Official Filming 2

Today I filmed the scene's with our actors in and Patrycja joined to support me. We all met in Camden at 5 pm to fit the dark night filmed yesterday. We also wanted it to be dark to create a sinister atmosphere using pathetic fallacy as the ghost appears.

It was very cold for our actress Marlena. In her costume I wouldn't be surprised! Thankfully she had a warm coat to snuggle into, keeping her warm in between takes. She did amazingly well considering the wet weather and repetitive amount of shots. She co-operated and listened to my directions carefully, taking on board everything.

Jack was nice and cosey in his costume! He co-operated fully for each time called to shoot, listening, taking on board any feedback on his acting and waited patiently when not being filmed.

We care very much for the well fair of our actors so we brought extra umbrellas for them to shelter under.

I think the filming was shorter than expected, finishing around 7 pm. I did allow a few refreshment breaks for everyone to rest while Patrycja and I checked the clips to see what needed re-filming but that didn't really eat away the time.

After re-filming the necessary shots I said good-bye to Patrycja and Marlena as Jack and I went back to his to charge the camera for his character's scene at home.

The corner of his kitchen was quite an easy area to film in, providing I stood beside the camera, as the tripod covered a large area. At first, it was difficult getting the camera in the right position as the back door window's reflection caught it. After adjusting and maneuvering the tripod I succeeded in finding a suitable position for it, the height, intended to be a level/equal LS of the protagonist - connoting the audience is equal to him - was lowered a little, and the camera was secure ready to shoot!

When being directed for actions Jack took initiative and came up with some of his own gestures for his character. I really enjoyed working with Jack as he kept experimenting with his movement in each shot. He was also a dedicated, humorous actor.

Once finished, roughly having over 120 shots in total, we decided to call it a day. I checked through his scenes and I think all the shots from today look great.

I'm looking forwards to seeing the clips edited together!

Official Filming 1

I filmed today between 10 am and roughly 7.40 pm in the rain with Patrycja's help holding the umbrella for the camera. It was very exciting, I felt like a professional camera woman! Members of the general public were smiling and looking at us, some spoke to us and asked what we were filming. That did get a bit annoying though as people seemed to try and stay on camera, even when we were taking shots of different crowds. We did politely wait for people to leave our cameras view, to get a duplicate of angle, position and type of shot for Patrycja to edit and overlap. At some points, the camera positioning did get quite cramped as I crouched down, trying not to get myself or the camera wet, holding position, making sure the camera was steady, was level via the spirit level

on the camera, that it didn't change position - so I could duplicate the shot successfully and I checked each shot individually to make sure the continuity flowed.
The only problem was that, although I had charged the camera to it's full capacity, it refused to hold out for longer than 2 hours! Thankfully I had thought this may happen and new of shops and cafe's to charge the camera. I was constantly checking on the daylight change and wanted to get slightly contrasting light to help with the clock shots. This was a repetitive process forcing us to quicken the pace of filming. It became very energy demanding rushing from shot to shot but it was so worth it!

I'm happy that the weather continuity stayed the same throughout. It was an overall successful day today and we have over 100 shots! I'm so thankful for making the filming plan as it really helped! I'm also really thankful for the story board, planning is so essential for success!

Looking forward to filming with the actors tomorrow!

Equipment for filming

Here's some pictures of the kind of equipment I'm going to be using:

Camera

Main piece of equipment, the filming wouldn't happen without it! I understand how to use the camera and it's different uses like switching it on, recording a video or taking a picture, zooming in and zooming out, setting different effects for the recording like sepia - although not going to use this it's handy to know. Our camera automatically adapts to the daylight change making it easier for me as I won't need to manually change it.

Tripod

Another very important part of equipment. It provides a multitude of angles via different levels through the adjustments and also keeps the camera steady - making my job easier. It also is great for pan's because i's steady, smooth and won't wobble; unlike if the camera was hand-held. It is quite bulking and is time consuming setting up, but I'm prepared and have planned for that for the filming.

Thanks for reading :)

Our Classification for our film

The classification decisions are all based on the BBFC's Guidelines: 

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  Suitable for all
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  Parental guidance

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• Cinema release suitable for 12 years and over
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  Video release suitable for 12 years and over

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  Suitable only for 15 years and over

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  Suitable only for adults
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• Adults works for licensed premises only

BBFC Classification

I understand that our opening sequence will not fit the 'U' and 'PG' grades because children aged four will not understand or may find our Ghost uncomfortable to watch.Our film may still disturb an audience of eight or a few years older. This is why we are not giving our film a rated 'U' or 'PG'.

