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I am really excited to start this module. Its always nice to meet and work with new people. Also, it's cool to finally introduce the roles of director and producer as it will be interesting to see what approach people take towards them

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In this session we began to come up with ideas for our group short film. We discussed what genres we could play around with and what underlying messages we wanted it to have. As a group we held a phone discussion in order to write the synopsis for the film. We came up with the idea of an alternate reality where stereotypical gender roles are swapped.

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In this session we looked into describing characters and how effective it is to use minimal wording and also the 'show, don't tell idea'. We then wrote out descriptions for our 2 characters David and Debra.

We then began to write our script as a group. As the film is only five minutes we need to dialogue and descriptions to a minimum, again using 'show don't tell'. As our piece has a lot of depth and things that happen we are going to include montages in order to show everything we need to to make the story flow. This means we will probably keep dialogue to a minimum.

We also started to look at writing our scripts. Because the film is only 3-5 minutes long, the script must be 3-5 pages. (page per minute).

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David, a stern businessman, wakes up one morning and finds himself in an alternate universe where stereotypical gender roles have been swapped. After a condescending goodbye, his wife leaves for work wearing a grey suit like the ones David would usually wear. She has left him alone with three feral children to get ready for school, a household to run, and a part time job. Throughout the day, he is constantly distracted by phone calls from his wife and his children’s school while experiencing funny stomach cramps. Once he finishes work, he sets about doing various household chores. He stops to make dinner before picking the children up from school but there is no food in the cupboards. He leaves to go to the shops. Later, he’s making dinner when his wife comes home from work. They realise that he has forgotten to pick the children up from school. She patronisingly offers to pick them up for him. Later, he is putting his children’s drawings away and accidentally gets glitter on his face. He goes to bed, exhausted. The next morning, his wife, wearing a robe, greets him with his morning coffee. Thinking he is back in the real world, he offers to get the children ready for school. David notices that he is still experiencing cramps. He goes to the bathroom and notices that he has a period. He looks up and notices that he still has glitter on his face from the previous day. He gets up and screams, realising that he is stuck in this new reality.

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In todays lecture we discussed the roles of director and producer and what they involve.

A director is primarily responsible for communicating the creative vision of the film, marking up scripts and working with the actors in rehearsal and on set.

A producer is primarily responsible for organising the work flow, securing locations, health and safety, financing and equipment. Also budgeting!

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Today we looked into visual style. We began by talking as a class and discussing the location of our films and how we will source costumes.

We looked at many thinks that factor into visual style such as:

Frame composition

camera shots

camera angles

movement of the camera

basic shooting techniques (180' rule)

colour

lighting techniques

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Some directors break the 180' rule in their films. It's not ideal to do so as it can confuse viewers but if done correctly it works really well visually.

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In this session we discussed the importance of sound recording and editing.

We talked about typical problems that we could face when recording such as weather and external/internal noise.

Poor sound recording can detrimentally affect the viewers expectations of the film. So having good sound quality is incredibly important. If the sound on a film is of bad quality it is less likely the viewers will pay attention than if it had bad visuals.

Editing is the most important thing when it comes to a film. It helps piece together the narrative and make the storyline flow.

Continuity editing:

The illusion of temporal and spacial continuity

The process of preserving temporal continuity

Films are usually shot out of sequence and then reassembled in such a way that events transpire in a coherent and continuous format/narrative

Basic techniques of continuity editing:

Ellipsis - An apparent break in time in the narrative world.

Usually signifies by a dissolve/ fade to black etc.

Sound - diegetic/non diegetic.

Match on action/Match cut - When one shot to another shot portraying the action of the subject.

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This lesson was all about pre-production.

Primary pre production include:

Casting

Rehearsing

Deciding on camera and lighting set ups

Securing locations

Recess + risk assessments

Sourcing costumes, props + set dec

Producer tasks:

Break down script

Start finding + securing locations

Casting

Work out schedule

Director tasks:

Script mark up

Statement of intent

Mood boards

Meet with your team

Camera/lighting/sound tasks

meet with director

Floor plans + storyboards

Shot list

Meet with team

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We continued this throughout this session as well to make sure everyone understood what they were meant to be doing and that we were on the same page.

