Screen Shots of our Film :)

 Collage that me and Sannah produced for Jons room to portray his passion for cooking!

Jons dinner!.

 Interview scenes of Jon watching his favourite Chef Mr Jame Oliver.

Dinner time with the family very important shot as the only shot you get to see Jon interact with People.

Over the past week we have all been working hard to produce our final product and help produce the pre production folder. Phil edited while i assisted him giving him my input . While Phil and i Edited , Sannah Mala and jess helped out by sorting the production folder . on the deadline today we all helped each other produce everything we needed in paperwork, finished product, etc. We have a few problems with the audio in the film however we were able to overcome that , the music we inputted went well with the film and helped to create emotion. I was very happy with the ending in which i pictured the ending in my head before all the researching, scripting, filming, etc however i thought we weren't going to be able to get exactly what i pictured but we got there! so i was very happy to finally see it on Screen . with the finished product i was very happy however as i have mentioned before just that one scene of in the room i feel brought it a bit down however the rest was brillant and just what i imagined the final film outcome.

Filming

Last week on Monday me,Sannah,and Mala went to matthew Bolton to film the student interview scenes, at first we had a problem as the weather was miserable and couldn't capture any of the outside shots of Matthew Bolton however From last year i took some unused shots of the college that we will edit and use in the film. Bad start of the day however turned out great we got a variety of students in which we all pucked up the courage to ask people to take part in which the feedback was very positive, we film 5 different students and asked them to make either good or bad comments about our zombie jon. The acting was impressive from various students and looked natural , I directed Sannah and the actors in what to say and how to take the shots and Mala did the sound for the shots .

On the Wednesday was the last day of filming in which we all made our way to Jessica house, me and Sannah both looked at the room a bit of a delay occurred as the room was not set up however while the guys set up downstairs me and sannah started moving things around.  I found a problem in which i wasn't very happy about the lighting as it was quite dull and we couldn't produce natural light in the room. Jessica did Jons makeup while me and Sannah cut up Food magazines which were to be used as food collage in Jons room we also went up their and set the room out in which we moved and took away some features/Furniture. While we were setting up downstairs Jessica went up and stuck the Posters on the wall.  Filming in the room went well again the lighting was a bit of problem as on camera it looks quite bad quality however interviewing john scenes we all quite liked the shots. I got some extra shots of Extreme close ups of Jons facial expressions which i think will become very useful. Next we did the cooking scenes in which took some scene of jon making dinner . Mom and dad scenes were next interviewing them in which i directing them how to react or how to come across in the interview Sannah filmed and Mala interviewed, phil also had input with the shots getting cutaways etc.

Yesterday Phil captured the footage that we took on Tuesday , he edited the clips togeather including the location scenes of Birmingham and of Jessica's area. Phil would ask for my input and ideas in which we worked togeather to edit the footage well.

Shooting

Yesterday we shot a few scenes around Jessica's area , we had to re-shot location scene's as the footage was not captured and was lost. while me,Mala,Phil and Sannah filmed the location shots , Jessica was doing johns makeup for the next scenes. The next scenes showed of John leaving his house , general walking scenes making his way to college/supermarket and then we went with the style of handy cam in which questioning john while he was walking in which Mala asked the questions as she is our interviewer in the short film. John was easy to direct in which he listened carefully and had the same vision that i have in my head of how the scenes should be shot and consist of. i was also pleased with Sannah and Mala's input of camera and interviewer as they both produced good camera shots and Interview questions. Mala also on shoot did location shots of the area.

In the Past week Jessica practice the zombie makeup on my self, we also went out in town all together to look for more makeup . Yesterday we had the idea of shooting the general interview scenes of john in his bedroom however Jessica's brothers room was not suitable for his character in which the suitable props were not their e.g posters,poetry/cooking books we therefore had to shoot the outside Scenes.

Last week on Wednesday we all delivered our pitch for the life of a teenage zombie, i think it went very well our teachers/class mates seemed very interested and liked the idea of our short film/documentary. On the Friday Sannah ,Phil, Jessica, and I went shooting near Jessica's house in which will be our zombie Jons home in the film, I directed Sannah in taking a variety of shots to setting the scene for Jon area in which we worked very well together in deciding what shots would set the scene well with also input from Phil, we took long shots of the streets, medium/close ups are the street signs, close up of the door number, a variety of nature shots for example out of focus shot of the tree branches then cutting into in focus shots of the branches and houses behind, and also included long shots/medium shots of Jons house.

Over the past week we focused on finding our actor in which we sent emails out to local drama/performing arts schools, and we all had some posters that we gave out in our local areas. In which we have received 2 possible candidates for the role in which we will take into consideration and decide in our production meeting on Friday as we are hoping to meet. Phil and i decided to storyboard some ideas for the script in which we came up with an alternative ending however we all came to agreement that it would be difficult for us all so we all decided to storyboard scene's in which we would all look out and pick out which ones we could visualize on film. over the past weeks i have been looking at a few documented and short films in which i have done a bit of research in what shots, style, content are compulsory in short films /documentary styled that would help me to draw up a storyboard/direct the scene. today Phil brought in a 2 disc DVD collections of short horrors for the group to watch  which was very beneficial. this week we hope to finish the storyboard/script and make final decision in the actor, also me and Jessica decided to film a few scenes for setting the scenes for example houses,streets, the bullring , etc.

Questionnaire

yesterday we discussed the questions in our questionnaire we would use to find our right target audience for our short film
We came up with the following questions

What was the last film you watched?

how do you watch films?

have you viewed a short film before?

have you viewed a documentrary fore?be

favorite genre of film?

what do you like about documentaries?

how often do you watch documentaries?

and what is your favorite documentarie?

