Post-Production...et Fin!

We soon realised shortly after commencing log and capture that we had too much footage. This I thought was better than having too little. Kay was chief editor and over Easter break she drew up a rough cut. Though there was still a lot to be edited it was exciting to see the film start to take its shape. It was hard to arrange editing times as the end of the year drew near and everyone had a fair amount of work to do. Kay did the bulk of the editing whilst the rest of us made time to help where we could. I mostly oversaw the editing; giving input where it was needed to help the story unfold. I tried to help by looking for music that we could use, however I didn’t find much that I thought would be usable, luckily other team members were more successful. The feedback for the rough cut was really helpful as they picked up on things we hadn’t noticed, it was useful to have an outsiders perspective on the film as we were all used to seeing the footage and the story. I am really pleased with the final cut, though it differs somewhat from what I first envisioned I feel that we made the best use of the material we had. The nightclub shots would have a made quite a difference but that was something out of our control.


We have now entered our film into the Strawberry Shorts film festival in Cambridge and await a response. It would be very gratifying if our film were selected for viewing at the festival. In the mean time, we are having our own viewing at the Little Theatre, it will be really exciting to see everyone’s films on the big screen and to see who’s is the most popular.

Filming...Action!

We started filming on the Friday of our filming weekend in the S.U to film our nightclub shots. As director I found this first filming to be a learning curve as it was late in the day at the end of the week and energy levels in the group were low. The morale of the team was lessened when it became obvious that it was going to be a very quiet night at the S.U. We had been counting on it not being too busy but we had not expected it to be practically empty, we needed people to fill out the dance floor and make the bar look more like a club. We had brought extras with us but they weren’t enough to fill the dance floor. Due to this a lot of time was wasted deliberating what we were going to do about this, some wanted to call it a night and change the club scenes into house parties. I felt that this would not have fit in with the film and that it would waste the time we had already spent shooting in the S.U. The solution in the end was to film as much as we could at the bar and to re-create a dance floor as best we could in some ones house the following day. It was risky but I felt that we didn’t really have any other choice. It was an experience for me as I felt that it was my responsibility to make sure that we were working as a team, making decisions together and to keep everyone motivated.

Our second day of filming went better, we started early in the morning in the library on campus. Though there was a difficulty in time keeping for some we were organised enough that it didn’t affect the schedule. Our second location that day was Becky’s (producer) house for the home scenes. This was a busy location as there were a lot of costume changes and we were filming in a small area over an extended period of time, which made the team a bit restless. We were all relieved when the bedroom shooting was over. We had a quick team meeting to discuss what we were going to do about the missing dance floor shots and went over the script. We decided to that we could cover up for the missing action by adding a few scenes to the burger location and street location to be filmed the following day.

The final day of filming was on reflexion the most successful day. Morale was high in the team and we had no difficulties. Most of the filming was in town and we had a large gap in filming where we needed to wait for it to get darker which I feel revitalised the team as we were able to have dinner and rest before the late night shooting of the final scenes. Filming ended on a high, I think everyone was proud of what we had filmed and the fact that we had overcome obstacles. I felt confident that we had filmed everything we needed and I was pleased that everyone had worked so well together as a team.

Story Boarding

After attending the camera demo with Abi (camera operator) we decided it would be helpful for me to put together a storyboard so that we could see if the shot list worked and so that I could better illustrate the shot list to Abi. Abi and Mark acted as characters in my photographic storyboard which turned out to be a little difficult due to a power cut in the building we were shooting in the evening. Luckily the flash was strong enough to cope without lighting. The storyboard turned out to be helpful on another level because it made it easier to work out what props we would need. The storyboard is not entirely complete. I had to miss out a few scenes to location but I think it definitely helped s to visualise more clearly what the film was going to look like.

