First Major Project - Research post 1/3

apologies for how late this is, i take a lot of notes, writing up research properly always feels wasteful, this is my research page on three short films and how they have influenced my writing.

three sections, three shorts.



PLURALITY
Directed by: Dennis Liu
Written by: Ryan Condal
Produced by: Jonathan Hsu, Dennis Liu
link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzryBRPwsog

a short about an over-networked, over-controlled NYC, following a futuristic detective specializing in "pluralities", examples of more than one instance of a person, slightly dystopian in tone, an interesting watch, with some interesting questions regarding social media and government powers relating to networking.

What I really like about this film is its tone, and its pace, if there's one thing I had hoped I would take from it, it would be its pacing, its constantly moving, this is something i hope to incorporate in my own script, its ability to constantly shift locations and focus, another thing I tried to incorporate is its colours, the slightly blue tinted colour creates this brilliant futuristic mis en scene, as blue tinting usually does.



SALON SHOOTOUT
Written and Directed by Thomas Ridgewell 
Cinematography by Ciaran O’Brien
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUniJxIe2YI

Salon Shootout is a short comedy film about an agent hunting aliens who work in a salon, things degenerate into a shootout. the comedy comes from its puns, almost every line from the main character is a pun, its parodies several different genres of film in one sitting.

from this I had hoped to have taken its comedy timing and self awareness, for a good dramedy like the kind im trying to write, timing is key, self awareness doubly so. This film knows its silly, it knows its cliched and it knows its story is paper-thin, and that kind of self awareness is something I need my film to come across as.



SUBSTANCE
Written and directed by Ben Green.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwX6CzrLVak

 Substance is the story of two young friends, one who takes care of the other far too much, the other having some serious drink and drug issues, generally its a heartrending short, emotional and poignant.

I watched this film to help me get a better understanding of how younger relationships work, my own social life was strange between 17 and 20, partially non-existent and partially just plain weird, so watching shorts that converse about hard questions allows me to better understand how young people deal with tough situations, I was never good in social situations due to numerous issues and this film, and others helped me to figure out how to write someone in the weird gap in my social life.

Workshops summary

in relation to workshop tasks, this blog may seem rather light, I have one, maybe two posts about them, and that's because I missed several, and I forgot to capture my footage from the others, below is a breakdown of the workshop tasks that aren't on the blog at the moment, and what i learned from the ones I simply forgot to capture.

I missed:

two editing workshops

I forgot to capture:

two camera workshops

Camera workshops:

the primary reason for the camera workshops was to familiarize us with the equipment, and to help us think in terms of camera angles and the rules of visual storytelling, one workshop was indoors and the other outdoors. 

being fairly familiar with the rules of shooting, I mostly learned the ins and outs of the two primary types of camera that we use, and the audio equipment. the EX1's and the PMW's having had some experience with Sony HDV cameras, it was mostly about getting used to the weight and the helpful tools that are available in the camera's on-board software, the control layouts are fairly similar across the Sony range so I had no problems getting to grips with the equipment, Ferg' gave us some very useful information and I am extremely glad I didn't miss these workshops.

I'm glad for the opportunity to experiment, I vastly prefer working hand-held over tripod as the weight of the cameras allows for a lot of movement control, it counterweights some of your movements, smoothing them out to an extent that allows me the freedom to shoot handheld for the vast majority of the time, even zoomed in.

First Major Project - Post production retrospective.

this will be split into four parts, Planning, rough cut, fine cut, and F/X. I will explain what I did and how I did it.


Trail Panning

I started by drawing out a fairly basic plan of what I wanted show in the trailer, a mixture of a scene list and a storyboard, this became a step outline which eventually became my rough cut, during the step outline stage things changed a lot, i kept making revisions and changes even before putting it together.


Rough cut
editing the rough cut was fairly easy, i started by making myself a basic EDL, i went through each shot and labeled it either Gd or Bd, good or bad, then I imported the whole lot into Premier Pro.
I worked from my plan until i had a very rough sequence, I then went in and tidied the cuts up and isolated the shots which required FX additions, these I exported as MP4's so that Hitfilm 3 Express could access them.

Fine Cut
after having shown Simon my rough cut I went back out to do my reshoot, after my reshoot I followed a similar set of actions as for my rough, I went through and labeled each shot as either good or bad, before exploring how to integrate them into my existing sequence, this took several hours as at every point I felt that it didn't quite make the cut, eventually I found a sequence I liked, I integrated my FX shots and then started on fixing the sound, unfortunately a lot of my shots had audio noise of one form or another, some far worse than others, after that I exported the whole thing in its native MPEG 2 video, I then opened a new project and imported the sequence, I did this to save time during colour correction, I colour corrected everything and then set about re-framing my shots to exclude the dead rabbit(Wind sock) that snuck into the top right hand corner of my shots.

