Friday 26 December 2014

SHOOT 3- The bedroom shoot problems, organising, planning, how it went

The planning and organising of the shoot along with the problems I faced
Problems-
I had organised for Lucy Carter to play the lead role but due to family matters she was unable to come to the shoot. Therefore I recast the lead role to Hollie Morris and talked her through what I had previously spoken to Lucy about.

Rose's window
Organising-
I showed Hollie the short opening of Submarine (This is the video I showed Hollie) so she would know the kind on deadpan expression I needed from her and how I wanted her to sit underneath the window. I had arranged the shoot to be at  Rose McLaughlins house as her bedroom already contained many crucial items for the meis-en-scene like the typewriter, many potted plants, books on films (I brought more though), fairy lights and the central focus her long window, which was exactly the style we wanted as it looked old and had long heavy curtains. I brought along an old retro telephone, books on film and media, bedding, a few sets of clothes for Hollie, a vase, candles, a retro clock and 2 retro cameras (one polaroid). (Photo evidence can be seen below)

How the shoot went-
It took along time to set up as I had printed and cut out around 40 pictures of modern and olden art to create the feel that the person who's room it was was beyond their age.
the professional light we used
The shoot went very well as the rooms size and shape meant that it was easy to film it without much difficulty and without breaking the 180 degree rule.

Hollie was perfect for the role as she has a very unique look that fits with the part and took all direction.

Even though it was dark outside the lights in the room along used the fairy lights and a professional light (I borrowed from a friend) meant that it was still light enough to film whilst also adding to the retro and unusual feel. I got as many shots as possible at different angles and heights to get a real variety.
                                                    

Actor:
On the right is Hollie wearing her usual clothes and on the left is her wearing the clothes I brought for her. The just under the pearl necklace, smart oversized coat and red lipstick make her look as if she is older than her years and quirky. This has intertextuality to Mollie Ringwalds character in Pretty in Pink (I have discussed the costume in a previous post) as she also wears a pink oversized coat and a pearl necklace. The under the knee socks and scrunch makes her look unusual and retro.
This is Hollies make-up
Photo evidence of the props I used-
A butterfly photo brought
Books I brought

Books and polaroid camera I brought

Clock and books I brought

Fairy lights I put up
Paint pallet and paint brush I brought
Roses horses head I put up and the images I printed, cut out and stuck up




Retro telephone I brought



Retro vase and pant set I brought. Rose's type writer and lamp I put out

Thursday 18 December 2014

SHOOT 4: Classroom Scene planning, problems, how it went, Call sheet and story board

Call Sheet and how the shoot went
Problems
We had a few problems to begin with, our actors had forgotten to come with their costume so we had to go and find some uniform from school. This was easily solved once we found the right items for them to wear. We also had a problem with one of the tripods as one of the legs seemed to be broken and so when we were filming on it, it made the camera move. 

Organising the Mise-en-Scene
When we arrived at the classroom we had to move the tables and chairs around so that we had enough room and so that it looked how we wanted it to. Once our actors got here and they were in their costumes, we added certain details to them, we gave Harris a vest to put over to add to his quirkiness.
How it went
Overall the shoot went well, as stated above we had a few problems but nothing major. Both Molly and I were filming so we were able to get different angles and a range of shots that will help for the editing. As we were filming a classroom full of people it was difficult to direct them at first, but after we had explained what we wanted we were able to get on quickly and efficiently. 
What we wanted to show
  • We asked half of the students to get out their books out and read or act like they were working and the other half to act rowdy and talk amongst themselves. This was too create a more realistic classroom scenario. Also too represent Hollie and Harri's personalities through them sitting with the sensible and hard working side connoting that they are smart and 'nerdy' which fits with their individual style. To contrast this Brad sat with the rowdy side showing his 'badboy' personality and 'jock' persona anchored by him reading his book upside down. 
  • Brad's act of throwing the ball of paper at Harri was to anchor the love triangle and that his love affection is directed at Harri. 
  • To show Harri's affection for Hollie we asked him to look directly at her longingly to clearly show this.
  • To denote Harri's and Hollies quirky personalities we included in the mise-en-scene 2 very thick hard back books one of which is the 'History of the Times' as well as Harri's 80's style tank top and Hollie's scrunch in her hair. 
Story board
This our original story board which we used for our classroom shoot, we had to draw it our selfs as we didn't have access to a printed more professional story board however this one worked just as well and helped us to create the scene that we envisioned. 

