LO5 5.1 PRACTICAL SKILLS

Welcome to the practical skills stage of my Unit 13 project. This stage is the main part of the visuals of this project. Within this section I will be looking into everything in the production and post production stage of the project. First off I wanted to look into my film shoots, and the successes and failures through detailed daily journal entries.

MINIATURE SHOOT

MINIATURE SHOOT DAY JOURNAL

THURSDAY 13TH APRIL 2023

Today was the first day of filming for the production stage of Unit 13. This shoot was for the first opening shot of my film, so I knew it was important for me to get it correct. It was also an extremely difficult shot to create that required weeks of planning with the creation of the buildings. For this shoot, I had to film in passes in order to create the most realistic look on the buildings. The passes were, info pass, beauty pass, fog pass, moonlight pass, searchlight pass, practical pass and street lights pass. One thing that I decided to do as an extra to these passes was a safety pass. The safety pass consisted of me turning all of the lights on, and doing a pass with everything at the same time as opposed to filming individual layers and composing in post. I chose to do this as if there were any shots in which the camera moved, all of the shots would be ruined, so it meant that if the passes failed, I still had the safety pass as a fall back. Although this shot was only for 15 seconds of the film, today's shoot took me 3 hours to film everything. I also was working on a tight time schedule as I was limited by the fire alarms. When filming this shot, I used a fog machine for most passes, so the fire alarm had to be turned off. But I was only limited to a certain amount of time, as the alarms were due to come back on at 5, this meant that as it came to the end of my filming time, I had to rush the last passes since I was rapidly running out of time. However, I managed to finish the shoot, and I believe that this was an extremely successful first shoot.

BATHROOM SHOOT

BATHROOM SHOOT JOURNAL

SATURDAY 15TH APRIL 2023

Today was my first shoot for this project that required me to work with my cast. Since this was the first time meeting my cast in person, I was quite nervous to begin filming. In all of my previous project, I have worked with a cast of people that I knew beforehand, either through other people or from me personally, however when it came to the cast of this project, since I had used backstage to find my cast, I had not met them in person yet so it was a big anticipation, and I was hoping that I had made a good choice in cast, as I would be working with these people for the next two weeks. Before shooting my first scene, I had forgotten to bring my shot list, so I had to really quickly create a script markup for the scenes, this consisted of writing down what shots I wanted for each scene. This was actually really useful for me, as it meant that I didn’t need multiple pieces of paper work, for example shot list and storyboards. This is definitely something that I want to look into doing for the rest of the project as it was very useful when filming. When beginning to film, I was already around 2 hours behind, as I was waiting on other crew members to begin filming. However, once I began filming it was all go. I had cast members being taken to the makeup artist by my runner as I was setting up my shots, this made sure that it allowed me to create the shots that I wanted before the cast were in and I could kill two birds with one stone, so having a runner on this shoot was definitely something that was extremely positive, and something I want to have for the rest of my shoots. When filming, I needed to get 4 scenes on my film done, so I knew that it would be very difficult to get these shots done since I began filming at 7 and I had to be out of the location by 10, leaving me with only two hours. Instantly I knew this was an issue, and didn’t want to keep the cast, crew and location managers waiting for me to wrap for this shoot, so I called the shoot early and had to instantly get to thinking on a date to reshoot. This was the main problem that I had to solve as of yet in the production stage of the project, however other than that the shoot was very successful.

THEATRE SHOOT

THEATRE SHOOT JOURNAL

THURSDAY 20TH APRIL 2023

Today was the day of my theatre shoot. Instantly this shoot did not go to plan, the day began with me still without an actor for the MIMIC. So when I got to the location I had no one, however I asked my sound op to act as the MIMIC for the day, and luckily he agreed. So instantly I managed to solve this problem which was a success. When going into the shoot I knew that I did not want to mess up any shots, so earlier this week I planned all of the shots so this meant that the filming went extremely smoothly. One shot that I am extremely proud of is the extreme close up of the taser device with Richard and the MIMIC fighting in the background. This shot looked very good when filming, so I can’t wait to get into post and begin colour grading. For the filming of today, I was given a time slot at the theatre to be able to shoot the scene, so I was in a bit of a time crunch as I needed to account for set up filming and packing down. However, I was able to fit pretty much exactly onto my time schedule, leaving just as my filming time was done. This was definitely a success of the shoot, and gave me a lot of confidence for my timing. There were not too many problems when it came to the filming, however one thing that I am not happy about is the fact that I was unable to record audio, and since this scene is a fight scene it is extremely hard to foley for this, but I am going to have to. Other than the audio and the lack of an actor the shoot went extremely smoothly and has left me feeling confident for tomorrow’s scenes which are the forest and the street scene.

