shot checklist

to make it easier to see the progress we are making and the shots that are left to do, i have created a camera shot check list

Shot Checklist

another let down...

we were suppose to get some more filming done today with our boy in the shots, preferably Day 1 of our story would be completed and we were going to get the final shots of the boy and girl at school, with the hinting of the connection between them.

unfortunately at last minute our boy pulled out and so we could not film. i am hoping he will be free soon, so that we can try and complete filming altogether by the end of next week

here is a filming schedule that we can hopefully stick to

Week Commencing

Tedious

whislt getting a lot of filming done last week, i really started to realise how tedious it can get. me and amy have been really trying to work hard in getting as many shots of things as we possibly can, even if they are not used in the final cut. the amount of shots is takes to show our girl getting from one room in her house to down the stairs into the kitchen is so many, but we really hope that our hard work will get noticed and all the different angle shots we used will make a difference to the quality of our film. we will try and put a few of the creative shot ideas we came up with on here to show you. :)

Filming hazards

When we start filming we need to think of the hazards our settings may have which could endanger us, so i have thought of a few;

Graveyard scenes:

• One of us may trip over or slip on the ground, Likelihood: Medium
• Filming may offend or upset some people visiting the graveyard, Likelihood: medium/high
• Empty holes or uneven graves on the ground may trip us, Likelihood: Medium

School scenes:

• if we film at the end of school clening will be being done so floor may be wet and one of us may slip or fall, Likelihood: Low
• doors or gates may get locked and we may not be able to get out if we do not ask permissions to film, Likelihood: Low
• People in school may make filming difficult, Likelihood: medium/high

Home scenes:

• At home you are generally off guard so may not be expecting anything to go wrong so if it does it will be a shock, Likelihood: medium
• Knives in the kitchen, Likelihood: Medium
• slipping in the bathroom scenes, Likelihood: Low/ medium

Bus scenes:

• Some members of the public may not cooperate and make filming difficult or even get offended that we are filming, Likelihood: medium/high
• Their is a hazard that the bus may crash as we are filming, Likelihood: Low/medium

Now we know about these hazards we will have to be careful as we are filming and make sure we do our best to avoid these dangers.

bus shot

went to town the other day on the bus and so took a photo of the kind of shot we are looking for in our bus scene of the film. our protagonist will be leaning on the window looking at at what passes by :)

filming

i have now found someone who has agreed to star in our film as the protagonist :)
this means we can finally crack on with starting the filming
we have managed to arrange some days in which we can all go an do some camera work and also available locations, such as the house - kitchen and bedroom, graveyard and school.

we shall have the storyboard up on the blog very soon!

Settings

I have had a few thoughts about the settings of our film.

We have a shot in or storyboard where the girl is in her room and she is looking out of the window whilst she is feeling alone, i thought we could use the view from my bedroom window for this because the view is quite plain looking over fields and i think this would work because it gives the feeling that she has no one around her or to turn to. Also if we needed to use a bedroom to use for the girls room we could use my bedroom because the colours may suit the feeling and it is quite a wide room so we would have room to film in it.

At the beginning of our film the girl is in a graveyard, we will film this in lutterworth because it is easy for all of us to get to and is a nice setting because we also want trees in this shot and there are a few here.

Also in our storyboard there is a shot of the girl on her way to school on a bus, we were not sure how to do this but we spoke to Mr Smith and he gave us the idea of using one of the school buses because we could film it just before the end of school when no one is on it, this would work better than using a service bus because we may need to film it a few times and would have to pay every time.

A few of the shots are filmed when the girl is at school, this will be easy to film because we can just film this in school and find an empty classroom to film in.

If we were going to film any of our shots outside i thought we could use the park where i live because it is quite quite and slightly run down, i think this would be good because it is not like a stereotypical park and would emphasise that our character is lonely.

We have had a few problems because we have had a few ideas of things we want in our film, e.g. a bathroom cabinet with a mirror, we are not sure how we are going to film this because none of us have the type of cabinet we want but we only need it shortly so maybe we could ask someone else, if not we could just change it to a bedroom cabinet with a mirror and use one of ours.

