Coursework task:
Our task is to create our own horror film. We will have to come up with one to as many stories as we can that we could use, and create a story board. This will be contained in the Pre-production pack, which will contain our story boards, design, set possibilities, casting files, research, cashflow accounts etc. Then we will be moving onto our Production, which will be after the winter term, starting in January. This will consist of shooting the movie, and the diary of the account of what we are doing and any ideas or queries. Once we have finished shooting, we will be in the period of Post production, this will include the editing of the takes we have filmed, adding sound tracks sound effects and special effects. This will then be exhibited at school.
Modern day. During beginning of recessional period. A father a daughter have bought a new house. Nick is hittign redunduncy. They arrive at the house, it’s autumn time, therefore lots of red and gold colours are present.
Eve wears mainly white and Nick smart casual jeans and an un tucked shirt. They settle in and read notes and rules they have to follow that have been left by the council. We are introduced to characters such as the next door neighbor of the castle who is Nick’s second cousin twice removed, and realize that she was the reason how Nick found out about the castle opportunity. They have a long discussion in the kitchen where they catch up for a short period of time and then fall into the discussion of the previous owner who died with no will or family, but many possessions. Intrigued they hear that there was no reason for his death and that he died mysteriously, with his possessions burnt black. She leaves and evening draws in, they get their possessions packed and go to bed. Next morning, and it’s the anniversary of two years since the miscarriage. The couple wear comfy clothes nothing exciting. Eve is quiet but is making an effort, Nick makes the first conversation, asks how she slept, and she says not well and hints about the miscarriage. They search around the house and now meet the cleaner; she is a tall very pale yet dark features mute girl. She seems suspicious but the couples are told she cleans in certain hours and lives nearby; she was close to the previous owner.
ACT TWO:
The story focuses more on Eve the daughter, and starts to follow her day as Nick helps the next door neighbor with gardening for extra cash. There is a storm the next night. We get a sense that something has changed in the air. More and more rooms are being discovered and Eve finds a room full of old ventriloquist puppets, they scare her; she starts to feel queasy and faints. She wakes up in her room with the mute cleaner patting her head with a flannel. The nights go by and she has vivid dreams that she is always followed in the dark and when she looks at her reflection she is a ventriloquist puppet and she has horrid images of symbolic images to do with death, evil, the Devil and money, her dreams are constant but every time there is something added to complete the story. We get a sense of suspicion from the husband Nick who gets smarter as the story is developed; he wears a watch he had not worn before and takes Eve out for a treat as she is worn out. They have an enjoyable meal, until she has an outburst that comes to a complete surprise. As they walk out dogs bark at Eve and a tramp stares at her as she walks, he mutters, and starts to shout worrying words at her. Eve worryingly wishes to Nick that he would shut up, Nick roars at the tramp. Eve thanks him and wishes that the tramp would get run over. As they drive off back to the castle, Nick kisses Eve on the lips, as he does so he sees there is an ambulance that brings a stretcher; we see it is the tramp from before.
FINDING ACTORS: On the whole in the whole script there only contains 4 characters, and a street busy at night with the hustle and bustle of a town. I the opening sequence though we only really need two actors, one male and a younger female. It is very hard to find actors suitable, as we are a 6th form college and unabel to use the upper 6th actors of suitable character, and outsiude actors are expensive, for our tight budget. We want to make this as realistic as possible, so therefore we can use actors that are available to us like teachers or students, and film in a way that we can manipulate the viewer, such as film in particular angles or use manipulative lighting. 
Day of filming:
January 20th 2009. 8.50pm I text the production team and actors that our Producer Jay will not be attending the shoot in the morning due to a medical issue. I take on the responsiblilty of the producer's role.
At night, i assure that we have Sophie Wilson's costume, that George's makeup and props are in a bag, the basement for our sequence is tidy and suitable for filming in the morning. So, the next day on the 21st January, we meet, Laura Little artistic director, Alex Wilshaw assistant director and the media crew, at the media suit at 9.45 am. We made sure we had all we needed including...
