Shooting Script

Shooting script is bound to change slightly depending on limitations of set and cameraman's abilities.

Excuse the mistake in numbering at shots 18/19!

Title Sequence Analysis

Costumes

The costumes we will be needing for the actors are fairly simple and do not require us to go out of our way majorly to find them.

Ivy, (Megan) overall will need need two costumes. One for the night scenes and one for the day scenes, these will be a pair of pyjamas and a school uniform.

Below are examples of these:

Beth (Katie) will only need one costume to signify the clothes that she died in. 

Below is an example of this:

Ivy's dad (Nick) will need two costumes, the breakfast scene and the night scene for this he will need one set of clothes that are smart and imply that he is going to work and the other will just need night clothes, predominantly a dressing gown.

Below are examples of these:

Genre Research

Our film idea is rather strange when it comes to selecting a genre. This is down to the fact that at first it seems like a completely different style to what it turns out to be in the end. At the beginning it gives off the impression that it will very much be a horror/thriller but at the end it changes quite dramatically when you find the conclusion of the film which in itself seems very much more along the lines of drama. From last year we both knew from experience that there were certain types of genre that we wanted to stay clear of for example pure horror as we felt that when it comes to student films they can have a lack of story (or a unclear plot) character development and are not always pulled off to the best of people abilities which is why we tried to focus our ideas mainly on the genre of 'drama'. We felt that making sure our film was understandable yet interesting and nice to watch was one of the main things we needed to focus on and when it comes to genre you really need to get a clear view on what you are portraying.

A little bit of information about genre itself:

Genre is defined by the elements within a film and there are certain elements for certain categories and this is what gives us genre. There are so many different sections and sub-sections of genre nowadays that it very hard to classify a film within one genre completely. Films have so many underlying elements that the genre of a film needs to be shown in a way that critics, viewers and media theorists need to be aware of. Genre is normally recognised by some form of descriptive or functional approach that you may take note of within the film, perhaps by looking at one of the following; location, character archetypes, plot content, costume, or shot transitions. The functional approach is more inclusive of asking questions about the film and seeing how the answer turns out, this could e an obvious giveaway to the genre.

Characters- Drama

Locations- Drama

Themes- Soft horror

Costumes- Drama

etc..

Most of the elements within our film suggest a slight genre hybrid of drama/ horror. Perhaps not even to the extent of horror as the only horrific element is that of the ghost of her sister. Though some of the connotations of our film such as death, nightmares and even having the main character as a girl may lead to believe it is a horror, we see it more as a drama with dark themes and especially do not see it as a horror  that involves gore or violence. We have tried to create an illusion of suspense to enthral the audience with these themes not just throw it in their faces with shock tactics. 

Continuity

Continuity is possibly one of the most important things within a film that needs to be pulled off with the highest standards possible. If the continuity isn't right then the whole film will look and feel completely unexplained and well delivered as well as disjointed. Continuity can refer to the plot of the film to make sure things make sense and it can also refer to how the film is made. In terms of the plot, it means the film just making sense to the viewer, discontinuity can be observed when someone notices a plot hole and there are some pretty famous plot holes out there.
      Some are quite funny when it comes to the writing of the plot, for example, in 'Transformers' (2007) We are told that the glasses the 'Decepticons' so desperatly need are the very glasses that young Sam Witwicky has placed on Ebay for sale. Yet later in the the film we are also told that the 'Decepticons' can very easily hack into the United States military network, which leads to the question, wouldn't placing a simple Ebay bid be an easier option?

