Direction Unit - Helping others

I was asked by a couple of people from my class to help them with their auditions and filming.

1) Helen's auditions

I have worked with Helen many times with projects and as she helped me out for my auditions I was happy enough to help her out. My job was to go down and collect the talent and then bring them back down stairs. I feel that her auditions went quite well, and that she was able to find the main characters needed.

2) Roxanne's auditions

I haven't worked with Roxanne before, but I was happy enough to help her out. My job was to collect the talent and bring them back down afterwards. Roxanne had a lot of extras to attend her audition, which was good because then she would have a realistic film with lots of people in the background. She also had a couple of people that auditioned for the main character, one of the guys seemed quite good for the main role and I think that he will get the part.

3) Helen Filming

I helped Helen out on two of her filming days, one to help film the indoor scenes and also to be the 'attractive lady' (passerby) in her film. I enjoyed filming with Helen, we both came up with as many shot ideas we had to make sure she had enough coverage on both days.

4) Sophie Filming

I was able to help Sophie with one of her days of filming. She was very prepared on the day of shoot, and we was able to film quite a few scenes, even though we started filming around lunch time. There was a couple of times where the sun came out and effected the lighting, but luckily the sun didn't stay out for that long, so we was able to get the shoots that we needed.

Overall I'm glad that I was able to help with a couples of peoples shoots and auditions. I wouldn't mind working with Helen, Roxanne and Helen in the future.

Directions Unit - Shot List

Here is the shot list I used on the days I was filming.

Overall shot lists are an organised way of making sure you get all the shots you need/want on the day of shoot. By using a shot list I was able to finish each filming day earlier than what I expected, also it meant that I didn't waste much of the crew and actors time.

Directions Unit - Props

Medication

Indoor scene

For the medication, I was able to use the outer packaging from someone I know. I looked at the size of the pills for Amitriptyline, and went to a savers store in town to see if there was any cheap medication that had the same tablet shape to create realism to the story. Luckily I was able to find some aspirin for 19p and decided to use them. I popped the pills out into a bowl so that I could film the left over packaging, and then when I needed the pills for the scene I then tipped the pills out into her hands. I wanted to make sure that Fiona (actress playing the main character) didn't actually try and get in any of the tablets in her mouth, as we were going to take multiple shots. After a couple of seconds we figured out that if she closed her mouth right before the camera moved up to see the pills moving towards her mouth that it would give the impression that her character was actually taking the tablets.

Outdoor

For the meeting scene where the two main characters exchange a package, I wanted to package to be in an envelope as it will the audience question what is inside that envelope, i.e. money, drugs, etc.

Here is an image of the package and the medication used for the different scenes.

Phone

For the phone scenes I was able to use Fiona's actual phone. I was originally going to use my own phone, but Fiona's phone seemed more practical for her character.

Digital clock

In the opening and ending shots of the film I decided to use a close up of a digital clock. I felt that because in a later scene the main character checks the time again but this time on a watch, that it would be a good idea to use a variety of different items.

Clothes

Im my description of the main character she is a bit messy due to her being down and not caring as much, so I thought it would be interesting to show this by having some clothes scattered on the floor.

Pictures

To make the bedroom a bit more homey, I thought it would be a good idea to have some family pictures around the room, i.e. on the chest of drawers and bookcase. I feel that this shows that the character still loves her family, even though her parents won't speak to her anymore due to her moving in with her boyfriend months earlier.

Plates and cups

I thought by having some 'used' plates and glasses on the side, will show how down hill the character has gone, due to her depression and that she doesn't case about the way she's living anymore.

I think these props helped a bit with what the main character is like, i.e. messy. By having the little touches of the used plates and the photos on the side, made the room look like that she's been there for a while.

Directions Unit - Depression Research 2

When looking through different films with depression I came across 'Titanic'. In the film near the beginning of the film, Rose the main character is about to jump off the bow of the ship, due to being forced into a marriage with a man she didn’t love. She feels trapped and pressured, resulting into attempting suicide. With depression you can sometimes feel imprisoned and think that the only way of getting out of thee situation is by removing yourself from it. This is similar to my main character Lizzie as she feels that she has no one to talk to.

When looking into different art pieces that related to depression, these three images stood out to me.

This image had a lot of meaning to what depression can make you feel like. The person fades into the wall, as if she is invisible to everybody, and the way her hand is covering her face, as if she is secluding herself from everyone. In a lot of depression images I found many people had hands over their faces or their legs pulled in.