SHOOT 4: classroom planning

Extra planning for the classroom scene
This is a brief outline of our classroom shoot. We have outlined where we would like the actors to sit and what kind of shots we would like.

Wednesday 17 December 2014

PRODUCTION SCHEDULE: Update 4 all scenes

Production Schedule Update

4/12/14 - Ben, practice shoot of the shop scene.
6/12/14 - Ben and Molly practice shoot of the shop scene.
8/12/14 - Ben and Molly shoot the shop scene.
11/12/14 - All of us to go to Leeds and record the soundtrack.
12/12/14 - Molly and I are going up to Rose's house to film the bedroom scene.

TECHNOLOGY: RSS feed added to blog

Added Technology
I have added my first rss feed, this automatically updates a list of articles from the guardian.

Monday 15 December 2014

PRODUCTION SCHEDULE: Update 3

Production schedule update 
17/12/14 - We will shoot the classroom scene, we have asked the year 10 drama class to come and be the extras for our scene, we have the uniform ready for the main protagonists too.

OVER CHRISTMAS - Ben will shoot the 'Badboy' scene, he's going to do it with a mo-ped in shot so that it anchors the badboy character more.

Wednesday 10 December 2014

AUDIENCE FEEBACK: genre

The recordings of the audience feedback

Clip 1- Pretty in Pink



Clip 2- The breakfast club



Clip 3- This is England 



Clip 4- Submarine



What I did and why
I used clips from 4 different films (shown in a previous post) and showed them to a female within our primary audience. After showing her each clip I asked her two simple questions, 1. if she could name the film and 2. if she would want to watch this film. Each film has influenced our film therefore I needed to check to see if they are films that would appeal to our primary audience. This also helped us to finally decide on our genre if we wanted to still use our hybrid rom-com and social realist genre. If she liked all the genres I showed her it would mean that our film would appeal to our primary audience as clip 1. was from Pretty in pink a rom-com that influenced our shop scene and costume for Hollie and Harri. Clip 2. is from The breakfast club a teen romance which influenced Brads costume, persona and our school setting. Clip 3 from This is England which influenced our social realist genre. And finally clip 4 from Submarine which has overall heavily influenced our film. 

Results
Our respondent successfully answered all questions without help and said that she would happily watch all of these 4 films. This therefore concludes that our genre will appeal to our primary audience

AUDIENCE: Target audience update

Our audience - updated
Primary Audience
15-21: I think our primary audience would be 15-21 because our characters
 reflect this age range. We are also composing a soundtrack to reflect this 
target audience. As outlined below our BBFC rating will reflect this.

Male and Female: We have taken a hybrid approach by having Social Realist and a Rom-Com genre. The social realist and comedy will help with the male audience and the romance, stereotypically will help with the female audience

Heterosexual and Homosexual: At the start of the film we have a heterosexual and homosexual love triangle, our film is not simply hetero-normative.   

UK-wide: Although our film is set in Yorkshire we intend to promote it to a UK 
audience. This may be difficult for example Mickybo and Me, set in Northern
 Ireland, was only screened for 1 weekend in Northern Ireland compared to 
Son Of Rambowthat got screened in the UK and USA in over 300 screens.

Secondary Audience
12-14: Younger viewers who aspire to be seen as older - digitisation means that it 
has become easy to get round the BBFC ratings as they can stream download or 
copy DVD's of files from online and watch them at home. I know this for example
 I watched Wolf on Wall Street from my PC at home when aged 15!

