Pre-production: final edited version of the script

Throughout all the shoots, we have been constantly altering our initial script.

Although our final script turned out slightly different to the first one, we were able to use the first script as a template during the shoots to work with the actors and alter our script to give the main characters some depth.

Our script is developed from the script mentioned in the "Treatment: Scripting our sequence" blog post.

We changed the dialogue to develop our characters through the opening sequence and to build up a better sense of tension.

As an example, our group found that the line, "Rise and shine sleeping beauty" was too cheerful for the situation so we changed it to "Jess, it's time to get up."

We are more satisfied with the script now as it allows us to build up the characters and seems like a realistic conversation instead of being very stereotypical and exaggerated like our previous script.

Pre-production: Storyboarding

Before all our shoots, for the storyboard, we drew out the shots we planned to use on post-it notes which we then placed, in order, onto a pieces of sugar paper. This also allowed us to see whether we had too many of the same framing shots together or not and it gave us a sense of how the film opening to turn out to be.

We used a colour coding for the shot framing as show below:

Colour coding for different framing of the shots

This helped up create shot diversity and realise any continuity rule breaks

We then used our storyboard to create our animatic. Then for the test shoot, we were able to create a more visual storyboard with the pictures from the animatic to allow the actors, as well as us, to understand how the shot will be filmed and what they would do in it.

Test Shoot Storyboard

Pre-production: Props and costume list

Our piece relies on props and costumes in order to convey the current state of mind of the Jess.

Beer bottles/cans and clothes strewn on floor

The props that we included in our sequence include:


-Alarm clock that lights up
- Bottles of Alcohol
-Bin
-Rubbish (leftover packets of food/bottles of alcohol)
-Clothes strewn all over the floor
-Make-up on the side table and mantel piece
-Extra clothes (that can be thrown at Jess)

Shot of Alarm clock as Jess ignores it

-Pictures of her and her family/friends










The costumes for the characters are very simplistic.

Black Shirt
Grey Jogging Bottoms

Black Chinos
Green Shirt

Jess:

-Black plain shirt
-Grey jogging bottoms

These were chosen as her sleepwear and to show her opinion on her appearance due to her current state.

Alex:

-Plain green shirt
-Pair of black chinos

We made Alex wear a coloured top in contrast to Jess who had a monochrome costume. Showing how he would be the one to help her later on.

Main Shoot: Storyboard and Shootboard

We made a storyboard and shoot board in preparation for our main shoot at our new location.

Storyboard for Mainshoot Sample

We adapted our storyboard to the rough edit of the test shoot sequence incorporating additional feedback and reflections into our new storyboard.

Shootboard for mainshoot sample with visual representation from the animatic

We tried to structure our shootboard as much as we could based on setups. This was difficult as we hadn't been in the room that we are going to film in.
If the setups don't match up well, we will shoot in order of the storyboard so there will be continuity of the drama.

Test Shoot and Edit Reflections

We had a test shoot in order to test out different practicalities of the shoot such as lighting props and blocking. Our edit enabled us to test the durations and the narrative that we conveyed through our shots.

Student Reflections

• The way Alex grips Jess in shot 21 seems too violent for the situation. Instead we plan on having him approach her by her shoulders and then for her to push him out of the room.


• Setting up lighting for the beginning dark shots was difficult as the lighting was too bright initially. We then had to use many filters to get our preferred lighting. However the footage was very blurry when we came to editing it. Therefore, we will now film these scenes in naturalistic lighting that appears very clear and then grade it down to our desired effect.


• Another problem with the lighting was that the gels merged into each other so they were damaged easily.


• We struggled to position the equipment suitably so the equipment wouldn't appear in shot as the space in the room was small. There is a possibility that we may shoot in another location. 

Staff Reflections

• They suggested for us to shoot master shots that we could refer to if our shots did not fit as well as we imagined it to have.


• We should also include more cutaways to increase the pace of the narrative.


• When we edit shots together we should edit it so the shot starts when the actors are moving. Since we had some shots that started with the actor standing still ready for the shot to start.


• Mise-en-scene looks like a room of a busy teenage girl, instead of a depressed teenage girl.

What we plan to do:

• During the next shoot, we will film the master shots so when we come to editing we would be able to use it as a backup and maybe cutaway to it.


• We took the advice about the cutaway and improved out first test shoot edit by making more cutaways and therefore increasing the pace.


• When we next edit our shots, we would have the master shots so if an actor is static at the beginning of the shot, we could cut to the master shot of them as a back-up.


• As for the mise-en-scene, we plan to redress the whole room to give connotations of a depressed teenage girl. We would get rid of the student books and maybe have ripped pieces of paper from her diary or a pile of used tissues that the main character has used to wipe her tears.