We got together in our groups to discuss what each member o the team would bring to the next session in order to prep us for shooting.

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This session was dedicated to signing documents, reviewing practical research and booking out all required equipment.

We then organised a production meeting to discuss who we wanted to be in our film, shoot dates, costume and other things.

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We didn't have a second session this week in order to finalise important dates and logistics before filming the week after reading week.

We discussed marking up scripts, shot lists, storyboards and the statement of intent.

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During this week, i typed out the shot list, and marked up the script with Tonilea and added all the shots onto to the corresponding lines.

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During this week, we began filming. We decided to shoot the scenes with Gemma in first seeing as this was the only filming day she was available. Filming went smoothly and flew by quickly. After Gemma's scenes were filmed we decided to take a quick lunch break before moving onto the hefty wedge of filming we had left for the day.

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Day two of filming went just as smooth as the first. The majority of the filming was today so all hands were on deck. We filmed for about three hours before taking a lunch break. We then filmed for another 4 hours and then wrapped!!

Filming was a really fun experience with this film and many laughs were had on set :)

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This week we reshot some of the scenes from the second half of the film. This was due to some of the lighting being wrong or not to a good enough standard. Reshoots were done in the space of a day so, nice and quick.

Both actors were awesome! they worked well with our direction and helped to bring our vision to life in the best way possible.

Thanks Gemma and Chris :)

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We started to create the first draft of our film. I began by putting all the clips into premiere pro and placing them in order. Then, trimmed them down to get rid of the action and cut marks.

I tried with the boom mic audio to begin with but felt that the camera audio sounded better. this was because of slight knocks to the boom mic causes jolts in the audio.

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In this session we were reminded of the basic editing techniques needed to make our films flow.

These were

Types of cut

Transitions

I used mostly 'standard cuts' as i felt these fit the film better. I did think about using jump cuts but felt that standard cuts flowed better.

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We discussed what kind of sound we wanted to use in our films. These include dialogue, sfx and music.

Dialogue

Nothing went wrong with our dialogue recording except the few knocks to the boom mics. i tried to mitigate this when editing but because the audio was jolted decided to use camera audio. Also our boom mic died at one point and we struggled to find batteries for a few hours. We recorded the scenes anyway as the camera had audio. the make the audio consistent when editing, i used camera audio throughout the film.

Sfx

there aren't really any sfx in our film apart from phone notification sounds which we recorded on the boom mic.

Music.

Originally, i only wanted music to play over the credits. However, when editing, i thought one of the scenes would look cool if i had music playing over it as if it was coming from a speaker.

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This week we continued to work on our edits. I made sure everything was flowing nicely and that the film made sense. I was worried this wouldn't be the case as i had to remove one of the scenes to make the film under 5 minutes. However, upon then watching the film start to finish, found it actually flowed better without this scene.

I worked again on sound editing, making sure that everything was sounding okay and that the music i added wasn't too overpowering.

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In this session i worked on colour grading my film. The first scene of the film is set at sunrise. We used lighting to create this when filming but decided to add some orange colour grading to enhance this.

Throughout the film, I added blue colour grading to give it a whimsical feeling, seeing as the film is meant to be an alternate reality. It didn't go very well at first as i was adding to dark of a blue and was making the clips look too over saturated as the kitchen wall we filmed in front of was green.

i then added transitions to my film. There is two scenes in the film with time changes. One going from morning to midday and the other evening to morning. I added fade to black transitions as I though these showed this well. I could have maybe chosen transitions with more technicality but felt like fade to black fit better.

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Title card

I made a title card and added it to the end of my film. i felt this fit better with the flow of the film at the start and also fit better with the credits.

As our film is called 'The other side of the apron',i thought it would be really cool if imported a picture of a white apron and put the name of the film inside it in black writing.

Credits

For the credits, I added the actors names first and then the camera lighting and sound, with the producer and director at the end.

I used a plain black screen with white writing for the names. But added a font that i thought fit the essence of the film. in short, a 'girly' font.

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This week i made sure my film was the best it could be and finally uploaded it to blackboard.

Im rather proud of this film. It could be seen as weird by some people because of the concept but seeing as we an all female production team, we thought it would be quite funny to show what we feel it would like if a man got a period.