Friday, 22 April 2016
Wednesday, 20 April 2016
Single Camera Research
When writing my screenplay, I conducted research into the themes, locations and characters of the story which you can read below. However, some things had to be changed, or they developed into something else throughout production.
Themes
As mentioned above, the key themes for the film were about exploring loneliness and deceit. The film explores the extent someone might go to to try and make friends. Dave listens in on people's conversations to try and fit in. This is a similar scenario to the film One Hour Photo, where a character played by Robin Williams makes copies of photos for himself to study what is normal and feel like he fits in.
To study the theme of deceit/betrayal, which is evident in most films, I watched Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. In this, one of the characters is an undercover cop who betrays the others by giving away the location of a jewellery shop they were about to rob. Although there is nothing this dramatic in our film, it was useful to see how deceit can be portrayed well in film.
What changes were made from the script to the film?
A number of things meant minor adjustments to the original script I wrote had to be made. The most significant of these was the ending, in which originally our lead character was considering committing suicide. However, feedback on the script told us they felt that the situation was not dealt with appropriately in the story due to certain real life resemblances. Additionally, feedback received in a survey I put out had a significant number of respondents saying they would feel uncomfortable watching something of that nature. Therefore, we opted to remove the section of the script from the film, and instead focus on the character's emotions.
Another thing we had to change was due to the casting. The characters in the script are aged between young twenties to mid thirties, but as college students we found it difficult to attract actors of those ages to work for free on a project. As a result the actor playing the main character was only 15 at the time of shooting, and the journalist only 17. Despite this I am happy with the appearances of the characters within the short film, as I think they were dressed appropriately for the parts and responded to the scenarios in more adult ways.
During the editing process, we made several choices which slightly changed the overall film. In the script there was a second written section between Damien and the stranger, which the film's audience were able to hear - but none of the characters. In this section it would become clear that Damien was not a traitor to the theatre, but instead the stranger was a private investigator Damien had hired. We recorded all the audio for this scene, but it was cut because I felt the story was becoming overly complicated. To add to this sense of mystery around his character, we included a shot of the cleaner seemingly discovering something of secret importance to Damien in the middle section of the film; later on when Damien returns to the theatre and is talking to Dave, he picks up this piece of paper and tucks it away in his jacket pocket thus concealing the mystery. This leaves Damien's whole character mysterious to the audience, they equally don't know whether or not Dave should be trusting him. To amplify this, you may notice that in the final few shots of the scene we do not see Damien's face at all - this was a deliberate choice to conceal what he might be thinking and make him even more ominous.
Other editorial choices included the removal of a couple of small detail shots in order to improve the pace of the film. The whole middle sequence was not intended to be one long montage, rather some montage parts with small scenes happening around it. This choice was made not only to speed up the amount of time the film was taking to edit, but also to make the pace of the film better and conceal the fact that we had not had enough time to shoot everything within that sequence. I am incredibly happy with this montage regardless; I think the music choice is good, and the wide shot of the movement around the theatre is interesting and engaging.
Locations
Despite all the changes we did have to make to the original planning and script, we were able to secure the location that we wanted for two days of filming. We had some restrictions with filming due to health and safety shooting on the theatre's lighting rig, but we were mostly able to overcome these. The location through Norwich city centre was scrapped however in a late re-write which removed the necessity to use more than the one location.
Themes
As mentioned above, the key themes for the film were about exploring loneliness and deceit. The film explores the extent someone might go to to try and make friends. Dave listens in on people's conversations to try and fit in. This is a similar scenario to the film One Hour Photo, where a character played by Robin Williams makes copies of photos for himself to study what is normal and feel like he fits in.
To study the theme of deceit/betrayal, which is evident in most films, I watched Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. In this, one of the characters is an undercover cop who betrays the others by giving away the location of a jewellery shop they were about to rob. Although there is nothing this dramatic in our film, it was useful to see how deceit can be portrayed well in film.
What changes were made from the script to the film?
A number of things meant minor adjustments to the original script I wrote had to be made. The most significant of these was the ending, in which originally our lead character was considering committing suicide. However, feedback on the script told us they felt that the situation was not dealt with appropriately in the story due to certain real life resemblances. Additionally, feedback received in a survey I put out had a significant number of respondents saying they would feel uncomfortable watching something of that nature. Therefore, we opted to remove the section of the script from the film, and instead focus on the character's emotions.
