Equipment List

Here is the equipment list Chloe and Vicky have put together of the equipment we will use when filming:

We will need:

1. A high quality video camera to record professional looking footage. This Nikon camera will be provided by the school, and has special features such as auto focus, which will mean that we can record our footage much faster as we won’t need to keep focusing the camera when filming. To turn on, you turn the dial on the top of the camera from off to on. Then to use the camera, you must focus it by either turning the hand focuser manually, or ensuring it is set to auto focus and pressing the focus button which is just above the right side of the screen and then to record, just press the red button. The camera switches off every 30 seconds to save battery power which can be slightly irritating when you are trying to position the camera, but can be turned back on by flicking the dial around the red button to the left. The camera will only allow you to record 10 minutes of footage at a time, which is far more than needed when filming shots for film work, as each shot is usually only around 3 to 5 seconds long. The reason there is a maximum about of footage you can record at once is so that if you accidently leave the camera recording, it will not completely fill up your memory card.
2. A Zoom H1 Handy Recorder so we can record higher quality diegetic sound. The camera has the ability to record sound, but is not great quality and can only record from the perspective of where the camera is. It is small and thus portable, so it can be easily carried about the set. It only requires two AA batteries so that if it runs out of charge it can quickly be re-charged. It also has an input in port so that earphones can be put in the input out hole, and one of us can listen to exactly what the microphone is recording. It has an X and Y recording technique which means that it will record sound from all angles. To record, simply turn on the microphone by switching the button on the bottom of the right side of the microphone to on. You will know the microphone is on as it will say ‘Hello’. To record, simply press the big red button in the middle.
3. A Rode Video Mic to help increase the quality of the sound recorded by the Zoom recorder. To do this, simply plug the Rode mic into the ‘input in’ port on the recorder. The microphone comes with an additional boom stick so that the sound can be recorded more closely to the diegetic sound than simply the sound from the camera. It will also increase the quality of the sound than the recorded as it is simply just a higher quality microphone and will reduce and muffle from the recorder.
4. A camera tripod so that all of our shots will be steady and thus make our opening two minutes look more professional. The school offers two kinds of tripod, one which has clasps which are released to extend and disassemble the tripod, and one which you twist to tighten and loosed so the tripod can be assembled and disassembled. Both are equally as good a quality. When filming, we must be careful to drop the tripod legs carefully if we wish to extend it as the legs could easily drop right out due to the momentum, so we must guide them out with our hands. To turn the camera once on the tripod, we must twist the large lever to loosen it, more the camera to the desired position and then twist it in the opposite direction to tighten it again. If this is not tightened, the whole base will tilt to the side and the camera could easily fall off and break.
5. A table camera dolly, which we will use to make the camera appear as though it is moving through a wall. It is attached to the dolly the same as a camera is attached to a tripod. The angle and position of the base can also to altered so that the camera can face in many directions whilst still moving in the same direction.
6. Finally, we will need a large track camera dolly to film any walking shots. The track is made up of several large tubes and some smaller, plastic connecters. The track can be as long or as short as needs be, so that we can tailor the length of the shot to the space it will be filmed in. The dolly then sits on top of the track and is pushed forwards or backwards. The tripod sits on the dolly, with each of the three legs in three of the 5 indents. There are more intents than needed so that we can adjust the height that the dolly shot will be filmed on. We must be careful to push the dolly at a consistent speed, or else the shot will very quickly begin to look unprofessional.

Storyboards

After making the storyboards, myself and Maddy decided to cut the drawings out and peg them on a piece of wool. We then used a table dolly to film them. However we were unable to fit all the drawn storyboards on one piece of wool, so in the video there is a clear jump back to the beginning for the last few pictures. We tied the wool tightly between two chair and tried to make the piece of wool as straight as possible.

I edited the footage me and Maddy had filmed. I added captions over the footage, the captions explain what is happening in each frame. Adding the music over the top made the video more enjoyable to watch. The editing process wasn’t difficult, however I wish the clear jump to the start again was avoidable. The dip in  between the two tables causes a small jump but I don’t feel it is too noticeable. I feel making this video was an effective and creative way of showing our drawn storyboards and is much easier to follow than them just being on a piece of paper as you see the shot in a continuous order ad they follow on how they will in the recording process.

