PLAN FOR SHOOT hospital scene

Casting
Tanay Saigal
The protagonist/tennis player
He is needed from:
11:40-12:30
3:15-4:30

Hannah Ni Leigh Evans
The partner of Tanay
She is needed from:
11:40-12:30
3:15-4:30

Sam Lau
The coach
He is needed from:
11:40-12:30
3:15-4:30

Harriet Barlow
Tanay's teammate
She is needed form:
11:40-12:30
3:15-4:30

School nurse
Nurse
She is needed from:
11:40-12:30
3:15-4:30


Location
The school nurses' office in our school, we had to ask the nurses for permission and we gave them a brief of what we want to do - we had to be flexible for shooting because if a student came in the space had to be free
We eventually filmed after school so we had more time to get all the shots we wanted
Date:
27/12/18 - cancelled because actor could not make it
28/12/18 - cancelled because nurses office was occupied
07/01/19 - "
11/01/19 - "
14/01/19
Time: 
11:40-12:30 
3:15-4:30


Equipment

• Sony A58
• Tripod
• Dolly

Props

• printed out picture of brain scans
• folder
• bandages
• blanket
• trophy
• cigarettes/packet - we included this in the training scene because it made more sense
• Nurses outfit
• Coach's costume

Shot List

• POV shots of Tanay waking up (hand-held)
• MS 2 shot of teammate and partner next to Tanay in bed
• CU BE of Tanay's face waking up
• ECU hand nervously tapping on trophy
• MLS 3 shot of coach arriving
• shot reverse shot sequence for dialogue
• CU HA of trophy being put on bedside table
• MLS 3 shot of all dialogue
• OTS MLS of nurse coming in and her dialogue 
• MS of nurse's dialogue
• CU OTS of nurse  pointing at brain scan images in folder
• CU of coach's reaction to tennis news
• try 
• try a few different shots for reactions to the news
• CU of various things in the space (looking at watch, stethoscope, bandages etc.)

Screenplay

I showed the screenplay to the nurse, and she suggested edits for her lines to make them more realistic, those are the ones used in the final cut
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Sample scene 2: Packing scene - 1st attempt

This is the scene where the Tennis player's partner is leaving him

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NOTES FOR IMPROVEMENT

• Mise-en-scene
• include tennis equipment in the background (racket, bag, water bottle)
• passport (shot of it being put in the bag)
• photos of the couple together and the team (have partner pick them up then put them down again, angrily)
• panning shots of props
• in wardrobe have clear split of his/her side
• have a larger suitcase, get a shot of Cathy grabbing everything from one side of the wardrobe and putting it in the suitcase
• Acting
• include clearer demonstrations for the actor/actress
• make it angrier and sadder
• aggressively throwing clothes into the bag
• slamming down the photos
• get a closeup of her face (expression)
• do a 'final look' around the house (living/kitchen) - more realistic and chance to include more mise-en-scene for exposition
  
• Editing
• bit at the start has very fast-paced editing, but you can't really see the shots because its so fast
• get some more ELSs to use for establish shots (closer and closer to the house, similar to in Psycho) 
• Get shots of the wife entering the car and slamming the door

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Sample Scene

This is the scene from The Journey where the wife is leaving her partner.
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• we are still missing the panning shot of the pictures, trophies (connotes he is a professional tennis player)

PODCAST4

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In this podcast we are talking about:

• the shoot this weekend(the packing scene, jogging in the forest, Tanay practicing tennis and the scene where he gets hit by the car)
• updates on cast
• more industry research
• and another deconstruction of a social realist film

GENRE RESEARCH Historical context

French New Wave (nouvelle vague)
In the 1950s and 60's a post-war movement began in France, lead by writer's for a French magazine Cahiers du Cinema such as Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard (A Bout de Souffle) and Claude Chabrol . It encompassed a lot of documentary style film techniques in order to challenge traditional film styles and make audiences acutely aware that they are watching a media text which has been artificially constructed, as a backlash against the influence of Nazi propaganda.

A Bout de Souffle poster

 


The idea of an anti-hero emerged form a lot of these films, having protagonists be morally ambiguous and focusing more on an aspect of audience identification rather than aspiration.


Some conventions of the movement found through research:

• Low budget
• pretty much all indie productions
• shot on site because of this (people's houses or public locations)
• cast was often people that the director already knew
• transportable equipment
• e.g. in Godard's A Bout de Souffle a scene shot on the Champs Elysees used a shopping trolley for a tracking shot
• improvisation (of lines, and spontaneity in filming)
• Themes:
• existentialism (often criticisms of organized religion, or nihilistic protagonists)
• gritty (disillusionment, abortion, rape, violence, poverty)
• Jean-Luc Godard did extensive research into Marxism and it is present in some of his films
• Techniques
• long takes (film reel was expensive)
• hand-held cameras
• fast cuts
• breaks of convention (e.g. the 180 degree rule) to subvert expectations
• jump cuts
• character asides
• breaking eye line matches
• Discontinuity editing (more on this in prelim blog post)
• Other:
• Lots of intertextual references
• e.g. A Bout de Souffle has quotes form Dylan Thomas, William Faulkner; music from Bach and Mozart, and lots of film posters as a part of set dressing
• They were black and white films, a lot of them made for television due to low budget
• The progression of time was often close to that of real life
• Cleo 5 to 7 follows 2 hours in the life of an actress/singer as she awaits the results of a medical test, however the narrative is divided into chapters follow her state of mind

  

  Cleo from 5 to 7 screenshot

• Open ended narratives
• some scenes are shown more than once but from the points of views of different characters - showing both the objective and subjective events

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British New Wave
British New Wave (1959-63) was inherently similar to French New Wave, as it was the spreading of the movement. Because of this most of the techniques used were the same, but some notable differences:

• Often had a focus on working class struggles, particularly those in the North of England
• e.g. Room at the Top has a protagonist from Yorkshire (though the actor's accent is inconsistent at best) 
• Heavier focus on relationship and social drama (hence the name 'kitchen sink drama/realism)
• e.g. Billy Liar follows the life of a man with three girlfriends
• e.g. The L-shaped Room uses the social interactions between the protagonist and her neighbors to explore social conventions and challenge social status quos
• 
  

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Italian Neorealism
TBC


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PODCAST3

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PRACTICE EXERCISE: Deconstruction of ´71

In class we did a practice exercise on how to tackle the first exam question.

