Depict : Pre Production Diary

Own idea :

My first initial idea was to create my 90 second short film based around a dream. Due to us having a skate park nearby college I wanted to base my film around skating. The idea was to have a young boy dreaming about becoming a professional skater and then when he actually tried to skate he embarrassed himself in front of everybody. The shot of him dreaming would then fade into what he is dreaming about. The content would have been shot in college and also on the skate park.

Group Idea : 

Myself, Adam andYasmin all put our ideas together and decided on what would be the best and most realistic idea to go with. In total we had about 5 ideas to choose from and from this we went with Adam's idea. Our final idea is to have two people sitting on a bench slagging each other off and then it cuts to snails who are also slagging each other off. Adam was inspired by some of Guy Ritchie's work and this was a contributing factor in why we chose this idea. With my idea it would have required us to have a child actor which just isn't viable. The reason we decided to choose this idea was because it should be easy enough to shoot but also give us a challenge as well.

30th September :

Today we started off by looking at how to create the perfect storyboard. We looked at the key aspects in a storyboard such as camera angles, camera movement and just visualising the shot in general.

Me and Adam then got together and started visualising how we wanted to get our movie looking to create our shot list. In the shot list we included shot number, framing, duration of shot, shot angle, mise - en - scene and edit. After getting this roughly drawn up with a few endings drafted we moved on to drawing the storyboard. After having an hour of practicing these earlier in the lesson we were able to do a pretty good job of visualising the short production which will help us when shooting.

The two endings we have drafted up have the same narrative but would be shot using different methods. One will have one smooth crane shot and one will cut to a long shot. One was Josh's idea and one was our original idea.

We are still in early stages of these ideas so they may change when we get to it. At this point now we do have a visual representation of how we want out film to look though.

1st October : 

In today's lesson we carried on with our storyboards and continued to visualise what we want our film to look like. I filled in the minor performance release agreement so I would be able to perform in our short film. Once I had finished this I helped Adam to fill in the storyboard and we both contributed to it. I worked on the written elements and wrote down how the edit would need to be done to make the film look the best it can be. Adam took control of the drawing side.

I also went and viewed some possible filming locations and wrote these into the recce forms.

3rd October 

After the last lesson today we continued with the storyboard and finally finished it. We decided to spend a lot of time on the storyboard so when we come to filming it would be easy to visualise and get that exact shot we wanted to. As well as getting the storyboard complete I also finished some more of the paperwork for pre-production; this included the props and costume sheet and also the budgeting sheet. This is vital paperwork and will help the smoothness of filming.

Next lesson we will get the script and production timetable complete which is the last of the pre-production work.

6th October 

Today's lesson consisted of carrying on and finishing of all of the pre-production paperwork. I had to complete the production schedule sheet which allows us to organise the whole filming process a lot easier. We also finished the contact sheet and Adam is continuing the script using the program Celtx. We have organised the visual side of the film well enough so far that we feel confident with the filming so it is just the dialogue we need to get sorted now, and we are well underway with this process. We have all contributed equally so far and it is god to get all of the pre-production paperwork sorted. Next Monday will be our next lesson and this is when filming will start.

13th October 

Today was supposed to our first day of filming, we had everything in place but unfortunately we could not proceed due to the weather.  All of our filming has to be completed outside and due to the severity of the rain we just couldn't film. Instead we put the finishing touches to the script that me and Adam collaborated on; we felt by both completing a script and then putting them together.

14th October

We started to film in today's double lesson. After 2 weeks of planning we felt ready to execute our whole plan and confident that what we had was suitable. We decided to use the HD camera's as these were the best suited to what we wanted - 1080p and large depth of field. We also used a tripod for stability in the shots where we needed this effect. After collecting all of the props we needed (slugs) we started filming. We made sure that the area we had permission to film in was clear as this is the surroundings that we required. We originally intended to film the opening and closing scene on the following day and the slug scenes on this day. Our opening and closing scene both needed Alana and it suited her better to film on this day; hence why all of the scenes were filmed over this double lesson. Overall I felt this lesson went well and the footage we got is suitable for editing and to achieve what we want.