Progress Report – 22/11/2011

We have just completed the rest of the planning that we required for our music video. We have made sure that we have covered every aspect that we needed to look at to ensure that the video was completely prepared for so that the film was as higher quality as possible. On the whole, it went very smoothly, without any hitches as we only encountered a couple of problems. Firstly, the location images were difficult to get hold of as there were so many to take and also we only took them as we were filming, so we had to take them as we were filming. Also, the actors that we wanted to use were very busy when we wanted to film them, so we had to spend time looking for new actors, but apart from that, everything went very smoothly.

Actors

Actors

Marriage

Woman – Jo Fox

Man – Darren Fox

This couple need to look as if they are married and also look very convincing whilst having the argument. Chris has chosen this couple to be the married couple because they are married and he knows them from an amateur drama society so they are very good actors and so will work well for our film, and because they are adults, they should be very reliable.

Religion

Religious Man – Chris Rushton (Group Member)

This character needs to look as if they are very upset about something, but he also needs to look phased by a past event. Chris is an actor himself and so he should be very good when filming this film, and also he is co-director with Oliver so he knows the story very well so he knows what is required of the film.

Social

Disabled Boy – Matt Oakden (Group Member)

List of other teenagers –

Keiran Hancock

Leanne Ashworth

Toby Carpenter

Abbie Thomas

Faye Podmore

Lucy Atton

Lucy Hall

Sally Hall

Danielle Birch

Lewis Jones-Dunn

Will Pointon

Emily Barnett

Chloe Hammersley

Aimee-Beth Torr

The disabled boy needs to act as though he is very depressed about his physical state and also very hopeless. The other group of teenagers needs to look as though they are having a good time as they need to be laughing and joking with each other to emphasise the disabled boy’s loneliness. Matt is also an actor himself and so he will be a very good source for our film as he will add more depth and experience into the filming. The group of teenagers are all from Chris’ Drama group and so, even though they only have a small part, they will be very good at what they do and add more experience to the video.

Locations

Marriage

Living Room

Living room - This is the main location of the marriage sequence as all but one of the shots is used in this location. This is the living room of Chris Rushton, and we chose this because it has a sofa next to a window, which is exactly what we need for our shoot. There is a very large window, which is good for gazing out of, with a sofa long enough for a very unpleasant and upsetting argument.

Drive

Drive – this is the location for when the woman walks out of the house after the supposed marriage break up. It is linked to the house for continuity reasons.

Religion

Church

Church – This is the main location for the religious scene. It is a small and dainty church that shows everything that we required from the church and seen, as it was empty at the time, it worked well for us.

Graveyard

Graveyard – This is the second location for our religious narrative. It is a stereotypical graveyard that has a very large number of graves, which is good for our piece because it shows the disparity of the events.

Social

Bedroom

Bedroom – This is the location where we start to see the disabled boy’s problems as he is trying to pull his legs up onto the bed, but failing. It is a very neutral based coloured room to show the vulnerability of the boy.

Car Park/Street

Car Park/Street – This is the location where we see both the group if teenagers and also the disabled boy. The group of teenagers are stood there having a jolly good time, whilst the boy is sitting there very depressed. It shows the connection and stereotypes of youth, but also the differentiation as they are discriminating against disability.

Staircase

Staircase – This is the location where the disabled boy wheels his wheelchair up to a set of stairs only to realise that he can’t go up them.

Props

Marriage Props

Veil to go over the crying woman's face.

Ring that falls on to the floor

Frame that gets dropped on the floor and smashes

Social Props

Wheelchair/crutches which the disbaled boy uses.

Religious Props

Cross from in the church.

Flowers from in the church

Gravestone from the churchyard, where the religious man is staring.

Risk Assessment

Costumes

Costumes

We have chosen to use mostly ordinary clothes as we don’t really need any fancy/periodic costumes since the video is set within modern times and the actors are no different to any other ordinary living person. The basic set of clothing will involve jeans and a T-shirt/jacket.

Even though the clothing items are ordinary we have decided to use different colour coded clothes, for example the disabled character is wearing a white T-shirt to not only show innocence but to show how plain and hellishly boring his life is now that he is immobile without the wheelchair. The clothes themselves technically go against the genre unfortunately as it is alternative music.

Multiple colours will be used within the marital break up to show that the difference between right and wrong/good and bad aren’t as “black and white” as people might think, this should aid in slightly disorienting the audience which is what we want as the content is writerly not readerly. Again we will be using multiple colours to blur reality with the religious character as his personal reality has become blurred from the loss of someone he loved, and this constant state of depression which is blurring his reality is taking over him making him depressed and obsessed.

We will also be using alternative costume props to try and link with the genre of the music an example of this would be the veil that we are using within the marital break up to make the scene appear abstract also the fact that the character is wearing a veil whilst sitting in a living room is very alternative and different which in turn can link with the genre.

