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Thursday, February 25, 2021

Casting Breakdown - Toy Story 4


Casting Breakdown

These characters below are the key characters that I will need to cast for this reimagined scene:
  • Name: Sheriff Woody Pride
  • Nicknames: Sheriff Woody, Woody.
  • Age: Doesn’t have an age since he is a human toy. The actor would be between 18 to 28.
  • Gender: Male
  • Occupation: Cowboy Human Toy.
  • Personality: Loyal, Smart, Determined, Passionate, Kind, Caring, Leader, Tactical, Family-Orientated.
  • Family: Used to be owned by Andy Davis, now owned by Bonnie Anderson.
  • Hair: Dark Brown
  • Eyes: Dark Brown
  • Height: Actor will be from 5'8 to 6'4 but will be shrunken down with a green screen to look 'toy like'.


  • Name: Dolly
  • Nicknames: None, just her name
  • Age: Doesn’t have an age since she is a human toy. The actress would be between 18 to 26.
  • Gender: Female
  • Occupation: Doll Human Toy.
  • Personality: Sarcastic, Leader, Wise, Passionate, Kind, Family-Orientated.
  • Family: Owned by Bonnie Anderson
  • Hair Colour: Dark Purple
  • Eye Colour: Dark Brown or Black
  • Height: Actress will be from 5'4 to 6'4 but will be shrunken down with a green screen to look 'toy like'.

  • Name: Bonnie Blair Anderson
  • Nicknames: None, just her name.
  • Age: 4 years old. The actress would be aged between 5 to 8.
  • Gender: Female
  • Occupation: Kindergarten Student
  • Personality: Kind, Imaginative, Caring, Shy, Family-Orientated, Adventurous.
  • Family: Mr and Mrs Anderson are her parents. She is an only child.
  • Hair Colour: Dark Brown
  • Eye Colour: Dark Brown
  • Height: The actors height would be roughly 3'2



  • Name: Mrs. Anderson (First name is not known)
  • Nicknames: Mum to Bonnie
  • Age: 20 - 30. The actress would be aged between the same age range as the actual character.
  • Gender: Female
  • Occupation: Sunnyside Daycare Receptionist (in Toy Story 3)
  • Personality: Kind, Caring, Passionate, Family-Orientated, Gentle.
  • Family: Bonnie's Mum and Mr. Anderson's wife.
  • Hair Colour: Brown
  • Eye Colour: Brown
  • Height: The actress's height would be around 5'8 to 6'3


  • Name: Mr. Anderson (First name is not known)
  • Nicknames: Dad to Bonnie
  • Age: 20 - 30. The actor would be aged between the same age range as the actual character.
  • Gender: Male
  • Occupation: Full-Time Dad (No evidence that he has a job, so I am assuming he's unemployed)
  • Personality: Kind, Gentle, Adventurous, Caring, Passionate, Family-Orientated.
  • Family: Bonnie's Dad and Mrs. Anderson's Husband.
  • Hair Colour: Brown
  • Eye Colour: Brown
  • Height: The actor's height would be around 5'8 to 6'3.


  • Name: Miss Wendy (First name is not known)
  • Nicknames: None
  • Age: 20 - 30. The actress would be aged between the same age range as the actual character.
  • Gender: Female
  • Occupation: Bonnie's Kindergarten Teacher
  • Personality:  Kind, Caring, Passionate, Family-Orientated, Gentle.
  • Family: Not known.
  • Hair Colour: Brown
  • Eye Colour: Brown
  • Height: The actor's height would be around 5'8 to 6'3.


The People I have Casted for the Roles of Woody, Dolly and Mr. Anderson

When it came to casting for this film, I used the character profiles and advertised them on mandy.com, and got 6 responses from people that were interested in acting in this reimagined scene. However, no one had shown any interest into being Bonnie's mum or Miss Wendy, the kindergarten teacher and unfortunately, I had no responses for Bonnie either. So if I had more time on this project, I would've had left the Mandy actor application on the website for a bit longer, but I am very happy for the cast I decided to choose for Woody, Dolly and Mr. Anderson. When it came to casting, I was very strict on a few things when it came to finding cast members. These were the following: I wanted the looks of the characters to be fairly similar to the animated versions of the characters, so for Woody, Bonnie's Dad and Dolly I wanted them to have dark coloured eyes and dark coloured hair, so any actors that didn't meet those requirements I didn't want them to be cast as the roles. Also, since Dolly has purple hair in the film, I wanted the actress to be up for having her hair temporarily dyed dark purple to match the character in the film. The cast for the following parts are:


  • Name: Joey Gaillet
  • Location: Lancashire
  • Ethnicity: Caucasian
  • Age Range:18 - 28
  • Height: 6' 4" (1m 93cm)
  • Weight: 12st. 8lb. (80kg)
  • Hair Colour: Brown
  • Eye Colour: Hazel
  • Build: Medium
  • Character: Woody

Reasons for choice:
  1. Was the only Woody that had dark coloured eyes.
  2. Has the right height and look for Woody. 
  3. Had experience with student films.