1. Script
2. Camera
3. Tri pod
4. Battery
5. Sound - boom stick - Doggle Leads x2
6. Lighting - Intensifying lights x2 - natural light - stands x2
We discussed the schedule of the day; Jay's absence, the chapel rules, and the schedule of the day. Due to mainly my un articulation, my script and sequence was a bit "all over the place". Therefore we had to change a few ideas around. This was a bit disheartening. We quickly moved on.
After discussing the day plan, Sophie came in at 9.10. I laid out the possible costumes and we sorted out that she will wear a large grey jumper, resembling her wearing her Father/Guardians clothes, connotations of trust and comfort. I wanted her to look innocent and younger than she was, therefore she wore leggings and pumps under the jumper. I also went through with her that as it was a cold day that if she gets cold she must tell us then we can quickly give her a blanket that we will have on side set.Holmbury St. Mary's:
We gathered all the equipment and loaded the bus. It took 20 minutes. When we got there the plan was to shoot her praying in low, high, jaunted and back shot, and as many establishing shots of the church. And if there were any inspirational shots we would shoot them too. We had a look around the church and then set up the camera next to the alter. As my role as director I went through with Sophie, what I wanted her to do and feel. her character is going to the church, one: to establish she was innocent two: that she was praying for her mother whom had died. And three she wasn't sad just lonely. I placed her hair out of her face and went through the Lord’s Prayer with her. This took longer than planned, as a mistake i made was to presume that she knew it already when actually she hadn't plus all of the crew knew a different version. Luckily we found it in the hymn book placed to the side of the alter; we went through the lord's prayer until we were ready to shoot. Each of us took turns in operating the camera. We used a Sony PD170... 
Order in action:
1. Placed the camera
2. Bubbled the tri pod
3. Raising and creating an angle using the tilt.
4. Zoom and focus the camera lenses
5. Checked the aperture6. And colour barred the tape. (This was done only at the first 30 seconds of tape)
The variety of shots imagined were utilized, and more, we created a CCTV looking shot and liked the idea of she is being looked upon, but then it just looked a bit pervy and it focuses on the chest area. We didn't need any sources of lighting as the light inside the church was fantastic as it was very sunny, and the natural light lit up the whole mis–en-scene.
Then once we had finished us Sophie we asked her to find some interesting shots for us to film, so she would not get bored. We had various shots at different angles and then agreed that the filming came to a wrap. We finished way before schedule. We collected all the equipment and loaded the bus and went back to school.Back to school:
As we finished way before schedule, we gathered all our belongings and freshened up and had some snacks. Jay phoned me before lunch telling me she was recovering and that she will be joining us in the afternoon. I told the crew that we will be having lunch for an hour and that we will meet in the media dept with the equipment and load the bus. George Gilles and Sophie met us as well.
Ewhurst Place:
We started outside in the garden as the light was starting to become limited. This was to capture story behind the guardian. When we got to the swing, we realized how great the sound was that was generated by Sophie swinging on the swing. It was eerie and noose like, and we really wanted to capture this so the boom was our weapon of choice.
Shooting our footage we found it hard filming on wet muddy floor, next time if we ever film out doors, we will have to take that into consideration.
Inside the Basement:
Setting up the sequence, consisted of shouting through the floor boards finding the cracks from above to below. Once we had Alex find the cracks we were beneath, we placed the intensifying lights in position to create bright lights through the boards. Once we got over the dank smell of the basement, the sequence involved Sophie our girl actor, to walk into the basement, look around and see George who represents the devil in our film. For effectiveness she stops under the cracks, this looked great. But we had to break the rule of 180 degrees, to create the same effectiveness to George. We then shot Sophie going down the stairs to create a narrative. The day of filming made me realize how vitally important the pre production is to filming, in aspects of efficiency, and to create a successful film. My un articulation and un organization really put the film down. It wasn't as effective as it could have been and a little hectic. However, the day of filming did go well, and the editing will help and save the film. It was easy to work with the team and everyone compromised and working efficiently. It was good fun. Pre editing: Once we had got back to school, we still had time left. We got the tape out and put it onto the server, firstly to digitalilse. This took what felt like eternity. And left it for the next day. Starting to edit we used
FINAL CUT PRO:
Using this Mac based program, once digitalised the footage, it produced a rush bin. This is all our footage in one role. Once we had looked through our rush, we selected certain sequences and shots from our footage, and logged them.
