Week 7 - Daniel Middleton

This weeks project was a remake of the previous weeks challenging on creating a film of the social realism genre. We had an opportunity this week to expand on our already strong project from last week, but as a group we were determined to better ourselves even more so.

The "twist" at the end of last weeks films that the camera was the child was a really good scenario and we wanted to expand on the interaction with the camera. This week the actors interacted with the camera more so, and the camera movements was more relevant to reinforcing the idea that there was a child watching this fight between its mother and father.

Andy did a great job as cinematographer and his camera work was strong and consistent. He kept at a low level to help re-in-force the idea of the camera being the child.

A major factor in improving this weeks re-make to last weeks project is the sound problems were sorted. Sam worked particularly well this week making sure he did not repeat the sound errors from the previous week.

I think this week was another strong project for our group and a strong piece of work to show for it. I am glad we went to the effort of re-making last weeks piece.

Week 6 - Daniel Middleton

For this weeks project the challenge was to make a film of the social realism genre. Since i studied film and media at A-Level and social realism was the main theme of this course, i knew my prior research in this genre would be make me the perfect candidate for scriptwriter.

After watching such films as Meantime and Made in Britain at college i developed a strong insight into the term "social realism". This helped with my script idea. The story was based around unemployment and the turmoil of the jobless underclass in society.

The script was very strong and gave us alot of artistic licence. The original script was shot across multiple locations but as a group we decided one location would be better, and we would focus the dialogue in a small secluded space to really emphasise the tension between the two characters.

The whole group worked as a team on this project and i believe it to be our best. The general audience feedback was very strong, so much so they want us to remake the project for next week to a even higher standard because the project was held in such high regard.

Week 5 - Daniel Middleton

This weeks project titled "All is fair" was a challenging project were we had to use sound to impact our piece. The group was again well organised and we had a studio booked to shoot our piece in and set up production of this piece very quickly aswell as hiring an actor for this piece.

I was in charge of sound this week which was important to this weeks project in particular. Any sound that i recorded was clear and did my job! One large criticism of me personally and the feedback group was however the slightly misplaced soundtrack in editing. The soundtrack played continuously and misunderstood by alot of the feedback group. The overall feedback that silence creates the tension better that than playing a soundtrack all the way through. The soundtrack should have been only included at certain intervals of the piece.

The production of the piece itself however was very strong. The actors did a good job and followed direction well. The cinematography was also strong on the piece was solid shots. Overall this week wasn't our weakest project but wasn't our strongest however we can still take alot of positives from this weeks projects and take those positives into our next projects.

Week 4 - Daniel Middleton

This week was a challenging task we had to duplicate all shots and the whole mise-en-scene from a scene from the 1966 Ingmar Bergman film "Persona". I was however ready for the challenge and determined to make a strong piece after the week 3 absence.

I took the role of director this week as I wanted a challenging role, i knew it would be difficult to exactly duplicate the whole scene but thought with strong direction thought this would be possible. I have to give credit to my actors for piece who did two wonderful performances. They listened to any stage directions i gave and listened to everything i said and gave two very strong performances.

I worked very close along the cinematographer this week as it was important for the director and the cinematographer to work closely alongside each other as to try and duplicate the piece shot by shot. I think we worked well together and this is shown by the final product.

One criticism of the project for this week was the lighting however me and the cinematographer must also accept fault for the one scene were we really used misplaced lighting and the film was led by our direction so we should have noticed this fault.

Overall for this project i think it was a success and we did well to duplicate nearly all the shots and had great acting performances and think this piece was a very strong piece.

Week 3 - Daniel Middleton

The piece from week 3 titled "one last reminder" i feel was a very important project. It was important for our group to work hard to redeem ourselves for our week 2 project which we all felt was rather weak.

I had no role in the film this week as i had an authorised absence but i was very happy at what my group had achieved and the film was a great success. The group was more organised and hired actors which was an improvement from week 2 when members of the group had to act which made the piece worse in week 2.

The script by Andy was very strong this week and gave the group a lot of potential to work with. The cinematography i was particularly impressed with this week as the piece had alot of variation in shots and made compelling viewing.

The director of this piece did a great job in stage directions to the actor of this piece as the actor performed very strongly to how the script writer intended the performance to be. The strong acting performance and preparation of our group this week really redeemed our poor piece of work from week 2 and was proud of the group in my absence for their efforts and commitment as a group to this particular project.

Week 2 - Daniel Middleton

Our idea for the week 2 project was a rather "over acted" drinks advert. The initial idea of this project was very strong and looked to have a lot of promise. My role in this piece was an actor. I am rather uncomfortable in this role, especially as a comedic actor. I felt although i did bring some humour to the piece my general performance could have been alot stronger.

However i do feel collectively this project was maybe a bit rushed and under thought. With no solid script in place it was difficult for actors and directors to really get the idea of what was going on. The directors for this piece was very strong and vocal and helped me as a first time actor though and feel as though they interacted with the actors very well and gave clear and strong direction.

I definitely feel as though this is our weakest piece of work collectively. This piece was quite under-planned. This could have been because our first week project couldn't be planned, as we was only assigned the challenge on the day and was a great success still.

The idea was strong though and could have worked very well with proper planning and a script. However some individual roles were very strong in this project such as director and cinematographer and we will learn from any mistakes made in this project.

