Pre Production Planning: Location Survey By Holly King

LOCATION SURVEY

Directions to location:  (Maps can be useful here)

Nearest hospital: Princess Royal Hospital, Haywards Heath Police station: Uckfield Police, New Town, Uckfield TN22 5DL Local taxi firm: Ray’s Taxis, Uckfield Lealands Drive, TN22 1DW, Get directions ‎                          01825 768 494 Train station: Haywards Heath Station Commercial Square, Haywards heath,   West Sussex, RH16 1DJ   0845 127 2920 ()‎ Bus link:

What technical facilities are there? i.e. Power, storage, enough space for equipment necessary to shoot certain set ups etc. We will use the electricity of the house to power the lighting equipment-There is no power supply needed for outside footage. There will be enough space in the house to store and set up the equipment safely. We will use a tall tripod to shoot the high angle of the boy in bed. There will be enough space to do so.

Cast & Crew facilities: i.e. dressing and waiting areas, catering facilities, toilet facilities etc. The characters can dress in the bathroom upstairs and the waiting area and storage area will be in the lounge and conservatory. The only areas we will be filming in, is at the front of the house-in the kitchen, hall and downstairs bedroom. Food will be provided after we have filmed in the kitchen. There are two bathrooms in the house we are filming (one upstairs and one downstairs).

Health and safety are there any implications that may apply to this location Cables need to be tidied away (lighting cables), to prevent tripping hazard. Fluids need to be kept away from electronics-Fire hazard. Ensure lighting equipment is set up properly-Fire hazard. Ensure filming area is clear (floor area) to prevent tripping hazard. Weather Conditions-Wind could blow over tripod; Water from rain could damage Electronic equipment (Could use umbrella to cover camera). Traffic-When filming in road/ down private roads we need to be alert of any traffic- to prevent injury and damage to equipment (Could wear reflective clothing to alert cars).

FILM TITLE:

LENGTH:  5 Minutes

GROUP: Holly King and Freya Murdock

SHOOT DATES: Friday 16^th December

LOCATIONS:  Newick (BN8 4NT), Newick Park-Allington Road

 CREW:  
(With mobile numbers)

• Holly King- 07561 110359
• Freya Murdock- 07943 491342

 CAST:
(With mobile numbers)

• Jake Green
• Jake Annison

CAMERA EQUIPMENT:

• HD Camera
• Tripod

LIGHTING EQUIPMENT:

·        Umbrella Lighting

WARDROBE:

• T-shirt and Cardigan, jeans and trainers for the 2 boys.
• Vest top, jumper, jeans and trainers for the young girl.
• Jeans, T-shirt, Apron

PROPS:

• Photo frame
• Football
• Twix bars
• Keys
• Funeral Clothes

Pre-production Planning: Rushes Update by Freya

Update on the weather for thursday:

Since Thursday is looking so good weather wise, and we have double media from 2 to 4.10 me and Holly think we're going to rent a camera out.  Our actors are free on Thursday afternoons, so we can leave at 1.20 and work until sunset.  The problem with filming in winter is that it starts getting dark so early, so we'll only have a few hours to film quite a lot of footage.  It also means we're going to have to try and get scenes done very close together, so the audience doesn't notice any vast light differences in between shots.   Because of this we're going to shoot the scenes outside first, as to not lose to much light.  When it gets dark we're going to shoot our inside scenes because it doesn't matter if it's dark outside as in the house we can use artificial lighting and have the curtains closed anyway to show Jake blocking out the world. 

Pre-Production Planning-Rushes Planning by Freya

We're having some troublce deciding when to film for a number of reasons.  First of all if we're filming in college hours our filming times need to coincide with our actors (Harry and Jake) frees.  Our times also need to coincide with our other actor, Vicky, who is quite busy.  We also wanted the weather to be bright and cold for our filming, since a lot of it will be outside and these would be ideal filming conditions.  It would also reflect Jake's joy of getting outside and being with Harry, as inside is dark and cramped, connoting the idea that reality is horrible so Jake resorts to a beautiful, bright fantasy world.  The problem with this is that weather easily changes and we have no control over it, so we've looked at the weather forecast to check what days will hopefully have these conditions.
We would rather just get the filming done in one day during the weekend or during the holidays, as it's so stressful trying to coincide our actors timetables and the weather. 

