LAFTAS: Script

The first draft of our script was very basic, we wanted to get the general order of the scene down at first. As we only had one line of dialogue, “surprise”, in our whole scene, we didn’t realise at first how short our script was. So, we decided as our film is more visual than full of dialogue, that we needed to add to the stage directions and descriptions in our script to make them more detailed so that our actors understood what we saw our film looking like. We improved our first draft by doing so and also added some more features that we thought about and created a second draft:Our second draft was a lot more descriptive and we felt that it would be much clearer to our actors to see our vision than it would have been if they were given our first draft. However, then as we completed more planning, including our storyboards, we started to think more about how our scene would edit togethe. Therefore, we incorporated this into our script by adding certain transitions and when our opening titles would be seen. We felt that we didn’t need to add much more to our script as there was little dialogue, but extending our directions for the purpose of our actors was a good idea.

LAFTAs: Thoughts On Mise-en-Scene

We really wanted our scene to give off the feel of grittiness and danger. So, we put a lot of thought into the costume, props and mise-en-scene that we used and what colours were in each shot.

For the outside shots, we wanted the colour palette to be very dark, with possibly a few hints of red to connote danger. So we put our killer in red trousers, a black raincoat and a balaklava, we didn’t want to put him entirely in black because we felt this might be a bit too stereotypical and we wanted some colours to pop rather than to have an overly dark scene. We also used a dark blue car which further added to the lack of colour within the scene. This made both the trousers and the yellow sponge pop which we thought looked really good once edited in our final scene.

We wanted the interior shots of the party to be really bright and colourful, which will contrast against the previous shots. So we had everyone put on brightly coloured costumes and placed them in bright lighting with their party poppers and bright background. The colour palette of this scene will help to highlight the difference between the two halves of our film, and help to give the contrasting feels of dark and light scenes which I described in my previous blog post on existing products.

I feel that each member of the group shared a clear idea of what colours we wanted to include in each shot, and we planned this well which was what helped us to create shots that were visually appealing and gave the right feel.

 

LAFTAS: Location, Props and Equipment

Certain aspects of our planning turned out to be more complicated than we anticipated. Particularly finding a place and time to film that suited each member of the group. On top of this, we all had to make travel arrangements to get to our filming location. In the end, we did all of the filming for our exterior shots at the weekend at my house, which meant we could begin editing when we got back to school on Monday.

The interior shots were a little more difficult because we needed a relatively large group to play our party guests. This was difficult to arrange in the short space of time that we had available to us. We were unable to find many people that were willing to travel to film with us on a school night. We were left with four people to play our guests, which was okay as we got everyone to wear bright colours to give the right feel to the shot. We also recorded more people saying “surprise” so that our sound had more depth to it, making it sound as if there were more people in the room. This also covered up the break in the audio that was caused by the sudden sound of the party poppers going off at once.

Some of our props caused us issues, for example, our dead body… We were unsure whether it would be better to fill a couple of bin bags with clothes and sheets or use a real person, of course this would lead to a risk of suffocation. We decided, as opposed to shooting the head being dragged across the floor, we’d film the feet being dragged, which meant we could use a real person and film their feet with their head out of shot, so we didn’t need to cover their head.

Other Props:

• Car
• Bin Bags
• Sponge
• House Keys
• Party Poppers
• Party Decorations

Equipment:

• Canon EOS 600D
• Tripod
• Mini Dolly
• Steadicam
• Boom Microphone
• Sound Recorder

We decided not to use the school’s camera but to use our own because the Cannon EOS 600D has a screen that can be spun round whereas the Nikon D30100 that we used last year did not. We made this decision because of how many low angle shots we planned to use, and having a screen that we could move would help us to monitor the focus and what we were filming more easily as we wouldn’t have to get down to the level of the camera during each shot.

We also use the boom mic because we wanted to pick up all of the sounds that were made by the body being dragged across the floor in order to make the scene as gritty as possible. We wanted to try use the mini dolly and the steadicam to get some movement into our film, as previously our projects have had very little movement and this will be a good opportunity to experiment with other pieces of equipment.

Although, a lot of this project has been difficult to plan, I feel like we did our best to organise ourselves given the time frame we had to do everything. Had we had longer, we could have definitely improved on some aspects of our film, such as the amount of people shown in the party scene.

LAFTAS: Research Into Similar Products

Before beginning the planning process of our LAFTAs entry, I watched a lot of existing short films and also a few other LAFTA entries that I found on YouTube. I’d watched the BAFTAs a few months prior to the project, so I already had a list of short films that were nominated I wanted to watch. At this point we didn’t know what genre we wanted to make our film or what the storyline would be about, so we were really just looking for aspects that made a good short film. We were aware that we didn’t want to try force an entire story with a beginning, middle and end into our film, but we wanted to focus on creating a scene that was visually impressive and left the audience with an idea.

The first short film that I’d been wanting to watch for ages was ‘Room 8’, which won best short film at the 2014 BAFTAs. I thought the storyline was brilliant and it really worked because there was one seemingly irrelevant but confusing shot of a moving matchbox, which opened up a whole new interpretation to the film at the end. I also liked how the scene portrayed a fantasy feel despite being set in a prison cell and then had a slightly darker ending which worked really well in many of the short films I saw and worked well for the length of time that there was to tell a story. Following this sort of structure, I felt could allow us to display two kinds of filming and editing and incorporate two contrasting scenes that were visually impressive when put together. Here are two videos that I watched, one with a darker ending and one with a lighter ending than the bulk of the film.

