Shooting Schedule 3

Planning Schedule

Planning Schedule

Scenes to Film –
Restaurant
Garden
Pool
Underwater
Killing
Driving away from house
Pulling up to restaurant
Ending

Filming Sequence –
Smiths
- Alice and Joe sitting at the table
- 36o degree turns into Kelsey
- Kelsey and Joe sitting at the table
- Kelsey and Joe leaving
- Alice and Joe entering
- Alice and Joe pulling up to the restaurant

Garden
- 360 degree shot both girls
- Alice exits after looking at phone
- Joe walks towards pool
- Over the shoulder shot, looking at phone

Killing
- Point of view walk
- Hit/flash to black screen
- Falling in

Pool and Underwater
- Variety of angles showing Joe fall in
- Dead under water, with blood
- Floating shot from high angle, filmed at day time (will be used after the first diving sequence and will be the final shot)

Driving Away From House
- Camera on floor showing empty road, the car will drive over and fade to black

Diary Of Day Shooting - Smith's

Setting and Location Lighting

For our short film we plan to use different levels of lighting, for example the pool scenes we will be using naturalistic lighting, so the lighting will just be from the general surrounds and the time of day. We used this in this scene and the beginning of the house scene as they were set during day light hours.

When it came to lighting for the bar scene we had a range of lighting possibilities as there was four different lights to choose from and each panel of lighting had its own dimmer switch, which we could use to set the mood. When we had the establishing shot and the tracking cam of the bar we focus the lights on the engravement of “Smith’s Est. 1957” on the wall and made sure the bar was lit up, making the fine cognacs and champagnes visible behind the bar. Most of the long shots used in the bar scene were lit to make the bar seem seductive, which produced a romantic feel which we were looking for. We also used several low angle close ups of the couple on the sofa. In these shots we made the lighting more dominant over the male to show that he was in control and was the strongest character. We feel that the lighting in this scene was very effective and helped us achieve the style and feel we wanted.

Permission Blog

Because we have chosen to change the location of the restaurant scene we have had to ask permission once again. This meant I had to phone and speak with the owners of Smiths Brassiere. After saying i was a media student and needed to film in a high quality and prestigious restaurant we agreed to film on 23rd^th October for a period on one and a half hours, while they set the restaurant up for business.

Change in location

As a previous blog post stated, one of our locations needs to be in a restaurant. The original plan was to film at the Masala zone in High Ongar, however we as a group have decided to change this location to a more upmarket location.

In the past few weeks a local restaurant has been undergoing work to build a new cocktail bar. As a group we decided that this cocktail bar will be a better location than the Indian restaurant. We came to this decision as we felt that the ambience of this new bar would suit the mise en scene of our film better. The new location for our restaurant scene is now Smiths Brassiere.

Shooting Schedule 2

London Film Festival

Short film creators are producing for a niche market and one of the best ways to distribute to this niche market is by your short film being shown at Film Festivals.  The London Short Film Festival is held annually, they screen more than 300 features, documentaries and short films from nearly 50 countries, the festival is the largest public event in the UK with a huge attendance record. The festival showcases films that are highly creative, original and show vision and imagination, awards are given to show recognition of those with the most creative talent.

On the London Film Festival website, there is a dedicated section to Short Films. This is useful if you are a short film director and want to enter into the festival line-up so you know what you’re possible competition will be like and you can create and produce a higher standard finished piece.

Institution Analysis

There is not a large range of companies or institutions that distribute short films, so finding an institution which we want to distribute our short film has caused some problems. We did however eventually find some online platforms that do in their own right distribute Short Films.
Film4 did not at first want to focus all of its broadcasting time on blockbusters, however nowadays does mainly broadcast these mainstream films. With Film4 being a part of Channel4 they can also show many of its in-house productions. Film4 also regularly set apart gaps in the scheduling to showcase short films from up and coming young directors; something which we are, as well as short films from well-known directors and producers. Film4 is a well known TV channel available on every satellite and cable packages free of charge, meaning they can reach millions of people making the level of distribution higher than that of other smaller institutions.

Other online platforms include the growth of YouTube and its increasing popularity. YouTube is a extremely successful way of distributing short films as anyone worldwide can access and watch the films. YouTube is also useful if you are a young/unknown director and you are trying to get noticed and gain exposure, without tons of financial backing. Other popular video websites include, Yahoo Videos, Spike and CastTV.

Props

Pitch

Budgeting

A Hollywood blockbuster or any professionally made film would usually have a budget of hundreds of thousand or maybe even millions of pounds or dollars to produce the film. However I am an A level media student without a huge budget, this doesn’t mean my group wouldn’t have a budget.

The table below shows what the expense was, why we needed it and how much it cost.

Intended Audience

Questionnaire

Although we have narrowed down our target audience, it is essential explore the ways in which they are able to access our film, by conducting a questionnaire we are able to extract this information. It has also become apparent that the number of people who watch short films is a very fine number; there isn’t any concrete evidence to suggest that the general public have any interest in watching short films as there aren’t accessible through a nationwide scale.

Shooting Schedule

Filming underwater

The main controlling idea for our short film is water. Because of this a majority of our film is filmed in and around water. For most of the filming we have had to use a tripod and camera to film alongside the water, but after uploading and starting to edit with this footage the scenes didn’t have the right effect we wanted.

After trying to resolve this problem as a group we had the idea of being able to film underwater, particularly the shots of the protagonist diving or “falling” into the water.

To be able to film underwater the camera needed to be in a water tight box or casing. We had many different ideas of making the camera water tight from putting the camera in a clear sandwich bag to rapping it up in a clear plastic bag. We didn’t really like this idea as the camera would be at great risk and the electrics and water would breach our risk assessment.

After searching around the house for something to use I found a large clear plastic box that could be partly submersed into the water, just enough so the lens was below the water line, this would ensure we could film some shots underwater.

Once these shots were uploaded and edited into our short film, we felt that these shots gave the scene the effect we were looking for.