Equipment list

PRODUCTION NAME: Drama Project

PRODUCTION COMPANY: Sheffield Hallam University

PRODUCER: Daniel Walsh

DIRECTOR: Hannah Bushnell

DATES PICK UP: 24/04/2012

DATES RETURN: 30/04/2012

QTY	DESCRIPTION	NOTES
1	Canon 550d DSLR Camera	Along with this camera we had two 8GB memory cards. These can be reused and has an easier transferability this saved us. going into Uni just to Log footage instead we could do it on set by loading it straight onto a computer with an SD slot.
2	Tripods	We used the Vinten tripod. even though its a bit of overkill for a DSLR. it gave stability where if we had used a camera tripod it would have the some quality of tracking smoothness.
1	Rode NT Microphone	The Rode was used to capture the atmos of the pub. This is because it has stereo mics
1	Rifle Microphone	The rifle mic was used to capture the main dialogue. this is because its directional and captures what it is pointed at.
1	Light Bounce board	In some parts of the pub it was quite gloomy. we were by a window so we used the light bounce to reflect the sunlight onto the subject.
1	Marrantz 660 Audio Device	the Marrantz 660 was used to capture the audio separately because the DSLR cant take external audio  with a boom pole so we used sync sound
1	Boom Pole	The boom pole was used to get right in close to the subject from a distance to get rich sounds.
1	Set of XLR Cables	with the Marrantz the standard XLR cable is too short so we had to extend it .
Props 5	Umbrella, Beer, Nachos, Newspaper, Bag	these were the props that the characters use each of these props were considered.

Drama- Schedule

Drama-Charcter back story

CHARACTER NAME: Keith Appleton

AGE22

APPEARANCE smartly dressed with tnnis shoes

1. What do you know about this character now that s/he doesn’t yet know? A. He will steal form someone unintentionally.
2. What is this character’s greatest flaw? A. He never thinks before he acts or speaks
3. What do you know about this character that s/he would never admit? A. His extremely awkward
4. What is this character’s greatest asset? A. His dress sense he is a very smart guy
5. If this character could choose a different identity, who would s/he be?  A.He would be a popular guy with no worries in the world
6. What music does this character sing to when no one else is around? A. Frank Sinarta New York New York.
7. In what or whom does this character have the greatest faith? A. In his nonexistent friends
8. What is this character’s favourite movie? A. The Hulk
9. Does this character have a favourite article of clothing? Favourite shoes? A. Blazer and tie with tennis pumps
10. Does this character have a vice? Name it. A. No he doesnt
11. Name this character’s favourite person (living or dead). His favourite person is the bartender
12. What is this character’s secret wish? A. To be liked by people
13. What is this character’s proudest achievement? A. 15 pints in one sitting
14. Describe this character’s most embarrassing moment. A. The Nachos story when he unintentionally stole someone’s Nachos
15. What is this character’s deepest regret? A. Borrowing money off a loan shark.
16. What is this character’s greatest fear? A. loneliness
17. Describe this character’s most devastating moment. A. When his parents disowned him
18. What is this character’s greatest hope? A. That he can live a stable like in the next 2 years
19. Does this character have an obsession? Name it. A. No
20. What is this character’s greatest disappointment? A. Not forfilling his dream of being a bowls player
21. What is this character’s worst nightmare? A. Being caught by a number of loan Sharks
22. Whom does this character most wish to please? Why? A. Everybody around him because he doesn’t have any friends.
23. Describe this character’s mother. A. A fragment of The characters imagination
24. Describe this character’s father. A. A fragment of The characters imagination
25. If s/he had to choose, with whom would this character prefer to live?  A. In Barnsley
26. Where does this character fall in birth order? What effect does this have? A. Only child
27. Describe this character’s siblings or other close relatives. A. distant
28. Describe this character’s bedroom. Include three cherished items. A. One bed chest of draws with a carling placemat he inherited from hid grand farther, Sheffield Wednesday jersey in his window with a goldfish.
29. What is this character’s birth date? How does this character manifest traits of his/her astrological sign? 4/3/1989 he doesn’t his a misfit trying to fit in.
30. If this character had to live in seclusion for six months, what six items would s/he bring? Beer pump. Nachos, house, bartender, arm chair and a glass
31. Why is this character angry? A. He isnt
32. What calms this character? A. The sound of the radio
33. Describe a recurring dream or nightmare this character might have. LOAN SHARKS BEATING HIM UP.
34. List the choices (not circumstances) that led this character to his/her current predicament. A. Not listening, trying to fit in.
35. List the circumstances over which this character has no control. A. When a loan shark wants his money
36. What wakes this character in the middle of the night? A. drunks
37. How would a stranger describe this character? A. Shy and awkward
38. What does this character resolve to do differently every morning?
39. Who depends on this character? Why?  A. Nobody
40. If this character knew s/he had exactly one month to live, what would s/he do? A. Drink and attack all the guys he owes money too
41. How would a dear friend or relative describe this character? A. An outcast
42. What is this character’s most noticeable physical attribute? A. His curly brown hair
43. What is this character hiding from him/herself? A. That he has no friends
44. Write one additional thing about your character. A. He hates onions

