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 all working together on one project and I had high hopes that we were going to do well. In this show, I was given the job of Assistant Producer for both the promotional material for the show and the VT's. On the recording day, I was given the role of Autocue Manager, which was a role I had never been taught before so I was interested to learn more.

For the promotional material, I was in charge of helping our main promo producer, Rose, with sorting out fundraising to fund the show's props, costumes, the actor's travel expenses etc. I was also put in charge of running the TikTok as I had the most knowledge on TikTok than Rose did. I was very happy with this as I felt like I could rise to the challenge creatively. However, there was one problem that arose when making the first TikTok. I was told by the main two producers that I didn't have to run everything by them and that they trusted my creative vision, so I assumed I could upload the TikTok without it needing to be green-lit. This meant that someone reviews it and sends a message saying it is ok to post, however, this was not the case. My unit leader told me that if I did what I did with the TikTok in the Media industry, I would have been sacked. I was not told that I had to send it for review to my classmates above me aka. Rose and the two producers. I have learnt from this that making sure that the posts are green-lit before uploading them is something of the utmost importance and I will make sure to consider this if I decide to do this in the future.

The fundraising went better than I expected, raising a total of £65.50, which was over the two fundraising days. Our goal of £50 exceeded our expectations and was put towards the show. With regards to all of the spare prizes, we bought them ourselves putting money into the show's funds, and any additional food that we had we would bring with us to the VT shoots at the dockyard for the cast and crew to eat over the day. When it came to the main VT shoot day, I was put in charge of making at least one or more TikTok's with the contestants and the Gaylien that we had on set that day. I was struggling to think of ideas because I was also busy being a Location Marshal and a runner on the location shoot that I was burning myself out. However, I managed to think of some fun TikToks to do and with the producer's permission, I manage to upload two TikTok's that day, given the circumstances of doing running and location marshalling, which I was very proud of myself for doing.

Before the recording in rehearsals, the team and I assessed the issue of not having an autocue apparatus to put onto one of the cameras, so we decided that I would hold up the autocue near the camera lens so the talent would be able to read the text and still be in the cameras eye-line and manually scroll with my hands instead of setting the speed of the text and just letting it roll through. However, there was one physical problem that was starting to arise. Considering I was holding the autocue up and scrolling physically with my hands for a long time, I was starting to get really bad arm cramps. I didn't think anything of it and I still wanted to do my job when it came to the live recording day. However, this all changed as when I was managing the autocue on the floor, I was told last minute that there was a newer version of the script than what I had previously uploaded on the autocue that early morning. As we only had five minutes before we were doing our final rehearsal, I was getting overwhelmed with anxiety and I started to panic.

Our Floor Manager then told me that our talent, Madame Muumuu who was playing Queen Thunderclap, said that she preferred it when someone else was doing the autocue as they felt more comfortable with them. With the talents preferences, my physicality with my arms and what would be better for the show in mind, I made the courageous and mature decision to let someone else do the autocue and I would rest upstairs watching the Livestream on my phone with the crew that wasn't on the floor and that I would still get credited in the credits for being the Autocue Manager considering that it was the job that I was given at the start of the unit. Even though I would've loved to do the autocue on the day I had to make the talent's needs and my physicality a top priority and step down from the role. With that in mind, if my physicality was not a problem I would have changed some minor grammatical details which were still in the autocue at the time of the live recording, but since I forfeited my role to someone else, it wasn't my responsibility anymore to change them.

Considering everything that I went through in this unit, I am truly happy with my contribution to the team and I am very proud of all of us for coming together and making a truly stellar show that all adults can enjoy.

6. Production Paperwork

Cosmic Snatchers Production Paperwork

Please see above the link for the production paperwork made for Cosmic Snatchers. My own input included: 

• Listing content for TikToks.

• Fundraising Ideas.

• Sourcing locations for fundraising. 

• Working with finance for fundraising. 

• Action plan for social media and promotional material.

5. (and 7) Workshop Outputs (Test Shoots)

One of the workshop challenges that we were to face was we had to make a 1-minute short story and we could choose the genre, I decided to do mine about a young woman finding something in her grandparent's war memorabilia box, the link to this video is below:

The unit's workshops were our test shoots and throughout these workshops, I had the opportunity to try out many different roles that I was interested in, these consisted of the following:

• Floor Manager
• Camera Operator
• Vision Mixer
• Graphics Operator
• Director
• Script Supervisor
• Cable Basher

Out of all of the roles listed above, I really liked being the Director and the Vision Mixer as I felt a lot less stress being in the gallery given that it was very quiet. Another reason why I liked these two roles specifically because I liked the feeling of being in charge of what comes out on screen and I always have a clear vision of the visuals I want for example what shots go where, I also enjoyed talking to the team over the communications as I felt very listened to, making our team even stronger. One trait that I think I need to work on when being a Director is that I am very impatient and I felt like I was rushing people to resolve all of the problems when I just needed to be patient and wait for the crew in the gallery to tell me that they are ready. Dr Thomas Barbian, a doctor with a PhD in Clinical Psychology, states that: "Patience allows you to persevere and make more productive decisions, often leading to greater success." (Barbian, 2017). With this in mind, I would take this into consideration when doing directing in the future.

