Term 4 Production

The production blog entry is more about what actually happened on your shoot: what went well, what you learnt from your mistakes (if any!) and your thoughts on the ‘bigger’ picture of shooting for a task like this.

In more detail, this blog entry needs to contain the following:-

·       any special circumstances surrounding the production processes should be mentioned, and any outside help received (for example, technical support) must be acknowledged.

·       Discuss how you arranged the logistics of your shoot on the actual day: organizing the equipment, mise-en-scene, etc

·       This entry should include your shooting plan and a logistical and creative analysis of your shoot/s i.e. equipment used, if you need to reshoot, plan for additional shots, etc.

·       Look again at the Unit Plan (see PPt on Managebac) for your ‘bigger’ picture thoughts: how have you chosen to depict your life and how truthful have you been?

In my previous entry, I went over what my group planned out for this term's project. This entry will describe what actually happened during the two weeks of shooting.

What happened?
2 weeks ago, my group started shooting the interviews. We started shooting on a Wednesday. We got permission to use the studio and to use the equipment the day before where we approached Ibu Lis and got the necessary forms filled out. 

We planned to shoot Sebastian and Nadind at lunch time, so we had to hurry and get the equipment up then. However, due to a mishap with SD cards we had to wait around longer and ended up shooting after school. Since we had the equipment set up already, we did not have to set up the equipment again and again everytime we had to shoot, although that did cause inconsistencies.

The equipment we used for all the shots were 

1x red head
2x LED's
1x Camera

We used the red heads as a prop that you'll see later on in one of the screenshots.

We finished shooting the interviews the next week or so and we borrowed a camera to shoot various sceneries around the school. This would act as the background for intertitles as elaborated on before in the previous entry.

The following sections are about the the good, the bad, and the details regarding the shoot.

Details
My role in this operation was as director, but it didn't mean I did not help out during the setting up of the equipment. Kevin and I set up the lighting and the scenery. We went for a 2 point lighting set up and we used the red head for decorations. Min Kee set up the camera. We did things very systematically and orderly. We knew what to do and when to do it before we started. After we were done setting up, we got people in, asked them questions, and did the interview. I asked the questions because I was the director. This is what a typical shot looks like.

The cameraman centered it on this subject whilst also including the red head and camera. When we were interviewing the cameraman, the camera had to lock the camera in place first and then we started the interview. The two props helped create a sort of technical feel. I was also proud of the fact that everything looked so nice. This screenshot was the first and the best shot we got. We tried to recreate this look, however as you will soon see, it was impossible for the most part. 

One thing to note was that we only had a limited amount of time every day to use the studio and the equipment, so that resulted in sometimes a lack of props or inconsistent framing.

Here are some of the examples of said inconsistencies. 

The first shot did not have the camera, and the second shot had different lighting configurations and a covered table. These two shots were the result of equipment shortage and time constraints. Ever since the first day of shooting, the shots just looked like this.

This mistake basically removed the green screen option from our list. The only way to fix this is to reshoot which we, unfortunately, did not do. These inconsistencies will have to be fixed in post production, where the editor can use transition effects to ease the inconsistencies in the viewers eyes. 

So we had the best shot we could've thought off at first, that unfortunately got watered down the more shooting we did.

Other than the interview, we shot some sceneries around the school to be used for the intertitles. We did this by borrowing a camera and letting Kevin, instead of Min Kee, be the cameraman due to his experience as GJNP cameraman, and we roamed around the school. We got some beautiful pan shots that would definitely add a bunch to the interview. One unfortunate thing that happened was that we did not get a shot from the rooftops of the gym, something Kevin had done before. We did not get to go there due to it being locked off and we had no supervisor, thankfully we had enough shots for the intertitles.

As far as capturing the essence of Life in a Day goes, I would say that we followed the plan really well. The shots we took were all about the people and what they thought about the overall documentary. The intertitle shots we took also represented the school and what people loved to do in their past times. 

Overall, the shooting was great. The only disappointing thing that happened was that the interview shots were inconsistent. However, the shots we got were still more than enough of what is needed for the project.

