Pre-Production: Production Schedule

Production Schedule:

Thursday 2nd March:

- Group work check
- Bring together costumes and props
- Decide on a name for film
- Finalise storyboard
- Create shot list
- Consider film festivals

Saturday 4th March:

- Film on set
- Arrive preferably before 12pm
- Prepare into costumes and set up ready for first scene
- begin filming shots corresponding to shot list.

Monday 6th March – Monday 22nd March:

- Post production editing
- Rough cut of film
- Colour grade film (Da Vinci resolve)
- Add sound
- Compress and export

Research: Character emotions

Leading up to production, I began to think about how I will direct the actors on set in bringing out the emotions we want for the characters. One form of research I have done is look at how a character deals with loss and the feeling of no control over what's going on.

In this scene from Interstellar, Cooper watches his children grow up in a matter of minutes which makes us as the audience feel great sympathy for Cooper as he has not been there as a father to watch his children become adults themselves.

I aim to get this same emotional response that Cooper receives from the audience within the protagonist. As a mother who has lost their child from forces they can't control; she will never see her child grow up and the only things that she has connected to her baby are the surgical scar on her stomach and the painting she draws with her own blood. 

Lecture: I Come From Cyberspace

Summary:
Technology has advanced so far over the years, it has now gained the potential to become art as it has inflicted a great deal of influence in modern day society and culture and continues to do so with VR being the latest branch of advancement. Technology has also innfluenced fashion like that of Cybergoth and artists and filmmakers are also using the concept of cyberspace and technology for creating projections of the future that technology may lead to; for example The Matrix by the Wachowskis and Uncanny Valley by Federico Heller.

Pre-Production: Storyboard

Storyboard Art by Fi, Shot concepts by Oscar

Pre-Production: Character Profiles

The Protagonist:

Referred to in the credits as "The Artist", she is a woman who has suffered at the hand of the law in horrific ways. Not so long ago, she was expected to give birth to a child. However, the government forced her to have an abortion and forcefully removed the child from her leading to a miscarriage.

Ever since that happened, she has laid low from the outside world due to the law against creativity. She has chosen to become an extremist of sorts and actively goes to an abandoned garage where she has set up her own secret art studio.  It's here that she is working on her masterpiece; a painting of the fetus that could have been her living child.

To show the commitment she has to this work, she paints on a large sheet with her own blood; extracting more of it when she needs more to paint. This has resulted in her entire body being covered with scars, cuts and bruises as well as extreme blood loss. It's only a matter of time before these wounds take hold of her health.

For her costume design, we've decided to make her wear a tank top so that her arms are permanently exposed for her to extract blood. Upon arriving at the garage, she wears a blue shirt. This is because; in accordance with visual components theory, blue is  the extraction of red; literally what she's doing with her own blood.


The Antagonist:

The three "police" represent the true antagonist in the film: the governing authority of the story's world. It's their job to hunt down and arrest anyone known to be breaking the law and creating illegally. At face, they seem to show no mercy beating their targets and hauling them away into prison. However, when they break in to find the work of the protagonist, we're reminded that they are still human as they express shock and almost fear; as if they begin to question if what they are doing is morally right.

Lecture: The Treachery of Images

Summary:
This lecture focused on the more experimental versions of art and photography and the movement of surrealism from the 1900's. This being that artist began to take a more bizarre/dreamlike approach to their work to convey messages. More contemporary artist in actuality use this idea of surrealism in the sense that they use new and unusual methods to create art such as 'glitch art'; taking glitches from google earth and turning them into surreal versions of landscapes. The idea of this is to play into things like the uncanny valley; this being to create a response into the viewer that makes the art seem almost like the real but at the same time, slightly and possibly disturbingly off by a little.

Research: Non-diegetic sound for ending

This piece of music is a song that did not get published with the Mylo Xyloto album by Coldplay in 2011 but was used in their "Live 2012" film. It's a song that has a theme of reflection and self awareness as demonstrated in the "Live 2012" film. Listening to this made me picture a sense of tragedy or sadness; based on the slow rhythm and basic form of the piano notes.

 In my opinion, it could go really well for the ending when the police break in and see the painting and the protagonist unconscious. The music would make the audience think that combined with their shocked performance; they question if what they are doing is morally right. As a group, we aim to create a piece of music similar to this to use in our film.

Music is used in "Live 2012" film (starts from 1:10)

Pre-Production: Location Confirmed!

Location  was one of our hardest choices to  make. We needed something ideally run down, confine and cut off. Our first choice was down by the locks next to City Locks accommodation. However, we crossed that off as being too unsafe to get equipment and crew down there. We had considered using the film & animation classroom as there is a lot of white which is what we wanted to represent bland and no colour. But there was also the option to use my grandmother's garage which is not too far away in Mosley.