I liked being the vision mixer because I also liked the idea of helping someone's vision of the shots come to life and I liked working with the Director as I could openly suggest some shot ideas to them and discuss this to aid in what the show would look like. I also liked the Script Supervisor role and for the same reason, I liked the Vision Mixer role. So to summarise, I preferred to be in the gallery than being on the floor. I also would've loved to try out being Sound Operator, however, because it was a very popular role in the class I never got the chance.

The roles I didn't really like doing from the list above were Floor Manager and Camera Operator, I didn't like these specifically because of the added pressure of being on the floor and in charge of something. For the Floor Manager role, I understand that it's quite similar to the Director with the only difference being one is in the gallery and the other is on the floor of the set, I felt an unnecessary amount of pressure and if something were to happen on the floor I'd feel that I would be to blame, even though I wouldn't. It is kind of the same reason for the Camera Operator role, if I was to press a button wrong on the camera, I would feel the same amount of pressure to fix the problem, I am also not that caught up in the camera terminology, for example, 'loosen' to zoom out and 'tighten' to zoom in.

I also didn't really like the Graphics Operator role as I'd think that I would get confused with the graphics and press the graphic an irrelevant amount of times, making the graphic flash on and off the screen. The Cable Basher role was also fun because I enjoyed helping one of the cameramen out by making sure they did not trip over the wires, however, I didn't see it as an important job like the Floor Manager, so I don't think I'd be happy to do this job on the floor of future productions.

Bibliography:

Barbian, T., (2017). The Skill of Patience - Columbia Metropolitan Magazine. [online] Columbia Metropolitan Magazine. Available at: https://columbiametro.com/article/the-skill-of-patience/ [Accessed 28 February 2022].

4. Analysis of the Structure of Cosmic Snatchers

For the logo of Cosmic Snatchers, we want to use purple, pink and white-ish colours to represent a galaxy look and we want the logo to look like Saturn but with a peach emoji in the middle to represent the planet name 'Bundah', which is another word for 'bottom' as it suits the innuendos that we have planned for the show, which is intended for an 18+ target audience. We want to use the font called Keep on Truckin' for the word 'Cosmic' and the Airstrike font for the word 'Snatchers'.

We have planned three rounds to have in the show and each one has a different title screen. The first round is going to be called 'Gaylien's Decipher' which will hopefully be filmed at the Chatham Dockyard. The contestants have to try to solve a Tangram, putting the pieces, that have been scattered around the room, onto the puzzle to try and solve it. We want to use green in the title for this game to signify the alien aspect of the show, however, this would be a problem for the show as anything that is green on a green screen will disappear if not changed to a different colour, so we are thinking on changing the colour slightly to be visible and to be able to reference the alien aspect. We have added the handcuff picture underneath the title to signal to the audience what would happen to the contestants if they were to lose in the show, and we coloured them indigo and silver to stay on brand. With the cosmic theme, with Keep on Truckin', the same font as the word 'Cosmic' in the above logo to stay on brand and to attract attention.

The second round is going to be called 'Feel It Up', this round will hopefully be in the studio live. The contestants have to reach into a box and they have to 'feel' the item and guess what it is. Some of the objects might be a little bit cheeky and some very messy. The graphic for this round is keeping this idea in mind with the hand aspect 'feeling' and the same pink colour used throughout the graphics used for the show. On the hands, we decided to draw nails on them to reference the feminine and drag aspects of the host.

The third round is going to be called 'Riddle Me Musk', this round is going to be the final game and the second scheduled VT with a two-minute advertisement segment before the round. In this round, the contestants will be given a word, that is all symbols, that they will have to decipher using an alphabet decoder at the other side of the room, and the first contestant that deciphers the code will win.

For the graphic, we wanted to use the same font, Airstrike, to keep on-brand with the main logo and we wanted to keep the same colour palette as the logo to reference the space theme, we also added a lightning cloud to make the round more suspenseful as is it the final round of the show. The two primary colours used in the show were purple and green. Furthermore, in terms of the spirituality with the colours we chose, Marc Green states that the colour purple signifies: "wealth, royalty, sophistication, intelligence" (Green, 2021), we really wanted to get the point across that the main protagonist was a Queen aka. a royal, hence why we went with the colour purple.

In contrast, in popular culture green is associated with aliens as being 'little green men', which seemed a popular colour choice for Cosmic Snatchers. Mindy Weisberger, explains that: "In science fiction, use of the phrase "little green men" dates back to the 1940s, with the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction tracing the first usage to the story "Mayaya's Little Green Men" (Weird Tales, 1946) by Harold Lawlor." (Weisberger, 2016).

In my role as Assistant Promotions Producer, I am in charge of making the TikToks for the show, so I need to take into account the colours used in the logos to reference the galaxy aspect and to stay on brand with the logo and with the theme of Cosmic Snatchers. 

