Second Day of Filming

Earlier today, me and the main character went out to film the majority of the second scene. This scene shows the main character discovering the power that the pendant possess. To show this, he accidentally freezes time and then takes advantage and steals a passerby's money. This filming session went well overall. I filmed a substantial amount of footage which I am happy with and don't feel that I will need to go back at any point to re-film. The main concept that needed to be captured was the fact that time had stopped. This was done using the two extras that volunteered. One extra pretended he had frozen whilst drinking whilst the other froze halfway through putting his money away. By having more extras it strengthened the illusion that time had actually stopped. I didn't have the time to do a vlog this session however here are a few screenshots from the footage taken.

Storyboarding for new idea

Now that my idea has changed from a fanasy thriller to a more contemporary thriller, there were a few steps in the planning and research process that had to be changed. One of these things was the storyboard. As mentioned in a previous blog, the storyboard is important as it makes the ideas visual and therefore more realistic. It also helps as it can be taken out filming so that the shots can be filmed efficently. Below is a page from the new storyboard that I am creating so that I will not have to think of the shots to use on the day. 

New location

  

One of the benefits of changing the film from a fantasy to contemporary is that it opens up the opportunity to film in many more locations. The fantasy idea would have restricted me as built up areas would completely ruin the immersion, so I would have to stick to woodland and farms. After thinking, my new location was going to be in Woodstock Town Square, just down the road from the school. I chose this location due to its ease of access for all my actors and the fact that it represents a stereotypical middle class town. Its also not too busy which means interruptions will be kept to a minimum. Below is a few pictures of the areas within Woodstock I will be using.

Big Changes

Now that I've begun work on my filming I have realized that my initial plan was a too much of a push at this stage in media. I wanted to create a fantasy film which I knew from the start would be difficult. However I overestimated how challenging making this genre of film would be without a budget which has therefore led me to other ideas. I don't plan on changing the story but instead adapt it to being in this world rather than a make believe one. The story will still be based around an object which has the ability to stop time however if the person using it decided to do something bad, they will edge closer to insanity. similar films include 'Clock Stoppers', which takes a comedic look on stopping time. This film is aimed at a younger audience but there are definitely parts I can take and apply to my thriller

Progress so far

So far, I have nearly finished the pre-production stage of my coursework. This proved to be a challenging part of the production as there was a lot more to do than I first anticipated. When I first began the pre-production process I assumed the only things I would have to worry about is the producing a story, applying this to a storyboard and then begin to gather all the mise en scene elements needed. However this wasn't the case. The A2 brief is a big step up from AS and therefore involves more effort to gather everything needed. Firstly, the story took a lot longer to come up with than it did at AS. This was mainly because the AS piece only involved a 2 minute opening sequence which left the majority of the story untold. However with a short film the whole story needs to be covered, making it challenging to incorporate everything within the 5 minute period. Getting hold of a costume was also one of the hardest things to do. Usually, a costume would be fairly easy to come across however this was made difficult due to  the genre being fantasy. I still am struggling to find a costume for my main character as the cost of a believable costume is too much. With this all in mind, I will have to make certain changes so that I can keep on track. At the moment, I am slightly behind the approved time as can be seen in the table below. Although I'm behind I still feel I will have enough time to film as I have a good idea of what I have to film.

     

Ancillary Texts: Magazine Review research

As I am doing a short film, one of the ancillary texts i'm doing is a magazine article reviewing the film. As I don't read many magazines I have researched the forms and conventions of making an effective and gripping review article. For this research the best source to use was Empire Magazine. Empire Magazine is a British magazine which focuses on the latest films and giving them reviews. As they're Britain's leading film magazine company they're reviews are good to look at. From the articles I've seen it seems that the image used is important. On the majority of the reviews the image takes up a lot of space on the double page spread, in some cases it takes up 50% of the article. The image tends to either be a direct extract from the film or will be closely associated with the films poster. Along with this picture there needs to be a substantial amount of text reviewing the film. This text has the goal of helping the reader decide on whether they want to see the film or not. Therefore, there needs to be basic information about the film along with the positives and negatives of the film. These image and the substantial text are the main two parts of the review however there are other smaller things which make an effective review stand out from the rest. The image below show some of these features, including important details of the film (release date etc.) and a tagline to summarise the review.

To make an effective magazine review I will have to take all this into account and then apply it to my review. Below are a few examples which I will use as inspiration towards my final magazine review. As my film is a thriller, this will need to be shown through the design such as the colours used and the font chosen.

 

The peasant character

Within my media piece there are a total of three actors. These are the main character (Character 1), this characters girlfriend (character 2) and the deranged character (character 3). On my first day filming I went out with character 3 to film the majority of the shots associated with him. This character needed to look like a stereotypical peasant from the medieval ages so the costume took a lot of thinking about, below is the final product. I used basic baggy clothes as well as a blanket to act as a coat. A belt was also used to both hold the blanket in place as well as holding a hatchet in it. There were a few extra touches such as the walking stick and all together I feel the costume portrayed a medieval peasant well.

Work towards rough edit

So far there hasn't been much filming towards the final product, due to a few stagnations. The main problem being that the costume has been harder to aquire than first thought. For the main character the plan was to have him look like a ranger with a hooded cape with a tunic and large boots, but these are expensive or too small. Therefore I have decided to make the costume for myself as this will be easier. The cape will be relatively easy to make and the tunic can be done by threading string through a v-neck collar. Another problem was getting to the location but this has now been resolved as one of the actors can drive us there. I plan on starting filming by this weekend as I now have all the means necessary to begin. Below is a link that I found which will help me design my cape as well as an image of what I hope to achieve.

How to make a Cloak

First day of filming.

A couple of days ago me and my first actor went out on location to film for the introduction to the short film. In this introduction, the character comes across as confused and dazed whilst wondering through the forest. Overall, this filming went well due to a few factors. The most helpful factor was the weather. Of course the main benefit is that it wasn't raining but instead it was a sunny day and the sun was beginning to set so it gave off great shadows to work with. Before filming got underway, there were a few hindrances (the main one being getting lost!) however the shots that needed to be taken in this session were shot and to a standard that I was happy with. The actor also did a good job portraying the character. Next filming session I intend on filming the first scene with the main actor in which the first actor gets killed. Below is a quick vlog, explaining again what we got up to on set