Read more at http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/bn8

Pre-production Planning: Short film Promotion By Holly King

Short Film Promotion:

There are several well known company that promote short films and Review them and also host awards for their favourite short films (competitions). A couple of examples of renounded websites that show short films are:

• Virgin Media
• BBC
• BFI London film Festival
• Empire Magazine Online

BBC Film Network:

Screen Short of the BBC short film Website-Webpage on short film 'The Cull'

• The functions i have highlighted in red show how you can share this video. This is important as it encourages people to share this video and this helps to promote it. People may copy the link to email it to friends, and also there is an 'embed' option which allows people to embed the video onto blogs or example.
• This is a good way of promoting a video and increasing its views as it is so simple to do and can spread so quickly.
• In the blue highlighted area is a function that allows you to create your own film network profile. This is so you can also upload films  to the website and allows you to have an account where you can comment on/rate other films.
• The Green highlighted area shows how by creating an account you can give people feed back on videos, rate the video or comment on it for example. This is a good way of getting feedback on a film.
• There is a section above the comments box, titled 'more from drama'. This box shows films from the same genre as the one you are currently viewing to suggest other films that might appeal to you. This is a good way to promote other films.
• Also by adding tags to your film (such as the genre/key words) when somebody searches this on the film network, your film will appear and so this is a way to make your film more viewed.

Reviews:

• There are many online blogs and pages along with magazines that write film Reviews for short films (such as Empire magazine).
• There are also events where short films can be nominated for awards and screened at a festival. To do this we would have to enter the competition and upload our short film to the website where people will watch it, rate it and vote on which film they think is best, and the most highly rated ones have a chance at winning. I feel this is a good way of promoting a shortfilm and getting it heard of.
• Also if we were to promote out film in a magazine, we know we would be targetting a specific audience and so could choose the magazine accordingly.
• Magazines such as empire are good because the audience buys it, to read reviews of films and they could talk about our film and it may be promoted through word of mouth.

Pre-Production Planning-Questionaire for Feeback by Freya

Our Questionaire  We will post this questionaire on facebook underneath a brief outline of our narrative, so our peers who are our target audience can fill it out.  We are using facebook because it's popular with our demographic so they will most likely see this and have the time to fill it out when leisurely being on facebook.  We are using closed questions so we can collect quantative data instead of qualitive so we can use the information to come up with statistics which can be read easily.  Holly has a Twitter acount so she will publish the questionaire on Twitter as well, which has a similar demographic to Facebook and our short film.

1. Do you think our narrative is a good idea?-Yes-No
2. If you are in the age group 15-25, do you think you would go out of your way to see our film?
   -Yes-No-Maybe
3. Do you see this as an original idea, please be honest!
   -Yes-No
4. What genre of film are you usually interested in?  Pick as many as you wish:
   -Drama-Comedy-Action-Thriller-Romance-Horror-Fantasy-Sci-Fi

Pre-production Planning: Initial Group decisions By Holly King

• Genre/Style- Drama with a twist, emotional film about a boy who is imagining his recently deceased friend.
• Narrative- Short film about a boy whos best friend has recently died. His isolates him self from reality and real human contact and endulges in the company of his friend (using his imagination). Only at the end of the short film do we realise his friend he has been spending the day with, is not real; As we are lead to believe he exists throughout the film.
• Target Audience- Young adults/Teenagers, who may be able to relate. (15-25)

Mise en Scene:

• Lighting
• Costume designs/Hair Make-up Young Female, Young males and Mother
• Setting and Location
• Camera Work
• Camera Shots/storyboard
• Props
• Facial Expression and Body Language will be important in our short film to help set the mood and also represent the characters. The main character will have quite a shy, unconfident body language and the characters emotion will change throughout. Characters such as the mother and Young girl will have quite concerned facial expresson to show they are worried about Jake.

