FAIL

We have abandoned our idea of the 'unseen heroes' theme of our documentary because we have not been given permission by Notts County Football Club to film the interiews that we needed to. However, they have allowed us to have a 30 minute slot in which we will be allowed to film GV shots. We have discussed in our meeting today about how we can make the most of this 30 minute slot, as this is the only time we will be given. We will take two Sony Z1's, a camcorder, any relevent sound equipment, and a stills camera to get as much footage as we can. The whole group will be present on this day and given individuals jobs, so that everything can be done on time and within the allocated 30 minutes.

However, on the good side, for the YMCA project, I have spoken to Jill about some other arrangments about tickets to the locations and she will be posting them soon. Jill has also proposed another meeting with the whole group sometime next week, in which we will also meet Simon from the communications team from the YMCA.
The only concern I have is clashing of days, as both of my projects will be running alongisde each other. If we arrange to interview someone on a day (for the Notts County Doc), it may be on one of the dates I am doing the YMCA shooting, mentioned in my earlier post. However, as of now, I know for sure the dates of the YMCA project, and we have planned to shoot one of our days for Notts County on the 11th February, which is the day straight after our filming in Liverpool. Hopefully, it will work out well, because the way I see it is, the YMCA project we are doing will help me and give me a real-life experience on working with a client and getting valuable work experience. It will be good practice for me for my final year clientel project also, as I have spoken to a few finals years and they have mentioned it is something similar to what they are doing in their projects.

YMCA Project

Ok, there is another project we have took on a few weeks back. Its a project that the YMCA have asked us to do. There are three other people as well as me who are doing this. We have been asked to make a documentary about the various YMCA centres across the UK and show what work they do and how they help young people. Basically we will show the hard work and contribution of the YMCA throughout the documentary. We have had a meeting with someone from the YMCA and have discussed how we are going to approach the film and we also organised the days and travel etc.

We will be filming in Liverpool, London, and Nottingham. The dates are as follows:
Liverpool - 10th February
London - 15th February
Nottingham - 3rd March

Should be good!

Documentary For NottsCounty

So, we have been given our groups and our topics for our documentary projects. Our topic is about the Notts County Football Club. We have already had one meeting to understand how we are approaching the film. We have come up with many ideas, but the one we have chosen to stick with is a 'unseen heroes' theme of the football. Hence, we will be interviewing thpse people who work behind the scenes to make the football club and run it. We have come up with a title 'Notts County: The People behind the dream'. The sort of people who we are aimed at interviewing are people who have been working at NottsCounty Football Club for a long while. In this way, we can get a more better understanding and personal experience from these people.

Roles for Documentary

Ben Thorpe: Director
Alan Vickerstaff: Producer
Umar Hussain: Editor
Chris Swann: Sound
Ryan Carthy: Camera

Quad

FILM SCREENING at the Quad in Derby today 26th!

Bogdan: a week on

So, reflecting on our shooting last week, i think it went really well and we all worked great together as a group. I think in accordance to the 'shooting schedule', we did not follow keep up with it at all. I mean right from the start for our first shot, we were behind with our time. But, as we got on we progressed good and finished on time with all the shots we wanted. I think the good aspect we included througout was communication between the crew and knowing what each member of the group expects, as well as a great relationship with the cast. We got good feedback from the actors, and i believe this is a good way to develop ourselves as practitioners. I think it was good getting good and bad feedback from people who are already in the industry and have experiece, as this gives us a more in-depth understanding of real on-set work and how much work is involved.

We are now in the editing stage, and we have made a good start on it already. We have 6 days left for hand-in, and i believe we will have a good finished edit for then.

Props List for Bogdan

EXT. LEGAL OFFICE. DAY (DICe)

handbag
files
portfolio
cigarettes/ bottle of water
folder (for Bogdan)
EXT. DAY. (Tramstop at Forest Field)
cigarettes
letter (with school logo)
watch


INT. LEGAL OFFICE. DAY (York House)

law books from Boots
computer (Macs from 207 Wav?)
desk lamp (?)
pens
mug
files
stationery
graduation photos
picture frame
pins
calendar
diploma
diary
airline ticket


INT. APARTMENT. NIGHT

pictures (son & wife)
picture frames
Romanian/English books
Ro/Eng Dictionary
chessboard
stationery
plate
knife
fork
newspapers
ironing table
Rubik`s cube (?)

Long awaited update... presenting BOGDAN!

