Problems with filming

As our actress Chloe is very ill and her health is not in good condition, we had to cancel our plans for today and reschedule the filming for another day. We have asked our actor/actresses about when they are available to film next, we came to the decision that it would be best to film next Tuesday after school at 4:30. We will be filming the scenes where Alex and Claire bump into each other, when they are on the bridge and lastly the scene where Stella is involved in an accident. We hope to finish all the filming by next week Friday at the latest and move on to editing as we know that this will take up a lot of our time.

Filming: Day 2

Filming the scene of children went very well. They listened our instructions and guidance throughout the time, when filming at Park Langley Estates. They were very sweet and mature towards everything which made it easier to film in that environment. At the last minute, when I was filming the children running, it started to rain. However, we finished today with variety of shot sizes. Here are shots from todays filming.

Soundtrack for the Trailer

We came across variety of artists and bands when looking for a suitable song for our trailer; whether signed or unsigned. Those genres such as Soul/Acoustic/Pop were big influence to us. As I am interested in music since the age of 5, I was already searching unsigned artists and to listen their demos from www.unsigned.com. Prior to that, I came across an amazing artist and guitar player, Erick Baker.
I discussed about those songs with Dolapo and she agreed with me that this could be a very good possibility for the trailer. In my opinion, the song 'Not Enough' will be very good during the scene Alex and Claire walk and bump into each other. Although this is not in the storyboard, we are thinking of using the editing effectively to show our audience, that the trailer of 'Once and Again' will be unique and different. For instance, before the two characters bump into each other, we could show their walk towards each other in separate frames within the scene.

Then the song could be replaced with 'Stay Awhile' during the scenes when Alex and Claire are on the bridge, Stella finds the note and cries onwards. Here are the songs:

Film Schedule

Filming : Day 1

After school yesterday we decided to start filming a few scenes in our film to lessen the burden for us when filming during the half term. We planned to film the scenes with Alex and Claire arguing, Alex and Claire on the bridge and possibly if we had extra time, the handheld shot fo Alex walking down the the path in the park. Although, this did not all go to plan as we wanted to film the scene with Alex and Claire arguing in the Annexe building but there was a problem as we could not get supervision at that time. As a result we had to look for another place that resembles a room to film this scene. We finally came to the decision that we will film in the common room as it does look like a room and has sofas etc. Therefore, we did not have to worry much about certain factors, for example, the mise en scene . Consequently, as this took quite a bit of time to look for a room in the school that would resemble a living room to film in we were not able to film the other scenes that we wanted to which was of Alex and Claire on the bridge, this is part of the scenes where they are getting to know eachother.We are now planning to film this scene later on in the week or beginning of next week, this will possibly on Tuesday.

The schedule for the days later on this week and next week that we are going to be filming will  be put onto the blog shortly.

Final Production Logo

          Here is our final production logo:

Filming Time

Tomorrow, we intend to start filming scenes of our trailer this week onwards. We are very excited to start filming. Tomorrow after school, we would like to start filming the scenes of Stella and Alex fighting in the Annexe building and Alex and Claire on the bridge. Here is the picture above of the bridge where we want to film this scene.

Testing Shot

Here is our testing shot above. We tried several different ways to film and to grasp the idea of a manual focus. As you can see , in parts of the clip the camera was unsteady in terms, of the zooming and reverse zooming.We also struggled to go directly into smooth manual focus as sometimes it would go to quick into focus that we wouldn't get the effect that we wanted. We will try again to improve and get the composition right before we film our trailer. So when it comes to filming the scene, it wouldn't be too difficult.

Sneak Shot of Logo

I came across one of my friends couple of weeks ago who is training for an architecture course.
He suggested me to try using the Autodesk 3ds Max as we could produce an animated logo in 3d. Although, at first it was difficult to learn it and find out about the different features of this software, with the guide from a friend, we managed to play around a bit. Here is sneak preview of the Spotlight Productions Logo :

I will be posting the production logo very soon.