Sign Language

One of the inspirations for the idea was this film. Sign language was shown in a lecture and it immediately caught my attention. The main character addresses the camera directly and is the backbone of the narrative, I suggested to my course mates that we take this approach with our drama. By doing this he immediately draws in the viewer and the whole story now becomes more intimate. The story is a journey of a man who works as a sign man and is the 3rd generation of sign men in his family. The main plot development that moved the character towards a goal was that he was going to be promoted. The lighting in the film is very bright and happy, this is because its very light hearted and results in a happy ending.  They use diagetic sound of the streets and and music which is non-diagetic to create an atmosphere.

The Location -The Royal Standard

The location of our drama is was at The Royal Standard which is managed by a friend of Ed (the sound technician). It was convenient because of the connection we felt more comfortable to ask for favours that we would normally feel awkward to ask e.g.(ask to turn off the pub ambient music). It was a really relaxed environment which allowed us to work in a flexible fashion.

Drama Project- The idea

After our first meeting we had an idea of a antagonist and protagonist. We came came up with a very ambitious story of a chase which had a lot of unusual camera angles and it involved the camera being very heavily involved in the chase stunts with roller blades. But due to the actors becoming busy and a vehicle not available we had to scrap the idea and come together and rethink our idea. 

I had to go back to Birmingham and the rest of the group met up to share ideas. After a range and ideas and narratives. I thought of a great story that I had heard when I was younger , but never have seen a it visually. This story is about a man who goes into a pub and orders some nachos he then leaves the table and a man sits in his place with a plate of nachos. Because the main character likes to jump to conclusions, so he decides to take the nachos assuming that they belong to him. It becomes a show down where both men are battling over the nachos, the man leaves the main character with the scraps from the meal. The main character tucks in stuffing his face, then a fresh plate of nachos the man had been eating the other mans nachos all this time.    

Inspirations

The archive was about a man who has a catalogue of vinyls which went into its thousands. I liked some elements of the documentary but I felt that it was kept on the same tone and pace. this is an example of how i don't want the documentary I am producing to have this vibe to it. i feel that it wouldn't engage our target audience and considering that its about music i would have like more of a upbeat tempo.

The subject matter of this documentary is the same as my groups own. It keeps the pace up and has a range of different clips to keep the viewer interested. One ting I dont like is the presenter because it gives the documentary that news feel and i think when it comes to documentaries that should be avoided simply because news is always related bad news. But i don think they were successful in their approach and becuase of the length of the whole documentary this first sequence certainly does set the tone.

Treatment

Jen and I put together the treatments and researched some information on sites that could help with the editing of the project.

screen grab 2

We has alot of stills of old Beatles pictures. They were all different colours and made our work look amateurish, so we desaturated them to make them all black and white. In some of our footage  the white balance was off so we used colour corrector which took out some of the prominent colour in the clip and made it a more neutral colour balance.

we did have problems with some of the aspect ratios of the pictures so some of them looked stretched and pixelated. So even though the pictures looked great they didn't fit into the 16:9 framing.

screen grabs

On this screen grab we were adjusting the audio for the clips to make them run smoother. this was a problem within our edit because we found out that some of our interviewees had big dynamic changes in their voices. We also had to merge music tracks together so we used the audio transition effect to merge them smoothly.

Locations

We went to the Liverpool Museum and interviewed a tour guide in the Beatles exhibition. Clarice had got in contact with the Museum educational department before hand so we could film in the museum. It was a bit a of a challenge because of the strict rules about not getting in small children and not being able to use a tri-pod in the museum. it was quite dark and noisy too, but we managed to get some good information on the Beatles as well as an opinion from the tour guide, who actually didn't like the Beatles until just recently. We filmed in the museum on our second day of the trip.    

We didn't have a lot of time to plan and get in contact with certain locations. The Beatles story needed more notice if we wanted to film and have interviews in the museum. But what they did do was allow us to take photos of the museum contents and use it in our documentary. If we had to film this again I would contact them much earlier than before this is because they have a press procedure set up. Where they arrange interviews and set up certain parts of the museum to make it more film crew friendly. 

