around the dates and times the actors and crew said that they were available and the weather forecast. I found that not all of the cast and crew were available at the same time as each other so I broke the shooting order of the scenes up depending on which crew I needed for each shoot. The final shooting order meant I was filming Scene 1 on Monday the 1st of May (starting with the interior shots blacking out the windows and waiting for the night fall to shoot the exteriors), scene 4 on the Tuesday, additional shot for scene 4 on Thursday with just Michael, Scene 2 on Sunday daytime with only one crew member but both the cast and finally scene 3 on Sunday evening with all the cast and crew. and Next week is the week before production so I will need to complete all the pre-production documents and finalise the schedule.
Week 7
Week 7 began with a massive problem, my actress realised she wouldn’t be able to get the time off work to shoot for my film when I asked her to commit to meeting for a script read through. I was left with the task of having less than a week to find a the supporting role for the film. I spent a few hours looking on Star Now and messaging a few actresses from Sheffield to find out if some of them could do it but no one got back to me so I messaged the friend who acted for my proof-of-concept film to see f she would be my backup if I couldn’t find an actress in time and she agreed. Later that evening I remembered that I had met an actress (who fitted the role perfectly) at a party about a month before and she sounded keen to be involved in more on-screen acting projects. I contacted her on Facebook and she seemed really keen to work on the project so we met up so I could talk to her about the film and do a script run-through. After this issue I have realised how important it is to have some idea of a backup actor or understudy just in case something happens meaning a main role doesn’t have an actor, so in future I will always look for a backup. Another thing that I have realised is how useful networking is, without it I would have never met my actress and without it my film would have been a lot worse because I would have had to use a non actor.
This week I also had to slightly rearrange the schedule after realising that the Monday was a bank holiday so my college was closed. This meant that I couldn’t pick up the audio recording equipment I needed for filming scene 1. I got around this by switching the Monday and Tuesday shoot, this worked because I could then shoot scene 4 which has no dialogue, so requires no audio equipment, and then pick up the equipment on the Tuesday morning and film scene 1 with the dialogue on the Tuesday afternoon.
Week 8
This week was production week. I began with shooting scene 4 on Monday, I arranged to pick up the cast and crew who couldn’t drive and met the rest of the crew who could at the location on the call sheets I gave them. The first problem that I had encountered was that I hadn’t planed the shots for the first half of the scene, this meant that the beginning of the shoot didn’t run smoothly because I was having to plan the shots on the fly with the camera operator. In future I will definitely go to the location to plan the exact shots so production will run smoother. The second issue I had that day was the weather, it was much cloudier than what the weather forecast had predicted, this was a problem because it made all the shots look flat and didn’t match the sun soaked shots from later on in the scene. We shot the footage anyway but when reviewing it I realised that I would have too reshoot some of the beginning of the scene because they didn’t match the later shots in the scene. Luckily these shots only included Michael, for this reason I didn’t need to arrange a completely new shoot day. I had planed to film additional shots with just Michael on Thursday at the same location, so I reshot everything that was inadequate. The new shot looked really good. This decision to reshoot had a massive impact on the final product. Without it the film wouldn’t have looked nearly half as good.
Tuesday shoot went incredible well, I had planed all the shots and lighting out perfectly. We had originally planned to use the Ronin gimbal for the main opening shot but later found a slider provided much smoother movement for the camera. The screen on the camera isn’t very big and we didn’t have and eternal monitor, along with this the camera was moving so the focus puller found it very difficult to hit the marks. We got around this buy syncing up the camera to the Sony mobile app meaning they had their own monitor that was independent to the moving camera so they could hit the marks. One thing that I didn’t do well was setting the colour temperature on the camera, the shot ended up too warm and I will have to fix it in the colour grade.
Thursday shoot also went really well, The shots on the bus went great and the re-shoots from scene 4 look amazing because the sun was at the perfect level so all the shots match now. However I forgot to book out the equipment until on the day so I had to wait around at college until someone was finnished with what I needed, in future I will book out the equipment in advance to avoid the chance of not being able to shoot.
The first half of production on Sunday went brilliantly. We got all the shots needed for scene 2 and it all went smoothly because I had planned out all the shots and the running order. The second half of production in the evening couldn’t have gone any worse. The actors and crew were freezing because no one Brough enough warm clothes, probably as I didn’t put it in the call sheet. We also couldn’t get the shots because I left it too late in the evening to get the shots and it got too dark. One the things I have learnt and can improve on from this shoot is that I need to send out more in depth call sheets talking bout what clothing will be appropriate and I also needed to do some more lighting tests so when it got dark I could get the shots I needed without having to mess around with different lighting setups. After the shoot I arranged a re-shoot for the Wednesday on the following week.
This week has had the biggest impact on the final product out of the entire production. I have filmed 3 out of the 4 scenes and planed to complete principle photography next week. Im very happy with the cinematography of the film so far, its some of the best work I’ve ever done. I think I also organised all the shoot days very well, everyone turned up and on time, I also only had them on set when they were needed meaning I didn’t waste anyones time. This weeks filming ha made me realise I could improve on my directing skills, I wasn’t directing all the crew to do there jobs, I ended up being too focused on the camera when I should have let the crew do there jobs and made everything run a bit smoother. I think that this comes with practice and experience though so next production I will have learned from my mistakes. I could have also planed the shots for scene 4 a lot better so I didn’t have to re-shoot, also I should have planed the lighting for scene 3 so I would have to book my actors in again to re-shoot next week. Next week I will start by with the assembly edit of scene 1,2 and 4 leaving space for scene 3 once its shot. On Wednesday I will then re-shoot scene 3.
