10/12/16 Screening Event

This was our last ever session in which we would have together as the BFI Future Film Academy. However it was my first ever screening and so was quite exciting. We all got there early as helped to set up and then when the screening happened each group got up and spoke about their film in a short Q and A. This was a great experience and I am so pleased that I did this course as it has and will help me with my future! This is because I have gotten into all the film Uni's that I wanted to, especially ravensbourne!

So just want to say a special thanks to Alison and the mentors and my peers who have helped me along the way!

30/11/2016 - Organising a Screening

In order to prepare for the screening on the 10th of December, we helped Alison think of each job role that would be necessary for the screening, then we all came up to the board and wrote our name next to the job title that we thought would suit us best.

I decided to take on the role of the programmer along with four other people. I wanted to do this job as we had to decide the order in which the films would be shown at the screening. Without us, every other role couldn't really do their job, for example, the designers needed this information to start on the programmes for the event. And as I had just produced a film in this BFI Future Film Academy, I felt that it was right to make decisions about the order of all four films.

     

From planning an event such as this , I have learnt about all the different roles it takes to put a screening on and make it successful.  

23/11/2016 Marketing Masterclass (social media online focus)

I arrived to this session a little early so that I could check on everything with Armand and Nathaniel. Callum and Iris came a little later and we were just finishing the edit fully so it would be ready for the screening on the 10th.

At 6:30, we had a speaker, Muffin, who come in to talk to us about online marketing as well as how to approach film festivals to submit our films. This was also relevant for our screening as we needed to know how to market our films in order to make sure there would be people there for our screening. She went round each group and asked for an outline of the films and then she gave us a lot of information about entering a film into a festival, including:

-Put it online

-Submit to festivals 

-distributors get films in cinemas on digital platforms and festivals 

-sales agents acquire and sell films to distributors 

-a list festivals cannes Berlin sundance etc 

-publicity prize giving south by south west BFI lff - national presmiere

-regional specific Leeds (festivals)

-film freeway film submission platform -festivals

-Vimeo - password protected 

-they would want a back up of film press kit (title, country, run time, one tag line then 30-100 synopsis, full cast and crew and contacts like press sales general 3 high Rez stills , 10 second trailer 

-dazzle -short film distributors 

-bitly link for others to screen it

-lux experimental film, club dfem, ica, Tate film, no.w.here, synonova, idailies

-commercial viability 

-bar and pubs have screening space 

-need ur own Projector and sound system and screen

After this talk I felt as if I knew a lot more about how to enter a film into a festival as well as how to create a screening and both these skills are vital when starting out as an indie film maker.

19th November- Post

This was one of our last sessions on editing our film. When I arrived I sat with Nathaniel while he finished up the music, meanwhile Armand was downstairs with Nuru finishing up the rotoscoping and the rest of the edit. 

After giving them advice about what we think, Iris and I went to the Raw Shorts event where we saw different clips from the R.S. Documentary as well as other media texts that certain people made in which we met at the Q and A. From this I learnt a lot about the way a film gets made with the fact that you have to go to speak to companies that will invest in you to make the film or documentary in this case.

After this, we were invited to the networking session with free drinks which is where I met Mandem on the wall and exchanged emails with him in order to have a possibility of working together in the future. My peer and I got a picture with him as well to lighten the mood.

I thought he was a very inspiring person as he knew exactly what he wanted in his career and he told us how he started his career. The fact he wants to be an actor and started by making his own stuff and staring in them to then getting professional acting jobs from that is such a cool story. I would love to follow in the same footsteps if my films became noticed. 

Post Production on short films 5-16th November

Through the editing process, Armand, as editor has taken control of how the film comes together. Callum sits with him in order to make sure he likes how the film is coming together. The rest of us normally sit behind them in order to learn more about editing and to give input if we feel something doesn't look right or even to praise the work Armand has done.

As we wanted all the characters apart from our main actress to have blurred faces, Nuru (the Guru) came in to help us all and he showed us how to blur people's faces and how we had to rotoscope it in order to fit on the extras faces.

Whilst Armand was editing on one of the days, Callum thought doing the credits would help with time in finishing the film at a more rapid speed. I, as producer made a list of all the people we needed to thank for helping us get our film done as well as giving us knowledge, moreover, I thought I should thanks certain people who let us use locations to shoot.

  

On one of the days of editing when the non editors weren't doing much, we got a chance to go and see the Infinite Mix exhibition which was a lot of different short films that had interesting content.

2 November - Editing and SFX Masterclass

In this session, we had a master class with Nuru "the guru" and he gave us an introduction to Premier Pro the editing software 

24-28th October 11-5: Shooting Short Films Throughout the Week

Monday 24th October

Today was our last planning day before the week of shooting commenced. We mostly arrived at 10:00 and went into a separate room to the others to finish off the planning. As producer, I started on the Call Sheet for the first day of filming on Tuesday. From doing this I was learning how to organise people as they would in the real word of the film industry. Whilst I was doing this, Iris and Armand re-drafted the screenplay, Thomas was finishing up on the shot list and Nathaniel and Callum were going through each fantasy section that would appear in the film. Armand thought that we had one dream sequence too many so as a group we were all working out how to cut it down the 3 instead of 4.

By the time lunch arrived, we ate and then started to get the equipment ready in order to go out and do some test shoots for Tuesday. We had Alex teach us how to use the clapper board that Callum brought in and this is where she assigned me assistant director. She taught the professional way to film, for example, I had to say "quiet on set, going for a take, turnover, sounds... Camera...." And they would reply with "rolling, set" then Iris or Armand would say "slate 1 scene 1" and clap the clapper board. The director would then say "action" and then "cut." We rehearsed this quite a few times before we went out to do some test shots where we threw paper in the air in front of the camera. We also went down an alley where there was a purple light lighting up the alley, but no other light, moreover, in order to gain more light we used the torch on our phones which worked.