Test Shoot: Storyboard and Shootboard

Call Sheet

Before the test shoot, we had to plan ahead  by making shootboard, storyboard and we made sure we booked our actors for the test shoot.
Since this film is both of their acting debut the test shoot will introduce them to the routine of the shoot.
This will allow them to rehearse their characters in front of the camera. It will also help us understand how our characters are depicted by our actors and we will be able to determine the strengths and weaknesses of our script so far.

Test Shootboard

We created our shootboard according to priority of casting and set ups so the actors could rest when they weren't in the scene.The set ups were also categorised because the room is small and camera equipment needs to be moved around carefully to  make sure it doesn't appear in our footage.

Pre-production: Costume research

Costume:

We had Alice Soulard try on her pyjamas to be able to choose which clothes will work best for our character, Jess. We want Jess's mood to be upset and frustrated. We want her to have an unwashed stale look.

We had Alice take pictures of the different clothes so we could trial them on her. 

We had Anthony take pictures of different outfits that fit Alex's character

Out of the costumes we thought the black pyjama top and grey pyjama bottoms suited our character the best. This seems to resemble the pyjamas of a 19 year old. The colour black is usually worn in mourning so thus relates to her going through depression after her boyfriend's death. We thought the others were too colourful to reflect the emotions of Jess.


Costume References:

Silver Linings Playbook (2012):  Tiffany wears black throughout most of the film. She has been impacted by the death of her husband.



We decided that we wanted Anthony, who plays Alex, to wear casual clothes since he is ready for university and is optimistic about life. We thought that his T-shirt should be pastel coloured to contrast the dark clothes that Jess wears.
In the end we asked him to wear his un-patterned green T-shirt and black trousers. The plain nature of the T-shirt doesn't pull too much attention from the audience and it resembles how simple and jovial he can be.


Costume References:
This is Adam from Now is Good (2012). He wears casual clothing and is generally more optimistic in the film. His role as the love interest is similar to our character of Alex as they care deeply about the respective female leads deeply.

Planning our post-production: Integrating Titles

Our titles will have no interaction with the sequence, we want to keep everything simplistic because of the nature of our film and the conventions associated with our chosen drama.

-The titles will be very stylised and simple so that they are noticeable, but not distracting.

- Their placing will be around the edges of the screen and in corners where possible.


- The main title will follow a similar style to the production titles, however it will be central on the screen and be much more noticeable. We want the audience to see the main title and be inquisitive in regards to the meaning behind the title.

- The colour chosen for our production titles: because of the purple colour of the walls of our location we felt that much darker colors blended into the wall and could not be seen; while light colours like yellow and bright green didn't suit our film and just looked out of place.


-We made the titles fade in, so it would not suddenly appear and distract the audience from the main focus.




Reference:

Our main inspiration for our sequence is "Struck By Lightning" which has titles that are plain white and non-intrusive. The film "Struck By Lightning" has some very dark themes and similarly because of this keeps everything else simple.

Pre-production: The Main Title

What a mess

We were unsure how we wanted to use typography to brand our film so we set about researching fonts that we could use for our title. We wanted to keep the shaping of the letters simple. We also wanted to create the neat graphic with solidly filled letters.

Castorgate Distort

Rough Rider

Reference: Remember Me (2010)

Reference: One day (2011)

Noir-Et Blanc

 We chose the font called "Noir-Et Blanc" since the letters are stretched. We thought that this represents the theme of reaching out and being helped up. It also fits in with titles that inspired us such as Remember Me and One day. The difference would be that our title is in mixed cases. It still fits in as it is a bold white colour that stands out but also doesn't detract from the scene.

Animatic Reflections

An Animatic is basically a sequence of photographs that represent each planned shot, all put together with any planned sound effects. Each photography is shown for the planned duration of the shot it represents.

We made an Animatic so that we were able to get a general idea about where the camera will be placed for each shot, as well as being able to make adjustments to a shot i.e. framing and composition if it doesn't look quite right. Since we did shot the pictures for our Animatic at the first designated location, we were able to get a sense of how we were going to film the shots.

After we made our animatic, we looked over it with criticisms that are listed below:

Student Reflections

While we were shooting and editing our animatic, we realised that there were certain issues that arose including:

- Continuity errors:

• In some shots, the bed was left empty. To rectify this, we will ensure that Jess is always in the bed where appropriate.
• There were various issues in regards to Mise-En Scene. E.g. Posters on back wall constantly falling; "Monster Energy" cans stacked against wall fell over repeatedly
• The 2 lighting set-ups must be kept consistent, especially in scenes when using low key lighting. To enable this to be consistent we will use a lighting kit provided by the school.
• The alarm clock needs to be set to the right time each and every time we shoot the close ups of it (the clock) at the start.