  • Name: Izabela Zieba
  • Location: Lincolnshire
  • Ethnicity: Caucasian
  • Age Range: 18 - 26
  • Height: 5' 6" (1m 68cm)
  • Weight: 8st. 7lb. (54kg)
  • Hair Colour: Brown
  • Eye Colour: Brown
  • Build: Slim
  • Character: Dolly

Reasons for choice: 
  1. Has the right hair length for Dolly.
  2. Has quite a resemblance to Dolly in the film.
  3. Said that she'd be ok with having her hair temporarily dyed purple for the shoots.

  • Name: Reza Diako
  • Location: London / Bristol
  • Ethnicity: Middle Eastern
  • Age Range: 21 - 31
  • Height: 5' 11" (1m 81cm)
  • Weight: 12st. 8lb. (80kg)
  • Hair Colour: Black
  • Eye Colour: Brown
  • Build: Muscular
  • Character: Mr. Anderson / Bonnie's Dad

Reasons for choice:
  1.  Looks quite mature and dad-like.
  2. Has the resemblance of Bonnie's dad in the film.
  3. Has the right height and look for Bonnie's dad.



Tuesday, February 9, 2021

The Ken Burns Effect Editing Workshop

 


In this workshop we learnt about the Ken Burns effect. The Ken Burns effect is when you add movements to still images to make them more dynamic. I learnt how to add a mask to a picture and blur the picture out so the main focus is on the primary object. I loved this workshop as I got to learn something different then just editing techniques and showed me the variety of effects I can use on Premiere Pro. I will definitely remember this workshop and I will love to add this effect to my future projects on this course.

Monday, February 8, 2021

Directors Research - Contextual Research

Dean DeBlois

Dean Deblois is a film director, producer, screenwriter and animator that is known to come from Brockville in Canada. He is well known from directing films such as Lilo and Stitch and the How to Train Your Dragon franchise. Since he is known for all of these job roles I will be focusing on the film director role a lot more than the others. The film I am going to be trying to reimagine is 'How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World' and the pages of the script that I am going to focus on will be from page 27, where it says 'Exterior: Woods - Night' to page 32 where it says 'He grins and ushers Hiccup out of the stall.' Here is the link to the full script: How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. In this film DeBlois uses a lot of moving shots to establish the fantastical world of the Hidden world so to make this film my own I'll be focusing on changing point of views from Toothless to the white dragon and using a wide variety of still and moving shots.

Josh Cooley
According to Wikipedia, 'Joshua Cooley is an American animator, screenwriter, director and voice actor. He is best known for working on the 2015 Pixar animated film Inside Out and directing the short film Riley's First Date? that was included in its home video release'. Since he is known for all of these job roles I will be focusing on the film director role a lot more than the others. The film I am going to be trying to reimagine is Toy Story and the pages of the script I will be using are at the very end of page 14, where it says 'Inside the Closet', to the start of page 19, where it says 'Woody freaks'. Here is the link to the full script: Toy Story 4. In this film, Cooley uses a lot of still and moving tracking shots so to make it my own work I am going to make it so the audience can see Bonnie's emotion when starting kindergarten and I will be using some moving shots, like POV and Establishing shots, and some stills to make this differ from the real film.

Taika Waititi

Taika David Cohen ONZM, otherwise known as Taika Waititi, is a film and TV director, producer, screenwriter, actor and comedian. Since he is known for all of these job roles I will be focusing on the film director role a lot more than the others. Waititi is well known for directing films such as Jojo Rabbit, Thor: Ragnarok, Team Thor and many more. The film I am going to choose of his to reimagine is Thor: Ragnarok and the pages of the script I will be using will be from the end of page 98, where it says about the interior of the commodore ship, to near the end of page 103 where it says on the script, "The Commodore ship is swallowed up by the towering nightmare that is the Devil's Anus wormhole". Here is the link to the full script: Thor: Ragnarok. In this film Waititi used a lot of stills and movements, so to make this film like my own I am just going to be still shots, using a variety of shots like wide shots and close ups.

The film I have decided to reimagine is Josh Cooley's 'Toy Story 4'.

8. Project Evaluation

For this unit, we were instructed to work on a TV show as a whole year group. This was a challenge because this was the first time we were a...