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Pre Production Logs W/C 18.03.19 (Pre-production week)

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Pre Production Logs W/C 18.03.19 (Pre-production week)

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Prior to the beginning of pre-production week, Eleanor (Producer) and I met up to arrange a solid, hourly plan for every day of pre-production week. We made sure that Imogen (Writer) was heavily included in our weeks schedule. I felt that keeping her involved at this stage was important as the actors will be beginning to understand their characters and the story development.  I also wanted to ensure my direction was corresponding with Imogen’s intentions of communicating the narrative. Following this, myself and Eleanor met up with Clare to talk her through our plans and check there wasn’t anything crucial that we had missed.

I started the first day with a power point detailing crew roles, character bios and confirmed locations. Ensuring to stop frequently to check if anyone had any questions or queries to raise, we then moved on to a script read through and discussion about the plot, themes and intended audience reaction. Following this, I asked everyone to get into groups of their departments (e.g cast, continuity/editing and sound/lighting/camera). I encouraged a more in depth discussion amongst these groups to make sure everyone had the same understanding of what they needed to do. I went round to each group to add to these discussions, answering any relevant questions. As I was aware that Eleanor (sound) was not confident in her role, I took the time to listen to her worries and ensured her that we have planned her an induction and that she doesn’t have to worry. I explained to her the music I wanted for the first scene and which scenes might be difficult to record sound for (e.g. external shoots). After lunch, I sat with props and costume as I felt that this was the department that needed the most time to get everything ready. Following this, I re-joined Imogen and the cast and did a hot-seating exercise, exploring the characters lives before and after what we see in the script. This gave myself and the cast an extremely more in depth understanding of our characters. I also listened to the character bios that Imogen and I had asked them to prepare earlier on in the day. It was rewarding to see the cast get so involved and begin to bring these characters to life. Lastly, I spoke with Chloe and Laura (editors) and showed them my storyboards for the script, explaining key transitions, sound bridges, match on action shots and the key one shot at the beginning. To conclude, I then messaged the group thanking them for their hard work and troubleshooted any questions that they had from the day.

On the second day, Eleanor, Brett, Rachael, Martina and myself did recces of the Treehouse café and Alan and Lillys house. Following this, we met the rest of the cast and crew and I went to the costume department with Tasha, Oliver and Sotie to look at potential costumes. During this time, I encouraged the actors to continue learning their lines. Following this, they had fittings with the costume department whilst I went through my storyboards in more detail with the editors and Rachael (DOP). That afternoon, I went to a Black magic induction to refresh my knowledge followed by a meeting with Clare to document our progress so far.

On the Wednesday, we began again at 10am with a brief of the day ahead. I worked with the actors and began to block the scenes as the cast had been instructed to be off book by today. We followed this with a series of different improv exercises ran by myself and Imogen, including the power step exercise and then I gave each character 2 imaginary scenarios for them to act out with another character. After this, I told the actors to make up their own scenarios and watched them act this out with their partner. Towards the second half of this day, we began to block out the first scene using the floor plan of the Living Room. We did a test shoot using the gimbal and the camera.  I ensured that all the movements for both cast and crew were choreographed and ensured that everyone was prepared for the size and exact movements of the gimbal on shoot day.

We used the next day to continue to block out the first scene with the full cast, sound, DOP and gaffer. As well as this, I choreographed the movement for all of the other scenes and worked on characters intentions and objectives for each moment. I then filmed all the scenes to distribute among the necessary cast and crew that would benefit from reminding themselves of the choreography. I then met up with the costume and props department to ensure they were on the right track with their purchases and to answer any questions they may have.

On the last day of pre production week, we had a full tech and dress run with the full cast and worked through the script chronologically. We began this day with a series of warm up games to get everyone motivated. As well as with my actors, I worked closely with my DOP, Gaffer, sound and the editors as we went through the script and storyboards. Following completion of the dress and tech run, Imogen and myself fed back to the cast and decided which scenes needed the most work. I then continued to use the remaining time to work on those scenes more thoroughly with the actors.