25-34+: There is an established older audience for social realist film. Plus as
 highlighted in the section below, we have incorporated multiple intertextualities,
 not least from older films. There will also be older characters such as the parents 
later in the film which older people can relate to. 

Intertextuality
Pretty in Pink: We may do a take on a scene from Pretty in Pink where the 'Ducky' 
character dances around a record shop, but in our case he will be dancing around 
a shop to the same music 'Try a little Tenderness' but it would be an acoustic version. 
This would appeal to the younger audiences as he is being very childish and funny 
but would also appeal to the older audience as the song is more relatable to them 
as it was originally produced 1933.This film had a BBFC rating of 15.

Submarine: Our idea at the start will involve a lot of long shots of scenery just like 
at the start of Submarine. We liked this idea as we thought it would cleary establish 
to the audience the, time, date and location. We also took the idea of having a young
 teen as the main protagonist. This will encourage a younger audience as they have 
a character to relate with but as this character is very mature signified by the
 mise-en-scene of the room it will also encourage a older aged audience. This 
is a mix of our primary and secondary audience as we aim to be a 

BBFC Rating
12: Having the BBFC rating as a 12 would narrow the audience and also due to 
bad language it wouldn't be appropriate.
15: This is our primary audience but we would want this as our BBFC rating at it 
would attract a larger audience.
18: Having it as an 18 would not be appropriate as there is no server bloody 
violence or sex involved.
Summary
Overall I think the best BBFC rating to have for our film would be 15 as we would
 get our Primary audience but also a younger and older audience as young people
 (because of digitation) would watch the film to make themselves seen older. This 
would be hard to get though as Indie companies have a less chance of getting a 
15 than one of the Big 6 as they are smaller and don't have as much money.

Tuesday 9 December 2014

SHOOT 3-Storyboard and call sheet for the bedroom scene

Call sheet and story board
As all shots are panning shots to create exposition of the room so we do not need many different types of shots just as long as the mise-en-scene is clearly shown. The mise-en-scene is key as it shows exposition of the female protagonist.



Monday 8 December 2014

AUDIENCE + INDUSTRY: The Gant Rule

Definition of the Gant rule
The Gant rule simply states that an average significant hit has 10 times the amount of box office in the USA than the UK. We tested this by looking at Hunger Games Mocking Jay part 1. It made £22m in the UK and $258 in the USA proving the Gant rule.

SOUNDTRACK: Meeting with composer; Otis + Aretha

Meeting with the soundtrack composer 
On Sunday I went to Conor's to start creating ideas for the soundtrack
I explained to him the basic ideas of what we wanted for the track 
personally and then he tried it out to see if they were actually possible. 

After going through the song, Try a Little Tenderness by Otis Redding 

we looked at other versions of the song to try out different styles, this
 was mainly to see if there was an easier version we could use or if 
there was a version that would fit better.

We looked at the Glee version sung by Amber Riley, Aretha Franklin's 
version and also an acoustic version by Erik Hassle. Out of these four
 clips we looked at we decided that we could do something similar to Erik
 Hassle's version for the bedroom scene and then speed it up so
 its similar to the Glee version for the scene with the main male in as they
 both fit with the style we wanted, soft and slow and then upbeat. 

GENRE - ROMANCE CONVENTIONS/INSPIRATIONS: Flashdance, Pretty in Pink, Footloose

Romance conventions and how they might potentially inspire aspects in out film 
The films I looked at:
Pretty in Pink 
Footloose
Flashdance

Key Features in Footloose
I looked at both the original (1984) and the remake (2011).

Sound: In both movies they have the title track, Footloose, this is an iconic 
song and really fits with what the characters are doing. As this is the final 
dance scene of the movie it also creates a good ending for the film, the 
audience are left with the new equilibrium and its a happy one which is 
only enhanced by the up-beat tempo of this song.

Final Dance, Kevin Bacon 





Cowboy hat and neck tie
Costume: In the 2011 version, one of the main protagonists wears a suit but with a cowboy hat and neck tie.
Inspiration: This costume is similar to what we described for our quirky male character's costume as we spoke about having a hat, shirt and then the neck tie.






