Shooting Schedule

Next week we are going to shoot the exterior shots for our short film. Below is a write up of the schedule which is the chronological order in which we will film the scene. 

Poster Drawing

The design of the poster for Dating 101. The main image is of the main character Harry played by Josh Smith whose name is placed centrally at the top of the poster attracting our preliminary target audience. The title would be written in clear black font with the number ''101'' emphasised in a larger font in red to suggest the basic level of Harry's skills in dating. The tag line of ''Let the dating begin'' would give the hint into the speed-dating that Harry will get himself into where pressure to score a date will create comic situations.

Poster Mock Ups

Using images from the Internet I created mock ups of the film poster. The resolution might not be of the best quality however I will try to improve with each draft. The style is similar with a white background, main image, secondary images, title and a tagline in red and black. I was inspired by the posters for the film Speed-Dating using a coloured backround to match the colour of the title while the mid shot of the character is a black and white picture following the elegant and eye-popping design. Also the name tag idea stems from the posters for that film however insted of giving insight about the character I just wrote their name which lives an air of mystery about the man in the pictures because his face is kept out of the shot.

Adobe Photoshop

For the ancillary tasks, which are the film poster and magazine review page I will be using Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended. This is the first time I am using this software which is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems. To help me learnt basic tools such as Magic Wand Tool and how they can make my life easier I watched Photoshop Tutorials which explore different tips and tricks in an step by step accessible way.

Review Page Mock Ups

Using images from the Internet I created a mock up of the review page. The resolution of the images from the film 28 Dresses might not be of the best quality however I will be able to take pictures of the high quality for my actual review page. The style is similar to those of current film magazines such as Empire with the page being a double page spread including shots from the film, the review, quotes, ratings and production information.

Change of Location

Ultimately we decided that a school will be unsuitable as a location for a speed-dating event and we had to look around venues that these events take place at. Historically the first speed-dating event took place at Peet’s Café in Beverly Hills in late 1998 and it seems that bars and cafes are the most popular location to socialise in a friendly atmosphere but quiet enough for people to talk comfortably.

Our perfect location is the Miles Bar situated right in the harbour and fortunately one of our actors is their employee giving us easy access to the venue.


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Shot List

Below is the shot list which we prepared for shooting the exterior shots at Kent Steps.

Read Through

Before we went to shoot at our location we gathered our three male actors, Josh, Will and Cameron for a read through of the script so they could meet each other in a comfortable situation to discuss their ideas for their portrayal of the characters and any changes they would like to make.

Filming Day 1 Extended

A more thorough look at the additional production pictures uploaded from the second filming camera. 

Myself (red coat) documenting talent in costume

Cameron Smith in character as his double Carlos

Still frame of the camera

Night sky after a finished shoot

Editing

While reviewing the footage we took we decided that we would have to re-shoot the exterior shots as a result of sound interference by the diegetic sound of the street. After further analysis we decided to change our casting choices swapping the actor playing Harry with Matthew. 

Recasting

After showing our target audience some of the preliminary footage a majority of them united in the opinion that 

''Will Channing would be more suited to the role of Harry [while] Josh Smith had the ideal characterisaton to play Matthew'' - Chloe

Agreeing that we made a mistake in casting Will Channing as Mattew and Josh Smith as Harry we decided that as we were re-shooting the exterior scenes because of the sound recording problems, nothing was lost and we could recast the characters as well. Target audience's opinion is important to us they are of the age group, gender and class that would be interested to our product and catering to them is crucial to our film succeeding in the market. 

Teacher Comments

What's here is excellent-level 4 quality (17/20). still incomplete though-get researchand planning for second ancillary task uploaded!

Shot Reverse Shot

Shot reverse shot is a film technique used for continuity editing so that the audience perceive one continuous action that develops chronologically. A character is shown looking in one direction with the other character looking back in the opposite direction as to give the illusion that they are looking at each other. This will be used extensively in the bar scene where we most of the interactions between characters happen and where we want to establish a logical coherence between shots in the editing process.