Pre Production Planning-Initial Prop Ideas by Freya

• In our short film we've planned to use a lot of props.  We're going to list them here so when it comes to filming we know what we need. 

1. Headphones:  We wanted to use these so the audience can very clearly see that he's blocking out the world around him. 
2. Keys:  Something that he grabs on the way out, to show his independence in being a 'latch key kid' and how even though his mother will probably be in he refuses to have her help in anything, even opening the door.
3. Twix x 2:   We wanted to use a twix specifically because twixs consist of two chocolates inside the packet, connoting friendship.  The fact he takes two trigures his mother to say "Are you hungry?" which the audience will look back on and realise why she said that because of knowing the twist.
4. Football:  This prop is used to express the fun, English, boyish relationship between the two.
5. Suit:  One of the first give aways of what's going on is when his mother tells him to get ready and she has the suit in hand.  It indicates a seriousness that the rest of the plot has lacked, and connotes celebration and going to an event. 
6. Photo frame: The photo frame holds a photograph of Harry and Jake.  It's a very important prop as it shows how close they were, and helps the audience understand that Harry is now gone.
   

Pre-Production Planning: Script By Freya and Holly

Scenes:

Scene 1- Opening house scene
Scene 2- Boys journey to the park, playing football and returning home
Scene 3- End house scene

Scene 1:

Jamie T song playing as off screen diegetic sound track (listening to in headphones)
Mother:     Jake?
                 Are you hungry? (Laughs)
                   You going out? Who with?
Scene 2:

Music Track Stops-Only sound is diegetic sounds and dialogue

Boys leaving house walking to park
Harry:        Hey
Jake:         Hey Man, Its nice to see you.
Harry:        How've you been?
Jake:         Yeah fine, Mums been driving me crazy though.
Harry:        She's just looking out for you.
Jake:         Yeah i know.
Harry:        Fancy a kick about?
Jake:         Hey did you hear about Socrates? Can't believe he's dead!
Harry:        Yeah I know! It's like a disease at the moment. It's always the best ones that go..

Boys Entering Park Playing Football
Harry:        How are the guys? Heard you haven't been going to college recently.
Jake:         It's pointless now, everyones being annoying, can't have 5 minutes to myself
                  You should come back..
                  Everyone misses you, you dick
Harry:        Bet Kate misses me eh? (winks)
Jake:         Oi you nob!

Kate approaches the boys playing football
Harry:      Isn't that Kate over there?
Jake:       Yeah, I think so
Harry:      Aren't you going to say hi?
Jake *shrugs*
Harry*waves*
Jake:       Stop it!  Oh look she's coming over now.
Kate:       Hey Jake!
Jake:       Hi.
Kate:       How've you been?
Jake:       Fine.
Kate:       Good, some people are coming round mine tonight if you want to come? 
                It'd be really nice, everyone misses you.
Jake:       I'm busy.
Kate:       Okay, text me if you wanna hang out.  *touches shoulder*  I really hope you do.

She walks away, Jake turns round to face Harry who's looking dissaproving
Jake:        What?
Harry:       You should go later.
Jake:         I'm busy.
Harry:       You don't need to be.
Jake:         I want to go.
Harry:        No you don't you just think you should.  I don't mind man.

Scene 3:

Start to walk back home.
Arrive home.
Mother:    Jake?  Are you home?
Harry:       Hi Vicky!
*Jake elbows him and they go upstairs*
Harry:       *picks up photoframe*  Who's this looker?  *places it on the desk*
Jake:        That was such a good night.  Remember when we stole that guys hat
Harry:       and he chased us for half an hour!  The funniest night
Jake:        It WAS so funny,  we should hang out more.
Harry:       We had some good times, man.  But you know it's gonna have to stop.
Jake:        What do you mean?
Harry:       You can't carry on like this forever, mate. You gotta let go.
Mother enters the room carrying clothes
Mother:     I thought I heard you come in Jake.  You should probably get ready, I've ironed
                 your suit.*sympethetic smile*

Pre-production planning: Planning filming By

• We plan to film our shots in the house in Wivelsfield Green on Thursday the 8th of December. We will take out an HD Video camera and borrow umbrella lighting equipment from the college.
• The rest of our fotoage (shot in Newick) we will film on the weekend of the 10th-11th of December. This is because we will need more time to film as the majority of our short film will be shot here- To film we will borrow an HD Video Camera from college- we will not be borrowing any lighting equipment as all the footage shot in Newick is set outside, and so we will use natural lighting.