Key features in Pretty in Pink

Location: One of the most iconic scenes from Pretty in Pink is the record shop scene in which Duckie mimes along to Otis Reddings Try a little tenderness
Inspiration: As I have said before, we thought about using the scene from Pretty in Pink
where Duckie walks in to the shop and dances in our film, so as we would want intertexuality in this, we would want to try and get as close to the actual location as possible. Also,
Duckie dancing in the record shop
if we were to do a school scene instead of the dance scene, the classrooms are an idea of what we could have instead.

Sound: This scene features Try a little tenderness
Inspiration: Again, if we were to use the idea of intertexuality in our film opening then we would want to use similar music as to what is 
in this particular scene. 

Our basic idea of costume for quirky male.












Costume: Duckie wears a blazer, white shirt, cowboy neck tie, hat and glasses. Molly Ringwald's character also wears quirky vintage clothes. 
Inspiration: A lot of the costume in this film stood out for me, when we are first introduced to Duckie's character, his outfit is almost exactly what we had in mind for our quirky male. Molly Ringwald's character also is a strong representation of how we were thinking we wanted our main female character to look like.

Key features in Flashdance

Mise-en-scene and inspiration: As this film is set in the 80's it had some really 
good examples of mise-en-scene we could use, for example the
 record player in the final dance scene and throughout, we have 
talked about having a record player in our bedroom scene. This 
shot is also very similar to that in the opening scene of Billy Elliott, 
as is the entire storyline.
Close up of record player
Character and inspiration: The main protagonist in 
this film is similar to how we would 
want to portray our quirky characters, 
an outcast, someone who doesn't fit in
 etc. As I've said there are some very 
close relations between this film and 
Billy Elliott.


Extreme long shot of the room
Sound: Similar to Footloose, this film 
has an iconic song in it too which lifts 
the atmosphere and tension of what is 
going on in the scene.


PRODUCTION SCHEDULE: Update 2

Updated Production Schedule:

4/12/14 - Ben is going to do a practice shoot of the Shop scene.
6/12/14 - We will do the actual filming of the Shop scene.
9/12/14 - We are all going to Leeds to record the soundtrack for the film.
11/12/14 - Molly is going to do a practice shoot of the classroom scene in B10.
11/12/14 - We are going to do the actual filming of the classroom after school.

Sunday 7 December 2014

PRODUCTION SCHEDULE: Update

Updated production schedule
4/12/14 - Ben, practice shoot of the shop scene.
6/12/14 - Ben and Molly practice shoot of the shop scene.
8/12/14 - Ben and Molly shoot the shop scene.
11/12/14 - All of us to go to Leeds and record the soundtrack.
12/12/14 - Molly is going up to Rose's house to film the bedroom scene.

Friday 5 December 2014

Weekly Podcast - 4

This is our fourth weekly podcast


In this we talk about:-
Distribution
Marketing
Practise shots of the classroom scene
Extra Scenary shots

PRODUCTION SCHEDULE 1

Our initial Production Schedule:

4/12/14 - Ben is going to do a practice shoot of the Shop scene. In this he is going to experiment with the different camera angles and show Harri what is going to happen and how we want Harri to act.

6/12/14 - We will do the actual filming of the Shop scene. After school from approximately 3pm onwards we will aim to get the whole of the shop scene filmed.

9/12/14 - We are all going to Leeds to record the soundtrack for the film. We will meet Conor at the train station, walk to the college and record the music we need for the film.


11/12/14 - Molly is going to do a practice shoot of the classroom scene in B10. At dinner Molly will go to B10 and move the tables to how we want and practice the camera angles so that when we get there we can be ready to film properly.


11/12/14 - We are going to do the actual filming of the classroom after school.

Monday 1 December 2014

INDUSTRY: Notes on distribution

Notes on Distribution
A film distributor is a company or individual responsible for the marketing of a film.(simple explanation from (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_distributor)

What is a Distributor?