Firstly we created bins, which are like chapters, and then the significant sequences invloved. We used the "i" and "o" buttons, that symbolised in and out. This was cutting the sequence, and "copy and pasting" them into the chapter.
Being unorganised it was hard for the group to start the film editing. Editing footage into a story we I didn't really know about. However, we were confident with the footage we filmed and had good enough narritave to produce a sequence.
We got off to a good start and produced a really good sequence, including fade in fade outs, the use of the lord's prayer and the eerie swing rope to create tension and suspense. We also played with the colour, erased some colour to create a sepia style of image. This we were really happy with and we thought did exactly what we were asked, however, looking at it in "final", we realised it had no narritave and was too much like an advert, a successful advert at that but not what we were asked of.
We had to leave it, which was really demoralizing and did set us back. And After that we had 12 more attempts, which seemed to be all failing and pretty much all the same. Two to three weeks before our deadline, we had to kick start our moral and just get on with it. So we did. We decided to make it easier, by creating the sequence and making it simple and just using our best shots. We did find this easier. From all our attempts we learnt that fade in fade outs were unsuccessful and looked as if we were not confident with our footage and on the whole advert like, which we had to avoid.
Once we had done this, it was easier to create a. We used various ambient and orchestral sounds which we found on the server. we mixed these up to create suspense. I think the music was the key to the tension. The use of silences and dramatic sounds creates unease.
For the opening, I played around with the sound mix on the sound log. I created an underwater echoey quality to Lord’s Prayer, this was done by changing the balances of left and right and timing. I think this is successful because, it creates unease in something that is re knownly known as comfort in some people, and was also contrasted with the blunt norm of the "amen". It was quite disappointing that some of our best shots were in the basement. However, due to continuity problems the sequence would have been faulty and un fluid if we were to use the shots to create a sequence. However, we did create a sequence and the sound and use of silence was effective.
Placing the credits was time consuming and really tested patience. Before we had started to place them in Jay and I discussed how to do it successfully. We had many ideas of black screen, writing the credits ending in smoke, giving connotations of the devil signing souls away, or creating the title and name into the shape of a cross or even opening books.
In conclusion we chose to have the credits over the footage, and have a ripple effect turning into Greek lettering.
By doing this we had to create a text log with the name and title, then leaving enough space for the viewer to read the credit three times over, then placing an additive fade just before the end of the text log. Once done that we copy and pasted that but changing the English to Greek lettering. This took a a long time, having to hand pick letters that suit the English, and then placing and spacing them equally to co ordinate them with each other. This was then copy and pasted where we wanted the credits to be, which we had chosen after looking through the footage several times. The ripple effect's timing and ripple action had to be changed which we chose, this was time consuming. I think it looks really effective so all that time was worth it. Once we had created our final sequence, we put our footage into the Mac based editing program After Effects.
We played around with the colour, saturating and contrasting the original colour by doing this we created a better looking quality film that looks more professional than the very low budget film it was.
FINIT.