How is meaning created?
We had to consider these 4 technical areas:

• Mise-en-scene
• Sound
• Cinematography
• Editing

These are some of the quick notes I came up. Also, some additional informations:

• Studio canal → both distribution and production, mainly distribution (co-production), often financing, one of the subsidiary of one of the Big Six owned by NBCUniversal
• Film4 → UK TV channel, if seeing Film4 or (BBC films) immediately denotes Low Budget probably Indie, financing company,
• BFI → funded by the UK governments, gives grants to films that they think needs support, see in most Indie film, replaced UK Council

Co-production even for the Big Six is common. Spilts the risk.

Accent is an important bit of representation(Northern english) which you wouldn’t find in working title movies. In American drama they use the accent to indicate working class, poor. The thick New York accent would connote posh, upper class.

The longer takes it is the less appealing it is to younger audience. However, in the movie you have a balance of long and short takes.

The seniors coming in and there’s a tacking shot but in extreme long shot then centrally framed where the sides are reserved for the inferior people.

Editing:

• Didn’t get an establishing shot aka ELS.
• No fade in, in first shot or audio → “Straight cut” enhance the impact in brutality
• ellipsis
• audio bridge between boxing scene and running scene
• editing style has changed (longer takes, )
• almost a match cut archived through audio

Cinematography:

• a lot of medium close up
• partially find shot reverse shot
• a lot of fast pace short takes
• whip pans
• a lot of fast pace, handheld tracking shot
• a lot of movements, shakiness
• odd framings
• low key, naturalistic lighting
• male character then get the equivalent shots as the senior officer

Title:

• white font, serif, on black background which connotes seriousness/drama
• different sizing of names to distinguish different types of roles
• Film4 and BFI are in capitals because they are important (financing companies)
• 2^nd title regional financing companies (Screen Yorkshire, Creative Scotland)

Audio:

• audio bridge (we don’t see the shot)
• which also adds narrative enigma
• people shouting, sound of impact
• diegetic sound
• could consider the crowd to be ambient sound, non-diegetic, adds verisimilitude
• the drum kicks in the background would connote sinister (something is going to happen)

Mise-en-scene:

• archived by Verisimilitude:

• make-up (blood)
• sweat
• uniform
• short hair
• people in the background also have sweat (meaning created, details)
• everybody has the same hair cut, wearing the same uniform makes it more realistic
• not a wealthy guy because the male character is taking the bus instead of driving on a sports car
• the scene in the bus refers to the title because of the old man smoking on the bus which isn’t allowed now but probably around 1971 it is
• not in a fancy restaurant, small cafe

Central protagonist:

• tracking
• not focusing on the senior guy, always focused on the male character
• centrally framed
• cut to get a tighter shot of the male character (from a medium long shot to a medium close up)
• shallow field of focus, male character in focus
• always cut back to the male character, still centrally framed and in focus

IDENT: Red Films

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For this ident I used photo transfer paper to iron the Red Films logo onto a white t-shirt. I mixed red paint with water so that it would make an even splatter on the t-shirt rather than just paint chunks. In FCPX I reversed the clip so that it looks like the paint comes off the shirt and added a colour mask so that red was the only colour and the rest was in black and white to give it a grim mood.
This ties in with the social realist genre we have decided for our film opening, and the short, practical effect is conventional of indie production/distribution companies. 
The serif font on the t-shirt is also conventional of low-budget indie companies.

IDENT: Journey Films (new)

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This is the new stop-go ident for Journey Films, the production company for our film The Journey

IDENT: Journey Films

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For this Ident, I used a luggage and threw clothes in it. Under the clothes, I wrote "Journey Films" on a piece of paper and included a passport which adds verisimilitude. Then I reversed the clip and increased the speed by 8.

IDENT: Maw Productions

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For this Ident, I took several pictures and put it into FCPX as a sequence. I shortened the duration of the pictures to make the sequence faster and also decrease the duration of the Ident (2-3seconds long like other Indie Idents). I added a 3D title which zooms in and out which makes it an animated title. Then I recorded a voice-over saying "Maw Productions" and put a filter on the voice-over.

Sample Scene1

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This is our first sample scene. However, this scene is to be reshot since the shots were shaky. We didn't have the cast I wanted. No tripod or stabilizer and more shots of Tanay hitting the ball. 

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Here we see how I recorded and created the background music for our film opening. It's a melody on the guitar with notes that are several seconds apart just like in Tyrannosaur.

(MY WORK)

Review notes:

• The jogging is not realistic (takes away from verisimilitude)
• get involved as director and demonstrate
• Use stabiliser 
• See if actor can grow a beard to make him look older
• Add sound of heavy panting for running
• POV GoPro shots of running
• Add water to make it look like sweat on the protagonist (for verisimilitude)
• Bring towels to show tennis player wiping sweat off of himself
• Try and film the final cut before the end of autumn (colours show up nicely on camera)
• not enough shots
• not enough shot variety
• bring water bottle to make Tanay look sweaty
• create a coach character - verisimilitude
• get sound of tennis balls 
• create dialogue
• get shots of Tanay warming up
• see if you can get someone to play tennis with him

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