Evaluation

The drama module this year has bee one of the most interesting, as a producer I have learned a lot about what needs to be done on set ad in planning and how frustrating it can be when people don't follow that plan. As I ultimately want to write and direct being a producer has shown me the other side of the coin so to speak, it feels like the producer is often the person struggling with control over the project with the director and this semester has taught me what it is like to be on the other side of that struggle, it will definitely effect the way I direct in the future.

When we began the project nobody wanted to be the producer, we all wanted other rolls, myself included, but I thought back to work done by most of the members of the group in the past and their presentations and realised that whilst their work in the past is good what they were missing was something to focus them and push them into working. With this in mind and the overall control and creative input I would gain from producing I decided it was worth taking a job I wasn't keen on to benefit the whole project.

The small project was directed and created by Jordan, originally a music video my main creative input to the project was the idea to take advantage of the on sync sound ad play it forwards in opposition to the visuals. I a really happy with how this worked out, I think it creates a little bit of mystery and puzzle in the narrative making the viewer question what they hear and ultimately wok out the narrative. This sense of audience participation is my favourite thing about the film and in the future I will try and explore similar ways of getting the audience to participate in the film. Watching audiences work the film out has been one of the most satisfying things about the project.

The audience ad peer reactions to Lack of Prestige have also had a big impact  as an insider it is difficult to tell if what you are producing is funny or not. to hear people laugh was a big relief. I am happy with the psst ad I think we produced a good piece of work, unfortunately I see Lack of Prestige as a big opportunity missed, we could have made something of a much higher quality.

The pre production of A Short Story in Brutality was good, we all attended most of the meetings and we discussed in depth what we each liked about the film and planned carefully what to shoot. how to dress the sets and what the actors should be like. One of the biggest problems was finding actors to take pat, I took advantage of the shu drama society which is where we got our actors. Due to illness however our lead actress had to pull out and Amy had to fill in. Not the greatest solution but there comes a point when you have to stop looking for ore ad work with what you have. Our specific most important meeting, I believe was our shot listing session, although Joe, the projects cameraman didn't attend, we did manage to get a coherent shot list of the whole film. timed and ready to storyboard. Not only would this help in the production but it meant we were all on the same page. we all had the same intentions, we were all making the same film.

In the pre production for Lack of Prestige on the other hand we had a lot of issues. Firstly with working and reworking the script and essentially with me and Christi not being on the same page. He pitched the film to me as like a brtish gritty drama that makes magic look real. I could see elements of that in his script ad tried to push it further in that direction but clearly that was not the film Christi wanted to make, instead we produced a quirky british comedy. After many rewrites we got close to an acceptable script, Christi wanted to continue working on the final scene which I thought would be good. I now know the importance of locking down the script, the changed Christi made were not exclusively in the final scene and the changes he made exasperated the confusion experienced on set. The majority of the confusion however stems back to the shot listing session, it was such a good process on the 2min I wanted to reproduce it. In the 2min the plans we made were frustratingly not followed and this time I specifically said to Christi either we can improvise on set or we shot list the whole thing. he agreed shot listing was the way to go. The problem I think with the majority of our production id that nobody but me and Christi attended the shot listing meeting or any of the other meetings, Joel was often present and I think it shows, his music fits perfectly and I believe it does so because he got a strong feeling for the film by attending the meetings. Without anyone else at the shot listing session and with Christi still working on the final scene I took on the responsibility of story boarding and produced some nice shots with the input of Christi from the session and the shots we decided on together. We used the story boards on production but they have since been lost.

I learned a lot about working with directors, in A Short Story in Brutality I leaned about trying to fuse ideas in pre production  Specifically that you have to either mix the ideas or throw one conflicting idea out and decide what to do in production in  pre production. Failing to do this wastes time on set and causes arguments. Our problem on the set for A Short story in Brutality was that nobody followed the planned shot list and the sets weren't pre dressed. I attempted to coordinate the production despite this but it was difficult and took a lot longer than it needed to.

On the Lack of Prestige the same issue unfortunately arose however this time I had asked Christi specifically if he wanted to follow the shotlist beforehand and he agreed so this time I forced Christi to follow the story boards when available. The problem was that a lot of Christi's ideas developed and changed through the production, he wanted to add things in and change bits we already filmed, I would have liked to include a lot of his ideas but I had to choose which worked and which didn't. Christi had a lot of ideas, I think putting all of the in the production would have crowded it with tricks and effects and would have taken away from the story. So restricted by taste and time I chose Christi's ideas selectively and made sure we had the coverage we needed.