QUESTIONS:1. In what ways does your media production use or develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media productions? Our product is the opening sequence of an original horror directed by Millie Corser has created called “SOLD” (2009). The duration of this piece is 2 minutes. The narrative is set in the current recessional climate, where money is scarce and the intentions of some people turn to sources of evil. The narrative is based around a widower and his daughter, looking after a mansion. There is obviously something wrong with the relationship between the two, being distant. The father sells his daughters soul to the devil for money, and as she does discover this, the narrative is of the daughter taking revenge, with the devil portrayed as an allusive, seductive character aiding daughter on her ways to revenge. In our opening sequence we gather that a young girl, innocent and seems to be religious praying at the alter, walking out and then we jump cross to an establishing shot of an older male in the background and the same girl on a swing. Their relationship seems to be distant, and then we create an impression that he does not care. We then again jump cut into the house and to the basement where she encounters the devil. In “SOLD” (2009), you can recognise that there are several conventions of contemporary horror films; the main and most obvious is the convention of young innocent female vulnerability, as demonstrated in figure of Sophie, such as Cathy in the Exorcist (1972). For the whole of the sequence the girl is alone with a male figure being dominating the figure of Sophie. In the film, the innocence of the girl is taken away and she grows up to enact revenge. I took this concept from the classic fairy tale “Little Red Riding hood”, going into the woods and pricking her finger, representing the movement from childhood to women hood. In this scenario its Sophie entering the basement; she walks out of the light, into the basement, the light representing purity and naivety, walking into the darkness of corruption and hostility. Plus the political and economical climate is touched on, being set in the recessional climate. This I thought would be effective in the sense that the possibility of temptation is increased in such situations. Everything is on sale. Also, the location is set in isolated locations, large houses with orchestral type music heightening fear. For the opening sequence, we use orchestral music but with the use of cutting it out, to create tense silence. I think this worked well with the footage. The sexuality of the girl is also touched on; the Devil is portrayed in contrast to the usual stereotype portrayed in film. We researched into worshiping the devil and the seducing ways, the snake the pentagram etc, by reading the bible and watching films such as: Constantine (2005) and The Devil’s Advocate (1997), therefore we created the Devil, as suave sophisticated and sexy, seducing girls into temptation, as does Al Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate (2005). I directed him to walk slowly showing higher status and dominance. His facial expressions being desirable also, he appears young, therefore more appealing to Sophie For the style of the film, we were influenced by the Omen (2006) directed by Benjamin Radford. He shows the utilisation of dominant Christian iconography, like in our film where we began with the crucifix and the alter. We used this dependence of imagery because we thought that this exhibited some of the main premises of the content of our film such as worship and religious theories, with the Devil as a menace. Our figure of the Devil has challenged some productions figure. Unlike Tim Curry in the Legend (1994) a fiery red horned beast, we represented him subtly seductively and in classic Devil fashion he has been brokering deals for souls. We decided him to look angelic, deceiving the audience, however with a real sense of allurement and demonic. However, we changed the female victim from the wife of the husband to the child. Firstly we could not find an appropriate actor, and then we did have an appropriate actor who could lead the audience into sympathy, which would end up more successful.
2. Question two:
Our culture nowadays is categorized into social groups, we thrive on giving labels. The society is divided into Women, Men, Children and the Elderly. We can also sub divide these in to Class, Gender and Race. This Hegemony in life helps us the film makers, make successful films for the consumers to enjoy. In “SOLD” (2009), the film contains females and males, the male being elder being the antagonist whilst the female being a young protagonist. The young girl has been stereotyped to be the victim. She is young innocent and dominated by the male figures throughout the film. The age of the girl is young, representing her as venerable and naïve. However, the innocence of the girl is taken away and she grows up to enact revenge, and from the opening we can portray her maturing and growing away from the dominance in her life. Her behaviour and movement become more obvious; from praying she is perceived as righteous, then her behaviour and movement change in the swing sequence; she looks upset and is slowly growing against her father, this is then concluded in her leaving. In the final scene she has finally grown up taking the path of retribution and unrighteousness. The Devil, we have portrayed as a male human figure. We dressed him in all business attire, with some quirk, to portray him as a rebellious character, one who is prepared to bend the rules. His facial expressions convey to us that he is seductive and he has a charisma that influences the troubled characters he encounters. We emphasised this by the construction of filming of George.