Preparation

Preparation
In the weeks building up t filming weekend we looked for locations such as the nightclub, burger shop and the house. The nightclub location turned out to be the hardest to pick as we quickly realised the difficulties of filming in one, loud noise levels and music that we would have to edit out due to copyright added with a difficulty in permission. We decided the best solution to this would be to use the Student Union for the interior shots as it wouldn’t be too busy and we were more likely to get permission for there. We intended to then use exterior shots of another club to make it appear that the shots were taken in an actual nightclub.
I then started to write the shot list, I did this by firstly writing a rough draft using the script and writing it in order of appearance so that I could be sure I hadn’t left any action out. I then re-wrote it in filming order, this turned out to be harder than I thought because I wanted to account for costume changes as well as locations, time of day and camera positions. The costume was the hardest part because we had the same actress wearing different at least two combinations of clothing on each day and the plot was set across four days.

Starting Again…Picking a Script

Picking a script was not an easy task. We narrowed our choices down by looking at what would be do-able accounting for actors, props and locations. In the end we picked a script called ‘Balance’ by David Fines that is about a girl who struggles to balance work and play. We picked it not only because it was suited to our resources and budget but also because the story is relatable to people of all ages. We liked the idea of alternate realities as the girls life splits into two when she struggles to find a balance, only when she finds balance do the two parts of her life fit back together. We liked the challenge of doing this.
After picking the script we started to re-write parts of the script to better suit the vision we had in mind for it. For example, in the original script the protagonist is a female office worker, we changed this to a female student so that we could shoot in the library rather than an office building, which would have been difficult to find the location and the extras for this. We also started to plan how we would show the split and the separate lives cinematically. We looked at the idea of split screen and researched films that used this and films that portrayed a similar idea such as sliding doors. In Sliding Doors a similar theme of alternate realities is explored. I particularly like the way the split is presented- as a re-wind sequence.



However we chose not to do this in ours because it is a different kind of split, for the girl in our film it is her personality that splits, where as in Sliding Doors it is simply two possible outcomes changed by the influence of something seemingly inconsequential. So instead we decided to use split screen to emphasise the fact that the girl had split.

A Change of Heart

The more I tried to write the script of my initial idea the less I liked it. I decided to change it to something that was more simple but just as relatable. So I wrote my script about a student who has a week to do an essay but procrastinates until they only have a day to do it. The climax would be the uphill struggle to get it finished only to be set another that’s twice as long the day of the hand in.

After some thought I realised that the narrative was a little flat and although the situation wad identifiable to many I didn’t feel that it was particularly moving or entertaining. I decided to make it a parody or perhaps more of a pastiche to Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’ (1980) because as I was writing it I felt reminded of it. The references to the film are supposed to be subtle as I still wanted it to have originality and because ‘The Shining’ is quite a well-known film I think an audience could pick up on the references without much difficulty.

I wanted to encapsulate the isolation and hysteria that one sometimes feels when working to a deadline. I hope I have achieved this and am now waiting for feedback from other students. I personally think Kubrick is a great director in particular due to his cinematography visit this site to see what films he's done.

After the feedback from fellow students and Mike I realised that I needed to make the story more exciting. Where as before I had been trying not to be too obvious with the parody I now knew that I needed to make the references more prominent, otherwise viewers weren’t going to get them. I had problems deciding on a definite ending, it was difficult because I was trying to create an ending that left the viewer with something to remember as well as fully concluding.

Getting Creative

I came up with my initial idea for a short film script quite quickly. I was thinking about ruined relationships and how people sometimes wish they had known what they were getting into before a relationship started. I thought this would make an interesting story because it’s relatable and not something that actually happens in real life.

To help myself with the writing process I looked to books for advice. There were two that I found to be particularly helpful- ‘Gotham Writers Workshop Writing Movies’ edited by Alexander Steele and Robert McKee’s ‘Story’. McKee’s was a book I’ve had for a while, recommended to me by a teacher last year, It really helped me to understand what we had discussed in class about only including what’s needed to tell the story in a script. Steele helped to develop my idea and structure the narrative. It’s a good read all the way through but there are stepping stones at the end of each chapter that are just as helpful on their own.

I found the feedback sessions helpful as it made me see problems with the idea that I wouldn’t have picked up on, I think it’s always helpful have others opinions on your work especially for something such as a script as it is made to be seen by others.