Production: Second Set of Footage (External Shots: Scenes 2-4)

Our second day of filming was where we would have to start filming external shots; some easy, some complicated. Because we couldn't get all of our footage shot in one day, we aimed to film at least scenes 2 to 4, thus giving us at least half the footage we would need for our final piece.

We stayed in one area location (between Carshalton and Sutton) to get this days shots. Any other shots that we need for our film would require travelling around via train, which would be rather expensive to do for two days when we could just film everything in 1 day.

This days shoot included bus footage, of which was quite difficult to produce at good quality. We had to take multiple shots and attempts during these travelling scenes, with production members constantly getting on and off of buses in order to create the shots we needed.
For example, if we wanted a scene of our actor getting on the bus, beeping his Oyster card, walking towards his seat and sitting down, we could not just film this it in one take. This is because there would be no angle variety, no shots of the expression on our actors face and there would also be a larger possibility of either being told to stop filming (regardless to the fact if we had permission or not) or members of the public on the bus watching the camera holder following our actor. It would also be very jumpy and not contain any of the shots that we desired or planned.

However, regardless to the difficulty and large effort we had to put into this shoot, one of the positive points of our second shoots was the weather. We were lucky enough to have weather that was exactly what we wanted for our film; dry, light and overcast. This weather made all of our shots look exactly how we wanted them; clear, cold yet 'normal'. We didn't want anything too dramatic (such as a storm or snow) but then we also didn't want something that was massively positive or optimistic (such as sunshine or rainbows).

Throughout the shoot, we only really had tiny problems. One of the main problems was if ever a member of the public looked into the camera during filming. We only noticed these wandering eyes during our overview of the clips, however we will try our best and find a way to cut out any noticeable 'curious' people during post-production.

Overall, the shoot was very well done. We got all the footage we aimed for shot, rarely had any troubles or conflicts with our filming, and overall produced some very nice, high quality clips that will definitely look good in our final product.

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Production: First Set of Footage (Internal Shots: Scene 1)

The only equipment we used for this recording session was a Cannon 550D EOS camera and and on-board external microphone. We decided not to use any additional lighting as the scene already had enough lighting to work with (and could be manipulated at a later date if we desired too) and it may have made the scene seem a little too vibrant and unrealistic.

We also couldn't use a tripod due to a missing plate that would hold the camera in place. We could have called it a day and not recorded anything, but we wanted to stick to plan. So, we improvised and used other surfaces and methods of holding the camera. For example, for the mid-low angle shot, we balanced the camera on an incense burner and placed it on the small coffee table in the middle of the room.
Although this improvisation was an extremely risky method to use, the results
 we came up with were great! There was only the smallest amount of shaking for hand held shots and all the angles and shots looked like they could have been created using a tripod anyway.

Here is a montage video that shows and labels the different angles and shots we took during the first part of production. I placed annotations on the YouTube video for notes on the shots we took.



Below are some photos that Matt and I had taken of our first scenes' set and shoot. These were taken to show the conditions in which we were working in, before and after the tripod malfunction, as well as key shots we felt should be recorded for notable notice.

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Production: First Attempt Issues

We all attended our arrange date to begin film production, however we came across a few issues and did not gain a lot of footage from our session.
Our first issue involved the camera being faulty. It repeatedly told us that our SD memory card was full, regardless to the fact there was not one piece of content on it. Our second problem involved the tripod; it's plate that holds the camera in place began to jam and wouldn't open or close properly, which was then followed by the problem of the panning lever being too stiff for any smooth or faster movement.

However, here are a couple of pictures that show us trying to work with this problem.

We later agreed to replace and fix the equipment at school on the next Monday and rearranged our filming sessions; 27th November would be used for internal shots and the 29th November would be our external shots recording session.

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Production Meeting: Plan Of Action

On the 22nd November 2012, we made a plan to meet and begin filming our projects external shots for the 25th November. We chose to do the external shots first because we felt they would have required a lot more effort and had a lot more that could go wrong with them, so we had to make sure we took a lot of time to produce the shots to how we wanted them.