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Production Week Logs W/C 25.03.19 and 01.03.19 (Production Week 1 and 2)

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Production Week Logs W/C 25.03.19 and 01.03.19 (Production Week 1 and 2)

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25/03/19- On our first shoot day we shot three scenes, beginning at 8am at Peel Park and then finishing late that evening at roughly 6:30pm. This was an extremely long day with a lot of quick location turn arounds, but we aimed to use our first day as a way of setting the fast pace and making sure everyone knew how on the ball they had to constantly be to make sure we didn't fall behind. When we arrived on location to shoot scene 22, our costume designer was extremely late and had not picked up the costumes or the pregnancy bump from the costume cupboard that we needed for the shoot. Because of this, I had to completely take over that department and think quickly to come up with a solution. We ended up using our DOPs jumper to dress Emma and she kept her own coat on. As we didn't have the bump, we had to ensure that our shots did not show her stomach as it would cause problems within continuity. I was extremely looking forward to shooting todays scenes as it mirrored my plans for the first scene as I wanted to start and end the film with a long, medium close up tracking shot. We worked quickly and efficiently and got this scene done in good time.
Following this, we drove to our second location which was my friends flat. Unfortunately, we had not been able to to a reccee of this location as my friend had not been well and hadn't been available for us to come round. Because of this, it was important that we worked even quicker as we had to quickly rearrange the furniture in her living room to make sure the design fit my storyboard. The entire cast and crew (especially props, DOP and the Gaffer) worked extremely efficiently together to transform the flat into what I had communicated that I needed. Although this was stressful as it was an extremely fast paced set up and pack down, we managed to get the medium close up tracking shot and myself and my DOP and gaffer worked extremely well to solve problems with too much daylight, door positioning and avoiding crew shadows on doors and walls. We had a couple of occasions where the gimbal wasn't being very responsive, which affected our time keeping slightly.  I was aware that we were filming the last scenes on our first shoot day. Because of this, I made sure to work with the actors to ensure that they were prepared in terms of their intentions and characterisation for the scene, and we spoke in depth about what had previously happened in the narrative to get their characters to this point.
Our next location was the car park on Frederick Road Campus. When we arrived, it was extremely full and there was no spare spaces, meaning there was definitely not enough space to film. Although this was very stressful and disheartening, Eleanor worked extremely quickly to find an alternative. We used the old fire station, which actually turned out to be an extremely aesthetically pleasing location and had the perfect amount of natural light. I was extremely relieved and I worked hard to successfully maintain the high levels of positivity and energy amongst all cast and crew members.

26/03/19- Todays shoot was Scene 21 where Alan and Lilly discuss Jamie over dinner. I was extremely happy with the dressing of the set by Tasha and her creation of a realistic bookshelf. In addition, the lighting and shots created by the DOP and Gaffer was exactly how I envisioned it in my plans. Again, we had an issue with the costume department being under-prepared and Matty had to wear his own clothes. As there was food in this scene, I worked hard with continuity to focus on ensuring the food levels, the way the actors held the cutlery, and when they ate/drank was exactly the same each time. Clare came along to set and supervised as we did the reverse OTS of Matty. Again, the morale was kept extremely high and everyone worked well together to get the scene done on time.

27/03/19- Today was to shoot the opening scene which is a 3 minute long tracking shot using the gimbal that involves all of our cast and extras. This is the most challenging scene in the film and it is the one that I have worked hardest on to choreograph and plan. It was extremely important to me to make sure that I got this scene perfect, as it opens the film and sets the standard for the rest of it. Initially, we planned to use this day to practice and then shoot it properly the following day as we fortunately had the location (The Living Room) for two days from 9-3. There were a few occasions where we had problems with the set up of the gimbal and it wasn't co-operating which meant we lost a lot of time. The set up of the furniture in the room and the sound also took longer than anticipated, but we managed to use the day effectively and get the movement perfect. We recorded sound on this day and although it was difficult Eleanor Gregory and Tasha Salia as sound assistant worked really well under the pressure. After Clare came to supervise the shoot she advised that we ADR the scene as there was way too much background noise from customers downstairs, music and fridge humming. Although I was dissapointed by this as my knowledge of ADR is limited, it meant that the following day would be alot easier to shoot knowing we didn't have to worry about getting perfect sound. However, we still recorded it for safety because we needed to use it for the ADR sessions. Unfortunately, Eleanor Thomas (producer) fell extremely ill with mumps and had to go to hospital which meant time-keeping was tricky. The set up of the furniture in the room and the sound took longer than anticipated, but we managed to use the day effectively and get the movement perfect.