One short film came to mind, that we saw earlier on in the year in class, when watching a few of these films because it also followed the same structure of having a dark and visually appealing scene which was then contrasted against a light ending. The scene shows a body being dragged through the snow close up, which looks good because of how gritty and rough the shots are, particularly in the icy environment that it was filmed in. To then go to a stereotypical scene where the killer held a gun to his hostage’s head, the audience was surprised to see the two characters start singing. A scene like this most likely wouldn’t work given the context of a full film, however as a short it works because the viewer is left to interpret what happened before and after the event for themselves and therefore it doesn’t matter how obscene the storyline may be. Of course there are other ways to go about making a short film with an effective storyline, however of the few that I watched, this is a feature that I really enjoyed about them because of the contrast and how it lead me to believe the scene was going in one direction but in fact took a completely different turn. The most successful films I felt needed to be visually impressive and have a unsuspecting storyline in order to create an impact on the audience in the 5-10 minutes that is available.

As well as looking at professionally produced shorts, I also had a look at a few other LAFTA entries that people had uploaded to youtube. This gave me a good idea about what we were expected to achieve, however there weren’t a great variety to look through, and none with a theme that I could see our group creating. Although I was unable to find anything that could give me inspiration or ideas, I was able to pick up on certain aspects that either made their projects look great or let them down. A number of them clearly were unable to find a suitable location to shoot their film, for example one film I found was about a couple of friends who were shopping, however the group, unable to find a shop to film in were forced to use a plain white room. This, as well as looking fairly boring, also took away from the narrative of the scene as everything had to be shown through dialogue as opposed to being able to successfully show the story visually. Some lacked a good storyline that would have potentially lead into a really well filmed scene. For example, another I watched showed two foreign tourists struggling to find the train station and were shown asking random pedestrians for directions. However, this meant that the two actors seemed not to interact with their environment and props enough as the shots simply showed too much dialogue with subtitles, which lacked variety. As well as noticing the negatives, there also were a number of really good shots that were framed perfectly. Including a few extreme close-ups and wide shots which looked really good.

Watching movies that are not professionally made helps to create a mental list of do’s and don’ts when planning a short film and I feel that this will help us to create a successful short film.

LAFTAS: Final Ideas

After quite a lot of discussion, we have finally thought of an idea that will allow us to create a short film that is visually interesting and will give us a chance to demonstrate our filming and editing skills without being overpowered by a overly complicated storyline. We all decided that we wanted to do something fairly dark as we thought this would work well for a short story and help us to achieve an impact on the audience.

We thought of a simple scene that showed a mysterious figure dressed in black pulling into his house and retrieving something from the boot of the car. It is then revealed that he is trying to hide a dead body and the scene will show him dragging the body across the drive and into his garage/house. We felt that this would give us the opportunity to film some really interesting lengthy shots, which will almost make the viewer feel uncomfortable or at unease as the body is shown being dragged across gravel and up stairs. We want to really drag out the process to have an impact on our audience.

Once the body is inside, the lights will be turned on and there will be a shot of a room full of people with balloons and cake who all then shout “surprise!” before realising what our mysterious figure has brought into the room. This shot will really contrast against the first half of the scene, as the balloons and party decorations will be juxtaposed against the dark nighttime exterior of the house. Again, we would like this shot to linger as we will focus on the reactions of the crowd. We are thinking of perhaps showing this shot in slow motion or as a slightly lighter ending, have a party popper popped at the back of the room which will break the silence in quite an awkward way.

We are going to have to film quite a lot of footage in order to have enough choice to edit the scene so that it gives the desired effect and looks as visually impressive as possible. During the next few lessons we will be putting together a shot list and storyboards.

LAFTAs: Current Ideas

Now having completed our AS course, we can now focus on a new project minus all the stresses of getting a grade for it and exam preparation. This year we are all entering the LAFTAs, the award ceremony will take place in October and our submissions will need to be in by July 3rd, which only gives us just over three weeks to complete a 2-5 minute short film. Four of us who are wanting to do film production at university, have already pulled together a few ideas over the last month or so, knowing that it’d take us a while to develop a full idea.

We’re having difficulty relating our ideas to the theme which is ‘sponge’, which we were given to base our idea around. We’re also limited by our potential locations and actors as we only have less than a month to complete the project. However we do have one idea that seems to be more developed than the others, which is still likely to be adapted and changed as we think of new ideas. Currently, we are thinking about doing a short film about cyber bullying, in which an internet chatroom is represented as a physical room in which the online verbal bullying is metaphorically shown to be as bad as physical abuse. We will develop the idea by incorporating features of online chat, such as text speak or glitches within the conversation. A chat between a group of bullies and a young victim will develop until the bullies are shouting at the young boy. As one line of dialogue is shouted, there will be a sound bridge which will take the viewer to the victim who is sat at his computer. The sound bridge will link the dialogue with the text that is seen on his computer screen, along with the rest of the comments made throughout the film. We aim to either show that online bullying is just as bad as physical bullying or show the victim shutting his laptop un-phased by the comments that were directed at him. We feel that a good ending and idea behind the film will be essential to the success of our short film.

However, we have so many other ideas which would definitely need further developing very soon, we are still discussing ideas and some things are likely to change but even so, I am extremely excited to film our LAFTA project.