We agreed to all meet at 11:30 at Strawberry Lodge, which was only a short distance away from Matt's House; the location where we would be beginning our external shots from.

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Planning: Script For Opening Arguement Scene

In the opening scene, when our actor is sitting on his sofa looking frustrated, there will be an argument happening in the background between the boy's parents. Although recording the argument using improvisation might be more realistic, it will cause a lot of hesitation and confusion on what things to say. So, with this in mind, we had to create a very brief script for our parent actors to read from and hopefully feel inspired by during our recording session.

Luckily, thanks to post-audio-production programs, we can delete any silence or awkward/unrealistic sounding lines and mix it all tight together in the final file. I will also apply a filter to the piece that will create a muffled, from another room effect.

This is our brief script of which Matt and Katie would lightly follow.

This idea of improvising some of the script was inspired by the techniques that Ken Loach often uses in his films with unscripted scenes. This is to create a realistic atmosphere and responses from the actors.

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Pre-Production: Costume & Character

The next stage of pre-production, which would lead to creating our film, was to plan how we wanted our characters to look. We only had one main acting character in our film, thus meaning we didn't have to plan a costume and personality for a whole cast; just one person. Any one else in the film would be purely dressed as they are; in what they would wear in public in the winter months and out and about.

When it came to designing our protagonist, we wanted his personality to consist of the following features:

We felt that these were the appropriate traits for our character in our film. A lot of social realistic films protagonists are often quite aggressive and violent, however we decided to use a different technique and idea to express any aggression in our character by making him quickly frustrated rather than violent. We also figured since he wasn't part of any gang culture etc, he would probably be a bit of a loner and/or be a little akward in real life, especially what with dealing with life at home, making him bottle up his feelings a lot. This also helps the viewer understand why he will not have a massive script, as he likes to keep to himself.

We then began to design and creating a labelled diagram for our protagonists' costume. Matt and I each drew an interpretation of the characters costume whilst Katie helped us with the annotating.

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Planning: Script & Storyboarding

One of the most important stages of the planning was to write a script. Katie produced our script for us.

Anchored Renegade

To also aid us with our project, we had to create a storyboard to know exactly how and what we were going to produce. So, following the script that Katie had written for us, Matt and I began to create visual image versions/format of the script. There were around 16 pages and 30+ different shots, I have scanned and placed them all into a PowerPoint presentation to view. We will carry these sheets of paper, along with the script, around with us during our production stage/filming, so we know exactly what shots and compositions to take.
Here is our storyboard that was uploaded onto http://www.SlideShare.net (open in full screen for readable quality):

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Research into Environments of the Real World

Before we began our project, we wanted to explore different settings to see which would be appropriate or interesting yet realistic for our project.

One of the ideas that we discussed and had to consider was that in order for our film to be realistic in Britain, it is likely the weather and overall atmosphere would have to be cloudy, dull and almost miserable due to the frequent cold weather we have here. We felt this added a more realistic feel to the film if we used this atmosphere rather than a bright, sunny one.

Another idea we considered  was the fact that the setting and atmosphere could set the entire mood of the piece, so we had to make sure it suited the theme of the film.

Here is a piece of footage and notes I created (using my smart phone camera and Sony Vegas Pro 12 to edit together) on ideas for location and setting:

Since public transport was going to be one of the main aspects and themes of our film, we had to make sure we researched how we were going to go about filming these scenes. One of the factors that we had to consider for when we filmed in a public transport area was getting permission to do so. In the UK, along with many other countries, filming (or photography) on public transport for projects such as films, advertisements and music videos, is forbidden unless you own the correct rights and permits to do so. Permits can be bought online via the services you require (for example; The Underground, Transport for London, Southern Train Services).