Week 1: Pickpocket - Daniel Middleton

Rather than doing a normal pickpocket we aimed to more ambiguous and also incorporate a hidden twist. As this was our first week project i was very pleased with the final piece. My role was cinematographer. I thought the film was shot very well, with a good variation of shots. However if i could improved personally in my role for this piece i would not use zoom shots. When presenting our piece the zoom shots were criticised, for being needless when we could have used a simple jump cut. The film generally had a good reception and, had an interesting concept. The story was strong and the group worked quickly and productively

We chose to do pickpocket over the other two choices because with pickpocket we believe we had the most artistic licence. This proved to be a good choice as we came up with the switching phones idea and could end the film on a cliffhanger.

For the first project of the module, the group worked really well as a team and also individually was strong in our own individual roles. I was overall very pleased with the final product, however if we could make it again, it could be even better as i think the story has a lot of potential.

Week 7- Golden- Andy

This week we decided to remake the film we made last week. We thought this would enable us to improve on the film technically and shorten the film it as the other was seven minutes long, which is 4 minutes longer than it was supposed to be. We were supposed to condense some of the character developing chatting from the start. What we thought was shortening it was them chatting about other things, although this understandable as the dialogue was still improvised. The film was generally an improvement technically until we got to the second location where our strengths were in the first film. The area was too dark, but looked reasonable on the camera monitor, this was a major disappointment as that was the reveal of our twist. 

Golden

Golden

Week seven we were given free rein to do what we wanted, as we got very good feedback from week six we decided to re-make Gold out film from week six and try and build on our ideas from before without over running and having the sound and camera problems we had before. However we had to film in a different location this week and this was unfortunate as the space was even smaller so it was hard to work in. Also due to a known absence Dan our actor and screen writer he had to leave half way through so we had less time to remake the film. This week I co-directed with Sam as we both had good ideas to put forward to the group. Even though we wanted to re make the same film as like any remake there were differences as we tried to make the camera angles more consistent of a child height that proved hard. Some scenes I felt were a lot better than the week before especially the kitchen scene fight it was more powerful and dramatic and a lot the sound and lighting were a lot more professional. However we all felt that the chemistry between the actors wasn’t the same and I think this was due to the fact we were trying to remake a film from before. However we remade the film we improvements and built on our ideas from the week before. Although in feedback it didn’t get as much praise as the end scene with the child being the camera didn’t come across as well and the idea was slightly lost this was due to the lighting in the scene was a bit too dark and perhaps Sophie didn’t get enough direction from us on the way to act in this scene towards the child. Altogether though I was pleased we remade the film and had another go on our ideas as I feel gold was our best film. And we got to work on our skills and develop them more through remaking the film.

Week 7, Golden R.M

This week we were given free reign of what to do so the group decided that we should reshoot the film from last week. In theory this should have been an easy task but our main actor had a job interview halfway through filming so we only had limited time to film the shots we needed. Even with this extra pressure that was put on us we were able to complete filming in time, because we had a more defined shot list and an idea of what our actors would be saying in each shot, but we became to focused on doing the things we messed up on last week well that we did not put enough emphasis on the things that we did well resulting in a film that was once again not to our full ability as some of the shots were to dark and some of the camera work was to complex that it did not make scene and ruined the ending of the film by not capturing the essence of the film last week, this week I shared camera and cinematography with Andy, this lead to some differences in opinion and because of our different styles the camera work looks disjointed and at times looks like we are trying to hard to emulate a child’s movement, this was also because of the confusing direction and at times lack of direction. I have taken some important lessons from this week mainly the need for clear and precise direction and full cooperation and trust in the group something I felt that this week we lacked. In the end we have decide to use or week 3 film one last reminder as our final piece, but as two of our members were not there for filming I believe that they have submitted one of our other pieces of work, this was a shame because we all agreed that we thought that our week three film was our best and most praised piece of work.

Sophie: Week 7.

 For this week’s film we decided that we wanted to re-shoot our last film but focusing on clearer and more purposeful shots and a clearer sound.  However, when re-shooting we found that the acting wasn't as spontaneous and that the sound still posed a problem. Ultimately, our biggest downfall was that the ending was not as clear in this week’s film, which was the main factor that made the film interesting. With this said, it was still a reasonable piece of footage, with the second third of the film being quite powerful.

My role this week was to act again but also to edit this week’s film. We tried to change the pace by adding in short shots between the jump shots of items around the kitchen, this was criticised as it took away from the awkward and almost painful atmosphere that was being created through the acting. The main bulk of editing time this week was spent on colour correction. We used lighting this week to create a sharper and more contrasting image, this made it interesting to colour edit. I based all my editing around the fundamentals of having the contrast slightly higher, generally around +6 and the brightness on the same level. I used a basis of Gain at 98.77 and Gamma at 0.871 to create a more dramatic look. I also edited the colour wheels so that the colour was slightly blue in each image to give it a colder and grittier look. When editing the colour I tried to keep Lynne Ramsay’s film ‘Ratcatcher’ in my mind as I thought that the stark and blue/grey tones in her film really added to the narrative.

In conclusion, last week’s film worked more effectively for narrative, with this week’s version falling shot behind it, however, the sound and camera work were a lot shaper this week and the overall image, I personally think, created a greater impact visually than last weeks, excluding the quick shots from around the kitchen. 