Bibliography:

Green, M., (2021). SBFAQ Part 5: Using Color Effectively. [online] Visualexpert.com. Available at: http://www.visualexpert.com/FAQ/cfaqPart5.html [Accessed 28 February 2022].

Weisberger, M., (2017). Why Do We Imagine Aliens as 'Little Green Men'?. [online] livescience.com. Available at: https://www.livescience.com/55370-why-are-aliens-little-green-men.html [Accessed 28 February 2022].

3. Analysis of a TV Show relevant to Cosmic Snatchers - Ludus

I chose the CBBC TV show Ludus as the TV show relevant to Cosmic Snatchers because it has the same general theme of space and the contestants win a ticket to leave the planet. In Ludus, the three contestants are playing to win their family members who have been turned into holograms by the main antagonist of the show Ludus. Before each game, they are shown who they can play for and if they win the game they can get their family member back, but if they lose then their family member gets uploaded into Ludus's game forever and won't be able to return home with them. In the final round, the three contestants face one more game and the prize for this game is a ticket home to planet Earth. The ticket is underneath a spherical object which Ludus calls 'a tick', however under the other two are Ludus's bugs meaning that if they choose a tick with a monster underneath it means that they lose and are stuck with Ludus for all eternity.

In this show, there is also an option that no one returns home and only the holograms of their family do, which I find quite tragic. I would argue that Ludus isn't a kid's game show as the concept of 'losing a family member' can be quite disheartening, even though little kids are the contestants. Some of the main differences between Ludus to Cosmic Snatchers is that the target audience is different as Cosmic Snatchers aims for a more mature audience, regarding the references to mature themes that younger audiences might find disturbing. Another difference is that Cosmic Snatchers has one definite winner of the shows to make it fit into the scripted parts of the show. 

With the concept of winning, in Ludus, it is all up to the final game to see who goes home, which does show a similarity with Cosmic Snatchers as there is a final show of who won by an egg reveal. In the plastic glittered eggs we were thinking of having blue tinsel for the losing eggs and in the winning glittered egg was gold tinsel and the tinsel would be the fuel for the contestant's spaceship to get home to planet Earth. Scott Manville, a former development executive of Merv Griffin Entertainment states that: "Those moments of drama always teeter on a CHOICE the contestant must make, and not always just on getting the right answer." (Manville, 2022)

I think the contestants choosing the eggs they choose and with one of them having the winning colour in is purely based on luck and how the cards are dealt. Dan Kowalski, a blog writer, states that: "Luck adds an element to games that allows for a worse player to have a chance at success against better opponents." (Kowalski, 2022). This is why I think luck games are crucial in TV game shows as it adds that necessary suspense which is what I like about TV game shows. 

Bibliography:

Kowalski, D., 2022. Dan on Luck In Games: Should the Best Player Always Win?. [online] Nerd Herd. Available at: https://nerdherdgettysburg.com/blogs/news-events/dan-on-luck-in-games-should-the-best-player-always-win [Accessed 28 February 2022].

Manville, J. (2022). Creating & Pitching Game Shows for Today's TV. [online] Available at: https://www.tvwritersvault.com/creating/creatinggameshows.asp#.YkxMOxPMLDE [Accessed 28 February 2022].

2. TV Production Roles - As Live

For this unit, I was given the task to pitch an idea (as described previously) that could possibly get chosen to make. I produced a PowerPoint presentation, and the link to it is down below:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ddySfmMsZZaNBxVh17OCIAMdoBDhQ53g/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=111638406977183413344&rtpof=true&sd=true

For this unit, I decided to apply for Promotions Producer, for my first choice, VT Researcher, for my second choice, and Promotions Sound Operator, for my third choice, for our chosen group TV show called Cosmic Snatchers.

For the job of Promotions Producer, according to creativelivesinprogress.com, they: "come up with ideas to promote television shows. Looking to engage with audiences, a good trailer has the potential to attract new viewers." (Promo Producer, 2022). Having had some experience with promotional material from making my short film promoting the course itself and I also helped out with making promotional material for the Makeup and Hair Design students for one of their units, I am very confident that I will hopefully get a job somewhere in this field. You can see these videos below:

For the job of VT Researcher, according to screenskills.com, they are: "key to any production because they find the people, the places, the facts, figures and stories that are at the heart of every TV show. In other words, the content." (ScreenSkills.com, 2022). I liked this role because I know of some contributors that could be beneficial to help with Cosmic Snatchers who would work for free. I also liked the idea of coming up with ideas for the story to make Cosmic Snatchers entertaining and fun for everyone.

For the job of Promotions Sound Operator, it's their responsibility to: "assemble, operate and maintain the technical equipment used to record, amplify, enhance, mix or reproduce sound." (Sound technician, broadcasting/film/video job profile | Prospects.ac.uk, 2022) Considering I have little experience with sound operating I wanted to challenge myself with a role that I wanted to try and give a go and see if it will be something I am good at in the future when I enter the Film or TV industry after graduating the course.