F/X

producing the Fx shots qwas one of the easiest and most annoying parts of post, I used two different programs, Hitfilm3 Express and Adobe After Effects. I used Hit film on the Alien fatial markings for the MIa character, and After effects for the explosive flash of light.

step by step,
I mocapped Nora's(Mia Maddeline's) face by way of her eyebrows and the corners of her mouth, this allowed me to mount the shape layer that was her facial makings to her face and have them move with it.-I used a single resource to remind me how to do this in Hit film.(LINK) I basically followed this process, once for each side of her face, to allow for her fatial movement as-well as head movements.

my other FX shot was the flash of light, I did this entirely in after effects and it shows how much more practice i need in that program, After effects is worse at motion tracking when compared to hit film, Period. so it looks rather bad in comparison to my other FX shot, unfortunately hit film express cannot generate lens flare, which is the effect process I used.

First Major Project - Production retrospective

this post will be split into four sections, outlining how shooting went on each day.

DAY 1 - Tues 10
on the first day of shooting we shot the secondary locations, due to previously mentioned issues, we started shooting at 6 pm and shot until about 7-8 pm, I realized only too late that, for an unknown reason one of the scenes we shot had no sound, in review of the footage i believe this was due to a compression error in the Mpeg 2 video files, numerous error messages were shown when capturing the footage to Premier pro regarding the rushes files, thankfully this was an isolated incident as the rest of the footage was captured correctly. due to the loss of my extras, an entire plot-pivotal scene had to be cut. this scene was not filmed today as it would have been if all had gone well.

DAY 2 - Weds 11
filming on Wednesday had to be cancelled due to several technical malfunctions, these where fixed by Thursday, however troubleshooting the issues took most of Wednesday evening.  the issues where regarding the clip mike and radio system, the radio system was un-synched, causing the receiver to not receive the signal from the transmitter.

DAY 3 - Thurs 12
the shoot on Thursday went relatively well, heavy winds impacted audio quality however the radio-mike was luckily free of distortion and noise, this does however reflect in the footage as the actor using the clip mike is perfectly clear, the other however isn't. I did have issues with my actor playing "the man", he, unlike my leads didn't take his role too seriously and at some points disrupted their performances by "taking the piss" a bit behind my back, this was annoying due to the extremely tight schedule we where working too. shooting eventually had to be stopped early due to even heavier winds and rain.

RESHOOT Day Thurs 26
the reshoot went extremely well, we managed to get all planned shoots done to a higher quality than previous shoots, this, i believe was due to the crew's experience and the even tighter schedule we had to keep, this was due to the cast's availability,  exactly one hour of shooting was done this day, as agreed beforehand. this was a very productive day.of all the shoot days I am most happy with how this shooting experience went when compared to the other shoot days, we were well-oiled and focused.

First Major Project- Review of Script feedback

I received my Script feedback on Wednesday the 11th, half way through shooting. Steve outlined some interesting ideas that I intend to integrate into my final script.

from a technical, formatting perspective my script was good, there were some small errors regarding the entry and exit from flashbacks, and, in relation to that, my lack of vigor when designing my non-linear narrative. I didn't provide enough detail when cutting between different points in the narrative, I wasn't specific enough with how i showed the audience that the time had changed.

He also said that i needed to better focus on my visual language, have a better idea of how I wanted to shoot the film and for my script to reflect that amount of fore-thought. this I especially agree with and will create a post relating directly to this major issue i have had with this entire project.

in regards to dialogue Steve felt that while my characters do speak properly in regards to their ages, the dialogue was a bit too functional, and that in some places my dialogue wasn't direct enough.

from the meeting with Steve I have decided the following about my dialogue:

• too much exposition
• not enough weird alien-ness from Mia
• not enough jokes
• more Mia being Mia (i needed to personify mia better)

MAJOR ISSUES

the opening scenes
both Steve and I had a problem with the opening scenes, i was never particularly happy with them but when I had a new perspective on them i realized what i had done wrong in particular in relation to them, I had been thinking far too practically. the opening scenes consist of(in this order) shots of the couple running, a flashback of the couple walking home from a club, and another, further flashback to before the club, waiting for a bus. i had decided on these because i had wanted to express that they where drunk, had a good time and that one, (Mia) had been feeling down about something earlier that day. i was thinking practically in that I had discounted the idea of a club scene during my idea phase because i wanted to avoid shooting a scene with so many extras in what could be a fairly expensive location.
however, having talked it over with Steve I have decided to re-write the opening section of the script to better reflect how it could have been.