The room was dark, pitch black, with the intensifying lights through the floor boards’ from above. This effect made him seem allusive, yet materialising from the shadows. To improve or change our representation, I would have liked to have given him a white suit and a dark coloured or black shirt, but we could not find a white suit. This would have contradicted the symbolism of white, and acted as a bluff to his victims. However we put George in a velvet suit and put bronzer on him to create a warm tanned look, communicating a hot hell and an attractive look that appeals to Sophie or members of the audience.
3. What kind of Media Institution might distribute your Media Product and why?
Fundamentally our product is a low budget independent film. The locations being owned by people close at hand, we were extremely lucky to only pay £10 towards the church as a donation of gratitude. We supplied appropriate costume. Being a new small production team our expertise will not match the other independent film companies, plus we do not depend on funding from other companies to get our product filmed and distributed. To make sure that our product is promoted effectively I think Caachi is a really good distributor to start from. Caachi is a fairly new entrant into the world of online guerilla film distribution, and they go about their service in a pretty interesting way, and would be perfect for us as a small independent film company to get involved with. First up, they offer a low budget film in DVD quality online for a small fee (set by the filmmakers themselves). They also give users the ability to download a DVD quality version of purchased films to their hard drive, where you can then burn onto your own DVDs at your leisure. Caachi takes a fairly small cut of the viewing/downloading fees. Caachi gives their independent, low budget filmmakers 75% of the proceeds, which for us would be fantastic. Low budget filmmakers are finally able to get a reasonable return on any sale. And finally, Caachi has set up a system where any website can become an affiliate distributor of any of the Caachi film catalogue. I think this is a great marketing and sales tool to use in our eternal search to have our low budget film shown before the masses. It gives them a great marketing piece to encourage webmasters to run our film information by offering them a 20% commission on any sales made off of their site. This will get the film known and encourage reviewers to evaluate our films. I also think this is really useful as the internet is the fastest growing form of time consuming in this day and age, and will be a great way of getting independent audiences involved. However I think maybe to get a higher and more successful viewing we could release it to a more niche company specializing in horror films. To modify our film into a higher categorized film, we could have increased our budget and hired a specialized after effects team to create a better effect and touch to our footage. We could have also spent more time in the pre production side of things. We could have also expanded our production crew to bring more ideas to the table. For the reason that our film is a low budget independent film, I would say a U.K distribution company would dispense our film. On the other hand, I think the interest of religion is dominated in the Europe, plus our product is English, and we have a great advantage that many people speak English as a second language, therefore we could be distributed in Europe and have a great interest.4. How did you attract your audience?
Being a low budget film company, we like to do things independently. We have already made a trailer for our film. A successfully thrilling advert enticing the potential customers to watch our film. It is successful in that it creates an atmosphere and makes you want to know more about the film, without giving too much away. We used various forms of fade in fade outs to seduce the viewer then push them away, playing with their minds. Also, the internet being the most revolutionary and most used form of communication technology; it consumes a large amount of time from prospective customers. YouTube has become the first port of call when seeking videos, as well as MySpace; it enables us to distribute our material to a vast audience. MySpace users range averagely between 16 to 25 year old, which is the perfect age group we are targeting. We would also using social networking site such as FaceBook, in order to construct a viral marketing campaign. As this is the fastest growing social networking provided thus far. We can create a page, blog entry, and invite friends by invitation. This will hopefully create hub and talk about our film, spreading it via word of mouth, and maybe even publicity. By using up and coming actors, we can use the advantage of local newspapers writing about how they have “landed themselves” a part in a film. By asking them to write an article about them and information, we are also creating free publicity. Advertising the film for absolutely no money. From the recent success of Batman, The Dark Knight (2008) I think merchandising is a great idea. The simplicity of the jokers face painted onto a plain T-shirt is apparent to most people, and is “free advertisement”. However, I created a tag line, not an image, which we will use on merchandising. “Every Soul has Its Price” That would be placed on the front of a black T-shirt, and the Title SOLD on the back, towards the neck, with the release dates underneath. Bill boards or posters would consist of using the main characters. There will be various posters. Using the most significant images throughout the film. Here is a sample… SAMPLE POSTER…