     Another example can be seen in 'Back to the Future' (1985) Marty Mcfly goes back and alters his family past changing the future for the better, and meets his parents at the same time. Yet neither of his parents seem to remember the kid who brought them together and inspired his father to write sci-fi, has the same name as the famous 'Calvin Klein' and who happens to look exactly like their own son? Of course the producers could be leaving it up to the audience to just look over it and enjoy the film but plot holes can sometimes ruin a film if they are just too unbelievable.
    When it comes to the production it can become a lot more complex in terms of making sure everything runs smoothly. These concern things such as editing and most noticeable visual errors which can occur with props, costumes, makeup or anything that is changed day to day with set or scene such as weather. The problem with large scale films is that they are never normally shot in order which means that if something goes wrong with continuity the best way to deal with it is to edit it out or edit it cleverly but sometimes it just cannot be avoided. Smaller things such as change in the length of cigarettes or the amount of water in a glass can completely ruin the illusion of reality for the viewer if they are extremely noticeable. Editing can be a problem when certain rules are not followed for example the 180 degree rule. If this rule is not followed and the characters that are involved in dialogue or screen time, are not looking towards each other when they should be, by keeping each character looking in the direction of the other and are kept to either side of the screen, the viewer may become confused or not fully understand the scene which can completely ruin a film. Below is a short video from the New York Film Academy explaining continuity and the 180 degree rule.

Photo Storyboards

This is a rough presentation of our soon to be made short film, 'Nightmares'.

The finished film's shots will be much longer, creating tension in the appropriate scenes with much more fluent editing. Eleanor Lewis portrays Ivy in the photographs, Megan Squires portrays her sister and I portray Ivy's father. These casting decisions are simply placeholders until we can come to an agreement on the actors for the film. Location is also likely to change, prop layout, plot structure and cinematography will remain largely the same.

Title Sequence Ideas

After researching into a number of title sequences from popular films it is clear that their success can swing either way. On one hand, a title sequence can pass by the audience completely unnoticed. On the other, it can leave a brilliant lasting impression. The title sequences that tend to leave an impression, however, are those with impressive effects and imagery. In these circumstances then it would be beneficial to aim for a less striking title sequence, including a simple title card perhaps with a 'fancy' fade-in of some sort, and then progress to the cast and crew's names displayed over the introduction of the film.

I'm going to take inspiration from my previous film that I made for AS Media. The title cards that slot between each scene of the film were plain black with a white serif font.

I aim to take even less focus off the title cards by simply placing them over the video rather than cutting the video to make room for the title cards. This way the audience can enjoy the film whilst we display the necessary credits. I do however want to put emphasis on the title of the film, and perhaps have that over a black background, with enlarging text.

The 'Tracking' option for text in Final Cut seems to widen the gap between each letter in a word. Finding the right balance of tracking seems to give the text a great 'cinematic' feel to it. I could perhaps also use key-framing to go from less-to-more tracking of the title.

For the cast and crew, I can place the titles over alternating sides of the screen, for example:
Directed by Benjamin Squires (bottom left), Story by Adie Grimbley (bottom right). This gives the title sequence a small amount of movement, stopping it from being a complete bore!

Experimenting with Lighting

When we got the chance, we experimented with lighting and colour to see what effects we could achieve;
We thought a particularly good use of lighting was the silhouette achieved when the light was behind the actor; although we're not sure when we'd be able to use this effect.
Although colour adds a nice touch to the shot, we'll only be using it subtly compared to how we used it in the video.

After we liked the silhouette effect we accidentally stumbled across last practise, I went out and purposefully experimented with silhouettes and lighting. The final shots are actually quite nice!

Storyboards

When it came to doing our storyboards, I tried to leave it vague but to allow some room for change within the overall look of the film. This was mainly because when it comes to filming, you never know what could change on the day or whether you can even manage to get some shots due to the location. This happened to me last year and I felt that having a vague yet instructive storyboard would be the best way to go about it. Along with the images I added notes about sound,lighting and even some of the connotations that would go along with the scenes. I felt this was important to give us some guidance, as well perhaps giving us some more ideas when it came to the actual days of filming. Below are the large images of the storyboard I created, and beneath them is a small slideshow of the closeups.

The 'Film' Look

Shooting on film looks great, but it's expensive and not an option for student film. Luckily, there are countless numbers of tutorials and explanations on youtube regarding how to achieve the film look.
But why is that film look so desirable?

There are a number of differences between film and digital with arguably, the biggest contributing factor being colour. Many YouTube film-makers try to achieve the film look with colour correction through software such as Adobe After Effects or 'Color'. The colour in film seems to be much more contrasting, vibrant and deep. Another factor that contributes to the film look is FPS (frames per second). Films are shot at 24 fps, and although the average moviegoer won't be able to tell the difference between 24fps and 30fps, there is a difference.

