Preliminary Task

G321 Preliminary Production from Millie Wrench on Vimeo.

17/01/2012 First story board: Rio, Hannah and I threw around ideas for the preliminary project, which must be called The Package. We all agreed on a story line for the film, and then discussed the basic planning, like the setting and how will go about actually filming it. The people who would play the characters were also chosen. We then made a REALLY rough storyboard and put our ideas onto to paper.

I have scanned an image of this storyboard.

19/01/2012 Second Story board:

As a group we decided to rethink our original idea for the preliminary project, we felt that our first idea was dull and would be boring for the audience to watch. Our new idea is more exciting, though maybe more complicated to create. We then created a new storyboard that we will develop later, hopefully onto A3. 

28/01/2012 Filming The Package Today we got almost all the filming done for our preliminary project. Our film was set on a train, so we had to spend the day filming on the train. We came across some problems whilst filming, we weren't allowed to film other people without their consent and as we were filming in a public place we found this quite difficult. We would be shooting and then a person would  ruin the shot as they walked by or started talking loudly. Another thing that we had to be careful of was to make sure that our shots were consistent and had the same setting as each other, to ensure that we did this we stayed on the same train in the same carriage.

One of the biggest problems we came across was the direction that the train was moving in the shot, however we didn't realize this until after we had filmed everything and so it will probably be a problem when we come to editing..

30/01/2012 Final Filming and Uploading Footage We filmed the final scene for our preliminary project today, we did come across some problems. We wanted this scene to be dark so that it had a sinister feel to it, to give the impression that our character is up to no good. However, we did not realize that it is best to film a dark scene in normal light and then change the brightness of the shots in editing and so we filmed the shots in the dark. After uploading and looking at the shots on screen, we realized that we made a mistake and tried our best to make the shots look ok by changing the gamma and brightness of the shots. If we changed the gamma of the shots too much we found they began to have an almost cartoon effect, which is not what we wanted for our film, so  the end results of grading the shots was that they were still a little dark unfortunately.

 

  Evaluation

  Our idea: We were told that the name of our project was to be ‘The Package’ and straight away Rio, Hannah and I brainstormed different ideas. We all decided on the idea of two packages on a train and them getting mixed up, we wanted to make it look as though one package could potentially be a bomb, however we didn't clarify this in our film because we wanted to make a point about stereotypes and how we judge others on appearances. We filmed it on the South Eastern train service to Victoria then back to Orpington. The plot of our clip was that a sinister looking male character (Kyle) was seen getting on a train with a package, he sits next to a innocent, attractive female character(Anna) who has an identical package on the seat beside her.  As Anna leaves the train at Victoria in a rush the packages get switched and therefore she leaves with his package in her possession. Kyle notices this as she is leaving the train and running along the platform, however it’s to late as the train has already began to move, in his panic he opens the package and confirms it’s not the right one. We then put in a 'cinematic boom' to end our short film dramatically.

  Filming the idea: We didn’t think filming was going to be as difficult as it was, we misjudged how hard it is to get that 'perfect' shot. At first, we wanted to film on a tube, however after further discussing this we decides that it would be too busy and would be extremely difficult to film without disruptions. We also felt that the subject of story, a suspicious package, is quite delicate and we may have unsettled those using the tube. As a result we thought it would be best to film on a train where it is less busy and we would draw less attention to ourselves in a more private environment.
Before setting out to film we asked media students in the year above for any advice they could give us, almost everyone we spoke to said the same thing: keep filming. They explained that when it comes to editing, it is much easier if your shots are longer rather than shorter. So we took their advice into account and shot loads of footage, knowing it would benefit us to have more footage than needed rather than too little. We were told that our film had to have many different camera shots and angles, we included as many as we were able to, however, not all were shown in our film. For example shot reverse shot was almost impossible to film as there was no dialogue in our clip so we soon realised that we wouldn't be able to include a shot reverse shot in our preliminary project. Whilst filming, we knew that some shots wouldn’t work with each other and others would, but we wouldn't be able to see if we really had the right shots until we came to edit.
When filming we made sure to stay in the same carriage so that our shots were consistent and adverts and seating around stayed the same.

  Editing the idea: When we began editing we came across problems almost straight away, some were easily over come whilst others were not. We had filmed one scene that in the edit we realized we couldn't use because it was too dark. We wanted the scene to have a sinister feel to it and so kept the lighting low, however in hindsight, we now know that it is best to film the scene in normal lighting and then darken the images down later in editing. One of our biggest problems was that when we looked closely at our shots the train was going in different directions, which is problematic as it made ours shots inconsistent. I think the main reason why we hadn't thought of this before filming was because we were originally planning to film on a tube where you are not able to see out of the window and so this type of thing would not be a problem.
Also the setting of where the train was situated was an issue as it wasn’t filmed in order and therefore the station we pulled away from whilst Kyle unwrapped the package was different to the one where Anna got off. Another issue was that in certain scenes Anna had gloves on and we had to make sure that her gloves were in the correct place to make the film flow. When we finished our first rough edit it was around 2mins30secs, which it almost a 1min30secs over the limit, so we had to sacrifice many shots to make it flow as much as possible in the time limit we were given.

  What went well? We worked well as a group and all had a part to play, if it wasn’t filming then it was adding ideas and input to make it as good as it could possibly be. Another thing that went well was that I made a clip list of all our shots and gave a brief description of what was in each shot. This made things much easier when it came to editing because it meant that we could refer to the list to find the correct shot rather than search through all our footage, which would waste time that we didn't have. Another thing that we were very lucky with was our actors, although they messed around a bit we, we are very grateful that they did such a good job at portraying the characters that Rio, Hannah and I had in mind for preliminary project.

I think that we all felt that the preliminary project really helped us to know what to expect when filming for our main project, the mistakes we made will not be repeated in our main project and so overall we can make a better film.