We believe the rating '12A' is suitable for our audience as it will allow adults to accompany 12 years or over to the cinema but will not allow a 12 year old to buy a DVD etc because our film has dark elements, ghosts. The darkness isn't highly focused on in our film, although there are some sinister moments; not intended to frighten the audience but they are just intended to cause suspense. We don't plan to have any gore or sexual acts within our movie, although, if allowed full length, there would be a small amount of swearing involved in our film. I believe our film will have more views as a '12A' because more people are allowed to watch it, it will certainly reach our TA and will thus gain more money for our company.

BBFC 12 and 12A Classification

Target Audience

We want our target audience to be unisex, aged 16 to mid 20's.

Considering the supernatural element to our Thriller-Horror (ghosts) we understand that in current times younger people seem more attracted to films and TV series involving the supernatural. This involves the 'Twilight' saga and hit TV series 'The Vampire Diaries'.

Poster from the Twilight saga's first film

Poster from The Vampire Diaries TV series 1

I myself have watched both and, as a teenager, I understand why myself and peers are attracted to this.
Both 'Twilight' and 'The Vampire Diaries' have young attractive male actors that appeal to their young female target audience. Inspired by this, our film also has young actors, which is more appealing for our audience as they can relate to similarly aged characters. 
However, we didn't just want our audience to be young women because our film has more variety; we have a male protagonist who is weaker than the supernatural - our female ghost. This highlights that humans are weaker than the supernatural also subverting the expectations of the 'dominant' male gender. In addition, as our ghost is female, is supernaturally stronger and threatens the male protagonist she subverts the expectations of the 'subordinate' female gender; connoting a gender power struggle. This power struggle is designed to intrigue a unisex audience through the conflict of gender and conflict between the supernatural.

I understand the relevance to our TA and have researched the NRS social grades:

NRS social grades

Our setting was originally in Central London targeted at  a B-D grade audience. However, both complications with filming and realisations of the change in setting helped us understand and develop on our target audience more. Now, our setting being in Camden, we realise that targeting a young audience may not effect their social class as much because they will generally still be living with their families or living on University campuses as they are mostly still in education. We also understand that the area is urban and are purposefully targeting a more urban younger audience. Camden is a diverse multicultural area with variety, this is why we have chosen not to focus entirely on a specific ethnicity. Our TA can easily identify that the location is in the London area, if watching from abroad, and Camden's local community will also familiarise with it, which will help draw interest from our TA.
Although both of our actors are pale skinned we do not intend this to affect our target audience and realise that some ethnic backgrounds will favour our film more than others, like European ethnicity's. In addition, we aren't  heavily focusing on social class but understand that our type of film will attract a B-D grade audience; considering the ranges of family income's and social classes.

We wanted to follow a masculine stereotype of our protagonist - drinking a beer - to appeal to our young male audience. We want the under 18's to look up or aspire to him as he is older, suggested through the alcohol, being inclined to follow him as a main character. We want the over 18's to see him as their equal, someone who they can relate to and understand, via the suggestion of age through the alcohol, making him 'one of the lads'. 
He is also suggested to live at home or have some form of student accommodation. This would show the audience that he is independent and would help them aspire to be like him. We wanted our TA to relate to him as a peer considering that a large amount of our TA will be in education.
We didn't want to give away our protagonist as it is the beginning of the film and following a convention we want the audience to wonder who the characters are, their connection, their significance and generally act as part of a narrative hook for our TA.
Our male audience would be intrigued by the female ghost, firstly acting on a possible attraction to her as she is female and secondly, as she is a mysterious character - they will  want to know her intentions and connection with the protagonist.
Our female audience would relate to the female ghost initially via common grounds of her age and sharing the same gender. They may also relate to her via her costuming, white t-shirt and denim jeans, and will be interested in her character as she has blood stains and is of the supernatural. We wanted her to have blonde hair because it goes against the stereo type of having an unintelligent female. Having supernatural power - being a ghost - would make her seem more authorative and intellectual. This would help our audience realise not to underestimate or undermine her as a character because she is of the supernatural and, via her actions, is unexpected; giving her character a sense of mystery.

