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.