SCRIPT TO SCREEN - LOCATION PROJECT- PRODUCTION AND POST PRODUCTION
Dungeness - Production and post production for 'Pre-Edit' film project.
Coach departure - 9am
Weather condition - Sunny - clear - 13 degrees.
Packed for location:
- Baby wipes.
- Make-up.
- Fly spray (prop)
- Hard hat (prop)
- High vis jacket (Costume)
- Clip board (prop and convenient)
- Lunch for crew.
- Eye-makeup remover.
- Script.
- Pens and pencil
- Umbrella.
- Water proof jacket and trousers.
- Black hat (Costume)
- Head shot. (prop)
Kelsey Parker, Carla Buckingham
Jack Flemming. Head Shot for last Scene
On arrival at Dungeness we were given a safety briefing by Simon and by the site manager, Owen.
Owen explained to us all that the area we was filming on was owned by EDF energy and he was responsible for taken care of the land.
He told us that for students and film crew to film on the land would require certain paperwork:
- Public Liability insurance.
- Permit to film.
- fee of £250 a day.
He told us that armed police regularly patrol the area as it is now classed as venerable due to the nuclear plant on site and recent threats of late.
Dungeness (as Owen puts it)is like 'Big Brother' the residents are always looking at what is going on around the area and we were to stay away from there houses, this could have been difficult in some ways as none of the houses are fenced off but we had to use our common sense when walking around.
We had to also stay out of the boats and keep a distance from the power station.
Only one public toilet on location and that was at the café, Owen explained that it had taken along time to convince the owners of the café to open it as a public toilet so we had to be respectful of that.
Overall to film on Dungeness there has to be a professional approach and to act like adults.
After the brief, our group a walk around the area to get our barring's, we didn't want to go far as we still needed to get our equipment and have a team briefing of our own, but even then by the time we got back to the coach we were left with the only EXD CAM that didn't have play-back on it, we made the decision to still take the camera as we didn't have any knowledge of how to use the smaller camera, Ferg did say that he would give us a short tutorial of how to use it but it would have run into our production time and as we had been using the EXD for the past 7 weeks we felt comfortable using it.
CAMERA WORK.
Jack and Kelsey, scene 2 location 3
We all had our turn being the DOP, I really enjoyed seeing the script come to life whilst shooting.
The were shots that we really wanted to get, we wanted to get some wide shots of the Barry the presenter and Kelly the guest star, of the tragic events unfolding, but we made the choice to get the story told first by shooting the exact sequence of the script, however we did run out of time so we couldn't get our wide shots as we also had to get our establishing shots, we felt that these where more important to get for our opening sequence Montague.
This was a learning curve for us as I think if we planned out our shots tightly we may have fitted in some wide shots, it didn't help that we couldn't look back through our footage either as it was really apparent when it come to the edit that we could of used the wide shots but if one wide shot was used we would have had to use them throughout and I am not sure weather it would of had the same effect of the story then it did.
SCRIPT
We worked along with the script in order but there where a few actions, locations and times that changed slightly. We didn't film any trains for the montage at the beginning sequence (more because we didn't see a train), it wasn't midday on all our shots. We added some props in there as well, like the Horrid Henry book seen in act 6 and Barry's scene clipper.
I also spotted an error with the script, Jack used his real name for his character in the first draft, but as we where filming it ourselves we knew it was an error so it didn't really matter that much on the shoot day.
We had a small amount of Improvisation and I feel like our character were executed very well according to the script dialogue and the comedy came across well too.
MAKE-UP AND COSTUME
All of our characters make-up and costume was executed very well.
Barry (the presenter played by Jack Flemming) dressed in a grey suit and it was evident that he was a professional and as the story developed he undressed 'distressfully' and I made up his eye's with red lipstick and dark eyeshadow, so that it was evident that his eyes where sore from being sprayed in the face with fly spray and also so that he looked tired.
Kelly Hudson (played by Kelsey parker) costume brief was to dress as a reality star from London, we wanted to make sure that it was obvious that she didn't belong in the deserted area, she wore Black leather trousers and a mustard spotty blouse with a black (pretty women) hat.
