STORYTELLING UNIT: EDITING SCRIPT (3rd Draft)

After making my second draft of my script 'Broken', I looked over it again and made some changes again to bits I felt needed changing. Firstly I showed my tutor Simon my new scene in my second draft, the scene where we see the party, and he suggested that I could word the actions of the party different and make it more simple. Below on the left is the second draft and on the right is the new third draft of the scene.


As you can see, it still tells us the same information about the scene but in a much more simple way. Without having to explain every single detail of the scene which isn't even that long. As well as this I also changed one of James's lines because it was also overly long and didn't need to be. The line I changed is below:

What I saw was that James already explains all that by showing Lily the photo, we can tell that he has carried that photo since the funeral and that he has been trying to stay strong. So instead I made it much simpler and changed it to this:

This again makes it much simpler and works better for the screen. The final change I made in this draft was when James gets signal on his phone. I wanted to have a moment between the characters, the phone has just gotten signal as they've just reconnected as Father and Daughter, it's a lovely moment in the script that I want to hold for a little longer. so I rewrote it to this:

I just wanted to hold this moment a little longer and make it more emotional for the audience as this is such an important moment in the script.

STORYTELLING UNIT: ROUGH CUT

During the post-production I showed my rough cut edit to my tutors and asked for some feedback. I had a full length edit with all my scenes together and it came up to 2:48 which is over the set brief. I was told that if that time is relevant

to my story this doesn't matter. But currently my edit was far too long and could be cut down. As well I just had cut to cut on dialogue which was very boring and basic and didn't look good for my edit, so I used the rolling tool to change the cuts with the audio and made it look a bit better. The biggest issue I had with my rough cut was my audio. I needed wild tracks constantly through my scenes as the wild tracks at the moment are cut up and all over the place. As well my audio from scene 2 isn't clear because of all the cars and background noise has made Zak's dialogue completely unusable so I'll have to re-record it and dub it later on. As well I need to add music into this and the third scene as well.

With the green screen I added the footage and added the effect 'Ultra Key' to the green screen footage and already it looks like good, the effect works and this is without editing and modifying the ultra key or colour grading. Although it isn't at a good enough quality yet, it's enough to show that this idea clearly worked and now all I need to do is fix the ultra key slightly and get rid of the white lines where the green screen is and also make it a bit more crisp. These were the only points that were brought but but the main 2 were my audio and the length of my video as well.

STORYTELLING UNIT: JAMES CORDEN

I looked into another screenwriter when I was researching for inspiration for my own script and one who I found I could relate to and I enjoyed his work was the comedy writer James Corden.

James Corden is mostly famous as a writer for the classic BBC 3 Comedy Series 'Gavin & Stacey' which was broadcasted on BBC 3 from 2007 but by it's third and final series it had grown so popular with views that it was moved to BBC 1. James Corden co-wrote the series with Ruth Jones, both also played main roles in the series. James played the character 'Smithy' which was Gavin's best friend and one of the most loved characters in the series.

James Corden never actually attended University of specialised in a course to get him into the Acting or Writing Industry. He did study drama briefly at Jackie Palmer Stage School before before moving on to Upper School. He was born is London but moved over to Buckinghamshire where he attended Park Middle School and Holmer Green Upper School. James Corden actually built his way up into the Industry. James admits in his auto biography that even though he did study drama briefly, he never actually saw it as a career and certainly not writing either. He actually built his way up into the industry. He took on small roles in TV dramas starting from 1997 and got his first big part in 'Fat Friends' in 2000, this was a British TV Comedy Drama. It was also through Fat Friends that he met Ruth Jones, a Welsh actress who he'd go on to work with as a Writer.

STORYTELLING UNIT: REWRITING SCRIPT (2ND DRAFT)

After receiving my feedback for my script from Steve Coombs I went on to rewrite my script. Working from the feedback and also making changes that I wanted to make myself as well.

Scenes 6-9
These were the biggest changes to my script that I made. With the final scene being completely re-written and made into 2 separate scenes.
Firstly with scene 6 in my first draft, this is where Lily and James are walking back to the car after having a big heart to heart conversation and sorting out everything. This scene can be seen below:

STORYTELLING UNIT: SIMON PEGG

A screenwriter I choose to look into is the British Actor, Screenwriter and Producer, Simon Pegg.