However, we still decided to contact a member of staff who works in a public transport based area (in our case, Southern Train Services). This was so we didn't make any unnecessary payments or approaches for our project, as it was only a non-profit student film. When we asked, the member of staff at first told us exactly as any website would; that we need to buy a permit. However, upon further investigation, the man called his manager and we found out we only really needed a piece of evidence of a school permission form as it was only a non-profit student film. So, we gained this permission form and showed it on our next visit to the train station.

Matt also decided to write an email to TFL (Transport For London) to contact them anyway to ask for permission and make sure that what we were doing was legal and okay to do. He contacted them via the email service 'Swan Webmail'.

We gained feedback of the same kind stating we just needed proof of permission from our school, so we made sure to always carry round a permission form during filming.

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Creating A Production Company Logo

For this group project, we felt we needed an identity or logo to represent our 'short film company'. We had already had a production meeting organizing and deciding on a name (Makley Productions) but we also felt a visual presentation of this identity would have been appropriate to include as a credit in our final piece.

We began looking into different film production companies, such as Paramount and 20^th Century Fox, for inspirations from their logos.

I found a video on YouTube that showed some of the company logo’s that we looked at.

After looking at these logos, we started planning our own. We first created our actual logo. We used a sans-serif tall white font. It did however contain a few interesting little details in the font that made it technically half sans-serif, half serif. We wanted to keep the logo simple, and thus we did.

We had some footage that we recorded during one of our 'camera testing' sessions, which was set on our school playground and focused on lots of seagulls in flight. We decided this would be a good piece of stock footage to use for an animated version of our logo, as it could be manipulated to look very professional easily.
I decided to take on the technical side of this process as well as some of the creative side.

During discussion of our design, I created a storyboard so I that I had knew what to work with and from. It stated information such as the times that certain visuals would be visible and what audio would be audible etc, the information given in these storyboards had to be quite concrete to ensure that I followed what the group had discussed and decided on. It also made sure I didn't get side-tracked or put in any other ideas that may have ended up not suiting the logo at all. However, the final product may not be 100% the same as my initial idea plan.

I began by creating a new project and importing the full raw footage into Sony Vegas Pro 12, a video editing program. By importing the raw footage, I had full access to every piece of footage I would or could need. I then cut and split through the video footage and found the clip that I needed for the logo.

The first step I took after this was to choose a frame in which the footage would freeze frame at, which meant I had to look for a clear frame rather than one that was blurred or inaccurate from the storyboards we made. However, I could not find the clear shot I needed that was in the same position as the one we had planned, so I had to improvise and find the nearest clear shot I could. It was on the opposite side of the screen but it still seemed appropriate luckily.

I then created an inverted mask on top of the video layer and created a circle that was set to follow and gradually shrinks on to the seagull. This circle would then freeze at the same time as when the freeze frame was placed.

I then had to take audio into account and apply some extra audio to the footage to make it seem more interesting and clear, as the raw footage's sound was extremely distorted, noisy and would have sounded very unprofessional. I downloaded some copyright-free source sounds from a website called http://soundbible.com. The sounds were simple wind noises which, in reality, could have been done easily by us, however we didn’t feel it necessary considering the easy access we had to the sounds otherwise. It also would have been a lot higher quality from another source.

We could however use the sounds of the seagull cries from our footage, however the cries that were from the particular clip we used had distortion and talking over them, so I had to venture back through the other pieces of footage to find different, clearer cries and move them to the section of visuals we were using.

I also wanted to add some background music to the piece just to add a little more drama and atmosphere to it all. I needed a music piece that was smooth, soothing and calm. I added a piece from the official soundtrack of a game called Clannad called 'Town, Flow of Time, People'. This piece suited the scene very well, it almost sounds like a soothing wind itself so it blended well with all the sound effects.

The next step involved generating text onto a new layer, above the footage,stating our company name; Makley Productions. I chose a sans-serif, tall, white font for the logo as it suited the idea of modern films, whereas a serif font with any other colour or look would have looked dated. The title had a kerning adjustment from the start of the clip to the end, making it move slightly. A fade transition was then applied to all layers; visual and audio to ensure a smooth exit of the clip.

And this is our final logo;

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