Production Diaries

Production Diaries:

Within this section I will be looking at the production stage of the short film. Here I will include the production diaries and the struggles we faced as our team and the short film changed and developed as we filmed. This also helped keep tracked on what we filmed and how the shooting went in case something was to be deleted we knew when we uploaded it so IT staff could retrieve it if necessary.

Tuesday 19^th April 2016

This was our first day of filming. We had previous dilemma’s which pushed back our recording. This is due to our actors changing and the location to our short film changing in order to suit the script development better. When we first started to film the actors felt uncomfortable as they haven’t spoken to us much before we started to film then however, they were very willing to be a part of our short film and we managed to get the first Act of our short film done within the time we recorded. Before we started to record we took some pictures of them for the main poster as well as gave them their call sheets and their script so they can read over before we started to film.

Friday 22^nd April 2016:

This was our second recording day however, due to some of our actors not being in the correct clothes we couldn’t record. Instead of this, I took the camera and did a little interview with the female actors in order to see how they were finding the production of the film so far and how this has helped them. Due to the fact we couldn’t record we weren’t able to progress with the film however we got some materials for the post production part of the process therefore it was beneficial.

Tuesday 3^rd May 2016:

Within this period I took the opportunity to record everyone’s press junket. This meant that they got to answer some questions on the film which will enable them to become closer to the character they are playing. As well as this, I also got some pictures of the girls in order to complete my feature article for the short film.

Wednesday 11^th May 2016:

This was our last day of production due to the actors being unavailable from this point onwards. During period 4 we recorded one of the library scenes in order to make it look more natural when recording due to other people being in there too. After this we regrouped after school and finished the rest of the scenes off. By half 4-5 we had finished all the scenes for our film and we gave it to Bilal to edit. It was a struggle getting everyone together due to them having different timetables and places to be after school but despite that we were able to get everything done.

Codes and Conventions of Short Films

Codes and Conventions of Short Films:

Within this section I have analysed the codes and conventions of short films. This has given me a better understanding about short films and has also given me an insight into some of the conventions I can put into my own short film.

What is British Social Realism?

British Social Realism:

Within this section, I will be analysing British social realism in an attempt to further understand the genre of the film our short films will be taking. I will be looking at the example of Kes briefly and giving themes of British social realism.


British Social Realism - Films based on current social issues within society at that time.

* Challenges the status quo
* Focus on current issues and ideologies of society
* Draws attention to working class within society
* Over the last 50 years then themes of social issues have changed and developed
* Revolve around the youth within society.


60’s
* Heavily influenced by the British documentary movement.
* Humphrey Jennings brought a surreal approach to pop culture in everyday life - known as British new wave.
* Ken loach and Tony Garnett were big advocates for British social realism within the sixties.
* Explores margins of society and projected industrial working class fa!ilies mostly from the Midlands and up north.
* Kes (1969)
* Saturday night and Sunday morning (1960)
* The loneliness of the long distance runner


70’s and 80’s
* In the 70’s there was little progress within social British realism within film, however it developed in television - EastEnders, Emmerdale.
* In the 1979 the structure of Britian changed: Margaret Thatcher came into power; it showed the hostality towards the government.
* ‘Making the rich richer and the poor poorer’
* Films were pessimistic and attempted to climb up the social ladder.
* Worked with a new diverse landscape: gender and race.
* Films didn't express the social realism in a straightforward manner
* Film example to show hostility;
* High hopes (1988)
* My beautiful launderette (1985)
* The Cook, The Theif, His Wife, Her Lover (1989)

90’s
* Arrival of the labour party - optimistic Britian.
* Films being shown in a different light and represented not just the new social issues such as youth and drug culture but the music scene within Britian as well.
* The working class was now coined as the underclass.
* Consists of poor and unemployed and the lowest position of class hierarchy
* There were two tendencies being shown in films:
* Male anxiety
* Labours new idea of rebranding
* Lack of political action and image of utopian society within the classes
* Working class played a certain role within the 90’s, they were a commodity and a style.
* The Full Monty (1997)
* Trainspotters (1996)
* Billy Elliot (2000)

00’s
* Social realism had a subtle change.
* New millennium started to showcased more films to do with the nitty-gritty life and dilemas the youths were facing.
* Focused on class and race.
* Opened up the market to multicultural markets living within the UK.
* Ken Loach is an advocate for the social realism and displayed this when winning the palm D’Or at cannes Film Festival for ‘The wind that shakes the barley’ (2006) it combines social realism and history together.
* Adulthood (2008)
* Kidulthood (2006)
* Bend it Like Beckham (2002)

Production Company

Production Company:

Our production company is called Awareness Productions. The reason we chose to go with this is due to the fact we are discussing very important and hard hitting subjects. This also helps to top show the public that we are doing something about the issues in society.