We aren't heavily focusing on out TA music interest because there is so much variety and we realise that our TA will listen to various genre's and styles of music. Having our protagonist listen to music on a radio station re-iterates his youth, as younger people are highly interested in music and it's variety. With an instrumental playing, interrupted by the news update, we didn't want to highly focus on a type of music genre - fitting to our TA, and we understand that Radio's do interrupt the music or begin updates after a song has finished playing - I have researched this in a previous post.

Ghost's Costume

We edited our Ghost's costume and used:

Fake blood 1

Fake blood 2

Scissors

To create:

End result of T-shirt

End result of jeans

Hope you like it! We certainly do!

Chosen Actors

After our auditions, we decided who would be our characters:

Marlena = Female Ghost

Marlena suits the role perfectly! She has a brilliant serious face, is obedient when asked to act, is blond and has long hair, has intense eyes, has the right body shape, the right height and is a pleasure to work with. 

Jack = Male Protagonist

Jack also suits the role perfectly! He is tall, is obedient when acting, can act very distressed and serious easily, can use the exact same movements each time acting which help with continuity, has a masculine facial structure and is a joy to work with.

I'm looking forward to filming with these two!

Auditions

Patrycja took charge of the auditions and considered each person carefully. I wanted to have a go at auditioning for the ghost to see if I could do it. However, I seemed to edge towards a more zombified ghost than planned. It was an interesting experience and I thoroughly enjoyed being part of the process. It was a bit weird having Patrycja ask questions and watch me audition but I could tell she took her role seriously. I'm looking forward to discussing the auditions with Patrycja and being part of choosing our actors. It's really exciting!

Here's the link to see the auditions:
http://patrycjalatkamedia.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/auditions.html

Our character costumes

We initially wanted our female ghost's costume to be similar to the girl in 'The Grudge', wearing a white night gown. This would make her a ghost from decades ago, but the film is set in the modern day, these two different time zones could be confusing for the audience with the connection of the ghost and the present day. This means that we would have to display a flash back or brief history to reveal to the audience that she is from the past; which would help make her character clearer. However, I realised that this would take up too much filming time and would also 'eat up' the precious 2 minute limit we have for our opening sequence.

Therefore, we changed her costume as we wanted the ghost to be modern, fitting with the time period.

She now will wear jeans, a white T-shirt and plain black shoes; looking like a fairly normal girl.

The twist in our costume is that her white top will have rips and blood stains in it and her jeans will also be ripped and blood stained. This is to communicate or suggest to the audience that she was murdered and is a ghost. Her makeup will consist of pale foundation, to achieve a pale complexion - a stereotype for ghosts, and a dark purple eye-shadow smudged around the eyes to create her bruises. The new costume is used to make a more intimidating, creepy character. The audience may also find her creepy because she is relatively normal looking and it could make them feel wary when out in the streets.

Our male protagonist's costume is fairly plain to reflect him as an 'Average Joe' type of guy. This will also create a sense that anyone could be targeted by the Ghost. His costume consists of a white top, orange hoodie, and black winter jacket layered together with denim jeans and white trainers.

I was also thinking that he could have a beer bottle as a prop, displaying that he is over 18 and is stereotyped as masculine. It is also a good idea to have this prop because it gives him an excuse to walk away from the ghost - thinking it's the alcohol. 

We don't need to change or edit our protagonist's costume. We only need to edit our Ghosts one to add the rips and blood. I'm looking forward to doing this with Patrycja and seeing the outcome!

Radio Report Script 3

As we've changed the location of our filming and costume of our female ghost I needed to edit the dialogue for the Radio report script. After making the necessary changes and printing the script I realised that any Radio broadcast that wanted the public's contact would give their contact information.

I annotated it and made the next changes:

Here's the newer version:

Good evening all you Londoner's! I'm Dawn Cope and you're listening to Lookout Radio's sixty second news updates

Have you recently seen anything unusual? We have reports  of sightings in Camden Town of a young female, early teens, wearing a ripped, blood stained, white t-shirt and ripped blood stained denim jeans. She is said to have marks across her face, possibly abrasions or bruising. She is also said to have long blond matted hair.

If you believe you have seen this girl, or someone of a similar description,please do not hesitate, report immediately to your local Police Station and Lookout Radio.

