FMP evaluation

Lewis Johnson

FMP Evaluation

Person ID: 32886

Learner registration number: 42994

Centre number: 47107

The start of my FMP project was, admittedly a false one, I began the project with the mind to create a dark drama in the vein of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror and a number of Christopher Nolan movies, mainly Memento however. Black Mirror is a show that twists viewer perception by making audiences think they’re watching a true blue drama, whereas what you’re really seeing is a dark commentary on the current state of TV and technology, mainly pertaining to reality TV formats, I found that this was an interesting concept so I decided to try and adapt it for a short drama. The main concept for the script I produced was of an individual with split personalities, however we don’t know this yet, not until the end, my drama would mirror the techniques used in Black Mirror by suggesting things about the narrative, that are later turned completely upside down. Christopher Nolan uses these types of plot twist frequently as well, but this isn’t why I took him as inspiration, I was more inspired by the deeply psychological style of film making that Christopher Nolan has adopted, he even went so far as to put an interesting psychological slant on the Batman series.

I definitely wanted to try and emulate the way Christopher Nolan likes to present a full picture of his characters psychological issues and then craft an interesting plot twist around it. The whole storyline for my piece was, as mentioned before, an individual suffering from split personality disorder (unbeknownst to the audience) who then begins to receive letters from an anonymous sender, the letters pertain to the individual’s dead girlfriend, she was murdered however they never uncovered who it actually was. We slowly uncover clues to the individual’s mental state, little quirks such as spinning a coin and looking intently at his own reflection, as if perplexed by it, point to much deeper problems. At the end of the film we would discover that he was the one who murdered his wife and then the character would have a confrontation with himself in the mirror, which would lead to a certain degree of emotional closure and catharsis. The film would include a great deal of flashbacks which would feature the individual’s girlfriend and would shed extra light on past events involving the two, with a big focus on illustrating the situation leading up to her death. After completing the script I began looking for actors and locations, the actor I had in mind for the main character was Peter Quinn who has worked with a few students in our year in the past, I felt as if he could channel the dark and twisted undercurrent that I needed for the character.

lnitially I wanted my mother to play the part of the individual’s girlfriend, I thought this was idea as their ages essentially matched up perfectly; however I soon realised that this wasn’t at all plausible as she finds it difficult to exert herself and the part would require that she move around a lot. In future I need to plan ahead much better so as not to waste time in trying to use actors and actresses that aren’t available, or just aren’t a plausible choice for the part. Regardless, after meeting with Peter Quinn it was clear that he was very enthusiastic and excited about the project, this was highly encouraging, so I immediately began to look for suitable locations, I had a number of potential places I mind that were ideal, one of them being Lee Stewart’s house (a fellow student) as it was undergoing minor construction at the time, this meant it had a suitably gritty look to it that was perfect for the individuals home. I also planned to use my own house for the flashback section, I decided to use my house because it was a start contrast to Lee’s and represented a better time for these characters.  The script also called for locations such as graveyard for the scene wherein in the individual visits the grave of his dead girlfriend. After securing the locations I got to work on securing another actress for the girlfriend role, luckily Alex had already secured a suitable actress for his short drama, Heather-Ashton Rowell, a local artist who had in the past worked with multiple students, she was ideal and immediately agreed to play the part, I was extremely glad to have solved the issue and couldn’t wait to get started.