Rule of Thirds

The rule of thirds is a guideline that applies to the process of composing films. An image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines. Aligning a subject within these points creates more tension, energy and interest in the composition that simply centering the subject would. The rule of thirds can be used to encourage the audience to think about positioning character and so depending on framing the boys and the girl in the bar it suggest whose more vulnerable and who dominance implies something about their character.

30-Degree Rule

The 30-degree rule is the film editing guideline that states that the camera should move at least 30-degrees between shots of the same subject occurring in succession. If the rule isn't followed a jump cut occurs and there is risk that the audience starts focusing on the filming technique instead of the story that is being narrated. Following this rule may soften the effect of changing shot distance, such as changing from a medium shot of Matt to a close-up of the same character.

180-Degree Rule

180-degree rule is a basic guideline regarding the on-screen spatial relationship between characters. The rule states that an imaginary lines connects the characters and by keeping the camera on one side of this axis for every shot in the scene, the first character is always on the right of the second character who is always on the left of the frame.  Breaking of the guideline will result in disorientating the audience which we do not want to commit as it will disturb the narration.

Breakdown Sheet

This is the breakdown sheet for the filming day of Tuesday 21st January 2014 which includes the reduced list of production elements, director's creative analysis of the dramatic action and character breakdowns. It acts as an intermediate step in the production of a film that originally planned using a script.

Cannon 550D Training

After the last time failing to try to achieve perfect lighting in a dark space we were not prepared to repeat the situation again and this time I took a Cannon 550D home and I watched a 3-part training video on photography. What I found the most useful was the part about exposure and how to achieve it with the combination of aperture, shutter speed and ISO speed which are massive improvement when you don't have artificial light to help you. Now I know that aperture is the adjustment of the lens opening, measure as f-number, which controls the amount of light passing through the lens. Aperture also has an effect on depth of field and diffraction - the higher the f-number, the smaller the opening, the less light, the greater the depth of field and the more diffraction blur. Shutter speed adjusts the speed of the shutter to control the amount of time during which the imaging medium is exposed to light and it is often expressed as fractions of seconds. Shutter speed of shorter duration decreased the both the amount of light and the amount of image blurring from motion of the subject and/or camera. ISO speeds are employed on modern digital camera as an indication of the system's gain from light to numerical output and to control the automatic exposure system. The higher the ISO number the greater the film sensitivity to light, whereas with a lower ISO number, the film is less sensitive to light.  A correct combination of aperture, shutter speed and ISO speed leads to an image that is neither too dark nor too light, hence it is 'correctly exposed'.

Here's a link for you to learn more about this fantastic camera:

Canon 550D Training Video - Beginner guide to photography part 1/3

Cannon 550D Training Video - Beginner guide to photography part 2/3

Cannon 550D Training Video - Beginner guide to photography part 3/3

Working with Script

Viewing the footage we completed last time filming we felt that the lighting was a major problem, it just wasn't strong enough and affected the quality of the production. As we were already analysis it against the real media products we felt that the script posed a few problems too. The action looked messy with the characters confined in a small space speed-dating and there was too much narrative to edit to 5 minutes bringing us back to the drawing board to try to keep the story nice and simple while also following the short film conventions of adding a twist at the end. Before all the twists we had in mind posed cliches based on the the idea that it was all a dream but inspiration came from plays that use the idea of a play inside a play which sounded intriguing with the possibility to turning it to film.

Filming Day 2 - Production Diary

Tuesday 14th January

About 4:00 pm we arrived at our destination Miles Bar where we set up our cameras and lights to film the first two pages of the script. This scene included the presence of our three male actors, Sammy and I. As we were in the scene while we were supposed to film we positioned the camera onto the tripod at the height we wanted it to and let it record while we acted, our actors were also great help as when they were not in the shot they acted as our camera men. Our aim was to shoot a three shot of the boys, a two shot of the different pairs speaking, close ups and medium shots to have a variety to cut in between to. In my opinion we were successful in achieving that and we finished about 6:30 pm at which I couldn't help myself but shout ''It's a wrap''. The whole filming process takes a lot of patience, setting up and repeating different takes to get what you want but no one can deny that everyone time we go out on a shoot we have so much fun and these pictures definitely prove it.

Director/Actress A.Paniak looking into the distance as you do. 

Director/Actress S. Ali  - No pictures please! 