Our telephone is, 0800 454 6712, that's, 0800 454 6712. You can also contact us on our website www.lookoutradio.co.uk/contact

Headlining today's 'More Money Than Sense' is Katie Price who has recently bought a new nine and a half thousand pound Loui Vuitton hand bag says, "It's a splash of cash for my little Princess"

The contact information in this Radio Report is fabricated and is not intended to be similar or the same as any living individual or company.

I do realise that this is just the dialogue for the script and I will be configuring the final one after composing more sounds for it.

Thanks for following, feedback is much appreciated :)

My Layout and Plan for Filming

After previous experiences of the impact of poor planning for filming I decided to create a thorough plan for the filming. I also divided into sections the aspects - busy crowds, traffic, market stalls etc - that I wanted to film to help me understand and be precise with what should be targeted. Saturday is when most of the filming will take place. I know that it will take the whole day to cover everything on the list and thankfully considering the daylight change and continuity, the shots of the clock changing will come in handy - helping the narrative make sense when edited together. In filming, the shots can look a bit sporadic when layed out because not everything goes to plan; there may be a new interesting shot that I didn't think of previously when creating the storyboard or shot list, there may equally be a shot that I can't use due to the impracticality of it etc. I've realised that too much filming is better than too little filming because the more material available grants the editor more to work with. I accept that there will be a large amount of the filming that will be discarded, but I understand that all of the shots are vital for creating the best opening sequence. I'm sure I will make mistakes in the filming, like accidently nudging the camera and having to re-film a shot again, also having to re-film a shot numerous times because of bad continuity. I realise that, as a large and vastly populated area, Camden will be crowded and I will have to wait a while in some shots when doing double shots for the ghosts because I don't want the same people in them - creating bad continuity. I'm prepared for any unplanned, spontaneous shots and I'm really looking forward to the filming!

It's forecast to rain on Saturday - perfect pathetic fallacy for our beginning sequence and narrative - although quite a difficult task for filming...I'm sure I'll get through it! I'm starting filming at 10am and don't expect to finish until approximately 7.30pm.

For Sunday's filming, Patrycja and our actors will be joining me. It's again forecast to rain and I've made sure we will all be wrapped up warm and have umbrella's at the ready! The timing is essential and we are scheduled to meet up at 5pm at Camden station when it's a darker setting. I have taken into consideration that our female ghost will need some prep for adding the ghostly makeup and Patrycja and I have made sure we have the right type of makeup - dark eye-shadow and pale foundation - including the costume. I hope that we will all get to the filming and won't be distracted by conversation or anything and will just get to work!

Anyway, here's my plan hope you like it!

Keep following and feel free to feedback thanks :)

Group meeting 5 The Concept

The basic outline of our narrative is a female ghost haunting a young male. However, concerning our 2 minute opening sequence, we realise that we can't show the full story and can only introduce it.

As conventions of an opening sequence, we have begun with establishing the location, a city - London - and specific location Camden Town, via shots of the London underground, crowds, streets, markets etc which is inspired by Hitchcock's North by North West film. This we want to continue for half of our opening sequence as it is setting up the atmosphere and mood of the film.

Beginning with the underground we want to take the audience along a journey. We have planned our first LS shot to be of a train entering the station to symbolise the beginning of a journey. We then will have various shots of the public entering and exiting the train, going up the stairs via a circular mirrors reflection - a less advanced version of Hitchcock's but I want to use reflection in the opening sequence - and exiting the station. This is where we take the audience on a journey along the street, using a variety of shot types and angles. During the daylight changes we display a clock to reiterate that time is moving and the audience are moving with it. Shots of Camden market follow to help display that business is moving, London's culture is vast and it's night life is alive. By getting shots of the Ghost across the street from the market, we want the audience to focus on her, wondering who she is and her relevance to the story. Then we see our protagonist walking by, noticing the ghost and walking away like it was his imagination. Little does he know that the ghost has seen him, by an extreme CU shot of her eyes the audience see her glare at his walking figure. We want the audience to understand that he has been targeted by her. Once at home, the protagonist listens to the radio and hears a description of the ghost, he begins to realise that he saw her, is panicking and that's when our opening sequence ends.