Week 6- Gold- Andy

I was really excited to work on the British social realism because it is a subject area, we as a group could connect over as it is an area we all know well. I really liked the script as it didn’t come with any dialogue, so we could talk about and improvise what the characters would say. I am not happy with my cinematography though. Although because there was only a general idea to what the lines would be the words would change with each different take and don’t connect well when it comes to editing. Some of the shots weren’t in focus and when it came to the edit the shots were dark. This is due me still rushing shots, not taking any masters and not taking any safety shots. Another habit I need to improve on is deciding when to cut. Sometimes I cut before the actors and the rest of the group were ready to cut and we would miss some good improvised dialogue. We have decided to remake it next week hopefully It will be able to iron out the faults.

Week 6 , GOLD R.M

This week we were tasked with creating a British social realism film. This week Dan had asked to do the script writing, he came up with the idea for a young couple who were expecting a new born child, both had recently been fired from the jobs and were looking for a new job opportunity, when the male turns to alcohol and the pair are evicted from their house and the film ends on them slumping in an alleyway. In the pitch we were told to simplify the idea and keep to one location. So we decided to keep the pregnancy idea and unemployment, and set the film in a kitchen. As research we watched rat catcher, and some other British social realism films. I was a technical assistant and editor of the film, the filming went well, considering that we had the idea of using only improvised dialogue to promote realism. We had learnt about preparation and organisation from our earlier films, and from this we had reappeared costume, set and props before the filming, leaving nothing to chance like we had done before. While editing I noticed that the sound quality was sub par and some of the shots were out of focused or not white balanced. But the end result worked well and was one of our best films especially when the twist at the end was revealed, when we show that the camera is looking through the eyes of their small child. We got very positive feed back and have chosen this film to reshoot for next week project.

Gold

Weeks six’s criteria was social realism genre focus on everyday life and depicts social and economic hardships within the working class. This week Dan wanted to be screen writer which he did well however we had to modify his initial idea which was a young couple who were expecting a new born child, both had recently been fired from the jobs and were looking for a job the male turns to alcohol and eventually they are evicted from their house and the film ends on them slumping in an alleyway. In the pitch we were told to simplify the idea and keep to one location as this was more like social realism. So we kept some of the original idea of the couple expecting a child however this time they were squatting and both needing a job before the child was born. As social realism consists of up close shots in small spaces that make you feel confide so you can understand there poverty it worked well just filming it all in a house. This week I took the role of director, for this I watch a few social realism film beforehand so I knew what kind things were consistent and typical of this genre. Helpfully we had watch Ratcatcher by Lynne Ramsey last term so I watch parts of this again along with having a look at some of breathless by Jean-Luc Godard I found with this film in particular the use of long drawn out silence that were sometimes so long they became uncomfortable and they reminded me a lot of real life that sometimes silences can go on for minutes without being broken. So I wanted to incorporate this idea into our film. Also with Ratcatcher in mind the use of up-close shots so that you were right in the drama not left safely on the outskirts made you feel more intimate with the characters. I felt that Sophie and Dan worked together well as actors they had good chemistry on screen that was need for this film as we were dealing with a very sensitive subject that need to be handled with care. They created very realistic characters which I was pleased with. To create this however we filmed a lot of the scenes over and over again until I was happy. As it was unscripted which I felt was more like social realism it was what they said at the time in the moment and how they felt. By just improvising it made their characters come to life more. We added a twist to our plot which was the camera was their other child watching them so all the camera angles were low and childlike even though it was revealed it was a child till then end. In feedback this got a very good response as no one knew it was coming. However in editing we found the sound to be off slightly in places and some shots out of focus. Despite these issues I felt that this was one of our group’s strongest pieces as everyone was very pleased with the end result and we were given good feedback. I felt I learnt a lot more about directing within this film and how to coordinate my thoughts and ideas better than before I felt I managed to effectively commutate with the group what I wanted to see on screen and I strongly believe we worked well as a group.

Sophie: Week 6.

This week’s film was based around Dan’s British Social Realism script. The script told the story of a dysfunctional couple who were expecting a child and had little to no source of income. The main standout feature of this film that really motivated the piece was the twist that it was told from a child’s perspective, which is only revealed at the end of the piece. My role this week was only acting, mainly because we have a large group and there were other members who needed to take certain roles in order to have played a large part in at least three of our films.

Dan hadn’t really written a script so that the actors, Dan and I, were able to improvise our lines and say what was natural. This worked really well and created a great rhythm with uncomfortable pauses and innate conversations with deeper meanings. Our film was well received on the Friday viewing with the only a few major faults. Number one being sounds and the occasional out of place shot that took away from the dramatic ending (As it would be impossible for a child to see from that angle). Number two that some of the shots should have been cut shorter in editing, however our director wasn’t available on the day that we were editing and our editor didn’t want to make those kinds of creative decisions. Overall I was really happy with this week’s piece and would go so far to say that it is one of our best films that we have made as a production team.  

Gold

Week 6 (Gold)

For week 6 and 7, I served as sound, and co-director. Our theme was social British realism, and this would also be the film we re-shot for week 7 as there was great feedback about it's acting, it's improvised script, and narrative, but we all basically agreed sound quality was poor in places, and shaky camera shots and a few shots out of focus let it down in places. It was a pretty unanimous decision to have Dan and Sophie off script to really try to create, and preserve the realism, which really made it seem natural, and emotional as a story knowing it wasn't heavily constructed, and could easily have happened in real life.  The casual costume, with generally bleak colours, suggesting the lower class, and suiting the atmosphere and tone of the piece was also very intentional. We also figured a kitchen would be the perfect setting, being the ultimate symbol of domesticity, while also suggesting specific gender roles, which are also evident in the piece with Dan not doing his part in their marriage. We didn't use lighting on this shoot, it was generally quite grey, quite bleak, as obviously appropriate to relate to the emotional mood of the film.