Week 9
I started with assembling the shots from production the week before to make sure that I had enough coverage for each scene. I did this early on so I would have enough time to arrange more re-shoots if I found that they were necessary. Doing the assembly edit this early will also speed up the post-production process. In doing this I found that I didn’t need any pick up shots because I had enough coverage for all the other scenes. On Wednesday evening I re-shot scene 3, I made sure that I had much more professional crew so that I could leave them to do there job and I could focus on directing. I think that I directed this shoot much better than any of the others that i’d done in this project or any other. One of the problems that I faced was I couldn’t book out the LED panel lights from college because someone else was using them. I got around the problem by contacting a friend who had one smaller light that I could use. I also asked my tutor to help with the lighting setup as I know that that’s my weakest skill. We ended up using the LED light and bouncing the light from our phones to create separation between the actors and the background. I’m very happy with the results from this. The re-shoot had a great impact on the quality of the end product, the film will now look more professional and be complete with all the scenes I had originally planed. I think that I was right to hire more professional crew for this re-shoot and have my lecturer on set as an advisor if anything went wrong because this ensured the shoot went smother than before and the end product came out as I’d expected it too. From this, I learned to hire professional crew in the first place so the job actually gets done well and also plan for more contingency time for potential re-shots. On this shoot I also learned that letting the crew do their job whilst I direct all the departments and the cast, would be a much more efficient way of directing, as opposed to me trying to take the role of DP at the same time. On the next project I direct, I will take this directing approach and hire crew I can trust to do the job to the standard I expect and then leave them to it. Next week i will begin editing, starting with the organisation of the rushes, completing the assembly edit and hopefully get near to picture lock.
Week 10
This week began with the organisation of the rushes, I was really glad that I had used a log sheet during principle photography because it made this job easy and quick, I just labeled all the clips with the shot and the take number. After this I imported all the rushes and files I needed into Adobe Premiere Pro and assembled them on the timeline in the order I needed them. I then trimmed them all to size to make the basic assembly edit. At this point I came a cross my first problem, i had worked with amateur actors meaning they hadn’t said there lines exactly the same every time meaning cutting the different shots together was very difficult as the lines didn’t fit together properly. This made the entire process for getting the film to picture lock much longer. I got around the problem by not using sections of certain angles and cutting to a wide where the actors mess up so you cant see there mouths move. This process took quite a while to get it to picture lock and it could have gone a lot quicker if I had checked the script whilst the actors were reading lines, this is something I can improve on for my next project. This weeks works has influenced the end products assembly and the pacing of the entire film. Next week I will have to colour grade and add music and finish the audio edit.
week 11
Now I had the project at picture lock , I Completed the audio editing, adding keyframes to change the volume of the dialogue to keep it a constant level. I’m happy with the result of this. I also added an EQ effect to some clips to alter how it sounds. I had to do this to remove some of the echoes that could be heard in some shots, especially the lines in the corridor in scene 1. Once I had the audio edit complete I added the music, I found that the backup music program I had planned to use didn’t have any music that fitted the style I wanted to create, This was my first notable problem of the week. I solved this by thinking back to previous projects and thinking about cheap places I got music for those films. After searching through Soundcloud I remembered an artist called Johnny Ripper who makes alternative music that would fit my film very well. I had used one of his tracks before so I knew that I could legally use them on this project. After searching through his music I found three tracks that would fit my film and then purchased them. This took a while and slowed the post-production process down considerably.From this problem I have earned to do more extensive research before the production to find the exact tracks that I will use in the film. The second issue I encountered this week was that the tracks that would fit my film changed the style halfway through them meaning the section of the song that I wanted to use wasn’t long enough to cover the scenes I had intended them for. I got around this by chopping up the song into the sections that I wanted, looped the sections and merged them back together, this made the song the exact length I wanted it so it could fit into the timeline perfectly.
Now that I had the picture and audio complete I turned focus to the colour and exposure. In research I had planned the colour grade and found the LUT’s that I was going to use, This made the process very quick for most of the film. There was one clip that I really had a struggle with grading. This was the third problem of the week. On the opening shot of the film I had accidentally set a warmer white balance that planned, this resulted in a really tungsten look that didn’t fit with the rest of the film. I applied the LUT that I had planned to use and it really didn’t work well so I reverted back to the original shot. I then did some research into saving footage that had lost information in colour, shadows or highlights.
From this week’s work I have learned to always check what white balance the camera is set to because it very difficult to correct it in post production and impossible to correct it entirely. I have also learnt a better way of colour grading using the lumetri colour panel and the RGB scopes. Looking back at the film whilst conducting the focus group I realised that I didn’t achieve the “Hollywood” look that I wanted from the film and it was too warm; I could have done a much better job of the colour grade. Next week I will be conducting a focus group to get feedback about the film and the writing an evaluation.
Week 12
The first thing that I did this week was upload the film to Vimeo like I said i’d do in the distribution plan. Once I did this I arranged a focus group of people in the targeted audience demographic and people who study film. I gathered their feedback which was mostly positive but with some really helpful constructive criticism. I’m happy that I have done this because I got the honest feedback of people who would actually watch this film which will really help me in the evaluation. Next I did the evaluation. I discussed what went well and what I could have improved on, all whilst reflecting on the focus groups feedback. This was really helpful because it made me me think about the film and realise what I need to improve on for my next project. I think that I could have improved my focus group by getting more opinions from a wider range of people, maybe some that weren’t in the audience demographic for this particular film. This would have been helpful because all feedback is good, as it highlights what I need to improve on. From this week’s work I have learned that a focus group is a great way of getting a large amount of feedback quickly. I’ve also learned from this feedback that I need to improve on my casting and my script writing.
Henry Rees 
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