This image of the two apples was perfect on showing how my main character feels throughout the story. From the beginning til just before the end of the film, she seems fine but at the end when you see the tablets in her hands and the medication on the floor, you then realise what she actually feels inside. Most people with depression will put a happy face on to make it look like their ok, when really deep down they are not.

This image was what depression would look like on a piece of paper. The colours used are dark, which creates this gloomy and miserable effect. The drawn face is sad and looks like it is about to cry. The hair is messy, which shows it hasn't been taking care of themselves. There is also a lot of shading and some features such as the eyes are hard to see properly. This helps create a darkness to the illness and that it isn't one of the best ones to have as it will make you feel down most of the times.

Sometimes depression can make you feel like you’re outcast. This image shows that you feel like the only one that has a problem and that no one understands what your feeling.

Overall these images have given me a sense on what depression can mean to different people.

Directions Unit - Depression Research

Depression is a real life illness where you persistently feel sad for weeks, months or even years. It is not something that you can snap out of and would need therapy or medication to make a full recovery. Depression can affect people in different ways, from feeling sad to worthless. Some symptoms are; constantly feeling tired, not participating in social activities, etc. People with depression are also more likely to have anxiety. A severe case of depression can make you feel like there is no point living anymore and can end up with the person trying to commit suicide.

There are different medications that you can take to help with depression, the most common being 'Citalopram.'

As my character suffers from a severe case of depression I wanted to look into medication that was a little bit stronger. I was able to find some medication called, 'Amitriptyline'. This medication is used for depression but also for relief from chronic pain. If you take more than the tablets prescribed it can have a fatal affect on overdosing, as it contains a much higher mg than a normal antidepressant. It also states that when taking any depression medication that there might be an intensified risk of self-harm in the early stages of taking the medication.

I thought that 'Amitriptyline' would be a good medication to use as the main character at the ends 'commits suicide' and by taking quite a few of these certain tablets have more of a realism of actually being fatal then other drugs.

Directions Unit - Editing

When I started editing my film I came across a couple of problems that I thought I wouldn't be able to fix.

Problem 1 - The lighting

As I filmed different scenes on different days, the shots had differently lighting. It wasn't a major issue as all I had to do was darken some of the footage as well as go on colour correction and fiddle about with the exposure and saturation. By changing the exposure and saturation on the colour correction in the inspector pannel  helped so much with the lighting in my film as I was able to change it different parts without darkening the whole shot.

Before

After

Problem 2 - Major crossing the line

When I filmed the meeting scene between the two main characters I totally forgot about using the 180° barrier. There were two over the shoulder shots that I really wanted to use, as it made this part more interesting, but what I didn't realise is that I filmed over the wrong shoulder, which meant that the characters face we could see didn't look like she was speaking to the other character we was on the shoulder of. I was able to speak to Fergus and he said that there was a way on FCP where you could flip the image, so that it would look like that I filmed over the right shoulder. I was able to go onto the distort button underneath the window where you play the footage and flip the image over. It made such a difference to my film and it looks like I actually filmed over the right shoulder.

Before

After

Directions Unit - Location Scouting

When location scouting I came across an estate. I went out and started looking around to see if there any roads and paths that I could use for the outside locations in the script.

Here are some images on where I am hoping to film my short film.

Bedroom

I looked around my room and thought that this may be a good space for filming as it is medium sized and has basic furniture, which was what I was looking for. I haven't fully decided whether to use my room yet as I will have to take a lot of items out to achieve the plain look i'm going for.

Street image

I was looking for different streets within an estate so that the walking scenes I had were different each time/met the description of the script. I was able to find some streets on the outskirts of an estate that weren't near a noisy main road.

Alleyway image

While walking around one of the estates, I came across this woody alleyway. It was similar to what I had in mind, and had one side fenced and the other part woody and overgrown. I felt that this would be good to use as it seems quite trapped and creepy and would be a great unknown place for the character to walk down.

Open space/field

When driving home one day I past this open space. When I went to look around outside, I found out that is was a place where people walking their dogs. It had a lot of space, which is perfect as it would be less likely to bump into people when filming and as its a place where people walk their dogs, not many people would hang around. Further down into the field I found a picnic area surrounded by trees and benches, which seemed perfect for the meeting scene in the script.