While the script was improvised, Dan the screenwriter, and I made sure to talk about things that would relate to the theme, unemployment, looking for jobs, no food, the awkward social situation of being a squatter. We also delve quite bravely into the themes of domestic abuse, and quite possibly into the abuse of children which is kind of suggested while not explicitly shown. In terms of sound, we used no soundtrack or sound effect as we weren't going for heavy elements of construction, but realism. However a few sounds we used to our own effect, where the can of lager Dan opened, as just a visually interesting few seconds we could cut to, and him in the toilet peeing (which was actuality on the audio) which I think really embraced the whole idea of British realism. The sound problems that let this piece down, were mainly down to staging, meaning I couldn't the boom close to speech without it being in the frame of the camera, and was positioned behind the actors most of the time due to the wall meaning I got quite shaky audio. Overall I was happy with the piece, and happy with the feedback even though it had problems, and the idea to use the camera as the eyes of a child in that way, was what really made it quite a special piece in my opinion.

All is Fair

Sophie: Week 5

This week my role was cinematography and lighting. This week’s film was based around a chess game. When deciding on the lighting we tried it from many angles. All the game shots were lit from behind the head of the actor wearing purple, shining down onto the board leaving anything that wasn't placed on the table in shadow. This worked effectively as it kept the actors in the dark, forcing the focus to be on the game and the game tactics rather than the characters at this stage. For the close up shots I moved the lighting so that it shone onto their faces only. With the actor wearing the purple hoodie, I tried to light his face from a low angle creating a more powerful and strong image then the side lighting that I used to light the other actor, to create heavy shadows on his face and show that he is the weaker player.

For the cinematography I tried to use very simple but clear shots so that the focus is always on the game. I tried to take some close-up shots at vital points in the game to show the significance, such as when the black bishop takes the white castle. I also took close-ups of the players face and hands to show the difference in emotion. The purple hoodied player, the winner, shows a lot more patience and has a more tactical playing style as the player in the purple polo shirt, the looser, shows more anxiety and a more aggressive playing style, demonstrated at the end of the film by the board swipe.  

Overall, I am pleased with my contributions to this film. I am especially pleased with the effectiveness of the lighting as I believe it really made the film stand out. The cinematography went well and is in focus and correctly white balanced for the majority of the film. 

Week 5- All is fair- Andy

In my understanding the briefing for this week is to use sound to create a world which is hyperbolic to the image. We had the idea of shooting a dramatic game of chess and use sound to create the idea of the evolution of war, I found sound effects of medieval war fare but I couldn’t find any for the next era for example muskets, It just jumped to World War one and two this was frustrating. Although when seeing the finished product I found it was easier to see the message we were trying to portray as the sudden change makes the audience the audience think about how war is still similar to a game of chess in modern times. Shooting the game was hard because of continuity. I had the idea of watching a real game of chess and imitate the moves but with time restrictions, it wasn’t feasible. I am happy with the idea but the cinematography let us down. Many of the shots were out of focus and we lacked in variations of shots and cut-aways and most of the film is just a wide shot of the board.

Week 5 All Is Fair R.M

This week we were tasked with creating a film that used sound to convey or denote something different from what Is on screen, this week Sam was going to wright the script but then we had to change this as he came down with illness so I took on this role as well as my directing role. I decided that I wanted a film to show the progression of war but that the strategy’s and tactics have stayed the same, to do this I wanted two people sat playing chess and as the game continues I wanted different war sounds from the middle ages all the way up to modern gun fire to connote the evolving nature of war, I also originally wanted to show old stock footage of war and super impose them over the chess game as certain pieces were taken or moved. I wanted to shoot the film in the main studio or one of the rehearsal rooms but these were all full booked for the day. So we had to settle for the sound recording room this posed a problem because I had to scrap almost half of the shots I had planed, as there simply was not enough room. Also we had further set backs as half of our group was not in attendance, and the props department did not have a chess board, so at the last minuet I had to arrange an actor and drive to town to pick him up and buy a chess board with a sizeable chunk of our filming lost to these circumstances, we had to hurry our filming and cut some of the shots I had initially wanted. But over all I think that our piece came together well and showed good promise and had a solid idea. I had to learn the hard way from this film that I can never take anything for granted and plan further ahead to give the group and myself some leeway in filming.

Week 4 'Persona' R.M

This week we were tasked with reshooting a scene from Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 film “persona”. This was a difficult task as the scene uses complex lighting, and camera work. Also it is hard to recapture the raw emotion and passion that the actors in the original piece bring to the film. This week I was in charge of sound, I found this to be a more relaxed job than the others I had taken and I feel that It was to a high enough standard and fortunately there was no missing or tainted audio. I feel that the film that we produced was not to the same standard as Ingmar Bergman’s original or close to it, in pre production we failed to plan ahead, having to phone around different companies to get access to one of the seminar rooms in p5, also the group differed on my opinion that we should have used period costumes from the props and costume department. With the majority of the group disagreeing, saying it will be fine without, this issue was raised in the showing of our film with one actor having a logo visible on her t-shirt which was highlighted to have lowered the overall tone and feel of the film. I think we could have made this film so much better if we had planned further ahead and experimented with the lighting more on set.