After going to the museums we went to the Cavern Club which is where when the Beatles first started to play and were founded. We interviewed two people from there one being the events manager and a performer. Throughout ll the locations we found that they were dark which affected the Song PD170 as it struggles to adjust in low light. Despite this we recorded some cover songs which we also used as bedding music for the documentary. It helped with the pace of certain scenes and are copy right free to an extent. The interviews we got definitely were helpful because one interview  answered one our most improtant questions "what's Liverpool doing to celebrate the Beatles 50th anniversary".  We also got footage of people dancing aswell as the performances.

The manager of the Beatles shop gave some interesting information about the Beatles as-well as his shop. We went there the day before to ask for permission and they agreed, so the following day we set up an interview with him and we got some great information and subject matter. This is one of the main interviews that makes our documentary  interesting, he makes some valid points as-well as providing information that even we didn't know about the Beatles. This was definitely one of our strongest interviews. We had all access to the store and to film it was one of our smoothest interviews. 

Production crew

 Albert docks

 Albert Docks

Hannah and the Merance.

I was on camera while Jen directed the Interviews and instructed certain camera movements that were needed for the documentary. Clarice was the Producer getting in contact with potential interviewees and asking for permission to film from the locations we were visiting. Hannah was the sound engineer for the  interviews, she also dubbed the sound in post as well. Sophie was are head editor but the rest of us inputted alot of hours into the post production.

schedule

Date Time Person Section

12/03/2012 AM Alex Uploading footage

13/03/2012 PM Jen Uploading footage/Edit

14/03/2012 AM/PM Jen, Alex, Hannah Working on intro/General structure

14/03/2012 PM Alex, Hannah Intro/Sections for tutorial

15/03/2012 AM Jen, Alex, Hannah Working on tutorial feedback

15/03/2012 PM Sophie, Clarice Sorting usable pictures

16/03/2012 AM Jen, Alex, Hannah Continuing intro/ structure

16/03/2012 PM Sophie, Clarice Starting Cavern Interview

17/03/2012 AM/PM Jen Sorting usable interview footage/ Cavern and Beatles Shop Sequence

19/03/2012 PM Jen, Hannah, Clarice, Sophie Going over what was done so far and proceeding

20/03/2012 AM Jen, Hannah Fine cutting interviews

20/03/2012 PM Sophie, Clarice Adding Text/Transitions

21/03/2012 AM Jen, Hannah, Alex Finishing the piece

21/03/2012 PM Jen, Hannah, Alex, Sophie, Clarice Final Run through and burning onto disk

here was our schedule  of how we were going to divide the work load between us from logging the footage to editing sequences. even though we had a designated editor we decided to all chip in since we had no other jobs to do around the post production bar two of the members of the group. This was done before hand so we all had a rough idea of what we had to do in-order of us to have a smooth production process.

Documnetary hand out

In the handout that was given David Bordwell and Kristin  Thompson discuss the main elements of a documentary and what points are raised when the topic of documentary is explored. They mention as moviegoers we tend to sum up whether a film is a documentary or fiction, in my opinion this can be sometimes wrong because some films will merge fiction and fact together to get their point across. A documentary is based on information that we as viewers may already know, but would like further insight into the subject or features real places that exist. this will determine whether we trust the film to be a documentary or an urban myth.

People don't normally trust documentaries simply because it "manipulates  the events  that are filmed". This is done so all the relevant information is documented in a controlled way so that the viewer wont be struggling to identify what the director is communicating. This will be done in my documentary in the interviews so that we get the interviewees reaction to questions and opinions on the subject matter.

In documentary there are genres, the genre can be the decider to the success or failure of the film. One of these genres are "direct-cinema documentary" this is  a camera crew follow an event as it unfolds this typical genre emerged in the 1950's and 60's. Originally the documentary i was doing about the Beatles was going to do this. by following how Liverpool was preparing for the 50th anniversary for the making of the group.

documentary and film have strict boundaries, these boundaries are normally pushed to its limits when directors don't have all the right information or make up places or scenarios to make the subject matter more interesting. This exaggerates the facts and makes the viewer think whether what is portrayed on the film is correct and could cause them to form an opinion that can make the film not as effective. 

shot list

Street view

Window shot

Laptop 1

Laptop2

Laptop O.T.H

Light

O.T.S

Draws 1

Draws2

Draws 3

Bed 1

\Monkey 1

Monkey 2

 Monkey 3

Monkey 4

Bed 2

Monkey 5

Light 2

Glass

Glass 2

Glass three

Glass bed

Absence of Satan

A beautiful woman screams at something unseen off camera. Paul Newman appears eating salad and soon the famous sequence of Paul Newman closing a car door cut with a helicopter takes place. Absence of Satan is probably one of George Barber's best Scratch works and is a deft reworking of cinematic narrative and cliché. 