Within our whole sequence we will have overlapping shots of crowds to make it look like there are ghosts in the city and not just our Ghost character. This makes our film interesting, acting as a narrative hook, and may connote that there are ghosts everywhere, hopefully freaking out the audience as they never know who's watching.

We have used Toderov's theory in our piece. Beginning with 'normal' life, equilibrium, another day in London. The overlapping of shots occur suggesting a disruption of the equilibrium/ norm, via ghosts. Our female Ghost is seen through an extreme CU and, via the threatening look she gives the protagonist, the audience know something will happen, an event that will create chaos in his life and possibly other lives. However, we haven't involved an event caused by the ghost in our opening sequence because we want our audience to keep watching and see what happens. Our genre is Thriller-Horror and, like The Woman in Black, no action has to be seen for a film to be suspenseful.

Realisation

Here's roughly what I said and talked about if you didn't catch everything or had some technical problems:

I've realised and discussed this with Patrycja that we don't need Big Ben to display the time for our opening sequence. Yes, it  is a landmark, but we are planning to film whilst red buses and black taxi cabs are going by - those are just some of the indicators to the audience that the location is London.  As I really want the time to be displayed in our opening sequence, through fading effects in editing, I can just take shots of one clock and change the time on the clock for each shot, illustrating that time is moving and life is going on to the audience : simple!

I find it's a great contrast having life shown via the traffic, crowds, market and general busy city atmosphere, with ghosts, i.e death, displayed via overlapping of shots and re-appearing and disappearing characters through editing - fantastic - as our film brings both ends and extremes of the spectrum together. This is intended to promote further intrigue from our audience and make our production unique.

I think the clock is a good idea because it reiterates to the audience that London is a busy place, time is moving constantly helping to give it a realistic feel, by adding something that the audience would relate to - not having enough time - whilst also suggesting a countdown that is intended to provoke suspense. Also, I'd quite like to film at different times during the day to get the daylight change, the clock will help with the continuity and flow of narrative.

Not only have I realised that, we also don't need to film in Central London - Oxford Street - because it would highly complicate the filming and crowd continuity. Considering this, I find that a perfect local location would be Camden Town because of it's expression of culture, busy atmosphere  and it's vast filming space, filled with balconies to film from, getting various view points, making our whole sequence interesting and unique.It's not as busy as Central, which helps the filming process quicken.
I'm considering my plan for filming and will post it soon.

Thanks for following :)

Sound Experimentation 2

I've experimenting with the ambient city sounds more and asked Patrycja to listen with me:

Picture of Patrycja and me listening

I really like what I've come up with here's the sound:

Here's some feedback from it:

I think it creates the tension for the audience and the busy atmosphere that cities have. It's almost like it's got a rhythm to it, a heartbeat, which is why I like it. But I'm not sure if we are actually going to use it yet because we may change to an easier location with the filming, which will slightly impact the atmosphere and thus the non-diagetic sound.

I also really like the exhale that I found on Logic Pro, I hope it's good enough for our opening sequence's titles.

Here it is:

Let me know what you think to it via comment or I might just have to interview you!

Sound Experimentation 1

Whilst Patrycja was editing for our first filmed clips, I took initiative to experiment with Logic pro. I wanted to find any ambient city sounds that could be merged together to add to a clip; cars, traffic, overlapping conversations etc. I also wanted to find the sound of someone exhaling for the title as it fades out. I think this would be eerie for the audience as it's a normal sound, slowed, and used in a creepy way; possibly linking to our ghosts theme. It also reiterates that the titles are fading, like breath leaves the body. Anyway it's just a thought.

Here's a screen shot of what I found:

Experimenting with Logic Pro

I'm starting to get the hang of Logic Pro more as I experiment. I will be uploading the sounds I am considering using soon, but if I'm not satisfied with the exhale I will just have to record it myself!

Filming in Central

As a company we shot our first section of filming. We already wanted to film in Central London so we went to Marble arch via the 113 bus route

and began filming traffic, crowds, traffic lights etc. It was amazing! It was such fun! We went around loads of different locations, from Marble arch to Trafalgar square to Big Ben to the London Eye. Although it was fun, at the end I was a bit disappointed as we hadn't got as many shots as we could of because of the time consuming travelling. I don't think I did so well at being in charge of filming as I should have planned in more detail.
I know our next time filming will be allot better because I will thoroughly plan for it!