Week 4- Persona- Andy

I was doing the lighting on this week's film which was to re-create a scene from 'Persona' (Bergman,1966). I had never done Lighting before, so it was a real challenge. The end product wasn’t the best. I would like to work with lighting again to get more practice and experiment with different techniques and light positions. I think we found that the group wasn’t communicating enough, this is why we ended up with lower quality sound and light. We weren’t asking the director what the sound levels and light looked like on the monitor. I do feel however that we did well in recreating the shots when it came to composition. We had a lot of trouble copying the location which let us down as the audience would be able to see white boards and power outlets in the frame. 

Week 5- All is fair- Andy

In my understanding the briefing for this week is to use sound to create a world which is hyperbolic to the image. We had the idea of shooting a dramatic game of chess and use sound to create the idea of the evolution of war, I found sound effects of medieval war fare but I couldn’t find any for the next era for example muskets, It just jumped to World War one and two this was frustrating. Although when seeing the finished product I found it was easier to see the message we were trying to portray as the sudden change makes the audience the audience think about how war is still similar to a game of chess in modern times. Shooting the game was hard because of continuity. I had the idea of watching a real game of chess and imitate the moves but with time restrictions, it wasn’t feasible. I am happy with the idea but the cinematography let us down. Many of the shots were out of focus and we lacked in variations of shots and cut-aways and most of the film is just a wide shot of the board.

Persona

Week fours’ filming was to recreate a part of a scene from the film 1966 film persona. For this filming we need two female actors to recreate the piece, so Sophie and I took the role of acting however we spoke the dialogue in English as neither I nor Sophie speaks Swedish. We were sent the clip of footage a few days before we were due to film so we were able to look closely at the acting, camera angle, lighting and sound. I tried to focus on the acting and how the character behaves within the scene. However in practice it was a lot harder to film, as the original film is in black and white. Although we filmed it in colour first and then in editing changed the colour it was hard to get rid of unwanted shadow in the room due to the light in the room. Within the film I also helped with some of the directing between actor and camera as the director Dan worked closely with the cinematographer. I felt I contributed well and worked hard for the three hours of filming and I felt I needed to prove myself to the group as I was away in week three so I was glad I could take on two roles and perform them to a high enough standard for the group to be pleased with. I thought overall this was a well done project which we all worked well in as a group, even though it was a long day of filming and we had to overcome some difficulties with light positions and camera angles. I was very pleased with this project and felt more confident as a group after this piece.

Persona (WEEK 4)

On week 4, our task was mimicking and replicating a film shot for shot as identically as possible. Bergman's Persona was much harder to replicate than originally first thought, in my role as cinematographer I felt our aim should be not only to try to replicate the shots Bergman uses, but also try and capture the heated emotional tension of the scene. As Gideon would explain to us after the task was over, it's one thing to copy a shot exactly, but another to actually recognize, and retain the same context, and meaning it had in the first place, instead of just being a straight replication with essentially no point.

Our location we used was a seminar room in Penbryn, because it was near, small, and could be easily manipulated in terms of lighting and sound.  My favourite shot of ours, would have to be the overlapping shot from the side, which turned out beautifully, even though our lighting was questionable at times with Andy not really having used them before. The lighting was incredibly dark at times, with only some reflection making it to what the camera saw, but in feedback we were told it made the shots seem quite intimate, emotionally charged, and effective, it just wasn't technically accurate to what Bergman did. In many ways though I think the exercise was not to simply copy, but adapt and evolve, in order to actually learn something an expand our knowledge of staging, lighting, and shot composition.

Our opening mid-shot of Sophie was particularly effective, really capturing the dull, grey, isolated mood of the establishing shot. Our only real worry was the radiator was in shot, but this was impossible to avoid as they were present all over the room, but in retrospect, a simple obstruction would have sufficed. As the piece progressed I found our lighting was far too heavy, and far too direct, giving an incredibly strong contrast when it wasn't necessarily needed. As it progressed the shots were fairly accurate, the one of Jemima slamming her hands against the table really worked, it was a conscious decision to let her keep her bangles on, giving quite a clashy, metallic, sound that was quite forceful, and just interesting to listen to. 

The staging was quite awkward at the very last shot, that includes Sophie in the foreground, while Jemima's behind her out of focus, and Sophie needed to appear in shot, thus wheeling herself in order to not see anyone else on camera, but also not wanting it to be noticeable. This meant this shot took many takes, and even then it was shaky at best. However, overall we were quite happy with our film, perhaps not as a strict mimicry of Bergman's film, but at least as an adaptation, or a concept spawned from the old one. We found we captured the same emotionally charged scene, with different lighting, and massively different pacing constructed in editing to really create tension, suspense. I was particularly happy with Ryan's editing, the girl's acting, and my cinematography. 

Sophie: Week 4

Persona: Week 4:


We were set a difficult challenge this week, we had to copy a piece of footage from the 1966 Ingmar Bergman film 'Persona'. We found this very challenging and made the decision to focus on the emotion and meaning of the piece as a main priority, however we did try to be as accurate as possible with the cinematography, sound and lighting. We chose to do the film in English, mainly because neither myself or Jemima can speak Swedish. 


