STORYTELLING UNIT: FINISHED SCENE 2

Today I had my first shoot for my script. Overall I feel it went really well considering we had a lot of last minute changes. Oliver and Jemma arrived on time and we started with Oliver and Jason's dialogue. We organised for Zak to play Jason since this is a very brief character and only requires 3 lines of dialogue. We worked through the dialogue of the characters at a good pace and working well and safely on the location.

We tried to work as quickly as possible since the weather was turning bad quicker and quicker as the shoot went on. We had a few issues, mostly with reflection from the windows during the opening of the door for Jason's entrance. The reflection of the crew could be seen no matter where we moved in the garden since it was such a small space, we managed to get just out of shot by going to the side of the door and making the shot a medium shot and recorded his dialogue again to have to cut to in the edit.





















As well as this we found a slight issue. The parking space in front of the house had been taken up by a neighbour's car and we had no way of knowing who's car it was and from the photos below, you can clearly see that there wasn't another place in front of the house where we could park the car to use during the scene. 

What we decided was to park the car about 20ft away from the house since there was a parking space up there and we made both actors walk there and did a handheld walking sequence which we can cut between in post production.

Other than these small issues the shoot went without anymore issues. We worked well through the shots and with the issues that did arise we worked through them and solved them quickly and professionally and on location we worked professionally and with good team work. 

STORYTELLING UNIT: ORGANISING LOCATIONS AND RECCES

When looking into my scripts settings I needed to find the following locations:
- Country Road
- House

Going into more detail on the house, it would need to be a house along a street, many not a private estate but more of a council flat or connected house, somewhere that the Father would have to drive quite far to come and get the Daughter since they end up in the car for quite a long time and also that you wouldn't go to a private estate and end up with a load of teenagers having a house party with load music. The photo below is the type of house that I'd like to find for my film.

This type of house is classic to what you'd see a standard, working class family living in as well as students. These are also what you would usually see in sitcoms or soap operas for house party's. This type of house is also very common for students accommodations in Kent so I decided to ask around my classmates for a location like this before contacting the Kent Film Office. My classmate, Victoria Simmonds, is currently living in a student flat, rather than the university accommodations. I asked her if it would be possible to film there and she agreed to ask her landlady.

Victoria told me that her landlady was happy for us to film as long as we were carful, no stunts were performed and also if she could see the finished film after it had been completed. Once agreed, I went over to the location for a recce. Below are the photos from the recce.

STORYTELLING UNIT: ACTORS DROPPED OUT

Both of my actors have now dropped out and cannot do the filming shoot. Samantha messaged me to tell me that she unfortunately has family issues at the moment and has had to drop out of a few different projects. Brett hasn't gotten back to me since I messaged him about the filming locations so I've had to go with the decision that he isn't interested in the project anymore.

My issue is that I don't have any other actors, I phoned Emma Miles and Julian Patten (both applied for the roles of James and Lily) but because of the short notice, they can't do it. I decided to ask my classmates for help with this to try and keep to schedule since my shooting days are tomorrow (9th Nov) and Friday (11th Nov). My classmate Jemma agreed to help and this works in my favour.



Jemma has previously done acting before coming to UCA so she understands the process of being in front of camera. She's confident and understands the lack of time so began learning her lines straight away. She also looks the right age due to her height (5" 2") which works in my favour as well.





After this I asked my classmate Oliver to play the Father, Oliver is very tall and looks much older than his real age (19).


As you can see from the photo Oliver is the best I could ask for in a class of students. He looks much older and could pass for a dad. His height (6" 5") helps make him look much older to Jemma and the beard is a huge advantage as well. Olly is a really dedicated and passionate guy as well and has had some experience acting so this again works in my favour.

STORYTELLING UNIT: PROP MAKING

With my script I noted that I had a few props which were needed for the film:
- Headphones
- Mobile phone
- Wedding Ring

Headphones and Mobile aren't an issue at all since I own both. The main issue was the wedding ring. Since the opening 2 minutes of the script focus on the ring at points I needed to get one for filming. I checked with my classmates if anyone had anything similar to a wedding ring but no-one had anything close to one. With this in mind I decided to contact a Jewellery Smithing student who is also in UCA. I contacted a second year called Domenic, who I know from living in the University Accomedations. I asked him if he could make me a wedding ring but that it doesn't need to be an expensive metal since I don't have a budget and this is only a small shoot. So we agreed to use copper to make the ring and the finished ring came out like this:

The size of the ring was measured from Domenic's middle finger, since we didn't have time to get the actors finger measured and he didn't know his measurements. But I'm happy how it turned out and how it looks.