Friends: crazy, awkward and good looking.

C. Smith - It's selfie time!

W. Channing - You have to laugh. 

J. Smith - Hello, I'm in the centre of attention. 

Guys, how do I use this? 

Poster Photoshoot Take 2

Second day of the poster photoshoot, with new actors on set embracing their characters and trying to convey their personality to the audience. Aside from single photographs of each character we also captured the whole group together to have a variety of poses to work with in Photoshop.

Phoebe Sola as Harry's love interest Poppy

Will Channing as his reincarnation Harry

Alice Mair and Jenny Dening as the
Americans Megan and Morgan

Sammy testing out the brightness of the lights

The speed-daters

Poster Photoshoot Take 1

As we were unable to organize our whole cast to attend to the poster photoshoot at once we decided to arrange it so that we had two opportunities to take their photographs and so on the first day we captured the majority of the characters we wanted. Aside from candid shots we took of them dancing to music we also took two shots of the boys and group shots.

Carlos (Cameron Smith) practicing his Flamenco dancing

Matthew (Josh Smith) posing as Kevin Spacey in Footloose

The boys are back

Zara (Sammy Ali, the other half behind Dating 101)

Sandy (Adrianna Paniak, myself)

Julia (Hannah Thomas) at her favorite vampire book

Harry with the two of his dating pursuits

Celtx

Celtx is a media pre-production software designed for creating and organising media projects such as screenplays, stageplays, audio plays etc. I've only used it for screenplay writing when we were scripting our film opening in at OCR Media Studies AS and I decided to watch this long but thorough tutorial Introduction to Film Preproduction using Celtx to learn all the tricks which I might have missed the last time. The application provides you with a non-linear approach which makes it very easy to add text later.

Dating 101 Edit 1:30

Here's the first peak at the editing of Dating 101. We still have to work out problems with jump cutting as breaking 30-degree rule wasn't our intention. Also the 180-degree rule for maintaining continuity editing was broken which further disorientated the audience.

Script by Sammy Ali and Adrianna Paniak

While on set we were faced with the complication of our careless decision to do everything ourselves. We split ourselves to be directors, actors and cinematographers which left us unable to do all three efficiently. Up against the wall we decided to remove ourselves from the equation and go back to the drawing board with the option to substitute our characters' lines with the extended appearance of Megan and Morgan however it still left us with plot holes. Determined to fix the problem we created we changed the narrative of speed dating to blind dates (a social engagement between two people who have not previously met, usually arranged by a mutual acquaintance) which turn disastrous when two best friends invite each others' ex-girlfriends as their best friends match turning into it into night of rows and mutual blame. To add to the old story's dynamics we changed the characters' names to start fresh and energized.

Refined Edge in Photoshop

I used Photoshop Refined Edge to help me to improve the quality of selection edges. This was particularly helpful when selecting hair from the background as Photoshop Quick Selection tool couldn't differentiate between the two. The Radius, Contrast, Smooth, Feather and Contract/Expand tools assisted me in improving the edge areas, removing fuzzy artifacts and removing the jagged edges.

How to Use the Refine Edge in Photoshop – Video Tutorial

Codes and Conventions of Short Films

Shot List 2

This is the basic shot list which we prepared for shooting the interior scenes in the Miles Bar.

Call Sheet

A call sheet is a document which provides all the necessary information to each member of the cast and crew. A call sheet contains a list of all the scenes that will be shot that day, which actors will be needed, which set, props or locations will be used and the names of every member of the cast and crew that will be working that day.

Here is an example of a call sheet which we created for Josh Smith, who plays the character of Harry.

Film Props

For the purposes of making the speed-dating look realistic we created a number of ordinary objects which you would find at such an event. We made a register which the boys have to sign at the beginning of the film which typically would be used to forward contact information if there was a much made. Also we had sticky labels where they would write their names on it as well as speed-dating advertising posters and date cards with the chat up lines included.

Registration

Speed Dating Poster

Speed Dating Date Card

Inside the Speed Dating Date Card

Sample Posters

I created three sample posters which I will show to my target audience to decide which one should promote my short film.

 

Original black & white poster

Original colour poster



Alternative poster