The First Reflective Main Exercise Blog Entry Thing!

This would be the general idea of the beach positioning, obviously the camera will be move in many alternate angles and camera frames however this briefly describes how it should start.
The research we studied we tried to keep it closely correlated with what we were trying to pursue, a romance. For Research sources we used we YouTube, firstly we studied Notebook then we analysed the technique codes, (camera, editing, sound, and mise-en-scene) this clip was similar to ours with a dominant theme on the action, however there was a large focus on the dialogue and social class. Then we looked at Grease, and older film to hopefully look at the different historical romance and how they portray them, here the use of a handheld camera appealed to us as the movements were more natural and also the background music was a very important theme. Lastly we looked at My Sister's Keeper and recent newly released and this was an emotion clip due to the context. The main reason that My Sister’s Keeper was a main stimulus of focus was due to the music being the main focus and illustrating what the director was trying to convey which was deep emotion as the character had cancer, therefore sympathy was apparent.

Next we had to complete a script for the main exercise, this was finalising what we wanted it to look like, and describing the shot size, duration sound and description/vision of the action. Next was the risk assessment, we have previously done this before therefore it was reasonably easy and we completed it quickly. We noticed the amount of risks we were being faced with, as we were doing it on the beach so were facing a lot of external factors for example weather, the sea. We worked through the logbook as a group, having it in a systematic form made it easier to see what we had completed and what we had left to complete. The main problem with the SWOT analysis was the problem was the fact that Nina was unable to access the beach due to a disability, this meant that it would only be me and Charlie able to control the whole clip. Therefore we allocated myself as the director, Charlie as the camera-women and Nina to do Sound. Charlie and I felt that it might not be fair as Nina would not be able to directly see the filming production and that this could play as a disadvantage to her in the long run. However when we discussed it Nina was still able to watch the filming process from the esplanade.

Our first provision date we wanted to film was the 16th March on a Tuesday, we chose this date as our last lesson was media on all our timetable and we finished at three o’clock therefore there was no limitation on filming in sense of not having enough time, this was a disadvantage to us last time as we hadn’t prepared ourselves with enough time to effectively film as Nina's transport home was waiting. We could not keep to the provisional date set as our actors were unable to come; therefore we chose to set the date for Sunday 21st March. We arranged to meet at 2.30 in Weymouth, the actors were Ali Mitchell who participated last filming and Jenny. The main problem arose personally to me as the director that it was a romance clip and these two people have never met therefore the context of the filming would of been awkward, I felt as the director this could influence how the filming went. However this was not an influencing factor.

The weather maintained reasonably sunny, and was not windy therefore the conditions proved perfect for our situation, interaction with other members of the public was a problem as we would have to wait until people had walked past otherwise they would have been in the camera frame.When filming it was quite hard communicating talking across the beach, as Charlie (camera-lady) had to keep continuity by moving with the shots we were moving further down the beach and I had to keep an eye on the belongings as well e.g. (tripod, camera box).

When we shot all the frames we noticed that the clip was only 1.21 minutes, this was a big problem as we did not effectively use time management to make sure it met the time deadline 1.45 otherwise we would not be able to edit effectively. To resolve this we re-filmed using longer shots than we had scripted. I felt that it was hard trying to direct, due to when we had scripted the storyboard we had a tight boundary of being able to change movements, and it was hard to just improvise on the spot also it would not of correlated with our final paperwork.

Shortly after we finished filming we analysed what we had filmed in the following lesson, and we were dissatisfied with the final product. When filming Charlie had not used a tripod due to a missing part which we had not checked, and therefore she used it handheld. Although in research we were going to use handheld as well as using the tripod the whole film that we had captured was shaky and the positioning was not correct. On my behalf I felt that as a director I should have been stricter on the timing as the clips were too short, therefore due to all these errors we decided to re-film otherwise we would be penalised due to the lack of knowledge applied, and we were not presenting our clips to the best of our ability. We were aware that we had a strict deadline to meet this was the only factor that was influencing us to not re-film, but we were all willing as a group to meet outside of college hours to help effectively meet the deadlines that we had been set.

We then set another date for Friday 26th March; we had checked the weather and rain was forecasted but not till later on in the day this therefore was a risk we were willing to take. We all met at the location with new actors, Ruth and Phil we moved slightly further down the beach this time, we shot the first 3 shots, doing each about three times so we had a wide variety of clips to chose from, doing this also allowed us to not make the same mistakes as last time but using limited resources. However the weather conditions changed and it rained, although we could have carried on and met the storyboard as it would not have changed the context, we could not risk damage to the equipment. Therefore we had to stop filming. Although we knew this could happen we wanted to meet the deadline, and film so we could edit and complete the task.

The next date we have set is Monday 29th March, we plan to do it at 12.15 and we have till 3.00 o’clock to complete it. The weather again we have to risk as the deadline is getting closer.

Journal

Currently were all trying to expand on our idea for filming. Firstly we chose the idea of a psychological thriller however due to lack of research and limited filming areas which would be suitable we decided to change our idea. We had an idea of what we all wanted but we then decided it would be hard to achieve effectively. We then decided to do a romance; by choosing this idea we were able to concentrate more on the camera, editing, sound and mise-en-scene rather than the context of the idea we had chosen. After doing this we were able to then do research of other films with a similar short scene, we have research the Notebook (2004) directed by Nick Cassavetes. The genre is similar a drama romance. We also researched and studied Grease (1978) directed by Randal Kleiser we chose both of these because they had a similar beach setting with not much dialogue but focusing on the action and music.

We have took into account some problems that might arise, such as attention from other members of the public and this could create distraction and unwanted noise. To minimise this problem we will do it either in daytime, or at evening on a weekday so there will be less people around. The picture below is where we hope to film, it a sand beach so we have to be careful when managing equipment, and when moving as it could cause injury. Also we will check the weather and tide times before, to check for (high, low or spring tides) if they could pose a possible problem. Also we would be unable to film in the rain as the equipment would get damaged this is the biggest threat as when we set our provisional date we would have to have it relatively close so we could choose a day with suitable weather.

My contextual understanding of media is developing as im able to fully take a hands on approach for example being the director would require me to take authority in making sure that what we have planned happens, and effectively. Also grasping the idea of what is required, for example shot duration and piecing everything together and this requires a better knowledge on editing. Doing the sequence will again broaden my knowledge as it will help and challenge my knowledge, the main problem which I find difficult will be enabling that our short clip will remain a short clip rather than a film trailer as this could be easily confused.

Our target audience is women, and maybe teens. I do consider them to be a niche audience as there would have to be a specific interest in romance, and love. And that being our dominant theme, however it could appeal to others who share this interest. Our reasearch of (Notebook) correlates closer to the target audience we are trying to achieve rather than (Grease) as this is a musical romance where as Notebook is romance focusing on different social positions and class.


I feel we have managed our time reasonably well although we have not yet set a provision date but we are just completing paperwork, and also the problem of ensuring that our group and actors are all free, and that there will be no complications as a critism of last time is that we did not ensure that everyone was able to defineatly make the provision date that we allocated. We managed to make the set times last time and i am confident that we will this time as if we fall behind i know that our group will arrange to meet out of College hours to keep to our provisional dates arranged. The most difficult part of planning to me was actually defining what our clip would be about, as if we decided later on it would be too late to rearrange our paperwork.