Week One
Due to my joining the course late, I had been behind the majority of the class. I was grouped with two other girls to create the preliminary task and then joined the Beacon Hills group for the remainder. For the preliminary, I operated the camera and wrote the script. I didn't have much experience with the camera which is obvious in the video - there are only three different shots. This was unfortunate and stopped the prelim task looking professional. The script is very rudimentary compared to the script I wrote for the film opening. It didn't have any stage directions or any other information to guide the actors which lead the actors to take their own initiative on how to act out the scene and left me in little control in directing them.
Week Two
In the second week, I joined the Beacon Hills group which was at that point unnamed. We decided to settle on Beacon Hills as it easily invoked the image of a lighthouse and was vague enough to draw people in. After that, we all made logo ideas before deciding on the one that was simple and best represented us. Our task this week was to start planning our shot by shot remake. Initially we had planned to film the opening of The Revenge of The Bridesmaids because it looked very simple and yet would allow us to show our ability in terms of camera operating. Unfortunately, it was harder than it looked especially because at that point, nobody in the group knew how to handle the camera properly.
Week Three
By week three, we were running late. Thinking it was best to do something simple and catch up on time, we decided to go with the opening of Footloose. In hindsight, it was probably too simple to show our ability in any capacity. It only has one shot and most of the hard work involved was with the editing. In this week I also researched on what exactly a film opening includes. To find out more, I analysed The Best of Me (2014) as well as other student film openings. It was helpful even though it wasn't the genre we picked later on in the week. By analysing real life and student film openings, I could see how to avoid common pitfalls of student film openings, such as having too much detail, or the pacing of the scene as well as comparing directly to a real opening.
Later in the week, we decided which genre we were going to focus on. We were toying between a thriller or a sports drama and although we were initially leaning towards a thriller, the genre we ultimately picked was a sports drama. We liked the idea of both of those genres as we thought they were more "out-of-the-box" than your typical teen romance. The genre thriller had to go when we released how hard it was to create a suitable atmosphere in the very first five minutes of a movie and still have it be instantly recognizable as a thriller. One of the reasons we liked sports drama was that it seemed more unique than other genres. Another was that because it is a relatively small genre, we could put our spin on it and have more creative control over it compared to other genres that often have strict codes and conventions.
Week Four
In this week, I analysed Warrior (2011) and Lords of Dogtown (2005) to see more detail on how to construct a film opening. Another thing I concentrated on was how it was made obvious that it was of this particular genre, especially when considered that we couldn't put in too many details of a story.
Week Five
For this week, we did more research. We looked at theories for story plots and I concentrated on the Propp Theory. It was really interesting to see how the same basic story plots are in every genre and it was helpful to see how we could put that into our own film opening. We also looked at Representation in films. I concentrated on Gender. This was particularly enlightening because the two parts of the genre we had picked (Sports and Drama) often had conflicting conventions. This task was also helpful because it made us start thinking about how we wanted to represent things like gender and age, and whether we wanted to conform to those stereotypes or subvert them.
Week Six
In this week we looked at different directors and their style of filming. I looked at Sofia Coppola even though she doesn't do sports/drama films. The reason I concentrated on her was that her films tend to be character-based as opposed to story-centric and I thought that quality would be beneficial for a film opening where you only get about five minutes of film time.
Week Seven
We started the week off by annotating the opening scene of a real script to learn how to write our own and then we finally commenced the first stage of our own film opening. First my group each came up with two brief ideas for a plot and title. Then we each wrote a first draft for one of the ideas that we felt had the best potential. I picked my second idea because it had a clear sense of plot and direction. After discussing within our group, we decided on my script. One of the reasons we did so was because it had minimal characters (3) which would be mean it would be easier to film (fewer schedule conflicts etc.) My group also said that they felt connected to my characters already which was great because that is central to any drama film.
Week Eight
In this week, my group all sat down and annotated the first draft of my script. This was to make sure it followed the conventions of a sports/drama and to make sure it made sense. This was very helpful because in the end, we felt the first draft was leaning towards a comedy rather than a drama. I rewrote the ending of the script and tweaked some continuity issues and so we had completed our second draft.
Week Nine
This was the week where we were all picked our roles within the group. I was the Production Designer so I also researched on the job role. I felt I was suitable for the job as I was one of the more creative people on the team and so felt it appropriate for me to control the mise-en-scene. We also discussed the script some more and after fixing some issues, we were left with our final draft.
Week Ten
In this week we broke the script down in terms of each of our job roles. For instance, as Production Designer, I picked and noted the areas that I would be in charge of, such as props and lighting. We also made the storyboard using Celtx.
Week Eleven
We did our location and technical recces. We looked at five different places for our film opening which was eye-opening because seeing the locations presented new ideas on how to film it and also bought new issues to light such as background noise to our attention.
Week Twelve
We held casting auditions. After seeing a few people, we chose Baqer as the main character because out of all the actors, we felt he understood the character the best. We picked the actors Mohnish and Mishal for the Doctor and Coach because they looked stereotypically like their respective characters which would make it easier for the audience to easily identify them.
Week Thirteen
After we picked our actors, we went for a test shoot to see how the actors would perform and to see how they worked on location. The test shoot was also useful because it allowed us to plan the angles and shots we could film. We found that our second location was echo-y due to it being quite big but we couldn't do anything about it. Unfortunately Mohnish couldn't make it and so Jainisha had to fill in.
Week Fourteen
In this week, we concentrated on editing the test shoot.
Week Fifteen
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Week Sixteen
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Week Seventeen
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Week Eighteen
We started filming! The only issue we had was that the lighting was slightly too bright (which we found later was due to the really high exposure). We didn't know how to control it and so at this point, we just decided to continue filming.
Week Nineteen
We had to film again. This time we were more prepared (and had learnt about the exposure!). Our Doctor was once again not able to film, and so this time Nasima took his spot.
Week Twenty
Our rough cut was due in at the end of the week which was difficult because we were using Premier Pro. We had not used that software before and so even though we did manage to complete our rough cut, I think in the future, it would be a good idea to practice using a new software before a big deadline.
Week Twenty-one
Our final draft of the film opening was done and so we started on our evaluation questions.
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