However I wasn’t in the clear yet, as I quickly faced some more issues, one of the locations fell through and time was quickly running out, I was adamant that I would continue with the film and complete it. However it was only after a meeting with Alex and a tutor that I realised I had to do something to solve this problem, as quickly as possible, we discussed the possibility of simply joining production groups in order to produce one short film, by using all of our collective efforts we realised we would be able save time and produce a better drama. This was ideal as we were already part of the same production company; the newly formed ‘Hoodlum Creations’. So it was decided that I would shelve my project and transfer over to Alex’s, this was fine by me as his film was very similar to mine in that it was a dark drama with a twist, I was immediately interested in the concept and was very enthusiastic about working on it. Jordan also had a similar problem and followed the same solution, I was a lot more comfortable with allowing myself more space for continuing my film in the summer, that said I was still admittedly rather disappointed in the fact that I allowed my schedule to slip and endanger the entire project, in future I need to make sure that I have all the required assets prepared as soon as possible and I need to make doubly sure that I don’t take gamble with casting like I did this time, it also took me quite a long time just to finalise the concept from the research I gathered, it took me a long time to become comfortable with how the story was planned out. This lack of confidence stemmed from the fact that I decided to go for a non-linear narrative, this often made it difficult to properly decide which pieces of the story needed to go where. I’m happy with the way it turned out though and it remains a project that I’m still committed to completing over the holidays.

Work began on Alex’s project, I was given the role of co-director and sound engineer, whilst also setting up most of the lighting, at first I was worried by the idea of moving onto a pre-existing project, I thought I wouldn’t get much work, but that wasn’t true as I found I instantly had much to do. The concept behind Alex’s film was of an apocalyptic drama that revolves around two brothers struggling to stay afloat in a world that has been devastated by an untold cataclysm; I thought this was a very interesting narrative which provided much scope for emotional concepts and scenes. The bulk of the film was to take place in a basement underneath the main characters’ house; this is where they take refuge and shelter from the disaster above. As such the first job was to set up lighting down there; we went with orange filters so as to simulate the effect of a gentle candle light, which the brothers were relying on after the power had been knocked out. I thought this was going to look perfect, however in my opinion in ended up looking far too orange on camera, we didn’t have any other filters that were suitable so we instead were forced to fix it in post-production. This was very surprisingly effective; we did eventually achieve the desired effect and made it look as if the whole basement was being lit via candle light.

Other issues cropped up such as a few continuity errors, the main one being during the scene in the corridor between Peter Quinn’s character and one of the brothers, during lunch someone put a bottle on a side table, which later showed up blatantly in the middle of the scene, this compromised continuity and we weren’t able to edit around it either. I learnt that you need to be much more vigilante when it comes objects around the set and consistency, there’s always a risk of the smallest objects cropping up and almost ruining a shot. We also had continuity issues with lighting from room to room, there’s a scene where the two brothers are fighting in a brightly lit, vibrant living room setting, afterwards we go to a corridor scene where the lighting is noticeably different and you can almost tell that we shot at different times in the day, we were also able to save this through editing but it’s something else to think about in future. In hindsight we probably could have brought the lighting equipment upstairs from the basement to improve the exposure on the characters, but in the interest of time we simply trucked on a shot the scene, we wanted to get it done quickly as the actors had started laughing frequently during the scene, which set us back quite markedly.

Overall, I think I could improve by not taking on too many projects at the same time; this is what led to me having to drop my own project and move onto one; however this wasn’t all bad as it still allowed me a large amount of creative freedom during production as I got to be co-director, this allowed me have my own input on the project and let me change things where I thought necessary. The final stage of the film is putting it in the exhibition; this will allow multiple members of the public to view it and it will give us a chance to generate a lot of feedback pertaining to how we did on the film. The only problem being that the film contains quite a lot of swearing and adult themes so it’s not possible for us to show the film on the cinema setup provided, instead the whole thing will be shown on a separate MAC station, hopefully this won’t compromise the amount of who watch the film.

Bibliography

Bibliography
Information taken from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://www.imdb.com/

http://movieimage1.tripod.com/memento/

Images taken from:

https://www.google.co.uk/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi

http://www.channel4.com/

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2013/02/18/review-of-black-mirror-white-bear/

FMP project 'Endure' post production final

To begin the editing process we decided early on that we should split the editing up into three sections, so that we get it done faster and have an equal workload to go on, I was in charge of editing the hallway confrontation between Peter Quinn's character and Phil's, as well as acquiring all of the sound effects we would need for the film. Alex was in charge of editing the basement scenes, while Jordan was to edit the kitchen and bedroom scenes. I found editing the corridor scene quite challenging as there was a blatant issue with continuity that I had to try and avoid, in that someone put a bottle down on a stand behind Peter whilst were on a break halfway through the scene, no one noticed this when we got back to shooting and by the time we noticed it, it was far too late to do anything about it. Lighting was also an issue throughout, so when I had put the scene together I had to go over each shot and use RGB curves in order to adjust the colour and I had to make large adjustments to the brightness and contrast of each shot, this was just so that it flowed logically into the next scene; the kitchen, without them looking unnatural next to one another.

