Filming plans put on hold - Mae Webb

• We had planned to film on Monday 28th October - however due to the weather of St Jude's Storm we were unable to do this.
  
• We had planned to film the shots at the graveyard that day, but we felt that it would be too dangerous to film outside with the weather being bad as there are many trees around which could have fallen and we did not want to put ourselves or our actors at risk, therefore we made the decision not to film on this day.
• We also thought that the wind and rain would have made it a very difficult task to get the shots we wanted and our equipment could have easily been broken.

• We were also unable to do this as the trains were not running on this day and that was our mode of transport to get to where we were filming as we all live in different places.

Planning our filming for Half Term - Mae and Imo

Testing the tears - Mae Webb

Continuing on from Candice's post on 'How to fake cry':

Here is a video we filmed of me applying the water to Phoebe's face using the syringe that Imo brought to create the effect that she is crying. It took a couple of tries to make it look the way we wanted but we got it right in the end and we hope it will look effective in the film. 

Costume - Mae and Candice

Mae as the Solicitor

• We had to make a few adjustments to our interview scene as Paula (who we had planned to be the solicitor in our short film) was unable to make it. However, we felt if we used the right costume we could use one of us as an actor instead. Mae was perfect for this role as she does theatre studies for one of her subjects.
• We dressed her in formal clothing with a blouse, blazer, knee high skirt, tights and formal shoes- not forgetting the small touch of the broach on her blouse. Her hair we chose to tie back and removed her nose piercing to give the solicitor a formal and classy look. The glasses and the red lipstick as an added touch to add a few years onto her age.
• As Mae had used this costume for a recent performance we knew it would work well and would be rather effective for creating the idea of Mae being older than she is.
  
  
  Phoebe's costume when she's released
  
  
  
  • We thought carefully about the costume Phoebe would be wearing as we realized that after being released from custody she would change back into the clothes she was arrested in.
    
  • Therefore we wanted to have her in all black to mirror her dark and twisted character and represent the underlying darkness that is revealed to the audience, the all black also makes her appear more evil.
  • We also wanted a rucksack that she would have put all of her belongings in.
  • We kept her hair tied up the same as the shots in the interview room to show that it is the same day and she has not been able to do her hair differently.
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    Megan's costume to show time passing
    
    
    •  We have a sequence of shots where it shows Louise opening her book several times over a period of time and finding bullying notes. We used her costume to show this time passing as it shows her on different days. We have also thought about seasons changing as in one shot she is wearing her coat showing it is colder.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

Police Station shots- Candice Mae Charlotte and Imo

• This is before we started our filming at the police station. It was the perfect setting and the weather created an atmosphere for our filming that will work nicely when the rest of our film is put together.

• We did a risk assessment to make sure we were aware of the risks around us and so we could avoid them.

• We practised our tracking shots to find the best way of doing this without having bumpy footage. We worked out the best way of doing this is to use a tripod and walk backwards than to hold the camera with our hands. We couldn't use a dolly as the ground was too rough and full of acorns and leafs.

Filming Our Interview Shots- Candice and Mae

•  We have filmed a number of interview shots already. Still a few more to go but so far so good.

 

• We had to make sure we were positioning the lights correctly to form the atmosphere we wanted for our short film. We also had to make sure the lighting was the same in every shot.

• We are using two graphic matches in our short film and in order to do this to make our lives easier we have drawn a template to make sure the two linking shots fit nicely together creating an effective graphic match. The difficulties we had doing this was the that the camera was touch screen making it difficult to trace a template. However, we overcame this and managed to make a suitable template.

• Shown above is a snippet of our 5 minute short film in the interview room. In this shot we are panning left to give our film a number of different shots, we also wanted to give variety to our filming instead of having lots of still shots which is less interesting to the audience.

• This image shows the camera during the process of our pan shot.

• Mae having a bit of fun out of character.



The 5 Key Concepts for our film- All Of Us

Representation - Mae Webb

Social class - We have represented social class in our film jealous, steals jewellary
Gender - bitchiness
Stereotypes - female antagonist, also female victim. Females being bitchy


Narrative - Imogen Salmon

• We used a hybrid of both a circular and multi-strand plot line, this was in order to entice the audience into watching the whole short film, in order for it to make sense.

• The circular plot resulted in the opening graveyard scene appearing as the final scene also, this suggested these shots were at the present time and the scenes to follow were of the past which led to this event at the graveyard. The reasoning behind this was that in the final scene, more was discovered, as after becoming more aware about the character Rebecca, throughout the short film, the audience discover she is in fact watching the grieving mother at the graveyard the whole time, positioned behind a tree.

  

  Opening scene

  

  Final scene

• The multi-strand element to the plot is the two scenes of flashbacks of the friendship of the two girls, against the interview scene. The flashbacks worked parallel against the plot of the interview scenes, this was in order to represent how their relationship was different in real-life (in the flashbacks) to how it was being described as in the interview, showing the depth of Rebecca's lies. 

• The narrative was unrestricted, as the audience remained omniscient throughout, knowing more than the characters (e.g. the interviewer believed the lies). 