I learned a lot about working with actors, both professional and unprofessional. On A Short Story in Brutality we used mainly professional actors, getting them scheduled was tricky, they kept backing out the day before but when they got on set they were professional, knew lines and were really helpful. I would have like to direct them a little more or for Jordan to direct them a little more but we concentrated on coverage. In Lack of Prestige we used non professional actors, the advantage to using them is that the characters were written for them to play and so they fit the parts perfectly. The down side was quite literally the lack of professionalism, they weren't on time, didn't know lines and acted differently on every single take, a problem in post. Even though they were good for the part in future I would rather work with the professional or semi professional actors it would run much more smoothly. On the Lack of Prestige shoot, due to the actors not turning up we ended up shooting until 6 in the morning to make sure we got everything done. I scheduled a lot of the shoots and think we could have worked to them if the actors had known the lines and Joe had known the lighting and storyboards.

Post was good in both productions due to good coverage, a few shots were unusable as always but we had enough different angles to fill in gaps. It would have been nice in both cases to do some pick ups but we just didnt have time. We learned a few effects in the Lack of Prestige edit and applied the effects learned in the Short Story in Brutality edit to our second film and generally it all went well. There were a few arguments but when it comes down to it a lot of editing is about taste and personal choice. In the 2min Amy edited and both me and Jordan had to work with her a lot to keep the project to schedule, on the 10min Jordan edited, with the editing I saw him help with in the 2min I was confident with leaving him and Christi to do the work.

Sound worked well for both projects, the guys put a lot of trust in my idea for A Short Story in Brutality's sound and I am grateful for that but all praise has to go to Joel for sound. On both projects recording were done well and music was brilliantly written despite the completely different tones of the films, I am extremely impressed, the music really finished both films.

I am not sure if it is because of my producing roll or because of my wish to make really good films but I felt like I did a lot of work for these projects. As well as all the jobs required of me I filled in and helped out wherever possible just trying to make everything run smoothly. Nothing did run smoothly but I would never expect it to, the work I put in I feel held the projects together from pre production to end. I found the level of involvement from start to finish both liberating and enlightening, seeing the ways the concepts changed in production and them were differently interpreted in the edit makes me think about how to articulate my own ideas and interpret others'.

I am happy with both films, they both have good stories and good camera work but I feel in both cases they could have been excellent. I think everything was well planned but we poorly executed those plans because no matter how early we planned on filming and conservatively scheduled we just got delayed over and over again and the projects became rushed. I think strong pre production and post production save both of our films. In the future I will push for as much production time as possible I will help this by using professional actors and not just planning long before the shoot but having other actors on back up in case the schedules get endangered. I enjoyed being a producer and learned a lot from it but still don't want to pursue it as a career.

A Short Story in Brutality and Lack of Presteige

This is our final film, Lack of Prestiege
Which was informed by our short, A Short Story in Brutality

Presenting and Class Feedback

I was a little nervous about exporting a mere 5 minutes before the deadline but our film was bound to be cutting it close after all the production problems. We didn't have time to check the disk or run a second copy if things had gone wrong so just crossed our fingers damn hard. the export was good quality so nothing went wrong, not only that but the on the spot laughs and reactions we got were great.

It was a little tense to screen a comedy as the reactions are all there for you to see but I think along with the music the acting and writing got a chance to really work its magic and the audience knew exactly when to laugh and knew exactly what they were watching.

The one response I am surprised with is that people like the performance of Nick, the market salesman and thought that Jim the magician could have been more eccentric. Whilst this is clearly an issue with rehearsing which we had no time for I am shocked that it was that way round. I thought the magicians performance may be too over the top when filming the scenes however they come across more refined on camera. Either way i'm very happy with the final piece, it got the reactions we expected and its not too poor in terms of grain however the camera work it one of the let downs, Night Shoots Are Hard!

Editing and the final product.

The editing process was an interesting one for me, Christi and Jordan were quite on the ball and apart from actually sitting at the computer and working there wasn't a lot I could do to help. That being said I still came into the edit suite as often as possible to check on things and offer constructive feedback and make sure everyone was on task. Most of the time they were and despite a tight editing schedule the work got done to a good standard in good time.

One creative thing that came from  the edit was the way we will in future treat special effects, some of the things we wanted to do didnt work and some of the things we did do could have been achieved more easily. There are a few ways we could have figured them out before production such as test shoots and test edits but the fact that the schedule changed so much made these things difficult to plan. However I am a little glad we didn't know exactly how easy it could have been, this could have led to an overuse of things popping up added with after effects as the muzzle flashes were. I think the balance between comedy, story and effect is just right, it isnt a camera exorcise but a tasteful and playful film, a fine line we could have easily fallen off.