I was happy with how this edit came out, so I imported it over to the main editing computer to join the other edits, I was very happy with the fact that everyone's edits seemed to flow together nicely, even though everyone else encountered similar problems with continuity, Jordan's main problem was that during the bedroom scene a bottle of vodka falls on the floor, the mother then picks it up and secures the lid, but with certain takes the point at which the lid was secured varied, so Jordan had to do his best to edit around those points. In order to properly convey that the house was being bombarded and shaken by the event in the film we asked Brian for assistance in how to add the necessary effect, when he'd shown us It was then a simply matter of applying to all the scenes. When all of the edits were finalised and put together I got to work trying to colour grade some of the other scenes so that they would match up better to what I had done with the corridor, this didn't take very long and eventually all that was left to do was put the sound effects on.

I gathered multiple sound effects using the list of needed sounds that Alex put together. Sound effects such as inhuman screeches that we could overlay onto the basement scene to suggest that theres something strange stalking up above, we also needed lots of sounds of glass breaking and explosions to make the scene where Phil's character runs downstairs in fear much more believable. It was mostly a simple process putting the sounds on, however there was one section that proved much more difficult than anticipated, for the bedroom scene where Phil's character is woken up his mother hoovering the landing we needed to add the sound ourselves because we didn't actually use a hoover during the shoot because it may have messed with prompts for the actors and so on. This meant that we needed to make the sound effect seem as though it was coming from a different room, however at first we only succeeded in making it sound like an aeroplane, this was quickly resolved when we asked Brian how to do it.

FMP project 'Endure' shooting day 3

The third day of shooting would consist of us picking up the shots we missed during the first few days due to time constraints and the actor's schedules, decided that we needed to get some more shots of Phil's character reacting to the cataclysm and then we needed to get shots outside in the yard and in the back alley, for the scene in which Phil's character meets his dealer and then goes away to take some cocaine. We once again started by having Christi apply Phil's makeup then we got straight to filming the scenes, this proved immediately difficult as we had come straight after college and were losing light outside very quickly, the problem wasn't the darkness, as that was what we needed for the scene, the problem was the alternating amounts of light in the scenes. I combated this problem by adjusting the exposure for each of the shots I was responsible for and Alex did the same thing, all in order to make it look even. We completed both yard shots and the back alley shots rather quickly, which meant we could quickly get on with the very last interior shots.

For the interior shots we just needed more footage of Phil's character running through the house whilst it shakes and the furniture and ornaments fall all around him, we found that making everything fall and shake was going to prove far too time consuming and wasn't really a feasible effect to pursue at such a late stage in production. Instead we just filmed him running through the house, later we would add shaking effects to the footage and along with the sound effects we were sure this would sell that fact there's something terrible going on outside. With that done we'd finally acquired all the footage we needed and full editing could commence.

FMP project 'Endure' post production 1

After the second day of shooting we decided it would be a good idea to review the footage we had so far, even though we didn't have all of the shots yet, Jordan went through the footage and I made a checklist of what was usable, unusable, useful for the bloopers or useful for production videos documenting the process of making the film. The full list is as follows;
















After completing the checklist, me, Alex and Christi went back to the shooting locations to grab the final shots.