When it came to the interview, I thought I did very good, considering I had some training for how to sit and speak in an interview in secondary school, which I used to my advantage and I was very confident that I would get a job in either Promotion or in the VT's. And to my surprise, I got both, being made Assistant Producer for both the Promotions and for the VT's for Cosmic Snatchers, and when it comes to the recording day I have been made Autocue Manager. I am very happy with my roles, as my mentors stated in my feedback that they felt that I would be too stressed being the main producer and they see me as a team player.

I agree with my mentors and I am glad they are looking out for my mental health which I am making a top priority off, along with the shoot and pre-production stuff for Cosmic Snatchers. According to careerssearch.bbc.co.uk, an Assistant Producer: "assists the Producer in all stages of a television programme or series, with direct accountability for the execution of a programme intention to a specific brief, referring when necessary on editorial matters." (Assistant Producer | Jobs and careers with BBC, 2022). But in this case, I will be specifically helping out the Promotions Producer and the VT Producer for the show.

For the role of Autocue Manager, otherwise known as the Autocue Operator, according to ScreenSkills, they: "control the teleprompter on studio shows and some location shoots." (ScreenSkills.com, 2022). The website also states that they: "format the computer files of scripts to be displayed correctly on the prompter and operate a computer that’s linked to the prompter during a recording. They check with the presenter what font size they would prefer and, during rehearsals, assess the speed of their delivery so they can move the script down at the right speed." (ScreenSkills.com, 2022).

I'm, as I have stated above, I am very excited to be a part of this project and I can't wait to contribute my skills to make this TV show the best that it can be.

Bibliography:

Careerssearch.bbc.co.uk. 2022. Assistant Producer | Jobs and careers with BBC. [online] Available at: https://careerssearch.bbc.co.uk/jobs/job/assistant-producer/8351#:~:text=An%20Assistant%20Producer%20assists%20the,when%20necessary%20on%20editorial%20matters. [Accessed 26 January 2022].

Creative Lives in Progress. 2022. Promo Producer. [online] Available at: https://www.creativelivesinprogress.com/job-roles/promo-producer [Accessed 26 January 2022].

Prospects.ac.uk. 2022. Sound technician, broadcasting/film/video job profile | Prospects.ac.uk. [online] Available at: https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/sound-technician-broadcasting-film-video [Accessed 26 January 2022].

ScreenSkills. 2022. [online] Available at: https://www.screenskills.com/job-profiles/browse/unscripted-tv/editorial/researcher/ [Accessed 26 January 2022].

ScreenSkills. 2022. [online] Available at: https://www.screenskills.com/job-profiles/browse/unscripted-tv/technical/autocue-operator/#:~:text=Autocue%20operators%20work%20with%20the,and%20planning%20meetings%20as%20required. [Accessed 26 January 2022].

1. Whodunnit? - An analysis relevant to my TV show Caught in the Act!

I chose to do a murder mystery game show series because there hasn't been much of them lately, the only one being Whodunnit?, the show that I am analysing that aired from 1972 to 1978, making it the first-ever murder mystery game show in the UK. I see this show being fairly similar to the show I want to make, for example, in both Whodunnit and Caught in the Act, the judging panel or in Caught in the Act's case, the contestants will be given clues as to who the murderer is to make the show a bit easier for the audience.

According to a blog writer, Joslyn Chase, in her blog about the importance of clues in mysteries, she states: "When we plant clues, we’re unwinding a ball of thread for our readers. If they follow the correct thread, it will lead them out of darkness into the light of the mystery’s solution." (Chase, 2022). However, in Caught in the Act, the contestants would only get a clue if they got a certain amount of questions right in the games. I added this aspect into my show because I thought it might make it a bit more challenging and suspenseful, I also had an idea of giving out sympathy clues if for some reason the contestants did not win any of the rounds or have been doing very poorly. I additionally had an idea to give out fake clues as well to make the show more challenging but I thought that might be too unfair on the contestants as I don't want to make the show too hard to participate on. 

In terms of the structure of the shows, they are quite different to each other, with Whodunnit mostly being cut scenes between VT's or pre-recordings, and a little time on the actual judging panel. Whereas with Caught in the Act, there will only be at the maximum 5 VT's, one being the introduction to the cast and their interactions with the victim, three being clues that the contestants can win and one is a commercial break of two minutes after the second round of games.

I think that an advert is crucial to a television show especially for a game show as it allows for the members on the floor to set up anything that would be needed for the next round and for the cast and crew to have a bit of a break before going back on the air. Improvemarketing.co.uk state that an advert: "can drive market share, people trust TV and it provides scale and reach. It also provides you the ability to buy the exact amount of ratings (or numbers of viewers) that you need." (improvemarketing.co.uk, 2022)

Bibliography:

Chase, J., (2022). Mystery Clues: The Ultimate Guide to Clues and Red Herrings. [online] The Write Practice. Available at: https://thewritepractice.com/mystery-clues/ [Accessed 25 February 2022].

Improvemarketing.co.uk. (2022). Benefits and Advantages of TV Advertising. [online] Available at: https://www.improvemarketing.co.uk/single-post/benefits-of-tv-advertising [Accessed 25 February 2022].

