Nicole & Pia's POM Advert

https://vimeo.com/40520818

I'm very proud to say I helped in this video, My role included Lighting, and being a general runner (help making lunch, setting up etc)
When I say I did lighting, Elvina who was on Camera and far more experienced than me told me practically where to put the light, as she could see what looked best through the camera, but I had control over the lights and really enjoyed helping with the shoot.
It was a very calming experience.

MDA 1400 Final film, Instagram Advertisement

So, here's our final project of the year.
After the stress, the tears, the laughter, the anger! The bloodshed!
We have finally come out with this comercial, i'm pretty proud to say the least, its one of my favourite pieces of work that I have finished this year. Thats not to say that this was easy to make.
I took the role of Producer which was extremely challenging but also very fun (loved bossing people around).
Layla was Director, working with Layla was enjoyable at first but in time it became clear that we were on different wave lengths, it was neither of our faults but at times it became very stressful as Producer when arguments started.
I arrange for Mayang to be on Camera, as she had a wonderful Canon Camera 500D, we originally wanted Thor to do be cinematographer however the day before he dropped out as he had to film his own project, but lucky we had Mayang as back up.
I had Adam edit the project which was amazing, not sure what we would have done without him, his ideas matched mine perfectly and I absolutely love the outcome. Adam cut up and spliced the song really well so that it matched the style of our ad. It was also his idea to have the the kind of 'mash up' that goes with the music.
I'v learnt a lot about myself as a Producer throughout this project including the fact that I literally just need to chill out sometimes. I get very stressed and angry, which does get things done quite well but does not earn me many friends.

The Art Of The Image

This lesson we looked at how shots we're composed, the effect that the composition may have on the audience.
We looked at the rule of thirds, showing us 'points of interest' here's an example I found.

 "Rear Window"

Here you can see that Grace Kelly is taller and bigger than James Stuart, emasculating him in his wheel chair. 

There is a lot of empty space in the shot but it is countered by the actors as they are lit and much brighter than the empty space. 

Generally viewers read the shot from left to right 

so Grace Kelly is appropriately placed onto the left line. 

You can see that Lisa is exactly on the line as is Jeff following the guide of the rule of thirds. 

Had one or the other been in the exact centre maybe our focus would have been more on Jeff than on Lisa. But as it is like this Lisa has more attention because we can see her face, her emotions, creating dramatic tension, whereas Jeff's face is covered by the binoculars. 

The Composition of shots are important as they

• Direct the viewers attention within the frame e.g when a character looks at something
• Creates Atmosphere/mood e.g in Rear Window Lisa and Jeff are looking and something, and the audience want to know what
• Generates dramatic Tension and meaning. 
• Help to create a unified style for the scene.

We looked at how Horizons are filmed and how some directors such as Andrey Tarkovskiy who would have the earth covering most of the screen with the sky left smaller, having the earth dominate the sky. Other directors such as Sergio Leone who would have the sky dominate the earth. But neither would have the horizon and earth meet in the middle as it looks slightly awkward and wouldn't normally be done unless to say something different or out of the ordinary. 

Brief 4, Storyboards and Treatments!

Storyboard for advert

View more PowerPoint from Lizzy Morey

As you can see, I'm not the worlds best artist.
So I tried to make a collage out of photos. Not sure the idea worked but it will still be useful for us (myself and Leyla) to have the storyboard with us on the day of the shoot.

And here is a photo of our Instagram Mood Board, which was to show our target audience in our presentation on Friday.
It was great making the Mood Board, we got a little carried away, but I think that it shows are target audience, how divers Instagram can be and a little bit about what its functions are.

Review of ads in chosen area

There are over 30 Photography apps for the iphone, Similar to the Instagram is Camera +, Procamera, Hipstamatic and Magic Shutter, they all promote the same things, photo filters to make your photos look more professional. The Recurring visual themes of these ipod apps are; Colorful, they show a lot of photos that were taken with the app and show the features. They also show the price of the app. The Key messages from the adverts were that the aps are easy to use and fun, anybody can use the aps, and quite a large target audience appears to be family’s who share their photos with each other. Some of the language used is quite forceful, “You must buy this app” quite aggressive. Instagram is used not only to take photos but to share them with the Instagram community, most other ads are only on the apple app store, our advert will be a film, 30 seconds long. Instagram is Social networking with Pictures all integrated in one app. That’s what makes our brand unique.

