Contact Sheet

Over my shooting of my short film I only took one image as it was all that I needed to use for my poster as my article features pictures taken directly from the short film. I chose for this particular image to be the main image that my tasks focused around as it is dark and mysterious and creates a lot of intrigue around my short film.

PRODUCTION LOG - Call Sheet

The call sheet is a document that is required to let the equipment company know how much equipment you and your production team require. This document is crucial not only to the equipment company or the production studio but to me as a director.
It helps me keep track of what equipment I will be needing,
How I will be using that equipment,
How long I will need that equipment for and so on. It helps because it lets me visualise the entire project as a whole and much like the production schedule it lets me put a deadline or a goal onto my work.

Call Sheet

This is the call sheet for me to use when looking at the organised dates I have set aside for shooting. The sheet looks like it contains very little information and it does but this is because my short film is an exceedingly small production in the sense that it is all shot in one month at one location and it only requires two people, me and my actor Arun. I will be taking 1 or 2 cameras out in order to get multiple shots or angles; this is still to be confirmed at a later date as I am not certain on that yet. The call sheet will help me to get an understanding of the schedule that I need to stick to. This post is similar to my schedule post but it goes more into detail than that post.

Alterations made along the way - Article

BEFORE 

Big empty space

 

AFTER

Empty space is filled with a small fact file about the film 

 

BEFORE 

Lacks a nice title

 

AFTER

Title placed and looking good against a white background

PRODUCTION LOG - Finding royalty-free music

In today's lesson I went on the hunt for decent royalty free music to use in my short film. I found a webstie called incompetech that has a whole library of royalty free music that users can download. I clicked a few selection boxes to filter throught the music they had on offer and found a song to use in my short film. I selected the boxes;

• Dark,
• Mysterious,
• Intense,
• Serious,
• and Unnerving.

I did this in order to get the song that I knnow feel is a perfect selection for my short film.

In the second half of todays lesson I started to toy around with the different effects and effect conrtols that come available to me in Adobe Premire Pro CS6. I applied an effect that put my video in black and white and in order to suit the music I had now selected I slowed the video down by setting it to 50% speed.

Alterations made along the way - Poster

BEFORE 

My poster looks slightly empty here, not much going on with barely readable text.

 

AFTER

I chose to implement the colour bars in the poster as I wanted them to become my house style or my house theme as they look nice and capture what I want the film to be. I also put the BBFC rating at the bottom nice and obviously so that people could see it. This was all done to make my poster seem much more real and much more like an actual poster.

PRODUCTION LOG - Script

Today I spent time working in a new program that I have never used before called Celtx. Celtx is a program that allows people to make really nice and well laid out scripts. This is a valuable asset to me as it means I can create a professional looking script very quickly.
Celtx is very easy to use and it took me about as long as it would have taken me if I was using Microsoft word. This is why having Celtx available to me was very useful.

Script

My script features no dialogue as there is no dialogue throughout my entire film. Instead I have created a script that will help my actor understand the shots how I would like them and what actions he must complete in order for this film to be a success. In some of the actions I have described where the camera is or when the shot changes and this is for my actor so that he can understand how the shots will look and how the camera will move throughout the film.

I've included the time of day on the scene headings as well so that I know what time everything should be shot and how the rooms should be shot in order for the film to keep within the correct continuity.

This is a screen capture from the program Celtx. I used Celtx to create the script because it is a handy piece of software that makes creating a script nice and simple. The program is very intuitive and easy to understand. This is also very helpful as I have never written a script before.This is my script as it will look to my actor. I will have to explain certain aspects to him but hopefully not too many.

OPENING QUOTE

INT. LIVING ROOM DAY

PROTAGONIST IS SITTING WATCHING TV, BACK TO THE CAMERA,
MOVING FEET IDLY AROUND ALMOST WITHOUT KNOWING.

FACING CAMERA, LOOKING PAST IT AT THE TV OUT OF SHOT. PLACE
REMOTE TO THE SIDE AND RAISE PHONE INTO VIEW.

CLOSE UP ON REMOTE OUT OF FOCUS. LIFT THE REMOTE AND TURN
OFF THE TV.

TITLE CREDITS

INT. BEDROOM EARLY MORNING

PROTAGONIST SITTING ON THE EDGE OF THE BED PROTAGONIST
SLOWLY RAISES HIMSELF AND THEN WALKS OUT

INT. HALLWAY MORNING

PROTAGONIST WALKS DOWN THE STAIRS AND INTO THE KITCHEN

INT. KITCHEN MORNING

PROTAGONIST PREPARES BREAKFAST WITH A MULTITUDE OF CLOSE UP
SHOTS.