Another thing we had to change was due to the casting. The characters in the script are aged between young twenties to mid thirties, but as college students we found it difficult to attract actors of those ages to work for free on a project. As a result the actor playing the main character was only 15 at the time of shooting, and the journalist only 17. Despite this I am happy with the appearances of the characters within the short film, as I think they were dressed appropriately for the parts and responded to the scenarios in more adult ways.
During the editing process, we made several choices which slightly changed the overall film. In the script there was a second written section between Damien and the stranger, which the film's audience were able to hear - but none of the characters. In this section it would become clear that Damien was not a traitor to the theatre, but instead the stranger was a private investigator Damien had hired. We recorded all the audio for this scene, but it was cut because I felt the story was becoming overly complicated. To add to this sense of mystery around his character, we included a shot of the cleaner seemingly discovering something of secret importance to Damien in the middle section of the film; later on when Damien returns to the theatre and is talking to Dave, he picks up this piece of paper and tucks it away in his jacket pocket thus concealing the mystery. This leaves Damien's whole character mysterious to the audience, they equally don't know whether or not Dave should be trusting him. To amplify this, you may notice that in the final few shots of the scene we do not see Damien's face at all - this was a deliberate choice to conceal what he might be thinking and make him even more ominous.
Other editorial choices included the removal of a couple of small detail shots in order to improve the pace of the film. The whole middle sequence was not intended to be one long montage, rather some montage parts with small scenes happening around it. This choice was made not only to speed up the amount of time the film was taking to edit, but also to make the pace of the film better and conceal the fact that we had not had enough time to shoot everything within that sequence. I am incredibly happy with this montage regardless; I think the music choice is good, and the wide shot of the movement around the theatre is interesting and engaging.
Locations
Despite all the changes we did have to make to the original planning and script, we were able to secure the location that we wanted for two days of filming. We had some restrictions with filming due to health and safety shooting on the theatre's lighting rig, but we were mostly able to overcome these. The location through Norwich city centre was scrapped however in a late re-write which removed the necessity to use more than the one location.
Monday, 18 April 2016
Technical Deceit | Blog #3
1 Week until Shooting
It really doesn't feel like a week since I last wrote one of these! As we get closer to the deadline I can feel myself becoming more worried and stressed - might be in for a couple of sleepless nights over the next week. Thinking back over the past 7 days though: we returned to college to begin more pre-production work, which included more production schedules, cast permission slips, sorting props and equipment, and the all important shot listing.
The week began with a lot of emails and messages. As briefly mentioned last week, we were initially told that the production schedule needed to be adjusted slightly to accommodate for when we would have access to certain locations within the venue. This changed a couple of times throughout the week, as details changed. We will now have a tutor with us for roughly half the time of the shoot, which thankfully gives us more time to shoot certain scenes on the lighting rig. With a third production schedule now complete, we wait with our fingers crossed for it to be locked down!
Robert spent most of the week working on our shot lists. We discussed at length the various ways we could shoot in certain locations, and plotting the character movement around the locations. Currently this still isn't complete, but we still have this week to lock that down too. Meanwhile, Alex has largely been working on props including the newspapers which the character of Kate writes in. Not only that, but we completed a prop, costume and equipment list to help remind us of everything we need.
On Tuesday, I spent some free time typing up some useful information to send to the cast, regarding the location, timings, costume, props and more. Alex made some permission slips to be sent alongside the information, as we need to confirm we are allowed to photograph the individuals. A few of them live quite far away, and so we cannot receive these forms (they need to be printed and signed) until we see them in person on set.
Rounding off the week, I completed the second version of the shooting script (ironically titled Shooting Script_01) alongside an extract script of a newsroom scene which appears near the end of the film. We plan to shoot this scene (X22) this Wednesday so we can edit it ready for the shooting days next week. As always, I've tried to pack as many references as possible into this extract; it includes a crossover reference to a film by my own tutor, and the lower third graphics are set to reference events that take place in the films being produced by my other classmates. All for fun!
Exactly this time next week, as I write this, we will be shooting. If you happen to want to come along and be in the background for a couple of scenes, please let me know! We need background artists between 10am and 4pm on Wednesday 27th, so make sure you're free and then slide into my DMs for more information. Thanks for reading!
