After the weekend of filming set about editing the film pretty much straight away. The Chief editors for the film were myself, Daniel Dearing and Lucy Baker. We took shifts each having a crack at the editing over the space of a two weeks. I'm very pleased with our edit and also the fantastic music written by George Turner specifically for the film.
Here is the finished product:
The production of this film went incredibly smoothly which is a stark contrast to some other productions I have worked on. I believe this to be down to extremely good planning by the director and producer and also because we never bit off more than we could chew. We scaled down the script and made the film a lot more achievable. On my next film however I would like to be a bit more ambitious and try to push the boundaries a bit more.
I have undertaken making a short film in a group of 7. In my group there is Eve, Joe, Lucy, George, Ros, Daniel and myself. We have been given a script to work with and have equipment booked out for the 13th and 14th of November.
I'm looking forward to this project as i like the idea of taking a script that none of the production team have been involved in writing and trying to make our own interpretation of it.
I think every member of my group has reservations about the script and the story however so we've decided to rewrite the whole thing.
We have taken away the dialogue and decided to a silent film with the music directing the audience instead of forced conversations. This also halved our fears about getting good actors as the script no longer requires that much from the performers.
Here is a brief outline of the script as we are going to shoot it:
Dan (the protagonist) is lying in bed. There is an argument happening in the room next to him that he can hear clearly. The argument is about him and is between his parents.
He stands up and leaves the room through a door.
When he walks through the door he is suddenly in a library. He looks back into his room and then curiously walks through the library.
He walks through another door and is once again teleported but this time to a cafe.
He keeps walking through doors and teleporting to various locations and as he does so he becomes more confident and almost cocky.
He teleports outside and there is a couple walking down the street. The girl looks at him which sets the man off into a jealous rage.
He runs through a car door and is teleported into a porch.
He is visibly distressed and leaves the porch.
As he walks home he sees the girl, they look at each other and the film ends.
I'm a little bit worried about the story but i feel that if everything is filmed well and the actors, in particularly Dan, perform well then the film will be a success.
When I first read the script for 'choices' I immediately thought of the film 'Jumper'. In this film a teenager discovers he can teleport and sets about robbing banks (as you do).
I found this film very entertaining and, for me, the only reason was the characters ability to teleport or 'jump'.
The story wasn't that good and in parts made little sense to me but I couldn't get over how cool the idea is of being able to travel anywhere simply by thinking you want to go there.
I think if we can bottle that concept up in our film it would be very entertaining to watch.
As the deadline for my group project drew ever closer my group decided to make several changes to our project so that it would be a little easier to create and also to fit inside the 5-8 minute length requirement. We kept the theme of the story but got rid of the three separate narratives that meet at the climax of the film idea as it would require to many actors and locations and was really a bit out of our reach. We also decided to allocate production roles to each member of the group. Harry Symes and I would be co-directors and co-editors, Carlina Flood would be producer and Keiran Jones would be sound. This meant that each member of the team would have an exact idea of what the part in the production would be and so would know there responsibilities . Carlina was quite successful at finding actors, she made a shortlist that got whittled down into the final cast, I booked out equipment and Keiran was able to gain permission to film in the Victoria Works. But tragically disaster struck; two days before filming was scheduled to start our lead actor pulled out. This forced us to use Matt, Carlina's Boy Friend and a music student with no previous acting experience. This also meant that we had to change pubs so i arranged for us to film in the Royal Oak. Filming started on a Thursday and finished the following Friday. Along the way we pretty much had every single problem in the book happen including; sound problems, lighting problems, location problems, props breaking, transportation issues, script issues, running out of day light whilst filming the chase scene, a main character injuring himself etc.. Post production also lasted about a week and was acompanied by our group falling down many pitfalls, the most problamatic of which was the final edit of the film being 4 minutes over the required length. this meant we were forced to cut a third of the film, which made a barely watchable film even more difficult to follow. Any here is the result of our suffering:
This is not a film i am proud of. The only positives I can take away from it are that we attempted to make quite an ambitious film and failed doing it and I feel like I've learnt a lot from the mistakes we made whilst making it. We needed to give ourselves more time to film and edit, also we needed to prepare better in pre-production.
I found with my initial idea for my personal project that there was far to many major problems including; Copyright, security and access issues. I have decided to evolve my idea into something a lot more doable but still around the same subject: football fans passion/boarder line obsessions with their clubs. I watched clips such as this:
I thought this would be a nice idea but it'd require a lot of consent and form filling so i decided to something a bit more low key. I had an idea of doing a sports style interview so i looked into some interviews given by football players, in particular experienced footballers who have experience giving this style of interview:
I have taken ideas from both of these styles and decided to create an interview with a fan in the style of the sports press. Basically I'm going to make a fan seem as important as a professional footballer, I want this to reflect their importance to the club's success .
I have recently undertaken the task of creating a video project by myself. I thought of several ideas for this project including short films, animation, but have decided to create a short documentary about a football fans passion for his club and the sport. I am planning to film a documentary on my friend Lewis. He is a madly devoted Aston Villa fan who lives in Birmingham. The documentary will be about his passion for the club and also the build up and aftermath of the Birmingham city derby at their home ground (Villa Park). I have purchased a ticket for this game and have confirmed everything with Lewis. This game is known to be one of the most heated fixtures in the world with Aston Villa and Birmingham City being very old rivals (image from weblo.com), so it is perfect for the kind of content I was looking for. My main concern is being able to film inside the stadium. I'm not sure what their regulations are on this kind of thing. I was thinking of using some of the highlights but then there are copyright issues which are very complicated when it comes to sport what with the BBC and Sky wrestling over the rights. Before I begin production of this piece I want to get a better background knowledge of the rivalry between the two clubs and how far it runs down their history. The rivalry is known as the Birmingham city derby or the second city derby and has produced heated matches for over one hundred. The first competitive match between the two clubs was in a 1888 FA cup game that Aston Villa walked away from 4-0 winners . Since then the rivalry has grown and more and more often there have been acts of violence before and after games which has resulted in the premier league arranging all of the fixtures to be played at lunch time to stop supporters drinking through the day and acting anti-socially at the stadiums.
Obviously I'm not hoping for a repeat of any of this kind of violence but i will attempt to capture the atmosphere and a bit of the hatred going around the stadium on match day.