the final scene.
I and Steve both agreed that my final scene was far too long and that i would have been better off splitting it in two, maybe at different locations, we also agreed that the ending was a bit to ambiguous and that it needed to be better defined in the final version.

story Vs character
I tried to tell too much, in too little time, the exposition went a little far and the emotion didn't go far enough, I need to be louder with the emotions of my characters and tone down the reasons behind events, i need not write a history book when writing a screenplay, if the events of the weekend have taught me anything, emotions are key.

post process personal schedule this week

MONDAY: AT HOME TODAY
EDITING: 10-17
 EDL's, Lighting, Colour correction, steady-shot.
SET UP PRINTER:18-20
 FINISH  PRODUCTION RETROSPECTIVE: 20-23
finish writing retrospective on production, (inc. issues bits)

TUESDAY: AT HOME and at ROCHESTER campus TODAY
EDITING 10-12
Busy 12-13,
 EDITING 14-19
WRITE SCRIPT FEEDBACK RETROSPECTIVE/SCAN NOTES FOR BLOG 20-23

WEDNESDAY: AT TV STUDIO TODAY
EDITING:10-13:00 (show Simon rough cut)
EDIT RETROSPECTIVE START: 14-16
QUICK DESIGN PROMO POSTER and BLOG ENTRIES 18-23

THURSDAY: ROCH CAMPUS
---BUSY WITH CONT STUDIES---

FRIDAY: AT HOME/STUDIO TODAY
EDITING: 10-12
EDITING: 13:30-17

First Major Project - Pre-production Retrospective

To start this post I will apologize for my lack of recent entries, for the last two weeks i have been focusing upon my work, and is it only now that i am fully recovered from the process.

the bulk of my pre-production process lasted between monday the 2nd and Thursday the 5th. during this period I sourced actors/crew, finalized the shooting script, schedule and generally made-ready for my shoot, previously I had booked my equipment and requested access to my locations. the following paragraphs will explore what I did during that week in relation to this project. (note I had found myself somewhat ill with a severe cold during this period)

• CAST AND CREW- MY primary foci for the week were two-fold, properly confirming the actors/crew i had already, and finding actors to complete my cast, both of these where done fairly promptly, having already figured out my schedule it came down to simply making sure that the persons involved where fully briefed, including having a copy of the script and shooting schedules. I did have some trouble finding my two leads, however by Thursday evening I had both confirmed and briefed. unfortunately i could only find one backup lead, this lead to issues later on, during the production process. My final workforce was due to consist of the following: two lead actors, four extras/runners, one camera and one sound.

• SCHEDULING- I had planned to shoot across three days for approximately two hours a day, split in half by a short break for refreshments, this method was chosen due to the timing issues I ran into, see HERE for more info on timing. while my shoot was split over three days it was actually split into two parts, part one, which was shot on Tuesday the 10th, and part two which was to be shot on Wednesday and Thursday that week. my reasons follow, I had one primary location where the bulk of my script is set, i thine have several smaller, secondary locations within very easy reach of each other, the primary location was to be shot over the two day period and the secondary locations, on the first, single day period.

• SHOT LISTING- this was of a lower priority compared to preparing the practicalities of the shoot, and received little attention when compared. this was a mistake because it meant that i didn't have a clear focus, if i had listed better then the production workflow would have been drastically more time-economical. Anyway my shot lists for each shoot day where fairly simple, and rough, a basic outline of how and what I wanted to shoot on each day in each day in relation to the scenes I was planning on shooting, I kept it rough because of my experience with things going wrong, while i had accounted for most uncontrollable events, I had no preconceptions as to how much can go wrong on a small scale shoot, by keeping it simple and not micromanaging I hoped i would be able to get around any small, on the day issues.

• ISSUES ENCOUNTERED AFTER PRE-PRODUCTION, BEFORE PRODUCTION- I had serious casting and scheduling issues, the first appeared early friday morning, I lost two of my extras(the third had to cancel later on) due to deadline constraints(the mistake of using students as actors), on friday I left for home, a weekend away from the stress to take my mind of things, when I returned from my time away, I had lost my backup lead and one of my primary lead actors, I re-cast the character late monday evening, after having run out of options, I cast my boom operator as Shaz.
• the second major issue reared its head monday evening, this changed the proposed technical quality greatly, I had to scrap my early shoot times completely due to the inability of my cast to arrive at the required time for the day-for-night shooting blocks as scheduled.