I took the role of acting and editing this week. When I was piecing the shots together I found our shots to be accurate on most occasion but I did have to trim the beginning of some of the shots as they weren't quite correct and took away from the piece, (mainly the last shot). I created the black and white by removing all saturation from the footage within the colour correction mode. I also increased the brightness to +6 and the contrast to +12 (give or take as I edited them to be as closely matched to each other as possible) to try and give it that sharp and striking look. 


I was pleased with our piece this week, I think that we captured the emotion of the piece and I feel that my editing was to a good standard adding visually to the piece. 

Working on Persona

Week 3- One Last Reminder- Andy

I enjoyed writing this film as it gave me chance to go into tougher subject matters. When it came to the shoot I think we did really well although I think we could have done better with sound, as it peaked a lot of the time. In post we should have re-recorded the voice-over as it was blatant that our voice actor was reading from the script. With more planning we could have got the actor to learn the lines. The camera work on this briefing definitely raised our groups standard. As One thing I hope we get into a habit of doing making sure the set is clear. We often have problems with camera bags and tripods being visible in the shots. Another habit I think we need to get out of is editing in camera. Only shooting what we need once with no safety shots. We also don’t use enough master shots. This makes it hard to edit the shots together as there is nowhere to cut away to.

Week 3 (Sam)

Week 3 went generally quite well for us a group, producing our best piece of work at this point by far. We were very organized, and felt we needed to redeem ourselves from Week 2's film, which was admittedly sub-par. We had a drama student be our actor for the task, Jamie Gordon, who is very talented, and we are all grateful he had the time to help us. The initial concept written by Andy, describes a man who is always married to his work, and his career over the bigger things in life, and his letting his life pass him by completely, however an old friend is terminally ill, and leaves him a voice-mail message, that is intended to change his life completely. The audience hears the entire voice mail over the visuals of Jamie working, looking distressed, procrastinating, which is really, really, effective. The piece finishes with Jamie listening to the voice-mail, and looking in horror in the sudden realisation with all that he's missed out on, and a friend he'll never get to say goodbye to. In particular I really liked the close-up near the printer, that really showed his distress, and really established the mood for this film. Overall the entire piece just seemed very professional, and artistic.

Editing went very smoothly this week, besides a few audio mishaps as we filmed in the library, as we occasionally picked up some unwanted sound. This wasn't much of an issue as we didn't want that much ambient sound with the voicemail playing over the soundtrack, and we used a soundtrack aswell to really enhance the somber, melancholy mood of the piece. Watching it back, reminded me of how textured, and emotional the piece felt, and feedback was excellent. While I only had a minor role on sound this week, I'm still very joyful with the increasing quality of our work thus far.

One Last Reminder

Week 3 One Last Reminder R.M

This week we really wanted to make up for our bellow-par film from last week, bounce back and make a film that properly portrays our skills and passion. This week we organised everything well before hand and planned out where we were shooting and we had a Theatre student Jamie Gordon as our main actor and a musician/poet Owain Banfield as our voiceover actor to witch we are thankful for the time that they gave up for our film.

The idea for the film came about when Andy and i were talking about how males relate to each other and why they cannot just express they true feelings, to which andy said ill be right back, and five minuets later he had come back with an outline for the film, he bounced the idea around and the rest of the group loved it, so he went ahead and wrote the script for the film with the help of Owain.

In production my role was cinematographer and camera operator, coming off the back of the last film i asked for this role so i could show them and myself that i can excel in this role and use a camera well, i think that i performed my role well using all of the standards shots and filming them well and also using some unconventional shots that were hard to get right but i feel that they were worth the hassle, i wanted to film the entire film on the wide angle lens so that the camera feels like it is actually their and omnipresent in this world looking into it and invading the privacy and personal space of Jamies character. although i am proud of this film and its is probably the best we have done so far, there is room for improvement in two of the shots the white balance is out, when on location this was not apparent on the camera as the glare on the screen made the shot look the same as all of the rest, but this is something i have lernt to avoid now by covering the screen to avoid gare now.

Working on One Last reminder

One Last Reminder

Week threes filming was to concentrate on the inner image and building relations between people and that people do not always act in a certain way. Also to think about what people are thinking internally. With a subject in mind and our group chose to concentrate on ‘muster courage to do or say something’ and also incorporated a phone call as well. Unfortunately I was ill that week that our film department knew about so I wasn’t present for the filming which I was not happy about as I would have liked to be there for this filming. I was very pleased with my groups efforts when I saw the film and thought it to be a very well made piece the camera angle were well executed and consistent it told a story which I could follow and the directing was well thought out. However we chose to re edit this particular film and within this process I help edit. The re edit was due to the fact that some scene hadn’t been white balanced so there were two scenes that were very bright compared to the rest so we colour corrected the film. To do this we had to raise the contrast on each scene and also we felt that due to the fact it was a sad film it would look better if then scene was dark. We changed Gain to 1.140 and Gamma to 1.60.7 also on the colour wheels we had to change these so each scene looked the same as the one before. To do this we changed every scene to the same numbers on each setting and then worked from there so we had a base to work from. At the end the overall look of the film was changed and created a different mood. Also in the second edit we had to lower the audio track that runs through the whole piece as it was slightly too loud on the original and effected the dialogue in the piece.