STORYTELLING UNIT: FILMING INSIDE A CAR

After deciding on creating the opening 2 minutes I realised a difficult task I had with creating this. I need James to be driving a car. At first I thought I could just record the actor talking while driving a car for real but then found out there are serious health and safety issues with that and it isn't allowed, As well it would be really difficult to record Lily's dialogue as well if the car was moving. So I scrapped that idea and began thinking of other ways I could film this. I remembered that in sitcoms you've always got scenes where people are driving but it's actually green screen behind them or a projector.

 
However, I don't like the look of this. It's been used in so many sitcoms that I just feel it's too cheesy and doesn't look very professional in a short film. But using green screen was an idea that I liked and thankfully found a video by the YouTube channel 'Film Riot' who focus on DIY film making and created a video called Drive in a Car without Driving in a Car! where they show their viewers 3 different ways of driving a car. 2 of which involved confined spaces but the first with green screen involved lighting the green screen and then simply recording the footage and getting footage from a moving car later to add onto the green screen. I decided to take this but instead of trying to find a confined space like garage I could use the car park in the Maidstone studios and have the natural day light as my light source for the green screen. This way I can get the footage I need and don't have to worry about finding somewhere to use the car or the green screen.

STORY-TELLING UNIT: SCRIPT BREAKDOWN AND SHOT LIST

After completing my script and organising my actors I began planning out how I wanted my opening 2 minutes to work (shot wise). To decide on this I took my opening two minutes and broke it down, shot by shot. This way I could use this to put together a shot list. I had originally thought about doing a storyboard but I never really use them and don't find them helpful, I work better with a list of shots and then I can also work around them and see what looks best on the day. 

I made up 3 separate shot lists, one for each scene, so I could keep a track on all and do scene by scene.

STORYTELLING UNIT: SHORT FILM REVIEW 3

Since my two characters in my script are a Father and Daughter. I wanted to find inspiration from a short film on how the Father would talk to his Daughter, since I'm not a Father and I never saw my sister and Father sort out their differences, I had no idea how they'd speak. How I finally got the idea for a calm and protective Father to start with, as if he was talking to a 7 year old girl rather than a 16 year old girl. Was from the short film "The Talk" which can be seen here:

The TALK Short Film 

'The Talk' plays on the idea of a Father giving their child the talk about what sexual intercourse is, at first anyway. The idea that this is a very awkward situation to talk about with your child and that you'd want to discuss it when they're a teenager, so between 12-16 years old, rather than a younger age since children are often protected from sexual content or talk. This short film makes out as if the Father is about to have this talk with his Daughter and even by him holding back when saying "Your mum and I..." and then it changes to the Father is actually telling his Daughter that Santa Claus isn't real and that it's been the Mother and him bringing the presents and pretending to be Santa Claus. The film then goes into a more comical film by the Father opening up and telling his Daughter that she was an accident, he's always stressed, he stays at work late just to have time to himself and misses his old single life even though he loves his family. The writing for this plays with the feelings that some Father's do have after years of being in a family. He always goes back to tell his daughter to eat more pie as 'it'll help'. We think this is the twist as he goes from comforting and apologetic to very blunt and almost like he doesn't care, as he also eats her pie himself while telling her all these facts. 

The real twist and comical turn comes towards the end of the film though as at the end the Daughter turns around and begins to tell the Father facts as well like:

- She's not actually his daughter

- The Mother is having an affair

- The Mother plans to leave him in a few years

The writing for this is very clever and makes the script very unique in the sense that we think we've seen the height of the film and then suddenly we get a complete change where the daughter is actually having a much serious talk and acting like the adult and the Father begins to act more like the child and then the at the end we get a brilliant moment where the daughter passes the plate over and says "Here, eat some more pie, it'll help" which is what the Father tells the daughter at the beginning of the film. 

What I actually took from this short film was the way the Father acted. When writing my script I wasn't sure how to write the Father, I knew I wanted him and the daughter to argue but at the beginning of the script I couldn't have him shouting at her straight away because then there's not build up to the argument, I also couldn't have him mourning over his wife as this takes away the surprise at the end and takes away the build up to the discovery of her death. When having the script surgery with my tutor Simon he suggested having the Father trying to be nice and then from this film as well I saw this working. This idea of the Father being friendly, polite and caring, talking to Lily like she was a child would help get the audience on the Father's side and helps make more of a story then, this also helps the impact later discovering the truth of why the Father acts the way he does.