28/03/19- Today was our second day in The Living Room and it was an extremely tiring shoot. I was extremely proud that our team kept their morale high and everyone was very supportive of Rachael as she was struggling to find the strength to hold the gimbal for this huge amount of time. The determination I witnessed on set this day was amazing and I was so proud of what we achieved as a team. The choreography, movements, dialogue, costume and set dress was exactly how I envisioned it to look in the fake world. Today was also the day that I realised how female-led our team was. This was a great moment as I looked around to witness that all the major crew roles were filled by strong, talented women including Director, Producer, Writer, DOP and Sound. The name of our production company "žena productions" translates from my serbian background to "woman productions" which really resonated positively with me on this day. After 26 takes and hours of Rachael holding the weight of a gimbal, we finally wrapped and went for a drink together to celebrate our bond as a team and the hard work we had produced today. Unfortunately, Eleanor was still ill which meant she couldn't attend the shoot but I made sure to keep her involved at all points throughout the shoot.

29/03/19- Our last shoot day of the week was in my house using my house-mates bedroom and ensuite for Jamie and Emmas bedroom. An important part of today was to create the subtle differences I had envisioned between the real world and the fake world using set dress, costume, and the actors characterisation effectively. Today was our longest shoot day in very cramped and warm conditions; we began at 9am and did not finish until after 10pm. There were many quick turnarounds in terms of camera equipment, lighting and set dress as we had to transform the same space into two contrasting worlds. Due to missing equipment, we were pushed back an hour when shooting Scene 2. Although we did struggle to stay on time and had to move around the scheduele slightly, I was extremely thankful and proud that everyone managed to maintain a positive, friendly, fun and uplifting attitude all day/night. I focused on directing the actors to make sure every tiny detail in their performance was planned, for example in the fake world, I directed Theo to keep his fingers extremely straight and to make his leaning into Emma more stiff and less natural. It was difficult for the actors to find the balance between what came across as too robotic on screen, but after a few rehearsals I was proud of their performance in both the fake and the real world scenes.

01/04/19- Today was the first shoot of the second week and I was excited to begin again after a couple of days off. We returned back to my friends flat to film some more of Emma and Jamies scenes. Because we had previously set up the flat into a new position last week, this meant our set up was much quicker and everyone worked well to get this done. Unfortunately, my friend returned to her flat earlier than she had previously planned which meant our pack down had to be extremely fast and rushed. When shooting scene 2, I directed Theo to drop his papers and then hit his head on the wing mirror, which caused it to fall off. Although accidental, I was extremely happy with this scene as it added in so much humour and gave the scene something a bit more interesting. We had a problem on this day as there was a construction site just outside of Eilidhs flat. As we had to wait for the brief silences in their work, this caused a couple of time-keeping issues. Overall, I was extremely happy with how these scenes looked on camera as they completely replicated my storyboard and my creative decisions.

02/04/19- Today we returned to my friends flat to film the last few remaining scenes in there. Due to not being able to do a reccee in pre-production week, this meant we had to use the upstairs roof garden instead of using the flats actual balcony, as the new positioning of the furniture meant that this was not possible. This was only a minor change, but meant that I had to choreograph the actors movement again as it changed from rehearsals. We worked quickly to adapt to the new space and I was extremely happy with how the shots looked in the new location of the roof garden. Due to tiredness, one of our actors became extremely irritable and slightly aggressive towards a member of the props department on set. Unfortunately, I was not aware that this was happening which caused me distress as I wanted to prevent any negative confrontation from happening. Eleanor resolved the situation and we have discussed these issues further multiple times since to make sure that the member of crew was alright. I was extremely happy with how Scene 24 (the post credits scene) looked as it fit my vision perfectly and will be a strong way to end the film.