Target Audience:

As a company we are targeting young adults aged 15-25. This is because the issues that are discussed within our short films are usually happening amongst young people of this age range. The students will have little to no money as they will be in full time education and only have money from their parents or from a part time job. This means we will need to make sure are short films are cheap and easily accessible. The films that we produce will cater to both male and females as the issues we explore happen to both genders. As well as this, are target audience is any sexuality as some of the issues we plan to explore in the future are based on this topic.

 

Brand Image:

As a company we hope to present the inequalities within society and the different issues we face. We want to give the image to the youthful citizens of Britain that we are concerned about various issues we raise within our short films. Our image and our logo will help to give a contemporary feels to the company and boost our reputation within the media industry as well as with our target audience.

Logo:

Our logo features a camera. This is to symbolise that we are capturing everything and making it visible for other people to see. We have two variations for our logo one with the full writing of ‘Awareness Productions’ and one with the letters ‘AP’. This is because when we are distributing our products and when we are using the logo within the film. Once we get a large audience pool we can use the abbreviated version more often as people will be familiar with our company.

 

Employees:

An important aspect to think about when creating a production company is who you plan on employing within the company. We want people who give our company a good image and make other directors and other people want to work with us. We also want to make sure we provide a good image for our audience. Our probable clients would be those who are able to connect with young adults and those are more likely to produce films in relation to our target market.

Within our company we have chosen to keep a flat structure. This due to the fact that we will have better and faster communication as well as knowing the employees in more depth as we will have a narrow span of control meaning there will be less people reporting to the manager of the company. In order to employ suitable people we need to make sure our recruitment period is vigorous and is able to show what kind of skills possible employees will have and how this can benefit our company in order to sell more films and create better quality films. We will need to make sure that employees have good teamwork skills in order to further help the company produce better films. We will need to create certain teams that will work of specific features of the film and it won’t be unlikely that one employee will be working in more than one team. This will be down to what kind of skill set they possess.

As a company we need to make sure we are producing relevant ideas that abide by the codes and conventions of British social realism films. Although people who don’t study the fil m industry will not know what this means, they will feel more relatable to the film than if it was a Hollywood film. This means that through the actors and the style of the film will help to further push the idea of British social realism. Our unique selling point of our company is the fact we are addressing issue that are relating to our target audience in this current day which is helping to educate as well as raise awareness for the issues within our society.

 

Kes/This is England/ Mean Girls

 Kes/This is England/ Mean Girls

Within this section I will look at 3 different films. Two of these film are "British Social Realism" and the other is a "Hollywood Film". I will be looking into some information on these films as well as give some clips to show the difference in not only quality but also the issues that are raised. Through this analysis I have gained a deeper understanding into what makes a "British Social Realism" film and what makes a "Hollywood" film. 

Development

Development of short film

 

Our Idea's:

We had a lot of idea's for our film in order to make it hard hitting and educational. In order to stick to British social realism within our film we decided we would look into serious issues that Britain needs to consider and issues we believed would be important to explore.  These include issues such as bullying, cyber bulling, teen pregnancy, date rape drugs, drugs, and relationship abuse.

After research into all of these topics we decided to do base our film around relationship abuse. Within this, we decided we wanted to take a different approach and did the woman abusing the man. This made our film different from those already available and will also make it more interesting for people to watch.

Although the other issues listed are important issues they are addressed regularly therefore they won't be as hard hitting as the one we have chosen to pursue. Due to them being a regular theme within the media people might not be as willing to watch our short film as they are too familiar with the topic.

Production Plan:

Within the production meetings we organised a plan in order to make sure that we are meeting deadlines and getting everything done when it is supposed to be. This will help us to be more organised as well as be more familiar with the way each other works. It also helps us to know what needs to be done and what is planned for the future so that we know in advance to free time. In order to document this I recorded the production plan in the form of a Gantt chart. This makes everything easier to read and also outlines everything in an easy and professional format. Pictured here is the Gantt chart for the production plan. This outlines everything that needs to be done throughout the eight week production period. Various tasks will need to take longer than others therefore this Gantt chart is able to identify this and show this to the cast and crew members.

We have decided to give ourselves deadlines of certain weeks to complete everything as this will prove to be more efficient. Making sure there is enough time to get everything done will stop the cast and crew from stressing and panicking about meeting deadlines. This makes it easier and proves to be more helpful in the efficiency of producing the film.

Target Audience:

In order to create a successful short film, we need to make sure we are targeting our audience to the correct group.  In order for us to do this we will need to decide what and who we want to target to.

Focus Group:

One way you can really get to know your target group is through conducting a focus group. This is because it helps us gain a deeper understanding of our audience as you are able to discuss certain things that you wouldn’t normally know. In order to choose which topic would be best, we discussed the ideas we came up with and asked for feedback from the group.