In terms of shorts, a distributor is an individual or organisation who will represent your film at festivals and markets around the world and who will attempt to sell it to television (including terrestrial, cable and satellite), airlines and other companies that show short films. The major short film distributors in the UK are (in alphabetical order): Dazzle, Futureshorts, Network Ireland TV and Shorts International. See the distributor section of our Related Links: Exhibition & Distribution – Shorts for information and links to these distributors and others.

In terms of features, a distributor is generally an organisation who handles the theatrical release of a film in a particular country as well as the marketing and circulation of films for home viewing (DVD, Video-On-Demand, Download, Television etc). Often feature films have different distributors representing them in different territories and different distributors handling the home-viewing circulation. Independent film distribution in the UK is generally managed by indie distributors such as Metrodome, Optimum Releasing and Momentum. See the distributor section of our Related Links: Exhibition & Distribution – Features for information and links to these distributors and others. (from http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/filmmaking/guide/distribution/distribution)

Distributor (2nd source)

Distribution is the highly competitive business of launching and sustaining films in the market place.
Like other forms of entertainment, the film business is product-driven: the films themselves are the reason why most people buy cinema tickets. But how do people get to know about the range of films on offer, or coming soon, in the first place? How do they come to feel they want to see particular films and go to the cinema to do so? UK film distributors alone spend around £300 million a year on bringing new releases to market, and building awareness and interest among audiences. It's a fast-moving, highly competitive, high-stakes business.

Distributor notes:

  • Middle men between producers and exhibitors
  • Producers often pre-sell distribution rights to finance production. Michael Leigh and Ken Loach do this to distribution companies in European countries e.g Spain, Italy, Germany and France. Working Title sometimes do this but low budget films rely on this technique.
  • Distributors are primarily responsible for marketing
  • Producers often attempt to create hype during production and pre-production
  • Distributers decide upon the release dates, it remains conventional to stagger release dates across different markets E.g Love actually is heavily related with Christmas as they used a seasonal release strategy (DVD came out just before Christmas and was first shown on Tv around Christmas as well) as well as the posters and CD covers had connotations of Christmas. Saw and Paranormal activity franchise  are now associated with Halloween.
  • For film distribution they have to involve the audience, this is becoming a bigger and bigger issue, user generated content e.g fan art for Star Wars (free marketing) Snakes on a plane - extreme example of this, the producers invited an audience to name their film.
  • WT are a good example of a production company that almost always gets involved in the marketing even though they're not a distribution companyLots of online material- they created games, Saun of the dead, space invaders, Hot Fuzz, Pac man on their website. Muli-lingual Facebook groups, Spanish and French official group for the movie Paul, they have money to spend on this in contrast to Warp.
  • Star wars fan art
  • Films of all types and people are looking for a gap in the market, for example if there are lots of children Disney film coming out around the same time you could try and bring out a very different genre of film like a horror. If you have a similar film to a big tentpole film then you would wait 3-4 week to release yours

What specific stratagies are involved in film marketing?

  • Teaser trailers e.g Star Wars
  • Production company - pre- production and production blogging, UGC (audience interactivity) can happen at any stage inc. exhibition
  • Release date, awareness of what else is currently on the market and thinking of rolling regional releases e.g Avatar was released simultaneously. Reduces marketing costs, create hype, standard to release is staggered because hoping its a hit in one major market, creates hype, one sets of prints sent round is expensive
  • Main trailer possibly differentiated for differentiated for different markets, posters possibly differentiated for different markets, Tv spots, cast and crew doing Tv tours to promote films, DVD and  Blueray additions, initial release with no extras = vanilla release then Special addition, Un cut addition may have a higher age rating, the director of Blade runner, director of this was unhappy with the cinema release so you can get directors cuts, collectors addition = more extras
  • For films such as Halloween, Blade Runner ect, ultimate addition (lots of unseen extras) New Harry Potters DVD's being re released with new covers creating collectors covers.
DB distribution