Last scene/Deadlineee

In essence, after shooting the last scene to our short film/documentary, we had saved the last 2 weeks to edit and develop our production folder.

We had a very successful last shoot of Jon giving the tour around his room, mom and dad interviews and scenes of Jon cooking. Whilst jess applied make up to our actor, we found the room in which we were to film Jon giving a tour was still insufficient, again due to lack of set design. So to make it appear in the shot of a more teenager boys bedroom, I began cutting out pictures in magazines of anything related to cookery as the zombie in the film will be portraying a profuse passion for cooking. Amy helped me, we’d stuck down these pictures to an A3 sized paper, creating a collage to stick as posters around the room. We had also replaced and eliminated some things in the room to the convenience of when Jon gives the tour. I filmed the scene in the room in a handycam style, with some assistance off Amy and Phill of what shots we require, and for editing purposes.

cooking posters

The second scene I shot was of Jon cooking, also in a handycam style, a technique used in most documentaries. We shot a quick scene of Jon on the Xbox before shooting the mom and dad interview scenes. I’d shot that in low angles and long shots.
The interview scene with the parents went really well, we captured their emotions in close up, mid shots whilst they spoke. Phill assisted on having extreme close ups, again for the editing process.

Since, all footage had been captured by Phill and edited. The production folder has come together well, individual research and treatments have been completed by us all also analysis of audience research to enhance our production file.

We have handed in all work by deadline and anticipate high grades J

Over the past two weeks we have essentially been filming. We have shot a few scenes around Jess’s house which we are using to be Jon the zombie’s house in our documentary. Whilst i had captured location shots with Amy, Mala and phill, Jess applied make up on Jon for our next scenes of Jon walking on the street, leaving his house and a brief interview scene. I captured the interview scene, assisted by Amy in a handy cam style to give it a more documentary approach, Mala asked questions. We hoped to have also filmed the bedroom scene of Jon giving a tour around the room, we decided to have used Jess’s room but faced a slight holdback as it was not suitable in terms of props, eg- posters, cooking, poetry books due to lack of set design. 

Since, we have held production meeting whereby we discussed the expecting filming schedule and capture the footage which phill can edit. The script has now been finalized by myself and amy and have handed it to jess to continue story boarding. By the end of next week we hope to have finished filming all scenes, put together and complete our production folder and advise phill on editing our short film/documentary 

Pitch/Shooting

Last week Wednesday we delivered our pitch to our class, going through what we will be creating. They seemed very interested and liked our vision of producing a short film/documentary about a zombie.
Also Friday 18th of last week we had gone out for our first shooting, we went up Streetly where Jess lives, which will be our zombie, Jon's area in the documentary. I worked alongside Amy who gave ideas as to what shots looked best. I captured numerous shots to set locations of the documentary, of the street, in long shots, Jess's house in various shots such as close ups, wide shots and also long shots.
This week Tuesday we went filming in the town center also to set location. We had all put in input as to what shots we require as our Director, Amy was unwell and absent that day. I had captured shots of the center of Bullring in establishing shots, close ups of signs around town and static shots of people walking past, where we will be speeding up whilst editing in post production.

Within the past couple of weeks as a group we have been essentially dwelling on our ideas and now have looked at ways to put them in action in terms of filming certain scenes. From our advertising campaign of looking for an actor we received a response from someone who seemed very interested in playing the role, but lives slightly far away which means we may have problems on actual filming days where are having to travel to locations. So we thought we’d use on of Jess’s friends who is also interested and willing to play the part called Jon, we decided to meet up with him one of the days next week to go through storylines and what his role entails.

We received back the questionnaires we distributed and myself and mala sat closely together and counted up the results in order for everyone in the group to analyse individually and to discuss in our treatments.
There had been slight disagreement on the plot of our storyline and scripting, it is important to have a well-structured script before going further as we can work from it in all ways. Jess has been storyboarding some shots based on the ideas we have produced as a group and we have been doing individual planning of a potential ending.

I personally have been doing some research on essentially how to shoot a documentary to get myself familiar in terms of conventions they share, tips of camera angles and interview expertise. I found out about; 

• lighting and how it should be refrained from reflecting in the eyes
•  how the interviewees’ must never look into the camera
• equipment, what we will need

We have also been preparing for our pitch which will be taking place next week, Wednesday. We created a rough sort of plan of what we will be talking about. Jessica wrote on the board whilst myself, mala and phill generated ideas what we should talk about in the presentation.