03/04/19- Today was an extremely long shoot as we had to transform a blank empty room into a convincing looking office. Setting up and packing this down took and extremely long time but we worked extremely well together to create a really realistic, standard and monotonous office space. Both scenes were quite dialogue heavy too which meant I had to spend a lot of time with the actors directing them to extract the right amount of comedy from Alan. The conditions of the location were extremely hot which meant I kept allocating quick breaks for everyone on set to maintain the positive energy. I was extremely happy with how the comedy came through in this scene, and the representation of Terry was exactly how I envisioned. I think that this was due to many rehearsals, workshops and exercises that helped me communicate the understanding of each character to the actors. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to get many cut aways which may cause problems in the edit if anything needs to be shortened but overall I was extremely happy with the footage we gained today.

04/04/19- Because we had successfully shot so many scenes in a short amount of time, this meant that today was our last shooting day and that we didn't have to use the Friday for shooting. The rainy weather caused problems for us today and pushed us back slightly, however when shooting we worked quickly to make this time back. Clare came to supervise our shoot outside of Treehouse which was lucky as we had an issue with some potentially dangerous strangers that shouted abuse at us from their car. I made sure that none of us reacted to encourage them to leave because I was aware that we had extremely expensive equipment at risk. When we moved to our third location inside treehouse, I was extremely happy with the pace that we worked at. Although set up took a while, I was so happy with the performance from the actors and how the shot looked that we did two of the shots in one take. One of the problems that we encountered was the shot I had planned did not work well in making Emmas baby bump realistic. This took some time but I compromised the shot slightly and worked with Megs positioning to solve this problem. We finished perfectly on time and followed a successful wrap day by an evening celebration with the entire team of Remote.

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Post-Production Week Logs W/C 29.04.19 (Post Production Week)

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Post-Production Week Logs W/C 29.04.19 (Post Production Week)

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29/04/19- On our first day back after easter I sat with the editors all morning and then attended our ADR session in the afternoon. Adam Douglas fortunately offered to show me and Eleanor the basics of ADR so that we were prepared. Myself and Eleanor found it difficult to set up but once we got going I was very pleased with our progress. Theo was especially skilled at ADR and managed to do the entire of his monologue flawlessly. This was a good first ADR session and allowed me to be more confident for the ones to follow.

30/04/19- Due to my house-mate going home to Ireland, this meant that during production week her room had extremely limited availability. We used this day to pick up the few remaining shots that we weren't able to get in production week. As I had made a prior commitment to work, this meant that I had to rush and leave 15 minutes before we had finished shooting. Although this wasn't ideal, I gave Rachael a detailed shot list and set everything up ready for her to do this independently for the last 15 minutes. We got everything we needed to done to the standard I expected and I was extremely happy with the quickness that we all worked as a team.

03/05/19- Today we successfully recorded some further ADR. Although there were a few technical problems with the set-up we still managed to get Pauls, Marias and Martinas ADR and extra dialogue on the zoom.

04/05/19- Unfortunately we were running late to this ADR session and it got cancelled. However, this worked out to be better for the actors (Robyn and Meg) and we rearranged it to Monday instead.

06/05/19- This was our final ADR session and I was pleased with the skills that I had learnt as I set up with Eleanor but then recorded the ADR independently whilst directing the actors. We split the dialogue into small parts to make it easier. One issue we ran into was that we had to use the camera sounds as reference for the actors, but the sound of the gimbal was extremely loud and distracting. I decided the most effective way was to let them rehearse with this sound, and then rehearse without it, and then just take as many takes repeatedly playing them back until I was confident that we had a strong enough take.