Sophie: Week 3

One Last Reminder: Week 3

This weeks film was written by Andy and based around the idea of a missed phone call from one friend to another and the effect that the phone call has on his life. I directed this weeks piece and, on a whole, am very happy with the overall outcome. We were much more organised this week and were very lucky to have Jamie Gordon to come and act for us, giving it a more professional edge whilst freeing more of us up to focus on the actual filming of the product. I worked closely with Andy to try and create a piece that really emphasized the ideas that he expressed within his script. 

The main themes that we aimed to highlight in this weeks piece were; regret, ennui and the passing of time. I feel that we achieved this themes effectively but subtly within the piece through choice of shots and during the editing process. We chose to start the piece with just audio and a blank screen to give the film an edge of mystery and ambiguity. When showing the film to a variety of different audiences they all mentioned that they liked the way that it isn't obvious who is speaking and the confusion when trying to asses whether the person they are seeing is saying these things in an internal monologue or whether he is being spoken to. I also believe that this made the ending much more effective and gave it more of a climax.

Some of my favorite shots are the shots of the coffee cups slowly draining itself. I think it moves the piece along very effectively and is also symbolic of the Jake's emotions and slow deterioration of motivation. I also really liked the end shot when he drops his coffee and we have a medium close up of the cup rolling and then a close up on Jamie's face. I think the shot holds great symbolism and really shows meaning behind the piece.

I am extremely happy with the final product of the film and of the way that our group worked this week. 

Week 2 (Sam)

For Week 2's project, I served as the scriptwriter. The theme was product placement, so we went for a light-hearted, off-ball comedic advertisement as we figured that would suit the overall theme best. Having written scripts for the past 3 years or so, this week I discovered how hard it is to write something that seems amusing or funny in your head, and for it to just not on footage. Our actor Dan, also a member of our group, did add some humour to the piece, as he is quite naturally amusing, but it wasn't exactly intended, it was more awkward performance humour, than intended humour. Also, Andy had trouble visualising the script as the director, and we did somewhat clash on our choice of shots, our choice of location, which overall did really degrade the quality of our work this week.


In editing we had an absurd amount of background noise in the audio due to the vending machine we used, as a key part of our Dr.Pepper based advert. If that wasn't enough, our cinematographer forgot to focus on a few key shots making the whole thing not really gel together that was kind of a basic concept at first. The narrative revolved around Dan, trying to entice a passer-by into buying Coke Zero from the vending machine, and failing to great comic effect, and then it cutting to Andy on the roof, advertising Dr.Pepper in an effective, much modern manner.


In reflection, I was not happy with this weeks work, you could say I was the root of the problem, as a bad script causes many other problems. In hindsight it was a hard theme to write around, and I should have considered bouncing ideas and developing other concepts with someone in my group, to help channel and develop my ideas before I began writing.

Week 2- Andy

I feel this is going to be our weakest film. I think what went wrong is that the film was rushed and I believe we didn’t fully understood the briefing. If we studied the briefing more we could have hatched a better script. It was a case of running with the first idea we had rather than coming up with multiple ideas and picking the best one. Another factor is that we as a group are still finding our feet; we had also gotten two new group members since the first week. I feel we should try and shy away from comedy as it is a very hard genre to pull off well. We thought it would be interesting to make a film about product placement although it ended up as an advert due to planning issues around the group. This was my first try at directing the group, I feel like I tried my best but I found we never knew what we were going to do next, constantly improvising what the next scene is going to be. We had lots of issues with location. Our main location was a corridor with a group of vending machines. The issue was that there was a lot of foot traffic around the vending machines, not only walking past the machines but needing to use them themselves, this meant we were constantly losing time to having to stop filming. There were also a lot of issues with sound as the machines were also very loud. At our secondary location we had issues because the light was very blue and we also had a lot of traffic noises.  

week 2 Dr Zero R.M

For this week we choose to film a spoof product placement advertisement for dr pepper, the advert was supposed to be a tongue in cheek post-modern reflection on the capitalist world that we live in.

The idea behind our film was worked well and we knew that it had promise, yet in execution we did not live up to the idea, i feel that we fell short in all aspects after our last film i feel that we became complacent and allowed our work slip.

My role this week was cinematographer, i tried to work with the director and writer to help capture what they wanted but i ultimately failed in the execution, as the more important shots and some of the very arty and impressive material had to be left on the cutting room floor. As when in editing we found that the lighting wasn't quite right or it was a little out of focus or it might not have been framed correctly and i cut of the actors head room. The shots that were left in were sub-standard and boring.

All in all i felt that making this film was good for us a learning experience as we have taken some important lessons from it, such as the need for proper planning and commitment. There are positives to be taken from the film though as some of the shots and the concept is good.

Sophie: Week 2

My first week with Group S: Week 2: 


This week we attempted to focus on the use of product placement within our film this week. We tried to create an add for Dr Pepper that originally disguised itself as a add for coke zero. In theory the idea seemed genuine and had a huge potential for a spoof advert however, the execution on the day was not so brilliant. 
My role this week was sound. Overall I believe that the sound in this weeks project could have been much better. I wasn't happy with my contribution as the sound fluctuated between being too loud to to quiet frequently within the piece. As the film was centered around a vending machine there is a general electrical hum that could be heard pre-edit and can still faintly be heard post-edit. With editing we did manage to disguise the hum by adding in cheesy style elevator music, in keeping with the spoof style of the piece, however, if the hum could have been avoided during shooting it would have saved time during the editing process. 