Simon Pegg was one of the main reasons I wanted to get into the Media Industry. After watching his first feature film 'Shaun of the Dead' back in High School, I was then fixed on his work but also saw that it was possible for an ordinary, British boy, to go to High School, University and then go on to be a stand-up comedian, later write a comedy series for Channel 4 and finally end up making what was thought to be a low budget and simple feature film and ends up being a smash hit at the box office and sends his carrier off from TV writer to Film maker.

CONTEXUAL STUDIES: CRIME GENRE

We started by watching an episode of 'The Bill' and looked out for the key points as we always look at.

The Bil (1983 -2010)
- Set in a fictional London police station
- Longest running UK crime drama
- Originally 12x60mins episodes
- From 1988-2005, became year-round twice-weekly serial
- Peaked audience of 11m viewers in 2005 rivalled Coronation Street

STORYTELLING UNIT: DOCTOR WHO SERIES 5

Although a Science Fiction TV Series, the Fifth season of Doctor Who was very inspirational when I was looking for ideas for my script after changing my idea from the feedback of the 25 word Pitches. I wanted to add something to the script, a secret almost, that the audience could slowly figure out piece by piece. However, trying to find something in my script proved very difficult and also how to go about doing it so that it's subtle but creates an impact on the audience.

Doctor Who series 5 was the next edition of 'The Doctor' where we changed actors from David Tennant, to Matt Smith. This also changed over writers from Russell T Davis to Steven Moffat so it was a completely new era of Doctor Who. We even got a remake of the Tardis.
Through this series is the Doctor not only becoming a new Doctor and growing his relationship with his new companions, Amy and Rory, but also battling all these different Aliens. All the time something serious going on in the background.

Episode one is where we first see the new Doctor and his relationship with Amy Pound begins and builds. The doctor crash lands the Tardis and is still regenerating. All the time he's adjusting and we're seeing the new Doctor. Amy finds him and asks if he's the answer to her prays about the crack in her wall. He fixes the crack in the wall by opening it and hears a voice saying "Prisoner has escaped" and after finding a giant eye ball alien in this crack, it closes and vanishes. The Doctor then runs off to fix the Tardis but without meaning to ends up returning 12 years later when Amy has grown up. Through the episode the Doctor tracks down Prisoner Zero and finds him and gets him back into prison. At the end of the episode after the Doctor has saved the world Amy agrees to run away with him and  they run off but see that Amy is to get married the next day.

What grabbed me about this series wasn't the adventures of the Doctor and Amy or the different storylines between the episodes. It's that after that first initial episode. We constantly see something over and over again in each episode. Which is that crack that we see in the first episode. At the end of each episode of Doctor Who, we see that there is another crack and these are all over the galaxy and even at different points in time. Below are photos from different

These cracks are seen at the end of each episode, apart from 2 where the Doctor actually see's them but no-one ever knows what they are. Finally in the last 2 episodes of the series we are given the truth and learn the importance of these cracks and that they are seriously dangerous and end up breaking up the fabric of reality and brought the critical episodes which these little mysteries had been leading up to throughout the series and the biggest episode of the series as well.

This lead up to the final episode by showing these cracks, the mystery and wonder behind them which leads to the be reveal of the truth really helps to make the series even more interesting and the writing for this was a brilliant idea. One object which is constantly staring people in the face and makes you question the importance to it is something I wanted in my script.
This was how I came up with the idea for the wedding ring that Jame's wears and always kisses when he's making a decision. When seeing these cracks, I realised that I could use this concept of mystery in my script. I decided to have Jame's almost refer to his ring when making a decision or when a situation gets too hard. Like he's still asking his dead wife what to do or asking her to give him strength. This would then make people question why he was doing that and the importance of the ring until the end of the film where we'll learn the truth about Jame's wife and that she past away. When writing this into my script I felt the impact of the wife's death was more for the audience with the reference to the ring constantly. It shows Jame's isn't over it and it still deeply effects him.