Direction Unit - Book Research

I was able to go to the library after a lecture and get some books on directing as well as how to film within a budget. The books I took out were 'Changing Direction: A practical approach to directing actors in film and theatre', 'Directing Actors: creating memorable performances for film and theatre', 'Directing: film techniques and aesthetics' and 'Beginning film making: 100 easy steps from script to screen.'

I found that 'Directing: film techniques and aesthetics', was very helpful for this unit, especially on cinematography and sound. There is a list of what is within cinematography, which helped with writing my directors statement, as I found this section quite difficult to write about. The section in this book that was very useful was the sound pages, as it went into depth with multi-layering and how to match dialogue, etc. Multi-layering was something I definitely wanted to look into, because when I did a rough copy of my film some of the scenes seemed to have more going on then others, so I wanted to find a way of adding separate layers in to even this out.

Beginning filmmaking, was my favourite book out of the lot I took out. It was useful throughout the process of filming. It is a great book for students who are starting to make films, and gives so many tips on how to use lighting, to help create different moods as well as guidelines on how to achieve different shots. The pages I looked at the most were the ones on camera angles and shots, as it gave me ideas on what I could shoot before I started filming. I like how this book went into detail on the different ways of using shots and angles, i.e. by using a low angle it gives the effect of the character looking more powerful.


Overall I was able to find something within each book to help out with my filming process as well as communicating with the actor. I will definitely be taking out the 'Beginning filmmaking' book out in the future I feel this will be very handy when creating my own short films out of uni.

Directions Unit - Filming 3

After editing through all my clips, there were a couple of shots that really bothered me. They were the beginning indoor scenes, where the main character wakes up in her bedroom.
The lighting was yellow, due to me using my bedroom lighting and I didn't feel that the actress portrayed enough depression in these shots either.

I was able to take the camera out again for a day to re-do these shots.
Luckily the actress understood and didn't mind coming back to re-shoot them.

This time I decided to try and use the natural lighting from the window, as well as brighten up the footage by using the settings within the camera. The shots definitely looked much better with the natural lighting and this time round I gave my actress more direction so that I wouldn't need to re-shoot again.

I also went through the footage bit by bit with the actress to make sure that she was as happy with the shots as I was. I felt this helped a lot as the actress was then able to see how her performances turned out and if she wanted to re-do them again, then she would know what she had to do different.

I'm so happy that I was able to get all the shots I wanted that day. I definitely feel a lot happier with my footage. I am now going to start editing my whole film.

Directions Unit - Filming 2

After filming the first time, I had to wait a couple of weeks before I could re-shoot due to the lack of cameras that were available as well as who could help me out as crew on the shoot.

Unfortunately I had a lot more trouble on this second shoot than the first.

1) Two actors dropped out, due to travelling.

2) I couldn't find anyone available to help out as crew.

3) I had to figure out a date between my actors work schedule as well as my studies.

After panicking for a couple of days, I decided that I would have to film and direct, so that I am able to get my footage and have long enough time to edit it before the deadline. Luckily my friend out of uni, Sinead was able to help out by holding the boom and helping out with sound. She was also very honest when I showed back the footage, which I appreciate. If Sinead wasn't there I would have probably not been able to shoot my film for another couple of weeks.

The two actors who had dropped out were, the old lady and the male extra. I completely understood why they dropped out, due to no expenses being payed (as they lived quite far away), however I was able to convince my lovely nan to fill in the position of the old lady. The male extra role wasn't really important for my story anyway, but I decided to keep the female extra in (as the male and female extra originally were going to play a couple).

I spoke to my lecturer, Simon about what was going on and he was able to help me choose a date to do the filming as well as confirm that I could film and direct at the same time due to my circumstances.

When it came to the day of filming it actually went better then what I expected, the weather was overcast and I just about missed a shower of rain. The shoots only took a couple of hours, which is quite good as I had to film about four scenes each day. 

Here is an example on what I filmed over the three days.

Day 1

I filmed the indoor scenes as well as where the main character leaves her home.

Day 2

I filmed the walking scenes outside with just the main character.

Day 3

I filmed the meeting scene between the two main characters as well as the second characters intro.

Overall the shoots went great and we ended up finishing a lot earlier than what I expected. The cast were very cooperative and I gave them a box of chocolates and a thank you card each, as I was so grateful that they didn't mind not being paid as well as helping out on the shoots. I'm quite happy that I was able to fit my filming within three days, although I probably could have split filming into two days instead. In the future I hope not to take the camera so many times out and try to shoot what I want the first time round.