We also have a very different end product to the script for a lot of reasons. Firstly its because of large changes in post, Christi's original script was too much for the time scale, there were too many ideas within it. We had a really long session talking about where to take the script and came up with some good ideas and simplifying the idea a lot. However, I believe, the problem with the project on the whole is that after this meeting the other group members left it to me and Christi to plan the film. They were told to come along to the scripting discussion and the shot listing session but they didn't. This lead to lots of production issues and a lack of coherence between the team. Finally a lack of professional actors and Christi's directing style led to takes being improvised and different every time causing continuity and editing problems.

I think overall that is why we have a different product, with a lack of coherence and muddled story lines we never quite knew what we were making. With the coverage I made sure of and the voice of Christi that was written in the script and executed on set we ended up with a nice final project, cobbled together from takes  a little all over the place.

Production

Day 1

Schedule:
20.30 Meet Outside uni with equipment actors and props.
21.15 Arrive at alley location.
21.45 Start Alley Shoot. Scene 2, Scene 5.
12.00 breaktime
12.30Carry on with shoot
01.30 Finish scene 5. Walk to sitting location Scene 6
2.00 Shoot scene 6
3.00 Shoot scene 7 (costume change)
4.00 Shoot ends.

Unfortunately at 2 we lost battery in the audio at 2 and only got to shoot scene 2. This was due to poor acting and bad set ups.

Day 2
Failed Day shoot

2030 arrive at location to finish scene 3 and film scene 5 and final scene
2300 Shoot scene 2
2330 walk to carpark location and shoot scene 6 and 7
0100 break
0200 Shoot subway scene
0400 fin

This time the camera battery died and we again failed to shoot scene 6 7 and the subway scene.

Day 3
Failed to shoot

Day 4
failed to shoot

Day 5
Failed to shoot

Day 6
1800 start shoot and continue till finish... which was at 0600 the next day, a hard shoot but we got it all done over the time.

Inspiration and influences on Magicians Veil

Through its many forms of script there have been a lot of different influences and inspirations, what we have arrived at takes parts from all of them and rejects other sections.

At its inception it was described to me as a "gritty realistic" portrayal of urban magic, despite it not turning out this way in the end it immediately pointed us in the direction of films such as This is England (2006 Shane Meadows) and many other Meadows films. They encouraged us to add an aspect of violence and or drugs that in "gritty British" films unfortunately represent Britain realistically. This model isn't just perpetuated by Meadows, many British films, specifically those set in London, portray Britain in this way such as Harry Brown (2009 Daniel Barber) and Kidulthood (2006 Menhaj Huda). We attempted to add a more violent and drug orientated subplot to the film but on development it became clear that this style was not right for the lightheartedness of the film. 

For some time we moved in the opposite direction, it was suggested in one of our feedback sessions that we consider our audience, could this be a children's or family film? This lead us to look a little at films like The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010 Jon Turteltaub) which deals with magic in a very realistic way. We kept the realistic aspect of the film but didn't want a family audience, a lot of our comedy comes from our character who's traits depend on his rudeness and brash qualities which contrast comically with the magicians manners.

Another film which springs to mind for me, in reference to both narrative and characteristic inspiration is The Fisher King (1991 Terry Gilliam). The slight arc at least of characters being introduced to new worlds fits nicely. The characters also share similar but not exact characteristics, at very least they are similarly opposite and the ways in which they react to one another and ultimately work together similarly reflects our film.



This is England, 2006, Meadows S. UK, Big Arty Productions, Film4.
Harry Brown, 2009, Barber D. UK, UK Film Council.
Kidulthood 2006, Huda M. UK, Stealth Films, Cipher Films.
The Sorcerer's Apprentice, 2010,Turteltaub J. USA, Walt Disney Pictures, Jerry Bruckheimer Films.
The Fisher King, 1991, Gilliam T. USA, Columbia Pictures Corporation

Magicians veil Reccie

All of our next film will be shot in the night time(ish) and will be outside in streets and markets so we looked around sheffield with a camera to see how it would look on film. Lights were not available so it wasn't a great test but we suspect if we can find a location where the background is lit well lighting the characters with small spots shouldnt be too tricky.

 This first shot is on the market in sheffield and will be practically the same as the first shot of the film.

We got a large selection for each area and these are some of the best. We will use locations that have good lighting but are also interesting to look at we hope some of these will work out.