Poster/leading roleee

Over the past week, as well as generating ideas and carrying out research, we thought it be the right time to start looking for an actor to take on the lead role to our film. We were meant to go MBC and present our ideas to the performing arts students and find someone to feature in it but found that we needed to set a proper storyline first and be more prepared. Jess produced a poster and had given me 5 to distribute around local youth theatres and drama groups. I'd put on up at where i work in Tesco on the community notices board and have already had people come in to ask.

The requirements of the actor we are looking for are quite specific just because of our vision in our head of a zombie, they are

-need to be from the ages of 16-20 slim built      
-travel quite a bit to the different shooting locations 
-and must be willing to wear stage make-up (zombie)      

We made an email address which we all can access. And i have also started looking at amateur drama groups to email on this website. Youth Theatre Groups in Birmingham researching the different documentaries

2nd project meeting

In this meeting we discussed what was achieved, what progress had been made and enhanced on our production ideas. I feel we have worked very well this week and have accomplished what needed to be done which was of

•           Researching documentaries
•           Looking for our potential lead role
•           Collection on money (for props)
•           Introduction to zombie styled makeup

In the meeting a number of topics were raised in terms of scripts, filming locations and focus groups. We decided for the script, 2 will be created one by me and one by amy. The group will then take aspects of each script to form one. We also discussed styles of scripts and how it will be written.
Regarding the locations of filming, we talked about what areas we want to film and where is best suited. So sometime next week we will be visiting these sites to make sure that’s where we want and for location reconnaissance. 

Questionnaire

Yesterday we printed off 50 copies of a questionnaire i typed up. we thought of questions which would give us an understanding as to what our potential audience might be and moreover what they expect from what we create, we came up with questions of asking them their;'

• favourite genres of films
• how they watch them
• what newspaper they read
• their interests and hobbies
• how often they watch documentaries/films 

We distributed them to some of the people in our class as we are all in the same age and have all gone away with 5 copies to give them to people outside of our class/age range to give us a diverse collection of results to work with when analysing.

Researching existing documentaries

Since our last project meeting, I as the chairperson asked everyone to go away and so some study on some short films and documentaries to enlighten ourselves with the techniques and conventions consumed. Over the weekend, I’d got onto the 4oD website and looked at generally the introductions and endings to some documentaries. I watched one of the ‘body shock’ series where a girl was born with two heads. Whilst focusing on the introduction to gain ideas on how we could possibly start off our documentary I found that they had slow music played at the start to the set the emotion and scene with personal home videos. There was a voice over introducing the main character and starting what is wrong with them along with statistical information explaining how they might be the only person in the world living this extraordinary life. The voice over then went onto saying, ‘this film tells the incredible story of (name)’s life’ I found this quite effective and could be something we consider to use in our film in terms of techniques.

5 minutes into the documentary it then cut to interview scenes with family members and the doctors where the background was blurred, another convention used in most documentaries whilst interviews are taking place and again we could use this sort of technique for our documentary.

Most documentary/films acquire the same types of conventions essentially in introductions and ending. The ending shots for this documentary were of typical home shots reflection back to the beginning. Clips of the family being happy were being shown and in this case it was the mother of the girl who was born with the two heads playing with her leaving it on a positive note. The closing scenes were of the credits scrolling down slowly with slow music.

Even though what we will be creating will be something completely different in terms of content the techniques and conventions are what will inspire us.

New brief :)

The brief for project management was distributed to us on Wednesday 14^th sept. Ian and Pete had gone through with us the fundamental aspects of managing a creative production project along with the different tasks and criteria’s. After I then had an idea of sort of project  I wanted to work on, which was creating a short film, we all then got into groups with others who were interested in the same sort of image. My group consists of 5 people, myself, Mala, Amy, Jess and Phil. Once we got together Ian had given us some time to correspond with each other and have some sort of inkling as what to have a short film about. We mostly all came to a decision of having our film based on just one person due to previous constraints in projects like creating a music video where it became difficult accommodating everyone involved also we believe it can be managed more easily. From having it based on one person we then all came to an understanding of making a documentary/sketch which acquires a purpose to it and is going to be about a fictitious character of a zombie starting university. Since then we have had project meetings whereby we discussed job roles and progressed on our ideas and enhanced them. In terms of job roles, we have Amy as our director, Jessica as our producer, I on script writing and on camera, Mala as location manager and set design and Phil on vision mixing and editing. I thought it would be essential for us all to carry out effective research to familiarise ourselves and so we are considering things together. Since, we have created agendas for our project meetings where I am chairperson with Mala who will be noting down the minutes. In our most recent project meeting we discussed what research needs to be carried out, pre-production work, resources, confirming job roles, filming locations, and what things we hope to have accomplished for our next project meeting.
I personally will be carrying out research and taking note of different documentaries and their conventions, sketches, start looking for available actors who can feature in our film and potentially gather props.