The questionnaire will prove very useful to us as we need to find if their is an potentional audience out there for our short film and to help us find exactly what the audience want from the film.

This is an picture of our poster to advertise the vacancy for the male actor role within our short film, we involved the name of the production , the requirements we want from the actor, and what the actor can benefit from taking part. i made an email address for our group in which we can all use to get in contact with colleges and drama clubs to send our poster and advertise and try and find an actor that would fit the requirements. again it is important for us to find the right actor to fit the role!!.

Poster

On Monday and Tuesday i did a bit of research where i watched a couple of documentary films e.g The cove, dolphin boy, etc. in which i wrote down some notes to help the group understand the way documentary films are filmed.

We held an emergency meeting on Tuesday where we decided on the Monday we was going to go to matthew bolton college to find the lead for our short film and to present our short film documentry idea to drama students , however we felt we wasn't prepared and decided to design and produce a leaflet that would promote and interest to a particular drama student. we started to write down ideas in what we would want in the lead

• 5ft 6
• age 16-20
• slim build
• must be willing to wear stage makeup

we then used this and produce a leaflet/poster in which we would distribute in colleges and drama schools/clubs.

MEETING/ZOMBIES!

On Friday we got into our groups to arrange a council meeting in which we discuss the preparations for our short film, the first task we had to do was vote for our council leader in which we all agreed Sannah should be and then we wrote up a list of what to discuss in the meeting. Our meeting started at1.33 in which we talked about research where we would each watch a documentary over the weekend and write down some notes on the content and the style of a documentary. the next topic was the Actor which is very important for our short film in which we all agree would make or break the film instead of using a friend we decided we would go to Matthew Bolton or BCU and talk to the drama apartments in which giving a presentation about our short film and really try and sell it to the young actors, of successful we would possibly think about holding an audition, our next meeting we would discuss what exactly we are looking for in the actor. the next topic we discussed are the different locations we would use in which we came up with

• BCU univeristy possibly the library-class room
• Jessica's brothers room for the lead 
• possibility of a shot within an pub?
• Oasis market ( possibly)
• Woods/street scenes near Jessica's house      
• 
  

the next topic we talked about was resources in what we need..

• makeup ( zombie)
• Costumes 
• bedroom props ( posters, cds, etc)
• Meat?

we all decided to produce a timeline so we can sort out what we need to do in good time and not leave stuff important to the last minute we decided by 23rd September everyone will have done research into short films/documentrys, idea of what we want in the lead/actor, introduction to the script ,  and money collecting for props ( £7 each).

Over the weekend one of my tasks was to look into Zombies in which collecting any information that would be useful for the short films

• Diseased yet moving
• essentially dead, no need for organs to support its life functions, destruction of the heart or other vital organs will have no effect
• brain must be destroyed in order to die
• dont feel pain
• walking corpse syndrome this is linked to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotard_delusion
• popular subjects in horror films
• sometimes they are victims of pandemic illness causing the dead to reanimate or the living to behave this way but often no course is given to the family 

Production Management Project

Yesterday we received our first brief which is the Production Management project.As freelance media professionals we were all asked to research and come up with ideas for a production we would take part in a group. On this project i got into a group with Sannah, Jessica, Mala, and Philip. we all came to a decision to make a short film.

At first we got into our groups and started drafting ideas and what is the short film going to be about or style  educational? comedy? documentary?. I came up with the idea of it being a short film/documentary similar to the E4/40D documentrys you would find for example undercover boss, 24 hours in A&E, etc. However with the genres we didn't want our short film to be drama based of course we wanted to bring a bit of comedy possibility of romance?. We want our short film to be unique and different , following documentary style however use of handy cam, single cameras and we also wanted the short film to be based on one person.

We researched other documentrys/short films and their styles of how they are filmed and the content, the first film i looked into was a film called Catfish which is not a short film however is a documentary based on one man and a relationship he has created with a woman on Facebook from this film we came up with the idea of our documentary based film to contain one person prefably a boy , in which we follow and document possible ideas we had was the person affected by an event/disaster or documenting a person facing a challenge for example super size me .

Catfish

                                                                         Supersize me

however we wanted to bring a bit of comedy into our short film so we all started sharing ideas in which we came up a person who thinks hes a superhero? alien aduption?... in the end Phil came up with a great idea of    a Male teenager thinking he is a zombie .. it sounds crazy however putting myself in the audience shoes if i was watching TV and i saw this come up i would laugh and think "yeah right" however it would shock me to actually see a young teenager thinking he is and would be interesting whats going on in this persons head and how others would react to him. .Straight away i could picture some scenes in my head and thought it would is a mad but brilliant idea! Again we did want a drama/comedy based documentary but not too much comedy , we would be making this short film serious based however we would want our film to be NATURALLY funny without even trying too hard.

However we feel the drama is important and making the document big lead, its a serious issue and in the past i have watched alot of documentry's where its quite humourous on screen however the message is quite sad actually ,these people are serious and generally feel normal without being too somber. we also discussed our target audience and looked into how young children 11+ would find this hunourous however we all expected young adults would watch it around about 16-20 possibly up to 25 years olds.

the last thing we talked about was job roles in which i really wanted to push myself this year so we decided on these roles...

Amy- Director, Script writer

Jessica- Producer, Editor

Sannah-Camera, script writier

Philip- Camera/Editor/sound

Mala- Location Manager, assistant

We all cant wait to put our ideas on screen so really looking forward to this project.