In this film George Barber shows off his 'Scratch video' skills. Which came about in the mid 1980's in the UK. He found films and television programmes and cut them together to make a new meaning. Its done to a beat and has been referred to as the video version of DJ scratching which was commonly used in Hip-Hop music. I liked the way the clips  made sense and moved in a rhythm, this is something that I would have liked to put in my experimental film. I didn't quite understand the images on the boat, but neither the less it complimented the video scratching. 

The music

I used Garage band to produce some of the music that features in the film. I used various sounds such a pas and synth leads to create the atmospheric sound track.  I used the Oxygen 25 midi key board to play the sounds into garage band.

Other tracks were taken from youtube

Post-Production

In final cut we had troubles with some of the files but the finished product was a success. We used the slow motion , reverse with numerous transitions to create the feel of our film. Me and christie worked in a pair to edit the film as we were more experienced with Final Cut Pro.

The Idea

When our group first came together for a production meeting, we all had ideas of what films we wanted to make for the experimental.

Tom- A man who suffers with Bipolar and he has a split personality. He had the idea of two different actors portraying the same character, one being his dark character and the other being his normal and happy character. I thought it could be a great subject to explore but I wanted something that had all of our ideas in. the idea had a lot a potential because if we used first person view lights and abstract editing could be added to create a more emotive frame.

Cristie- he had a monkey that he thought would be great focal point for our film. But he didn’t have a storyline or firm idea of how we were going to use it to create something original. I liked the idea of the monkey as the main subject because not only did it seem like a great prop. It also intertwined with the idea I had.

My idea was to personify an object and give it human authority and presence. I came up with the concept of an Apple having a dominant presence.

The final idea was a merge of all of our ideas combining the idea of a mentally insane man who is being tormented by a puppet monkey. By doing this we have all had an equal part with in the initial production development stages of the experimental film. We were planning to use the Sony PD170 but all of them were booked out so we used the Sony Z1. We also planned to film in the dark and use household lights to light up the scenes. 

The Experimental Hand Out

Experimental film is separate from the studio system exploring how certain subjects and themes can be portrayed in film. The films are normally abstract and at times improvised to create a feel or atmosphere in a film. By reading this booklet about experimental films I have noticed elements of the art form within my own film production. Some films may be inspired by a poem; I think by experimental film taking poems and interpreting them with a visual aid it cause the audience to think about the words and the image and what they mean when they are both combined. Experimentalists don’t necessarily have to go out and film their own footage to create their film allot of them use footage from other sources i.e. (newsreels & video sharing sites like YouTube). When experimentalists affix this type of footage to their films they are free to twist facts or create a totally fictional story.

Another unique ways experimentalists explore different aspects of film is by using animation, strips. Using both narrative and non-narrative films experimental films can take a storyline in any direction. Sometimes an experimentalist’s film may not make any sense at all to the audience. It might just want to evoke certain emotions or highlight a subject or maybe even an object. Voiceovers and external sounds are used in experimental alot. In the handout it gives an example of a experimental film which explores the theme of religion, where a nun discovers her sexuality. This is a so called ‘Taboo’ subject and wouldn’t normally be put in conventional films.  Film is stretched to its limits when it comes to experimental films to the point where it can be offensive to some viewers. By putting to opposite themes into a film like Holiness and Erotica, in reality those themes bear no resemblance to each other and would never be put together. But that’s what makes it experimental hence the breaking of normal social barriers.  Compared to the experimental films mentioned my film would be seen as the ‘safe’ choice when it comes to content.

B.I.T. Plane

A critical aero-anthropological study of Silicon Valley USA. The Bureau of Inverse Technology, an information agency, deploys its model spy plane the BIT PLANE [wingspan 31"] on this mission deep into the glittering heart of the Silicon Valley, to investigate the progress of the Information Age.

In this experimental uses the personal view of the spy technology i.e.( the BIT Plane & spy bug). This puts the viewer a first hand experience of what the plane saw from the skies. Sounds from the radios and the engines in the spy plane is continually played throughout the film, this creates the atmosphere of the sky. Text is used to inform the audience of what the mission of the spy plane was.

The film has no structure, this helped it with it's effectiveness because it doesn't need a beginning or a end its objective was to inform. But I do think that it does loose some of its effectiveness by chopping up the text so much. The film met its goal but I felt that it could of been done more effectively by being more creative with the footage that was shown.