Okay, so as you can see i haven't updated my blog for like 2 weeks! Its been so damn busy these few weeks. 1st with our assignments and then our productions. Be prepared as theres alot im gonna go through so brace yourselves! So yeh, we've got another film to shoot and this one isn't a practice. We've been given scripts from Jools, which we've re-written in the way in which we want to percieve the story. Well, its been re-written like 3 or 4 times to what we've got it to now. Our story is called 'Bogdan', and is about a Romanian man who is an immigrant to the country and the story basically outlines his struggle with having to deal with the seperation with his family and how he tries to bring them over to the U.K and what issues he faces in the process.

So, last week we got our scripts (through a random dip) and our group was glad to have got the Bogdan script, as we all were more drawn to that script on first impression anyway. The day after, we had a group meeting, discussed through the script, and the group shared ideas on what they thought could be useful in the process of getting a meaning to the script and ideas on how we might approach telling this story in the most effective way possible. Luckily, we have Diana in our group, who is from a Romanian background, so we were given a head start in the background knowledge and how our character Bogdan may appear and what his characteristics may be like. Diana has done a character study on our character 'Bogdan', in which she outlines what our character will be like and what type of clothing would be suitable and what props may be effective with our Romanian character (http://duckieontrent.blogspot.com/2009/11/bogdan-capitan-de-plai.html).

We then discussed everyones roles. The main idea we had was for everyone to try out a different role from the one we had in our previous film. This is turn, would help each of us to understand the other roles more and, in essence, this would be better practice for ourselves in learning new skills. I myself was incharge of all the camera-work in the previous film, however in this film i think i want to discover more of the sound side, as i believe this is my weaker side. Therefore, i have chosen to be incharge of the sound design for Bogdan. As well as this i am the assistant director and assistant producer. I have been reading a book called 'Sound for Film & Telivision' by Tomlinson Holman:

(http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=wBlRtAlKPFsC&dq='Sound+for+Film+%26+Television'+by+Tomlinson+Holman&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=HhMLS83eHZT54AbI3OS3Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBkQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false).

This book has helped me develop many interesting ideas, which were are fairly new to me. In the book i learnt about ''Hyper-REAL'' sound and the way in which this works and how sound recorded as natural may not sound 'real' when recorded (in the viewers perspective). Therefore, the technique relies with the sound being exxegarated a little during post-production. We see this in nearly all films, yet it goes un-noticed. This exxageration of sound adds so much effect to what is happening visually. Watch a film next time, and realise how the foley sound effects (e.g. footsteps) are alot louder than they would be in reality (exxageration of reality). I believe sound plays a massive part in a film, yet is is the thing that goes un-noticed the most. I think sound is VERY crucial, as it works with the audience unconsciously (as it can't be seen) yet has a MASSIVE effect with how a story is told. An identical scene played back with different music, can have a completely different meaning and message to an audience.















This is me collecting Foley sounds to include in post-production. In this specific picture i was collecting a sound for footsteps. I was completely caught off-guard :D

An example is in the film Citizen Kane, a scene where the sound can be contrasted with that in the next scene of Kane and his girlfriend in the back seat of his car. In the first scene, the sound is emphasising the seperation of the characters, Whereas, in the second, the sound is very intimate, emphasising the change of scene and moment or even change of emotion between the characters. All in all, i believe sound plays a massive part in directing the viewers attention and witl all the things i have learnt about so far, i am intending to incorporate all these ideas into our next film Bogdan as head of sound. I have written down a long list of sounds for what will be taking place in each of the scenes and i intend to collect these sounds seperately also to 'hype' up in post-production. This will all help me in the process of me learning new ideas and skills.

We then as a group decided on some location for the scenes in the script. We had 2 exterior and 2 interior shots. We had some discussion, and changed our locations around a few times and finally came up with the locations. We will have an exterior shot at behind the university DICe building, an exterior shot at the Forest tram stop, an interior shot in an office, and an interior shot of a house. We went to all the locations with the all equipment and had trial runs, just so we known and are confident that everything is right for the shoot. If any problems occured, we could then solve them on the trial run ready for the shoot. Here are some of the pictures of the locations:

















Oh yeh, and we met the actors we have been given for our film today too. It was a great opportunity go through everything with them and understand their professional perpective on what they thought. We also ran through the script and went through any problems they had and rehearsed each scene until we felt it was ready for us. Both of our actors come mainly from a Drama and theatre background. For example our female actor has been in Heartbeat, Doctors, Casualty, Holby City, Children Of The Crown (Nottingham Playhouse), and has also been in some feature films. Our male actor has been in The Execution Of Damiens, Coronation Street, Holby City, Coke Zero Advert. These are just a small few from a big list of things the actors have done.

We have also got a list written up of all the props that will be included in each scene, but i'll just include that in a seperate post as iv'e written sooo much already! Well i guess thats due to the fact so much has been going on the past 2 weeks. Neway, we are going to film tomorrow, so lets hope all goes well!