- Mise-En Scene:

• Be mindful of large mirror on wall, to avoid reflections of crew members and equipment.
• Suitable lighting needed so that actors are visible in low key lighting.
• Certain props are missing and therefore are not in

Staff Reflections

-Titles:

• There should be consistency in how the titles are sequenced.

- Scripting

• The intonation used in some of the lines does not quite fit the scenes mood, this is due to all of the dialogue being added in at a later date as a voice over and will not be a problem when filming the sequence.

- Composition:

• There should be more shot diversity
• There should be more cutaways

One major piece of feedback that we were given from staff is that there is a lack of movement in our sequence. This is mainly due to the limitations of an animatic's static nature and is hard to fix unless there are a variety of transitions between separate shots.


These are all things which will be taken into account when we move on to the film opening's construction.

Treatment: Scripting our sequence

Below is a very much shortened version of our original script, many of our original ideas had to be withdrawn from the script for both time constraints and practicality reasons. The script was drafted 3 or 4 times and finally condensed into this version which should last around 2 minutes, have very few set-ups and can be sectioned into short sequences that can be easily remembered by the actors and allow us to film from various angles with ease.

We made sure that there was definitely a sense of drama and a hint of romance in the script, so the audience would be able to identify the genre. We 

Treatment: How we plan to connote genre in our sequence

After our proposal, we made some changes to how we would connote the genre in our sequence to what is mentioned below:

In order to make sure the audience was able to clearly understand that the genre is Romantic Drama, we looked at some film opening of the same genre. For example, 'The Notebook', 'P.S I Love You' and 'Silver Linings Playbook'. From analysing the opening sequences of similar films, we came to the conclusion that: 

Many Romantic Dramas tend not to make it initially clear what is the cause of the drama; it may have been something which happened prior to the films starting point, it may happen during the film, or it may be a mixture of both as is the case for our film.

The music that we plan on using will help us convey in more depth the emotions of the characters to the audience, since Romantic Dramas depend a lot on emotion. This genre tends to have the protagonist in conflict with themselves or another character, which happens in our opening sequence.

Treatment: our planned film narrative

The concept for our story follows Todorov's theory of equilibrium; this gave us a set structure to follow when creating the narrative. It is also a trusted theory used in many films that ensures the audience are able to understand the narrative.


Our film narrative is similar to that of 'Remember Me'. From it's narrative we came up with our own narrative as explained below:

A young woman gets back to normal life after tragedy strikes. Equilibrium: Jess’s (protagonist) life is turned upside down after Michael; her boyfriend of two years dies. She isolates herself from her surroundings as she’s trying to cope. At the start of the new academic year, Jess has been finding it hard to deal with the death of her boyfriend. She starts college along with her best friend Alex. He acts as a guide for her.

Disruption: Jess decides that if she can’t cope with her life the way it is, then the best thing to do is to create a new one. A new Jess, with new motives and a new outlook on life. She begins skiving off college, going to parties and taking drugs. She turns into the complete opposite of normal self.   Resolution: Alex cannot stand by and watch while Jess continues this spiral of decline. He decides that it is time to step in and force Jess back onto the right path, because he knows this isn’t the true Jess. The two of them bond over this event and become close to one another. New Equilibrium: Jess realises that she isn’t being true to herself and that if she continues then she is only heading towards self-destruction. Alex and Jess have become an official couple. The two of them decide that the best way to honour Michael’s memory is to plant an evergreen tree in her back garden.

Treatment: Planning our use of effects

There are a range of possible effects that we could use in our piece, but we want to keep things simple and neat. To do that we will keep the use of effects to a minimum and if any were to be used, then they will be subtle and meaningful.

This is the type of effect we would like to use when the main title for the film appears on screen. It will be integrated onto the memorial card, so that it looks like it was typed on there initially.

Our score for the sequence will be fairly slow and soft, building up in tempo as the characters emotions begin to flare up. It will not be introduced into the sequence until the last few shots as we feel that it may distract from the scene.

As it stands this is our chosen piece

With this as a contingency plan if any problems occur

Treatment: Planning our film-making techniques

Our use of film-making techniques is very important in telling the story and conveying certain things about our characters. Making the wrong change could in fact lead to the audience getting the wrong perception of characters and story.

Camera:

We will use panning in our first shot to convey the location of objects in relation to Jess.