Mags the local nuisance (played by me) make up brief was to have dark ringed eyes,(which I used different shades of orange and brown eyeshadow for) a slight hairy upper lip, which at first I over did the mascara and it looked like I chewed on coal, so I had to dab it down and blend in. Red obscure lipstick, My costume was miss matched in colour and style, I had a thick cardigan, a fluffy bum-bag (which came in handy for things I needed to carry) I also wore my green waterproof bottoms which I wasn't going to wear as costume but they did have a great look on my character as well as my flyers hat.
Once we finished our shot Jack removed all the footage of the camera onto his laptop and on to our hard drives, it was time to see the footage for the first time as we didn't have playback on our camera.
Immediately we knew that the sound was very distorted because of the wind during filming, however some of the clips worked well for me as it fitted into the story for my edit, however I wanted to experience the sound booth and the rest of our group wanted to record the dialogue.
Two screens are used for the recording, we set the bars to the level that we wanted by asking Jack to talk his loudest on the microphone in the booth, if the level went to red then the sound would be distorted and we would have to record it again, however we got around this issue if it did happen by asking Jack (or whoever was recording) to stand back from the microphone if it was loud dialogue, this seemed to work just as well. We haven't been taught the sound equipment yet but Ferg run through the basics for us.
Whilst recording one piece of my dialogue I was eating because I had to recreate a scene where I had my mouth full, this actually help me with the recording.
EDITING THE FOOTAGE
The biggest challenge we had to face was to get our film to look like a self made film but having to edit it to look like one ??? confused ? I thought so.
Our screenplay is about a presenter who's crew didn't show up for the shot and everything seems to be going wrong.
The first bug edit that I had to create was the camera falling over, although I shot it lying down, then fell, I needed to make it look convincing so Sydney (my classmate) helped me find cracked glass images on goggle images to use on top of my footage, she explained to me that if the image had grey squares behind it then it can be used. I found a good crack screen images and she helped me save and upload it.
Next I asked Simon to look at my edit and he made some suggestions, he said that to cut it shorter I should really emphasis that it is a self shot documentary by putting in bleeps and distorting the picture some what, I have never used a lot of graphics before but I had a browse through and found some fun effects that I could work with, Simon also said that the last scene that we put in didn't make sense to what I have edited, he was correct, however I wish that I had the software at home because the last scene could have gone at the beginning of the edit.
DELETED SCENE
We wanted alternative endings (non-scripted) and the mourning scene made sense to me as I was a pain in the arse on shoot (my character) and because the presenter and the guest star had lost there life's in the tragedy off the nuclear explosion, they couldn't be there to defend there self's other wise when Mags did a TV interview about what had happened to them.
I had another effect at the end of the film and looking back now I am not sure if it worked as well, I added it on because I wanted to create the illusion of the camera also breaking down as well as the presenter.
ORIGINAL ENDING
There were a few issues that our group came across on the day and during edit:
- Weather - Although it was a lovely clear day, the South coast was very windy which effected the sound. We used clip mics and camera mics on the day but we wasn't aware that there is special wind protectors for them till after our shoot.
- Exposure - The sun was nearly directly in front of us on some of our shots so we was over exposed, we still continued to shoot because the location was just what we intended for the shoot.
- Aperture - At first we was unable to get the correct aperture on the camera, but what we found out (when Fergus came to the rescue) that it was just where we were standing and having a certain amount of natural light in, effects the wat the aperture works.
- Walking with the equipment - As there was three of us we all helped carry the equipment, but it was a vast area to cover, for the locations that we wanted to film so the equipment become heavier as the day drew to a close.
My final edit was reduced from 5mins 34seconds, however I didn't get it down to 3 mins.
I also worked on the edit from 10am - 7pm because I don't have the software at home, I did have a lot of clips to work with and I feel that if I did have the weekend to work on it I would have produced a better piece, I would have wanted to explore Premier-pro a bit more and do a couple of cuts and really played about with it. I have no credits at the end and I feel the title is simple.
I am only satisfied with my final footage not entirely happy, as a beginner on premier-pro it isn't a bad piece of work but there is a lot of room for improvement.
FINAL EDIT OF 'THE PRE-EDIT'
WORKING WITH THE GROUP
Working with Kelsey and Jack was a great experience, they approach there work with professionalism and enthusiasm.
Jack also a great ear and will be great on pre-production as well as production and this is the third project I have worked on with Kelsey as I like her way of thinking on the spot during a shoot.
I will defiantly like to work with both of them again and I hope they have enjoyed working with me to.
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