FMP 'Endure' shooting day 2

This production day consisted of shooting the remaining scenes in the house and the entire basement scene, which would later be split up into three separate scenes in editing. Like the first shooting day we decided early on to split the filming the responsibilities up between us, especially when it came to the basement shots, we agreed that Jordan would film the first section, whilst Alex would film the middle and I would shoot the end. In order to not get held back like last time we decided to set up all the lighting equipment in the basement well before any of the actors showed up, we quickly managed to emulate the ideal lighting conditions we had achieved in the practice shoot. This meant that Phil and George could get straight into having a quick a rehearsal before the real shoot, whilst intermittently allowing Christi to reapply the makeup to Phil; Christi was going to be attending the shoot all day this time so we didn't have to worry about losing the makeup like during the first day. The only difference with the makeup this time was that due to it falling off too frequently last time, we all decided that we should just have his lip swollen and red rather than cut open, this would also make it much easier to match up the makeup from shot to shot if it became smudged.

Jordan began shooting the first basement scene after we were sure both actors were ready and the makeup was correct, with me on sound and Alex improving the lighting with the reflector board where necessary, the only hurdle we came across during this first section was space; there was a scene which required a close-up from the left side of both characters during a confrontation, however this meant Jordan had to do his best to squeeze into a small alcove just in order to get the right shot and this resulted in a few hits to the head and scrapes for him. Next time we should consider alternate shots when it comes to situations like that, perhaps if we had temporarily adjusted the positioning of the lighting equipment we could have shot from the right side instead, where there was ample room. Instead of going straight into the second scene we decided to film my section, the part where the brothers leave the basement to explore the outside world, this was the first time I had operated the camera down in the cramped basement location, as such I found it rather challenging at first. I realised that space wasn't just occasionally an issue it was an issue quite consistently, since this scene was full of emotional one to ones between the brothers I had to get in close in order to capture their faces clearly. What this meant was that I often had to stand at the side of them, with the basement being narrow this meant I was often struggling to get the shot right, or it took much longer than it needed to. A factor that also added additional difficulty was that I needed the fig rig for some shots, particularly when the characters move around the basement, this made the space even tighter but I think in the end the extra stability will benefit the footage greatly.

 

One part I struggled with was a shot wherein the pair proceed up the stairs and leave, it was very hard to get the lighting correct here and we had to rely mainly on the box lights just to get enough exposure on the characters, the stairs were cut off from the rest of the basement by a wall so there wasn't any other option. We also improvised slightly by wrapping the light at the top of the stairs in an orange filter to make the stairs look like the rest of the basement, this worked fine and I able to complete the scene rather quickly, which meant we could move onto the middle basement scene. We left this for last as it involved a scene where one of the characters vomits in the corner, we wanted this to seem real, so after researching effective vomit substitutes we found one that was ideal, we realised that the vomit on the floor might effect continuity if not cleaned up properly which is why this was shot last. Alex began shooting the scene, with Jordan operating sound and me using the reflector board where necessary, the vomit substitute looked very effective on camera, however the first take we did I suggested that Alex pull back a bit and get more of him being sick in shot the next, the first one barely caught any of it. After trying that we all agreed that the second shot was much more effective. After we'd completed the middle section of the basement scene we thought were finished, however we realised a problem; the box light hadn't been functioning during the first section and it had to be reshot in order for it to look consistent with the rest of the shots.

After that was dealt with we moved onto the scenes in the house that we didn't manage to complete during the first shoot, such as the kitchen argument and the scene where the mother and stepfather leave for a night out. We started in on the kitchen scene where the mother finds a bag of cocaine belonging to Phil's character and confronts him, we immediately made a slight change to one of the shots, in the original shot list the mother comes in and places the drugs down on the counter, we see this from a wide shot. However me and Jordan decided that it would be much better if we got a very low close shot of the counter, then when the drugs are placed on the side we tilt up and pull focus to reveal Phil's face and his reaction. In order to make the focus pull much easier I came up with idea of using little pieces of sticky notes to mark where I needed to pull focus from and where to, in order to have both the bag in focus initially and then move to a perfectly focused shot of Phil afterwards. This worked perfectly and we acquired the shot in one take so we moved onto the rest of the argument, I suggested that we shoot both Heather and Phil from low angles, to create power shots and have the argument seem much more intense. We had a problem though in that during the argument Heather and Phil would move around a lot, so I suggested to Jordan that he should try unlocking the tripod and following them as they move around, this worked perfectly and upon reviewing the footage we decided that all we needed to do was shoot the whole thing from a wide angle, just to cover our backs when it came to editing.