Music for our trailer

As this week we intend to start filming a few scenes within our trailer, we understand that we need to pick the final music pieces that we are going to use in our trailer. Looking in depth at different pieces of music by unsigned artists I came accross the website www.unsigned.com where I researched ambient/romantic music and I found several music pieces that we can use. One particular artistic music that stood out to me was Carl Hauck. I particularly liked his song 'Marital riesling','Milt the Stilt' and 'Herrick you Devil'. We thought 'Herrick you Devil' would suit the scence of Stella dying, we initially thought that we would edit a part of this song to use in this scene.
Here is the link to the different pieces of music that we looked at and liked by Carl Hauck. http://www.unsigned.com/carlhauck 

Casting Shot of the Children

I have taken photos of the children. It was a difficult decision to choose between two beautiful children. However, we had to consider the fact that the children will have to look similar to the actual grown up cast. These are the shots below:

                                                                     Callum

Charlotte

                 

Harriet   

We came to final decision that Charlotte looks like Chloe and have the similar face features of Chloe. Therefore Claire will be played by Charlotte. Alex will be played Callum.

Costume Ideas

                                 Costume Ideas and Characteristics of Characters on Prezi

Here is the prezi I have made about props we will need and what costumes the cast should wear in order to attract audience as well as reflecting their stereotypical representations clearly by using bright/dark colours and costumes. Pictures I came across on websites have inspired me the most and I included the ones I liked above in prezi. 

Title Choices

Looking at our influences and doing questionnaires we came to the conclusion that the title for our film will be 'Once and Again'. We also came up with a title that would appear in our trailer  in the middle of scenes to engage the audience members even further which is 'Can coincidence in love be their destiny . Apart from the obvious title that appears at the beginning of our trailer and the title of 'Coming soon' at the end of the  trailer these are the titles that we want to include in our trailer, this is already shown on our storyboard. Things may still change in terms of the titles in our trailer but we are currently thinking about this.

Draft for transcript

After discussing this is lesson and looking at our final storyboard to help us in this. We have come up with a transript, although, these ideas that we have put in the transcript may change later on. We also included the number of the particular shots where this would take place, we also included a lot of description of whats going to be happening at the time. This would not be in our final transcript but as this is only a draft of our transcript we put this there . Below is the transcirpt that we came up with in lesson:

(Childhood scene)
We would play a soundtrack that would be similar to a song by Lucy Rose-Place that we liked but we cant use this song as it is copyright. ( shot 1-2)
Digetic sound of the children laughing (shot 4)
*Production logo appears just at the end of the laughter*
( scence with Alex and Stella in the room)
Stella: What are you doing?
Alex: Nothing, i'm just gonna go and sort some stuff out. ( shot 7 when Alex closes the book)
Digetic sound of Alex's footsteps (shot 8)
Voiceover reading the title that appears ( shot 9)
In shot 10- Claire: oh! Im sorry, Im sorry. Im in a rush.
In shot 11- Alex: No,no its my fault ( at this time Claire bends down to pick the picture up so we dont see Alex but only hear his voice)
Between shot 11- 12 there will be slow motion to signify that Alex and Claire have realised who they both are.
Shot 15-17 ( Stella and Alex are arguing)
Stella: Dont lie to me, who is Claire?
Alex: Nobody, just a friend
Stella: Friends dont leave you these kind of notes
Alex: urgh! just leave me alone Stella
Stella chucks the book accross the room
She breaks down and starts crying-shot 18
Possibly a different soundtrack playin between shot 19-20
Voiceover reading the titles ( shot 21-22)

Casting Shots

So far we have taken the casting of Chloe and Fiona who are playing Stella and Claire in our trailer. Chloe will be playing Claire  and Fiona will be playing Stella. We have chosen Fiona as she had starred in other school's media projects and prior to that, she has previous experience. We are currently dealing with casting shots of Alex and the children that will be in the scenes at the beginning of the film, though their faces will not be shown instead there will be a long shot from the back. Alex will be played by Oliver.

Chloe as Claire

                                                          Fiona as Stella

                                                       Ollie as Alex

Updated Animated Storyboard

After receiving feedback from our teacher, we changed the film strip theme on imovie to keep the storyline more simple and accurate. As these effects are not going to actually be in our trailer when we film it we took this out. I managed to remove the Ken burn effect and here is the updated story board below:

Ideas for locations and testing shots

In the lesson we decided to look at our storyboard and think about a few things before we actually go out to film so things would not be chaotic. As we are in the middle of taking location shots for our trailer, we wanted to pick our locations, as we got several shots for locations, as well as to pick particular scenes that would happen at that location. At the beginning of our trailer, where the children are walking through the park, we choose to film this at Park Langley Estates as the location is not noisy and calm. The scenes with Alex and Stella needed to be filmed in a room, we choose to film this in the Annexe building which belongs to our school. Last but not least, we decided to film the scene with Alex and Claire on the bridge at Kelsey park, as the bridge is under a lake, this creates that romantic atmosphere that we would like to film. The images of our final three locations are shown below, although we are going to take the shot of the Annexe building and upload this onto the blog soon.