1.	Our Advert: We want people to download the app from the apple app store and tell them that it is completely free.
2.	Our Target Audience: People who own Iphones/Ipod touch’s, who love photography and to share photos with friends and family and the world.
3.	What insight or truth that drives this brief: We want to show our audience what the apps does, its features and how it works.
4.	Why we are advertising: There are 146,000,000 people with Iphones globally and we want to get as many people using the Instagram app as possible.
5.	What media channels? Where will the advertisement be shown? : The Advert will be shown on the web, on side bars of social networks and before youtube videos.
6.	What do you want consumers to do and think in response to the ad: Download the app from the apple store and then use it, meet new people and share their photos.
7.	The single most important point to communicate: That you should download Instagram onto your Ipod Because there are over 15,000,000 users to share photos with.
8.	The style and tone of voice of our ad: Globally used in a fast fun advert that easily communicates with people of all ages.
9.	Brand name: Instagram

Depression Campaign

This project had been my favourite so far, I loved working with Nicole, who directed this project as she was extremely passionate and knew what she was talking about.

We choose to do a Campaign for depressed people so that they know where to find help and to make sure they know they are not alone. 

As you can see the video still needs some work, Their are shamefully a couple of spelling mistakes as well as the timing with the voice over being a little off.
However I am still extremely proud and learnt a lot about photography and how time consuming stop motion is. We took over 1,200 photographs over two days of 8 hours shooting.
I'v learnt that it would be best to have a professional photographer with us and also somebody separate as a hand model so that we wouldn't have to duplicate rolls.
Despite this I think the message of our film pulled through and the response from our class mates were extremely positive.

Depression Campaign, The shoot

Some photos for our shoot;

As you can see we used two pampa snaps for the lighting and it took us a while to set up the lights.
We had problems with the glare and light reflection on the white board we used and so it took our a couple of hours to get the lights perfect.
The Camera we used was a X-S1 Fuji film, we tried several cameras but in the end the Fuji film gave us the best picture as the background came out whiter which was the look we were going for.

This is the Storyboard Nicole spent hours on, we had a couple of different story ideas, but in the end we split our idea in two and decided to make the campaign shorter as we thought it would be more effective. 

We also decided that our main message for the film would be to "seek help".

We changed a couple of shots around as you will see in the final film, but apart from that we stuck to the storyboard. 

Scream

Scream is a prime example of postmodernism, it has intertextuality it has homage, it refers to itself and no matter how corny you think it is its still pretty brilliant postmodern wise.
The horror movie 'rules' are particularly amusing postmodernism wise,
Randy: There are certain RULES that one must abide by in order to successfully survive a horror movie. For instance, number one: you can never have sex. 
[crowd boos] 
Randy: BIG NO NO! BIG NO NO! Sex equals death, okay? Number two: you can never drink or do drugs. 
[crowd cheers and raises their bottles] 
Randy: The sin factor! It's a sin. It's an extension of number one. And number three: never, ever, ever under any circumstances say, "I'll be right back." Because you won't be back. 
Stu: I'm gettin' another beer, you want one? 
Randy: Yeah, sure. 
Stu: I'll be right back. 
[crowd cheers] 
Randy: See, you push the laws and you end up dead. Okay, I'll see you in the kitchen with a knife. 


This script refers directly to the audience, Scream is telling us that it knows that it is a horror movie, but that it can still be scary with a "LOOK BEHIND YOU" audience participation. 


And then we have Scary Movie... a film making fun of a film thats making fun of film? 

Postmodernism

Postmodernism is awesome, but extremely hard for me to define, mainly because the more you think about postmodernism the more postmodern everything seems to become.
Its easier to break down postmodernism into elements;

• Bricolage
• Parody
• Pastiche
• Homage
• Semiotic
• Intertextuality
• Realism
• Identity
• Economics