5. What have you learnt about Media Technologies form the process of constructing your product?
In one, a great deal. From the start of filming to editing and final effects, screwing it up, fixing it then tweaking it. We filmed at Holmbury St. Mary Church, and the exterior and basement of Ewhurst Place. Using the SONY PD170 we attached it to a retractable tri pod this was to secure a steady shot. We placed the camera at the height that was necessary, to ensure that the image would be balanced and levelled, we bubbled the tripod to secure a straight shot, as we didn’t jaunt it for style. As we shot many angles we had to repeat this process many times. For our low shot of Sophie praying, we detracted the tripod to the lowest knot and had to bubble it again. However for his particular shot we tilted the angle the camera angle and once we got the right angle we tightened the screw. Also, before recording you must focus the shot. By zooming into the main object then focusing upon it. Personally I like to use the front focus wheel to do this. You must always check the aperture too; luckily for recording in the church we had lots of natural light through the windows. Therefore the white balance did not need changing.
From this I have learnt that you must always check the bubble as it can slip, and learning from the preliminary task, an un-bubbled shot is really off putting. When we were recording in the dark basement we had no light, accept the light through the floor boards above, therefore we used intensifying lights to help emphasize this.
I learnt that lighting is very important in filming, you can always take light away whilst editing, and however you cannot put it in. Therefore we filmed the exterior of Ewhurst first, as it was winter and light is scarce and ran out quickly. We broke the 180 degree rule whilst filming in the basement. We had to cheat, as there was a lack of light, so we had to place George walking in the direction that Sophie was walking, but to create an allusion that he was not doing this we recorded him from the other side. My favourite use of recording sound was the swing. The eerie noose like sound was captured by the doogle, which we placed next to. Using the doogle, can capture sound very well, therefore there does need to be complete silence on set. As when editing it is difficult to take out some muffled giggles etc.
6. How was EDITING
It was a bit of a parody. In the duration of constructing our product we managed to produce 14 sequences. It was hard work, but we learnt a lot. After digitalizing our footage, we opened it up on the Mac based program Final Cut Pro. By opening it up you have created a rush, which is all of your footage in one, like a book. To help save time when editing we constructed log bins. These bins acts contain the takes. And to save time further, you can construct bin files which act like chapters of a book. For example, we had bins the names of Church, Prayers, Swing, Basement, and there we placed the cut sequences from the rush. To do that we scrolled through the rush and used the “I” and “O” keys to cut the sequence, this acts like copy and pasting. I have learnt that it is better to have too much footage than too little, as you can cut it down, therefore you in point the sequence from the end of action and “O” points it at the start of the word cut. Also keep looking back at your rush bin as there might be a shot that will become useful that you did not log. Also I learnt that fade in fade outs look as if we are unconfident with our work and also advert like, when it is snappier it is professional and confident, and also keeps the audience engaged. My timing for cutting was perfected by the end of editing. One tool that helped me was markers. By pressing the key “M” you can create a mark for a particular time. A scene in particular was the prayer. Editing sound was difficult as you really had to have an ear for the timing and effects. For many of our footage we had to change the balance of the sound. The swing for example needed to be quieter when seen further away and louder when nearer. By double clicking the sound log, I edited it by clicking the balance line and dropping it at particular points. Also, the use of reverb and echoes were used in the church, to create an eerie almost atmospheric quality we added a reverb to Sophie’s prayer. To finish off with we went to After Effects, were we create a texture that a professional film has, to create a richer feeling. For our soundtrack we used ambient and orchestral sounds. We had to experiment for an hour to get our perfect tracks. Noting down the tracks and placing them to the film is easier. Also you can use silence which can be just a shocking. This is also another thing I have learnt, it is easier to get your film done rather than edit your film to sound. Finally finishing I have learnt that fully understanding and knowing your product is vital, and makes things easier. You must also be confident with your work and if not experiment. 7. Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt about the progression from it to the finished product?