Pre-Production Planning: Costume Design by Freya

Pre-production planning: Roles By Holly King

• Lighting-Holly King
• Acting- Holly King
• Props/ Location- Holly King
• Camera Movement-Freya Murdock
• Positioning of characters- Freya Murdock
• Hair, Make up and Costume- Freya Murdock
• Overall Camera Work-Freya and Holly
• Video Editing- Freya and Holly
• Sound Editing- Freya and Holly
• Directing Shots- Freya and Holly

Pre-production planning: Location By Holly King

Locations of our short film:

Our short film will be filmed in the following locations:

Newick:

•  Newick will be the location where we film all of our outside footage. We will film the characters leaving the house and walking to Newick Park.



Google map images of Newick-Journey to the park from the house.
Image 1-The Boys house
Image 4-Entrance to the Park

• The characters will be playing football up at the recreational ground. They will go to either one of the following three locations:

• 1-The Skate Park -This is a communal environment where teenage boys stereotypically hang out-also at the skate park in newick there is a bench (where the two boys could sit) and it opens on to a field (this is where the two boys could play football).

• 2-The Children's Park- This is another communal environment where teenagers (stereotypically) often hang out, so we thought the children's park could be a good location for our short film.



• 3-The Footballl goal- There are 2 football goals at newick park where the 2 boys could be playing football-One of these goals is close to a bench area where the two boys could sit down and talk.

• We Chose to use Newick as the location because we thought the recreational ground was large and had different facilities that we could use in our short film. We also like the rural location and the emptiness of the surroundings (showing its a quiet village).
• It is also a more convenient location for myself and Freya as we both live locally.

Wivelsfield Green:

• For the scenes that are to be shot inside of a house, we will be filming at my house in Wivelsfield Green-This is because the layout of the house works better in our short film than the house we would be using in Newick.
• We will have to ensure the cut from inside the house-to the boy leaving the house at walking outside is smooth and looks as if it is the same location.

Images of key rooms to be filmed in our short film

• These images were taken as pre-production planning, before we film in these locations, the rooms will have been cleaning and props placed accordingly.
• The main filming will be in the boys bedroom and the kitchen-The bedroom will be redressed to look like a young teenage boys and props (such as the photo frame) will be put into position. This is the location where we see the boy emerging from and also where himself and his friends return to.
• The kitchen will be where we will film the mother.
• Other Locations in the house (Such as the staircase) will also be briefly filmed in our short film to show the boys movement around the house. Also pans across different rooms at the beginning of our short film to establish the location.

Pre-production Planning: Lighting By Holly King

• For the majority of our short film we will be Using Ambient Lighting because most of our short film will be filmed outside in daylight and so will need to look realistic and natural.
• The ambient ligthting will also create a sense of normality and realism. It adds to the fact that we are using observational camera work, and other lighting effects (such as low key lighting) are subjective and create a mysterious, melencholic mood however this is not the effect we want throughout the majority of the short film.

Example Showing Natural/Ambient Lighting

• Towards the end of the short film however, (When the boy is sitting alone in his room) we will experiment with using Low Key lighting. This is because low key/dark lighting creates a dark, melancholic mood and is also more subjective so the viewer is able to empathise with the character more and this is what we wish to achieve at the end of our short film when you realise that the friend had died and was being imagined by the boy.
• The low key lighting can also give quite a distorted, surreal mood. Which is significant as the boy has been imagining his friend the whole time (giving a distorted sense of reality).



Example showing Low Key lighting

• We Could Create Low Key Lighting using an umbrella light. This lighting was used in our AS Media thriller work and we feel works successfully.