And many more words can be used to describe postmodernism.
Its easy to find Postmodernism in film (not just because our teachers choose Scream for us to watch on Monday) but also because quite often in postmodern films there are so many references and chances for the audience to pick up on postmodernism, such as most of Quentin Tarantino's films. You can tell by his movies that he was heavenly influenced by Italian director Sergio Leone, the music Tarantino uses and even the shot types, his long takes and wide shots, but why is this postmodern? When I watch Tarantino's films I think of Leone, I'm reminded that the film is a film and a homage at that.
In our lecture we looked at a scene from Pulp Fiction, the famous dance scene, where Travolta and Thurman dance. It was interesting to see that even though unintentionally Tarantino hadn't cast Travolta thinking that people would reference him back to one of his most recognisable character from Saturday night fever. Even though Tarantino had not put the message there the audience were still making what they will of it. What I think is even more postmodern is that now a days people dress up as Mia and Vincent so much that when I got around to watching the film (it came out when I was two) I thought that the characters in the film were dressed up in fancy dress, like in other films I had seen, taking an entirely different meaning from the scene.
Another way we could reference the scene was from Godard's 'Bande a parte' which is probably the most likely reference from Tarantino, especially as the name of his production company is called A Band Apart.
I was going to link the dance on here however every version I find on youtube has had music added to it, it seems like the dance scene has become a meme in the internet world.

We looked a little at Roland Barthes in class and his book "Death of the Author" and his theory that the meaning and messages are all picked up by an audience and that nothing is controlled by the author.

I'll leave you with "copy shop" as I can't get the "Bande a Parte" dance!

Script (for Brief 3)

1. University campaign


Narrator

"Do you suffer from; Restlessness,inability to sleep, Helplessness, tearfulness, mood swings, Anxiety, Worthlessness, Lack of Energy, emptiness, loss of interest
or even, Consumed by a black cloud

This could be caused by;

Leaving friends and family, Living with strangers, coping with work loads, Stress, meeting new people, unhealthy eating
Lifestyle Change, Lack of exercise

If this is you, you might have depression and are not alone.

15% of students suffer from depression and that mean 900,000 thousand of you, Yes you, but there are things you can do.

You can help yourself.

You can exercise, You can eat a balanced diet, You can see a counselor, You can talk to someone, You can join a support group, You can think positive, You can seek help. Don't suffer in silence."

This is the first draft for our Script, it needs a lot of work, there are not many examples of depression campaigns out there so we (Nicole and I) have been struggling to find something to base ours on to match.

Perhaps this is a good thing as it means our campaign will be completely unique and AWESOME. 

Treatment

Assignment 3 – Campaign Film Pre-Production Template

Producer: Lizzy Morey		Director: Nicole Michaelides
Synopsis: Students suffering from depression at a university (represented by fingers) learn what the symptoms are and how to deal with it.
Treatment:
Key aims - what do you want your work to do?	We want to advertise university counseling services to students who may be depressed so that their time at university is more enjoyable and easy to cope with, Create awareness, Change behavior, Motivate people to act.
Key messages what do you want your work to say?	We want our film to tell students that its okay to be depressed and that they are not alone That depression can be dealt with and that its nothing to be embarrass about Students can help each other with depression, its not something to keep in the dark, its something you can talk about.
Audience - who are they? Where are they? Why should they watch your programme?	This film is directly aimed towards university students, students with or without depression, to learn how to recognize and cope with symptoms that they or someone they know may be experiencing.
Style - how will your work look and feel? What stylistic devices will you use?	Our campaign will be a stop motion using pictures of fingers with faces painted onto them. The faces on the fingers will change (according to their emotion) and also the backdrop.
Distribution -how, when and where will your audience see your programme?	This will be distributed on the Middlesex University counseling page and on youtube.com We aim to promote our videos ultimately on all university websites.

Schedule: Saturday – Buy all Equipment, White bored, eye liner, pens, tripod, lights Monday – 12.30pm – 5pm set up room, lights, camera, tripod, white bored. Tuesday – 9.00am Prepare hand models,                  10.00am First scene with single Finger                  11.00am Single Finger with addition of Restless, Inability of sleep, helplessness etc                  1.00pm Lunch                  1.30pm Second scene, Caused by scene                  2.30pm Single finger                  3.30pm You can scenes                  5.00pm Finnish. Clear up. Wednesday – Time to re film if needed, if not start edit 10am, record Narration Thursday – Editing from 10.00am – 11.00am 12.30pm – 2.00pm                    4.30pm – 9.00pm Friday – Time for more editing if needed

List of crew: Nicole Michaelides - Director Elena Magee – Animator/ Photographer Lizzy Morey – Producer Aaron Willet Purchase – Hand Model Becci Lee – Hand Model Alex Crowley – Hand Model Narrator

It's my first time as working as Producer and its been very exciting, I had to prepare a treatment for the first time and it was hard to know what and what not to put onto the treatment.
There are still some things missing from our treatment for instance the narrator. I really hope we find a narrator soon, Im sure we will.
Working with Nicole has been really good so far and pre production has been fairly easy, we're pretty lucking in this project because we have two animators helping us on the day of the shoot and even in the editing stage, that is if nothing goes wrong (which inevitably it will).