New Project

7:35 in the morning
The class has entered term 4! And that means new projects are our main focus now. This term, our teacher Ibu Lis gave us a week or two to discuss amongst ourselves on what we want to do, however before we got down to that we did some class work. We watched the short film titled 7:35 in the morning. It's a really intriguing film that does suspense and plot twists really well and it will leave you at the edge of your seat due to its nature. It was directed by Nacho Vigalondo, a Spanish filmmaker, and he earned a bunch of praise and awards for this. The class spent one week analysing the film bit by bit. What Ibu Lis would do is pause after a certain number of minutes and get us to guess what would happen next, and we were wrong every step of the way. It really helped with our analysis skills as well as getting us to see other points of views. Before the climactic ending, each group made a prediction and the class rated each prediction based on certain criterias. I linked the video below for you to enjoy.

7:35 in the Morning

The Trailer

After that week, Ibu Lis showed us three options on what we could do for our term project. We were asked to form groups of three to four, I teamed up with Kevin and Min Kee, and she also gave us freedom to choose so that each individual group can do something different than the others. The three options were, to make a tutorial highlighting technical film skills, to make a trailer for Life in a Day and a behind the scenes clip, or to make a 5-minute documentary. My group chose to make a trailer and a behind the scenes clip for the following reasons:

1. It would not take as much time as making a documentary or making a tutorial as the footage was already there. This was important because the group had to balance out each member's schedule with the exams coming up.

2. The creative freedom of this project allows us to make it more entertaining than if we were to make a tutorial, yet it is less burdening to do so than to plan out, shoot, and edit a full 5-minute documentary. 

The basic gist of the path we took was this: the trailer was going to use footage from Life in a Day and it will probably use music that was already used in the actual documentary and the behind the scenes footage was going to be composed of interviews. After deciding, the group started to plan everything out.

The Plan

First things first, we made a timeline. This was essential as the timeline was going to be our guide to finishing the project with more than enough time to perfect it before the due date. This was our timeline: 

Week 3: Storyboarding and Planning

Week 4: Test shots

Week 5: Principle shooting of interviews

Week 5-6: Assembly editing

Week 6: Re-shoots if needed, otherwise start post production

Week 7: Post Production

Week 8: Exams

Week 9: Post-production

Week 10: Final Edits, export movie then showing at Arts Assembly on June 10

So far, we are at week 6, the week when we were supposed to wrap up filming interview footage. We decided to tackle shooting first because the group agreed that there is some merit to using the interview footage in the trailer to give more of a "we worked hard and we're proud to have made this" vibe to it. The main idea behind the trailer was inspiration, an idea that would entice people to watch our documentary. I personally went for this idea since the documentary, which aimed at showing the mundane tasks that the year 10's do daily, might need to be flared up a bit. This decision is not final, however, as things can change in the editing stage. I felt that the documentary was one thing and the trailer didn't necessarily need to compliment it, rather it was supposed to draw attention, get people talking and hyped up about the documentary while also giving the essential idea behind the documentary as a whole. This all relays back as to why we decided we might need to put in the behind the scene interviews.

In week 3, we made our storyboard for the behind the scenes footage. It gave us a sense of the angles, the background, and how it would be edited in the end. For this, we followed a similar format to how popular media sites such as BuzzFeed handles interviews since it seemed like the best way to conduct these sorts of interviews where you are asking a lot of people. We would use intertitles to ask questions and what followed are the responses from interviews for that question. We also specified the type of song we wanted to use.

We shot half of the necessary interview footage last week Tuesday, where we got Sebastian, Nadind, and Min Kee. During the shoot, we discussed the possibility of interviewing people who have only watched the documentary to get someone the audience can agree with since there is less of a bias for those people. We got a friend, Ian, interviewed and we plan to shoot some more interviews with other non-Film Studies students. We did this in the Global Jaya News Production studio, a place with a green background, a table, and a chair. The interviewees would sit on the chair, usually place their hands on the table, and look at a person behind the camera. We used one of our headlights as a prop in the background to give a more technical tone to it. Other than that, everything followed the format we thought of in the storyboard. 

These are the questions that were asked:
·     What do you think of the finished life in a day?
·      What inspired you to make your segment the way it was?
·      What challenges did you face whilst making your segment?
·      What were you most proud of/what did you like the most of LiaD?
·      Would you have done it any other way?
·      What do you think life in a day means?
·      Rate it from 0-10
·      How would you describe it in one word?

Half of these questions easily qualify for the trailer yet it also sheds some light on what they did, if they liked it, and what they thought about everything as a whole. Perfect for behind the scenes footage.

This week, Kevin had assembled a rough cut with all of the footage we have as of now. He also messed around with green screen effects and the group still has not come to the decision on whether or not we should use it. Hopefully we can stay true to the schedule.