Unit 2, Part E

21 January 2017

Fiction, our short film, I think on the whole turned out relatively decent. I really enjoyed making this film and think it created the desired effect I aimed for. Overall, through making this film, I've learnt loads from the rest of my crew and our mentors: Meabh O'Donovan, Rosie Thompson, Darren Eagle, and Becky Waters. I have really benefitted from the experiences making this film has given me.

One strength of the short film I think was the story. I think it's really intriguing and worth developing and reshooting in the future. I feel that I could learn from this film Fiction and redo it in a much more effective fashion. How I could improve the story/narrative is by extending the story and allowing more time at the beginning to develop the character of Lewis -making him more nerdy and relatable.

Editing wise, I think I would add more cutaways and close ups to allow the audience to feel the emotions of the actors more. I would also like compose more music (as I composed the music for this film) to put in the middle of the film if possible. However, I did think that the silence in the cafe scene was effective because it made it more awkward between the characters.

There are also some things we could improve upon in cinematography. For example, there was a silly pan down and back up when he was putting away his notebook in his bag. It lingered slightly too long on the top of Lewis's head and looked out of place because the narrative was supposed to be entirely from Lewis's perspective and this was a shot from the POV of Caitlyn. Additionally, as I said before, I would do some more cut aways to defining features of Lewis, in his costume and perhaps to his hands and maybe his feet walking.

I'm incredibly pleased with the experience I've gained from doing this Silver Arts Award, writing Fiction, and collaborating with industry professionals and other students. It's been extremely helpful to grow my network and to learn from these talented people. My single aim in completing this film and arts award was to learn from the people around me and create the very best short film I could manage with my fantastic collaborators. I worked my hardest, and I think I've, with the help of others, achieved these goals.

I can't wait to see how this BFI experience will open doors in the future and how the lessons I've learnt will play out in how I implement and achieve my future aspirations. Incredibly excited for the future thanks to the outcomes of this Silver Arts Award!

Unit 2, Part D

I think that I worked incredibly effectively with the rest of the crew and filled in the gaps where need be without question. There was an unspoken understanding between our crew members and I think that we've really gained respect for each other and what our specialities were during this process. I learnt a lot from them and they learnt from me as well.

In pre-production, I took on a lot, making sure everything was planned correctly so that we would minimise the amount of time we wasted on the shoot day. We had consistent communication over email and Facebook Messenger to make sure that we knew what was going on and everyone was in constant agreement. As I've said before, I wanted to make sure that everyone was okay with how I wrote the script, Fiction, who the characters were and even asked them what they wanted their names to be. I think that I held a good balance between asserting what I thought needed to happen and letting others do what they knew how to do best.

Whenever I made a mistake, which happens sometimes, I made sure to apologise and we would resolve the issue together. Also, if any of the other crew members made a mistake or needed help, I would try my best to resolve the issue. I think that we worked together effectively but didn't neglect the fun in the experience we were having together to be completely serious. I think I had a good balance between getting things done and becoming more than just business partners with the crew, but having fun a lot of fun together. I think this was worth mentioning because it would have been hard to complete the film if we didn't keep the morale up and just have some fun every once in awhile. I've really enjoyed collaborating with these talented people and would love to do it again!

Unit 2, Part C

During my writing process, I was very dedicated to the script Fiction and making sure it was absolutely the best script I could possibly write. Under the time limit of one shooting day, it had to be a concise and interesting story. One of my goals was to avoid people clicking away from this short film if they saw it on YouTube or some other platform. I understand the incredible weight that comes with being in charge of the story behind the film and I wanted to write it to perfection.

Additionally, I had a huge part in helping the rest of the crew out and filling the any gaps we had. It seems I took part in almost every role of the film and though I still let everyone be the leader of their own role per se, I wanted to help them out if I could. By the end of it all, I had helped out a little bit in art direction, editing, and production in general.

On the actual shoot day, I was a runner and kind of the person who they asked for a second opinion on certain shots. This was fun because as a runner, I looked after the props and made sure the actors were warm and fed. But as the third or fourth pair of eyes on set, it was good to be asked for my opinion and be able to veto some shots that seemed a bit risky or suggest shots that weren't thought of before so that we'd have options when editing later.

This goes to show what the diversity of one's role can be on a short film and how just being the screenplay writer can expand into something much more when you don't have a huge crew (ours was five people in total). I think that I fulfilled my arts leadership role effectively and helped out the other crew members as best as I could when they needed it. One of my goals in doing BFI was to learn from the specialists around me -the people and students who were better at one thing than I was, and I think in doing this, it has made it easier to help fill in the gaps where I needed to. Now, I feel like a more well-rounded individual, who could fill any role if I need be, because I learnt so much from my crew and this experience. 

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Here's me giving the "go" signal to our director, Ben, inside -who was going to tell our actors to start talking:

Here's me taking a look at the camera angle we were using in the cafe scene:

Here's a picture of our actress and my crew, looking for the approval of our director, Ben: 

Unit 2, Part B

14 January 2015

Whilst I was writing our script, I had to make sure that what I was writing was practical to shoot in less than a day. One sequence we had in the original script was a montage; it took place in many locations and had the actors wearing multiple costumes. However, with guidance from our mentors, we were told that shooting something like this in a day would be impractical if we also wanted time to shoot the other scenes. We resolved this particular problem by removing the montage, and changing the relationship of Lewis and Caitlyn to take place over a day rather than months or years. 

Once I had written our script, we had to think about getting props, what type of costumes we wanted the characters to wear, and gaining access to locations. I personally made some notes regarding this process, and had a hand in asking permission to use the Sheffield Central Library to shoot some scenes in at the beginning. 