Ballet Mecanique (1924)

I decided that just the first 8 minuets will be enough to give you the general gist of this film.
After watching this, and during watching this, I felt extremely sick, I thought I was going to BE sick, much like the rest of my class. It was extremely hard to watch, I wanted to look away but I didn't want to miss anything, incase there was something to pick up on to make some sort of plot.
There was nothing.
I picked up that maybe the film was set in a circus. Towards the end especially we are given a couple of wide shots that could make out the whole of an object instead of just shapes.

Before showing the film we talked a lot about Cubism, we looked at paintings by Picasso and Braques, but I found more sense in their paintings than any of this film.

We looked at Features of Modernism

• Takes Contemporary life as a theme, technology, city life, personal identity
• Challenges traditional 'realistic' art which is not really 'real'
• Often critical of mass entertainment.

I can pick up these features in the paintings, in cubism but for me Ballet Mecanique is just to abstract for me and I couldn't focus or pick up anything relevant to... anything. 

Brief 2, Observational Documentary

I really loved the idea of this project and in researching watched Molly Dineens film about Angel tube station.
However I found it extremely difficult finding something that the world had not seen before and trying to fit that 'something' into a two minuet film.
For this project I worked as Director with Kohei as Producer.
I started off with two ideas, one was to film Ariel and Monte doing their film of an observational documentary, but after watching the rushes from that day I realise it wasn't really working and that I needed to find something or somebody, a subject that I really cared about.
So I choose to film my friends, not an original idea, but people that I knew would be comfortable with me filming them and to act natural. (although its debatable whether running around in your pants is natural)



I really enjoyed making this film and hope that others can learn something from it, about student life. On showing the film to fellow film students they all commented how they wished they lived in halls and how halls life here looks exciting and different, which I believe it is. So I felt really good about the film and about making a difference to peoples opinions on halls life, especially on Writtle house which is classed as 'the quieter' of the halls on the Middlesex website.
Im thinking about making another observational documentary this time about my younger brother James who is 5. I may do an experiment and give him a camera to see what he films, and if he can make something better than I can by capturing something that adults ignore.

Titles

Today was the first of our post production editing workshops with John Cox, it was a lot of fun and I feel i'v learnt a lot even within the first hour.
We looked at Artofthetitle.com and examples of professional titles from oscar winning title designers such as Saul Bass (I didn't even realise there were oscars for title designers)
But it showed how important titles were to a film, they are the gateway to the film, the very first thing that the audience see so its incredibly important to get titles down to perfection.
Crap titles tell the audience its going to be a crap film.
We worked on two different types of software, Final cut pro and Adobe premier pro.
Things I need to remember for Final Cut;

• Effects button (top next to file etc)
• Titles button (right hand screen under viewer)
• Filters such as Bloom, Alpha and invert, Invert gave a really cool effect, like the titles for skins or E4 channel programs. 
• Needing to render film after putting titles on
• Stop Motion Buttons

From the things John showed us in the lesson its going to be easy to experiment with, we can make our own titles from the little things he showed us, the Motion buttons for instance make it very easy for us to make all kinds of titles and move them around the screen easily, whether we want them coming in from the left, the right, or whatever we want them to do.

Its far simpler than when Bass had to create his titles. His were hand crafted, so really we have no excuse for rubbish titles anymore. 

In future projects I hope to make titles such as this;

These titles have been very inspirational to me, in Juno they have been hand crafted, each frame drawn, but the same effect can be achieved on adobe premier pro.
Hopefully we will see much better titles after this week!

Un Chien Andalou 1928

In France during the 1920's there were two film movements; Surrealism and impressionism. Un Chien Andalou is a prime example of Surrealist film, directed by Luis Bunuel and heavily influenced by Salvador Dali its no wonder this film is the way it is. 

Un Chien Andalou is a film that reflects on dreams and the subconscious, dreams show us what we are really thinking and the protagonist in Un Chien Andalou (either the girl or the main man, I have not decided yet) shows us their thoughts, worries and deepest thoughts/desires and then Bunuel exposes them on screen. 