•  Plot vs. Story (Bordwell & Thompson) -

The story was that the character Rebecca had been accused and also held for her friend Louise's death, Lousie's mother had accused her, resulting in Rebecca being held for something she persists she didn't do. 

The plot only showed the interview resulting in Rebecca's release, the character leaving the premises, the bullying scenes leading up to the murder, and the murder itself.

• Todorov- the short film followed the stages of this theorist primarily, but it was disorganised with the stage of confrontation occurring before the disruption instead, also the resolution was a resolution to the character Rebecca, although it was not the justice deserved and resulted in a criminal being freed, so could be interpreted as further disruption.

Equilibrium- Grieving mother at graveyard

Confrontation- Rebecca being questioned/interviewed on the events leading up to her friends death

Disruption- Rebecca being shown to be the cause of Louise's death

Resolution- Rebecca being released

New equilibrium- Mother at graveyard in fact joined by Rebecca as if she is out to kill again???

 

• Propp- False Witness didn't follow the typical character conventions of propp, other than having a villain who was clearly Rebecca.

• Levi Strauss- the conflicts which occured were good vs.evil, the police and innocent victim of Lousie were 'good', although the police unknowingly released a criminal, whereas Rebecca the murderer was 'bad'.
  

Audience - Candice Tyson

• The target audience we have chosen for our film 'False Witness' is very similar to the audience we targeted last year as we felt this was particularly successful. We have chosen to target female teenage girls and have done this by using female teenage actors in our film. We feel that by using these actors, other teenage girls will be able to relate and put themselves into the shoes of the characters in the film. 
• The other aspect that was quite important when targeting our audience was age. The actors we have used in our film are 17. We used these actors so that girls of this age can relate to the characters and the issue raised within the film(bullying). 
• In the film jealousy is a big issue for the one character Becca and leads to the extreme outcome of murdering her best friend Louise. As the film presents the jealousy in an extreme way we felt the topic of murder should target older teens rather than a younger generation as this is something that could possibly shock a younger generation and could be a topic they don't understand.We felt females 15+ would be a perfect target audience for our film as people this age and above will be mature enough to understand the topic and take the matter of bullying seriously.

 Genre- Charlotte Hudson  

• Like last year, we made our film a thriller genre. However this year we made ours more hybrid as we merged the crime genre as well.
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Mixing work with fun

Here are some pictures we took on the mac whilst waiting for our footage to be converted on the Aimersoft Video Converter (it took a while as there was a lot of footage!!) We felt that after a long day of filming we deserved to have some fun with the webcam effects.

What went well during our interview filming:

• Lighting worked well and we thought it was very effective
• The location also went well as the room was free and gave us enough room to film effectively
• The time schedule, and the filming times- we've made sure we've got enough footage
• The acting and actor- without Mae we wouldn't have had another actress for these scenes and therefore we made a good quick decision so we weren't affected massively

What went wrong:

• Paula wasn't able to act, so we had to get Mae to act at the last minute
• The table prop- it was wider that we thought and therefore caused an issue because we had to place the camera at a different angle and work round the table
• Sound- we found that the diegetic sound was quite quiet and we had to repeat many shots because of the sound- hopefully we will be able to enhance the sound during editing

Here are some pictures of the footage converting, we were waiting for this whilst taking the pictures:

How to Fake Cry- Candice Tyson

• In the graveyard shot at the beginning of our short film we are planning to use a close-up to show the emotion on the Mother's face as she mourns at her daughters grave. We want to show her crying so I have researched 'how to fake cry' to see what I can find that will make the crying believable to the audience.

While searching the internet I found this method of using eye drops that I feel would be perfect to use in our short film to show our actor crying. Another thought was that if we couldn't access eye drops then maybe using slightly salty water and a syringe could do the same trick.



Planning of the interview shots- Candice Imo Charlotte and Mae

• We've had to plan our interview shots very carefully as some shots include both our actors and we are sometimes unable to get the actors in at the same time to film these particular shots.
• To make our lives easier we have made a table of what shots will involve both actors so we can plan and work around our actors so that we can get these shots done.
• We also made a list of all the equipment/props/costume we will need on the day

First Day of Filming- Candice Mae Charlotte and Imo

• Our first day of filming was successful, we used our actress that is acting as Louise (the protagonist) to film the shots of her receiving the number of bullying notes over a period of time.
  
  What went well:
• We felt that the actor we chose really fits the part of 'Louise' and she played the character convincingly and listened to our direction well. 
• We were able to use a classroom that was empty to make things easier for us, we will then add foleys of other people talking in a lesson to show that she is not by herself in the classroom.
• All of the shots that we wanted worked and we did not have to change the shots to make it work, which means we can get the effect that we want of time passing when we're editing.
  
  What we could've improved on:
• We weren't very organised as we had not got the setting ready before our actor came so she had to wait around for a while which wasted time, we also hadn't made the props of the notes that she had to find in her book which we then had to make so it wasted more time and we weren't as efficient as we should have been.
• We did not think very much about lighting and used mostly natural lighting, luckily this worked and the shot is well lit but this could have caused a major problem for us when we looked over the footage as we do not have time to redo these shots. 