CONTEXUAL STUDIES: SOAP OPERA

We started today by watching the first broadcasted episode of 'Eastenders' and were told to look into the following genre elements:

Mise En Scene
- How many locations? - it's all set along the same street however, we go into at least 8 different locations through the episode; old mans flat, cafe, pub, laundrette, corner shop, market stall, doctors office, family flat
- Real or Studio? - I would argue that the locations are mixed between real and studio, the main street is real location, as this couldn't be done in a studio. Doctors office and pub could be a studio location and the doors are what gives it away as they're at the side where you couldn't see 
- Communal space? - Communal space is used in the programme such as the pub, cafe and the market. This is where the characters can meet or we see a number of different characters all through the programme.

Camera & Sound
- Single & multi-camera? - Single camera
- Diegetic or non-diegetic sound? - I would say that all the sound in this episode is diegetic, the main one is the dialogue between characters as there's so much through the episode

STORYTELLING UNIT: FINISHED FILMING

Today, I finished filming my final 2 scenes. We started at 11 by setting up the green screen and getting the car into position. We decided that since the green screen was going to be the most difficult and also the most important to get first since we were depending on the sun for lighting the green screen. We had the green set up and the car in position with Oliver ready to begin recording. However, we weren't able to begin recording until 3pm, nearly 4 hours later because Jemma ended up being late for shooting because she was on another shoot for one of my classmates.

When Jemma finally turned up we didn't waste anytime. We went straight into filming with the green screen. We set up the shot so that we'd only see the green screen behind the actors and nothing else. This was so in the edit we wouldn't need to cut or crop the shot in anyway. Below is how we set up the shot.

This was the style I wanted so that I could make it more realistic that they were in a moving car. When filming, I repeatedly pushed the car gently so that we got that slight movement to help make this more realistic. As well as this I had a member of my crew move a light up and down on Oliver's face to give the impression of moving past trees or lap posts, since you always get slight movements of passing lights when driving. We worked through all of this which took about an hour and when it came to changing sides for Lily's dialogue, we had to move the car around since that was easier than trying to move and re-set the green screen.

With the green screen footage, we actually had to use a different car from what we'd used for scene 2. Below are the difference in the cars used. The silver car in the second photo was the first that we used as it belonged to one of the crew, George Lock. However, when it came to filming the green screen footage, George wasn't able to make it to the afternoon shoot, He was only available for the morning but Jemma was not. So we decided to use a different car but we got the opening shot which was the steadicam shot of the car and the open bonnet and then of Lily's first line. After this we used another 

students car and set up the shot so that you could not actually see that the car was different on the outside. We found this worked well and you can't actually tell that the cars are different. 

After we finished scene 3, we went on to film scene 1 which was filmed just by the side of the car park which we filmed the green screen footage. This went much more smoothly although we did find a slight issue with filming this. We'd already filmed the opening shot of scene 1, but that was early in the morning when we had George's car and Jemma for only about 20 minutes. But, since then the lighting had changed as can be seen in the photo below, continuity would be an issue with this but since there was nothing we could do to change this, we had to continue to film and hope that I could fix it in post-production. We got on with filming and it worked well and went along very well. Once we'd finished filming we packed up and took back the equipment. 

(All photos are copyright to ©grstudios)

STORYTELLING UNIT: RISK ASSESSMENT

While organising the filming locations, I had to identify the risks that where at each location. With the risk assessment I tried to be as detailed as possible with the risks and identified as much as I could to ensure that there wouldn't be any accidents or legal issues on the shoots and to show that I was clearly putting the cast and crews safety first.

CONTEXTUAL STUDIES: SITCOM

We started the lecture by watching the pilot episode of Vodka Diaries. Watch out for:

Mise En Scene:
- How many locations? - Living room, bedroom, kitchen, hallway, stairway, outside the house
- Real or studio? - Real location
- Reflect characters?

Camera & Sound:
- Single or Multi-camera? - Single
- Audience laughter? - No
- Diegetic or non-diegetic sound? Diegetic - Music from phone, dialogue and door bell. Non-diegetic - music at the beginning and end of the programme, numbers changing during instagram photo

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.