Moments which particularly stand out to me and probably the majority of audiences are the eye slitting scene, this scene builds up, we see the male sharpening the knife and then cutting his finger, we wonder what he'll do, we have a shot of the moon which then matches the shot of the woman's eye, a close up of the cut, its all extremely shocking, in class there were gasps and sounds of disgust. We talked about what this symbolises, does it symbolise the woman cutting into herself, her inner self, cutting into her subconscious, a title card says 8 years later, but her eye is fine, are we now in her dream? The film is completely up for interpretation, maybe the knife symbolises something else, her worst nightmare perhaps, or something she is remembering. Its interesting to see her staying so calm, not struggling, she doesn't even blink. I love how when watching the film everybody in the audience is asking the same questions, mainly, What is going on here?!

The other scene of interest is the man who pulls the pianos, not just pianos but what looks like the 10 commandments written on stone and two religious men followed by 2 dead horses! Again all these things are up for interpretation, he's pulling them over to the women he wishes to sleep with (we assume after he has groped her) maybe the things are pullings against him, say religion is telling him not to rape this woman, and the pianos symbolise his class, would a middle-class man rape a women. Alternatively it could be interpreted that he has worked his whole life, the horses are dead, he should be allowed to be with the woman. The religion could be saying that he has a right to the women, as in the bible/ other religious texts a woman is the property of man, and its her duty to sleep with him. 

 The mans hands, ants coming out of them means his desire to kill, I found a quote on IMDB.com 

"The French phrase "ants in the palms," (which means that someone is "itching" to kill) is shown literally." 

After watching the film the 'ants in the palms' gives the film another interpretation, does the man want to kill the woman? 

Is the film even about the man at all, or more about the woman choosing between two guys? The films editing comes to mind when reviewing the scene where the woman sticks her tongue out at the man and leaves him on the second story room to go to the beach. She's now with a new man, only to end up dead by spring. We are left here with the classic 'fin' ending, shocked.

I started thinking about my own dreams and what happens in my dreams, in dreams we accept what is going on, no matter how bazar and go along with it. Bunuel expects us to do the same and after a couple more viewing perhaps we will. 

Un Chien Andalou (even the title doesn't make sense) 1928

Space

I worked with Martins Galenieks this week to producer our 'Space' themed film, we didn't really specify who was Producer or Director, however I generally took the role of Produce. 

We had a couple of aims for the film, one was to show how the space transformed when the Buddhists prepared it for meditation, another was how the community centre itself changed, we also had a more spiritual meaning, that of the Buddhists themselves, the way their 'space of mind' changed when they were in their sacred space.
To have so many different messages flying around in our heads whilst making this film confused the film a little, in class people found it difficult to find the exact message we were sending. And after Eddy asked if people would of know that the film had a space theme without knowing that it had a space film, made it clear that we hadn't really passed the task.
However we did get some good comments about the camera work (although if you look carefully the camera is pretty tilted).
I did enjoy making the project although having to get up at 4.30am on a wednesday morning wasn't the highlight of the year, but I did learn that their defiantly needs to be a prominent director and producer unless we want a messy film with mixed messages.
It was also fun working with a Editor from TVP who knew exactly how to use final cut pro without having to ask the teccy's to help us with every little detail.
Overall i'm pretty happy with our space project as well as learning a lot about Buddhism.

Very much looking forward to our documentary project for this week and hoping that a little bit of snow isn't going to mean uni's closed!!!

Close Up

"Filmed version of a real story"

"to create reality in front of camera and pull the truth out of it"

Abbas Kiarostami 

Close up made in 1990 directed by Abbas Kiarostami is a filmed version of real events, its a mixture of real documentary and reenactments following the events before, during and after the trial of Hossain Sabzian who had convinced a well off family in Tehran that he was famous director Mohsen Makmalbaf.

One of the most interesting things about this film is the casting, Kiarostami managed to get the whole Tehran family to play themselves even though in the film and probably in real life, they were made out to be quite foolish. Throughout the film the father claims that he knows the truth, but keeps it from the children to 'test' them. But how true this is we will never know. 

Its quite hard to know how much of any of this film is completely honest as even during the trial cameras were rolling and questions were being asked from behind the camera, and people change when they are in front of the camera. Hossain talks a lot about acting and who he wants to be in the trial, it makes it even stranger that he then goes on to act in the film. 

 Throughout the film we never really find out Hossain's intentions, but maybe thats because he didn't know what his intentions were, all he wanted was to make a film, which at the end, he did, if it wasn't for him this film wouldn't have been made. 