The first issue we discussed was bulling. The feedback we received from them was that although bullying is an important topic, it isn’t something that will motivate them to watch the film as it is in a lot of short films recently. They believed that this idea would be ‘predictable’ and something they would see a lot if they wanted to watch a movie.

Secondly we discussed the idea of date rape drugs. They said that this would be a good topic to explore as not many people know about it and it would be good to raise awareness for it. However, they said due to the fact it isn’t a well-known issue some young people may not be interested in it.

Lastly we discussed the idea of relationship abuse. They said they really liked this idea and when we proceeded to tell them about what kind of relationship abuse we were focusing on they seemed very interested in the film. This is good as it will interest them due to the fact we are doing it on a unique topic that isn’t mentioned a lot.

Through this focus group we were able to find out what type of film we should pursue and which topics to invest more time in then others.

Age	The age requirement for our film is 15. This is due to the issues that are being raised only start to become known when they start getting into relationships. Our overall age range for our film is 15-25 as the setting for our film is within school.
Gender	Our film is aimed at both male and females. This is because the issues that are raised within the film can affect both males and females alike. This means we need to make sure that we are not favouring one gender over the other in order to make it more enjoyable for both audiences.
Social	The social aspect is important as we are targeting those of every social background in order to raise awareness of the issues within each social group. This means that there will be a range of different actors who portray different social groups within a school setting.

 

 

 

Delegating Roles:

Pre-Production
Synopsis	I will be the one to do the synopsis. I will then type and finalise the document.
Script	I will be the one to write this up however I will give it to other people for moderations and make changes due to the moderations.
Story Board	I will be the one to draw and finalise these due to the fact I did the script therefore I could do them together
Character Profile	We all did our own character profiles the way that we wanted to therefore they will be different.
Post-Production
Marketing	We will be producing our own marketing methods and creating different feedback methods in order to gain critique on the film.

 

The reason we have delegated roles to different people to ensure that everything is completed and played to each other's strength. The editing will be done by Bilal as he is passionate and skilled in this area. This way we can make sure that everything is being done to a high standard and the film will be created to the best of its ability.

 

 

 

Research

Living in Oblivion:

 

When we first started our short film research, we looked into a short film called ‘Living in Oblivion’ which was released in 1955 and was directed by ‘Tom Dicillo’. The film was very popular and branded as being ‘the ultimate tribute to independent film makers’. This film is about a group of cast and crew members who are having a bad day on set and nothing seems to be going the way it’s planned. This however, turns out to be a dream of the director. The reason we were given this short film to watch is so we get an idea of what it’s like being a director and the different roles there are within the film industry. It helped us to choose which roles we would do within the group and also help us to realise that it isn’t going to be an easy task and we need to co-operate.

Cinematography:

I was given the role of director therefore I wanted to make sure that I knew about the different camera angles that we could incorporate within the short film. This means that I will have a better understanding as a director and I will be more knowledgeable about to improve my short film in order to make it more interesting for people to watch.

The shots that we can include within our short film are listed below with a definition of what they are:

Close Up: Head and shoulders are within the frame. This is because the director wants to focus the audience’s attention on the facial expression of the character.

Extreme Close Up: This is when small details are given the most attention. This can either be done for artistic effect or to highlight an important aspect that they director wants the audience to notice.

Long Shot: This shows the whole character from top to toe. This helps us to identify the characters body language along with see what clothes and prop they may be wearing.

Point of View Shot: This shot is used to see what the character is looking at. This helps the audience get into the scene and makes them feel a part of what the character is going through.

Mid Shot: This is from the waist upwards. This shot is usually used to the audience will focus on what the characters are saying rather than what they are doing or what is going on behind them.

Over the Shoulder Shot: This shot is where we are looking over one characters shoulder at the subject. This is usually to focus the audience’s attention on the subject and their reaction to what is going to happen next.

Two Shot: This is a shot of two people which is used to show the relationship they have with each other. For example: if they are close together they are friends with each other of they are far away from each other there is hostility between the characters.

Another important aspect we need to consider is camera movement. This is because cameras are very rarely motionless therefore camera movement is used to create impact. Some of the types of camera movements are as followed:

Steadi-cam: This is where the camera is at a standstill and is mounted onto a harness so the movement is smooth.

Handheld: This where the camera shot is a bit shaky due to the camera being held without support. This is usually used to show panic and build tension.

Pan: This is where the camera moves horizontally across the room or location.

Zoom: This is where the camera is in a fixed position and the lenses moves either closer or further away from the character. This is usually used to show the sudden facial expressions of characters.

Tracking: This is where the camera is placed alongside the movement within the scene in order to ‘track’ or portray movement.

Tilt: A movement in which scans a subject or location vertically.

GRANITE:

 

Within this section I will analyse the GRANITE structure on order to analysis films effectively.