To cap off this shooting day we finished up the hallway scene involving the mother, stepdad and younger brother, which went smoothly and didn't require any reshoots, this meant we could then focus on shooting another scene which we had forgotten to film. The shot we needed was of the initial reaction to the cataclysm, Phil's character would run downstairs grab George's character then rush down to the basement, after we had filmed that scene we wrapped for the day and assessed what still needed to be done and whether we needed a third day of shooting, just for picking up the shots we missed.

FMP 'Endure' shooting day 1

This was the first day of actual shooting with all actors present and all crew attending, which included Alex as director, me as co-director and co-lighting and sound engineer, Jordan Gott as main camera operator (although we all had some time on camera) and the other co-lighting and sound engineer, while Christi was in charge of make-up and production stills. We began the day preparing the locations, we would need to shoot the bedroom, hallway, kitchen and outside scenes with the basement scenes to be filmed on Sunday. We began by dressing the bedroom with various props and items, such as empty beer cans and pizza boxes in order to better mirror the character. After doing that and as we waited for the actors and actress to arrive we split the roles up more evenly and decided amongst ourselves who would be filming which scenes, I was given the responsibility of shooting the bedroom scene, I knew this would be a challenge but was happy for the chance to improve my camera operating skills. Jordan was given the job of filming the hallway and kitchen scenes, whilst Alex would be responsible for the outside scenes.

The actors arrived and we allowed them to begin practicing the bedroom scene after Christi applied makeup to Philip in order to make look like he'd been in a fight (busted lip), whilst they were doing that I began to set up the camera, whilst I was doing this Jordan happened upon a problem with sound equipment, everything was echoing and didn't sound natural at all, we quickly rectified this with a change in positioning for the mic and the use of a boom pole to get in closer to the actors. Once I had selected an appropriate camera angle for the wide shot we began filming, initially I had feared that the drastic change in light during this scene would compromise the exposure however I switched the camera to automatic and did a test run, this looked perfectly natural in terms of how the lighting switched so I stuck to automatic. After getting the shots we needed with the tripod I wanted to switch to the fig rig as I though this would suit the scene much better, since we needed at least a small bit of instability to make it seem a bit more gritty and edgy.

The bedroom scenes took all morning, by which time Peter Quinn and George had arrived which meant we could get on with shooting the hallway scene involving the stepdad (Peter) and Tom (Philip) wherein they have an argument. Jordan was on camera for this section and it proved much more difficult than we anticipated, as after we had secured the entire conversation from multiple angles each of the actors began having laughing fits, this lasted for far longer than it should have done and even began to spread to the crew, this meant after trying for at least an extra forty minutes to get the last shots, we had to take a break in order for the actors to calm down. Securing the last shots then became much easier and we filmed them without incident, however we knew that we wouldn't have much time for the rest of the shots, thus we postponed the outside shots until Sunday. This was one of few problems we encountered that had to be rectified quickly in order for us to stay roughly on track. We had just enough time to secure the shots in the living room, wherein Tom changes the channel whilst Luke is playing on the Xbox, this whole scene was completed quickly and didn't present any problems like the last scene did.

The only other major problem we encountered which also hindered filming greatly was the fact that Christi went home much earlier than everyone else, shortly after she left Philip accidentally ate the makeup on his lip, which we tried desperately to replace but had no luck. This meant that we definitely couldn't continue filming as there was no way we could quickly produce a convincing replacement for the makeup without Christi. We also began to lose light fast which made shooting the outside scenes successfully quite impossible in the time frame we had. There was also a minor issue we spotted with continuity in the hallway scene, whilst we were having a break to try and subside all the laughing someone placed a plastic bottle on a cupboard behind where the actors stand, unfortunately we didn't realise it was in shot until it was too late and the actors were ready to leave, we can avoid this in future by being more vigilante in regards to the items around set.