Tuesday 12 November 2013

Equipment List

  • Canon 7D DSLR + Battery
  • Sony HVR Z5E
  • Canon EF 85mm Fixed Lens
  • Canon 55-250mm Lens (Zoom)
  • Rode VideoMic - Sound Recorder
  • Zoom H4 N Handheld Recorder
  • Tripod Velbon DV6000
  • K9 Hague CamCrane With Stand and Camera Cilt Control
  • KIT - N15 - Drive - Ianario Gulliver Lighting Kit 

Monday 11 November 2013

Rationale

Rationale

Wasted, our final production piece is based on a successful author named Oliver Harrow, a middle aged man who has gone through life with great  amount of sadness.The story takes you through the life of the troubled writer, showing you the inspiration for his trilogy of books, The Lover, The Writer, and The Romantic. This short film reveals the true thoughts and feelings of an author who has been through a terrible experience. We take you through Ollie's life showing you how he overcame his troubles, and made the most of his mourning. 

Tuesday 22 October 2013

Production Journal Final Edition

Production Journal 2013
'Wasted'
Sam Sherwood




Day 1:
Scene 1 - The first day of our film shoot, consisted of filming Scenes One, Three and a very brief shot of Oliver Harrow's House. Our set had been set up prior to day one, therefore that allowed us to prepare for the whole day without rushing first thing in the morning. From 9 til 11 we did not film anything apart from tests for sound and footage. At 11 we planned to take the crane to a large house to film the exterior. We reached our destination, however we had left the bottom half our our crane at our original set for 1 and 3. This caused delay in our schedule as we had to return to collect the other piece. In this delayed time we did however get the camera set up and ready to go, so as soon as the equipment arrived we could film. After taking many shots of the exterior of the house, we made it back to school in relatively good time. Although having to make our actor wait longer than we originally intended, our set was ready to film back at school. We took a large variety of shots from many different angles to we had a lot to work with in the editing stage, just incase we lost one of our clips that we wished to use, we had back ups!
We managed to film all of Scene 1 by one o'clock, giving us time for a quick lunch and straight back ready for Scene 3.
Scene 3 - Scene three was quite similar to scene one. There was no speaking roles in these scenes, so we managed to get it all done in very good time. Allowing us to begin recording the voiceovers for certain scenes. Again we filmed the scene from more than one angle, giving us variety and safety shots. These shots allowed us to do match on action edits throughout the film, making it more interesting and keeping the audience drawn in.


Day 2 
Scene 2
Day two was extremely busy, Livvy and I managed to film extra scenes that were planned for day 3! We first traveled to Chestfield, to film Young Olly and Young Andy's argument and the car crash!
Our two young actors arrived enthusiastic and ready to go! However when we got to our set, it did take a while to express to them exactly what we wanted to do, but we achieved this eventually! The car crash scene was quite hard to film in my opinion. At times it did get confusing and we had to be extremely careful for the safety of our actors, ourselves, and the equipment. We managed to get a shot that did look good, and with some tight editing I was sure I could make it look somewhat close to a car crash!
Scene 5 was the award ceremony for Oliver Harrow, this scene did not take very long to film, however we did have a problem with the camera settings, however that was corrected quickly, I set up the lighting just to  reveal the actress and the award, and then Oliver harrow, I liked how this looked on the camera and it gives a very interesting contrast to the film.
Scene 6 - Scene six was the final scene of the film. This consisted of filming the exterior and interior of Waterstones book store, and then we filmed mostly in the library. We had to round up many extras to get their book singed by Oliver Harrow. This did not take too much time, however due to the fact many people were in the library at the time, it was hard getting everyone to be silent as we filmed. Then, at 4:15, five minutes before the end of the day, with one shot left to film, our camera died! So we had to run back to our storage room, get another battery, and get the shot done. Luckily we managed to accomplish this! With a great amount of stress and running around.

Day 3 
Home Videos - This may have been one of the hardest scenes to film, plainly because there were young (hyper) boys from around the age of six to ten, running around playing games, kicking balls, etc. They were extremely hard to control, which slightly delayed us, however we did manage to get all our montage and home videos filmed. One problem we did suffer was transportation of the crane, (again!)
Due to the fact it did not fully fit in our car, we had to leave the boot slightly open. There was a steep hill en route to our destination, leaving us limited choices to keep the boot shut! However one extremely uncomfortable position for myself allowed us to reach the set with all the contents from the boot!
Scene 4 - Scene four was the Television Interview for middle aged Olly. We set up a simple television set, using white backgrounds, and placing unused cameras around the set. We only used two shots in this scene, which maybe should have been increased as the scene does seem to go on for slightly longer than I first thought it would. However the is a match on action straight away. I have struggled matching sound with this scene, due to the fact we re shot it many times from one angle, and used a separate voice recorder. 


