DIRECTIONS UNIT: RESEARCH MATERIAL - ZOMBIES

Since Shaun of the Dead is about a zombie apocalypse so one of the main things I need in my film is Zombies. However, I've decided to research into these undead, horror creatures to decide the type of zombie I'd like to have since there has been so many adaptations over the years. I started by watching a video on Youtube which shows the evolution of zombie adaptations over the years:

ZOMBIE EVOLUTION

The first actual adaptation of 'The Walking Dead' zombies that we know of today, meaning a corpse that has come back to life to feed on the living, actually came from George Romero and his film 'Night of the Living Dead' back in 1968. This film kicked off the zombie craze and has since been classic as the mother of zombie films. This is also the film that got Simon Pegg's interest in Zombie's and helped in the creation of 'Shaun of the Dead'. You can even see inspiration and reference within the story. In Night of the living Dead they are trapped in a house and end up in the basement before the military comes and saves them. In Shaun of the Dead they are trapped in a pub and end up in the cellar where the military comes to rescue them. 

Night of the Living Dead zombies are very slow, pale and look like dead people. They walk with very stiff movement, almost like they're joins are all stiff and locked in place. They don't make any noise other than a growl when attacking and they always have a blank and emotionless look on their face.  

Looking to a more modern adaptation of zombies, we tend to get something like this:

                                                                                                                                                           

This latest adaptation of zombies comes from the game 'Dying Light'. These zombies only come out at night, run very fast, just climb and jump very high as well as being very strong. They glow red but are sensitive to UV Light. These days, zombies in both games and films are aiming to become much more scary and also harder to fight so you'd more likely have to run. Here are a few examples:

Z Zombie - World War Z (Film 2013)

They has a horrible chattering noise they make. They can only be killed by being burnt, story, fast. Eyes go more white the longer they are infected. Skin loses the blood cells and begins to thin and rot over time.

Bonies - Warm Bodies (Film 2013)

Zombies that have been infected for so long and have gone without feeding that they feed on their own skin, they will feed on anything with a heart beat including animals, humans and newly turned zombies. Can only be stopped by removing the head or destroying the brain.

Bloater - The Last of Us (Game 2013)

The infection is spread by Cordyceps Fungus (which is a real life fungus that only effects small animals), if infected fungus will grow over a great deal of time from the infected person and end up with being armoured with these fungus growths as well as firing spores of the fungus at enemies, blinded by the infection but has improved hearing. 

All these different adaptations have attracted different audience and made out zombies in different ways and given then so many different abilities. It's changed so much from the dead bodies coming back to life that we had in 'Night of the Living Dead' so the actual choice of how my zombies will both look and act is really important for my film.

Shaun of the Dead situation 

In Shaun of the Dead, when Shaun and Ed awake from a night of drinking, Britain has broken out into a zombie apocalypse. The important part of this story is that this is the first day of the apocalypse. The people who have become zombies have only been zombies for 1 day so they wouldn't have rotten skin, they wouldn't be covered in blood but could possibly have blood on their clothes from their attacks or around their mouth if they have fed. Looking to Night of the living Dead it might be an idea for the zombies to have white eyes (could be done with coloured contacts). With the way they would act, I like the idea of having a Walking Dead style for them, like this: 

Walking Dead Zombies Walking

The slow and almost struggling movement, as well as no fear or cares if they fall over just getting back up and carrying on.

DIRECTIONS UNIT: SOUND LECTURE

Sound design is one of the most interesting and important parts of films and directing. The sound design for a film can make or break it.

Sound design in film and television is the progress of capturing, layering and mixing the individual sound elements to create one single Soundtrack for the project. Sound takes up 50% of a film/TV programme and sound design occurs at all stages of a production but it is mostly a post-production stage for the majority of the work.

The Sound Designer
Originally, the sound editing for films were edited by Sound Editor or a team of sound editors but there wasn't any creative input given by sound team for the project. This changed in the 1970's as a higher demand for better sound came along and much more input came from the sound editors then and the job 'Supervising sound editor' came about which meant that role had total over view of the sound design.
The sound designers role is to assemble a number of layers or tracks of sound, which are mixed together to form one whole track to work with the footage. On some productions there might be fifty tracks of sound. Most commonly there will be between 5-20 tracks of sound in a production

Types of tracks:
- Dialogue
- Sync
- ADR.
- FX.
- Foley
- Atmos
- Music

Dialogue
This is what is recorded on set or while filming on location. A voice over is recorded on a separate track. The sound designer would take out anything that isn't dialogue to ensure only dialogue is in this track

Sync
This is the recorded sound from the shoot that is not dialogue. E.g. someone walking, getting into a car, etc.

ADR
Automatic Dialogue Replacement. This is all the dialogue re-recorded or dubbed, after the shoot. Nearly all Hollywood films use ADR for the whole film.