We were required to create an opening of a horror/thriller film for the duration of 2 to 3 minutes long. Before that was to occur we had a continuity exercise and put a production team together and allocate positions, create a story, film and edit it.
Before diving into the deep end, to give us some experience we directed a continuity exercise involved filming and editing a script involving two characters in a conversation within an interior set. One character opens a door crosses the room and established a relationship in the few lines of dialogue. So it was very simple.
We were put in a group of three, and given the script. In the script were particular shots to be used and a vague story that could be moulded.
We were allocated roles and shot the script, looking at continuity and tested our creativity.
From this I experienced the organizational skills needed for the production are vital. I enjoyed the camera work but I was clumsy with the equipment, which was improved on when I next used the camera. Looking at other group’s footage, it just goes to show how you can make anything out of the simplest script.
In the editing side of things, the script really helped and I learned that editing can really improve a scene, and can save poor acting, or poor directing. Having a small scene and a small company there are less things to go wrong, therefore it was an easy well done product.
However, for our real thing it was bigger, and more detailed. We started our coursework by writing a treatment, script and story board and then we were put into groups and chose a story.
This was more daunting as it was all our work and we had to know our product inside out to really get down with it. I didn’t really go into my story far enough to be imaginative with it, and for it to be chosen I did panic. In general I am an unarticulated person and it was hard to tell the team what I wanted. I didn’t really want to be a director as it was such a lot of pressure on me to finish a whole product when I would have preferred to improve upon another. Nevertheless it was a challenge which I did step up to. I had many ideas which I did eventually narrow down and condense. My organizational skills improved and when making “to do lists’” and constructing research we got a clearer plot to the story. From this I have learnt that research and working upon consumer wants and asking the team, I got things done without panicking (too much).
The company formation started with a group bonding session. From this I was confident that we would not conflict, and that cooperation would be vital in our process. I was a bit weary being cast as the director as it came with many responsibilities. Writing the script took me too long, and to be honest I slacked, just because I wanted to create a good piece, but I didn’t trust myself. However I did finally manage to write something. To creatively translate the script to a visual experience. I was exciting by this but being unarticulated this was really hard work, I came up with many ideas, some really good, some not so, and this also took me a while to narrow down into the final product. I worked very well with our producer Jay, our work was solid and efficient, and we got everything done. I over saw the writing of the permission letters sent to the owners of the locations needed.
Like our final editing I created many storyboards all being dissuaded and they were all eclectic mixes of styles therefore not good enough.
My blog helped with my organizational skills, and to keep on top of my work. Everything was a bit of a hectic mess, but things did get sorted and was
Our day of the shoot was good fun, and was really enlightening to how films were created. I felt I did well with authority and organizing the team, taking up the role as producer as Jay was taken ill, as well as directing.
Editing Jay and I did a lot of the work. It was time consuming and actually a bit of a parody at times. But I think Jay and I worked really hard and it was strenuous but we worked really well as a team. Priorities were challenged when I had my drama practical exam at the same time but making notes every time was really useful as Jay and I could work resourcefully the next time.
Finally finishing the product it was hard to accept. I was treating it like a piece of wood, and trying to perfect, but if we had tweaked it any more there would have been nothing left. Jay was the final decider to tell me to stop.
I think if I could go back again I would have definitely spent more time on the story and made sure it was secure and I knew the plot inside out. It would have made things a lot easier.
This task helped me reflect on how I organized myself and how working for the film industry works. I feel that I have good creative skills and with a little more work I could expand on that, next time I think my skills would suit assistant directing, having less responsibility for the actual product but have an input on some ideas and also working with the producer.
Film crew shooting the prayer in Holmbury St. Mary. 
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