Single Camera Production: Technical Deceit

Pre-Production
     The first essential thing we had to secure for the film was a location. The film centres around a theatre, but we needed somewhere that also had a suitable lighting rig that we would be able to use. I had approached The Garage (a theatre and arts centre based in Norwich) in January with the film concept - before the project had even been given the go-ahead. After some slight script adjustments, serious negotiations around health and safety and several re-structured production schedules, we got permission to shoot Technical Deceit over two days - the 25th and 27th of April 2016.
     I was then tasked with finding cast, as unlike some other groups none of us wanted a large role in the film. This was mainly conducted online through Facebook - finding friends of a friend - and by the Garage themselves promoting the opportunity to their drama students. As a group we chose Isaac Wright (15) to star as 'Dave', Bethany Lain (17) as journalist Kate Hamilton, and James Amey (22) as theatre director Damien Blake. I also cast Jordan Bushby and Connor Stevenson-Wright as the Macbeth actors, Adam Hunter as the voice of Damien's mysterious contact, Reuben Convery and myself as TV news anchors, and Robert as a cleaner.
     Meanwhile, Robert was made Director of Photography and began constructing a shot list and storyboard. This included management of the newsroom scene, which had to be shot prior to filming starting at the Garage. Alex arranged for and made props, and some costume where necessary. I gathered some lighting equipment from a local school to be used as props also.

Production
     Day 1 of production meant first meeting in Norwich, and collecting equipment from the Trett Films offices. Our first shots were up on and around the lighting rig itself - one of the only shots filmed in order was the opening shot (another was actually the closing shot which was admittedly filmed more as an after thought). For this whole day of shooting, we only required two of our actors so we shot all the scenes only involving Isaac and James. Alex acted as sound recordist for this day of shooting, whilst Robert and I remained in our roles as DoP and Director, with all of us taking a join role in production management to ensure it ran smoothly.
     ...It didn't! As with any production, things occurred which we weren't fully expecting, and some scenes took much longer to film than we were expecting. The main consequence of this was having far more that we needed to film on the second day, so for Day 2 of production we split our small team into two units. On the day off between days of shooting, Robert and I discussed at length what else was necessary to ensure we could produce a full film. We colour coded much of the shot list into categories of "completed", everything we were happy with from day 1, "essential", shots we had missed from scenes on day 1 and everything absolutely required for the edit, and "if possible", all shots that fitted neither previous category.
     Day 2: Robert headed up Unit B, working with our tutor and filmmaker Josh Trett and Isaac to shoot all the required shots in the theatre control room. Simultaneously, I ran Unit A. This was a larger group consisting of Bethany, James, Jordan, Connor and Alex. Connor was also a member of our college course at East Norfolk, so he was able to help considerably when not on screen himself. Robert and I therefore shared the roles of Director and DoP for each of our units. This process allowed us to get nearly every single shot that was on the shot list, importantly everything that was considered "essential", and some of the "if possible" shots too. Some small scenes - marked as "if possible" - were completely neglected due to the small amount of time we had to film.
     Over the two days, Technical Deceit took eighteen and a half hours in production.

Post-Production
     The scenes were divided up between the three of us for editing, Robert, Alex and I. Robert and Alex completed the first half between them, and I completed the second half as I had the ability to also edit at home - this included what is now the montage sequence and the final two scenes. The assembly process took the best part of a month, as we were still working on other projects and evaluation work for the course. Alex left the project at the end of May when we submitted a very early draft for assessment for the course. Robert and I, still unhappy with how the film looked, chose to continue work in our own time.
     The main issue we took with the first cut was the pacing. Honestly, it was boring. We started hacking away at the second scene, losing over a minute of dialogue. A lot of the first scene was scrapped, and the music edited to be faster to allow for the jump cuts. Then the montage sequence was made a lot quicker, and another section of dialogue towards the end also scrapped. With that dialogue went some of the final scene - we chose to make the character of Damien more ambiguous and suspicious at the end rather than showing his innocence as the script intended. The end credits were also made snappier.
     With an Offline edit we were happy with, we began the Online. Robert's expertise in editing is with colour grading and stabilisation so he began work on that. We had chose to try and replicate the style of Netflix drama series House of Cards in our cinematography and this is where it really started to appear. I also began work on the sound design and levelling which, for a script with not much dialogue, was quite difficult. The end result was finally published on the 18th July 2016 - 82 days after wrapping production.

Evaluation
      We could have worked for months more on Technical Deceit before I was completely happy with it, but that wasn't realistic given the time I had already put into it. Looking back on our scene recreation of Above the Fold, which was the first thing I had taken an individual active role in directing, I think I have improved.
     The cinematography of Technical Deceit is something I am equally happy about and unhappy about. I think the look of the overall film I had envisioned was realised to an extent in the final product, but not as consistently as I would have liked. The shot variation is interesting, 180 rule remains unbroken, and the framing is mostly good. I'd have liked to include some more dynamic shots to really amplify the House of Cards look into the film, but those shots take time to set up and were often sacrificed for the sake of just having something done. Being low on time also meant we sometimes ended up forgetting the basics, in this case too frequently shots appeared under-exposed and the process of trying to fix this has damaged the quality of the overall film. This wasn't helped by the fact we had incredibly limited lighting equipment, and relied so heavily on what was already available within the Garage.
     In terms of sound, I think I learnt a lot from the Above the Fold scene recreation task, and consistently ensured as a director that it was well placed. There was some necessary levelling to do in post, but this was largely due to how wide the shot was that changed how close the microphone could be to the subject. Frustratingly, the one thing I forgot to do was record an ambience track in the theatre; things like the humming of the air conditioning and buzzing of lights that you don't tend to notice in person are heightened by the recorder. The last scene was the only one really affected by this, as I was able to hide it in other scenes with music and ambience tracks from online.
     In the end, everyone we asked seemed to enjoy watching the film, and would ask us questions about whether Damien really had been breaking the law or not, and what happened to Dave immediately after?