In-between these dates and up until the final deadline, I sat in with my editors from 10am every following day and continuously made notes on changes and improvements that I wanted to see in the edit. Whilst watching the fake world scenes, it became clear that there were a couple of lines of dialogue that we could get to improve the overall realism of the scene so myself and Eleanor Thomas booked out a zoom and recorded the cast saying filler lines and laughter. We also recorded the lines that weren't required to be done by ADR as you couldn't see their faces. When we took this to the edit in the second week, it became clear that the audio had been recorded in different places and it didn't sound very realistic. Luckily, Connoll helped us to resolve this by teaching myself and Laura about reverb and the different settings for "Big room" you can place on audio tracks. The other problem that we encountered during the edit was that we were 10 minutes over our 15 minute maximum time allowance. Clare encouraged us to be harsh and to get rid of things that did were not neccessary in the progression of the script. We cut down our film by slicing off small parts of scenes and dialogue but also by cutting a number of scenes that had no dialogue in them and were just to show the characters travelling from scene to scene. As we were editing on two timelines, it was difficult for me to envision what the film looked like as a whole and what we needed to focus on. Due to this, we put it onto one timeline on a few occasions which meant I could highlight what needed the most work. When it came to the last week of edit, I made a plan that we would do a practice export to calculate how much time we needed to leave on deadline day. Luckily, this only took just over 20 minutes so I instructed the editors that we would need to be exporting by 1pm latest on our deadline day. The night before our deadline, we all watched the exported film and took notes on changes we thought were vital. I had written 4 pages of notes of things I wanted to change, and we worked extremely quickly and professionally to get these done in time for our deadline at 4pm. Unfortunately, Laura worked at a much slower pace than Chloe even though her workload was nearly half of what Chloe had to edit which caused a few minor frustrations at times. Another issue we encountered was color grading on the scene of Shelly and Jamie. We found it difficult to enhance the vibrance of the pastels and the whites because it was outside and there were multiple, large bright red doors. The doors became too overpowering so I had to compromise and reduce the vibrance of the pastels in this scene. We exported our film at around half 1 and it unfortunately had a border. After Chloe fixed this problem and we exported again, the wild track did not seem to be audible in the first scene, meaning we had to export it again. Luckily, we had left enough time to make these edits and we handed in the film with half an hour to spare. Overall, although the edit was extremely time consuming and hard work, the editors took my direction extremely well and we worked strongly as a team with Eleanor Thomas to create a film that we were proud of that fit my creative visions perfectly.

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Critical evaluation.

Amy Fretter. @00467853.A.Fretter@edu.salford.ac.uk.

Link to padlet: https://padlet.com/a_fretter/videoprojectlogs
Remote is a psychological drama with rom-com aspects featuring throughout. The script follows our lead Jamie and his wife Emma as he faces a growing addiction to his video game and the virtual life that he has created. The result of this addiction is a developing confusion between the real and the fake, as his real-life relationships, work and life plans begin to fragment. The scripts themes reflect our current social climate of being completely absorbed with technology. A sociologist that I studied named Philip Zimbardo (2012) believes that young men are using games as a form of extreme escapism from the worries and responsibilities of real life.We chose to base our film on this topical and relatable social issue following the recent success of Black Mirrors latest episode, Bandersnatch. (2018) We took inspiration mainly from Bandersnatch and an older episode named Nosedive (2016) which both show the damaging results of your life being absorbed by a virtual, online presence or gaming world.

In the initial stages of the project following our pitch, we realized that our first script plans were flawed in terms of copyrighting issues as it featured The Sims (2000) gameplay. After our pitch, Imogen, Eleanor and I held a meeting straight away to brainstorm how we could solve these issues if our project got greenlighted. Although during the pitch we were able to offer alternatives to the issues raised, our lack of understanding into copyright became a weakness and it could have been avoided by conducting more thorough research into this area.

When we heard the news that our project had been greenlighted, Eleanor and I began working straight away to combat the previous issues with the script. We worked closely with Claire and Imogen to create an entirely new narrative that still held the same themes. Although this was disheartening to abandon our initial idea, I knew that the changes had to be made and as we began developing the new script I began to realize that our new plot was more engaging, interesting and had more depth to it than before.