Image of umbrella lighting which could be used to create low key lighting

Pre-Production Planning-Camera shots by Freya

• We've planned to do a lot of tracking and panning shots through out our short film.  To track we have a number of ideas:

1. Balance camera on wheely chair that we than push
2. Tape it to a remote control car
3. Try and walk very steadily with camera
4. Balance it to skateboard

• Prom our prelinary project we found panning to also be a huge difficulty, to have a pan that is even and has the same pace the whole way through was so hard.  Ideas:

1. Balance on wheelychair and turn it slowly
2. Turn slowly on spot

Pre-Production Planning: Costume Design by Freya

This costume design is an idea of how our male characters will be dressed.  It had aspects of what both characters will be wearing, as they will be similarily dressed.  To create this I found an image of an outlined male on google, and then seperately found items of clothes I wanted him to wear, applying them to him on Photoshop.

Pre-Production Planning: Costume By Holly King

Young Female Characters Costume Design

• I  Created this Design to show how we intend to represent our female Characters in our short Film. There are some Traditional Features however the majority of the design shows a Modern Representation of woman.
• I started off with a plain female body and photoshopped on different items of clothing individually. I chose which styles of clothing to include as this affects how we represent the gender and if it was traditional or modern.
• The older female character of the mother we would dress more traditionally as she is older and we feel this would work better with the character.

Pre-Production Planning: Animatic By Freya and Holly

Pre-Production Planning Animatic Script: Written by Holly and Freya

Shots and voiceover description of shots:

Shot no.	Voice over Descriptions of shots/script:
1, 2	The first succession of Establishing shots are in wide depth of field and show the camera panning across the rooms to introduce the house as a location.
3, 4	The next two shots are tracking shots, towards the stairs and the bedroom door, showing that we are approaching something.
5	This birds eye view shot will slowly track towards the male character until he opens his eyes.
6	And will then change to a medium shot at eye level of him sitting up.
7	This shot is an extreme long shot, showing the boy leaving his room .
8	This is a shot at eyelevel with his feet, showing a close up of his feet as he walks down the stairs.
9	This shot will track/tilt down while he goes downstairs showing his journey.
10	Close up shot of boy taking 2 Twix chocolate bars.
11	Close up shot of boy unzipping his bag and putting the two chocolate bars inside.
12	Over the Shoulder shot of mum facing the boy as she speaks to him.
13, 14, 15	Shots in quick succession showing the boy fulfilling tasks needed to leave the house.
16	Over the shoulder shot of mum looking at the boy as she speaks again.
17	Shot of door closing as boy leaves the house.
18	Close up of mums facial expression-zooms in on face.
19	Extreme long shot and Point of view shot, showing boy looking over at his friend waiting outside-the camera tracks in.
20	Over the shoulder shot showing friend looking over at the boy.
21	Extreme long shot tracking out showing the 2 boys walking away together.
22	Extreme long shot showing the boys playing football-Camera pans to follow ball.
23	Big close up of shoe kicking football.
24	Over the shoulder, extreme long shot showing girl approaching the boys.
25	Over the shoulder shot, medium close up of boys, showing reaction to girl.
26	Extreme long shot of boys walking back home-pans slightly to follow them as they walk out of frame.
27	Extreme long shot of boys entering the house-Camera tracks in as if to follow them.
28	Medium close up of legs walking up stairs.
29	Extreme long shot showing boys entering bedroom-camera tracks in.
30	Extreme long shot of the 2 boys sitting on the bed.
31	Extreme long shot showing mum entering room, holding pile of clothes.
32	Medium close up showing clothes on the bed next to the boy –Camera tracks in/zooms in on clothes.
33	Extreme long shot showing boys sitting on bed in background-the foreground is out of focus.
34	Plane of focus changes, so foreground is in focus and background is out of focus. Uses shallow depth of field so we are able to see photograph in foreground, and the friend that is out of focus in the background fades away.
35	Big Close up of boys facial expression-looking sad.
36	Extreme long shot showing boy sitting alone on bed. Camera tracks out and then fades to black.

Presented by Holly