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Played icebreakers of each other's opinion on different films and tv series - eg: wether they were over/underrated.

I said that my most underrated film trilogy was Terrifier, due to the gore turning so many people away & the trilogy improving with each film.

Learnt the basics of the course and how to use Padlet, as well as the structure of the coming weeks.

We learnt about what makes a short film both good, and actually a short film, & our reflections going forward - such as things we may struggle with.

We also found out our groups going forward and assigned each other our roles. In my group I have:

Charlie(me) - writer & producer

Gemma - sound

Kaitlyn - director

Alex - camera & lighting

Overall I am extremely happy with this group, I already know them very well and look forward to seeing what we can create together.

As a group we each have our own strengths and weaknesses, and our roles help to reflect this.

For a first session, I would call this extremely beneficial, it was straight forward & to the point, nothing was dwelled on for a long time and there was an overall good pace, I'm looking forward to the future workshops.

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Watched Christopher Nolan's student short film - "Doodlebug". From the start his style was clearly present, there were themes present such as schizophrenia and paranoia, as well as the message of ourselves being our own worst enemy. - Under 3 mins in length.

We also watched a second short film called "The Black Hole", even shorter than Doodlebug, but with just as impressive of a message, the dangers of greed and abusing your power. However, there are also links to the saying; Curiosity Killed the Cat - a proverbial phrase.

We then looked at how to correctly create a character description - whats necessary and what isn't.

I drafted a basic premiss of 4 stories, but after collaborating with Kaitlyn, we decided to go for a home invasion romantic comedy style film, so a thriller rom com.

Only a basic draft exists so far but our key ideas are present and should hopefully be achievable with what is at our disposal at uni.

Story development:

Story type

Underlying themes

Where the story falls commercially (genres)

Seven basic story types:

Overcoming a Monster

Rags to Riches

The Quest

Voyage and Return

Comedy

Tragedy

Rebirth

Blake Snyder's basic plots:

Monster in the House

Out of the Bottle (wishes and curses)

Whydunnit

Golden fleece (quest)

Rites of Passage

institutionalised

Buddy Love

Superhero

Dude with a problem

The fool triumphant

Over the coming week I will create a rough story board and script for our short film - The Thrill of Love

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Our focus today was on creating both a log-line and a rough step-by-step walkthrough of the series of events in our film.

We learnt about what actually goes into a good log-line and created several before finally settling on one which worked.

"A hopelessly lovestruck student pursues an uninterested man. When she takes the obsession to new heights, it hits a bit close to home."

Until today I never realised how vitally important a log-line was to the actual creation of a film, I never would have thought that simple sentence would influence whether a film is created or abandoned.

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Kaitlyn decided to switch our roles with each other, I am now directing and she is producing.We thought this was for the best as she is a lot more organised than I am and I am a lot more creative than she is.

The opening of our lesson today began with learning about the similarities of a producer and director and how integral it is that the two of them work together.

We also learnt about the creation of a storyboard, and how integral they are to the creation process.

These storyboards then go hand in hand, with a shot-list, which is simply a list of all shots and the angles they use. This will then get turned into a shooting list, which is simply an in order shot-list.

For a good audition:

-Ask them to prepare a piece

-Have them perform an excerpt of the script

- Give them some lines from the script to do on the day.

Allow them to do it as they have prepared

Give them direction to alter their performanc - seeing how good they arer at following directions

Try another direction.

MAKE SURE THEY ARE AVAILABLE on the day and at the right times.

DO NOT give them a role there and then - someone better could always come along.

Starting with Actors in rehearsals

Starting with ice breaker questions

Talk through character(s) with actor(s) and see how they feel about them

Have a table read

Have an active read - directing as they wander around the space - also block some lines

Listen to suggestions - don't let your vision get destroyed by an actors concept of their character

Test out multiple versions of pacing to discover what works best.

PLAN IN ADVANCE

Working with actor:

Make sure you have:

Rehearsed ahead - so you can remind the actors of what was decided on already.

Keep actors fed and watered

Keep actors waiting as little as possible - need a place for them to relax.

Shooting schedule:

Simply a template involving Who, What, Where, When & Why

Includes time stamps, location, ideas and what is being scened.

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A treatment package is a document that presents the story idea before a screenplay. It is used to pitch ideas to studios and highlight the most important information.

- A treatment package includes

A film title

Logline

Synopsis

Character description

Statement of intent

I am intrigued to see our work culminate together as we build our film from the ground up and finalise our creative vision.

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"A hopelessly lovestruck student student pursues an uninterested man. When she takes the obsession to new heights, it hits a bit close to home."

A logline is a catchy sentence which highlights why your film should be produced. It has to easily describe the basic plot of your movie and bring an interest to the story created.

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Mise-en-Scene = everything that appears in a shot has meaning.

Frame composition -

Static composition - lines are vertical or horizontal (soothing)

Dynamic composition - lines are diagonal (unsettling)

Lead room - space infront/in the direction of moving or stationary subjects.

Rule of thirds - The intersections of the lines are "points of interest"

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How will the 6 steps to success change how I approach assessments?

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How will the 6 steps to success change how I approach assessments?

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1. Following the submission checklist will help stop me from making small mistakes which lead to a large loss in marks (one of my biggest issues in the past.)

2. In the future I will utilise the Cornell method as I have always simply used bullet points for notes and they are not well organised.

3. I will try out creating a timeline for myself for future essays and research projects.

4. I will utilise the "library search" tool more frequently, especially in regards to referencing.

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To stay ahead, as a group we decided to meet up during the week to finish our script together and consolidate any final ideas we had. This led to several changes in the script specifically in relation to the ending. But these choices were definitely for the best, it feels as though our ending, and overall story has a much deeper meaning.