Control of the camera also has a major affect. If the camera is shaking everywhere, not focused properly and controlled in an amatuer fashion, it won't look like it's been shot by a filmmaker, just a student with a camera; filmmakers should use tripods, dollys and steadicams to a achieve a much better image.

Perhaps another very obvious giveaway in regards to film vs. digital is the aspect ratio. When you see a film on TV, you'll notice the aspect ration becomes letter-boxed (most of the time). This is because televisions are made accustomed to the 16:9 aspect ratio whereas film is usually shot in either 2.35:1 or 1.85:1. The camera that we and the majority of other student film makers use shoots in 16:9 which is why during the editing stage, many choose to add the 'letterbox' effect to achieve that film look.

The video below shows a great comparison of digital and video including the main differences between each. The point of the video is to see how closely the film look can be replicated on digital. The end effect is quite impressive. 

Achieving the film look may not be not necessary, but as Tarantino was saying, it all helps to create the illusion of what a movie really is.

Taking these things into account I tried to make a short video of my dog playing, look more filmic;

A screen shot from raw, unedited video.

As you can see form the still, the colours are a little dull and could do with some correction.

Using the technology that I have available (Final Cut), I only went through a couple of stages to get to the finished result.

1. 'Widescreen'

 The cheap effect of altering the aspect ratio of my video from 16:9 to 2:35:1 by simply adding the 'letterbox' effect.
2. 3-way Colour Correction
The most important step of the two. As you can see from the visual colour correction diagrams below, there are a number of things I changed. First, the saturation, which refers to how 'bright' the colour is. No saturation will make the video black and white, whereas full saturation will show an unnatural, vibrant picture. I bumped up the saturation slightly to enhance the colours, but not ruin them.
I then made both the blacks and the mids slightly darker to create more depth, and made them both ever so slightly blue, whilst moving the whites more toward orange.

Original

Colour Corrected

The process was purely experimental, seeing what suited the video best, and colour correcting accordingly. I assume each location will require different colour correction and alterations, but practising these skills before the editing stage will surely help me in the long run.

Here is the end result -

The image looks deeper and colours are more vibrant because of colour correction.

Change of plans!

Because of work schedules and availability times clashing, we have decided to use another location to film and another actor to play the main role. She is a little older, but it works out best for the group considering she is the sister of the 'monster' in the film.
The location is a house belonging to a close friend of Adie's, only five minutes from where she lives. This makes borrowing and moving equipment easier for us considering we won't have to get various buses and trains to the location.
With these changes, we should be able to commence filming very soon.

Some aspects of the story have also changed; Ivy, the lead character, now actually suffers from nightmares, rather than experiencing them in real life. This conveniently fills a couple of plot holes, one being why Ivy believes she's safe in a closet rather than just her bedroom. The fact that a lot of the film takes place in her nightmares also allows us to bend the rules a little, playing with lighting and colour to accompany Ivy's emotions in the nightmare.

Problems that may be encountered

Shooting in enclosed or smaller spaces
For some of the shots, especially the closet shots it may be difficult to do and we may have to think of another way of how to shoot it, depending on what we decide when it comes to actually filming it. The problem will probably come because of the size of the camera we are using as well as any sound or lighting equipment we may need. As neither of us have really had any experience in dealing with a problem like this before this may be one of the hardest to deal with and pull off.

Finding a younger actor
As we wanted our film to look potentially very good we wanted to find a child that would have at least a little experience with acting. And although it would have been easier to find someone related to us that option was not possible. So we have two options; one is using a boy from my dance school who does musical theatre, I have seen first hand that even when he was younger he was very capable of behaving well and acting to a good standard and now that he is older he is even easier to talk to. Our other option is by instead of using a boy would be to use a girl for the main part of the film. The actress that will be playing 'the sister' has a younger sister which gives the advantage that they look very alike. Also the good thing with this is that she is slightly older but looks young so it will be easier to work with and talk to her.