Evaluation - Trespass

For this project, we were given the task to make a short film, from a select portion of sonnets and poems. We were also given the challenge to try not to use the poem for exposition i.e. to tell the story of the poem. This was a challenge because when I was coming up with ideas for the short film I came up with the exact same idea as what the poem was about. However, I overcame this hurdle quite quickly and came up with an amazing idea, which is very personal to my own story with my anxiety and intrusive thoughts.

When it came to casting, there was a few problems with casting the main character Lucy as an adult and casting Hope, Lucy's positive voice, with some of the cast pulling out to do paid jobs and some not showing any interest at all with being a part of this project. Luckily, I made sure to have two backup actresses that I knew were available to play Lucy. However, when it came to casting Hope, no one had applied to be her, so I decided to play the voice of Hope to save me the added stress of asking around and getting rejected. When it came to the day before my filming day, my original actress for teen Lucy had just recently gotten the booster vaccine for COVID-19 so she said she was feeling too ill to be on the shoot the next day. This definitely was an added stress for me, but I adapted to the change and asked around to see if anyone would be available last minute to act in my short film, and luckily in about half an hour, I had another person to play teen Lucy.

When it came to the actual filming day, there was a couple problems that occurred. One of them being that at some points it started raining outside when filming the majority of the scenes, but the rain was not constant, this meant that some shots had rain, and some didn't. Another problem was that the actress that was playing Lisa, Lucy's therapist in the flashback, was only available after three o'clock, this meant that for the therapist scene it was a lot darker than initially planned. However, I dealt with these with the upmost professionalism, making sure that the camera was covered from the rain with an umbrella to prevent any damages happening to the camera, and I had to deal with the change of the time for the therapist's scene as I knew that filming the therapist scene also at noon was going to be tricky as I had to consider the cast's schedules and availability. 

When it came to editing the final product, I was really happy with the quality of acting that my main actress portrayed when being adult Lucy as it made the whole story a lot more believable. I was also happy with the idea of the overlay of the fire after Jax, Lucy's negative voice, shouted in Lucy's head "and make your life a living hell" as I thought it added the connotation that Jax was associated with a demon, fire connoting hell and the underworld. I also liked the idea that I had with one of my teammates who suggested to do high angles and have adult Lucy look straight down to the floor to connote hell when Lucy was listening or addressing Jax and the low angle shots with Lucy looking up when she was listening or addressing Hope as the looking up connoted that the good voice came from her head but was from heaven. I also enjoyed colour grading the clips red and dark contrasts when Jax's voiceovers were happening and colour grading the clips yellow and warm contrasts when Hope's voiceovers were happening.

On the contrary, when recording the voiceovers for Jax and Hope, there was a noticeable difference between the two voices, that was because the Jax's lines were recorded at my home, in my cabin, with the actor speaking into a professional microphone and Hope's lines were recorded in a professional sound recording booth that is provided at the studios. Before this happened, I had planned for the actor to do the voiceovers at the studios with myself as Hope that way the sound matches. However, he was busy on the day that I booked the sound studio, so I decided to just use the sound studio to record Hope's lines and level the two voiceovers, sound wise, in post-production. In addition to this, I enjoyed playing around with the voiceovers, using the audio effect 'Analog Delay' to make Jax's and Hope's voice sound more mysterious and sound like voices in someone's head. I also liked the idea I had with having red and white lights flash on the screen to signify that Jax and Hope are fighting, I made the last white flash deliberately longer to show that Hope was triumphant in defeating Jax.

The things that I have learnt from this project was that you have to plan your time solely on the cast and crew and to be more patient with them and open-minded when suggestions for shots are suggested by cast and crew. I also learnt that not everything has to be perfect, and nothing always goes according to plan when filming is taking place, as long as you adapt to the change of plan and show your passion for the film and filmmaking in general then that is all that matters. 

If I had more time to develop this project, I would carry out more research on this project and look further into mental health in general, I would try and send the casting call on mandy.com a bit earlier than I did to allow for time for people to respond to the post. I would also consider adding an optional ending that we decided to film on the filming day including teen and adult Lucy together, if we didn't have one of the requirements be that the film has to be a maximum of five minutes long including titles and credits. If I didn't have this restriction of this timeframe, I would have added the additional optional ending that me and my crew filmed. Overall, I am very happy with how well this unit has gone and I am very proud of how my final edit came out and can't wait to see how my imagination flows into my future projects on this course.

Trespass

Pre-Production Paperwork - Production Notes - Trespass

Pre-Production Paperwork or Production Notes - Trespass

The above link is my evidence of my planning and preparation for this project. This includes: consent forms for the actors shown in the video and the actors that was voiceovers (not including myself), floor plans or shot ideas for the day of the shoot (instead of a storyboard), my idea development with copies from my post on mandy.com for casting (I did not include teen Lucy, Lisa (Lucy's old therapist), Jax (Lucy's negative voice) and Hope (Lucy's positive voice) as hardly any people wanted to be those characters and I had already casted teen Lucy, Lisa, Hope and Jax), the location permission form to film at the location, the mood board (for adult and teen Lucy and Lisa), the risk assessment signed by one of our course lecturers, the first and second draft of the script, the shot list, that was used on filming day and the treatment for the project.

