Thursday, 28 February 2013

Lighting tests and Trouble shooting.

A few days ago me Joe and Jordan sat down and had a little chat about the storyboard for the fight scene, we decided it would come together more in the edit but did note that we should get: POV shots from all characters, profile shots of the fight, blood splatter cutaways, a wide shot and a shot of Jenny crying. We also talked about a few lighting plans for the rooms we will be shooting in. Finally when it got dark at 5.30 we went to our exterior locations to see if they were well lit enough for night shoots or if we would need to light them ourselves or even set it in daytime.

This first few images is the Won Ting Chinese take away we plan to shoot some of the stalking at. I played around with the ISO a little bit to try and get the right amount of light but it was quite dark. We are hoping and thinking that when we shoot there will be no other people around so the movement of the characters in the static shot will draw the eye of the audience.








This viedo shows the kind of motion that is visible. Although there are a lot of people around it is clear that the characters would be visible. 



The tunnel is the other location we looked at, the lights are dim but the gaps in them create a really nice effect we want to keep, we decided despite the darkness and possible gain in the image it would be best no to compromise the lighting pattern by spotlighting any of the characters in the tunnel.


These videos show a rough but realistic example of what the final image will be like without lighting.

The rest of the images are tests to see what the light is like in the light and dark sections separately on different ISO's.




















I personally like the images where, when in the dark, the characters cannot be seen at all, the effect this will give will be that the following character will light up when the other two go dark and vice versa. However the problem with this is that when in the light they are still dark, also narratively our stalker, Dean, will be wearing a black hoodie and therefore be difficult to see either way.

Its a fine line to tread but I think that we compromise and end up with something really nice.

Trouble shooting!
Whilst the second reccie went really well and we were all geared up for shooting I got an email from our actress Kenzzie, unfortunately she is ill and in hospital so she wont be able to appear in the film.... We had no specific back up so the hunt for actress' began again but to no avail to date and we NEED to shoot this weekend. I think that if we can't find anyone our editor Amy should step in, we have been desperately looking but its not going well so I think its a nessecary contingency. Jordan disagrees with me and doesnt think that she is right for the part but I feel that Jenny isn't that important to the success of the film, its all about Dean, that what we need to get right, not Jenny.

Saturday, 23 February 2013

Kit List and Shooting Schedule

Booking list for Wednesdays Shoot along with the shooting Schedule!

  • 30cm Reflector
  • Audio Technica 8015 mic
  • Boom Pole
  • Clapper Board
  • Dedo DLH4 Kit
  • Diffusers
  • Kino Flo Diva Lite 400
  • Mains Extension
  • Male XLR- Female XLR
  • Marantz PMD 661
  • Rode NT-4
  • Camera Tripod x2
  • Canon DSLR 600D with 18-35mm lens
  • Cannon DSLR 60D with 18-35mm lens + 18-55mm lens

MEET TIME: 16.00 @bus station.

TIME
SCENE
SHOT
DESCRIPTION
ACTORS
LENGTH
16.30
4
1
CU of hand track down to face
J
4s
16.50
4
2
Blood drip from hand to hand (ring)
J
3s
17.10
4
3
Shot from in sink
J
2s
17.30
4
4
CU Tap running, being turned on + off
J
3s



BREAK


18.00
1
1
Low angle dean holding ring.
J.
3s
18.20
1
2
ECU ring. Box snaps shut.
J.
3s
18.40
1
3
Sofa profile shot of Dean Jenny comes in Pans across as she comes in and gets her coat and goes back into the kitchen.
J.K.
30s
19.10
1
4
Reverse of shot3 OSS Jenny.
J.K
30s
19.30
1
5
CU of mouth on hug
J.K.
2s
19.40
1
6
ECU of phone steal
J.K.
3s
19.50
1
7
ECU of phone message
J.
3s
20.30
1
8
Medium long of Jennys reaction. She leaves and he waves goodbye phone behind his back. Dean fumbles ring in pocket and slams door behind him
J.K.
40s
Thats the plan as forced by busy actors and sunset times. Hopefully all will work our, I give roughly 20-40 mins for each shot, I want to use all of that time for alternate takes and lighting planning. This should be Wednesday's shooting schedule and we should have some good rushes to edit during the week.

Friday, 22 February 2013

Casting take 2

So I got quite a few replies from possible actors, a lot of them were interested and even more were interested but didnt have the time which is encouraging. We only got 1 female possibility for Jenny, Kenzie Harvey, who wasnt able to come in and officially cast but looks the part and was really interested when I spoke to her online about the project. Jonny Carroll was the most interested in playing Dean so we met with him today, he looks the part and read through the script well. So we are finally cast, shooting begins wednesday!

Tuesday, 19 February 2013

Searching for actors

This morning I sent out even more emails to possible actors, heres what I sent them:

Hi there my name is Robin and I am a 2nd year Film Student from SHU, got your details from blackboard where you said you might be interested in participating in student films, well here is your chance! I am producing a short 2min drama about rage and anger. I need cast members definitely and would love to meet up to talk to you about the film asap to see if you are right for the part or if your interested. 

As for the film itself its going to be a reverse film (like The Scientist coldplay video) so it should be a fairly interesting project to be a part of, we are quite flexible with our shooting dates and are very near ready to start shooting. The whole production should only really take 3-4days if all goes well so it should be a nice little project for you to get involved in.

I attached a copy of the forward moving script so you can get a good idea of the story, we already have someone playing Tom but the other two roles are available, send me an email if you are interested and we can meet up at uni asap.