FOREST SHOOT

FOREST SHOOT JOURNAL

FRIDAY 21ST APRIL 2023

Today is the day of my forest and street scene. Like yesterday, this day took a lot of planning to make sure I had all of the kit. However, I knew that I wanted to pack light, so I just had to make sure that I had the camera, batteries, and the costumes. As well as this, it was predicted to rain so I bought a rain cover in order to protect the camera in case it rained. For the shoot today I filmed this in savernake forest. For this scene I wanted to have it set in the night, however this was not possible as the forest shut at 7 so it meant that I had to really think about my camera settings. In order to make it easier for future me when grading this shot for night, I tried to create a night look as much as possible using the camera settings. For example on all the shots I lowered the exposure to make the shot a lot darker, and I changed the white balance kelvin to the coolest tone it could get to try and create the blue look before even grading. After this shoot I am not too happy with the results, I believe the fight scene went well, however I don’t think it will fit in well with the cyberpunk genre, it has taken me up to now to realise this mistake, so I am slightly regretting my choices in location.

FOREST SHOOT JOURNAL

After the forest scene, I headed back to Swindon in order to film the street shots for just after the bar scene. These shots were extremely quick to do, however it required that I filmed at nightime, so I went and grabbed food before heading to the location. Once I arrived, I scouted out the shooting location to see where I wanted to shoot. This was good as it meant that I wasn’t sitting waiting for an hour without doing anything. When it finally turned dark, I headed off to the location and got straight into filming the shots for the scene. The shots went extremely well, and only required one take on each as there was no dialogue. After today I think the shoots went successfully however I believe that the forest scene will feel out of place in the final production.

BAR SHOOT JOURNAL

SATURDAY 22ND APRIL 2023

Today is my final day of filming for my entire film. This day is going to be an extremely long one to get through, and is going to be a struggle, but I see it as the last push before I am finished for the production stage. For today, my plan of action is to arrive at the studio for 9am to set up the bathroom in order for me to shoot my final scenes. After this was set up I headed over to the bar to film the second scene in my film. This film was a large dialogue scene, so I knew it would be fairly straightforward camera work, however I was heavily relying on my actors remembering the words in order to get the shoot done as quickly as possible. This shoot went very well, the only challenging thing and problem for me to solve was the harsh daylight coming from the big window on the front of the bar. In order to solve this problem, I got a c stand with a large black negative fill to attempt to block out the light as this scene was set in the nighttime. As well as the negative fill I used a large light with a flood light attachment on it and blue gels in order to try and create a blue over glow to contrast the large orange soft light. As well as these two lights, I had two pavo tubes acting as practicals underneath the table. Setting up this scene was a breeze as in the pre production stage I had already created this layout in the floor plan and lighting plan. This shoot was very successful in the end and I managed to pack up and leave just before my filming time ran out.

BATHROOM SHOOT 2

BATHROOM SHOOT 2 JOURNAL

After the bar scene I headed back to the studio for the continued shoot of the bathroom scenes. Since I had already set up the set in the morning, I could head straight into the filming, so after everyone arrived I went straight into the set and turned on all of the lights. After this I fogged the set up and began filming. The first scene that I filmed was the opening scene of the film, this scene required the old tv to be playing, so luckily I managed to get that working before the shoot, so I could play a random bbc news report on the screen, and get a voice actor to do the voice over of the story I wanted played after. After this was set up I instantly began filming, I really wanted to experiment with focus pulling in this project, so the opening shot I managed to get a really clean focus pull so I was extremely happy with this. All of these scenes were very successful when filming, and since I was on a time crunch to get to my next shoot, I was happy that everything went very quickly. In the second scene I had to film today, I also used another focus pull, focussing from the taser in Richard’s hand onto his face.