FX:
Certain sounds effects for elements such as a car engine, a computer, or explosion. These will recorded specifically for the production or more commonly they will come from a Sound FX library.

Foley:
Foley is recreating the sound effects and matching them up to the footage. This can takes ages and takes a great deal of skill which is why they were known as 'Foley Artists'

Atmos:
Creating the atmosphere for a location, this can be with room tone, wild track, etc. it creates the atmosphere for the scene and the location is based at.

Music:
This is all the music in the film. Diegetic music which can be music from a radio in the scene, someone playing an instrument, etc. and the other is non-diegetic which can't be heard by the actors and helps to create all kinds of emotions or feelings. Such as tension, fear, hope, love, etc.

The Sound Edit
Through the sound edit phase, the sound designer will work with their team and edit the various sounds to the picture and making the creative decisions all the time. Sound cutting is just like picture cutting and will mostly be done with professional software.
The Mix is the final stage of the sound progress. This is where the Sound Designer, Editor, Director and Producer will come together and all together all the separate tracks of sound together to form one complete track.

The Art of Sound Design
The art of Sound Design is to add depth, feeling and emotion to the picture. It's not about making something sound LOUD, it's about making it feel real and work for the audience. If it's set on an alien world we need to make it sound like an alien world, even though we don't know how that would sound.

Silence is golden
To understand sound design, you have to be silent.
In a scene where you would need silence, say after a horrific battle scene has just finished and you want to convey the feeling of silence you can use sounds like:
- breathing
- Wind
- A fly
Sounds you wouldn't hear if it wasn't quiet.
Adding depth and emotion to a scene doesn't always mean adding in music. It can also be done with sound. A person alone in a house, you can add a clock or a dog break.

When you need to create a specific emotional moment, such as horror, fear or love, this can be done with sound design. A classic edit in horror or thriller is to cut from the image of someone about to scream to the image of a train or alarm clock. We see the picture change but not the sound of the train whistle or alarm that does the trick.

Sound Design
A production might spend 7 weeks shooting a film/programme, but they might spend double that amount of time on the sound design. You could have the most beautiful, clever and amazing footage ever see on screen. But if the sound design is poor it will bring down the quality of the entire production.

(All images taken from google.co.uk)

DIRECTIONS UNIT: PRE-PRODUCTION SCHEDULE

This is my schedule for my pre-production section. So far I'm running to schedule, apart from the locations since I'm waiting for a response off the shops that I have asked. Other than that I'm running to schedule.  

DIRECTIONS UNIT: GETTING MAIN ACTORS AND EXTRAS

Since we are required to use actual actors for this unit I put out a job application for my Shaun of the Dead re-make. Although I've only advertised for the main characters, Shaun and Ed. Since these are the only 2 actors that have actual dialogue and actions which I'll need to direct I've decided to use Casting Call Pro to try and get professional actors onboard with the project. All the extras I'm going to ask my classmates and some of my friends as well. 

So with the 2 main characters these are the breakdowns that I've done for them:

Shaun is 31 years old. Male. From London. Skinny Man who works at a computer shop as a team leader. He's worked there for over 5 years and hasn't really achieved anything in life. He lives with his (lazy) friend Ed and another friend Pete. Shaun doesn't have any ambitions for his life and likes to just go to work, go to the pub and repeat the same the following day.
He's in love with his girlfriend Liz and is devastated when she breaks up with him. He just moans and cries about it over and over again.

30 years old. Male. From London. Slightly overweight. Ed is unemployed and has no interest or aims of getting a job anytime soon. He's very lazy and if he needs some money he'll sell some weed to his drug dealer friends. Ed's favourite motto is 'fuck it'. He doesn't care or take things seriously, he thinks everything can be made better by having a pint in the pub. Ed can be very rude and inconsiderate but he loves Shaun and loves to have fun with him. 
Ed likes to just sit around and play on his playstation and is overall a very lazy character.

So with those character breakdowns in place I went on to the casting website and finished up the advert. For the payment I've offered the actors full credit, a copy of the finished film and as well I can put forward £40 to each actor to help with Travel expenses. 

(Images from google.com/castingcallpro.com)

LIGHTING WORKSHOP: 3 POINT LIGHTING

Through the workshop with Fergus we went over the basic lighting set up of 3 point Lighting. We started by covering the different types of Lights and how they can be used including the main 4 fixture types:
- Open Face
- Fresnel
- Soft
- PAR
We also covered the lights we have in the store and how lighting is such a key element for cinematography. Without lighting you won't get as good a look, you'll get more of a 'daytime television' look. Meaning it'll be very flat and we won't have as much depth within the shot. We practiced the basic lighting set up which involves 3 lights, A Key Light, A Fill light and a Back Light. The key light is the main light, the fill light helps to fill in the rest of the character and the back shot helps to bring the back out slightly more.