Hopefully I will get replies soon.

Monday, 18 February 2013

Pitching the 10 min and discussing the 2 min.

For the whole project we need to produce two films, today we discussed the 2 min film in depth with our tutor as well as discussing the whole 10min with the group. This was really helpful, we got a lot of good feedback about the work and some new directions to go in including making it a family movie and mixing in my idea about repressed anger. It definitely made the film more attractive to me, I still need to read the script but once we get the 2 min out of the way I will start working really hard on that itself.

Till then its all about the 2 minute, we got a lot of good feedback about that too, especially in the form of revenge thrillers. Specifically "Dead Man's Shoes" (2004 Shane Meadows), the world Richard is in, and the murders he commits are given context and his anti hero character hinges on the evil of those around him. One of the conflicts with our project and this film is that our "anti hero" doesn't have a really big reason to commit the awful act of violence, we need to walk a fine line of not making him too hatable and getting the audience towards empathising.

We met after the class and discussed a few things, first off we finalised our locations, my house works really well for the scene of Dean and Jenny. This is simply because when I wrote it in I thought about my living room and kitchen so with Christi's set dressing they should look good. Secondly we are going to use Christi's house for the second location and bathroom, his room is big enough and he thinks he can dress it to look like a clean bachelors apartment. 

So its all going well, unfortunately I still dont have all of the actors but they are on the way, we have Tom cast but we need Dean and Jenny. I'm going to get Nathan to help me find two other actors asap!

Wednesday, 13 February 2013

Re scripting and Shot listing!

After scripting out Jordans idea and talking it through, taking it all the way to a basic practice shoot we were all fairly confident about the project so we met up on monday to discuss where to go from here. Unfortunately Joe wasn't there and because of her difficulty getting about at the moment Amy couldn't attend either but we still got a lot of work done!

Firstly we had to look at amending the schedule, I wanted to shoot this weekend but it turns out thats not going to be possible because of a lack of actors. I posted on the ShuDrama facebook about a casting session but nobody got back to me. Since then however I have found one of our three actors, he could be either part, I have worked with him before and trust his skills as an actor. 

The monday session was really helpful and as a producer I think I really got a handle on the more creative part of my role. Whilst I get that Jordan has the majority of the creative control I really wanted to nail down shot for shot what the film will be, in doing so a lot of "kind ofs" and "a bit like"s were thrown out and I flt as though it was my job to settle creative disputes and change kind of's to exactly what they would be. I notated on the script and this is what it ended up like:
With my own script slightly adapted and the scenes divided literally into single shots I wrote a shotlist to be storyboarded. 

That is it or now, the search for actors, prop gathering and planning a pitch for the lesson should keep us busy, even though we are behind schedule I am not worried. 

Tuesday, 12 February 2013

Editing the practice shoot!

We did the practice shoot yesterday, we didn't get a lot done, it ended up being a little bit of experimenting and a little bit of a reccie as we didn't have a woman to act and Christie and Joe couldn't come.

As it is only a practice shoot I thought I might as well edit it myself and document what I do to help Amy out when she is editing. First I learned how to turn images black and white and reverse them. This is reletively simple with the speed control (right click the clip) and with the image control effects. I then looked at two similar shots from the day to compare their quality, one was taken in black and white (left) with the monochrome setting on the camera and the other was grey scaled in post (right).
To me it seems like the converted greyscale is better quality however I have another example.

In this shot I actually preferred the clip taken in b/w however after altering the contrast on the other clip it looked better. It is however not as good a take in general even if the film is to be converted to b/w in post for this exercise I am going to use the clip taken in monochrome. On the bright side the blood is really easy to see which is excellent! The shot comes across really nicely, when we consider the framing a little more and set the shot up a little better with lighting im sure it will be brilliant.

Another thing I learned or had confirmed in the edit is that the two "stalking" shots we had took up a lot of time, although they are not final and would be tighter we planned on having a few other too, at the moment they already take up a minute!

Finally I discovered that it is really confusing to edit a scene backwards, especially the fight scene which relies on continuity. I suggest when we edit the final project and rushes that we edit them forwards first and then reverse the whole film at once, reversing parts on separate time lines to review it as the process goes on. This is simply because of how confusing it is to backwards edit something.

I have a lot of images from the day too, I will upload and talk about the day in general soon.
Here is the final experiment/ practice.

Whilst it is a little dodgy you can clearly see a lot of the scenes, stalking, the fight and washing the hands. The fact that they all work backwards has given me the confidence to go ahead with the full film and the shot by shot planning will be done soon.

Reccie/ Practice shoot

 This first image is a quite high ISO but is a basic shot of the tunnel we want to shoot in.


 The next few are a little darker, thats the kind of ISO we want to shoot at so we will definitely need lights. However the location is really nice, we definitely want to use it.









 This is a few shots from a roof of a car park, it overlooks "Won Ting" a restaurant that we plan for Tom and Jenny to meet.





This is the second tunnel we looked at, it wasn't quite as dramatically lit so we are going to use the other one.


 This final reccie was of another potential stalking location however it might be a little to rural for the scene.



 The house we used for the location wasn't ideal but did work. The window let a lot of light in but for shooting we would have them closed, more lighting would be needed. The bed was well located and the wall just by it worked well for Jenny being thrown. The room was a little small though, we didnt have a lot of room to fight in.



This bathroom was cramped and the tap was wrong but light was strong enough and we got the practice and shots we needed to test.

Finally we tested a liquid latex solution that looked really cool. With blood effects on top  I think it will add realism and make the bathroom scene look really special.