I have enquired and that location has been confirmed for us to  use. It appears fairly run down, is sealed off and has white walls. It ticks all the boxes and it allows us to set up our own set without the need for permissions or hassle. We shall commence filming there on 04/03/17.

Applying Theory to our short film

As a group, we have spit the visual components between us to further develop our film based on each one. I have been assigned line, shape, rhythm, space and movement:

Production Roles

Director - Alex
Story and Screenplay - Alex, Ellie, Fi, Oscar
Director of Photography - Oscar
Storyboard Artist - Fi, Oscar
Production Design - Fi
Visual Effects Artist - Ellie
Grip - Alex
Sound Design - Fi, Oscar
Script Supervisor - Ellie
Editing - Alex, Ellie

Theory: Visual Components Lecture Notes

Research: The Pleasantville Effect (Secondary Colour Correction)

Lynda.com Article:

• Secondary colour correction isolates "a range of colour, saturation and brightness values and make adjustments in only that range" 

- Kennedy, A (2014), Beyond Pleasantville and Sin City: Secondary Color Correction, https://www.lynda.com/articles/secondary-color-correction-sin-city

This article helped me to get a better understanding of what the Pleasantville effect actually is in technical terms. Thus, it helps me to explore the possibilities of using this effect in my short film.

Films that use the Pleasantville Effect:

Pleasantville:

Where the effect gets its name from. the use of colour in the film is limited as the protagonists enter the sit-com "Pleasantville" and more colour is added as more rules of the world they are in get broken. Colour is this form is used as a method of literally standing out from the world in which the characters are in.

This is highly useful for our short film as the protagonist does not belong in the world she is in. Her love of creation in a world where it is illegal confines her to the space of her own make shift art studio and so using colour to make her stand out as in Pleasantville is a highly effect use of contrast with this visual component.

Sin City:

A more obvious use of the Pleasantville effect in Sin City is to isolate the colour red and de-saturate all other colours to make the red much more outstanding when it meets the audience's eye. The director's may have chosen to do this as an emphasis on the colour of blood marking the foreshadowing of the violence of the film or to add on to emotions of anger and lust.

This way of using the effect can prove useful for highlighting the red of the blood in our short film. As the protagonsit is painting with her own blood, having red as the only saturated colour will make it much more horrific to the audiences eye; by the means of contrast in saturation of the visual component colour.

Pre-Production: Script 2nd Draft (current latest version)

Theory: Editing Preparation

X Fix in post

• Planning is KEY

First Step:

• The paper edit (pre-visualisation) Storyboard + Script etc combined
• Show what shots are used where
• Shoot master shots first
• Paper edit will reference a separate storybaord with coded entries
• Allows all members to understand what you're working towards

Second Step:

• GET ORGANISED
• Media management
• Meta logging - log takes and review footage

Editing The Craft:

*In The Blink of an Eye* Walter Murch

Concepts:

• Rule of 6

Emotion - 51% of the time emotion motivated

Story - 23% does it advance the story

Rhythm 10% does it occur at a moment that is rhythmically intersting and right

Eye-trace 7% does it acknowledge point of interest

2D plane of screen 5% does it respect planarity  

3D space of action 4% does it respect 3D continuity

Subjective over objective

• Don't worry it's only a movie

Brain buffering

Blinking makes the end of one moment

Hide cuts with blinking

Use emotion as a sign of when to cut

Edit Types:

• Matched action
• After action
• Before action
• Entrance/exit
• Foreground wipe
• Look off
• Dialogue referred (end scene of Dark Knight)
• Reaction
• Thought referred
• Visual Link (Beginning of Hook; more childish cut)
• Dialogue overlap
• Audio linked
• Loud sound (Indiana Jones plane explosion)

Only cut when there's purpose

This workshop was useful in helping better understand what we need to gather in production which n turn will determine what we have to work with in terms of what cuts we can use and how well we can hide them.

Pre-Production: Script 1st Draft

Lecture: Happy Mondays (The Visual Rave Culture)

Summary:
This lecture touched upon the rave culture and its progression through the years in regards to political movements like that of Margot Thatcher. Rave culture in itself has since brought out its own visual aesthetic and graphical portrayal of a more cultural  approach to politics and it has also shaped the fashion and the environments it associates itself with; embedding that impact in societies culture and progression through history.

Story Ideas Pitch and Feedback

After we discussed the themes we came up with, my group and I prepared to pitch 2 ideas:

Idea 1 was then selected for us to develop into a script and then shoot as a our short film. Evaluating the pitch, I think we put our ideas across fairly. On my part, I could have simplified the explanations of the ideas to make them less complex for Matt and Kelvin to picture there and then during the presentation.