Music Video: CHVRCHES - Empty Threat

Music Video Research

     For our music video, we have decided to use the song Empty Threat by CHVRCHES. The official music video for it can be seen below, along with two other examples of their music videos which we studied.

Analysing the Track

Meaning

We believe this song is talking about a break up between two people - a break up they regret because they still love eachother and want to be back together. Because it’s a girl singing in this song, it’s seems clearer that she’s the one who broke up this relationship and she wants to fix it. The meaning behind this comes from the lyrics: during the chorus, the song talks about “Taking back an empty threat”. An empty threat could mean that she didn’t want to break up but they did anyway. “More than you could ever know” sounds like she’s talking to someone, expressing her love for him which is greater than he could know. “Take it back with no regrets” talks about how she wants to take back what she said or did.

Imagery

This track is full of metaphors, a lot of them referencing the ocean. This is clear especially during the bridge of the song: “If we wanna stay here, can we see the waves”, “They’re spilling over us, filling our insides”, and “In the rising water, in the rising tide”. Particularly describing the tide and the waves as their “spilling over us”; a reference which gives evidence that she’s drowning or being pushed back because she can’t undo their split because of her mistake. This imagery gave us the initial idea to set our music video on a beach.

The first line in the song starts as “Tore a line in the sun” this can be a reference to separation that was perhaps the result of an argument that a couple had. Further evidence is given with another line; “I see the turning tides are parting for you”.

Narrative

The song itself doesn’t have any progressive narrative. The lyrics express the various emotions felt by the singer as a consequence of the assumed break up.

Genre & Style

Electronic / Synth-pop

Duration

Full Song: 4.04

Radio edit (which we used): 3.46

Image & Representation

Music Video Pre-Production

Technical Deceit | Blog #4

Final Week of Pre-Production
            It's been a while! As I write this, we've already began editing having finished the shoot - but I'm going to pretend that it is still Monday 25th and I'm not ridiculously behind in writing these. But lets start by talking about the final week before production began.
            Realising we only had a few hours left where we would all see each other before the shoot, we set to work hard on Monday (I even wrote the previous blog post early in the morning to give me more time later!). Alex completed the two newspaper cover props, as Robert worked frantically to finish the shot list. In the meantime I wrote a new scene - X22 - to be shot on the Wednesday at college as our 'news studio'. This scene was designed to make the main character of Dave feel like crap about not getting any credit for the public reveal of the Director, but it didn't come without a whole barrel full of references!
            The following Wednesday we shot scene X22, with me in the role of the newsreader. We had planned originally to shoot the scene in the college's boardroom but we were told on Tuesday that it wasn't ready and so we planned to shoot it on the green screen instead. This later proved to be a massive pain in the ass in editing despite our best efforts to light the green sheeting well, it even turned out that the boardroom was ready when we shot it on Wednesday but were failed to be informed in time.
            Another issue we encountered was the equipment. A lot of what we wanted in terms of sound recording had gone missing from the college AV room. We had to improvise using a cheap RODE attached to a camera for the newsroom audio, whilst the rest of the equipment was located. It worked well enough though - after all Dave is meant to be watching the news on his smartphone so it shouldn't sound great anyway.
            With the scene shot, we frantically tried to edit it ready for the following Monday. In hindsight this was wasted time, as it was an impossible task with the difficulty of the green screen. We did have some breakthrough on the Friday though, the equipment all magically reappeared in AV! Robert ran about between all the cupboards like a kid in a candy store coming up with ways we could use equipment to help us in ways the objects were never designed to be used! We packed all the kit into some bags and hopped on the next bus to Norwich to drop it off ready for the following week. Our tutor Josh had kindly offered us his office as a place to store the equipment over the weekend, to save us from coming back into college on the Monday morning. Then Robert and I relaxed after a busy week by watching the new Jungle Book at the cinema. I don't know why I'm telling you all of this when there's so much more useful information I can write instead, but maybe it is a good insight to how we worked on this project; lots of hard work, but always with a little time to enjoy it.
            Jungle Book, by the way, was a very good film. I couldn't help be distracted by the extreme blurriness of the film footage, but the story remained to be incredibly well told. The film also partially served as a good omen for filming - as the venue we were shooting made a play of the Jungle Book just last year, which I had some involvement in.
            The weekend was spent gathering props. I managed to negotiate my way into my old school to source a few props, including Dave's broken light (it was truly broken as well, as the one I found didn't even have a bulb in it!), some cables, and a whole bunch of tape. I wasn't able to gain access to any of the wireless microphones the school has - so I quickly bought a lapel microphone from Amazon (I had wanted one for a long time anyway). Then it was a matter of purchasing some batteries, and raiding my mum's tool box to complete the prop list.
            We were ready. At least we thought we were... but that's for next week's blog post... ;) Thanks for reading!

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