Lighting decisions for the interview room setting

Permission to film at my house- Charlotte Hudson

I asked my parents if it was okay for us to film whilst they are away next week. We thought this was the best time to film as there will be less people around the house and therefore less risks involving more people. As well as these reasons, we wont be getting in everyone's way whilst they are trying to get on with their everyday lives around the house. 

My parents are happy for us to film whilst they are away!

Permission to film at the grave yard/church- Charlotte Hudson

As I know the vicar's son, I was able to easily speak to the vicar (through his son) and was able to get permission off the vicar. I am also going round his house to double check that it is all good to film at the church and to also say thank you in person!
He asked different questions, and it's a good thing we didn't pick the idea and genre of 'Halloween' as we wouldn't have been able to film there.

Permission for Interview room

Risk Assessment of Interview Room Setting- All

Unfortunately we couldn't access the interview room today, so we filmed outside it after writing down the risks which we were already aware of after viewing the room previously.

We will make sure all our actors are fully aware of these risks to ensure their safety throughout the filming process. 

Organising our actors - Mae Webb

The message I sent to our two teenage actors

•  I sent a message on Facebook to our two actors playing the characters of Becca (Phoebe) and Louise (Megan) asking them about their availability during the week, weekends and half term where they would be free to for us to film. 
• We decided to ask these two girls as they are both Theatre Studies students here in the college and are both in my class so we know that they would be make our film convincing as they are actors and they are also easy to get in contact with as they are at this college. 
• I also felt that from seeing them both acting in my class they would both be able to fit the characters in our film and perform well. 
• From this we can now organise times that both of them are free to begin filming for our short film. We will make a timetable for when we are going to film and send this to both of them along with the script so that they will be ready  in advance to start filming to speed the process along.

The message I sent to my theatre teacher (Paula Watkins)

The reply from Paula

This shows that they are both free Monday mornings, Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons, Thursday 3rd period and Friday mornings.

• I spoke to my Theatre teacher here at college about whether she would act in our film as the Solicitor as we wanted to make it convincing by having an adult play this part.
• I feel that also being an actor herself we would easily be able to direct her and she would play the part very convincingly. 
• Thankfully, as we would be filming her scenes in college in the interview room she said she would help us out by acting in it.
• I needed to find out when she was free in order to plan a time we could film.
• I sent her an email asking for the times when she would be available, and it seems that mornings will be the best time for us to free as our actors all seem to be free more in the mornings.

Permission from the Police Station Setting For Our Short Film- Candice, Imo and Charlotte

• One of the settings we needed for our short film was the outside of a police station to show the audience where our interview scenes are taking place.
• The lady at the police station said she was happy with us filming as long as we don't disturb them or any members of the public.
• We also picked up some leaflets as a prop for our interview scene to make the room a believable prison interview room.

Mise en scene - Imogen Salmon

Props

• Church setting

Bunch of flowers
Note 'Miss you, Mum x'  
Syringe with water- to create realistic tears of mother

• Counseling room 

Notepad & pen
Desk and seats
Police leaflets and posters for noticeboard
   

• Louise's House 

Top (to be stained) 
Red wine
Blood substitue (ketchup/bbq sauce mix)
Jewellery box, jewellery
Bag 

• College

 Threat letters x5

• Bus shelter 

Vodka bottle

• Police Station

Rucksack  



 
Costume   

• Louise

 5x change of clothing for college scene  3x change for house scene

• Becca 

all in grey (hoody and trackies)
Normal outfits (Police location, at louise's etc) 

• Mother

1x all in black grieving outfit

• Counsellor 

1x formal outifit


Settings

Counselling room 

Interview room

We are using the meeting room in our college, we have booked it in advance and have collected posters and leaflets from the police station to put on the noticeboard, to make it a convincing location for an office in the police station.

Police station

Police station location

In the scene where Becca is released we are filming it outside Haywards Heath Police station, we have been granted permission on 09/10/13.

Graveyard Scene
We have asked for permission to film in the graveyard of St.Peters Church, Ardingly. This will be where we film the opening and final scene to the short film.

Graveyard on map

St.Peters Church, Ardingly

Victims House
We are using Charlotte's house for the scenes of the flashbacks including: the victim getting pushed down the stairs, Becca comforting Louise on the sofa, Becca spoiling Louise's top with wine, Becca stealing money etc.

As you walk into the bedroom

the  bedroom as you come in the door

the bedroom from the far end, facing the inside of the door

The walk way from the bedroom to the stairs

The view from the top of the stairs, coming from Charlotte's parents bedroom

Parents bedroom, this could be Louise's bedroom, if we decide Charlotte's is too small

Classroom/ Library
We are using a setting in the college which we will find depending on what is available at the time, this will be used to represent the place where Louise repeatedly opens her books on different days to find new letters of abuse. 

Here is a picture of where our character may be in the college when reading the bullying letters.

Here is a closer shot that may be used