Follow me on Twitter to know when I next update my blog: @mc_onnell
It really doesn't feel like a week since I last wrote one of these! As we get closer to the deadline I can feel myself becoming more worried and stressed - might be in for a couple of sleepless nights over the next week. Thinking back over the past 7 days though: we returned to college to begin more pre-production work, which included more production schedules, cast permission slips, sorting props and equipment, and the all important shot listing.
The week began with a lot of emails and messages. As briefly mentioned last week, we were initially told that the production schedule needed to be adjusted slightly to accommodate for when we would have access to certain locations within the venue. This changed a couple of times throughout the week, as details changed. We will now have a tutor with us for roughly half the time of the shoot, which thankfully gives us more time to shoot certain scenes on the lighting rig. With a third production schedule now complete, we wait with our fingers crossed for it to be locked down!
Robert spent most of the week working on our shot lists. We discussed at length the various ways we could shoot in certain locations, and plotting the character movement around the locations. Currently this still isn't complete, but we still have this week to lock that down too. Meanwhile, Alex has largely been working on props including the newspapers which the character of Kate writes in. Not only that, but we completed a prop, costume and equipment list to help remind us of everything we need.
On Tuesday, I spent some free time typing up some useful information to send to the cast, regarding the location, timings, costume, props and more. Alex made some permission slips to be sent alongside the information, as we need to confirm we are allowed to photograph the individuals. A few of them live quite far away, and so we cannot receive these forms (they need to be printed and signed) until we see them in person on set.
Rounding off the week, I completed the second version of the shooting script (ironically titled Shooting Script_01) alongside an extract script of a newsroom scene which appears near the end of the film. We plan to shoot this scene (X22) this Wednesday so we can edit it ready for the shooting days next week. As always, I've tried to pack as many references as possible into this extract; it includes a crossover reference to a film by my own tutor, and the lower third graphics are set to reference events that take place in the films being produced by my other classmates. All for fun!
Exactly this time next week, as I write this, we will be shooting. If you happen to want to come along and be in the background for a couple of scenes, please let me know! We need background artists between 10am and 4pm on Wednesday 27th, so make sure you're free and then slide into my DMs for more information. Thanks for reading!
Follow me on Twitter to know when I next update my blog: @mc_onnell
Monday, 11 April 2016
Technical Deceit | Blog #2
2 Weeks until Shooting
In the last week, some significant progress has been made in pre-production of the screenplay, including a production schedule, a re-write of the script, and casting. Despite the progress, I can't help but feel slightly worried by what is still left to do as time runs out.
The first few days of the past week were spent re-writing the script. The ending had to be changed fairly significantly due to my own lack of decent research. Along with that, I simplified it down a fair bit too. There was too much back and forth going on, so I condensed a few scenes down into one and cut out the bits in the middle that weren't necessary. Suddenly 28 scenes became 22, and 13 pages became 12. Much easier.
In case you're wondering, I won't be uploading this version of the script until the film is released. This is mainly because of spoilers, but also because we're already at work on the next draft, so there's no point. The people who do have the script however *smooth segue* are the actors!
We now confirmed all three main cast roles of Dave, Kate and Damien. Once the final videos were sent in last Wednesday, myself and Robert reviewed all of them and chose the best people we could agree on. Then there were the tricky messages between cast to sort out, but nothing was too bad as most of those who didn't get a main role should be joining us on the shoot to help out and appear as background artists.
I'm very excited about the cast. All of the auditions were great, and I really enjoyed seeing my script come to life. The auditions for Kate in particular were all very different, but each one gave me some new ideas about where to take her character, so I'm extremely grateful. Contrary to what I said last week though, I won't be announcing the cast just yet. They have the all important forms to sign off, and I think it is best to not say anything at least until those are done. I might be really mean and stay quiet until we release a trailer...
There was a bunch of minor things that also happened in the last week, including emails about the location and messages about other various pre-production, but the one big thing I wanted to talk about was the production schedule. In total, it took me four hours to compile all the information on each scene to work out who should be there at a certain time, when we could and couldn't be in a location, and how was easiest to do it all in just 18 hours.
Luckily, I had a huge whiteboard lying around which quickly became very useful for plotting out the scenes where everyone was. Combined with some paperwork I had done previously, everything started slotting together nicely.
At least it did, until we were told we couldn't quite do it like that! As these things go, there are guidelines in place - in this case mainly about being up on a lighting rig - which you have to work around. All part of the fun, I guess. So a second production schedule later, the week came to an end.