We worked through this lighting set up and messed around with some filters for the lighting as well. Below is a short video of our practice with 3 point lighting.

DIRECTIONS UNIT: DRAFT SCRIPT

When choosing the clips that I wanted to remake I also had to write up a script. By looking online I was able to find the original screenplay for 'Shaun of the Dead' which meant I was able to copy the original script and make my first draft of my screenplay for my own version.

FIRST DRAFT

With making my script, I did have to take out the joke about the pub being called 'The Winchester' and the landlord having a Winchester riffle above the bar since I can't get a pub called that or get a riffle since I would have to go through the police. However, taking away the joke doesn't effect the script at all. As well as this, the script contains dialogue that didn't make it into the final version of the film. I decided to keep this and see how this can work in my version, although I found that Edgar writes in the close up sequences in his scripts. I, again, chose to keep this in my version. 

When I showed it to Simon, he told me my script was 'Greenlight' and I could go ahead with this version of the script. 

DIRECTING UNIT: EDITING

When working as a Director, you will work with an Editor. Someone who edits your project and has a creative input in the edit. This is like a second pair of eyes, another opinion to make sure your work is the best thing possible.

We started the session by watching a car scene from Steven Spielberg's first film 'Duel'.
Through this scene we see the editing speed up as the car chase speeds up. It works with the actions and builds up the tension right through and always gets tighter and tighter.

Film Editing
Editing is the art of joining separate shots together to create longer sequences that make up the complete film/programme. Editing is the only part of the production process that is unique to filmmaking and is often referred to as the 'Invisible Art'. because when done well is so immersive the viewer doesn't notice the edits.
Editing isn't just joining shots together, it's also about creating emotion, drama, rhythm and action through the shots. This is where Story telling. The man who created editing is Edwin. S. Porter with 'The Great Train Robbery'.

DIRECTING UNIT: STEVE FINN

Steve Finn is a Professional TV Director who has been Directing for over 20 years. Currently working for Eastenders and has done over 100 episodes of the programme. He explained that Directing can have challenging times, Steve had this with 'Moon's Fire' which was that he wasn't originally going to Direct it, the original dropped out and he then had to write up, shot for shot, what he was going to do in that scene since it is such a complex scene.

He explained that being prepared and having everything planned, is the way to keep everything flowing and keeping to schedule. Preparation is key for directing to make a shoot work. He explained that he will have 4 weeks of prep before a shoot. The director works through all the departments and work through each department working up to the block of the scenes and shoot and then on the forth week, the entire crew meet together and the director will talk through the schedule and what he is going to shoot and how.

He told us, the important part of the director is to see the production and see the script come to life, scene by scene, before getting onto set. All the work he described is done in his head. 'Scripts are god at the moment' is what he said but explained that directors are always about pictures.

CONTEXTUAL STUDIES: METAPHOR & MEANING

What is a metaphor?
- Originally in english literature, a figure of speech in which a word or phrase makes an implicit, implied or hidden comparison between two things that appear unrelated but share some common characteristics. Shakespeare once said 'All the world's a stage...'

- A creative means to stimulate audience by getting them to think in new ways

- To look into metaphors, we watched the first episode of the Netflix Marvel series 'Jessica Jones'.

Jessica Jones is a series about a woman called 'Jessica Jones' who has supernatural powers, she tried being a hero once but we learn that didn't go well and instead she became a Private Investigator. We see that there is a Villain called 'Killgrave' who has the ability to control people simply by telling them what he wants them to do.
This series is based off the Marvel comic book character. Although  grounded in realism, TV series acknowledge superhero powers.

Metaphor or allegory? Allusion or analogy?
- Allegory - an extended or complex metaphor, or connected series of metaphors
- An allegory usually has two meanings: literal and symbolic (or metaphorical)
- Alien is regarded as a feminist/freudian allegory, using visual sexual metaphors

- Allusion - an indirect or passing reference, usually with no metaphorical intent
- Often used as homage or nod to a related show or film or writer/directors' inspirations

- Analogy - a literal compassion without further meaning (a metaphor uses analogy with greater meaning)
- Forest Gump's 'Life is like a box of Chocolates'

Metaphor in TV and Film
- While writers may use verbal or literary metaphors, most metaphors in film & TV will be visual
- Metaphors generally need to be constructed of familiar visual symbols and references, and cannot be overly complex
- Like a verbal metaphor, they will break down if there are too many analogies to process at once. But there needs to be enough detail that the metaphor is recognisable and easily understood

Jessica Jones
- Dominant narrative theme is power and control
- Dominant narrative metaphors illuminate theme of power and control:
- Rape and PTSD
- Child Abuse
- Addiction: drugs and alcohol
- 'Superpowers' - externalise characters interior trauma and struggle

