Drama Project- Edit Feedback and Final Thoughts

Today we finished the final cut. Sound and everything. We all met and reviewed the final piece putting in all our own opinions and giving feedback on small things that needed tweaking for the final changes before tomorrow. This was the first time I had witnessed the entire edit due to time constraints with other projects at this time. I thought it looked really good! We had made a successful piece in which through edit, lighting and sound, we had captured the emotion that I had wanted to capture when I wrote the script. Except for a tiny little few problems that James successfully fixed the piece was great and had truly made an impact on me as an audience member. I look forward to seeing how the piece is recieved tomorrow in the presentation.
Altogether I think the group worked well within their roles and everyone put in an effort which gave their input into the final film. Although there were a few problems along the way the piece seems to have worked out successfully and just in time too! I have enjoyed working with this team and feel that through everything that has happened along the way we have created a great end of year project that we can all be proud of.
Thank you!

Drama Project- Contribution Forms

The contribution forms were important for me within the shoot. It provided evidence that the actors wanted their work on film and the location was allowed to be used in the final piece as well as the contributor allowing the consent for this film to be promoted within the digital media. Here is our evidence we are legal below.

Drama Project- Shoot Review

With the amount of pre-production we did before the shooting came around we had high hopes that this would be a successful shoot. To an extent this was true, we used the material created in the pre-production stages as a guideline I had prior knowledge of what we were aiming for and we all pulled our weight throughout the two days. However there were things that went wrong when shooting that didn't help with the overall rushes. For example the kino lighting that we booked out was dodgy and when we came to setting it up on the Saturday the fuse blew and we weren't able to use it for the rest of the shoot. This held us back a little however we used the dedo lighting as a substitute and were still able to get good lighting that showed in the overall rushes.
The weather was not very positive throughout the shooting and as you will see in the final product we had to film the bridge scene when it was pouring with rain. It literally didn't stop throughout the whole of this scene and created both positive and negative things about our shoot. The negative things was the length of time it took to set up shots and record as we had to be extra carful with everything. Also the whole group was freezing and got completely soaked so this didn't help with the moral of the last piece of recording, this lead to some shots being over-exposed or the framing being slightly out, little things that could have been avoided. The positive side however was that because it didn't stop raining we were still able to get good continuity, also the rain helped to futher exaggerate the emotion that James displayes within this scene and what I wanted the audience to understand. Overall the rain was a blessing in disguise as it gave us the right atmospheric mood for the final scene of our piece.
Overall I think the shooting went very well, I think this helped by careful planning and organisation as it allowed us to be ready for anything that came our way.

Drama Project- Schedule

This is the shooting schedule that I planned on the weekend of shooting. I aimed to get a majority shot by the end of Saturday and then the rest shot on Sunday. However this didn't work out successfully. We spent all day Saturday recording and ran over by an hour, still not completing everything noted down for Saturday. Therefore Sunday was all the rest of the un shot scenes as well as the scenes still needed to be shot. Sunday ran over by around an hour and a half. We started just before 12pm and finished at around 5.30pm. The rain during the Sunday didn't help either as we found it very difficult to film in this condition as everything had to be carefully handled as notto get wet and the group was very cold during it. Luckily James still did an incredible job of acting in front of the camera through these conditions and looking back on the rushes this was a successful shoot.

Drama Project- Actors and Rehearsal

When in the pre-production stages of this project I have found myself needing to mention the actors and how we pulled in the actors that suited the part. Firstly we needed two actors and a mother for the photos, this was I think the most difficult part in the whole production stages of this project simply due to the lack of time we had available to us. We had to make the actors fit their week around us as well as find an actor that would be right for the image of the film. Firstly I emailed around the university seeing what actors they had, I found plenty of female actresses suitable for the daughter role within the film but there were no  middle aged male or female actors that could play the part of the father or as the mother in the pictures. Therefore I used a website provided by the university called casting call pro. This is where I found an actor who when I got in contact wanted to do it but later found out he could not stick to our schedule. Therefore we had to look for another. Finally, after contacting many actors around the area I found James who was available during our schedule. The daughter role was a lot easier as I sent a note over to the performing arts courses and got a lot of interest which lead to me doing auditions for the part of the daughter which after a lot of debate the group decided that Fiona was perfect within the image of the daughter part.

The female we used for the mother ended up being Jess's cousin that we 'photoshoped' onto the photos we took of Fiona and James in a rehearsal. We were lucky with this as we couldn't find anyone who was available to do the pictures therefore we relied on digital media to save us which we are lucky that it did.

Finally we had a rehearsal with the two actors running through the script to get an idea of how the actors responded to the lines as well as each other when acting. This was very useful as we found what needed to be changed and had enough time to really give the actors an image of what we were looking for before the actual shooting day. We also used the rehearsal as a time to get pictures of the actors to try and show there relationship as a family which we used to dress the set with on the day. Furthermore we used the rehearsal as a technical rehearsal as well where Natalie as the cinematographer was able to practice with the Shoulder rig and the DSLR to get a hang of its functions and how it works and Jess the sound recordist was able to grasp the positioning of the boompole throughout the scenes to give the maximum quality of sound on the day and know where she needed to be straight away when shooting.

Drama Project- Equipment List and Location Viewing

This is our Equipment list that we have booked out before the shooting day. We have a lot of equipment and each have our own specific pieces equipment that we need to fullfil our roles given to us. I am taking my Canon DSLR which is what we are using to film with throughout. This is because the Canon is fully HD and gives a lot crisper depth of field than what a PD170 can give. Natalie has supplied a tie clip mic in case of emergencies but we have the rifle mic and a Rode NT for a majority of the sound so we hope that this will be uneeded during the shooting. Finally we are using a lot of lighting within the shoot. I have booked out Kino and Dedo lighting as this will give us a fuller lighting capability so we are more in control of the overall shot and do not have problems with natural lightings unpredictability. Hopefully this will work out to our advantage in the long run.

The Location we are using was viewed today by both myself James and Lewis. I took my script with me and looked at each scene in relation to character placement and room environment as well as the shots we would need. This was extremely useful as we actually acted out the scenes to provide us with knowledge of the shoot before it had started. I made some minor changes on the script about placement and where the camera would be and this has been brilliant in finding an image for the film is needed in pre-production.

Drama Project- Storyboard

The storyboard was very useful when finding a common image that all of the group could share. We converted this from the previous shotlist looking at each shot and how it could fit with the next. This was really useful to do in pre-production as we were able to visualise the piece to see if it would work and to see if we needed any changes that to shots to make it more successful. Altogether the storyboard posted a crucial part in the overall production and we used this throughout the rest of the stages of production as a guideline of the final piece.