Follow me on Twitter to know when I next update my blog: @mc_onnell
In the last week, some significant progress has been made in pre-production of the screenplay, including a production schedule, a re-write of the script, and casting. Despite the progress, I can't help but feel slightly worried by what is still left to do as time runs out.
The first few days of the past week were spent re-writing the script. The ending had to be changed fairly significantly due to my own lack of decent research. Along with that, I simplified it down a fair bit too. There was too much back and forth going on, so I condensed a few scenes down into one and cut out the bits in the middle that weren't necessary. Suddenly 28 scenes became 22, and 13 pages became 12. Much easier.
In case you're wondering, I won't be uploading this version of the script until the film is released. This is mainly because of spoilers, but also because we're already at work on the next draft, so there's no point. The people who do have the script however *smooth segue* are the actors!
We now confirmed all three main cast roles of Dave, Kate and Damien. Once the final videos were sent in last Wednesday, myself and Robert reviewed all of them and chose the best people we could agree on. Then there were the tricky messages between cast to sort out, but nothing was too bad as most of those who didn't get a main role should be joining us on the shoot to help out and appear as background artists.
I'm very excited about the cast. All of the auditions were great, and I really enjoyed seeing my script come to life. The auditions for Kate in particular were all very different, but each one gave me some new ideas about where to take her character, so I'm extremely grateful. Contrary to what I said last week though, I won't be announcing the cast just yet. They have the all important forms to sign off, and I think it is best to not say anything at least until those are done. I might be really mean and stay quiet until we release a trailer...
There was a bunch of minor things that also happened in the last week, including emails about the location and messages about other various pre-production, but the one big thing I wanted to talk about was the production schedule. In total, it took me four hours to compile all the information on each scene to work out who should be there at a certain time, when we could and couldn't be in a location, and how was easiest to do it all in just 18 hours.
At least it did, until we were told we couldn't quite do it like that! As these things go, there are guidelines in place - in this case mainly about being up on a lighting rig - which you have to work around. All part of the fun, I guess. So a second production schedule later, the week came to an end.
Follow me on Twitter to know when I next update my blog: @mc_onnell
Monday, 4 April 2016
Technical Deceit | Blog #1
3 Weeks until Shooting
As previously promised, I will be briefly documenting our progress throughout the production of my short film Technical Deceit over the next several weeks. If you don’t already know what the film is about, here’s a few handy links to the Screenplay Treatment and the Documentation for the project itself.
The reason I have not achieved quite as much progress as I would have liked by this point in the process, is because I was very busy editing for another project which you should totally check out here! Follow me on Twitter to know when I next update my blog: @mc_onnell
As previously promised, I will be briefly documenting our progress throughout the production of my short film Technical Deceit over the next several weeks. If you don’t already know what the film is about, here’s a few handy links to the Screenplay Treatment and the Documentation for the project itself.
We are making the film as part of the Single Camera Productions unit of our BTEC Media (TV & Film) Extended Diploma course. The team consists of Robert, Alex and myself – as well as a couple others from the class who we intend to recruit for the days of production.
Over the last seven days, my primary focus has been on finding cast. Having had our dates confirmed at our location, this was my next big worry. Robert produced the image below for us to begin posting (although many would consider it spamming) on social media. It was a simple matter for me to change the dates on the post to the ones we had confirmed, and then posted it on Wednesday evening. I kindly asked my friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter to share the post in an attempt to make it get seen by as many people as possible.
I prepared a few documents to send to the people who responded to the casting call – including a brief explanation of the plot and each of the characters, along with one of two extracts which were for female or male applicants respectively. In return, I requested a video of the applicant reading the extract in character. At the time of writing this we are still accepting applications (if you’re reading this before noon on the 6th April 2016, please apply!) but I hope to announce the castings of each character in my blog post here next week.
Looking forward over the next seven days, as well as casting I have got to make all the final tweaks to the script so we can begin sketching out the storyboard; Robert and I are hoping to make a visit to the venue at some point to make this easier. Also there is a whole variety of things which need preparing, such as rick assessments, recces, production schedules and prop and costume lists (to name but a few).
Check back next week for more!
The reason I have not achieved quite as much progress as I would have liked by this point in the process, is because I was very busy editing for another project which you should totally check out here! Follow me on Twitter to know when I next update my blog: @mc_onnell
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