 

Location Scout

I have taken picture of the areas inside and outside my house we will be using in the film. The photos in this location scout are what we tried to show in the story boards but actual photos make it more clear.

This shows what you will see from the over the shoulder shot of the woman walking into the kitchen.

This is a photo of the kitchen table where the woman will leave her keys. We will perform a focus pull from the keys to the photo on the table in this location.

This shows the kitchen which is the location the woman will make the tea in. We will show a wide shot of the woman making the tea here.

These photos show the location where the girl will be tied up. The tea party will take place here. This area is quite small and enclosed so is fitting for the place the girl will be kept.

Shot List

Below is the shot list I have created to draw the story boards from. A shot list is helpful because it details what is seen in each shot and the different shot we will take. Like the storyboards, this will be helpful in the filming process as we can look to the shot list to see what comes next and use the storyboards to visualise what we will be filming.

1. Establishing shot of the woman walking down the street outside her house.
2. Wide shot of the woman walking up to her front door.
3. Mid shot of the woman putting the key in the door to unlock it.
4. Extreme close up of the key in the lock.
5. Match on action as the woman walks through the door into her house. She cautiously checks that she has securely locked the door.
6. Over the shoulder shot of the woman walking into the kitchen.
7. Close up of her putting her keys on the table. This is followed by a focus pull from the keys to a picture of the young girl in a frame.
8. Wide shot of the woman preparing a tea set in the kitchen.
9. Close up of her turning the kettle on.
10. Camera dollys through the wall to reveal a girl sat on the floor tied up.
11. Camera then dollys back through the wall to the woman in the kitchen.
12. Wide shot of the woman walking past carrying a tray with the tea set on.
13. Over the shoulder shot of the woman walking into the room and looking at the girl.
14. Close up of the girls hands tied together. The rope is surrounded by red irritation.
15. Wide shot of the woman sitting down in front of the girl. She starts pouring tea for the toys at the tea party.
16. Close up of the woman untying the girls bounds.
17. As she does this, you see a close up of the girl rubbing her arm. This reveals the bruises she has received from the rope being tied too tightly for a long amount of time.
18. Mid shot of the woman pouring tea for her daughter.
19. Birds eye view shot of the mother moving the teapot forward and across, scolding her daughter.
20. Close up of the water being poured over the girls hand.
21. Through the bottle shot of the girl screaming as the film fades to black.

Costumes

 

For the girl in the film, we are using Vicky Bell. She must wear things that make her look year and that stereotypically resemble a young girl. So for the film, Vicky will wear a very sweet looking light blues dress, as shown below. She will also wear long white socks, this make her look very young and innocent which is perfect for how she will be portrayed in the film opening.

 

                       

 

For the mother, we are using Jane, my mum. She will wear what any average mother would wear around the house, just something casual. This will help with making everything seem very normal until you realise she has her daughter held captive. Here is the selection of outfits we have discussed and chosen from.

Logo Production

Using the site ‘www.freelogoservice.co.uk’, we have started making different logos. Due to everyone in our groups initials, MCMV, also being the roman numerals for 1905, we have decided that 1905 studios would be quite fitting. Here are some examples of logos we have already tried on the free logo site. 

The above logos are ones that Vicky has tried and shared with the rest of the group. Together we decided that the logo with hands is the logo we prefer because it looks most professional and the font of the writing looks the best.

This logo is also our most preferred because it adds colour and is simple but effective.

Because the groups initials also stand for 1905, we researched what events happened in 1905 and realised it was around the time of the Russian revolution. So from this we decided to use the hammer and sickle logo.

Over the logo we are thinking of putting text that is flickering between 1905 and MCMV. As this will be moving it will become more of an ident, due to this we have decided to use this instead of a logo but we may still put a logo in the corner as we have seen this is other films.

Storyboards Research

Vicky also completed research into how to do story boards. Since this research, myself and Maddy have been drawing and colouring the story boards for our film opening. Below is Vicky’s research:

‘What is a storyboard?

According to Google a storyboard is a “sequence of drawings, typically with some directions and dialogue, representing the shots planned for a movie or television production.”

I think that the purpose of a storyboard is to make sure that your filming idea can work as you have to go through every single shot that you will use and so it will become evident if one shot is not feasible.