I haven't included the location pictures because I did not have the time to take pictures of the location before the owner went on holiday, but I did have permission to film at the location, as evidenced by the location permission form. 

When casting for this film, I did have some initial issues. For example, the actress, that I originally had planned to be Lucy as an adult, emailed me on mandy.com to tell me that a paid job came up and she had decided to take that opportunity, instead of being in the short film, but she did send her deepest apologies. So, I went with my first backup actress that also applied for the role of adult Lucy, but she didn't email me back about the opportunity, so I decided to go with my second and final backup actress and luckily, she was available. 

I also had problems casting Hope, Lucy's positive voice, because at the time of casting I wasn't sure if I wanted Lucy's voices to be physical people or voiceovers, but I then decided that it would be easier and simpler for me to have Lucy's voices be voiceovers. With no one who applied to be the voice of Hope, I decided to have myself play the voice of Hope and I made sure to agree this with my unit leaders prior to filming. Also, the feedback from my tutors I took onboard was that the ending should be more positive, and I fully agreed and went onboard with this feedback.

Idea Development - Fiction Adaptation

When it came to choosing poems to inspire some ideas for a short film, I liked the look of one poem and two sonnets. These were: Time does not bring relief (Sonnet II) by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sonnet 1 by Gwendolyn Bennett, and Trespass by John Clare. The ideas I had for these are in a mind map below.

Mind Map - Development of my Ideas 

I decided to go with the Trespass poem by John Clare as I really liked the personal spin, I took on this poem as the idea is based on my personal experiences with my intrusive thoughts and my experiences with my anxiety going to a place that I am not familiar with. I wanted to include the voices in the Lucy's head because in the poem itself it reads: "And always feared the owner coming by" (Clare, 1841). So, instead of taking it in a literal sense and having Lucy getting shouted at by the owner of the mansion, I thought about the owner being the negative voice taking over Lucy's head.

When writing my first draft for my script for this project, I am planning to have Lucy's voices to be physical people that only the audience could see to make the story more mysterious and dramatic. I also planned for the ending to be more sad, as the 'Trespass' poem is very sad, and have Lucy break down at the end saying: "Why do I have to be different? I just want to be normal". Normally, with my writing, I like to leave the audience on a cliffhanger to make them ponder what happens next. 

However, when writing my second draft, after I casted all the actors for the characters, I decided to save myself the stress with the actors having to drive to the location and for my mental health, I came to a consensus that I want the voices to be voiceovers and that I would record them on a separate day to the filming, as I am planning it to be a very long filming day and the actors playing the voices both agreed and were completely fine with this. 

Also, when coming up with an ending to Trespass, I also decided to make it a bit more of a happier ending, with Hope, Lucy's positive voice, triumphing over Jax, Lucy's negative voice, and entering Lucy's head saying that it's all going to be ok and that she is going to get professional help as she gets up and walks out of the shot of the camera. My two drafts of my script are shown in a link below: 

Scripts - Trespass

I decided this because I wanted the main character to follow the same pathway that I am going through personally to make it more unique to my story of my life. This was also one of the suggested things that I should do by my unit leader. Also, the majority of the poems and sonnets that we had to choose from all had sad endings so I wanted to show a bit of diversity to show some difference to my other peers short films. When it came to storyboarding, I decided to not do a storyboard, but I did a few floor plans to help with staging when it comes to the actual filming day. These are shown in a link below:

Floor Plans - Trespass

These three particular shots were at the start, the first shot of the short film, the shot of teen Lucy panicking with the negative voice in her head and the shot of her running out of the therapist's office. I thought it was important to map out the most important scenes so I at least have a visual plan for the day of filming, along with the shot list which I am planning on making.

In terms of feedback when it came to my feedback for the pre-production paperwork that I produced and the pitch I did to my unit leader, it was fairly positive feedback with the one critique being that I change the ending from being depressing and sad to a more positive ending. I agree with this because as I have stated above, it makes the short film more personal to my story of my life and makes it different to my classmates' short films.

Project Research - Trespass

Please see above the mood board I did for the main character Lucy, as a teen and as an adult, and for Lisa, Lucy's old therapist. For the main character Lucy, I wanted to give off a depressed gothic look, with dark colours to give off a character that wants to blend in to the background, metaphorically. With Lisa, I wanted to give off that professional look that she means business and I wanted the therapist to look approachable and kind and give off that vibe.

Floor Plans - Trespass

Also see above the floor plans that I made for three particular shots for the filming day to help with staging the cast. I did not do any further research on any relevant topics to the short film, but I will make sure to do so in any future projects on this course.