As I had already had previous experience as a Director from taking the Directing and Producing module and directing in the Documentary to Mockumentary module, I was already aware of how much responsibility, pressure and work was expected from this role. Rabiger (2013) describes “the task of film directing is formidable and doing it well takes determination, resourcefulness, creativity and tenacity”. The main reason that I wanted to be allocated the role of the director was to improve myself not only in these areas but also to give me the opportunity to create something that was personal and that I had complete creative control over. Although I expected the role to be extremely time consuming, the number of hours dedicated during before pre-production, during pre-production, shooting and editing were much more than I had anticipated. Previously when directing I had never been in charge of such a large number of people and was only responsible for a much smaller crew and cast. This was the biggest change that I experienced between my past experiences compared to directing Remote, but I felt that I adapted extremely well and remained confident and in control at all times throughout the process.

Luckily, I already had a strong rapport with many of the individuals amongst our cast and crew. I think as Director it is extremely important to be respectful and patient towards your team at all times, especially when the ability levels vary throughout our course. I learnt that you have to constantly be aware of the line between being strict and coming across as rude. By respecting my cast and crew and making each role feel valued,  I felt that my authority on set was respected in return.

One of my biggest strengths overall was the positive, encouraging energy that we managed to maintain throughout the entirety of the project. Eleanor, Imogen and I had previously discussed the importance of having a constructive, exciting energy and to keep this ethos running from the first day of pre-production until the very last day of editing. As we were aware the crew and cast had just completed a tiring video project already, we felt that this was extremely important. We made sure that the atmosphere on the first day was calm, happy and friendly to reflect how we intend to be on the rest of the project.

Although overall our entire team got on extremely well and developed a strong bond, due to a few long shoots in small, warm rooms there were a couple of occasions where my DOP would become irritable due to the stress of her work-load. Eleanor and I communicated extremely well at all times throughout the process, so as soon as we noticed this change in behaviour we spoke to our DOP straight away to remind her of standards of professionalism and the importance of keeping the positive energy whilst on set. Although it felt awkward to confront one of our peers, I was extremely pleased with the outcome as it reset the energy back to its former positive tone and it meant that we could carry on without further confrontation.

During pre-production week, I learnt very early on the importance of knowing every tiny detail about my creative vision, my characters intentions and the story. This is the only way that as a director you will be able to extract a believable, engaging story. Because of this, I devoted a lot of my time during pre-production to the actors to make sure they had back stories. I think that leading the improvisation workshops and the hot seating exercises was an effective way of achieving my aims during shooting week as the cast and I all shared a joint understanding of the motives, plot and character relationships/development. Weston (1996) agrees, stating that if directors know the characters and the script structure inside out, then they “will have insight and understanding that you can communicate to the actors.”

One of the main things I focused on with my actors was the difference between their roles in the ‘real world’ and within Jamie’s game in the ‘virtual world’. I understood that I was putting a large amount of pressure on my actors as they were essentially multiroling, playing two contrasting characters within one film. It was extremely important to me to create very subtle differences between both worlds that would translate on screen without giving too much away. When rehearsing the fake world scenes, I would pay particular attention to the delivery of the lines, making sure that they spoke with correct grammar and didn’t use slang or abbreviations at all. I also ensured that in the fake world they never spoke over each other, as in a game each character would have to pause and wait to respond as they were programmed to do so. In terms of physicality, I held workshops to focus on this in pre-production week where I would tell the actors to walk around and then conduct certain actions in the real world, and then in the fake world. I think that this really helped them develop an understanding of the differences between the worlds, and how it needed to be subtle to be effective. For example, in the real world their bodies would be relaxed, slouched and more fluid, drawing parallel to real life. However, in the fake world, I reminded my actors that every muscle needed be stiffer, even down to the straightness of their fingertips. For this characterization, I took inspiration from Channel 4 series Humans (2015) which follows extremely realistic ‘synths’ who perform similar physicality and speech patterns that I used to direct my cast.

In addition to the actors characterization, I also portrayed the real/fake world by using the color grading and set/costume design. As well as on set, we used the color grading in post-production to make the fake world scenes much brighter, with more use of whites and making the hues of the pastel colors more noticeable and vibrant. This was to replicate a clean, perfect and almost clinical world with no mess, dullness and minimal use of greys and blacks. As I mentioned previously, Nosedive (2016) and Her (2013) were my two main inspirations in terms of color palette, blending whites with vibrant pastels; pinks, mint greens and duck egg blues. I was extremely particular about the props I had on set and worked hard with the art department to make sure there were no patterns throughout the film.