WAREHOUSE SHOOT

WAREHOUSE SHOOT JOURNAL

After finishing these scenes, I went straight upstairs to begin setting up the warehouse scene. Whilst this was happening, everyone was eating their food that was catered by the catering assistant. This allowed me time to set up the scene, however there were two areas in the room that I was shooting, so it meant that I had to reset after I got the first shot down. When I was setting up the first shot, I really wanted to show the warehouse shelves in the background, so I had an idea to use spotlights in order to highlight the entire warehouse in a blue hue. This added some really nice depth to the shot. For my first shot I wanted to have Richard walk out of an elevator heavily backlit, so I chose to use a pavo tube on a stand in the elevator to create an orange backlight. However, when it came to setting up the lights, I realised that the elevator became a risk, so I changed the shot to have Richard not be in the elevator and just close the door, to give away the effect that he had just walked out. This shot came out looking beautiful, so I headed straight into my next shots, this was set up just around the corner so it was not far to travel at all. For this shot I had already planned the lighting plan so it was easy to just set up straight away. For this shot I really wanted a practical light, but the light I was using was extremely harsh, so I used about 12 layers of diffusion paper to diffuse the light making it a lot less harsh on the back of the Investors head. When shooting the scene, I really wanted to emphasise the dutch angles, so every shot other than the two shot was made dutch to really emphasise the feeling of unease in the audience. When filming this scene, I wanted to have the Investor hit Richard on the head with a pole, so I planned to just pretend that the hit connected, however my actor playing Richard was really keen in going out for the stunt, so with everyone's permission I went ahead with the shot, and the stunt came out perfectly. After this shot it was officially a wrap for my film, this was a huge relief for me in this project, as it meant it was purely up to how much time I wanted to put into the project, and anything that went wrong there was no changing it now as my main actor is leaving the country after the filming. After wrapping, I quickly packed down the bathroom, and got ready for the final cleaning on Monday.

PRODUCTION STAGE INITIAL CONCLUSIONS

When looking back at the production stage of this project, I believe that I hit all of the expectations that I wanted to surpass. For example, I believe that during this production stage I was able to express full creativity, and not just follow the strict pre production paper work that I set up, although some of this was due to problem solving, it was also a creative desicion since it best fit the scene when filming. One big problem that I had to solve when in the production stage was the issue of time management. This is one thing I did not plan for in regards to time management of allowing for late cast and crew. This meant that in some shoots I was left with a lot less time than expected, for example with the first bathroom shoot, I did not have enough time to film so it meant that I had to reshoot on a different day. Despite being able to reshoot I still missed some content that I wanted to film as having the shoot on two seperate days confused me. One extremely successful shoot with very little issues was the miniature shoot. When going into this shoot I had predicted that this shoot would go smoothly since one of the main problems for poor time management is relying on other people, so when it came to filming the miniatures I did not have to rely on any other people, and could just film.

POST PRODUCTION

After the production stage of the project, I was left with a reduced time for post production, so it was predicted that I would run into issues. However, through problem solving I was able to overcome these issues and create a full piece. In this stage of the Practical Skills, I will be looking at my process of editing, from looking at the growth of my timeline, to the specific colour grading in my shots. First off I am going to look into the growth of my timeline, and the journals that follow this stage.

TIMELINE PROGRESSION

This was the beginning of my timeline for the project. To start off with I structured the timeline into different sections for each scene, this was done purely to make it easier for me to spot where each scene was. This first image of the timeline was taken after the original rough cut, however the timeline is still basical with little audio design compaired to the final product.

This image of the timeline was when I began to start piecing the scenes together. At this point was where I realised the lack of travel, and flow between scenes. This made it very hard to flow the scenes, and had me resorting back to Star Wars style wipe transitions.

This image of the timeline was when I really started to include the audio design into my project, this was arguably the longest part of the edit since it was so precise. For example for a 15 second shot of the city, there were 7-8 audio tracks. So for the rest of the scenes, it required an equal amount of audio design.

This is the final image of the timeline, this is the completed film, however all of the visual and audio tracks are not visible due to the sheer amount. The audio design on this timeline took me longer than the visuals, and were much more precise. Despite it taking longer and being more precise, I was still unable to get the audio design to my ideal level. However, I want to look into reediting in the future in order to create the best version of this film possible.

PRACTICAL SKILLS CORRESPONDENTS

For the correspondents of the production stage of the project, most of the discussions were done through in person conversations, so there is not much documentation for that. However, most of my communication between cast and crew were done over message.

SHOT LOGGING

When logging the shots for this project, I didn't have to log too many bad takes since I was very lucky and managed to get the shot within the first take on most of the occassions. However, one area that required a lot of takes was the bathroom scene, I believe this was purely at the fault of me. So from filming this project, it has really proven to me that filming with experienced actors can drastically decrease the time you need to spend correcting things in post, and retaking shots, therefore saving lots of time when filming.

SET BUILDING

When it came to filming the workshop scene, I knew I wanted to put effort into set design, and improve my skills in the art department stage of the project. As well as the bathroom scene, I experienced set building when looking into the creation of my minatures.

When creating the bathroom set, I really wanted to emphasise the look of an abandoned public bathroom. So for this I just included lots of junk such as lava lamps, old radios, empty cardboard boxes, and metal trunks.

For this shot, it took a lot of preparation both creatively and logistical, and was much more meticulous then dressing the set for the bathroom, as each building had to be wired, built and painted separately. However, I think that this came out being one of the best areas of my film, and something I am very proud of.