We planned to use focus pulls in our first shot to blur the alarm clock which becomes sharper, symbolising waking up (imitation of Jess’ perspective). However this has now changed, to us panning from the alarm clock to Jess as she rolls over in her bed

Composition:

We are planning to frame most of our shots with focus on just one character hence portraying the sense of emptiness in the film.

Mise-en-Scene:

Use of set and props in Jess’ room will give a large amount of insight as to the type of person she is. Our mainly monochrome colour-scheme of the room reflects her state of mind at the time and shows that her life is in a state of disarray. Our props will include empty ice cream tubs, vodka bottles and other objects associated with mess. This will be used to depict the stale bedroom that Jess has created. The male lead, Alex will interact with the props such as straightening the photo and clearing up Jess' mess.

Continuity:

To create continuity in our sequence we have used a series of techniques. These include:

- Match-on-action: When Alex is pushed outside of Jess' room, we see him being pushed out and then we see the door slam in his face.
- Shot-reverse shot: We will use this to illustrate the conversation between the two main characters, Jess and Alex. 

- The props on the set will be set out the same throughout all our shoots. To do this, we will take a picture of the room and use it as a template to rearrange the bedroom every time we shoot.

- We have complied with the 180 degree rule to make sure there is no confusion experienced by the audience.

- We would use elliptical editing: Alex turns to the door, then the camera cuts to inside the room as Alex knocks. The audience would assume that Alex had walked to the door despite there not being footage of him walking to the door.

Treatment: Visual Style

Our Original Plan for Lighting:

We intend to have the room lit in a fairly naturalistic way, we want it to look as though there are two main lighting styles used, low key and high key. Our preference is to have the low key lighting soft and feint, to almost reflect Jess' state of mind. It should look like a natural source of light.

For the dark scenes we will use numerous filters over one light so we can see her and it will replicate how her room looks before the morning. We are planning to direct our light at the ceiling so the light can bounce off the ceiling and walls to give the impression of room lighting.

The Final Approach to Lighting:

We still intend to light our room in a naturalistic way. We decided to use all three lights in the lighting kit with filters. We aimed to keep the lighting constant by blocking out light from the window so there would be less likelihood of continuity errors as the light outside changes as the day proceeds. We will grade the sequence further to observe our desired look for the dark scenes as well as the light scenes.

Papadopoulos & Sons

We took 'Papadopoulos & Sons'(Marcus Markou, 2012) as an example, at the begining, they made the lighting of the mansion have a sense of coldness as well as making it naturalistic.

For the main bedroom where the predominant scene is set, we will use two lights. One light will have a purple filter over white filter. The second light will have a grey dimming filter and a white filter. The first light provides clarity and gives the scene a fresh look. The second light lessens silhouettes and balances the light as well as adding a yellow tinge to colourise the look of the actors. We plan to direct both these lights out of shot so the walls and ceiling and reflect the light.

Treatment: Ensuring our sequence look like a Film Opening

The project is to create an opening sequence for a film, not a film itself. As such is it essential that the sequence is made in a way that allows an entire story to be put on the back of it. There needs to be some ambiguity, so that the audience are left with questions that will be answered later on in the film

Since it is generally the opening scene that sets the scene and first introduces the characters, we will use establishing shots to give the audience a sense of where the scene is set, as well as who is the main focus of the film.

To further identify Alex and Jess as the main characters, we will use a mixture of techniques i.e. cross-cutting. 

We intend to use slow pans also to show the interests of the character. The dialogue will be brief and only give a small amount of insight to the audience, leaving them with certain questions unanswered.

We looked at many different types of film openings, including: 
-One Day
-Silver Linings Playbook
-Now is Good

Treatment: Targeting the Audience

If we are going to have a specific target audience, then the film opening needs to be appealing to them in some way. Since Romantic Dramas rely on the story over anything else, this seems the most appropriate way to appeal and relate to them.


Characters:

-Jess initially appears to be a stereotypical lazy teenager as she ignores her morning alarm. She is then shown to be a reflective teenager as she flicks through the photos quietly.

-Alex is portrayed as the patient friend through him gently trying to get Jess to wake up and go to her lectures. As well as this, he is shown to have a tendency to be very jovial. He is shown to be the helper archetype as he straightens the tilted photo frame of Michael. 

References we used: Rae Earl and Finn Nelson from My Mad Fat Diary

Themes:

-Jess is mourning the death of her boyfriend. This is depicted through her reluctance to carry on with life without him. 

-The relationship between Jess and Alex is shown to be friendship. The comfortable manner between each other shows that he is able to influence her and help her.

Settings:

-The setting of Jess’s Room is very important so we will make sure it will be decorated with posters, depicting her interests. 
 

-The English accents will suggest that the film is set in the UK.