First Filming Session Saturday 23rd Of January

First filming session- Saturday 23rd January...

I can sit here and calmly admit this filming session was a success! It was a very long day of madness and chaos... I wanted to do this filming in one bit hit, this way would be most simple for me as it would meen only arranging actors for one day, the weather would be the same (As England is very unpredictable) and i could get on with the editing quicker which will be most time consuming for me. To make sure Saturday would run as smoothly as it could, the night before i prepared the equipment and texted actors double checking they knew times, their costumes and dialog lines they needed to say. I made sure the camera's were fully charged and filming tapes were good to go.

The day started at 10AM... i was busy with my partner setting up the tripods and re-arranging furniture to set the mise en scene how i planned. I 'House borrowed' my friends house as it had enough space to allow me to use all camera shots from a variety of distances, especially my establishing shot. Throughout the day i used my checklist of scenes, shots and pictures i had previously produced to ensure every aspect of filming was covered. There was a great deal of trail and error shots until we achieved the perfect take, this would explain why we finished at 8pm! although i did have lots of fun filming.


Here are some of the photo's setting up during the day.

Tripod, with camera ajusted.

Setting up video camera
Props of wine and mise en scene candles placed.

Props of costume... High heels, which i am proud to own.

Setting out the mise en scene. Pictures of the Husband and Wife in photo-frames as shown in previous blog.. along with candles to show realism of the couples bedroom.

Film Schedule

When preparing for my production i made a film schedule, to help organise out my timeline of filming and editing. I was very keen to get filming done ASAP, so i would be able to then concentrate of the other tasks that needed individually completing and resuring myself if any changes needed to be made i would have plenty of time to correct my production tease trailer.

Film Schedule:

Thursday 21st of January: Take photos of 'couple'. Get photos developed.Buy props and films. - candles, photoframes, lighter, etc.

Saturday 23rd and Sunday 24th of January: Filming home scenes (Husband and Wife). Main filming session. i will need props, costumes, actors/actresses, cameras, tripods.

Friday 29th of January: film scenes needed in London...this is more for the scenary effects for my trailer and burning of photograph.

Thursday 25th of March: Each thursday between these days i have booked a Mac laptop and have set aside time from 11:00am to 4:30pm to edit my filming.

Shopping & organsation for Props

...Shopping & organsation for Props...

This picture is two actors in my film, (Husband and Wife) I took this picture to use as part of the mise en scene to show around their house.

This is another picture of the 'happy married couple' to use as part of the mise en scene.

One of my favourtie... The two actors looking happy on an outing, this picture will be used as well as part of my mise en scene, but another dramtic scene in my film when the wife burns a photo of them both.

An innocent picture of my two actors looking happy.

With all the pictures i took of my actors, i got the pictures developed at Boots as you can see above.. and im using these to put into photo frames around the couples family home to add an authentic touch of realism.

Just to be on the safe side, i wanted to buy my own film roles just in case nothing would be over-recorded by other students, or i needed the footage without edits. this seemed like a good idea as this media production work is very important.

Production Work Research

As i have learnt over the last two rather long years of A level media studies, Research is a vital aspect of good media knowledge to complete a good peice of work. To research my production work I used several different methods:

Watching previous St Marks past Student work on the same production coursework.
http://www.youtube.com/
http://www.google.com/



Narrative

I wanted the narrative of my film trailer to be 'different' yet still have the touch of realism of a film that really could be produced. I wanted a strong plot that would captivate a wide audience and was at first lost for thougths of a good storyline. I had ideas such as a dance film which would include clips of professional dance schools. Another idea of a Young child going missing from his Grandma using effects of cliffhangers to keep audiences intrested. & I even has ideas of a film trailer based upon fashion! these ideas became difficult and complicated to plan within the short space of time i had to film, edit and produce my other two tasks.

I have interest in true life stories ( such as in magazines) & events (such as documentries & news) that I could manipulate into a good narrative for my film trailer, my Grandma is addicted to these magazines such as: 'Take a Break'...'Real Life Stories'...'Pick Me Up' I began reading through her magazines. Then instead of trying to think of an idea at random it became a great way to find many real life shocking stories, & using a conbination of information from newspapers/websites/TV, I finally thought of a great ideas for my film trailer.
Here are a few of the magazines and websites I have been reading to get ideas...







Here is a viarety of media reserach to help me create ideas for my film trailer. I have decided to base my media production film trailer with a Thiller, romance genre... The narrative, A 4year old happily married Couple together, when the husband cheats and the Wife finds out... The Wife then turns crazy & heads to the kichen for a knife!! My target audience is aimed for aged 15 and above both male and female and for those who enjoy the thrill. I plan to have my film trailer fast, flashy, Bold, with a hint of sexyness & mystery.

Preliminary tasks on film studies

Returning back to school after the rather long christmas break due to the snow, Half way through the year now, media studies becoming more challenging & exciting as ever as were getting closer to producing our final product. Over the last few terms i have created 3 prelimanry tasks on film studies:

• Alco help mini film
• Film trailer for the horror film 'Prom Night'
• A music video!

Alco help film, was a short film (3-5 minutes) that focused on showing the dangers of underage drinking. The films target audience was aimed for teenagers aged 12-15 years, showing the negative effects and awareness of underage drinking. This mini film was also part of a competition all over the country although however, I wanted to focus more on the practice experience of equipment and editing more than the competition side of things . For this assignment I worked in a group which consisted of Catherine, Karmann and myself, As a group we all brought together skills and qualities that worked well together so we could reach our best potential. For example, Karmann's good at the 'technical' side, while im the 'Creative' one and Catherine 'honest' one about changes that need to be made. Seeing as it was my first preliminary task, i had to re familarise myself with equipment, filming techniques and the most obvious one which was EDITING! during the editing stages we spend hours doing editing when our laptop Mac decided to crash without us saving our work, we were very frustrated and quickly learnt to save work on a regular basis.

(download film here)