I will now take some pictures of the settings and see if they will look good in our film.

music

finally managed to embed my music onto blogger :)
i have been looking for some slow piano tunes that could be used in our film and found three possibles ones from competch.com that are not under copyright and so could be used :)

Cryptic Sorrow - Kevin MacLeod

Wounded - Kevin MacLeod

Sovereign - Kevin MacLeod

further thoughts...

after thinking further into this idea of the mother, whilst watching the film 'Matilda' with my younger sister, i came to realise that the mother character in that was a lot like i saw our mother character being like, but just not ever being shown in the film. a certain point in the film made me think this, when everyone leaves the small child, Matilda, alone for the whole day in the house. before the mum leaves she gives the girl some instructions on how to get herself some dinner and then leaves her to fend for herself. obviously the point being tried to make in 'Matilda' was the fact that the girl was much to young to fend for herself and this isn't what we are trying to show in our film. however the same principles are there about the mother not being there for her daughter and this is what we are trying to show in our film. Matilda is also shown with having no friends and being on her own just like our protagonist and one of the reasons for her loneliness is her mother's neglect.

character profile: mother

i have begun to think in more depth about the characters of our film. i have particularly been thinking about the mother, and how we are going to never show a person but show messages and requests left by the mother for our female protagonist to find. in effect her mother is simply post it notes. this shall emphasise greatly on the protagonists loneliness, and really bring to home how close she was with her father. her father being the one she spoke to about her problems and the one she made most contact with.

from the amount of messages left, it shall show that she is very rarely around for her daughter and so wrapped up in her own world and thinking that communicating this way is better than nothing but in actual fact it is a lot worse. half of the time we show the girl not paying attention to these messages, showing that she doesn't really listen to them.

her mum will be shown as thinking that she is looking out for her daughter but the fact that she is never seen in the film and purely represented by a post it note will show that in actual fact she is never there. the mother could be seen as a binary opposite to the father, if the audience are told in some way that the father was always there for his daughter and the one spoke to her about everything.

This is England

Last night i watched 'This is England' on Film Four, and as i watched it i jotted down some ideas that i felt would work great in our own short film. Near the beginning of the film Shaun's mum reminds him of how his dad has gone now, the line being "dad's gone" this was then followed by the start of a slow piano tune that played for a series of time and made me empathise greatly with Shaun, i felt that the music was a big influence on this.

secondly whilst the piano music was played, shots of trees in the sun and different buildings were shown, with noone else in the shots. i felt that this was setting the scene of the film and also the piano gave the sense of loneliness, the different surroundings were reflecting Shaun's feelings.

Thirdly, the slow piano music, Fuori Dal Mundo, was signature to the film, and in several parts was reoccuring. i feel that this will be a good thing to do in our film as it will bring back the sad feeling to the film and connect all the shots, giving the film a nice smooth flow.



there is also an effective use of a photograph os Shaun's father who died in the faulklands war, this photo is looked at by shaun through the film several times, this is showing that shaun is sad about the death and shows his loneliness, and in the film actual words about his fathers death are not used frequently and so this photo helps the audience work out for themselves.

presenting our pitch went really well. As we spoke of our ideas, new ones were spurting in my head as i spoke and found new inspirations and ideas being created. we told the class of how we have looked into shane meadow's work and in particular 'this is England'. as i spoke about the film i realised that in actual fact the protagonist of our film was starting look very similar to Shaun, the protagonist of 'this is England'. Shaun is also suffering from the loss of his father and having to tackle day to day problems including bullying at school. the film is shown through shaun's eyes, which is a convention we want to use in our film having issues seen through our girl's eyes.
i shall continue to research further into some of shane meadows work as he had been a successful director and made several short films also.





the way in which in the film the loss of shaun's dad is portrayed through the photo is effective and something we have considered to use in our own film. we were asked whether we would have a flashback of how the dad dies but i think that this could be difficult to achieve without looking corny and would make us lose the feel of our film. showing small clips throughout of the girl looking at the photo and visiting the grave will be a better way of expressing her grief and letting the audience know that she is grieving for her father.

Pitch

We showed our pitch to the class and i feel that it went quite well because the powerpoint explained clearly our ideas, whilst reading it we expanded on what the slides said to get into more depth of our initial ides of our short film.

From showing and talking to the class about our ideas we gained afew more, we have decided to look closer at some more of shane meadows work because he has made short films as we are hoping to make them, also we have thought that we can base our main character on the main character in ' this is england' because this is the kind of character we were hoping to use.

We also have gained a better grasp on our idea because being put on the spot made us decide what we were doing and by explaining it to others it helped us understand it better ourselves.

Hi, yes that sounds like a good idea shall we meet up in our free today in the library to get it done? I have some ideas on the institution we could use because i have been watching some short films on channel four and they are quite similar to our idea. wb

Amy xx

hey amy

we need to make sure our presentation for our film is ready to show in class, i have began doing a few slide but if we could me up in our free to finish it off that would be great :)
let me know asap so we can get sorted

laura
x x