Here are some examples of a storyboard;

Drawn: 

Animated:

After we have drawn our storyboard, we will animate one so we know exactly what to do on the days of filming and no problems will arise on that day. Here is a programme that I found the most straight forward and effective that we could use (https://www.storyboardthat.com/storyboard-creator);

I found this programme easy to use and very detailed as you could pick characters according to the time period and even change their details such as hair and eye colour would would be useful for getting it to mock up what our opening 2 minutes may look like.

However, the only slight problem I came across whilst trailing this programme was the fact that the storyboards seem to only be 2D which would be difficult to show the positions of the characters but after a lot of searching I realised you can pivot the character from side to side so this could be a way around the 2D problem.

Also, saving the storyboards is difficult as it seems to only do a certain amount of storyboards a time as these types of websites want you to join the membership and due to the costs this would not be feasible but with 4 of us in our group we could all do a select few storyboard boxes and then eventually sequence it together. Of course we cannot do this until the original draft storyboards are done which will be produced by hand.’

Idents and Logo Research

In our group, Vicky did research into logos and idents so that we could start making our own. Without this research, we would not have enough knowledge to start making the logos and idents for our film. Below is Vicky’s research:

‘Idents

I have researched on the search engine, Google; what is an ident? And this is what it told me:

It is a short sequence shown on television between programmes to identify the channel.

This means that it is an aspect of a TV Channel that the audience would recognise to brand the channel. For example, the colour, font, or even individuals in the sequence will be consistently used so when the audience sees it, they will automatically recognise it as that channel.

An example of this is Channel 4, which is a well known channel that shows a variety of shows;

Straight away you probably recognise most of these logos and Indents, which conform together to have the audience knowing what they are watching without even having to pick up the remote and check. An ident of Channel 4 looks like this;

This is where Channel 4 have a random landscape and various objects floating that link to the landscape and they make the number 4, this is universally recognised before a programme will start so the viewers know what channel they are watching, which is great advertisement for the channel because if the ident changed a lot then people would not recognise the channel as quickly and efficiently, and without probably knowing it the audience would know this ident from recall of memory, without even having the think.

Here are some of the idents that Channel 4 has released throughout the past few years, all having the number 4 form on screen in common and also the music is the same, as having both senses (sight and hearing) recognise  the ident is even more effective at getting the audience to remember;

Logos

Again I researched “what is a logo?” into Google, and this is what it said;

A symbol or other small design adopted by an organization to identify its products, uniform, vehicles, etc.

This is something that my group and I will definitely have to create as we will not have enough time to create a sequence for the ident as it is only a film and not on a Channel. Here are some logos that my group and I could use as templates for ours;

As you can see these logos are very simple, which I think is key for a logo as they are not too hard to remember and are easily imprinted on the viewers brain and so remembered better. It also seems very common for the logo to have the name of the organisation below it or near it, this is something my group and I will need to take into consideration when creating our logo as a name will have to come with it. It would be a good idea for us to have the name as something that will link to the logo so its even more memorable.’

Making Actress Look Younger

As the mother in our video is trying to keep her daughter young and innocent so she can protect and prevent her from growing up and leaving her, we will have to make the daughter look younger. We will do this by putting her hair in plain or plaited pigtails tied with ribbons for example, like a little girls hair would be. We have also considered just giving her tight ringlets similar to the curled hair of young girls. We will also give the girl playing the daughter just natural makeup so that it doesn’t look like she is wearing any as a little girl wouldn’t be wearing makeup and makeup would be too much of a grown up thing for the mother to put on her daughter. Another thing we will do to make the person playing the daughter look younger is dressing her in a sweet, childish looking dress. One that is plain and flowing for example, the dress would also resemble the dress a doll would wear as this is fitting with the tea party idea in our opening 2 minutes. 

Making an Actor Look Older

To make the woman, we are using in our video, look older we have decided to use makeup. The makeup will create wrinkles are aged skin. We have practise this effect in the following video:

 

We will also use costume to show the woman as being older. We will dress her in clothes that are typically seen on middle aged woman, such as long skirts and un-revealing clothes like loose jeans and tops. We will also give her hair that is associated with a middle aged mum. So we have chosen someone with short hair, who is a mum, to play the woman in our film. The mother in the film won’t be wearing anything you expect a my her her age to wear as she has to come across as being normal and that nothing suspicious is going on until you see her daughter tied up.