On a few occasions, I found it difficult to communicate with my head of costume as he struggled hugely with reliability and sometimes time-keeping, meaning that on a couple of shoot days I had to completely take over the wardrobe department and source costumes myself last minute. I learnt that the difficulty of working closely with your peers is that it can be a struggle to be strict and tell people when they are doing wrong. However, as production went on, I found it easier to be assertive and strict with costume to make sure I was getting the results that I needed. If I were to have this opportunity again, I would make sure that I was stricter with this department and I would allow myself more time to check in with costume to make sure he was prepared before every shoot.

I think that one of my strengths as director was my technical skill in terms of camera ability and previous acting training. My ability to communicate the correct terminology to my DOP and then to my actors about their techniques such as internalization and beats helped create a professional atmosphere on set. This also meant that I was able to evoke exactly what I needed  from my cast and crew when shooting. During pre-production week I went to a Black Magic Induction to familiarize myself with it to make sure I had a strong understanding which would mean I could confidently ask for certain things from my DOP.

The main issue I faced throughout the process was that when we got to post-production and put all the edited footage onto one timeline we had exceeded our 15-minute maximum time by at least 10 minutes. I had realized that when directing the scenes with no dialogue I had not taken into account how much time they would use up, especially as our opening tracking shot was already 3 minutes long. Luckily, through working closely with Clare and my editors, we were able to come to a number of harsh compromises in terms of cutting scenes. I studied the scenes and got rid of lines and scenes that weren’t vital in presenting the stories development and progression. I had realized that I was spoon-feeding the audience too much information, and that they would definitely have the ability to piece the parts of the film together without me explicitly showing it. An example of an unnecessary scene was where Emma walked through the park to get home but instead we just showed her arriving at her front door, and the same with Jamie’s journey to work. Cuts like these to show characters travelling along with trimming down some of the dialogue made me realize that not everything was needed. In conclusion, I am glad that I was forced to cut it down because I believe it made the film stronger, more engaging and less long-winded. Rabiger (2013) encourages cuts like these, stating that “Removing extraneous time and territory is called elliptical editing and is a common cinematic technique”.

Although each scene shared equal importance to me as director, the opening shot was one that I put more effort into as I wanted to start the film with a strong, beautiful, tracking shot that set the scene and introduced us to our cast. However, during this shoot, my Producer Eleanor fell seriously ill with mumps which meant her contribution was limited and she wasn’t able to attend. Although it was extremely challenging to create a 3-minute one shot/tracking opening scene, this was my proudest day during production. This is because I had truly seen my creative vision come to life despite the absence of Eleanor and I saw my hard work paid off after successfully choreographing each actor and crew members movement using the floor plan, test shoots and many rehearsals during pre-production to do so.

Overall, I have learnt so much from my experience as a director and I am extremely proud of the standard of Remote. I believe that the themes and intentions of the piece have been communicated effectively alongside my personal creative vision. Although there have been obstacles as there is within any film making process, there have been no major mistakes or issues throughout and I have developed a variety of transferable skills. Myself and Eleanor worked extremely well as a reliable team to troubleshoot any problems quickly and efficiently come to a conclusion. I think that I quickly learnt to trust myself and make executive decisions quickly which is something I have definitely struggled with in many past projects. Kid In The Front Row (2012) advised that “You'll have a lot of those moments yourself where you, as director, can see something that nobody else can see.”I believe that I successfully demonstrated effective leadership and communication in the directing of actors/performers and I have thoroughly enjoyed the entire process.

2244 words.

Bibliography

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Brooker, C. (Director). (2016). Nosedive [Television series episode]. In T.C. Kearns (Editor), Black Mirror.London: Endemol Shine UK.

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Rabiger, M. (2013). Directing. (5th edition.) Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge.

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Wright, W. (Creator). (2000). The Sims.[Video game]. California: Electronic Arts.

# data[].attributes.body
I completed storyboards for every scene of the film, here are a few examples. (Open the image and scroll down to view them all)

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Here is an example of one of my shots lists. This is my initial shot list for the first opening scene and the last scene.