We also filmed at an outside location which was problematic as the action was positioned by a road and in a area that was also being used by other members of the public. We had to re-take this shot a few times due to these sound interference however overall the sound balance within the shot used seemed to be usable and didn't pose the same problem as the the previous shots. 


Overall, I would say that this weeks film was weak in comparison to the film(s) that we have made before. Some of the problem could have been avoided by better planning and organisation and a clearer structure of events. With this said, I don't believe that it is a bad film but with more time it would have been a much more effective and polished piece. 

Week 1- The Pickpocket- Andy

I was only acting in this film although I was able to pitch in ideas for example what angle to take the shot from and a couple of ideas for narrative. I do feel we made a good first film. It is a fairly simple piece, but with the time we were given to prepare I think we did well. We decided for this film we would put more emphasis into style instead of substance. Not trying to tackle any of the deeper subjects, while not going into comedy. We wanted to play with the conventions of a spy thriller. So we used iconic mise-en-scène features, for example the thief using a newspaper to block his face. We used a lot of extreme close ups of the thief’s eyes carefully watching the victim. We also made it black and white which gave the film a noir like effect. The way we edited the film was to increase tension. Using shot reverse shot the cuts getting quicker each time until the swap of the phone.

Because of the location we chose to film at we had difficulty with lighting. Surprisingly we didn’t have many issues with recording sound. As the location was a relatively busy café In relation to where we decided to shoot. There was a light which would change to and throw. This is why made the film black and white in the edit. The film was easier to edit because we weren’t allowed to use dialogue as we couldn’t stumble over any lines from different takes  not matching up. Narrative wise it was also useful as it stopped us from getting distracted with character development, so we could just focus on what the characters were doing at that precise time.

Week 1 (Sam)

For our 1st week project, we went with the idea of the Pickpocket. In our group discussion of our concept, we wanted something a bit more interesting, and ambiguous than a straight forward Crime, and victim. Thus between us, we developed the idea of a phone being stolen, but being replaced with one looking identical, with an unknown number ringing the caller. This doesn't simply suggest a crime, but something much, much bigger of a far more complex, and possibly sinister idea. I was the director of the piece, and thought our choice of shots to show our actor (Ryan) pseudo-stalking his pray through various shots, and looking fairly mundane at first were quite visually interesting, and did help build tension, and create enigma coding of who he was, and why he did what he did, which really helped me as a Director, get the most out of my actors.


Our choice of shots were mostly Long shots to establish with, with a few mid-shots, and then mostly close-ups, to show Andy's confusion, and Ryan's intentions. We chose to film in the Art Centre Cafe, as we felt it had a far different atmosphere than most other places on campus. However in Editing we found the lighting was far too warm, exuberant, bright, and cozy for our idea, and the atmosphere we were going for, so we changed it to Black and White in editing, and sharpened the contract to make a bolder image. We also added ambient sound we found on the internet, as we suffered some problems with our camera's audio recording capabilities. Overall in review, we were quite happy with our piece, and found it was quite creative, quite well-made, other than a few camera shots, we couldn't really think of much we'd have changed in hindsight, and felt feedback was mostly positive.

Mise-en-scene Drink Ad

For week two of filming we concentrated on Mise-en-scene, for this the choice was made to make an Ad we decided to make an Ad for a drinks company as we felt that the drinks cans were ideal props to be used. In hindsight this project required more effort than first thought and was probably too ambitious for only week two as we came up with the idea on that day as our original script writer was absent so overall the film was a bit rushed. Although within the filming of the Ad we all had specific roles and worked well in the limited time. My role this week was sound, however we all had a say in each part of the filming process to ensure it was of a high enough standard. We concentrated carefully on how the shots were taken and had to re film several integral parts due to the sound quality. This was because we filmed it in a busy corridor where the vending machines are situated so we had a lot of nondiegetic sound. We filmed the actor opening the can of drink on a close up shot with the microphone very close to the can to create our own sound effect of the pop and fizzing sound a drinks can makes when opened. I chose to do this as it enhanced the message of the film and the opening of a can is a well know sound and even if you weren’t watch the film and just heard that sound you would know what it was about. We didn’t have any other soundtrack to the Ad as it wasn’t needed the only other sound was the Diegetic sound of conversation between the actors. However again due to the busy corridor we had to re films certain scene and I had to play around with were to place the microphone this was due to the obscure angles of where the actors were. Within the filming I felt I learnt a lot more about sound and what was involved as we had to deal with external stimuli. Even though the sound of the finished product wasn’t perfect and in several places it was to quiet and could have been stronger I felt I learnt a lot. Such as placing the microphone in the right place, whether it is to quite or loud on the audio and how to set up.

The Pickpocket

Our first group project has been to make a silent film, based on one of three different stimuli.

They were:

1. Pickpocket

2. Late again

3. The chase

We decided to use the pickpocket stimulus for our short film, but instead of making a film just about the pickpocket taking a item we decided to use the pickpocketing as a part of a story where an phone was replaced by the pickpocket.

The film posed a challenge to us, as we were unable to use dialogue we had to convay the story using just the camera work, lighting and mise-en-sene. The directing roll was taken by Sam Thorne, cinematographer was Daniel Middleton. and Andy Nuvoletta and I took up the two acting rolls in the film.

Editing went smoothly, as we cut the film together we used all of the clips we had recorded to give the film the best chance of looking good and telling a compelling story.