In addition to this we can now ensure that our film encompasses several camera and lighting techniques to show the progression of our skills learned on our course.

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This was our first true pre-production lesson, we had several goals; break down the script, find/secure filming locations, casting and a shooting schedule (once the locations were found).

We also each had our own personal objectives, as the director mine were; marking up the script, the statement of intent, mood board and to plan a meeting with the team later in the week.

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Cindy is hopelessly in love, Michael... not so much.

On the benches outside her University Students' Union, Cindy eagerly texts Michael, pouring her heart our, while he responds with indifference, polite - but distant.

When texts aren't enough, she takes matters into her own hands, standing outside his flat, peering through the window, imagining a love story he never agreed to. Inside Michael goes about his life, unaware Cindy is closer than he thinks.

A split-screen reveals their vastly different realities - Cindy, filled with romantic hope, and Michael increasingly unsettled. Then, an opportunity presents itself: Cindy sneaks into his building, slipping through the door behind another tenant.

Michael remains oblivious as Cindy watches him from the shadows.

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We had two dedicated days for filming throughout week 7, 7pm-11pm on Tuesday 18th Feb, and 9am-11pm on Friday 21st Feb. These didn't go exactly to plan, we kept going until around 12:30 am on Tuesday and a similar time on Friday, but with the shots we ended up with, this extra bit of time was more than worth it.

We chose to start on Tuesday with the evening shots, both internal and external, we thought these would be simpler to shoot, hence the shorter filming schedule, but we didn't account for the usual filming blunders of the first day being MANDATORY for something to go wrong. Despite this however, we successfully shot all evening scenes bar the finale and a handful of shots involving both characters' differing perspectives from the window of Michael's apartment.

As we only had a small handful of evening scenes left to shoot on Friday, it meant that we had plenty of time for reshoots, as we thought these would be where most of the problems would arise because of the heavy use of lighting effects. This was a smart choice as we ended up having a number of reshoots, primarily because of lighting changing slightly between scenes, or realising a new idea we incorporated contradicts a scene from before.

The scenes set through the day were much simpler. We used the golden rule for permission to film in Peel Park, by. using no equipment aside from the camera. Some shots were harder than others, thanks mostly to having to deal with the public, but it was a highly successful final day.

Overall I'm really proud of what we achieved during our filming week, we have one reshoot we want to do, as we've realised that 2 shots which should transition into one another swaps perspectives, so we will do that before we start putting it all together.

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Today we didn't have a timetabled lesson, so we met at Alex's flat to discuss our progress on our individual tasks and to plan out the shooting week.

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This was a much more laid back workshop than others. We were simply informed about the plan going forward and made a check-list of what our plans were over the coming weeks.

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This was our final session before reading week. We initially hoped we could film during this time, but unfortunately not all of our crew was available, so instead we decided to use that week for any final bits of preparation, such as props, necessary equipment, and briefing our actors on the plan one final time.

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After a successful week of filming, upon returning to the classroom, we firstly ensured that none of our footage was corrupted, and then had it quickly checked over by Lara, who approved it nice and quickly :)

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This workshop was dedicated to reshoots, and although we originally thought we would need some, we reviewed the footage further and changed our mind. So instead we all got to together to look over the outtakes of film, and simply have a nice rest together.

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This was our first proper editing lesson, and I devoted much of this lesson to deciding which clips I wanted to use, and simply putting each one of them into Premier Pro.

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Now that I had chosen which shots I wanted to use, I chose to start by editing and positioning the videos first, without worrying about audio yet. However I did make sure to find out which clips we had external audio for, such as from the boom, and which clips only had audio from the camera, which, depending on their quality, may have simply been used with music over the top.

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Most of, if not all video clips I wanted to use had now been edited together, and so I decided it was time to make a start on audio. I didn't put in any music or sound effects at first, instead choosing solely to focus on the dialogue and ensure it was correctly aligned with the videos. I made very good progress on this, and by the second half of the lesson I was adding sound effects, still only ones that we had gathered ourselves, but this let me see a clearer picture of what I was creating. Finally, by the end of this lesson, I added the penultimate scene, the montage set inside Cindy's mind to the sound of 'Happy Together' by The Turtles. This actually proved quite challenging, as I wanted each new clip to appear at a certain change in rhythm or beat drop. I was mostly happy with this by the end of the lesson, however I decided to stay for longer to perfect it and add a little blooper reel for fun.

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I finished the blooper reel, and added more external sound effects, whilst tweaking some aspects of the film itself, such as adding more split screen/split perspective shots as I found these to better portray what my vision was when creating the film.

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This was the final editing lesson, I asked Lara to watch my edit and I received some feedback from her, and so I changed some aspects of my film to incorporate her ideas, such as adding a backing track and adding thick black lines between split screens to more accurately show that they are split perspectives.

I then had another idea, from the beginning I had wanted this project to be more of a horror/thriller than a romance/thriller, but I was happy to change the script to accommodate the wishes of my group. As this was my edit however, I knew there were ways where I could have my original vision shine through. So I stayed after the lesson, changed the backing track, added more realistic sound effects, slightly altered some scenes to make them more horror themed, added special effects to the 'dream sequence' to pull it away from being a solely romantic sequence, to it starting romantic and lulling the audience into a false sense of security, only to change course at the end and become a much more disturbing sequence.

After completing this, I was happy with my final edit and ready to submit.