'Trespass' by John Clare - Contextual Research

'Trespass' is a poem by John Clare, the poem reads:

"I dreaded walking where there was no path

And pressed with cautious tread the meadow swath

And always turned to look with wary eye

And always feared the owner coming by;

Yet everything about where I had gone

Appeared so beautiful I ventured on

And when I gained the road where all are free

I fancied every stranger frowned at me

And every kinder look appeared to say

"You've been on trespass in your walk today."

I've often thought, the day appeared so fine,

How beautiful if such a place were mine;

But, having naught, I never feel alone

And cannot use another's as my own."

John Clare, according to the John Clare Society website states that he: "was born in 1793. With his reputation having grown over the whole of the 20th Century, he is now regarded as one of the most important poets of the natural world." (The John Clare Society, 2017). Also, according to this website, he has written a lot of literature about love, corruption and politics, environmental and social change, poverty, and also folk life. 

My take on the poem is about the poet who used to dread working on a place without a path. It is also about the beauty of the meadow and that he would have a fine day everyday for as long as he lived if he ever had such a beautiful place like the said meadow in the poem. I liked this poem because it gave me a variety of ideas that I could play around with for my version of this poem. I also liked this poem because I liked how it portrayed the emotion of anxiety that the poet was feeling in this poem when confronting the owner. 

According to Dan Rose, the content creator at SkillPath.com, states that: "A confrontation is usually a conversation with heightened emotions. Sometimes it is a result of unresolved conflict." (Rose, 2021). With this poem it is the poet trespassing on unwelcome territory and the owner does not want them there, meaning that the conflict between the poet and the owner is unresolved. The poet showing signs of wariness but was distracted by the sheer beauty of the meadow that he just wanted to be that lucky person that lived by this meadow.

Charley Reid, an author of lovepanky.com, says one of the reasons why people try to avoid conflict is that they might be afraid that they will not be liked. She mentions that: "You may not be afraid of confronting someone, per se, but you may be scared that after you confront someone, they’ll like you a whole lot less." (Reid, n.d). This can be proved by the eighth line of the poem: "I fancied every stranger frowned at me". This means that the poet envisioned that everyone would frown at him, meaning that they would dislike him.

Bibliography:

John Clare Society website (2017). About John Clare. [online] Available at: https://johnclaresociety.wordpress.com/about-john-clare/ [Accessed 28 November 2021].

Reid, C., 2021. 6 Reasons People Have a Fear of Confrontation. [online] lovepanky.com. Available at: https://www.lovepanky.com/my-life/relationships/reasons-people-have-a-fear-of-confrontation [Accessed 28 November 2021].

Rose, D., 2021. This is How Timid People Get Over Their Fear of Confrontation (and Win!). [online] Skillpath.com. Available at: https://skillpath.com/blog/timid-people-fear-confrontation [Accessed 28 November 2021].

Montage Camera and Editing Workshop - 18/11/21 to 19/11/21

In this workshop we were told to try to convey 3 out of a chosen 6 emotions through camera angles and different colours using gels on the lights to connote the emotions. We decided to choose anxious, rage and hopefulness. 

For the anxious emotion we had our actress sitting on the floor with her knees up to her chest, as small as she could and looking around anxiously. In terms of colour, we decided to use a mix of red and purple, the purple colour representing anxiety and the red colour connoting danger. We also decided to try pulsing the light, with the red gel on, slow then fast to convey the characters heartbeat with their anxiety. In addition to camera angles, we wanted to do slow movements and the camera being at a high angle to channel the character feeling tense and anxious and the camera looking down on them to convey her feeling small in size.

For the rage emotion we decided to have our actor sitting in between piles of chairs, making it look like he got angry and threw them, looking away then looking at the camera with a psychotic look in his eyes, the camera being at eye level to make the audience feel scared. We also attempted to do very fast shots as this can make the audience feel a bit uneasy and a bit uncomfortable. With colours, we used the red gel, the same one that we used when doing the anxiety emotion, to represent the emotion of rage as it is a very harsh colour. Kendra Cherry, an author of verywellmind.com states that: "Across cultures, people intuitively associate red with the concept of anger. This relationship makes sense given that many people get red in the face from increased blood flow when they're angry." (Cherry, 2020)

With the hopefulness emotion, we wanted our actor to be spinning on a chair in a circle smiling, much like those shots that best friends use in short films, where they are holding each other's hands and spinning around and the camera focusing on their facial expressions. With colours we went for yellows and greens to give that sense of happiness and life. With the motions, we decided to do fast spinning to give that feeling of joy.

In the editing workshop, we edited our footage that we filmed when we were playing around with the cameras previously in the workshop the previous day. Our team wanted to capture the emotions of the different characters portrayed in this montage. So, we used the montage type of character development, which entails communicating the growth. When it came to sound, I wanted the same music for the anxiety and rage emotion because I wanted to show a character arc between the two characters, even though they are both of different genders, to show the similarity between the emotion anxiety and the emotion rage. The lighting that we used really helped convey the different emotions. 