"A story like this doesn't come along every day"

One of the films first lines and its true, when a story like this comes along, its only natural to want to share the story or make a film about it. 

Term 2 - Art Cinema 1

Why do we move the camera?

We've looked a lot at Andrey Tarkovskiy and how he uses single shots and still cameras and what effect it has on his audience. 

In last weeks lesson we looked at Hitchcock and how he used the camera in Vertigo, we watched the scene  where Scottie follows Madeline (for about the 50th time) and looked closely at how Hitchcock moved the camera to show the audience exactly what he wanted to be seen. He uses two different methods to show the audience two different things, first he shows us what Scottie is looking at, Madeline's flowers followed by the painting of the flowers, to do this he tilts the camera up and pans in, next he shows us Madeline's hair followed once again by the painting of the hair, this time zooming in to the painting from over Madeline's shoulder. These two methods are extremely similar but to the audience they mean different things, The first we think that Scottie looks up (as the camera tilts) and the camera pans in to give the audience a closer look, the second time is almost as if Scottie steps towards Madeline, gets close to her, a voyeuristic technique which Hitchcock is famous for. These camera movements are ones that we have grown used to watching, they make sense to us, we know what the camera is trying to tell us along with the editing. 

This week we looked at the film Breathless. Here again the camera is used in a different way, the use of Jump cuts at first can make us feel a little disorientated but here it makes the film an arty 'french new wave' film. An experiment (a successful one). 

The film edits between the conversation of the two main characters however the camera stays in the same place so its as if the background is just randomly changing. For me this style is very different from what I'm used to watching but its extremely interesting,  I would love to use this in my projects as a kind of experiment but with all these methods they can all go terribly wrong. 

Hitchcock made a film called 'rope' which was all filmed in one shot, he himself said he didn't like it and that it was mearly an experiment. So if Hitchcock was experimenting in film then I should defiantly give it a shot. 

Another example of a one shot scene from Breathless (1959)

New Module

In our new module we have all been mixed up so we have all got different people to work with, its going to be good working with different people and having new experiences filming with them.

We talked about what film meant to us and that film can be anything, not just something from the cinema.

Some examples of what film meant to us from class;

"Telling a Story" "Sending a message" "video + Sound" "perception" "interpretation" "Expressing emotions"

We discussed how even an advert or campaign can mean the same things as 'film' does to us. 

Why are we taking film, why didn't we choose 'video' production. We thought about what the difference is between film and video and if there is any difference at all. 

It was an interesting lesson that made me think about why I had chosen film, I love films and making films, but I'm still thinking about what I want from films, I could make anything from adverts to silly youtube videos. I know I don't want to work in Hollywood, but do I need to make feature films even in the uk, especially when there is so much more going on in the film world. 

I'm really looking forward to this new Module as we have a lot more freedom, working in groups of two will mean we can put more of ourselves in our videos and get a lot more artistic, we can experiment, even make animations of just use photos. 

Can't wait to get started with our first project; 'Space'

Brief 6, The Gift

For this project we mixed roles a couple of times but it ended up being; Claire as Director, Sofiane as Camera operator, Adam as lights and editor, myself as sound/props/ story boarder and Francisco as Producer.



This was by far the most challenging project due to a series of unfortunate events.
We hired an actress who didn't show up on the day of shooting,
Francisco our producer disappeared for a month of pre production,
and Sofiane our original director dropped out due to creative differences,

However I'm glade these things happened as now we know what we really need to do to make a successful things. There are many faults with the films, under confident actresses and a couple of dodgy edits, even out of tune music, but now we know the mistakes we have made we can learn from them.
Specific things I have learnt are how to export the movie properly (it seems obvious that if we filmed in frame rate 25 we need to export it so) but I'm still getting use to the mac system and final cut pro.
I learnt that even if the camera operator says the boom isn't it shot, sometimes it still is.
Another thing I learnt from this project is that if you have a problem about anybody you absolutely have to tell them about it other wise the project can be jeopardise.
Sound again was an issue, there is a buzzing sort of sound when the actors or music isn't play and we spend a long time whilst filming trying to sort it out and in the editing suit but in the end had to leave it, theres a DMW blog that we can follow now which has some tutorials so hopefully by our next project we will get the sound to a good standard.