Abuse as metaphor
- Killgrave's sexual abuse/control of Jessica is both explicit and literal in original comic
- TV Series uses kilgrave's mind control and Jessica's PTSD as a broadcer metaphors for abusive relationship
- TV series also expands abuse metaphor further than source material
- Jessica's friend Trish (a former TV child star) is a victim of childhood abuse (physical and drugs) by showbiz mothers
- Kilgrave's new backstory reveals him to be a victim of abusive childhood medical experiments

Addiction as Metaphor
- Addiction/substance abuse becomes a metaphor for both control and loss of control
- Jessica's alcohol abuse as coping mechanism
- Former soldier Simpson abuses 'red pills' that give him superpower
- Jessica's addict friend is made stalk her by Kilgrave in return for drugs

Surveillance as metaphor 
- Stalking and surveillance as also used as metaphors for abuse and control
- Jessica's surveillance work is an expression of her needs to control
- Kilgrave stalks Jessica by surveillance and, when discovered, forces her to self-surveil by sending selfies

Superpowers as metaphor
- Superpowers are not just a physical manifestation of control, but metaphor for 'the other'
- Mrs Eastman's attempt to kill Jessica is motivated both by revenge and fear of 'the gifted' (or 'other')
- Marvel's X-men have been interpreted as a metaphor/allegory for civil rights struggles ad LGBT issues

Visual metaphor in Jessica Jones
- The cockroach scenes that bookend Episode 2 are examples of visual metaphor
- At the beginning or episode, Jessica looks at a cockroach while thinking about Kilgrave's capacity for survival
- By the end of episode, Jessica has reconciled to confront Kilgrave, and symbolically crushes the cockroach in sink

Static vs dynamic metaphor
- The cockroach scenes are examples of static metaphor
- A static metaphor is a metaphor whose meaning is obvious and constant (like using red to signify sexuality). It usually reflects one characteristic and one character
- A dynamic metaphor is one that provides new information.

DIRECTING UNIT: CHOSEN DIRECTOR

Edgar Wright

For my Director I chose the British comedy Director and Writer, Edgar Wright. Edgar is 42 years old and was born in Dorset but grew up in Wells, Somerset. He studied at the Arts University, Bournemouth from 1992-1994 and received an ND in Audio-Visual. But it wasn't University where he found his love for directing. He discovered his love for directing after watching John Landis' 'American Werewolf in London' and Sam Raimi's 'Evil Dead II. He's said these are the films that made him want to become a director.

CONTEXUAL STUDIES: TWIN PEAKS

With this session, we finished off the final genre discussion which is postmodern TV. We started this by watching the first 15 minutes of an episode of the American TV Series 'Twin Peak'. By watching this I found the camera work and editing really impressive considering it was all shot on film. However, I personally found that I didn't enjoy the programme that much because of the acting from the actors. 

Twin Peaks was broadcasted from 1990-1991 having 2 seasons. It is commonly said that it was created by David Lynch but it was also created by TV crime genre writer mark Frost for ABC Network. 

DIRECTING UNIT: TAXI DRIVER SCREENING

In the session today we started by watching the film Taxi Driver. We then went on to discuss the following:

Screen language:

• its a language you must learn and will continue to learn
• It’s a complex integration of visuals and sounds
• importantly, it allows you to ADD LAYERS to the story that go beyond the words on the page of the script 
• its a language you must learn and will continue to learn throughout your career 

Taxi Driver:

• Directed by Martin Scorsese - the film is a prime example of how a director can add LAYERS to a story by the way its directed 
• made on location, with no special effects used in this film

Travis (character)

• starts as a very ordanary looking character with the way he dresses, apart from the army jacket that he wears. 
• When he starts to work out and prepare with the guns we see his scar on his back which shows that he has been through some horrible times and makes us question what the story is.
• later when we see him popping a pill and suddenly he has a mohawk showing his complete change and has almost become a soldier 

Betsy (Character)

• when we first see Betsy she is wearing a long white dress, symbolising an angel, innocence, you can almost describe the character just by looking at her.
• only 2 scenes don’t have Travis in them and that is the scene with Betsy and he co worker talking and iris and Sport, these two scenes both share the theme of a man expressing his love for the woman in the scene
• at the end of the film, Betsy’s character is darkened, and hardly seen, only her face is really seen, which makes you question if she is actually there or if this part is just in Travis’s head

Characters:

All the characters in this film are unique, distinct and invested 

Suit of Amor

• this is the costume that the character puts on when it’s going to go big and break out

Setting/locations

• time/setting/tone/character, mood, authenticity/story
• most of the locations make Travis look and feel trapped. he’s around people but never involved with them. Colour read is used in eat location in some way, whether its clothing, props or set. 

Camera:

• In the opening shot where we first see Travis, he is given the position of power by the fact he is standing up during this interview