Overall I believe Livvy and I accomplished a great deal of footage throughout the three days. We realised the stress and hard work that has to be put in to keep everything flowing, and that there should always be a back up plan if one thing is not possible to complete at that moment in time!
We both had a great amount of fun filming, and I think we both have now experienced all the different aspects of film making and it has inspired myself to consider becoming involved in film making in the future!


Storyboard Drafts
























Risk Assessment


Wednesday 1 May 2013

Mindmap Different Jobs & Roles


Original Idea for 5 minute short film. Now has been modified, will be posted soon


Roughly 151,600 people die each day. There are 86400 seconds in a day, thats nearly 2 people per second. Life can be taken away at any one of these seconds, gone in an instant. One second can create eternal happiness for one, and a life of sorrow for another. It is vital to make the most of every one of these seconds, with the people you love. Before it comes clear that it is too late. 

Friday 15 March 2013

What can go wrong on a FIlm Shoot


Reverse Engineering



Overview
For this project my group and I decided to remake a clip from the film School of rock. We chose the scene including many characters in the classroom with the teacher explaining and telling them how to rock. We took this original clip and broke it down and analysed all the different shots by writing up the script and putting the shots and directions next to it. The clip had to be around one minute long and we had to replicate this as closely as we could. We had to film, edit and add in any sound effects used into the film we have made ourselves. We all got given our parts in the film, and we had to change our vocals to hopefully match the way the actors in the real clip said it. We also tried to use as many props in the scene as possible, still trying to keep the small details in the film scene. Before we started filming we all had our separate responsibilities to take 20 seconds from the clip each and write down all the shots ready to go on to the shot list and script. Everyone designed a story board with drawing and detailed descriptions of the shots so that it made it easier to use when filming the real thing. We also had to take note of the depth of field whilst having the camera in manual setting. We got all the resources that we could ( drums, keyboard, tables, chairs, guitar) just to make the scene seem more realistic. We than began to film in the music block classroom because it had some of the basic objects that we needed to use. We realised after we had filmed that we had made quite a few mistakes but there wasn't much time to adjust these small errors.We realised that in some of our shots we had not had the camera on a manual setting and that we hadn't checked the white balance before filming, meaning that whilst they were filming it made the characters look like they were surrounded in white ( the look of being in heaven) which didn't match the real film. We also noticed that some certain lines from the script were said wrong, this was due to not writing the script up properly or just not reading them out correctly whilst performing. A few lines hadn't been filmed due to a un organised schedule of what we had filmed and what hadn't been done yet, therefore we ended up missing some key points that needed to be in the film, leading to having to redo them with just a simple voice over. 

A remake of the scene from School of Rock, Edited by Sam & Livvy


Organisation:
At first, out team was not extremely organised, we spent a fair amount of time drawing out storyboards and attempting to write out a detailed shot list. However when it came to filming, it took us a very long time to get set up, and we spent more time talking about it, rather than getting the shots we needed to get. Overall our organisation was okay, but we could have been much more prepared regarding filming,  and getting on with the work.

Communication:
Although we spent time drawing out the story boards, our shot lists were not perfect, and when we were up and ready to film, there were many disputes on what to film etc. We did not communicate well when trying to sort out what we were going to do, this could be why our final production had faults and errors, e.g Missing out clips, over exposure etc.

Technical:
Whilst using the cameras, we faced a few problems when trying to film. First of all, on two occasions our shots were extremely over exposed, leading to a huge difference in lighting in our final edit. Also, at one point we did not correctly set up the camera, so we ended up with automatic camera settings when our aim was to film manually.

Group Dynamics:
We had varied faults regarding out group dynamics in this exercise. A few people had been in throughout different times in filming, and so we had a very limited time to film this, continuity was a problem when it came to the final edit. A positive element was that everyone took part, contributed thoughts and feelings toward the filming. However this once lead to people becoming stroppy, which luckily did not fault the filming or editing. Wasting time was something that the whole group experienced. Our first few sessions on this was more wasted than used properly. We took a very long time deciding what to do, and how to set up. However after a while it was redeemed and everyone was working hard.

Friday 1 February 2013

Depth Of Field


Depth of Field practise - The aperture is set wide open so this creates a shallow depth of field as the focus is racking from the background object to the foreground image.

Friday 18 January 2013




The reason for the Coke can in the background bring very out of focus compared the the can in the foreground is because the aperture is set to 2.8 meaning it is a wider shot and a shallow depth of field, causing the background the become much more blurred and out of focus compared to the foreground.