CONSTRUCTION: INTERROGATING OUR CHARACTERS

During my research into the practises of professional filmmakers I came across the film website FilmEscape. On this website I discovered an article by Charlie Sierra in which she discusses the book 'Riding the Alligator' written by Hollywood director Pen Densham. She talks about a chapter in this book in which Densham describes a checklist of questions that every director should ask their actors to get a better understanding of the characters. 

Click here for the article

After reading the article we created a brief script for each character as our interrogation. We decided that we would ask each character five questions, four of which are tailored specifically for the character being asked and then the fifth question being the same for each character. The reason we chose to ask each character the same fifth question (which was "How far would you go to get what you want?") was to get a strong understanding of the contrasting personalities that the characters have.

 Adam Character Interrogation

As Adam is hopelessly in love with Eve his responses to the questions were planned to be very enthusiastic and loving even though deep within he knows that Eve doesn't feel the same way.

Eve Character Interrogation

As Eve is a very confused and unsure character we made sure that her answer were very vague and kept the audience (and Adam) wondering where her loyalty and love lies.

ULAR Character Interrogation

We created these character interrogations to help the examiner understand the thoughts, feelings and motives that our characters have. As Ular is a very mysterious character we kept his answers short and very vague.

CONSTRUCTION: EQUIPMENT

In the production of our film trailer there were many pieces of equipment that we needed to create the best possible content.

Nikon D5200 - As I already had my own camera, as a group we decided to use it instead of a camera provided to us by the school. We made this decision because it gave us a lot more freedom when it came to filming as we didn't need to wait for permission to go out and film.

GorillaPod - A Gorillapod is a very small and lightweight tripod with flexible legs that can wrap around and grip to anything you need it to. We mainly used it as a stand for the camera light we used.

Manfrotto Tripod - We used a very high end Manfrotto Tripod that the school provided us. We were very grateful to use this tripod as it is one of the best that an average consumer can buy. It was exactly what we needed to get steady still and moving shots.

On Camera LED Light - As a group we decided to invest in cheap on camera LED light to help us light our scenes. We would attach the light to a Gorillapod so we could easily set the scene and have the light in a suitable area.

Rode VideoMic Pro - During my practical work last year I discovered that sound is incredibly important. Therefore I invested in a Røde VideoMic Pro which is a very good quality on camera microphone that can really improve the sound of your film. This is was very important as an audience is more forgiving for poor video quality if the sound is good.

PLANNING: SOUNTRACK AND VOICEOVER

As a group we have decided that the majority of the sound in our trailer will be sound effects, a soundtrack and a voiceover. We decided not to have any actual film dialogue in the trailer as we discovered last year that it is too difficult to get good sound levels and quality for dialogue and in my experience sound is almost more important that a good quality video.

We have been constantly brainstorming different song choices and ideas and we still haven't come up with a concrete decision on the soundtrack yet.

For the voiceover we are currently creating the script and have also planned to use the poem 'A Sick Rose' by William Blake. We have decided to use this poem as part our voiceover as it perfectly and beautifully represents the decay of Eve's innocence and if spoken correctly can sound very sinister which is exactly what we want from it.

The Sick Rose

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

O Rose thou art sick. 

The invisible worm, 

That flies in the night 

In the howling storm: 

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy:

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

CONSTRUCTION: EXPERIMENTING WITH ADOBE inDESIGN

In our lesson today we had someone come in to teach us the basics of Adobe inDesign. Adobe inDesign is a professional standard software used to create publications for magazines, websites, you name it! 

We spent the lesson experimenting with all the different tools and methods of editing that we would expect to use when creating our film poster. There are an endless amount of features that can be explored and used on inDesign but we only looked at the basics. The features we looked at were mainly to help us create the text of the poster and the different effects that you can use to make your text stand out more.

Here are some screenshots of my experimentation of inDesign

PLANNING/CONSTRUCTION: inDesign PRACTICE

In todays lesson we had a special guest teacher to come in a teach us the basics of inDesign. inDesign is a programme that allows you to create professional standard publications. For this practice we used draft images that we captured yesterday to experiment with and test out the different features that can be used on inDesign. 

Here are some screenshots from my experimentation:

PLANNING/CONSTRUCTION: FILM POSTER

In this lesson we spent our time preparing different aspects of our individual film posters. We collected all of the information we need to include in the poster (social media icons, our production company name etc.) We were doing this as practise for when it comes to do our official film posters. 

In our lesson tomorrow we are going to be receiving some professional insight into how we use an Adobe tool called inDesign. inDesign is a professional standard piece of software that can be used to create all sorts of different publications. We have decided to use this software as the examiners request that professional grade software is used at some point in the creations of our coursework project. As what we will be making in our lesson tomorrow will just be a very early 1st draft of what we think we would like our posters to look like, we are not expecting the best quality image, but with the help of our inDesign tutor we can make all of the graphics and text we want to use as perfect as we possibly can.

We found that with the posters we looked at they all had everything that is needed in a film poster with slight changes from poster to poster. We focused on the film poster for 'The Book of Eli'. It helped us understand how much information is really needed on a film poster. We looked in detail at the specific cast/crew members that need to be presented on the poster. This poster also helped us gather an understanding of how a poster should be laid out and how there are many little logos that you would be able to see unless very close to the poster. These small details although quite hard to see, they are still necessary to have on the poster. This research was also very helpful for us as it gave us a strong understanding of what the tag line on a poster is used for and what the tag line should include.

Here are two images of us working as a team conducting research on the type of institutional information that needs to be included on a film poster and the construction of our own personalised institutional information.