Depict! Production Diary

04/10/2012 - Props, Costumes and Diary Entry

 Synopsis

Our story starts off with a young teen sitting on the end of his bed in his bed room; he seems nervous and anxious about something and keeps checking the time on his watch.  Then realising it is time he rushes down the hallway and tries to sneak out through the backdoor unnoticed, however his mum is standing by the door with arms crossed and catches him in the act.  The mother asks him ‘Where are you going?’ he replies ‘nowhere really, just out’ and leaves quickly without another word being said.  We then see the young teen walking to somewhere however at this point we have no idea where he is going or what he is planning to do, he still appears to be nervous and anxious about his actions but it is not yet made clear what about to the audience at this point.  The boy then comes into contact with what appears to be a shady looking character in a seedy looking area, he clearly looks very powerful compared to our nervous young teen and it is clear at this point something is about to happen.  The nervous young teen and this shady character then begin to exchange words and it becomes apparent that they are doing some sort of deal, first impressions tell the audience that it appears to be some sort of illegal activity including drugs.  As the deal concludes between our two characters it humorously turns out that what appeared to be a drug deal is in fact game deal.  The last shot then fades out and information about help and a slogan against game addiction appear.

List of props and costumes

Costumes
·               Hoodies – Shady Dealer, Nervous Character
·               Trench Coat – Shady Dealer

Props· Games – Shady Dealer hands over to Nervous Character
·         Watch – Nervous Character at start

Thought of the day - As a group we thought about what our synopsis of our short film would be. We planned out our costumes and props for what we would need in the film. We also thought about storyboarding, what things we should include in it and how in depth we have to be to produce a good thorough story board.

09/10/12 – Storyboarding

Today my group and I finished off our storyboards. Thinking through camera shots and angles and how our film will pan out (excuse the pun). We thought about location and actors which helped us understand the way in which our dialogue will be spoken and the way we film around our characters in the story. We have around 30 shots at the moment which is the guideline to our 90 second short film. However we think we’ll go over the shot limit as our film is about building up tension and we need lots of close up shots and quick transitions with tense dialogue, which is why we think it will go over 30 shots. Overall we did good.

Thought of the day - I think our group will be able to film on Thursday and be able to reccee around different locations for us to film on.

10/10/12 - Recceing

We finished off our storyboard and completed everything. We started to take photos around the area of locations we thought would work for our short film. We chose locations which would fit into the genre of our film and locations which would look eerie if it was dusk/night.

Thought of the day - Our group will hopefully be filming tomorrow. I think our production is going smoothly and our short film will be good. We just need to do the script and shot list, however the shots are on the storyboard, which is complete.

These are the photos we took of the locations we wanted to try out. We took photos of locations which appeared to be eerie and where 'deals' would take place. However this would have a better effect if it was darker, which is the time of day we want to film in originally.

11/10/12 - Paperwork

Today we just finished off filling in paperwork and making sure that our actors sign the talent release forms for us to be able to start filming on Monday. We finished filling in the risk assessment form and finished doing the production schedule. Hopefully we will start filming on Monday after college when the time of day is more appropriate.

16/10/12 - Helping out and filming plans

Today I helped out Megan and Ollie as their group member Luke wasn't in today to help them film. They managed to get a few of their scenes done. However today is the day we shoot our film, hopefully it will go well and the weather won't be much of an issue to deal with. We are filming the first scene of the film which includes one of the actors, this should be ideal as he is proffesional and also a close friend. If all filming goes well, then we should finish by Friday's lesson.

17/10/12 - Shooting

Last night we shot our film, we managed to collect the equiptment with no hassle and found eachother in around 5 minutes. When we came to actually shooting the film, we followed the storyboard accuratley although we changed some of the shots that were dependant on the environment we were in. We managed to shoot all the film and made sure it went smoothly. I think our group worked together well and the actor we had followed the instructions cooperatively. We took turns to film different parts of the film, and to direct eachother where we were meant to stand, film, and what to say etc; We didn't use the locations that we shot on the reccee, but the shots still turned out okay. However the dialogue could have been spoken louder, but it was hard as we were filming mostly on the streets where cars and wind were blocking the sound of spoken dialogue.

18/10/12 - Post production

Today we have been perfecting our rough cuts from yesterday. We have been using the ripple editing tool to accurately pin point what parts of the shots we want to cut down, this helped us understand the importance of editing and getting the continuity right throughout the film. We've done the transitions between the shots where Laurie is walking to meet the dealer. We made this a montage of him walking to show the time difference. We used cross dissolve transitions so the shots blend in together and create smooth footage.