However, our original actor that was portraying the emotion rage was not feeling well that day when we had the camera and lighting so we had one of our teammates step in for him to test out the shots with the gels on the lights, and we decided as a group that we would colour grade the red for the emotion of rage in editing to prevent any further problems with our teammates health. I also decided when editing to make the movements slower than originally planned because I thought it added a bit of uncomfortableness and made the viewers very uneasy. I also wanted the sound to fade into more cheery and upbeat music, for the emotion hopefulness, to show the clear difference between the previous two emotions, anxiety, and rage, as hopefulness is the polar opposite emotion of anxiety and rage.

Bibliography:

Cherry, K., 2021. How Does the Color Red Impact Your Mood and Behaviour?. [online] Verywell Mind. Available at: https://www.verywellmind.com/the-color-psychology-of-red-2795821#aggression [Accessed 18 November 2021].

Haiku Workshop - 16/11/21

In this workshop we were introduced to a new type of poetry called Haikus. We were given the choice of three haikus to make an edit on using stock footage and sound clips from online. I decided to choose a haiku that was written by Matsuo Bashō, which said the following:

"No one travels

Along this way but I,

This autumn evening."

I chose to do this haiku amongst the other two because I really liked the idea of making something based on what I thought about autumn, which is my favourite season, which the haiku itself mentions. When making this edit, I was thinking about all the things I associate and do in the autumn. For example, going on nature walks with my family, roasting marshmallows on an open fire, conkers and the list goes on. I wanted to try to include as much as I could in this edit, however, because of our timeframe of 2 hours, I didn't get everything I wanted in my edit.

But I was really proud of the music that I sourced from YouTube, that was copyright free, as it made the whole minute of the edit seem very nostalgic. I also wanted to add the colour orange in as much as I could because I associate the colour orange with autumn as it reminds me of the colours of the autumn trees, much like what I included in my final edit. If I had more time to edit this haiku, I would have found some clips of roasting marshmallows on an open fire and conkers falling from the trees to give more of an autumn vibe. 

In comparison to my classmates's Haiku edits, there was a lot of different interpretations for the selection of Haiku's we were given. However, some of my classmates that did the same Haiku as myself took it in a dark and mysterious way which I really liked because it showed how everyone has different feelings of walking alone in the woods and the difference in everyone's imagination when it comes to creating short edits in a very short timeframe of two hours.

 

Evaluation for TV News - Sans Vanitas News

In this project, we were told to create a news channel with a TV News Package and a promotional video for that news package. I was put in charge of writing the script for both the news package and also the promotional video. I wanted to try and challenge myself as I have never written a script for television before especially for news. I found this very challenging as I struggled to make the dialogue something that would be said in the news, fortunately I managed to finish the script with time to spare.  

Additionally, we decided that we would not do a shot-list or a storyboard as the shots that we had planned were not changing as much so we thought those two paperwork wouldn't be necessary however if there was a lot of shots planned and if we were filming in a proper TV show baseroom and doing it live, beside from doing it in front of a small green screen, we would've taken the shot list and storyboard into consideration. One of the problems that we had when in the pre-production stage was our financial advisor that we had planned to interview for the cryptocurrency portion of our news package unfortunately said that he couldn't make the interview, so we were in need of a finance expert, someone that knows a bit about cryptocurrency, to interview.

Fortunately, we did a Facebook post on a local community group, looking for a cryptocurrency expert, and a man called Lawrence Ray, who said that he was the co-owner and head of a Brazilian cryptocurrency brokerage, a company that buys or sells goods/assets for clients. He also said he is working part-time with another cryptocurrency industry company. He also mentioned that he was currently in Spain on a business trip but he was more than happy to do a Zoom interview for us. This was a good thing to hear, but it did mean that we had to go with our backup plan which was doing some split screen shots to show authenticity and professionalism. 

One other problem that we faced when we were in the production stage was that the producer, who was also the live OB (outside broadcaster), changed the script a bit for the racism in football part. This was out of my control to change as I was not on set to hear the change of words, so in the future when doing more projects like this, I will make sure to work more closely with the producer to make sure they are happy with what is going to be said for the final product and that no changes will be necessary when filming the main news package at the last minute. We also wanted to interview someone from the Gillingham stadium, which is where we were filming outside of for our live OB, but unfortunately we never heard back from them.

When editing the final product, we stumbled on two problems, the camera kept on jumping around and not staying in one place so there are a lot of jump cuts in the live OB and in the audio you can hear my hair rustling on the microphone and you can hear Joey's coat rustling against the microphone, to prevent this next project we will look back at all of the footage on site so if we need to record again we can. If we had more time to complete this unit, we would try to approach the people of Gillingham stadium a lot more earlier than we did to get a response to even out the two news stories, try and do some advanced graphics like the news anchors names across the screen when introducing them to the audience to make the broadcast look professional and try and listen to the audio on site to see how it sounded or do a sound check to see what it sounded like and to make sure that the camera is static on site, meaning staying still or on a tripod.

Overall, I am very pleased with how this video turned out as this unit has taught me about a new type of script that I hadn't done before but I am really happy that I challenged myself because I think it turned out very well.

Sans Vanitas News Promo

Sans Vanitas News Package (Full)