The Idea

The story line follows a thirty-something year old man on his quest to achieve his childhood dream of winning enough tickets at different machines at a arcade to be able to win a model car to complete his vintage toy car collection. On his way to fulfill his desire he meets the arcade employee Antonio and a young boy Leo who teach him a life lesson he will never forget.

Behind The Blog

This Media Studies A2 blog is an individual creation of myself, Adrianna Paniak however on this short film I am working in a group of two with Sammy Ali who is the owner of another blog updating on the progress of film making. Aside from the contributing posts  about the progress of producing a short film I will present individuals pieces of research for the ancillary tasks.

Location Scouting

I and Sammy decided that this weekend we will go out on location and do some test shooting to see if we might have any problems on the actual filming days which we can take care of now. Our main shooting location is the interiors of Fun Shine Amusements, which is a family arcade in Margate.

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Test Shoot

This weekend I and Sammy went to the beach to polish our filming skills but because of unfortunate circumstances our day turned to a little nightmare when we found out that we will be unable to film at the place we wanted to because the arcade had some hard experiences with film crews recently, not being able to control their image but we used our brain cells effectively and in the next 30 minutes can with a solution to all our problems. All we were left to do is to talk to our focus group and see if they can be persuaded to accept the new and improved short film idea.

Watch our personal revelations from day on the beach.

Group photo

Sammy documenting our work on her phone

Me, myself and I rewriting the script

Long shot of the upcoming tide

Practicing blured focus of the harbour

Extreme wide shot of the Turner Contemporary Gallery

Sharper focus of the high street

Mood Board

Pictures that inspired the idea for the short film. My mood board shows the variety of images and scenes from films, television shows and books that express my ideas and what I personally enjoy as we are considering a genre for our short film.

Casting

Writing the script we had in mind the outline of the different characters we wanted to have at the speed-dating. The different personalities with the peculiar quirks. Though the characters are imaginary we wrote some qualities around them and so Julia's hobby is inspired by the actress's passion for writing. The number of main male characters developed over the drafting process and the availability of actors informed our character choices and so from one main character we progressed to his sidekicks. We picked Josh to play Harry because he is a very talented actor and we have a past working relationship with him which established us in our opinion that he is suited and available to play the character. We wanted to have a friendly atmosphere on set which is most of our cast know each other and are friends in real life.

Cast Contact List

A cast contact list is the organised way of keeping details of all your actors in one place.

Production Credits

Title: Dating 101

Directed by: Adrianna Paniak in collaboration with Sammy Ali

Written by: Adrianna Paniak in collaboration with Sammy Ali

Edit by: Adrianna Paniak in collaboration with Sammy Ali

Promotional material by: Adriannna Paniak and Sammy Ali

Location: Chatham and Clarendon School Federation

Actors:

Harry: Josh Smith
Matthew: Will Channing
Carlos: Cameron Cullen Smith
Zara: Sammy Ali
Sandy: Adrianna Paniak
Megan: Alice Mair
Morgan: Jenny Dening
Julia: Hannah Thomas
Poppy: Phoebe Sola
Extras: Natalia Renwick, Leena Magid, Alex White

Filming: November 2013

Release: March 2014

Worlde

While looking at a recommended A2 Media Studies blog E.T'S BLOG I learned about Wordle which is a toy for generating ''word clouds'', a visual representation for text data, typically used to depict keyword tags on website or blogs just like this one. Tags are usually single words, and the importance of each tag is shown with font size or color. 

Wordle states that ''you can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and colour schemes. The images you crate with Wordle are your to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.''

Here's an example:

I will use Wordle to present the feedback from our target audience on our script. 

Production House Logo

Trying to come up with a name for our production house and a logo we used the Logo Garden website which makes logo creation easy dividing your area of interest to ''Industry'', ''Symbol'' and ''Color & Type'' categories. It's a 3 step process which takes approximately 8 minutes and allows you to make a professional logo for free.

We wanted our production name to reflect us as a company and so we read this article on GQs website on How To Name Your Hollywood Production Company which talks about going neighbourly and using the street name where you're based making it easy to remember such as Cavendish Street Studio, or if you cater for specific genre then name your company appropriately like Fall In Love Productions which would symbolise romantic films.

But finally we decided to call ourselves Storybook Pictures because we simply want to tell stories and it made sense to follow DreamWorks, Image Entertainment and Relativity Media for a name which had an ominous tone that sound that if our company transcends the medium of film itself and seeks to pursue larger questions about culture and humanity.

Costume

Below is a list of preliminary costume ideas for the characters in our film.

Dating 101 Costume from Adrianna Paniak

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. 

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

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.