Unit 1- Type of Production

What does the brief ask me to do?


The brief for this unit asks me to create a short film for entry into a Short Film Festival. The short film needs to be between 2-4 minutes and must be suitable for 12-18 year olds to view. The brief also required us to research into a variety of formats , styles and features of a single camera production. The short film needs to be completely original and not contain images and sounds that are subject to copyright.

My initial idea for my short film was a simple linear narrative ,action comedy. I have chosen to make my genre this because, generally if you'd like to win an audience over the best way to do this is making them happy and satisfied, I think that this can be effectively done through humour. For my casting, I have decided to employ three (main) characters to play the roles of; a policeman(1), a second policeman and a lady who is mistaken to be non-law abiding citizen. If it is possible I would also preferably like some extras to play other roles.

The opening scenes would include the lady at home, in her kitchen making herself a cup of tea. We then see her go to the living room to watch television. However, not long after the two policemen characters come swarming into the house in a chaotic manner, and without any permission or dignified introduction. They (dressed in uniform) then arrest the lady without again giving any detail or specifying why they're arresting her, she struggles with them and doesn't seem particularly happy with what's just happened. Here I realised that this may be difficult to achieve because it would mean we need to buy the costumes and possibly a walkie-talkie, also the genre of comedy we thought would be useless without a naturally funny person acting the role. Therefore actors were a major problem. 

We move on to the next scene for which the lady is now in the police station giving her details to the police, they then take her in to cell where she spends a night in police custody. Again, I planned for the cell to be a frame instead in my estate where the door bars could be used to manipulate the scene, to make it look like a prison cell. 

Skipping to the mid-point of the plot, we have the lady from earlier trying to complain about the police men who arrested her without any explanation of what she's being arrested for, and no body is listening to her. This however my group thought would take away from the comedy element and the audience wouldn't be amused. 

By the end of the film, the lady after being released from her cell is now planning a major death plot against these policemen, the film merely ends with her walking up to the police station and in her hand a gun. The overall decision we made was that we were not going to not proceed with my idea unfortunately because we just didn't have the budget and cast for all the essential things in my idea.

I was inspired by many comedy movies such as ; 

We moved then to looking at possibly another genre, for which we decided on a hybrid genre of Horror/Suspense. This was mainly because It is one we considered to be the next most popular/engaging of genres which can easily be done to engage a target audience. The conventions of a Horror include things such as ; blood, knives, suffering/torture, death , a haunted house, a basement /an attic, the woods etc. For suspense , you'd be looking at shadows , a missing person, death (unsolved?). This combination was perfect for us as it gave us flexibility with many things such as props, costumes even characters. Our final short film idea was decided on and this was, a family consisting of ; mum , dad and daughter. The dad is a cold-blooded killer who tortures his daughter, the mother has always been suspicious of this however never spoke about it. Their relationship becomes increasingly worse and after many tortures and torment from her father the daughter finally overdoses herself in an attempt to kill her self , she dies and by the end the dad is remorseful of his actions and he goes to visit her grave. 

Unit 1- Personal Pre-Production Roles

Within pre-production the roles that people have to consult are all significant for the production to develop and come up with a film/show which fulfils the needs and standards of the target audience. The process before the production is a collaborative team effort and this is what makes film/television such an interesting industry as a whole, without every individual you wouldn’t get the end result.

The film I will be looking at for the pre-production job roles is the film ‘The Dark Knight’ (2008). I personally am interesting in this films because of the prosthetics and makeup that we see on most of the characters and the memorable makeup on one of the leading actor (Heath Ledger) who played the joker.

The pre-production roles in this film included the main body, the Director who was Christopher Nolan, one of the most famous and recognized directors for his directing of many successful films. The directors role within pre-production is to control a film’s artistic and dramatic aspects. Has a key role in choosing the cast alongside the casting director, production design and creative aspects of filmmaking.

Next in line is the Producer who was Emma Thomas, her work would involve overseeing projects from conception to completion, also being involved with the marketing and distribution process. Producers work closely with directors and other production staff. There can often be more than one producer, the other producer for this production was Charles Roven.

An Executive Producer will often oversee the work of the producer on behalf of the studio , the financiers or the distributors. They will also ensure the film is completed within time and budget and to the agreed artistic and technical standards.There are often more than one executive producer working together with the producer. The executive producers for The Dark Knight were, Michael Uslan and Thomas Tull.

The Production Designer is responsible for the visual concept of the film. The production designer here was Nathan Crowley. He would have needed to identify a design style for locations, graphics, props, lighting , camera angles and cost times. Whilst working closely with the Director and producer.

The Cast of a production are probably the most important part of the whole film making process, this is simply because without them you cannot practically do anything, even if you have equipment/props etc. The main actors in The Dark Knight , were ; Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman. Their role is to play the character in which they are acting as. Most successful actors/actresses will cast in blockbuster films.

The Cinematographer or in other words, the camera man/women, is in charge of the camera on a film set, depending on the camera they have they will try to achieve various shots,angles and movement in order to tell the story effectively. They work quite closely with the Director on set and will often be in conversation with the editor.

For my production I needed the following equipment;

• Camera - This is very important not only for achieving the camera language which helps to tell the story line but also it in itself is the basis for a production otherwise it would be pointless and achievable
• . The second piece of equipment we needed was a tripod, this was essential because it meant that we were able to get a steady shot and the movement was controlled, if we didn't have this piece of equipment then the camera shots and even angles were going to be shifty and jerky which isn't particularly good if we want the audience to concentrate on whats on their screen.
• We also need editing software in order to edit and cut each scene together, for this we used 'Final Cut Pro' on the Mac's provided in school. This is also essential for our production because as well as the initial story / narrative the editing stage also helps massively with engaging the viewer and through the editing techniques the audience are also told the story.
• We also used my phone voice recorder to record our characters narrations, this is because the film is silent and we needed a voice over to go on top of this to guide our viewer.
  

Weekly Production Log 5- Unit 22 Single Camera Production

This week me and my group members have individually started editing our short films. We used Final Cut Pro to do so, and in my opinion although I thought it was going to be a hard job and really complicated to use , I actually found it quite simplistic and clear for me to use. This made it much more easier for me to go about editing the beginning of my short film. I would like to use this software program to effectively show how I can improve my film even further through editing and sound.
Although I am going to make the film silent, I think the narration and sound I will put on top will show and engage the audience. It is not always scrips and dialogue which makes a film successful and my short film will enforce this idea, hopefully.
Throughout this weak I will continue to edit my film and I am aiming to at least get near to the end of the edit, so that if additional scenes need to be shot I can have enough time to go out again and shoot these scenes.