Lighting Workshop

Last week our class was able to learn about lighting with Fergus.

He showed us about 3 point lighting and how to use the lighting on creating atmospheres, etc.

Three-point lighting is a method used in video, film and photograph, by using three separate lights in different positions, so that the photographer, etc can light up the subject (person you filming or taking a photo of) as well as controlling the shading and shadows produced by the main light.

Our group was given a task to complete a couple of film noir style using lighting and filming a couple of seconds of it. I teamed up with Colleen, Andrei and Mark.

We chose a photo from the internet that had a film noir effect to it, we decided to go with a poster image from the horror film 'The Thing.'

When we looked at this image, we thought that the best way to replicate this image was to light someone from behind. Colleen offered to be our model. It took us longer than we thought to get the same effect. We tried using all the three different lights, as we thought they would give a much more darker shadow. After when we thought we finally got the image correct, Fergus came to check what we had done and said we didn't actually succeed in copying the image. He showed us how we could get the same lighting effect from the image by just using one light. Unfortunately we ran out of time, so we weren't able to film this image.

After doing this, we was given another task to create another film noir image. This time it was just me and Colleen.

Here is an example we was trying to re-create.

This time me and Colleen only wanted to have lighting so that we could focus on the eye area. Yet again this was a lot harder to achieve than we thought.

Here is our attempt of re-creating the look from the image of the woman above.

Overall from doing this workshop I have found an interest in film noir filming and definitely want to do a film noir type of film in the future. I feel that having this workshop helped show how important lighting can be and how positioning the lighting differently can help make a scene more dramatic.

Directions Unit - Cast Wardrobe

Lizzie Pierce

For Lizzie's wardrobe I wanted to have a lot of dark colours. This was because depression is connected to lots of dark colours, i.e. in paintings, in colour charts, etc.

I was able to speak to Fiona via email, to discuss what her character would be wearing. We was able to agree on some pieces of clothing from Fiona's wardrobe for Lizzie's character to wear. The only item I wasn't sure on was the blue jacket, as I feel this will bring too much attention to her character. We then spoke again and decided that we would go with a much darker coat and Fiona will now wear a black leather jacket instead of the blue coat.  Here are some images on what Lizzie's character will be wearing.

Rachel Parker

For Rachel's character I wanted her clothing to be completely opposite to what Lizzie is wearing. Her clothes have to be neutral as well as brightly coloured. I want Rachel's character to contrast Lizzie's, by showing that Rachel has money and Lizzie doesn't as well as how happy Rachel is compared to Lizzie.

I was able to speak to Rebecca, who is playing Rachel's character and we was able to speak via emails on clothes for Rachel's character. Luckily all the types of clothes I was describing, Rebecca already had, such as a long neutral coat and heeled shoes. Here are some images of the pieces of clothing Rachel's character will be wearing.

Female and Male Extra

For this extra role I wanted a couple who are middle class and are quite well dressed. This is because I want to reflect how poor Lizzie is, as well as what it would have been like if she stayed with her bf. I wanted this couple to be newly engaged and there was one item that I wanted the female extra to wear and that was an engagement ring.

I spoke to Krystina, who is playing the role of the female extra about the pieces of clothing she would need to wear as well as the importance of an engagement ring. Luckily she had a ring she could use as well as some fancy clothes that she could borrow off a family member.
Here are some items of what Krystina will be wearing as the female extra.

I spoke to Julian to discuss what he should wear as the male extra and we was able to make a decision on what he had in his wardrobe. I definitely wanted him to wear a dark coat, with some jeans and smart shoes, so that he looked smart/casual. Here is an image on what the male extra will be wearing.

Old Lady

I discussed wardrobe with Mary when she auditioned and when I was explaining about the old lady and her part in the script, she instantly had an idea on what type of clothes this character should wear.
Here is the outfit Mary will be wearing for her character as the old lady.

Mary was able to send me an image and I was happy with the outcome, as it was very similar to what I imagined this old lady to wear. This outfit is definitely more casual and slouchy compared to the other characters.

Overall i'm quite glad that I was able to use pieces of clothing everyone already had. I was also happy that all the pieces of clothing we all decided on fits each character really well. It definitely makes it a lot easier when your filming on a budget, that your actors are able to wear their own clothes!