Overall I'm quite proud of this project, I think that we got the message across quite well, but the last scene of the film is a little off due to a lack of shots and dodgy camera work. But I know that me and my fellow crew worked really hard especially on the shooting day and a lot of team work and friendship came out o this project.

Macbeth Retelling

Macbeth:

On a calm early morning, three women unlock the school gates for Cawdor elementary school. As they walked into the school kitchens the women discussed the fate of Macbeth, They suspected they would be seeing him by the end of the day. The dinner lady’s laughed and chucked the turkey twizzles into the ovens.
As deputy headmaster of Cawdor School, George Macbeth always though of himself as an academic man, someone whom others could look up to. His wife, Lauren Macbeth thought he should aim rather higher, why stop at deputy when he was so close to the top, after all, it was Macbeth who had suggested all the changes around here.
George arrived at school early as usual with his best friend Ben,
Duncan was late as usual, he would normally let Macbeth come in first and set up. No need to get his hands dirty before any parents arrived. Banquo arrives with Macbeth and together they go about replying to emails and getting various paperwork done.
By the time Duncan arrives at school most of the hard work is done and the teachers settle for lunch. Macbeth and Ben are the last to be served, and are sent into the kitchens to get their food. Three women stand before them, telling George and Banquo their future in a game show style way, Macbeth will become Head Teacher of Cawdor and Ben’s children and his children’s children will be forever successful.
George tells his wife about what the dinner lady’s had said and immediately she hatches a plan to murder Duncan after the school fate the next evening.
George manages to kill Duncan by stabbing him in the neck with a metal ruler. He leaves Duncan’s remains in a classroom and plants the ruler in some teaching assistant’s car.
Carl Macduff, one of the school governors discovers Duncan’s body and soon starts to suspect George.
Lauren starts to go mad, washing her hands repeatedly, she cry’s at night, George doesn’t see this, he only sees his own pain, Carl notice’s George is not himself and as George gets more and more suspicious he begins to argue with Ben eventually thinking that even his best friend is out to get him. He realizes that if he is going to succeed as head teacher he must kill Ben.
A school disco is organized in honor of Duncan, The children all attend and the money goes to a local charity in his memory, one of which is Bens oldest Son, Danny. Macbeth has it arranged that the father and son will be murder on the way home by the same two teaching assistants, Macbeth tells them that if they do not murder Ben and his son then he will turn them into the police for Duncan’s murder. On this same night Lauren driven mad by the children she sees at school, to her they look covered in blood, jumps off the top of the school.
Driven my madness over this Macbeth says he can see children moving towards him, he begins yelling and screaming, tormented by what he has done, Carl find him in the school kitchen looking for the 3 dinner lady’s, wanting to know what happens next in his miserable life. On hearing George’s confession, Carl stabs George in the neck with a meat knife. The police arrive.
The film ends with Bens wife finding out her unborn child is boy.

Brief 5, Recreation of a scene

This weeks group; Adam, Francisco, Mayang and myself, I was lighting and Camera in this project and I loved it.



For this project we chose a scene from the film, London to Brighton, one of my favourite british films, we chose it because it was real and gritty, and we had the room for it. The scene in the real film is set in a kitchen, but we managed to turn my student bedroom into quite a good replica. Also seeing as most of the shots are extremely close up the audiences attention is barley on the background at all.
Something which really let us down in this project was the lack of a good actor (no offence Thor, we thank you) However in the real version the actor is clearly a real Londoner, a lot older and frankly a good actor.
We had such an actor set up all ready for a shoot on tuesday, unfortunately on that day university decided to break down and we couldn't get equipment, we still had our other actors and decided we would have to change shoot but we lost our lead actor.
Other than that we tried hard on props and costumes and did quite well, getting the cans and bottles and dressing Mundeer in an almost matching costume as in the real film. Luckily the two guys in the other room were topless so they were easy to dress.
Problems we had when showing the film were sound, however the sound is fine on this version and when we edited, so once again we had problems showing in class, looks like we didn't learn from our interview exercise however I'm pretty sure this can't happen again.
I really enjoyed being camera operator for this project as there is a lot of movement that I had to be careful to follow, but because we were in such a tight space it was hard for the director to come and check the frame before shooting.
Lighting as well was good, but as you can see not quite spot on, there are bits where Arielle's face is almost completely shadowed,  which never happens in the actual film.
This project has made me very excited about making films which are entirely our own, our own story, script, it would make us all feel like we have achieved something on our own.