INT. LIVING ROOM MORNING/MIDDAY

PROTAGONIST WALKS INTO THE ROOM FROM OUT OF SHOT, PLACES TEA
AND FOOD ONTO THE SMALL TABLE AND WALKS TO THE SOFA.

PROTAGONIST TAKES A SEAT ON THE SOFA AND PROCEEDS TO READ
THE NEWS PAPER.

PROTAGONIST TURNS TWO OR THREE PAGES AND THEN PAUSES ON A
STORY.

INT. KITCHEN MIDDAY

PROTAGONIST TIES UP SHOES EXTREME CLOSE UP

EXT. GARDEN MIDDAY

PROTAGONIST STEPS OUTSIDE WITH NEAR ROBOTIC MOVEMENTS

PROTAGONIST LOOKS AROUND AT THE OUTSIDE WORLD WITH WONDER

PROTAGONIST CROUCHES BY THE EDGE OF THE GRASS AND PICKS UP A
LEAF. PROTAGONIST STUDIES THE LEAF CLOSELY BEFORE PLACING IT
DOWN.

PROTAGONIST STANDS UP WITH GREAT PAIN, SLOW MOVEMENTS AND
WALKS/STUMBLES ONTO THE GRASS.

PROTAGONIST FALLS TO HIS KNEES AND THEN TO THE GROUND.

CLOSING QUOTE

Once the script was printed I used 3 highlighters to give Arun a clear understanding of what everything meant. I used green to do locations, blue to do his movements and orange to do the movements and the locations of the camera in each of the shots.

Time Lapse

This is the time lapse I took throughout the construction of my television mask prop. The overall deconstruction and reconstruction of the television took one hour and fifty six minutes. The following is my near two hours of hard work wrapped up in a one minute, fourteen second video.

 

This was an interesting project as I had never done anything like this before and I was going in completely blind. As you can see at a few points during the video I was forced to snap certain objects only to later find out that they couldve just been unscrewed. This was an excellent learning experience for me and I believe it has helped to add a personal touch to my short film whilst also demonstrating how committed I am to the film.

PRODUCTION LOG - Creating my time lapse video

 

Today I imported my time lapse pictures. Sir showed me how to import it and make it so that each picture only lasted for 4 frames. this was very helpful as it prevented me wasting my time by having to re size every single indivdual clip by hand. This was a huge time saver and allowed me to move on pretty quickly. The clips were inserted in chronological order making it nice and easy to export. At the end of the time lapse I have placed some pictures of my actor wearing the televison prop just to show how it was used later on. The time lapse will prove very helpful as it gives the audience and insight into the behind the scenes of my short film. It also adds a personal feel to the movie as it shows the effort that I put in, in order to make this film my own. I also feel that it shows how devoted to the film I am because i gave up a few hours in order to make one prop.

In total there were over three hundred and fifty individual photographs as it took a picture every 3 seconds and it lasted for one hour and fifty six minutes. It's very funny to think that my work that took nearly two hours out of my day is summarised in a mere one minute forty five second video.

PRODUCTION LOG - Health and Safety

I had to write a report about how health and safety was tan into consideration when I was shooting my short film. This is important as I need to make a document of what precautions I took to ensure that whilst we were fiulm my actor was as safe as he could possibly be.
I discussed in great length the efforts I went to in order to make sure that everything was ok.

Health and Safety Evidence

In preparation I have had to make a few changes to my house in order to make 100% sure that my actor will be safe during the filming of my short film.
There have been a select few problems that I have encountered whilst filming that I will outline and then explain how I have rectified the problem in order to ensure safety.
Problem:
Television head mask - The actor cannot see out of the television head mask when it has the face plate section on it and this means that the actor cannot see where he is going. This could possibly lead to a serious accident if he were to fall down the stairs.
Solution:
I have replaced the plastic cover that I initially used with some black sugar paper. My actor can now see out of the mask with ease and he can now see where he is going. This is key for safety and for filming as he can now focus on the acting more so than the walking.
Problem:
Dogs - I have two dogs that are ever excitable and they would get in the way of filming and possibly even cause my actor to fall. They are a health hazard when it comes to the film.
Solution:
My neighbour graciously accepted to look after my dogs whilst I shot my short film. This is very helpful as now I can film in peace.
Problem:
Tea - During initial planning I began to think about the fact that my actor could accidently spill piping hot tea on himself during filming and this would not only cause the clips to be useless but it could hurt him a lot.
Solution:
We will film using cold water from an unboiled kettle in order to make sure that if something spills then it will not affect filming or hurt my actor.