Locations
Our film has three major locations, a school, a house and a street. The street part will be easy enough as long as it fits in with the whole look of the film for example if the house was quite big and nice but the street looked very dirty and grimy. The school will be okay if we can get permission to film outside it and to record the sound of one class. The problem with this would be trying to recreate a classroom, it would have to look believable and not as though we had just stuck a few drawings on a wall somewhere.  The hardest part for this was to find a house that would have all the appendages that we would need. At first we were going to use my grandparents house which had all the necessary parts but the downside was that it was in Sheffield. For us to get all the equipment and every actor and helper to this site would have been extremely difficult, also because it is not the largest house for moving around and setting up lighting it would have been quite hard to get the effect that we need. Luckily my friend Beth has agreed that we can use her house which is quite big and has all the things that we need. Although it does not have a closet to hide in per say it has a very small bedroom that with a few props can be made to look how we would envision it.

Getting everyone to be free at the same time and in the same place
As both me and Benj have college almost five days a week as well as work it is very hard finding a suitable length of time where we will both be able to film with enough time to get the work done. When you add other people into the mix this just gets more and more difficult, as we have three actors there are times where not all of them are in the same scene together. This will make it slightly easier to schedule. Everything also has to be scheduled with Beth and when someone is in at their house, so that we do not trash it.

Locations

Our locations for the film are very few in total but finding them and having them fit the feel of the film has been more difficult. The scenes that require separate locations are the main house, a street,

The following pictures are of the house that we will be using;

From inside the study
The study is not a location seen very much within the film
yet it may be visable from the scenes within the kitchen.

From outside the study
The study may also be used near the end where Ivy runs upstairs as
she sees Beth downstairs, this is where she may come from.

Dining room and living room
The dining room is where Ivy will sit when her mother is questioning
her about her nightmares, she may face away from
the living room or facing it.

and again
The living room is where we will see Beth when Ivy runs away from her.

Dining table and kitchen
The kitchen is where Ivy's mother will be preparing her
lunch in the morning and speaking on the phone.

Front living room
The front living room is not used very often during the film
but it will be seen when Ivy come downstairs
in the morning to the kitchen

Stairs to second level leading from front living room
From the top of the stairs during one of the nightmare scenes you
 will be able to see the light pouring from the
 small bedroom to signify its safety.



Landing at top of stairs
The landing which leads to her mothers bedroom will be seen
at the very end of of the film in the scene with beth and also
 slightely seen when her mother knocks on
 the door of the bedroom.



Small bedroom (closet) to the right of the Landing
This is the room where Ivy hides during her nightmares,
at one point we will have lght pouring out of this
room to show it is her safe place



Inside of the small bedroom (closet)
she sits upon the small bed right behind the door with her
 back against the wall



Bathroom to the left of the landing
Out of this room and her mothers room lights will also be shown
 with faded colours to represent how
 she feels about each room .



Large bedroom at the end of the Landing
This door will also show a muted light.

Beth's bedroom and the very top of the stairs to the left
This room is only seen when she passes it on the way to
 hiding in the small bedroom. It gives a
 clue to who she is being haunted by.

Our other locations are mainly very simple other than the need for a school. The main other being a street where we see flowers left at a streetlight, this was very easy to find as the location of the house had some perfect 'neighbourhood' looking locations that would give the idea that you would not expect something like this to happen here.

Our last location was the school which was difficult to get permission from but as we were not shooting during school time they graciously allowed us to shoot at my old primary school which has an excellent community feel to it, which again makes the viewer think 'how is this going unoticed' 

Film Viral Campaigns

With social media ever-growing, viral marketing campaigns are adapting. There's been many, many attempts to ignite buzz about an upcoming film, with only a handful being genuinely successful.
The idea of a viral campaign is to generate word of mouth and further advertise a film. Because of the recent growing population of sites such as Facebook and Twitter, many choose to advertise through such websites.