                                                           

After having a lesson today, we thought that we should test one of the shots that is going to be in our trailer so that we can know the difficulties if any now as well as knowing if the shot is worth including at all in the trailer.  We took a short clip using the effect of the shallow focus, as we have never used this effect before and don't know how to use this on the camera, this test shot helped us. There were some difficulties trying to do the effect on the camera as we couldn't quite get the grasp of doing a deep focus on the character in front and a shallow focus on the character at the back although, we did get there in the end.The short clip that we did to test this effect will soon be uploaded to the blog as we are currently editing the final look of testing shot.

Animated Storyboard

I edited and put our ideas into this animated storyboard, using iMovie. I also included the song by Lucy Rose to see whether it works or not.  Here is the animated storyboard below:

Influence: Lady Antebellum- Just A Kiss

Although, our focus is mostly on films and trailers, I came across clear use of editing skills and shots we were thinking of using in our trailer, within the music video of the song 'Just A Kiss'. The music video is almost like a short film and includes paused moments  from two strangers lives and how the girls dream turns into reality as she meets the stranger in the dream. Here is the official music video below:

We are thinking of including a shallow focus to show the confusion Alex is in, during the scene where Stella has an accident and Claire is behind Alex watching from distance, what occurs within the scene.
I think it is very useful to show it in examples rather than just having thoughts on our minds. So this way, we can easily move on to bring the idea to the surface.

Feedback

We are happy with our current grade and we are following the feedback given by our teacher to make sure that we improve the quality of the blog as well as keeping the interesting aspect of our posts, our teacher commented on. We hope to bring our grade up to an A.

Location Shots 2

In addition to the previous post on location shots, we also took picture of a closed pathway near a lake which we thought may be good for one of the scenes involving Alex and Claire. We particulary thought that  if we filmed in the right weather, like shown below in the picture, would be a very well thought location for shooting the trailer and make it easier to balance out the contrast&brightness during filming later. We thought about filming the scene with Alex, Claire and Stella in 'sponge kitchens' as the area is not too noisy and is quite relaxing. Though, we are still currently thinking about whether we need to include this scene at all in our film because this may not allow the story to flow very well and we would like the audience to be guided through the trailer so they know whats going on every minute within the trailer. So that there will be  no confusion until the end when we can pull the strings a bit with the audience and leave them in suspension/a cliffhanger.

Location Shots

We have been looking at different locations as to where we could film certain scenes, for example, the scenes where Alex and Claire are getting to know eachother better or where Alex and Claire as children are in the park playing. We both looked at parks around the area where we lived and took pictures of particular places within the park that we thought would be a good place to film. We are currently taking more location shots for other scenes in our film as we want a variety of locations in our trailer. Below are the pictures that we took of particular areas within the park:

Update on Casting Shots

We have been searching for a suitable actor and actresses to play the roles of Stella , Alex and Claire. We made sure that we spent the right amount of time when finding the cast. Looking at representations and stereotypical characters in romance films and TV Dramas, we decided to include similar stereotypical features of characters such as the ex- girlfriend Stella being ruthless in a hidden way, Claire being the sweet, mysterious girl that appears years later and Alex, the only boy and the one stuck between an unsolved love triangle. His confusion is a very important aspect within our trailer and we hope we found the right cast to reflect this in our film. But do we know who they are?We will be posting the casting shots soon.  Here is a book so keep reading and a question mark for you to keep wondering :)

Storyboard Final

We will discuss the storyboard on Tuesday with our teachers to get their feedback and advice on the storyboard. This way we can decide if we need to include any shots or take any shots away. Additionally, we can get opinions from their perspectives rather than ourselves in terms of, if the story flows within our trailer as well as being constantly guided along this journey.
Below are the pictures from storyboard:

Influences for our transcript

We decided to look at some transcripts form popular romantic drama trailers. On the one hand, this was helpful as it gives us an idea how to set out of transcript for our film as we are struggling with this a bit. Though, we are currently thinking about this and looking for more examples to help us.We decide to make a prezi presentation showing our ideas as well as including a few examples of some transcripts:

Influences for Transcripts on Prezi

Storyboard second draft

Here is our second draft of storyboard below. After having taken suggestions from our teacher, we decided to include more shots to our storyboard to make it flow better and to make sure that the audience is clear with what's happening in every minute of the trailer.  We again looked at a few influences such as, 'Hope Floats' which helped us in deciding what to do for one of our camerawork. Although, after taking some feedback from our teacher again we have realised that we would need to include more shots to make sure the trailer is smooth and even better. We are currently drafting our third draft of our storyboard.

