Production Meeting: Synopsis & Planning

In our second production meeting, we began to produce ideas on what our film was actually going to be about. We began to write possible synopsis ideas using Pages on a Mac.
Te following screenshot shows our first synopsis idea.

Matthew also produced this video to create a visual version of ideas that we had come up with in this synopsis.

Fellow classmates puts comments on to our work and highlighted them with yellow markers so we would know exactly what they were talking about. A lot of the comments didn't seem very useful or even aware of our story's purpose, thus leading us to believe that our synopsis, and overall plot, was not understood and needed some changes.

So from the comments we got and further research/brainstorming, we then produced a second synopsis.

This idea was eventually cut due to how complicated the piece would have been. It was also due to the fact that, regardless to the 'realistic; features the idea possessed, it wasn't very believable and seemed a little too dramatic for a normal persons every day life.

We were finally getting the hang of creating synopsis', which the second one being even better than the first and giving a clearer idea. We did however feel this story that we had created was a little too unrealistic and would be almost impossible to film at a high quality..

So, we finally put in all of our ideal ideas and worked on a final synopsis was the one we decided to use; containing elements of the two previous ideas but with a new plot entirely.


This is our final synopsis and plot idea. This will be what we produce for our final product.

Target Audience:
We then decided to jot down what our preferred target audience for our short film would be;

Although we may not meet these EXACT preferences in the final piece, we will make sure to stick as much as we can to this audience type. We have however noticed that our target audience seems to be quite limited, so if we are to match these targets, we must make sure to make quite specific points throughout our film to match their stereotypical appeals.

Age Rating:

We also decided that our film would have an age 12A certificate on it. This was for a few reasons.

1. 12 is an age that is often involved with or approaching being involved with a lot of themes that are currently in social realist films of today. This could show the youth that this pathway in the film isn't a good one to take and may provide a role model for them if they ever feel the urge to runaway themselves; showing a way to cope or deal with the situation correctly.
2. We also chose the age 12 as this is when our youth start to find themselves and become their own person, choosing what will influence their actions and self. Any younger, say for a PG rating, could possibly influence children to runaway from home or act antisocial getting involved in family arguments on purpose due to having be influence by our film. We would NOT want that effect on children, it would cause a very negative response for us as producers and would promote our film as being bad.
3. We also considered how there isn't any offensive content in the film either though, aside one 'mouthed' profanity which could be misheard or misinterpreted. We did however take measures to make sure this wouldn't be seen as offensive to anyone and boosted the 12A certificate idea. We also would want their parents to be aware of the content they are watching, thus encouraging the fact that a 12A certificate is appropriate.

Gender Preference:

We didn't particularly chose a gender preference or aim for our film, however gender targeting will be present in our film due to the fact we will be using a male actor. It is far more likely that a male will relate to a male character than a female audience. However, we will make sure not to assert the theme of masculinity in our film, as we do wish both genders to be able to watch our film without having to feel they stand for a gender.

Class:
As most social realistic films are about working class people, we wanted the film to be best viewed by this class too, as we felt they would relate to it best. We did however think that middle-class may appreciate the film too, as it may seem dramatic to them. However, overall, working class people will best be suited to our film.

Overall, I quite like our final film synopsis/idea and I think we can definitely match some of the typical conventions and themes that are often approached in social realism films, as well as challenge some of the presentation techniques that are used to get them across the an audience.
It would also be a great idea to reference any information and knowledge we gained from Ken Loach, as he focussed quite a lot of his work on the idea of homelessness; which strongly relates to our film idea of running about and having no where to go (being homeless).

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Pre-Production: Working With Focus

Focus is something that we wanted to experiment with and use in our short film product. Focus can be used to create a depth of field and point of focus. We all decided to practice the technique. Matt and Katie filmed some footage exploring this camera visual technique and I created a video that includes notes and possible uses for this technique.

Here is the video that shows our learning process on using this filming technique.


We then started thinking about possible interesting ideas we could use in our short film to implicate the focus idea. We knew that focus helps to viewer notice or understand important objects on scene, so we decided to use this idea to think of ways to implicate focus into our short film.

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Research: Camera Angles & Distances

We didn't want to walk into our project completely blind on how to choreograph and set our short film, so we looked back on some research that Katie had created that describes the different uses and advantages of different camera shot styles.

She uploaded this research presentation to SlideShare.

Camera angles from KatieeBeth

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Assembling Equipment

In order to even attempt to film or create any sort of  movie image product, you need to have certain pieces of equipment and a knowledge of how to use them. These range from power sources to suitable lighting to sound equipment and more. I created a basic Powerpoint Presentation to show any equipment that is essential (or optional in some cases) to filming. This was uploaded to Authorstream.

My group also created a step by step video guide to assembling and using some of the major parts of equipment that would be required for a filming project.

Also, I created a diagram that shows how lighting is usually placed and use on a film set. This would be used later on during production for if we ever needed reference as to how to set any artificial lighting on sets.

Lighting Equipment Set-Up Diagram

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Project Practice: Creating A Scene

As a class, we were all assigned different roles and were set the challenge of creating a piece of footage that we would all later, in our groups, edit and render to post as a short film scene. Although I was not assigned an official role, I decided to personally focus on and take notes on continuity and how the actors were set out, which would be called choreography on a professional set.

The hardware and equipment we set up and used included; a Canon 550D EOS camera, an external boom microphone, tripod (to support the camera and keep the visuals still) and an SD card that was used to store the footage on.

The shoot went very well overall. The only issue I personally felt the shoot had was the time we consumed in order to create the shots. However, this could be argued by the fact that this was our first filming shoot and we would did not entirely know what we were doing. We had to learn how to create a piece of footage somehow. We shot many takes and camera angle varieties, including master shots, over the shoulder shots and other interesting angles that would usually be used in short films. These would then be cut into a scene using Final Cut Pro on a Mac.

We got into our group and began editing the footage together. We were focussing on the piece being fluid, creative and pleasant to look at, as well as understanding how visuals and audio work together.

This is what we created using the footage we had shot during the class shoot:


By creating this piece of footage, it allowed us all to practise the use of post-production editing software such as Final Cut Pro and also allowed us to become comfortable with using hardware such as cameras and boom microphones.
It also gave us a much better understanding of how to create well cut clips, especially shots that follow into each other. Part of creating a successful film is to make sure the clips we use cut into each other fluidly. I think our best example of a fluid cut is from 0:04 - 0:06, as our actors movement match up really well through these two shots. I also really like how we'd focus on one of the actors face if they were speaking at some points, giving full attention to them. This taught us how we can present ideas and any important 'objects' in our own films shots, knowing how to focus on points of interest.

We did however have a few issues with noise, which can be heard. Although very faint, there are certain points of the film where noise in the background is slightly louder than other clips. This would be due to the production value rather than the post-production alterations. This problem will need to be tackled sufficiently during the production of our short film project.

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Production Meeting: Starting Off!

Today in Media Studies (4th October 2012), we began to take action on our projects by choosing our team mates/groups of which we would work with through this project.

I am in a group with Matt Martyn and Katie Jones.

Our first meeting consisted of thinking of a production company name for ourselves and discussing the possible future ideas we could use for our short film of the social realism genre.

I created a presentation on Prezi to present a summary of the meeting we had. Please view in full screen in order to see details in the presentation.

Production Meeting 1: Beginning Ideas on Prezi

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