Since we were shooting in a library, we also had to think about when we were shooting close ups of books, that we weren't causing any copyright problems by mentioning real book names and authors. To resolve this problem we opted to create a few fake books, to put on a shelf, when we were taking close ups. I volunteered to figure out how we were going to make these fake books. 

What I ended up doing was photoshopping some of my own photos and using our names and, with permission, some of my other friends' names as authors. Then, I printed off the "spines" of these fake books, folded the paper to make it seem like they were covering books, and taped them all to together in the back. Lastly, I attached them to a metal frame that I twisted out of wire. Here's what it looked like in the end: 

Unit 1, Part B- Entry 6

18 January 2017

Recently, I did an entry in my inspiration notebook that focuses solely on storyboarding because being a storyboard artist is an incredibly important role in the art department of a film. Directors or cinematographers can be the ones to draw the storyboards, but oftentimes, storyboarding is an entirely separate job. Perhaps this is because of the weight this role holds -visually displaying to the entire crew what exactly is going to happen on the screen.

Storyboarding is essential to pre-production, and successful filmmaking, because it allows for filmmakers to have discussion based on a visual plan -and most filmmakers are very visual people. Once a storyboard is made, changes can be made, based on this plan, during the shooting process. Storyboarding is very useful for the entire cast and crew to create a meaningful and powerful sequence.

In my inspiration notebook, I've gathered some storyboarding examples from some films that I enjoy. It was interesting for me to see the diversity in the styles that the storyboard artists use; this goes to show that anyone can storyboard and they don't have to be meticulously detailed all the time. However, on the other hand, the detailed and colourful storyboards are incredibly inspiring, and I can imagine they moved or inspired the rest of the crew before they even started shooting. I think it's amazing that there is this much diversity in these storyboards and it has challenged me to think of ways I can develop my own storyboarding style in the future.

Unit 2, Part A

13 January 2017

My leadership role within this project (creating a short film in collaboration with other BFI Academy students), was to write and edit a screenplay/script that we could film.

My aim in writing the script for this short film was to improve my writing skills through fulfilling the advice given to us from the speakers and instructions and edits given to us. Before, I've always just written scripts for school or my friends and I've been able to be quite free in how I write and wouldn't even plan -I would just go for it. This was a different experience for me because of the planning, and the fact that a film would actually be produced from the script I wrote. My aim was to make sure that it was a professional script because BFI is a program where we, as students, are learning to work in a professional environment.

This role required lots of pre-planning before writing the script. Besides coming up with the actual ideas for the story, I had to make sure that my whole group was on board with the ideas and that they felt like they had a part in the production of the script. It seemed important for my group to feel that they had some ownership of the story, as I certainly felt I did at the end of the script writing process. So before I even wrote the script, I made sure that I had the full support of my team members in making some of the decisions. Here are some earlier screenshots of our conversations:

On the first Saturday of BFI, we were very lucky to have a speaker called Rebecca Mark-Lawson come and talk to us about creating scripts specific to short films. I took extensive notes during this class in order to better prepare for the task ahead of me. Although I have written scripts before, I wanted to make sure that I did this one the right way. The biggest thing that I took away from this "master class", as she called it, is that simplicity is key; when writing my script, I tried as hard as possible to implement this idea and keep in mind the format of the film. The fact that this is a short film, not a feature film, really affected the tone of the story and kept any elaboration I desired to touch on to a minimum. Here are the notes I took during this talk:

This talk also inspired me to create complete project plans and to do some further research on stories before wrote one. Here are some pictures of these plans and some notes that I made from a YouTube clip:

Also, I decided to make a PowerPoint based off the notes that I took, so that I could have something to reference every time that I write a script in the future. I really wanted to make sure that in doing this course, I didn't forget what I learnt. Hence why I've taken so many notes and created this PowerPoint:

Another mentor who had a huge role in helping me develop the script was Caroline Cooper-Charles. She asked me how I could make the main character, Lewis, more personal to the audience and talked about how his actions could portray him as a more likable guy. Her feedback really helped me to develop the second draft of my script.

Unit 1, Part B- Entry 5

13 January 2017

Over this past week, I've been noticing the importance of props -and how props relate to the words quality and quantity.

In films, oftentimes props are not noticed unless they frequent the screen multiple times. The more times a prop is shown, the more the audience is expected to notice said prop. For example, in the film Dirty Pretty Things (2002), directed by Stephen Frears, the number of times clocks (or watches) and mirrors are shown on the screen is absolutely immense. The production designer of this film is Rebecca Holmes.

I've seen this film a few times, and perhaps my second time watching it, I started to notice this trend and I was absolutely fascinated by it. It's beautiful how something like a prop can increase the quality of a film because it clarifies the themes being explored inside the film.  The prop itself increases in quality because a story and a meaning is attached to that prop through the film -it would not be shown in extreme close up if it was not important. Additionally, the quantity, or the number of times these props were on the screen increased the quality of the themes and emotions being expressed.

In this case, the themes being discussed were: morality, time, and identity. Okwe, the main protagonist reaches many points throughout the story where he must consult his identity to make ethical decisions. The problem with this however, was that he didn't know who he was -only what people thought of him. The entire film he never looked in the mirror, he had to figure this out for himself. Time also, seems to grab ahold of Okwe, forcing him to consider things he never thought of before; the clocks and the mirrors both have a ring of light around them seeming to represent purity, found over time and in the actions of the characters who looked in the mirror. Although the characters did things that were wrong and time often seemed to be against them, in the end their identities and lives were redeemed, suggesting this idea of purity and rebirth.