Possible locations

Looking at our storyboard we decided to think about possible locations to film different scenes of our trailer. Although, we did not come up with locations for every single scene on our storyboard we did come up with couple of ideas, which will be suitable for filming.

For the first scenes of our trailer, which is where the children are together at a young age, we are thinking of filming the scene at Kelsey Park or at Park Langley Estates . Kelsey Park may be suitable for this scene as it is a public park where we can find nice views as well as the fact that it is mostly quiet on week days. However, filming on the weekend could be a major problem due to families and children coming to the park in addition to the noise. But saying this, the diegetic background sound, could be used to our advantage as the trailer could appear to be more realistic. We will try to film in that area soon and test it before coming to a final decision.

Later on in our film where Stella, Alex and Claire meet in the cafe we thought about filming this is the Sponge Kitchen or Starbucks. But we are still currently thinking about including this at all in our trailer as we want our trailer to flow and the audience to understand everything as the trailer goes along.
We are still thinking about other locations to shoot the scenes in out trailer.

Influences: Hope Floats

While drawing the storyboard for our film, we were struggling to think of  what to draw for a scene before the 'finale' of our trailer. We decided to go on online and look at some examples of romantic dramas posters as well as trailers . We came to the film called  'Hope Floats' and decided to watch the trailer, which did not give us any ideas, so we then came across the poster for the film and thought we could use this in our film in a scene with two of the characters ( Alex and Claire) hugging in a romantic scene. We are going to use this idea of the two characters hugging but change it to make it our own including: digetic sound, different shots and composition.As well as the fact it helps to guide the audience in telling the story of the trailer, making the story flow smoothly and helps to lead to the cliffhanger in our trailer leaving the audience in suspense; this also shows the romantic aspect of our trailer which we hope to bring in addition, to the sub-genre of drama.

Influences: Affair to remember

When looking at this trailer, we liked the idea that there was a voice over at the beginning telling the audience the story behind the trailer but not giving too much away,we particularly liked the idea that the voice over was continuing as scenes were going on, even overlapping into another scene. They even added quite a comedic tone to the trailer when Nicky( the male walking round the steps) and Terry ( the women on the stairs) were talking and she asked him to circle the steps the other way, not knowing that she had walked up the stairs he came back round and there was another women there.

Although, this may have nothing to do with the storyline I liked when there was a  pan shot of  the choir then zoomed in on the little girl singing a part of the song on her own, then used a reverse zoom back to the choir; this was interesting as it like there may be another sub-story in this film apart from the main plot as well as the fact that this is an interesting piece of editing to incorporate. 

I also liked the effect that they used at the end of the scene, as they used the screen effect of a wipe into the next scene. 

Though, I'm not sure if there was digetic or non-digetic sound being used nevertheless I found it interesting how they used that to convey the romantic aspect of the trailer. Additionally, I like how the titles appeared on the screen also emphasising the screen effect of a wipe making that part look smooth. The titles helped to re-emphasise the romance in the trailer such as, 'You'll love through every moment of it!' 

Lastly, I like the way they concluded the trailer, as the title ' An affair to remember'  came up it showed the two characters kissing underneath the title which I thought was a different and interesting feature to the end of the trailer; it was like a last aspect to the trailer to bring the audience in.

Ideas for our storyboard

We began to think about the shots, framing, composition etc. of our trailer which we want to  put in our storyboard. We looked at a trailer that was in our influences again to get more of an idea how we are to structure our trailer. After having a discussion in lesson, we decided on the structure of our trailer and the storyboard below is a draft that Mimoza drew. The draft emphasises the points that we would like to  include in our film clearly. However, we came to a final decision that giving away the ending at the beginning of the trailer won't work very well as the audience gets the first impression of the film in 15 seconds as well as the fact that they are just being introduced to the film so this scene being at thge beginning would lead to some confusion. We will introduce the audience to our trailer by the  voiceover and sweet love so that they are guided through our trailer and understand clearly what is happening.