At 3:00, Callum and I left the group to meet the actress back at the BFI. We had a chat and asked her about her acting career and so on. We then introduced her to the rest of the group when they came back from test shooting and managed to get a picture taken of Molly, our actress and Nathaniel who will be playing her brother in the film. Thanks to Benugo staff we were able to retrieve the image in their secret lounge area behind a bookcase in order to look like the photo would have been taken in their house.

After this, we told our actress to go home and get some rest before the first shooting day on Tuesday. I told her I would send her the call sheet for the next days also.

We then went back to the meeting room with the others in the group and his is where Callum and I got a chance to watch the footage back from the test shoots they did when we were with Molly. I thought they turned out quite well and thought they could be used possibly for our actual film.

I finished off the call sheet and sent it to everyone, we discussed what we needed to bring for Tuesday and then we went home.

A lot happened on this day and I learnt a lot about being a producer as well as the camera and equipment. I knew that by Tuesday we would all understand how everything works within the filming for out shorts and I couldn't wait to start the actual piece the next day and the rest of the week.

Tuesday 26th October

We started off our day at 9:45 due to the fact that we needed to set up the room in LS1 to make it look like an office. We got all of the white tables with wheels on to make them look like booths for each worker in the office. When our actress arrived, there was a bit of waiting around to do as we were still trying to set up and get used to the camera. We put props on the actress's desk such as a cactus, a photo frame of her and her brother, pens, paper and an old computer. We put paper and pens on the other tables too, however it took some time to decide whether they too should have old computers or the normal macs that were in LS1. We finally decided to put normal modern macs on their desks as we didn't have enough old computers and it worked better due to the concept that very civilian is he same and Molly is yet to change to fall into the norm of having no identity within the world.

We started shooting Molly sitting at her desk and doing everyday office work. We told her to have no emotion as we wanted to portray that work is slowly killing her inside, furthermore, her identity. We did multiple different takes of different shots so that we would have a large amount of choice in post when we would put the film together. As we hadn't had the opportunity to cast a boss, Alex volunteered to do it, therefore we shot her walking round with paper to put on Molly's desk in order to show the workload piling up. I handed her the paper so that she could take it quickly when she ran round the back of the camera. It ended up becoming quite funny due to the repetitiveness but we got the birds eye view/high angle shot done anyway.

After shooting more of Molly, we got the extras in and we placed them in certain positions within "the office." After a lot of discussing how to do the next tracking shot, we set up 2 of the brown tables from LS2 and put gafa tape on the parts which separated each table in order to gain a smoother track. We tested the shot and I called a rehearsal, nevertheless as soon as we finished the test shot, we realised that the camera jolted where the gafa tape appeared and we came to a conclusion that some of the crew needed to push the tables up from below in order to make them the same level, we also decided that we needed to lift the rig where the table is split so that it would contribute to a smoother track and by doing both of these ideas, the shot managed to work, finally, even though it wasn't perfect, it was as good as we could get it with our creative technique towards filming the tracking shot of the extras in the office and Molly.

The extras left after that tracking shot as well as appearing in other shots of the office and we were then left with Molly where we shot her having a tantrum and messing up her office. In order for the shot to feel angered, some of us shook the desks around Molly that acted as her booth and I 'made it rain' with paper as I threw bits of paper in front of the camera and Molly herself. The shot worked well when we watched it on playback, however we did a few takes for safety so we had to reset multiple times. Furthermore, we got a lot of shots that we would be able to choose from in post.

After we told Molly to go home we then found that all the footage we recorded came out with grid lines on the screen. This therefore meant that we had to reshoot all the footage that we had done that day. We planned to film some office  scenes with just Molly on Wednesday, however due to the fact that the extras couldn't make it he next say, we have planned to film the rest on Friday in the space of 2 hours, as Molly has to leave at 12 for an appointment.

Wednesday 27th October

We got in early on this day and started setting up one booth for Molly to act in and we quickly reshot all the close up scenes of Molly at her desk. There were 6 of these shots altogether and we also added new ideas for each shot. As we were sharing LS1 with the other groups on this day, we decided that we wouldn't use sound from this shoot but from the last one and also to use foley to add effect.

We finished these shots and more in two hours as our test shoot from Tuesday allowed us to become more organised with the equipment as well as what we were doing.

Then we shot Mollyand Alex, as the boss in the meeting room and we decided to do a parallax shot in order to create more rendition as this would be the part in which Molly gets fired. We got Nathaniel's jacket again and put the rig and camera on top of it so that it would be easier to slide.

We had lunch, which is when I did the call sheet for the next day.

After this, some of the group went to film the photocopying scene while the others stayed put due to the fact that the copying room is too small to fit us all inside. We then set up the Bolex for the next day just in time before the talk about the residential course occurred.

Thursday 28th October

Day 3 of the shoot. We got there earlier than normal and told Molly to also come in earlier so we could crack on and shoot the scenes in the park. So we went to the park and shot scenes with Nathaniel and Molly as brother and sister with the Bolex. Due to the fact that we wanted the camera to be moving around the actors instead of just static shots. We all had to run behind Tom whenever he turned with the camera just so we weren't in the frame. His was quite amusing for both ourselves and the actors which therefore helped them to act in a happier way.

After we finished the brother scenes. We placed all the office stuff on the floor while Molly sat sat her the chair in the middle. This shows the hubris within her character downfall.

After we did this and changed the reels in the Bolex, we had to leave due to the fact we were there too long and security didn't like it so we had lunch and I did the call sheet for the final day.

I also messaged the extra so that he would come in time for he smoking scene in the alleyway