Roles

Matt Oakden

Matt will be partaking in the research of the music video to ensure that we create a video that is up to standard and appropriate to the audience and genre. Matt has also participated in the main idea of the film where we all sat down and thought up all of the ideas for our music video. He will also play a huge part in the planning side of the video idea as we will need to do as many plans for the ideas as possible to ensure that the video is as good as it can be. Matt’s main role in this film is being the main character of the social narrative. He is a very talented young performer and so is the perfect person to play this role, as it requires top-level acting. Finally Matt will be aiding the editing side of the film, as everyone in the group needs to pitch in with ideas and how we can distribute our music video.

Oliver Sheldon

Oliver is a very respected member of the group. He has excellent knowledge of the subject and so was very reliable when needing ideas for the film. His input for the film has given the narratives more of an interesting look then put by giving appropriate shots and filming techniques. He also has had a big part in the planning of the film as he has taken control of a number of different planning aspects. Oliver’s main role in the film is being the cameraman for the shoot. This was helped by Oliver vast knowledge of technological items so he was able to use the equipment with ease an using the appropriate camera shots. Because of this, Oliver has also taken the part of associate director, as he was one of the main ones to perfect the narrative, so he knows the narrative inside out. Thee knowledge of editing that Oliver gives will be a massive help when we come to editing the film as he also uses his own editing software thus improves the quality of this film because of his knowledge

Chris Rushton

Chris has a number of roles within the creation of our music video. He not only acts but also he helps with the editing, filming and planning as well as the photos due to his history in photography. Christmas is also a very organized member of the group as he creates many documents which shall help in the long run for our planning process that each member of the group can distribute on their blog. Chris is very technical minded and this is an asset as it will allow us to do our editing and filming in a quicker process without any hitches. As an actor, Chris is the main character in the Religious narrative. Christy also aided within the actual creative planning of the product and was valuable asset towards the ideas and creativity of the product.

Group Feedback

The feedback we gained was when we explained our ideas to another group from our class so they gave us feedback on our work, which we did the same for them. Firstly, they liked the idea of using adults in our film because they felt that this would give us the best acting for our film. They also said that they liked the idea of the meaning we got from the colour desaturation as the video goes on as this shows the meaning of the film. They also liked the use of different narratives as they said that it was almost distorting the narratives as they crossed over each other. The audience relation was also a point that they picked up on because they felt that we had made it so that the narratives in the video could relate to the audience and possible aspects of their lives. This then links to the fact that we need to make sure that there is more emotion than just narrative because the emotion will be the aspect that will attract the audience and get them to enjoy the video more. However, they said that we shouldn’t make the narratives too emotional as it may seem as though everything is hopeless and extremely depressing, which is not the sort of emotion we want to give off. This leads to the fact that we need to make sure that we are sensitive to the issues that are raised in the video as they may offend or upset an audience member who has experienced this in real life and so we are making sure that our versions of the narratives are delicate and none offensive. Another thing they said was about the lyrics link to the video. We need to make sure that we aren’t too ‘cheesy’ with the lyrics link because it wouldn’t look very good if we took the lyrics to a ridiculous level and copy them exactly because this would make the video comical and pointless because these are not the emotions we want the audience to feel. The final point that they raised was the fact that we need to make sure that the shots, transitions and angles are varied because this will emphasise the emotion as the audience will see the problems from a number of different perspectives.

Teacher Feedback

The first feedback we got was from our teachers. They gave us a few compliments and also gave us a few pointers to ensure that our film is the best we can do. They said that we need to make sure that we have good actors that are reliable, and to do this the best thing to do is to get adult actors as they will be more reliable than youths and also being as they are from a drama group, they are very good actors.  They also wondered why some of the shots were for a long period of time, to which we answered that they were the same shots, but they were from different angles to add more depth to the shots. They said that the editing needs to give meaning to the film and to emphasise the meaning in the editing therefore needing to make it apparent what meaning we are trying to show. They said that they liked the look of the graphic matched between the three narratives as it shows a good knowledge of the shots and it will look effective for the meaning. Finally, they commented on the mise-en-scene by saying that we needed to look out for what is in the shot and make sure that all of the mise-en-scene is appropriate and emphasises the meaning. So the targets that they gave to us were all very useful to us. Firstly, they said that we should ensure that the shots and editing was at a high level to bring forward the meaning of the song and not to lose any meaning through bad editing and shots.  Also we need to create and analyse at the same time so that we are thinking about the meaning presented from the shots at the same time as creating them. Then we need to identify the journey that the audience is going to make during the viewing of our music video to make us think why we are using certain shots in our piece. Finally, they made us think about a question. They said; how could we make it interesting and complex? This is to make us think why we are using certain shots and how these are going to keep the audience interested in the video.

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