Some earlier campaigns include Fight Club (1999) and The Blair Witch Project (1999).  Fight Club hosted a promotional website and a couple of 'public service announcements', which didn't do too great considering this was all before the YouTube era!
On the other hand, The Blair Witch Project's various police reports and backstory of the movie were largely successful because of the already existing interest in the paranormal; blurring the lines between fiction and reality.

Some more recent examples of viral marketing include Cloverfield (2008) and it's few websites detailing the backstory and characters form the film, including a fake MySpace account of the character, Sherlock Holmes (2009) and a Twitter account belonging to one of the characters of the film and The Dark Knight (2008).

The Dark Knight had 4 different websites apparently 'created' and 'vandalised' by the lead antagonist, The Joker. Each had hints toward the themes of the film and their characters.
This was one of the most extensive viral campaigns around, and considering the film made more than double the amount than its predecessor, it was one of the most effective.

Lighting

The story we have decided upon is quite strange as we can play around with certain scenes to make them create a certain atmosphere. For this specific changes in lighting might help to create a different effect which is why we are looking into different lighting effects by using things such as flood lights and the use of torches. For a lot of the major lighting it will require flood lights to create different effects as well as giving the idea that it is night. This is okay because both college and myself have access to them and we would be able to borrow them for the time we need.

  

The use of flood lights also allows us the possibility to use gel filters to create different coloured lighting to subconsciously alter how the audience perceives the film. For example, the use of red lighting to insinuate danger or white lighting to show innocence. It would allow us to also show the emotion that the child was feeling for example if it was slightly red when the door was being shaken and then when his mother opens it and he sees it is safe the lighting changes to either green or white, it would deepen the effect that the film would have on the audiences emotions and make them relate to the main characters feelings as well.

This clip shows how the lighting was used to show how the character feels within the shots and how each different colour means something different, this is also shown in the film The cook, The thief, His wife and Her lover. 

Here, the lighting is white with hints of red this shows it is a very clean, untampered place but the red shows that it is next to the dining room which is more of a dangerous place within the film.

The lighting in the dining room is very dark and red which insinuates that it is a untrusting, dark and evil place where bad things may happen

The green in the kitchen represents it being a safe place 

Also as this style of lighting is more often used within horrors, thrillers and dramas it will help to fool the audience into thinking it is one type of film until they watch to the very end where they will find out the truth. This style of using lighting to show characteristics of a person has also been classically used within film noir to show the light and dark within a character. So for our film lighting offers a lot of possibilities for us in terms of making the film look that extra bit special.

The short film 'fables of forgotten things' is an excellent example of how lighting can be used within a short film to create a strange effect:

part one

part two

Props/Equipment

There are a number of things we'll need for the film; behind and in front of the camera.

Equipment we'll need include:
HDV1000
I used this camera last year for AS media, but we didn't shoot in HD, which we will be doing this year.
HD footage gives a much clearer, sharper image. Using this camera helps us achiever a more professional look.
To contribute even further to the professional look is the way the camera is handled. This includes using both a steadicam and tripod.
I hope to practise using the steadicam a little more before the day of filming.


Arguably, an even further way of achieving a professional film is the quality of the audio. This includes both audio quality and music.
We will be recording most of the audio, particularly conversations, with the H4 Zoom recorder. It has much higher quality audio, with the only draw being the battery life and memory card limits (depending on what format audio you record in, the suggested being WAV).

We will also most likely require some kind of lighting for the closet scenes. Adie's dad has access to floodlights because he works in archaeology. See the 'Lighting' post for more information on lighting and possible options for filming.

Props we'll need include;
A torch; powerful enough to illuminate a closet sufficiently, but not big enough to break the illusion of the scene (for example, a heavy-duty torch would be too large and inappropriate).

We will also require flowers (tied to a lamppost). Obviously, we won't need as many as in the picture to the left, just a
small amount to express the idea of a death nearby.
We also need a picture and frame; we'll be taking a picture of Ivy, Beth and Lily together (as a family photo for the film).

Ivy also requires a school bag or a general rucksack.

Camera equipment on the day; including steadicam!

A sandwich for the lead character

Family photos, props for breakfast scene

Dying roses, will be tied to lamppost

Tons of lighting equipment